Follow the Money 40:17

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Some of the cases that I've worked included the biggest fraud in history, the Bernard Madoff case. I'm Steve Garfinkel. I'm a retired FBI agent. The Madoff scheme, you know, over the life of the scheme, it was over $170 billion. $170 billion. I mean, that is a huge amount of money. I worked the Sam Israel Bayou hedge fund case. It was a $400 million case.

and Andrew Kissel, which was a $40 million case. Exclusivity is something that all Ponzi schemers seek. He's not going to take everybody's money. He just only wants to take yours. If you would Google Andrew Kissel, you would find that he was the president of a real estate management group and an owner of apartment buildings. By all appearances, he looked very successful. I mean, Andrew was a liar.

He was a thief. He wasn't stealing from people as much as he was defrauding banks. He didn't, you know, stick a gun in your face, but he was doing it with a paper and a pen. Andrew Kissel was one complicated guy.

I'm Philip Russell. I was Andrew Kissel's attorney. He was a very good father to his children. He was a good friend to some of his friends. And he was the worst thing that ever happened to his investors and to people who trusted him with money. He stole money. That was something that he didn't seem able to control. He wanted a bigger car. He wanted a bigger boat. He wanted to be out in front.

They always think they're gonna get away with it. Eventually, the whole thing is gonna, you know, collapse. It was a Monday morning. My phone rang, and it was a prosecutor from the U.S. Attorney's Office. She said, "It's Kissel." And I said, "Suicide?" And she said, "No, homicide. He's been murdered." The first thing I thought was, who did it? He had enthusiastic, motivated enemies. Lots of them. -Follow the money.

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Greenwich, Connecticut. One of the ritziest zip codes in the nation. Some of the richest, wealthiest people in America live in Greenwich. And, you know, Andrew wanted to play the part. It's where 46-year-old Andrew Kissel hoped to make his name in real estate. Instead, in 2006, he became the community's most infamous murder victim. I was shocked.

I was stunned. Phil Russell, Andrew's attorney, says his client was just days from pleading guilty to bank fraud in court. It was a complete surprise that this would happen to him. This is a man who had hurt a lot of people. But it was money. And for a bank fraud case to have this type of violence is just unusual.

Andrew was found dead on Monday morning, April 3rd, 2006. He and his family were in the process of moving. Andrew had stayed behind in their rented mansion. The movers discovered his body. I went up there and the crime scene unit was up there. Police brought in FBI Special Investigator Steven Garfingle to identify Andrew's body. How often are you asked to ID?

the body of a homicide. I'm a white collar guy. This was the only time this happened in my career. Kissel's body was in the basement. The first time I met Andrew Kissel was when I saw him laying there in his boiler room. Greenwich Police Detective Pasquale Irafino. He was bound and gagged. There was a lot of blood.

all over the concrete floor. Andrew's hands and feet were bound. He was blindfolded and stabbed multiple times. I believe the final blow may have been to the jugular. He bled out. He bled out a lot. Pretty awful way to die? Very brutal.

No one wants to die that way. There was no sign of a struggle and no forced entry. Police quickly concluded this was not a random crime. Andrew Kissel, they discovered, had a long list of enemies.

Carlos Trujillo, Andrew's longtime driver and personal assistant, says his boss may have had a premonition. Andrew Kissel's violent death brought to an end a life once brimming with promise.

He grew up in New Jersey, the oldest of three children in an upwardly mobile family. He came from a good family, a loving family, you know, an educated family. Carol Horton dated Andrew's kid brother Robert in high school and knew all the Kissels. I never saw any problems. I saw a happy family.

Their father, Bill Kissel, was a successful businessman who had high expectations for his sons. Tough on the boys? Yeah. Yeah, he was. He set down rules and expected them to be followed. Do you think things came quite as easily for Andrew?

as they came for Rob? No, I think Andy worked a little harder. He had a very monotone personality type. As opposed to Rob. Yeah, who was just very gregarious, very loving, very outspoken. They were two completely different people. They were night and day, night and day.

This house is the house where the Kissels grew up in right here. Danny Williams lived just around the corner. Well, I remember playing basketball on this driveway. We'd also play wiffle ball here every day. And games a monopoly, where the brothers chose the very roles they would later assume for real. Robert, the future financier. If it was monopoly, he had to be the banker. Always? Always. And Andy would have to be the real estate guy.

Even as a young man, Andrew was already building an image. He always wanted to impress. He liked to show off what he had, you know?

status. He liked to show status. By 1990, Andrew was an up-and-coming real estate developer in New York City. He was successful financially when he started and he had a nice life sort of laid out in front of him. All he had to do was stay on the path.

He had married Haley Wolfe, a financial analyst from a prominent family who had been a world champion skier. Ten years later, he had it all. Two children, a ski house in Vermont, and an apartment in a New York co-op where he served as treasurer. Everybody kind of wanted to kiss up a little bit to Andrew. So I got the impression Andrew was pretty important.

Andrew soon had his hand and cash in everything. Horses, an olive oil business. He even invested in a play. Brian Howey produced it.

I thought he had good taste, which was flattering to me on a creative level. Andrew spared no expense to amuse himself and his friends. He was generous. And was living large. 85, 90-foot yacht, beautiful, couple jet skis on it.

And he didn't have just one car. No, like 30-some cars. That seemed like a guy who was looking for things to do to have fun with his money, like he couldn't spend it fast enough. As Andrew's spending and behavior spiraled out of control, some friends blamed his actions on a tragic event 8,000 miles away in Hong Kong. It's an unbelievable tragedy. It's just lightning striking twice in the same place.

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The competitive Kissel brothers had each found success. Andrew was a real estate developer in Greenwich, Connecticut. His younger brother, a high-flying investment banker in Hong Kong.

By 2003, Robert was one of Merrill Lynch's top guys in Southeast Asia. He was one of the best out there and he loved his job. Frank Shea was Robert's friend. And he was successful. Very. He was earning millions. Robert, his wife Nancy, and their three children lived in a sprawling apartment in a luxury complex overlooking Hong Kong. Nancy seemed very happy. She always tried to please Rob.

She was always very proud of what he achieved. Neighbor Trudy Samra became a close friend. On the outside world it appeared she had the perfect life. But in early November 2003, Robert suddenly disappeared. She said to me something terrible has happened. She sounded distraught. She sounded very upset. A colleague at work reported him missing. Police went to the Kissels' apartment to investigate.

When they searched the family storage unit, they found boxes of bloody items and a rolled up carpet. And what in fact was inside that carpet? Rob Kissel's body. Robert Kissel had been bludgeoned to death. His head bashed five times. And police investigators quickly focused on Nancy. Within hours, she was arrested and charged with murder. They said that she had murdered him. I just couldn't believe that.

Not the Nancy I knew. She wouldn't do that. As investigators soon discovered, Robert Kissel's life, much like his older brother Andrew's in Connecticut, was nothing like it appeared.

In Robert's case, it was during the SARS epidemic, when his wife and children fled to Vermont, that he began to suspect something was wrong with his marriage. Robert hired private investigator Frank Shea to spy on Nancy. -Rob thought there was something going on between Nancy and someone.

He was right, says Shay. Nancy was having an affair with a local TV equipment installer. Rob Kissel was devastated. All he wanted to do was get his marriage back together. Nancy returned to Hong Kong, but Robert discovered she was still secretly in touch with her lover. The last time that you talked to Robert Kissel, was he planning on obtaining a divorce? Yes. He said that the marriage was over.

According to friends, he intended to tell her that on November 2nd, 2003, the night he was murdered. The case captivated Hong Kong. Albert Wong covered the story for the English language daily, The Standard. I think it really hit home with a lot of the people in Hong Kong. Well, that's about it. It was a glimpse of a world that they're not used to.

Robert Kissel's stylish blonde wife was almost unrecognizable when she went on trial in 2005. Nancy Kissel was always dressed in black, a typical widow look, as it were.

the prosecution's theory was simple they say it was a cold-blooded murder this was no accident there was evidence nancy had been researching and stockpiling various sedatives and they had a witness just hours before robert was murdered andrew tanzer a journalist and neighbor says nancy made the two men a special milkshake it had some strange taste some taste which i could not recognize do you think that nancy kissel

added drugs to your milkshake? Oh, of that I'm pretty certain. In fact, an autopsy would reveal five different drugs in Robert Kissel's system, including Rohypnol, known as the date rape drug. What do you believe happened the night that Robert Kissel was killed? I think that he was drugged. I think that he went into his bedroom. I think he passed out.

And I think Nancy Kissel then took a bronze statue and murdered him. But when Nancy took the stand, she told a different story. She said it was self-defense. She really thought he was going to kill her. He came at her with a baseball bat. There was a struggle. And it's at this point that she just swings back. And he kind of sits back and looks at the blood and says, you bitch.

And then at that point charges at her with a baseball bat, "I'm going to kill you. I'm going to kill you." And she said, then she just blanks out. Nancy testified that for years Robert had subjected her to physical and sexual abuse.

Trudy Samber remembers seeing suspicious injuries. The first time she had a rib injury, and one time we had a girls' night here, and she came in, and I said, "Wow, what happened to you?" And she had a big, big blue eye. But Nancy never told her she was being abused, and Frank Shea doesn't buy Nancy's defense. Do you believe that Robert Kissel abused his wife? No, not for a second. In fact, given the amount of...

Drugs that were in his system, he was defenseless. There is no way he could have defended himself. No less attack somebody. It took the jury eight hours to convict Nancy Kissel of murder. She was sentenced to life in a Chinese prison. Andrew Kissel was clearly devastated by the loss of his only brother. But things were only going to get worse. What happened to his brother really affected Andrew tremendously.

Andrew Kissel's friend Brian Howey says Andrew never recovered from his brother's death. His life just went on a different course from there. It just changed where his priorities lay.

He said it was more about, "I need to be happy right now." Andrew was trying to buy his happiness. He was shelling out $50,000 for his friends to have a good weekend. Indulging in extravagant parties on his yacht. Fully stocked with any kind of food and drink and crew and everything he wanted.

But where was the money coming from? While Robert had played by the rules, Andrew for years had been taking illegal shortcuts. He began in 1996 in New York City, where he and his family lived in that luxury high-rise, where Andrew was the building's treasurer. You just don't think your neighbor's gonna steal from you. Peter Chamberlain, new to the board of directors, was puzzled by some of Andrew's reports.

No one could account for how a hallway project could cost $2 million or $1 million. All the receipts, all the bills, all the contracts were in Andrew Kissel's possession. An investigation revealed that Andrew had secretly transferred building funds into his own accounts. He was caught red-handed.

He left the building in a very unsophisticated way, jumping in the service elevator and out the garage door, literally running down to 2nd Avenue. To avoid legal action, Andrew agreed to pay back the nearly $4 million he owed. We all wondered, well, where does somebody who had to steal $4 million come up with $4 million to give back? For Andrew Kissel, the answer was simple: another scam in another state.

Connecticut. He moved his family to Greenwich, where he had been buying and developing expensive homes as investments. Greenwich is probably the wealthiest town in Connecticut in terms of value of property. Nancy Walkley, a title search attorney, had processed some of the mortgage applications Kissel submitted to develop those multi-million dollar properties.

In 2005, while reviewing routine paperwork, she noticed something fishy about the signatures.

The A in the Andrew looked very similar to the A in the first name of the gentleman who signed that Astoria Federal mortgage. A quick check with the bank confirmed her fear. The color must have drained out of my face. I thought, oh my, I can't believe what I think is happening is happening. It appeared that Andrew had forged a bank executive signature indicating a $5.5 million mortgage was paid off when it wasn't.

Had you ever run into anyone doing that in the past? Never. Walkley stopped the deal, and as it turns out, it wasn't the first time Andrew had bilked banks with forged documents. He had been doing it for years. Here's a Juanita signature from November '03. Here's one from January '04. This is totally different. The FBI was called. Steve Garfinkel led the investigation.

He'd borrow money, file a fake release of that saying that he no longer owed that money, then would borrow again. They would think the land was free and clear. Correct. And then he'd go to a third bank and get a mortgage, do the same thing. So how much money was Andrew Kissel able to obtain by this kind of fraud? It was over $30 million.

I was impressed with this scheme in the simplicity, how easy it was to do. It was the era of easy money. The banks want to lend the money. They do. They want these deals to go through. They do. And when they think they have a viable, successful builder-borrower, they will fall over themselves to lend money.

This plan had to crash and burn at some point. Facing federal fraud charges, Andrew sought advice from attorney Phil Russell. He described to me what had gone on and I told him, "Yeah, you're in trouble." He was upset he was caught. No remorse. No, uh...

Self-flagellation. None of that. But Russell says Andrew did feel remorse and was willing to come clean. He knew it was wrong. Just not completely clean. Wait a minute, so was Andrew Kissel trying to con the FBI? Yes. The FBI uncovered another multimillion-dollar scam in another state. He was a serial fraudster. He just engaged in one fraud after another.

This time it involved apartment complexes in New Jersey. Here, Andrew Kissel had ripped off his investors by forging their signatures, secretly selling the properties, and pocketing all the profits. Some people put their entire retirement savings into this limited partnership. Somebody put all their IRA money in. But in this scheme, the investors he was ripping off were people he knew.

His father-in-law and dead brother's estate each invested half a million dollars. The people in New Jersey didn't know that these properties had been sold. But what he did was he continued to pay them a quarterly dividend. And what was their reaction to find out that Andrew Kissel had been ripping them off all those years? Well, they felt totally, you know, betrayed. What kind of guy can do something like that? Just continually...

do it and go on with his life? A very troubled guy. While Andrew's material world was crumbling, his personal life was already in shambles. His wife, Haley, discovered he had forged her signature to get a fraudulent loan on their ski house.

He was cheating her and cheating on her with other women. She knew that he was having affairs. And she wanted him followed, according to private investigator Vito Colucci, who says he met with Haley a year before Andrew was murdered. I said, "Well, you know, Haley, I have to tell you, I've seen a lot of cases, I've seen a lot of couples go back together." And she looked at me and she just said, "I want him dead. I wish he was dead."

Haley didn't need any Kleenex, trust me. She didn't need any Kleenex that day. Haley didn't hire Colucci, but in 2005, she sued Andrew for divorce and $7 million. There was no love lost there. This was not a...

a friendly divorce. By the first weekend in April 2006, Andrew's family was gone. He was alone under house arrest, wearing an electronic ankle bracelet, and just days away from admitting his guilt and going to prison for bank fraud. Everybody like him. Nobody want to talk to him anymore.

Except for his loyal assistant of six years, Carlos Trujillo. Why did you stay with him? I love this guy and I owe a lot to him. He helped me a lot. On Sunday, April 2nd, just before 6 p.m., Carlos went to see his boss. And what was his mood? No, he's happy. Making him the last known person to see Andrew Kissel alive.

Fourteen hours later, Kissel was found dead. Carlos, are you worried that if the police don't get a suspect, that at some point they may arrest you? Yeah, I worry every day. So worried, he hired attorney Lindy Urso. Andrew Kissel had a lot of enemies, but Carlos surely wasn't one of them. He would have to be probably the coolest customer you'd ever see if he really had any involvement in this.

He says he loved them, but friends sometimes kill each other too.

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This guy was a decent, hardworking guy. All the guy wanted to do was work. That's all he wanted to do. He's the person who would least want to see Andrew Kissel dead. Carlos Trujillo was the last known person to have seen Andrew Kissel alive. So the Colombian immigrant, who was his driver and confidant, became the prime suspect in his murder. Did you kill Andrew Kissel? No, I didn't.

They decided on the Columbian helper early on and they reverse engineered their entire investigation to focus on him. Defense attorney Lindy Erso says Greenwich police didn't fully investigate other possible suspects.

like the dozens of wealthy investors swindled by Kissel. We know Haley Kissel's father was one of the biggest losers in that scam. He lost about a half a million dollars. And Haley herself had told people, including her sister-in-law, that she wanted her husband dead. Once they decided that the wife had an airtight alibi, as they said, they turned their attention to Carlos, and that's where it stayed. Carlos certainly seemed to have nothing to hide. Did the police ask for fingerprints?

Yeah. Did they ask you for DNA? DNA. Did you give it to him? I gave it to him. He allowed investigators to search his car, his residence, a storage unit he had rented. He even took a polygraph, which he was told he failed. At this point, I'm feeling like a suspect, like a criminal. They treat me like a criminal. I thought Carlos was a very smart, calculating individual. But you couldn't charge him? No.

Lead investigators Pasquale Irofino and Pierangelo Corticelli lacked evidence, and the investigation stalled for more than a year. Prosecutor Paul Forensic. There was really no viable case against Carlos until Lenny Trujillo was uncovered. And that broke the case. What broke the case was a new witness, Lenny Trujillo, a 21-year-old petty thief and Carlos's own cousin.

Lenny told investigators that Carlos paid him $11,000 and a computer to commit a murder.

He told us, "Hey, that computer came from Carlos Trujillo. That computer was given to me as payment towards killing his boss." But why would Carlos Trujillo want to kill his boss? A bizarre theory was circulating that Andrew Kissel broke and headed to federal prison, enlisted his faithful driver to have him killed.

A suicide for hire. One last scam so that Kissel's children could collect on his $15 million life insurance policy.

If Andrew Kissel had taken a shot, one shot to the head, I might think that there was some credence to that claim. Prosecutor Paul Forensic doesn't buy it at all. He points out that Andrew Kissel's hands and feet were tightly bound with plastic ties, that he had been stabbed five times. It was a painful death. No one would want to go the way he went. Forensic has no doubt that Carlos was involved.

Andrew Kissel would not have let anyone in the house that he didn't know. Whoever killed him, he knew. I have no doubt that it was Carlos Trujillo. That's why, says Detective Irofino, Andrew Kissel was blindfolded and gagged. It's a personal reason. You just don't want to hear him and you don't want to look into his eyes when you're killing him because you usually know that person. Investigators still didn't know the motive, but they did have enough evidence. They arrested both Carlos and his cousin.

And finally, on November 30, 2010, four and a half years after Andrew Kissel was stabbed to death, Carlos Trujillo went on trial. He was charged with murder for killing Kissel and attempted murder for planning it. The star witness against him? His now 24-year-old cousin. How important is Leonard Trujillo to the state's case against Carlos?

He is the state's case. We can't show you Lenny's testimony. The judge wouldn't allow it to be videotaped. But his attorney, Mark Sherman, says Lenny only helped Carlos plan the murder. He didn't actually do the killing. Lenny had an alibi. He was at work very early that morning in Worcester, Mass., hours away from Greenwich, Connecticut. In return for his testimony, Lenny got a deal.

20 years in prison instead of life. Without Lenny Trujillo, I had no case against Carlos. If he did not cooperate, Carlos was going to walk out the door. Defense attorney Lindy Urso says having his own cousin testify against him puts Carlos in a very tough spot. It would take a minor miracle to overcome that hump with this 20-year stupid deal that his cousin took.

He goes to trial and loses, he's going to get life. The case against Carlos is circumstantial, but damaging. They bought stuff. They planned it. They discussed it. Money was exchanged. There were 52 phone calls between the cousins during a four-and-a-half-month period. They didn't have any interaction but for the planning and conspiracy of this murder.

Lenny says he made two trips to Connecticut to meet Carlos, and there are Amtrak and motel receipts. Attached to the guest card was an original receipt indicating that the room charge had been charged to a MasterCard in the name of Carlos Trujillo. But why would Carlos use his own credit card if he was using this trip as part of a surveillance? Yeah.

- Yeah. - To plan a murder. - People do stupid things all the time. - Everybody makes a mistake when they're committing a crime. - During one of those trips, Lenny says, they went to this Home Depot and bought plastic cable ties like this one. - This is one of those things that only the killer or killers would have known.

And how close is this type of cable tie to what was used on Andrew Kissel? This is the exact same make, model as the one used on Andrew Kissel. How would he have known all that? The fact that he was able to describe the cable ties and where they were bought was major. And it turns out there may have been a motive after all. Carlos Trujillo had always been the trusted aide, living on the fringes of Kissel's lavish life.

There is a wire transfer, funds transfer of $150,000, the account of Carlos A. Trujillo.

Bank records show that when the feds froze all of Kissel's assets, Carlos and other Trujillo family members helped him launder money through their personal bank accounts. In the process, more than $200,000 of Andrew's money mysteriously disappeared. Maybe the trusted aide wasn't so trustworthy. None of that money was found to have been returned to Andrew Kissel.

He was murdered just four days before he was scheduled to formally plead guilty to bank fraud. Did Andrew Kissel threaten to turn Carlos into the feds if he didn't return the money? I firmly believe that the motive of Andrew most likely was going to roll on Carlos's entire family tree. And you think it was money that was the motive? Well, money and of course the fear of going to jail, sure. People have killed for a lot less.

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We get support from Dove. Hey y'all, it's your girl Kiki Palmer, host of the Wondery Podcast. Baby, this is Kiki Palmer. Let me cut to the chase. Did you know that in many states across the U.S., it's still not illegal to discriminate against people based on the way their hair grows out of their head? To deny black folks from jobs and opportunities because they have braids, locks, twists, or bantu knots? That's messed

And today's sponsor, Dove, agrees. That's why Dove co-founded the Crown Coalition in 2019 to advocate for the passage of the Crown Act. Crown stands for creating a respectful and open world for natural hair. And the Crown Act is legislation which prohibits race-based hair discrimination in workplaces and schools in the U.S.

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And he's feeling the pressure. Obviously, you know, I'm up against it, but I still feel good. At the end of the day, it's just another trial. Yeah, but what's at stake here? The stakes are huge, but the stakes are always huge. You know, I mean, whether it's 15 years, 20 years, or life, I mean, it's a long time for somebody. But the pressure, the stakes are that much higher when you really believe your client's innocent.

Since there's no physical evidence tying Carlos to Andrew Kissel's murder, the state is counting on their star witness. The biggest evidence against Carlos is Lenny. That's the only evidence against Carlos. And Urso says Lenny Trujillo is a liar who made up this entire story. Do you believe Carlos even attempted to hire him at all? Not in the least. Not for a split second.

-Urso claims Lenny implicated Carlos to keep his family from being harassed by law enforcement. But prosecutor Paul Forensic scoffs at that. -Why would you implicate yourself in a murder? Why would anyone do that? -I believe

Carlos was involved. Steve Garfinkel, who now handles investigations for an international security company, says Lenny's story is too detailed to be made up. It's a believable story. And generally, believable stories are true. Why would he plead guilty and agree to go to jail for 20 years if it was not true? That's a heck of a hurdle to overcome.

So to establish reasonable doubt, Erso plans to poke holes in the story and make the jury question Lenny's credibility. He takes a little bit of the truth and he spins it into a fantastical story. Those 52 phone calls between the cousins? Records show it was Lenny making most of those calls. If Carlos was hiring him to do the murder, you would expect Carlos would be the one calling him. But what about Lenny's most damaging claim?

that he and Carlos bought plastic ties at Home Depot. It turns out the receipt doesn't match the date that Lenny told police he was with Carlos in Connecticut. - This guy has no credibility. I mean, zero. He lies and lies and lies. - If Lenny were lying, there's no way he would know all of this information. There were too many specifics that he gave us which were never reported, which he could not have possibly known.

After a 10-day trial... Now the heart starts beating because this man's life is in our hands. ...the case goes to the jury. We go around the room and say, "What do you think?" and "Where are you?" and everybody would give their... You know, we would take votes all the time. Guilty. It all came down to Lenny's testimony. And if who believed Lenny's testimony, who didn't? Not guilty. It was not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the two of them purchased those zip ties.

Not guilty. I live in Norwalk. We own cable ties. How do I not know that that's not me buying it that day? There was no proof that that was actually Carlos buying them. Guilty. Did he just make up this story? Plus, he and Carlos, while they're related, they haven't talked to each other in years. And all of a sudden, they make 52 phone calls together. I personally firmly believe that something was going on, that they were plotting something.

This guy Lenny, he pled guilty to this crime and if he wasn't involved at all, why would he sign that paper? Why would he say, "Okay, I'm guilty. Put me in jail for 20 years." When it comes down to it, it's not about what you believe or what you even feel in your gut. The evidence has to be there to support beyond a reasonable doubt and you have to apply the law. After four days, the jury finally comes back.

The first charge, murder, could send Carlos to prison for life. In the case of St. Versus Trujillo, have you agreed upon a verdict as to count to? We have. Being the foreman, he had me stand up and Carlos is right there and the guy is just... And I'm trying not to look at him. We saw the hands drop and the hands started shaking. You know, we knew that it was going to be very emotional for him. St. Versus Trujillo, what say you, Mr. Foreperson?

Not guilty of murder. Carlos finally cracked, showed some real emotion. You told Carlos it was going to take a minor miracle to get him off on these charges. Is that what happened? Not quite. I wouldn't call it a minor miracle. I would say it was a, when we pulled one out against some heavy odds, but I don't think it's a minor miracle.

There's still the charge of attempted murder, but on this, the jurors were deadlocked. I think the evidence is not there as it was presented.

Which means Carlos isn't off the hook yet. Paul Forensic wants to retry him. I never want to give up, and I felt that we did have a strong case on the attempt. But there will be no new trial. Three months after Carlos was acquitted of murder, the man who said he loved Andrew Kissel agrees to plead guilty to attempted murder. Carlos Trujillo has been saying for five years he was innocent, and then he goes in front of a judge.

and takes a guilty plea. Yeah, well, he's still saying he's innocent. I mean, it's clearly just a decision of practicality. It would have been a crazy decision to go to trial. If convicted, Carlos Trujillo faced 20 years. He's agreed to take six years in jail with credit for time served.

Which means he'll only spend three more years in prison. You know, he got off easy, but he didn't get away with murder. He is now a convicted felon. So we get satisfaction from that. There is justice. Andrew Kissel, who had so much in life, died with nothing. Not even all the answers. Do you think we'll ever really know what happened that night? No, I really don't know. It's still kind of a mystery. It is a mystery.

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CBS Saturday. 48 Hours brings you back-to-back episodes all summer long. There truly are people out there who are just plain evil. This week, explore two cases where homes were turned into murder scenes. Something went terribly, terribly wrong. Heidi was struck in the back as she was trying to flee towards the kitchen.

48 hours crime time double feature House of Horrors. Saturday, 9, 8 central on CBS and streaming on Paramount Plus. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery's podcast, American History Tellers, which dives into the events and people who shaped our country with 70 remarkable seasons of in-depth storytelling. History buffs and novices alike will appreciate the unrivaled storytelling of well-known events like the Civil War,

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or our latest season where we shine a light on First Ladies of the United States who've contributed to American history in their own unique way. Follow American History Tellers on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge the latest season, American History Tellers First Ladies, early and ad-free right now on Wondery+. And after listening to American History Tellers, go deeper and get more to the story with Wondery's other top history podcasts, including American Scandal, Legacy, and even The Royals.