♪♪
Up next... a late-night walk
in an upscale neighborhood
results in m*rder.
The victim suffered a horrible,
agonizing, painful death.
Surprise evidence
sends investigators
in an unexpected direction.
m*rder has no boundaries.
We're going wherever
we got to go.
After weeks of investigation,
the case comes down
to a single phone number.
The bottom line to this
investigation is forensics.
The cellphone forensics
actually brought
the whole focus 180 degrees.
The forensics is the glue
that sticks it all together.
♪♪
♪♪
After meeting online
and living for a while
in Europe,
Fred and Sherry Engel married
and moved
his consulting business
to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina,
in 2006.
The couple,
both in their early 50s,
lived in a complex
called Carolina Forest.
Carolina Forest... it was really
a planned-unit development,
but it stretches into
what was just a bare tract,
a wildlife tract,
for many, many acres.
Tom and Karen Rickerson were
the Engels' next-door neighbors.
We knew her first because
she lived in Myrtle Beach
before Fred was able,
with his job, to move there.
They were very quiet, you know,
like, you know, to themselves.
Very nice people.
Shortly before
midnight on April 21, 2008,
Sherry woke up
and couldn't find Fred.
He wasn't in the house,
but his car
was still in the garage.
She had worked herself up
into a panic.
She knocked on her
next-door neighbors' door
and very plainly said then,
but in a panicked way, you know,
"I can't find Fred.
I don't know where Fred is."
Tom Rickerson searched
the Engels' home
and found no sign of Fred in
the house or surrounding area.
But Sherry noticed that the keys
to the mailbox
were not in the house.
The mailboxes
for this development...
it's a bank of mailboxes
that's right
at the edge of the community,
and it's in a very wooded area.
This bank of mailboxes
was about two blocks
from the Engels' house.
Sherry Engel and Tom Rickerson
drove there.
I get out the car,
and in front of the mailbox,
I see a pair of glasses.
And when I get up close,
I see blood on the pavement.
Well, Sherry comes up,
and I said,
"Sherry, get back in the car,"
'cause I'm thinking
whoever did this
is still there.
Police were called to the scene
and immediately searched
the area.
And approximately 10 to
they see what appears to be
a body laying there.
It was Fred Engel.
He'd been strangled with a
highly unusual m*rder w*apon.
We see what appears to be
a bootlace or a shoelace
tied around Fred Engel's neck,
and it's tied from the back.
There was also a bloody gash
on the back of his head.
Detectives assumed that,
while he was at the mailbox,
Fred had been
knocked unconscious,
dragged into the woods,
and then strangled.
This gave detectives one piece
of vital information
straight away.
Fred was well over 6 feet
and weighed 250 pounds.
Dragging him into the woods
would not have been easy.
This is not gonna be
a skinny, little kid.
You know, this is going to be
an adult-size male.
Fred was still wearing
his wedding ring
and an expensive watch.
His cellphone was in his pocket.
It's quite apparent
at that point,
robbery is probably
not gonna be the motive.
The only motive
appeared to be m*rder.
But who would want to k*ll
Fred Engel?
No one had a clue.
♪♪
Evidence at the scene
of Fred Engel's m*rder
appeared to indicate his k*ller
was lying in wait,
that he knew where Fred would be
and at what time.
This was a particularly
vicious crime.
It was the type of crime that,
in my opinion,
happens because
someone knows someone.
When Fred's wife, Sherry,
found out what happened,
first responders nearly had
another emergency
on their hands.
She became
very hysterical, disbelief.
She passed out.
They were able to revive her,
but she wasn't the same.
It was heartbreaking
to watch someone process
and go through that instant
grief of understanding
that their loved one,
their husband, has passed.
When she could
finally communicate,
Sherry said she had no idea
who would want to k*ll Fred
and freely gave permission
for police to search her house.
We're looking for anything
that can help tell us
what happened to Mr. Engel.
Does he have a beef with any
of the neighbors in the area?
Has any business partners
or business contracts gone bad?
Any threats against him?
And it turned out that
Fred did have a confrontation
shortly before his m*rder
with a teenager who lived
in the neighborhood.
This young man was
so troublesome
and scared so many residents
that he and his mother
had been kicked out
of the development.
This young man had
committed some small fires,
had been accused of, like,
sh**ting an air r*fle
at passing cars,
different things of that nature
that had basically made him
unwelcome on other people's
property in the neighborhood.
And he fit the bill
as a potential suspect.
He had a significant temper,
was the size of a regular man,
so we're not talking about
dealing with a child.
We're talking about a child
in a man's body.
Even more telling,
the k*ller used a shoelace...
a crime-of-opportunity w*apon,
the kind of w*apon a person
might resort to on impulse.
Seeing the shoelace
around his neck, to me,
immediately started gears
spinning in my head.
The first thing it told me
was this most likely
was something
that happened in a hurry.
Perhaps Fred had
another altercation
with this teenager,
and it escalated into m*rder.
The young man's
police interrogation
did little to knock down
this theory.
His personality was
very confrontational.
He did not want to be there.
He would not provide
any direct answers.
Everything was evasive.
He finally admitted to
being in the neighborhood
but said he'd gone to
a nearby shopping center
later that night.
Surveillance video from
that shopping center
showed he was there.
And, most important,
he was there during Fred's
estimated time of death,
between 11:00 and midnight.
So, that takes him
out of the equation.
Investigators now had
to consider another possibility.
Fred's job tended
to make enemies.
He would come
and evaluate businesses,
see what was working,
what was not,
and very frequently,
whenever Fred came in,
people lost their jobs.
A lot of people
didn't like Fred.
He was kind of the hatchet man.
This meant a huge pool
of potential suspects,
not only in America,
but also overseas.
If you jump into a pond,
you're gonna make a splash,
and Fred had jumped into
quite a few ponds
through his business.
As detectives began
the painstaking search
for possible suspects,
they hoped DNA
might provide a break.
Could analysts get DNA
from the very unusual
m*rder w*apon...
the shoelace used
to strangle Fred?
The shoelace looked
dingy and old,
so I immediately got optimistic,
hoping, "Okay, great.
Hopefully, there's gonna be
DNA on this shoelace."
But in a setback
no one anticipated,
no foreign DNA was recovered.
Jurors believe that DNA
is everywhere, and it is.
But it's very fickle,
and it's very hard to get
a lot of times.
We're really looking for it,
and not having it
in this case...
it really hurt me.
As police dug for leads,
they had to deal with
a community on edge.
A m*rder*r was at loose.
No child was playing
outside after 5:00
when the sun went down.
Nobody was jogging any longer.
We've already crossed
that 48-hour threshold.
The investigation reached
a point
where I had essentially
ran out of leads.
But a few weeks
into the investigation,
detectives got a potential
break in the case.
Sherry's friends and family
said they saw something strange
shortly after Fred's m*rder,
on the very day
he was laid to rest.
During the memorial services
for Fred,
several family members
and friends of Sherry noticed
her having conversations
and interactions
with someone they didn't know.
It was a tall,
redheaded stranger.
And this behavior continued
well after the funeral.
She seemed to have a very
friendly, very cordial,
on the borderline of being
flirtatious relationship
with this man
that none of them knew.
Who was this man,
and was it possible
he held the key
to Fred Engel's m*rder?
♪♪
Even though Fred Engel
had moved his business
to the U.S.,
he still spent a lot of time
on the road.
He would fly to New York
for business meetings.
He would go to China.
He would fly all over.
And when he was gone,
Sherry would often stay
with her family in Kentucky.
Fred accompanied her
whenever he could.
Sherry's family in Kentucky
absolutely loved Fred.
They enjoyed every time
he visited.
They really appreciated him.
But there was something
about Sherry's behavior
that concerned her family
in Kentucky.
She was increasingly seen
in the company of a man
her family had never met.
And they seemed to be
more than friends.
In Kentucky, she had been seen
with this unknown redheaded man,
redheaded stranger,
several times over the course
of her visits,
and she had been visiting
frequently back home.
Family members didn't know him.
And after Fred's m*rder,
Sherry seemed to be spending
even more time with him.
The scuttlebutt on the street
in Breckinridge, Kentucky,
is Sherry is having an affair
with some redheaded guy
that's really big.
Family members in Kentucky
contacted the local sheriff
to express their concerns.
That sheriff promptly called
his counterparts
in South Carolina.
Both offices agreed to work
together to find out what,
if anything, was going on.
I asked the sheriff
in Breckinridge County,
"Is there any way... would you
mind, please, going out
and kind of doing the legwork
there in Kentucky
and finding out
who this person may be?"
And he agreed to do that for me.
Detectives in Kentucky
were eventually able to identify
the man seen with Sherry Engel
as Tim Rogers,
a divorced 40-year-old
contractor
with no criminal history.
He was 6'4", 240 pounds...
almost the exact size
as Fred Engel.
I immediately realized
I had a person
that was physically capable
of doing the things
that the crime scene
and the body showed me
happened that night.
Tim Rogers drove
a red pickup truck,
which turned out to be
potentially significant.
The night of the m*rder,
a woman in Fred's neighborhood
saw a red pickup
driving around the mailboxes
where Fred was att*cked.
The truck, which she had never
seen in the neighborhood,
drove very slowly to the bank
of mailboxes and parked nearby.
She said she never saw
the driver exit the vehicle.
She doesn't recognize
the vehicle
because, obviously,
she lives there.
She's never seen it before.
She believes
it's a Chevy S-10 pickup.
This truck was the
same model as Tim Rogers' truck.
But when South Carolina
detectives
went to interview Tim,
his truck was no longer red.
So, he changed the color
from maroon or red
to basically primer gray,
which was very suspicious
in and of itself.
Meanwhile, detectives
were questioning Sherry Engel.
On the night of the m*rder,
she allowed police
to search her house.
One item they searched
was her cellphone.
There appeared to be
nothing unusual on this phone.
But a few days later,
while going over Sherry's
physical phone records,
analysts found
something unexpected.
She'd deleted a series of calls
that happened in the days
leading up to Fred's m*rder.
All of these calls were to
a number in the 502 area code.
The area code was
a Kentucky phone number.
And analysts traced the number
Sherry had called
to a disposable burner phone
purchased by none other
than Tim Rogers.
A concentrated burst
of these calls
happened the night
of Fred's m*rder
at a time when Sherry told
police she'd been asleep.
Her whole story now was suspect.
Not only was Sherry lying to me,
she was lying to me
during the exact time period
that we're investigating
where a homicide occurred.
Definitely something is up.
Analysts now did a deep dive
on Sherry and Tim's
phone activity,
and it revealed
a m*rder conspiracy
in the works for months.
Sherry was brought in
for questioning
and denied any involvement
in her husband's m*rder.
But when confronted with
the evidence from her phone,
would Sherry's story change?
♪♪
Sherry Engel's reaction
to her husband's m*rder...
she was so shocked, she had
to be treated by paramedics...
made her an unlikely
m*rder suspect.
But if she was having an affair
with Tim Rogers,
investigators and even
her relatives weren't so sure.
Sherry's own family is saying,
"This is closer than friends.
These two have
something going on."
Rumors of an affair
and a lot of suspiciously timed
phone calls
were hardly proof of m*rder,
but detectives believed
those calls
might be able to tell the story
of what happened
the night Fred was k*lled.
Investigators got the locations
of all the cellphone towers
in the area
and then did what's called
a tower dump.
A tower dump shows you
every phone number
in and out of a particular tower
and the times that it occurs,
how long the call lasted,
the phone number
it connected with
or called to or called from.
Forensic analysts
were able to pinpoint
almost exactly
Sherry and Tim's locations
as they called each other
the night of Fred's m*rder.
So, they could put the signal
down into the size
of about a car,
I would say about
I could say that this person
was accurately within that area.
Sherry and Tim had
five phone conversations
around the time
of Fred's m*rder.
The tower dump showed
that four of those calls
were either made or received
right next to the mailbox
where Fred was att*cked.
The last call was from a hotel
about seven miles
from the site of the m*rder.
I immediately walk in with the
staff, show them a picture,
and they immediately
recognize him,
say, "Yeah, that's Timmy.
Timmy's been staying here
off and on for several months."
Hotel staff said he
drove a red Chevy S-10 pickup,
the same make and model
a witness reported seeing
on the night of Fred's m*rder,
and he checked out the day after
Fred Engel's memorial service.
Sherry Engel had been paying
for Timmy Rogers' hotel room
with her credit card.
Sherry and Tim were
both questioned
in connection
with Fred Engel's m*rder.
Timmy is denying
any involvement in the crime,
and he's denying
any relationship with Sherry.
He essentially played dumb
about every topic
that I asked him about.
How did...
Sherry's story wasn't
much different than Tim's.
She said that Timmy was
a very dear friend of hers,
that they spent time together,
but they strictly had
a friendship, and that was it.
Now detectives confronted Sherry
with the evidence
from her cellphone.
This interview ended,
but it apparently had
quite an effect on Sherry Engel.
Later that day, she came back
to the police station
and told detectives
it was time to come clean.
Okay.
Okay.
A rattled Sherry now confessed
to the affair with Tim Rogers.
Listen...
She told police Tim wanted
to k*ll Fred and marry her,
but she never thought
he'd go through with it
and was shocked when he did.
Tell me, what did...
Prosecutors say
the phone evidence created
a remarkably clear picture
of what happened
and proved Sherry was in on
the m*rder plot from the start.
At 9:43, Tim called Sherry
from the mailboxes.
This was him calling Sherry,
saying,
"Hey, I'm in position.
I'm ready to go.
Send him down here
as soon as you can."
At 10:35, Sherry called Tim,
saying the plan
had been delayed.
At 11:05, she called Tim again.
This is Sherry telling Timmy,
"Get ready. I have sent Fred
to the mailbox."
Sherry asked Fred to
get something from the mailbox,
knowing full well
he was walking to his death.
The evidence shows Tim Rogers
hit Fred in the head
with some sort of object,
knocking him unconscious.
Tim dragged Fred into the woods,
took one of his own shoelaces,
strangled Fred to death,
and then made his way
back to his truck.
At 11:42, Tim called Sherry.
That is him telling Sherry,
"The crime has been committed.
I've done it.
I'm heading back to the hotel."
At 12:03, Tim called
Sherry from the hotel.
He tells her,
"I'm back at the hotel.
I'm cleaning up."
And now, in a clear indication
she was in on the plot,
Sherry deleted
all her calls to Tim
before she informed neighbors
that Fred was missing.
When they got those records,
it was a definite "a-ha" moment.
In October of 2010,
Tim Rogers was convicted
of first-degree m*rder
and sentenced to 35 years.
In December,
Sherry went before a judge.
She hoped her story of being
an unwitting accomplice
in her husband's m*rder
would buy her some mercy,
but the evidence exposed
that story as a lie.
The judge couldn't stand her.
He gave her 30 years.
As unlikely as it seemed,
Tim and Sherry
apparently thought
they could pull off this crime.
Their main mistake?
They had no idea
their cellphones had been
tracking every move they made
and proved without a doubt
they had conspired
to k*ll Fred Engel.
The cellular data definitely
shifted the direction
of the investigation
straight at her.
I've described it
over and over again
as a busted lamp
or a busted vase.
The forensics is the glue
that sticks it all together.
That's what turned
the whole investigation around
to focus at her,
to focus at Timmy.
That's what also told us
there was no other players
involved in this
other than those two.