# The Bomb Waited 12 Seconds For Her

An episode of [Skinwalker: Horror Stories](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6785756522), 24 Jul 2026, 24 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/72735380/0036.mp3

The Bomb Waited 12 Seconds For Her In this episode, we delve into the chilling details of Don Fluitt's murder, a case where a meticulously planned trap led to a brutal end, leaving behind a trail of questions about who could have known his routine so intimately. Person: Don Fluitt Age: 54 Location: Albuquerque Date: December 28, 2016 Cause of Death: Beaten, strangled, throat cut - Don Fluitt had just driven 12 hours from California with his 11-year-old daughter, Sienna. - A neighbor's security footage showed a hooded figure tipping a garbage bin at Don's driveway at 7:41 PM. - The killer waited in the garage after Don stopped to pick up the bin. - Don's dog, Buddy, was found trembling in a back bedroom, not greeting them at the door. - The front door was unlocked, and nothing was stolen, indicating a personal motive. To listen ad-free and access premium episodes, start your 30-day free trial at obomedia.com. OBOMEDIA presents real horror stories a scary story podcast for the late night hours. Every episode is horror narration done right: true scary stories and horror stories based on true events, told from the first chilling minute. Expect disturbing true stories, disturbing horror stories and dark true horror stories drawn from real testimonies. Some nights bring camping horror stories, forest horror stories and road horror stories; others bring home alone horror stories, haunted stories, eerie stories, strange stories and unsettling tales true creepy stories and creepy encounters that never made the news. Press play on our late night horror stories and late night scary stories, from storytime horror to a full horror stories compilation or scary stories compilation real scary stories, scary stories based on true events, and dark stories to keep the lights on. © 2026 Created with OBOMEDIA technology. All rights reserved. This episode and its content (audio, text and related materials) are the property of their respective creator and are distributed under the OBOMEDIA name on platforms such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and Pocket Casts. Reproduction, distribution, editing or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission is prohibited. For permissions, licensing and business inquiries: business@obomedia

## Transcript

[0:03] Speaker 1: A neighbor in Albuquerque spent part of her evening after
[0:06] Speaker 1: Christmas reviewing security footage frame by frame, looking for nothing.
[0:12] Speaker 1: In particular. She had heard about a death on the
[0:15] Speaker 1: street and wanted to help. For several minutes, the footage
[0:19] Speaker 1: showed only an empty sidewalk, a quiet cul de sac,
[0:23] Speaker 1: ordinary darkness, and then in the upper left corner of
[0:28] Speaker 1: the screen, a hooded figure appeared. It moved deliberately toward
[0:32] Speaker 1: the house next door, and then it was gone. There
[0:36] Speaker 1: is no version of this story where everything makes sense
[0:39] Speaker 1: from the beginning, but there is one detail that stays
[0:42] Speaker 1: with you once you know it. The man who died
[0:45] Speaker 1: that night had spent the previous twelve hours driving back
[0:48] Speaker 1: from California with his eleven year old daughter asleep in
[0:51] Speaker 1: the passenger seat. He was thinking about the weekend. He
[0:56] Speaker 1: was thinking about feeding people. He had no idea what
[1:00] Speaker 1: was waiting inside his own garage. This case haunted me
[1:04] Speaker 1: in a particular way when I first came across it,
[1:07] Speaker 1: because the person who built the trap knew exactly how
[1:10] Speaker 1: long don would be gone, would be gone, knew when
[1:16] Speaker 1: he would come back, and knew that a garbage bin
[1:19] Speaker 1: tipped on its side was all it would take to
[1:22] Speaker 1: bring him to the right spot at the right time.
[1:25] Speaker 1: Don flew as fifty four years old and had lived
[1:29] Speaker 1: most of his adult life finding ways to be useful
[1:32] Speaker 1: to other people. He had worked for years supporting adults
[1:35] Speaker 1: with disabilities in Albuquerque, the kind of job that asks
[1:40] Speaker 1: more than it pays and that most people leave inside
[1:43] Speaker 1: a year. Don stayed. He had, also, somewhere along the way,
[1:49] Speaker 1: started what people in his neighborhood knew as Spaghetti Sunday,
[1:53] Speaker 1: a weekly tradition where he and his daughter cooked large
[1:57] Speaker 1: pots of pasta and brought them to people living on
[2:00] Speaker 1: the streets of the city. It was not a charity,
[2:04] Speaker 1: it was a habit. It happened every week, rain or dust,
[2:08] Speaker 1: and the people who showed up knew it would. Don
[2:12] Speaker 1: had two adult children from a first marriage, Tiffany and Josh,
[2:16] Speaker 1: both living in Oklahoma, and he had Siena, eleven years old,
[2:22] Speaker 1: from his relationship with Christine White. The custody arrangement had
[2:26] Speaker 1: been fought for, contested in court, and eventually settled into
[2:30] Speaker 1: something Don held carefully. Sienna spent time with both parents,
[2:35] Speaker 1: and Don had recently taken her to California for the holiday.
[2:39] Speaker 1: They had been on the road for twelve hours by
[2:41] Speaker 1: the time they pulled into Albuquerque on the evening of
[2:44] Speaker 1: December twenty eighth, two thousand sixteen. It was around seven
[2:49] Speaker 1: in the evening and they walked through the front door.
[2:52] Speaker 1: Sienna spotted it immediately, a new bicycle wrapped with a ribbon,
[2:57] Speaker 1: leaning against the wall near the Christmas tree. Don had
[3:00] Speaker 1: kept it a secret for weeks. What happened next went
[3:04] Speaker 1: unnoticed in the excitement of the moment. Don's dog, Buddy
[3:08] Speaker 1: was not at the door to greet them. He was
[3:10] Speaker 1: in the back bedroom, curled tight in the corner, trembling.
[3:16] Speaker 1: Don noticed. He decided it was separation, anxiety from the trip.
[3:20] Speaker 1: Something felt different that night. The air in that house
[3:24] Speaker 1: carried something Buddy could read and Don could not. Don
[3:28] Speaker 1: had been gone for days, Buddy had not. At around
[3:33] Speaker 1: seven forty Don and Sienna left the house to drop
[3:36] Speaker 1: her off at Christine's. The drive was short. By seven
[3:40] Speaker 1: forty five, Sienna was inside with her mother. Don turned
[3:44] Speaker 1: the truck around and headed back. The round trip took
[3:47] Speaker 1: less than ten minutes. A quiet neighborhood, a familiar road,
[3:52] Speaker 1: a normal night. That was how it looked from the
[3:55] Speaker 1: outside at seven forty one, four minutes before Donnie and
[4:00] Speaker 1: drop Sienna off, a hooded figure appeared on the neighbor's
[4:03] Speaker 1: security camera. It walked to the garbage bin at the
[4:07] Speaker 1: end of Don's driveway, tipped it on to its side,
[4:11] Speaker 1: then moved up the path toward the garage, and disappeared
[4:14] Speaker 1: from the frame. The figure knew Down would be back.
[4:19] Speaker 1: It knew Dawn would stop to pick up the bin,
[4:22] Speaker 1: and while Don was crouched at the end of his
[4:24] Speaker 1: own driveway, hands on a plastic garbage lid, the figure
[4:28] Speaker 1: slipped through the side door of the garage and waited
[4:32] Speaker 1: in the dark. What happened next still can't be explained
[4:35] Speaker 1: by accident or coincidence. This was planned, and whoever planned
[4:40] Speaker 1: it had been watching Don long enough to know his
[4:42] Speaker 1: routines down to the minute. The morning of December twenty ninth,
[4:46] Speaker 1: Sienna Flewet waited for a phone call that never came.
[4:50] Speaker 1: Don had a ritual. Every night before his daughter went
[4:54] Speaker 1: to sleep, he called. It did not matter how tired
[4:58] Speaker 1: he was or how long the dry had been. The
[5:01] Speaker 1: call arrived. It always arrived. But the night of December
[5:05] Speaker 1: twenty eighth, it didn't. Sienna waited then fell asleep, waiting
[5:10] Speaker 1: by morning, she called his office. Instead, Valerie Torres, Don's
[5:16] Speaker 1: co worker and friend, drove to his house on Hannett
[5:19] Speaker 1: Avenue with a colleague. The front door was unlocked, not broken,
[5:25] Speaker 1: not forced, unlocked, as though someone had simply forgotten to
[5:29] Speaker 1: close it. On the way out, Valerie called Don's name.
[5:34] Speaker 1: The house answered with silence. She moved through the kitchen
[5:38] Speaker 1: into the interior hallway and pushed open the door to
[5:42] Speaker 1: the garage. Dawn was against the far wall. The garage
[5:46] Speaker 1: smelled of bleach. Detective Matthew Caplan arrived within the hour.
[5:50] Speaker 1: He was a methodical investigator, and what he saw told
[5:54] Speaker 1: him two things immediately. First, whoever did this was not
[5:58] Speaker 1: a stranger passing through. The violence was concentrated, sustained, and personal. Second,
[6:06] Speaker 1: they had tried to clean up. The empty bleach bottles
[6:09] Speaker 1: sat on top of the washing machine. Damp towels were
[6:12] Speaker 1: bundled inside the drone. Someone had taken time in this
[6:15] Speaker 1: house after Dawn was already dead. That is not how
[6:18] Speaker 1: opportunistic crime looks. That is how premeditation looks. Caplin noted
[6:24] Speaker 1: the front door, no forced entry, no broken lock, no
[6:28] Speaker 1: pride frame, no shattered glass. He noted the interior too.
[6:33] Speaker 1: Don's wallet was still in his jacket. Nothing had been taken.
[6:38] Speaker 1: The motive was not money. The cause of death confirmed
[6:42] Speaker 1: with the scene already suggested. Don had been struck with
[6:46] Speaker 1: a blunt object with enough force to break it on impact.
[6:50] Speaker 1: He had been beaten, strangled, and his throat had been
[6:53] Speaker 1: cut with a kitchen knife, a knife from his own home.
[6:58] Speaker 1: The medical examiners findings pointed to a fight. Don had
[7:02] Speaker 1: not simply been ambushed and overwhelmed. He had struggled. That
[7:07] Speaker 1: detail mattered more than anyone new yet. The next morning,
[7:11] Speaker 1: Caplin got a phone call from a neighbor on Hannett Avenue.
[7:15] Speaker 1: She had a security camera mounted on the side of
[7:18] Speaker 1: her house. It captured a lateral angle of the path
[7:21] Speaker 1: leading up to Don's garage. She had been reviewing the
[7:24] Speaker 1: footage frame by frame since learning what happened, looking for something, anything.
[7:30] Speaker 1: She found it. At seven forty one in the evening
[7:34] Speaker 1: on December twenty eighth, a figure in a dark hooded
[7:38] Speaker 1: jacket appeared at the edge of the frame. The figure
[7:41] Speaker 1: walked toward Don's property, paused at the garbage bind and
[7:45] Speaker 1: tipped it over on to the path, then continued up
[7:48] Speaker 1: toward the garage and disappeared from view. Down and Sienna
[7:52] Speaker 1: had left the house at approximately seven forty pm. The
[7:55] Speaker 1: figure appeared one minute later. Dawn dropped Siena at Christine
[8:00] Speaker 1: House at seven forty five. He was back on Hannett
[8:03] Speaker 1: Avenue no later than eight o'clock. The timeline left no
[8:08] Speaker 1: ambiguity whoever that figure was had watched the house, had
[8:13] Speaker 1: waited for Dawn to leave, had tipped the bin deliberately,
[8:17] Speaker 1: not randomly, not accidentally, and then entered the garage and
[8:22] Speaker 1: waited inside in the dark for Dawn to return. The
[8:25] Speaker 1: rational explanation Caplin needed was simple, find the figure, find
[8:29] Speaker 1: the killer. What he found instead were loose ends. Caplin
[8:34] Speaker 1: ran through everyone in Don's life who had reason to
[8:37] Speaker 1: be there, motive to be angry, and knowledge of the property.
[8:41] Speaker 1: Don's brother, Denis Flewet, lived locally and had no alibi
[8:46] Speaker 1: for that evening. He told investigators he had been home alone.
[8:50] Speaker 1: No one could confirm that. When detectives pressed, Dennis pointed
[8:54] Speaker 1: toward another name, Benny Ruiz, Down's landlord. Ruiz also had
[9:01] Speaker 1: no solid alibi. He lived close by, he knew the
[9:05] Speaker 1: property intimately. The layout of the garage, the way the
[9:09] Speaker 1: door worked, where Dawn parked. In the days after the murder,
[9:13] Speaker 1: Benny had let himself into the house. He said he
[9:16] Speaker 1: was feeding Buddy. Caplin noted the timing, noted the access.
[9:21] Speaker 1: When Benny was asked about Denis, Benny pointed back at Denis.
[9:25] Speaker 1: Two men no alibis, pointing at each other. It should
[9:30] Speaker 1: have narrowed the field. Instead, it created a loop that
[9:33] Speaker 1: led nowhere. Neither man's DNA matched what Caplain was waiting on.
[9:38] Speaker 1: Neither man could be placed at the scene with anything
[9:40] Speaker 1: harder than suspicion and proximity. Investigators also floated two other
[9:45] Speaker 1: theories in those early weeks. One a road rage incident.
[9:51] Speaker 1: Dawn had driven twelve hours from California. Maybe something had
[9:55] Speaker 1: happened on the road, something escalated, followed him home. Caplin
[10:00] Speaker 1: examined it and found nothing to support it. No reports,
[10:04] Speaker 1: no witnesses, no connection between the route and any one
[10:07] Speaker 1: in Don's life. The theory dissolved. Two. A homeless individual,
[10:14] Speaker 1: some one who had wandered the neighborhood, found an unlocked
[10:17] Speaker 1: garage been surprised by Don's return. Caplin dismissed this one quickly,
[10:24] Speaker 1: the clean up told him everything. The bleach, the towels,
[10:28] Speaker 1: the deliberate erasure that was not panic, that was planning.
[10:33] Speaker 1: Whoever was in that garage had brought the means to
[10:36] Speaker 1: destroy evidence before the crime even began. There was one
[10:40] Speaker 1: more detail that the investigation quietly reconstructed, and it changed
[10:44] Speaker 1: how the whole night read. The garage door censer Don's
[10:49] Speaker 1: garage was fitted with a motion sensitive safety system. When
[10:53] Speaker 1: something passed in front of the censer while the door
[10:56] Speaker 1: was closing, it would reverse, the door'd lift back up,
[11:01] Speaker 1: and the exterior lights would flash three times. Investigators believe
[11:06] Speaker 1: the intruder, moving through the darkened garage, crossed the censer's beam,
[11:10] Speaker 1: the door rose, the lights flashed, the intruder ran to
[11:14] Speaker 1: the wall panel and manually closed the door. From inside.
[11:18] Speaker 1: Dawn was somewhere on the path between his truck and
[11:22] Speaker 1: his front door when the lights flashed. He noticed he
[11:26] Speaker 1: would have noticed three pulses of light in the dark
[11:29] Speaker 1: from a closed garage, but he went inside anyway. Maybe
[11:34] Speaker 1: he told himself it was a glitch. Maybe he was
[11:36] Speaker 1: tired from twelve hours on the road and his daughter
[11:39] Speaker 1: asleep beside him, and the weight of the holidays, maybe
[11:43] Speaker 1: the lights barely registered. He opened the interior door to
[11:47] Speaker 1: the garage and walked in. The tire thumper, a small
[11:51] Speaker 1: wooden mallet used to check tire pressure, was the first weapon.
[11:56] Speaker 1: It hit down hard enough to splinter. Dawn did not
[12:00] Speaker 1: go down. He fought back. He clawed at his attacker.
[12:05] Speaker 1: He tried to drag himself under his own truck, using
[12:08] Speaker 1: the undercarriage as a barrier, putting steel between himself and
[12:12] Speaker 1: the person trying to kill him. His attacker pulled him out,
[12:16] Speaker 1: struck him again, strangled him, then walked to Don's own kitchen,
[12:22] Speaker 1: opened a drawer, and came back. By February twenty seventeen,
[12:27] Speaker 1: Caplin had a crime scene, a video, a timeline, and
[12:32] Speaker 1: no suspect he could charge. Then March arrived. The forensic
[12:37] Speaker 1: laboratory called with results from the biological material collected from
[12:41] Speaker 1: beneath Don Flewett's finger nails during the autopsy. Dawn had
[12:45] Speaker 1: scratched his attacker during the fight. He had drawn something
[12:48] Speaker 1: skin cells DNA, and held it there under his nails.
[12:53] Speaker 1: Through everything that followed. The sample had been processed. The
[12:57] Speaker 1: profile was in the system and it matched. It did
[13:00] Speaker 1: not match Dennis Fleuet. It did not match Benny Ruiz.
[13:05] Speaker 1: The DNA belonged to Terry White. Terry White was not
[13:08] Speaker 1: a stranger to this case. He was Siena's stepfather. He
[13:12] Speaker 1: was married to Christine Dons ex partner, the woman who
[13:15] Speaker 1: had custody of Sienna and who lived five minutes from
[13:18] Speaker 1: Don's house on Hannett Avenue. When Detective Caplan had interviewed
[13:22] Speaker 1: Terry in the days after the murder, Terry had met
[13:25] Speaker 1: him at the front door with a smile. He had
[13:27] Speaker 1: been calm, co operative, and almost immediately deflected. He said
[13:32] Speaker 1: he and Don had no real relationship. He said he
[13:36] Speaker 1: tried to stay out of Down's way to avoid creating conflict.
[13:40] Speaker 1: He said he'd been at his sister's house the evening
[13:42] Speaker 1: of December twenty eighth and hadn't left until nine o'clock
[13:45] Speaker 1: that night. Two people confirmed that alibi. Terry's brother and
[13:51] Speaker 1: Terry's employer both told investigators that yes, Terry had been
[13:54] Speaker 1: at his sister's through the evening nine o'clock home, well
[13:58] Speaker 1: after whatever happened at Don's house. The case file had
[14:02] Speaker 1: two confirmed alibis for Terry White, and it had Terry
[14:06] Speaker 1: White's DNA under Dawn Flewitt's finger nails. Both of those
[14:10] Speaker 1: things could not be true at once. Caplin pulled the
[14:14] Speaker 1: alibi apart. The two witnesses, when pressed, became less certain
[14:18] Speaker 1: the timeline they described did not hold up to scrutiny.
[14:22] Speaker 1: When investigators applied pressure, the story shifted. What had seemed
[14:26] Speaker 1: like a solid account turned out to be a version
[14:28] Speaker 1: of events that two people had agreed to, not one
[14:31] Speaker 1: they could independently verify. The alibi collapsed, and in that collapse,
[14:36] Speaker 1: something else became visible. Terry had known Dawn's routine. The
[14:41] Speaker 1: custody schedule meant he knew exactly when Dawn would be
[14:44] Speaker 1: dropping Siena at Christine's house on December twenty eighth, and
[14:49] Speaker 1: exactly how long Dawn would be gone. He knew the
[14:53] Speaker 1: property well enough to navigate the garage in the dark.
[14:56] Speaker 1: He knew which nights the garbage went out, which side
[14:59] Speaker 1: of the driveway Don parked Dawn, how long the drive
[15:03] Speaker 1: from Christine's house to Hannett Avenue took. He had tipped
[15:07] Speaker 1: the garbage bin to slow Dawn down by forty five seconds,
[15:11] Speaker 1: just enough time to get inside the garage and close
[15:14] Speaker 1: the door. On April third, twenty seventeen, Terry White was
[15:18] Speaker 1: arrested for the murder of Don Flewet. After his arrest,
[15:22] Speaker 1: Terry made a statement. He said he had wanted Sienna.
[15:26] Speaker 1: He said he wanted her for him and Christine entirely
[15:32] Speaker 1: without Dawn in the picture. The man who had fought custody, hearings,
[15:37] Speaker 1: who drove twelve hours to bring his daughter home for Christmas,
[15:40] Speaker 1: who had bought her a bicycle and planned a spaghetti
[15:43] Speaker 1: Sunday and called every single night before she went to sleep.
[15:47] Speaker 1: That man was the obstacle, and Terry had decided to
[15:51] Speaker 1: remove him. In August twenty eighteen, a jury convicted Terry
[15:57] Speaker 1: White a first degree murder, aggravated robbery, and tampering with evidence.
[16:03] Speaker 1: The court sentenced him to life in prison plus twelve
[16:06] Speaker 1: additional years. The bicycle Don bought for Siena was still
[16:10] Speaker 1: in the house when police processed the scene, still in
[16:13] Speaker 1: its wrapping, still under the tree, still tied with a ribbon.
[16:18] Speaker 1: Don had put it there himself the day before he
[16:21] Speaker 1: drove to California to pick Sienna up. He had planned
[16:25] Speaker 1: for her to find it when they got home. She
[16:27] Speaker 1: found it, and then the house became a crime scene.
[16:31] Speaker 1: And the bicycle stayed. There are cases where the question
[16:35] Speaker 1: of why someone did something remains genuinely open, where motive
[16:38] Speaker 1: is argued, disputed, or simply never confirmed. The Don Fluitt
[16:43] Speaker 1: case is not one of those. Terry White hold investigators
[16:47] Speaker 1: what he wanted. He said it directly. He wanted Siena
[16:50] Speaker 1: removed from Don's life and Don removed from existence. That
[16:54] Speaker 1: is not speculation reconstructed after the fact. That is a
[16:58] Speaker 1: stated motive from the man who carried it out. What
[17:01] Speaker 1: remains unresolved is something different, and it is harder to
[17:05] Speaker 1: sit with. Christine White was arrested in the weeks following
[17:09] Speaker 1: Terry's arrest on the basis of Terry's own statement. Terry
[17:14] Speaker 1: told investigators that Christine had known about the plan, that
[17:17] Speaker 1: she had been aware or involved, or both. The charges
[17:22] Speaker 1: against Christine were for solicitation for allegedly having a role
[17:26] Speaker 1: in what Terry did. The prosecution could not prove it,
[17:30] Speaker 1: not to the evidentiary standard required the witnesses. They had,
[17:35] Speaker 1: the statements, they held, the physical evidence from the scene.
[17:39] Speaker 1: None of it pointed to Christine in a way that
[17:41] Speaker 1: could survive cross examination. The charges were dropped. Christine White
[17:47] Speaker 1: was released. What that means, legally is clear Christine was
[17:51] Speaker 1: not convicted of any crime. The system found insufficient evidence
[17:55] Speaker 1: to hold her responsible. What that means in every other
[17:58] Speaker 1: sense is question that has no clean answer. Terry made
[18:03] Speaker 1: an accusation under circumstances where he had every reason to
[18:07] Speaker 1: shift blame. That makes his statement unreliable. But Christine was
[18:12] Speaker 1: the one who had Siena full time. Christine was the
[18:15] Speaker 1: one who understood the custody schedule precisely enough to know
[18:18] Speaker 1: when Don would be at home and when he wouldn't.
[18:22] Speaker 1: And Terry was the one who knew Don's property, Don's garage,
[18:25] Speaker 1: Don's timing, and had direct access to all of that
[18:29] Speaker 1: through Christine. The investigation established that Terry acted, it could
[18:33] Speaker 1: not establish, beyond what Terry himself claimed, whether he acted alone.
[18:38] Speaker 1: In the planning. That ambiguity is not a gap in
[18:40] Speaker 1: the story telling. It is the actual state of the record.
[18:44] Speaker 1: The detail that does not require ambiguity is this, Don
[18:49] Speaker 1: flew At fought in the final minutes of his life
[18:52] Speaker 1: in the dark of his own garage, outweighed and ambushed
[18:55] Speaker 1: and struck. Before he could orient himself, he fought, He
[19:00] Speaker 1: grabbed at the person attacking him and held on the
[19:03] Speaker 1: DNA his fingernails carried through everything that followed the strangulation,
[19:09] Speaker 1: the knife, the bleach that was supposed to erase all
[19:12] Speaker 1: of it. That DNA was the only piece of evidence
[19:16] Speaker 1: that connected Terry White to the scene. The bleach destroyed
[19:20] Speaker 1: almost everything. Almost what it could not reach was already
[19:24] Speaker 1: sealed inside Don's body. There is something that still hasn't
[19:28] Speaker 1: fully settled, even now, having spent time with this case.
[19:33] Speaker 1: The tire thumper, a small wooden mallet for checking tire pressure,
[19:38] Speaker 1: ordinary enough that you would find one in half the
[19:41] Speaker 1: garages on any given street. Terry brought it with him
[19:45] Speaker 1: that night. He had selected it in advance, held it
[19:50] Speaker 1: in the dark while he waited and struck hard enough
[19:53] Speaker 1: to break it, and Don still fought back. Siana Fluitt
[19:58] Speaker 1: grew up knowing what happened in that garage. She grew
[20:02] Speaker 1: up knowing that the man who had taken her father
[20:04] Speaker 1: from her had been in their family's life, sitting at
[20:08] Speaker 1: their table driving her to school. She grew up knowing
[20:14] Speaker 1: that the last thing her father did before he died
[20:17] Speaker 1: was refused to stop fighting, And she grew up knowing
[20:20] Speaker 1: that because he did, the man who killed him could
[20:23] Speaker 1: not walk free. Dawn called every night before Siena went
[20:28] Speaker 1: to sleep. He never got to make that last call.
[20:31] Speaker 1: But in a way that no one planned and no
[20:34] Speaker 1: one could have predicted, he left her something better than
[20:37] Speaker 1: a phone call. He left her the truth. Terry White
[20:42] Speaker 1: was convicted in August of twenty eighteen first degree murder,
[20:45] Speaker 1: aggravated robbery, tampering with evidence. The jury needed no elaborate theory.
[20:52] Speaker 1: The DNA under Don's finger nails was the only witness
[20:55] Speaker 1: that survived the Bleach life in prison plus twelve years.
[20:59] Speaker 1: Christie kan White was arrested on the strength of Terry's
[21:02] Speaker 1: own statement. After his arrest, he said she had been involved.
[21:06] Speaker 1: The charges were dropped within months. Prosecutors found no corroborating evidence.
[21:11] Speaker 1: What Terry said about Christine could not be proven, and
[21:15] Speaker 1: what could not be proven could not stand she walked out.
[21:20] Speaker 1: That question has no clean answer, and the court never
[21:24] Speaker 1: found one. The motive, when Terry finally gave it, was
[21:28] Speaker 1: simple enough to be sickening. He wanted Siena for themselves.
[21:34] Speaker 1: Dawn had fought for custody in court for years, had
[21:37] Speaker 1: driven twelve hours to bring his daughter home for Christmas,
[21:41] Speaker 1: and had refused to disappear quietly from her life. Terry
[21:46] Speaker 1: solved that problem the only way he believed he could.
[21:50] Speaker 1: He waited in a dark garage with a wooden mallet,
[21:53] Speaker 1: and he waited for Dawn to come back to the
[21:55] Speaker 1: trash camp he had tipped over himself. There is something
[21:58] Speaker 1: that stayed with the investigator long after the verdict. Don
[22:02] Speaker 1: did not survive, but he fought. He clawed at his
[22:06] Speaker 1: attacker with both hands in the dark of that garage,
[22:09] Speaker 1: and whatever he pulled from Terry's skin that night, skin cells, blood,
[22:14] Speaker 1: something too small to see, ended up under his finger nails.
[22:19] Speaker 1: The bleach cleaned the floor. The bleach cleaned the towels.
[22:23] Speaker 1: The bleach cleaned nothing that was already inside Don's body.
[22:27] Speaker 1: Eleven year old Sienna had called the office that morning
[22:30] Speaker 1: because her father had not called the night before. He
[22:34] Speaker 1: always called before she went to sleep. The bicycle was
[22:38] Speaker 1: still under the tree when the crime scene investigators processed
[22:41] Speaker 1: the house, wrapped in a bright ribbon, exactly where Dawn
[22:46] Speaker 1: had placed it before driving Siena to Christine's house that evening.
[22:51] Speaker 1: Nobody wrote it that Christmas, Tiffany and Josh Don's adult
[22:56] Speaker 1: children from his first marriage, learned what had happened by
[23:00] Speaker 1: phone from Oklahoma. The man who cooked spaghetti on Sunday
[23:03] Speaker 1: mornings for strangers who had spent years in family court
[23:07] Speaker 1: rather than surrender a single weekend with his daughter was gone.
[23:12] Speaker 1: The person who killed him was the man who had
[23:15] Speaker 1: been living in his daughter's home. Siena grew up knowing
[23:18] Speaker 1: that she grew up knowing that Don had fought in
[23:21] Speaker 1: that garage, that he had not gone quietly, and that
[23:25] Speaker 1: the only reason Terry White is serving life in prison
[23:28] Speaker 1: is because of what Don's hands held on to in
[23:31] Speaker 1: the last minutes of his life. Detective Caplin closed the
[23:35] Speaker 1: case with an arrest in April of twenty seventeen. The
[23:38] Speaker 1: laboratory result from March had taken him directly to a
[23:41] Speaker 1: man he had already interviewed, a man who had smiled
[23:45] Speaker 1: at the door, offered a calm alibi, and said he
[23:48] Speaker 1: stayed away from Dawn to avoid conflict. Terry had been
[23:52] Speaker 1: so careful the bleach, the towels, the hood pulled low
[23:56] Speaker 1: on the neighbour's camera. He had thought about almost everything
[24:00] Speaker 1: he had not thought about Dawn fighting back. The bicycle
[24:04] Speaker 1: sat in evidence storage for months before it was released
[24:07] Speaker 1: to the family. By then the ribbon had lost its shape,
[24:12] Speaker 1: but it was still tied. This show is made by Obomedia.

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