True Crime Vault: Divine Intervention

Summary

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20/20 True Crime Vault: "Divine Intervention"

Podcast: 20/20
Host: ABC News
Episode Air Date: January 20, 2026

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Overview

This riveting episode of 20/20 True Crime Vault unravels the brutal 2015 murder of Earl Olander, a beloved 90-year-old Minnesota farmer. The story weaves through the complexities of small-town suspicion, the painstaking investigative process, and a dramatic break that investigators, and Earl’s family, see as “divine intervention.” The episode spotlights not just the whodunit, but questions of trust, community, and moral reckoning.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

The Crime Scene & Earl’s Legacy

• Discovery of the Body

  • Earl, a lifelong farmer, is found murdered in his rural Carver County home (01:00).
  • Details: Bound hands and feet with duct tape, house in total disarray, clear signs of a violent struggle (01:18, 03:33).
  • A poignant detail: a “freshly baked blueberry pie” left uneaten on the counter (01:30, 05:04).

• Community Impact

  • Earl is described as humble, kind, and devout, living simply despite accumulating considerable wealth through prudent farming and inheritance (05:04, 10:00–11:52).
  • His murder sends shockwaves in a tight-knit, trusting rural area with few homicides (06:45, 24:42).

Motive & Early Suspects

• Motivation: Money & Local Fear

  • Many suspect robbery due to the ransacking and knowledge that Earl was worth "several million dollars," though he lived simply (10:41, 11:08, 11:16).
  • The community draws chilling parallels to previous rural murders, notably the Wondra brothers (12:46–13:48).

• First Investigative Steps

  • Investigators collect about 90 pieces of evidence: duct tape, gloves, Gatorade bottles, bloody tissue, shoe prints (05:04, 07:35, 14:15).
  • Early hopes are pinned on DNA and footage, but these avenues come up empty—no fingerprints, no DNA (19:31–19:37, 19:45).

• The Role of Neighbors & Friends

  • Earl’s close friends, the Bokers, are both subjects of suspicion and emotionally invested in the quest for justice (09:49, 25:06–26:33).
  • A previous unsolved burglary at the Bokers’ home ($30,000 stolen) becomes an ancillary lead (26:02).

Forensic Breakthrough: The Shoe Prints

• Shoe Impression Analysis
  • With no DNA, the investigation hinges on shoe prints found at the scene—Adidas, Crocs, and Avia brands (22:05–24:42).
  • Police begin discreetly photographing shoes of potential suspects, generating community unease (25:04).

Community Fear & More Leads

• Neighborhood on Edge

  • Reports emerge of suspicious activity—strangers walking at night, possible stalking of neighboring homes weeks before the murder (28:35–31:10).

• Barroom Suspicion

  • Two unfamiliar, cash-flashing men in a local bar stir suspicion, but this lead fizzles (31:18–33:59).

• Undercover Operation at Earl’s Funeral

  • Detectives attend Earl's funeral covertly, recording conversations with potential suspects as part of an undercover sting (34:14–38:10).

Breakthrough: The Bible That “Solved” the Murder

• Divine Intervention

  • Weeks later, a janitor cleaning out an apartment in St. Paul finds an ornate Norwegian Bible with Earl’s name and $1,000 bonds tucked inside (41:00–44:01).
  • This is immediately identified as a crucial break—“the Bible gave us the leads that we needed to solve this case” (41:58, 45:12).

• Tracing the Bible

  • The Bible leads investigators to Edson Benitez and his wife, who admit the Bible was brought home by Edson from a friend; Benitez’s wife found it creepy and left it behind (46:18–46:46).
  • Edson works at Chili’s as a cook. When detectives talk to him, he’s wearing Croc-style shoes—matching a print at the murder scene (47:07–48:49).

The Confessions & Arrests

• Benitez’s Interrogation

  • When confronted, Benitez first blames a friend named “Hugo,” but under pressure, he changes his story (52:13, 52:21).
  • He implicates Renal “Henry” Vergara, a trusted painter who had worked at both Earl’s and the Bokers’ homes (54:39–55:25).

• Vergara’s Arrest & Shoes

  • Vergara denies involvement until forensic evidence—Adidas shoes matching prints at the scene—is produced (61:00–61:20, 61:30).
  • Both men point fingers at each other; the question of a possible third accomplice remains, focused on an unidentified Avia shoe print (62:20–63:18).

Trial, Community Fallout & Political Spotlight

• Legal Resolution

  • Benitez and Vergara are charged with four counts of murder each; the judge finds them equally culpable, though their stories conflict (63:39–64:06).
  • Both plead guilty to second-degree murder, receive 37.5-year sentences, and express remorse in court (72:36–73:17).

• Lingering Suspicion & Allegations

  • Rumors swirl about possible involvement of the Bokers, fueled by Benitez’s late-stage and post-sentencing claims (74:11–76:44).
  • Despite extensive investigation—including family hiring a private detective—no evidence is ever found against the Bokers (77:33–77:40).

• The Political Narrative

  • The case gains national attention when Donald Trump references Earl’s murder in a campaign speech on immigration (77:41).
  • Investigators push back: “Some of the statements were inconsistent. They didn’t have very much of a criminal history prior...” (78:55).

Aftermath & Reflections

• Divine Intervention and Community Healing
  • Investigators, community members, and family reflect on the “miracle” of the Bible discovery, interpreting it as divine intervention (80:56–82:08).
  • Earl is remembered fondly, with community traditions enduring on his farm, his tractor on his headstone, and family gathering around furniture crafted from his barn’s wood (81:16–82:57).

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• “I absolutely believe in divine intervention.” – Detective Chris Wagner (02:14)
• “There was a freshly baked blueberry pie on the counter that sticks with you. He was gonna eat this pie and he’ll never do that.” – Detective Chris Wagner (05:04)
• “Finding out Earl had millions, that was a bombshell.” – Community member (10:50)
• “We didn’t find one positive connection to DNA or fingerprints or forensic value.” – Detective Chris Wagner (19:37)
• “The impression in the drawer, that one was the Crocs. The impressions from the chair were Adidas. And the shoe print impression from the step was the aviation.” – Investigator (24:26)
• “He acknowledges that he had possession of the Bible, but he said that he had gotten it from his friend Hugo.” – Investigator (49:24)
• “For that Bible to end up being the way that crime was solved is...so clearly, to me, a way that God intervened in the story...” – Investigator (80:56)
• “There are no coincidences. There's only God incidences. And...that was, I'm going to close this chapter for earliest.” – Detective Chris Wagner (82:08)
• “The offer was plead guilty to secondary intentional murder and served 37 and a half years in prison.” – Detective Chris Wagner (72:36)
• “What I learned in this case is that Earl should and will never be forgotten...his senseless murder was solved with what those who knew Earl best say is divine intervention.” – Narrator (81:50)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Crime Discovery & Scene: 01:00–06:45
• Earl’s Background & Motive: 10:00–13:02
• Forensic Evidence/Shoe Prints: 22:05–24:42
• Bible Discovery & Break in Case: 41:00–44:24
• Benitez Interrogation & Confession: 54:11–58:31
• Vergara's Arrest & Shoe Match: 61:00–61:30
• Trials, Sentencing & Aftermath: 72:36–77:40
• Reflections/Divine Intervention: 80:56–82:08

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Tone & Language

The episode blends the reserved, steadfast professionalism of investigators with heartfelt reminiscences of Earl and the emotional turmoil of a community shaken by evil in its midst. Moments of dry rural humor, candid reflection, and faith infuse the narrative. The investigative narration is direct, detailed, and transparent about both triumphs and setbacks.

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Conclusion

The case of Earl Olander—unsolved for weeks and overwhelming in its lack of typical forensic evidence—was ultimately cracked through extraordinary persistence, community tips, and the serendipitous discovery of a family bible. The investigators and family perceive the Bible’s emergence as an act of “divine intervention.” Two trusted workers, not strangers but familiar faces, were revealed as the perpetrators, shattering the illusions of neighborly trust but ending the uncertainty that haunted Earl’s community.

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For those interested in true crime with emotional resonance, deep mystery, and extraordinary investigation, this episode exemplifies the genre at its best.

Transcript

[Narrator]

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[Investigator]

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[Narrator]

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[Investigator]

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[Detective Chris Wagner]

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[Narrator]

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[Detective Chris Wagner]

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[Narrator]

Listen to Killer Ken wherever you get your podcasts.

[Investigator]

Welcome back to the 2020 True Crime Vault.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

The sheriff's office received a call of a that had been found in rural Carver County. The murder of Earl Olander was a brutal, horrific crime. Earl Olander was a thriving independent 90 year old farmer.

[Narrator]

Earl spent his entire life reaping corn. Clearly they were looking for something.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Earl was in the living room. His hands were tied behind his back with duct tape. The house was in extreme disarray.

[Investigator]

They left him there to die.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

I think we had close to 90 pieces of evidence. There was a freshly baked blueberry pie on the counter that sticks with you. We assume that it was somebody from the area or somebody that Earl knew that had killed him.

[Narrator]

Earl's closest friends were put under the microscope. It's upsetting to you, obviously for someone.

[Investigator]

To say that my husband is the murderer. I mean, come on. I said, do you think we're ever going to get this figured out? And he said, yes. They always leave something behind.

[Narrator]

You felt like you needed a miracle.

[Investigator]

We needed a miracle.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

I absolutely believe in divine intervention.

[Investigator]

It all happened the way that it should have and it all happened to identify Earl's killers.

[Narrator]

I've had a 35 year career telling stories and that's a lot of stories with a lot of heartache, a lot of triumph. Things that make you smile and things that make you cry. When I first heard about what happened on this modest farm here in rural Minnesota, I just had to come here and see it for myself. What I've discovered is a remarkable story of terror, tragedy and transcendence.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Carver county has a population of about 100,000 people in it. It's southwest of Minneapolis about 30 miles. It's a Swedish community. Started out as we're in the Minnesota River Valley.

[Investigator]

So it's very beautiful, quite hilly. There's soybeans, there's corn crops. It's God's country. It's what it is.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

It's quiet out where we are. So when you hear police cars coming with sirens going, you know something's wrong. There are cases that you remember over 32 years and this is certainly One of those, the sheriff's office received a call on April 11, 2015, about 7 o' clock at night of a body that had been found in rural Carver county and that it appeared to be a homicide. I went down there as soon as I found out about what had happened.

[Community Member / Family Member]

The body had been found inside a home on the farm of Earl Olander. I've spent years covering crime in the Minneapolis St. Paul area. This is nowhere where you would ever expect a murder.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

As we're looking at Earl's house, in the middle is a large picture window. That's the living room. And the living room is where we found Earl laying on the floor on his stomach.

[Investigator]

I was coming in on the road and there were flashing lights everywhere like I had never seen before.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

His hands were bound with duct tape. His feet had been bound with duct tape as well, but they had kind of worked that loose a little bit. There was a circular pattern of blood around Earl that was on the carpeting. It appeared that Earl had been alive for a while and had been trying to get up.

[Narrator]

Earl Olander was born on this property in 1925. He spent his entire life here planting and growing mainly soybean and corn.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Earl Olander was a thriving, independent 90 year old farmer and he was beloved by people that knew him, his community. He was a bachelor and lived on that farm for I think almost his entire life and still lived alone in that home, was self sufficient. In the kitchen there was a freshly baked blueberry pie on the counter and that sticks with you. He was gonna eat this pie and he'll never do that. Your heart goes out to Earl and what he must have been thinking and how he must have suffered. I distinctly remember one of the police deputies coming out of Earl's house with his hand on his gun belt and he looked very seriously at the other deputies that were there and said, we need to clear these buildings. The first thing we had to do was make sure there wasn't anybody still here or anybody else that was hurt. You can see all of these outbuildings, barns and other buildings that were here. We had to clear all of those to go through to make sure we didn't have anybody else. We didn't really know what we had or how big our crime scene may have been. So we walked along the ditches and the farm fields looking for anything that may have been related. We found some Gatorade bottles, we found a pipe. We found a bloody Kleenex outside along here that we collected. Never knowing what may be important or where it Might lead us. We did have a pair of gloves that were found at the end of the driveway, black rubber gloves that we assumed were involved in the case.

[Narrator]

With the immense disarray inside the house, they'd have their work cut out for them.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

As the state crime lab, we respond.

[Narrator]

To homicides, death investigations, abductions, typically the.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Higher level types of scenes. It was a very sad case, obviously, as an elderly man was killed in his home.

[Narrator]

From the forensics perspective, we'll send out a team of three individuals from the lab and then one of our agents to assist with photography to evaluate the.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Crime scene and collect evidence and then.

[Narrator]

Bring that back to the laboratory for testing. The house had been ransacked, drawers had been taken out of the cabinets.

[Investigator]

We're looking for anything that is foreign to the scene that maybe was brought in and left, or we're looking for things that maybe the suspect would have touched.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

There were about 90 items that were collected from the crime scene by the crime scene team.

[Investigator]

There was a lot of sources where we thought they may have opened a drawer or opened a cabinet.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

We actually unwrapped the duct tape trying to find fingerprints that might have been within the duct tape. We did see some footprints in the kitchen. One was in a drawer and then one was on a chair that was in the kitchen. It looked like somebody had stood up on the chair looking for something. And in cupboards or on top of the refrigerator, there's one that we found on a step leading up into the kitchen from the sunroom.

[Narrator]

With so many areas of the house ransacked, both investigators and locals were hopeful that the killers left behind DNA or fingerprints.

[Community Member / Family Member]

Finding out the truth about what happened to Earl Olander was important to me because this murder happened right in my own community. This is a very tight knit place where everybody knows everybody. His case quickly made headlines in the local news.

[Narrator]

This is the original Olander homestead and it's where Earl was born 90 years ago. And sadly, just a few yards from here, he died a violent death.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

I have seen that level of ransacking rarely. I've seen it a couple of times, but it doesn't happen that often. Most of the time people want to get in and get out real fast. It was obvious that the individuals involved were looking for something, they were trying to find something.

[Narrator]

Figuring out what that something was would become an uphill battle.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

There is nobody alive who can tell us what was in the house and so we don't know what to be looking for. The main road getting to his house was closed, so somebody had to have known how to get around that. There was a detour that was coming out of Carver on County Road 40 going south at Bevins Creek Bridge. They were doing reconstruction out of that. So the only way to get to this area was coming up from the south out of Belle Plaine. You really had to know this area in order to find this place. Back at the time of the murder, we made Detective Chris Wagner lead detective for this.

[Narrator]

For Chris, this crime was also personal.

[Investigator]

Earl had lived about a mile away from my house at the time. Wow.

[Narrator]

So this hit very close to me.

[Investigator]

Very close, literally.

[Narrator]

What are some of the things you learned about Earl Olander?

[Investigator]

Everyone said, you know, he was just a sweet man. How could anybody hurt him? He was just very kind.

[Narrator]

Did he have any enemies?

[Investigator]

Not that we're aware of. Everyone, like I said, loved Earl. We'd go to church every Sunday at the East Union Lutheran Church, where we are here. And very simple. Never had a cell phone, never had a credit card. He would pay with cash or a check. You could tell that the suspects had spent a significant amount of time in the house going through all the drawers and covers.

[Narrator]

Clearly they were looking for something.

[Community Member / Family Member]

Yes.

[Investigator]

Money has always been in a lot of crimes that you're looking into.

[Narrator]

How much money did he have?

[Investigator]

Well, he didn't advertise, but he was worth several million dollars.

[Community Member / Family Member]

Finding out Earl had millions, that was a bombshell.

[Narrator]

Who would have known that? And is that what put him in danger?

[Community Member / Family Member]

Finding out that Earl, this modest farmer, was a millionaire was a big shock for a lot of people.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

We found that out pretty quick. We went to his bank, I think the next day.

[Investigator]

I think that is always a motive. Earl's money came from all of his previous family members who had passed away and had in turn left him money.

[Narrator]

Earl was also a profitable farmer in his own right. He even continued to sell hay at the age of 90. Here you have a farmer who spent his entire life reaping corn and soybeans on his farm and clearly reaping the benefits of all that.

[Investigator]

Yeah. If you would see his house, he lived very, very simply. I mean, you would never known. He didn't advertise it.

[Narrator]

He wasn't a big spender. He had no credit cards and no electronic bank cards.

[Investigator]

No. No cell phone. When his brother in law was trying to get a hold of him, it was on a landline. We would later learn that that phone line had been cut during the home invasion so that he was unable to contact anybody.

[Narrator]

Did Earl keep any money inside the house.

[Investigator]

When we searched his home, we found about $900 in the basement in a little coffee can that he had hidden under the stairs.

[Narrator]

$280 was also found on a dresser, perhaps missed by Earl's killers.

[Investigator]

But there was not a lot of money around in the house.

[Narrator]

The rest was in the bank, Correct?

[Community Member / Family Member]

There's this idea in parts of the Midwest that farmers don't always trust banks and instead keep their money hidden inside their home under mattresses. But this can make them vulnerable. And nearby farmers had been murdered for money. And the fear of that happening again ran deep.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Last night, a neighbor discovered the bodies.

[Narrator]

Of Harry and Clarence Wandra, two elderly bachelors who had farmed here together for.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

More than 30 years.

[Community Member / Family Member]

In 1985, in the county just 30 miles south of Earl, the Wondra brothers were murdered on their farm after a rumor circulated that they kept their money in cans used by dairy farmers to store cream and milk.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

They believe robbery was the motive, as.

[Narrator]

Evidenced by the house which had been ransacked. The sheriff says it appears the two.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Were beaten because they wouldn't tell the killer or killers where their money was hidden. It's been reported that large sums of money were stashed away.

[Narrator]

Earl followed this case and it scared him. Even after the man responsible for the Wanderer murders, Virgil Lee Hutchinson, was convicted of both Clarence and Harry wondrous murders.

[Community Member / Family Member]

He told someone he was scared it.

[Investigator]

Was another home invasion and he had said, I hope nobody does that to me. We had over 90 pieces of evidence. The first set of evidence that we sent in were the clippings underneath Earl's fingernails, the duct tape that was surrounding his wrists. We found a roll of duct tape in one of the bedrooms and then those black gloves.

[Narrator]

While they waited for the results of that first batch of evidence, Chris Wagner and her team canvassed the neighborhood to learn everything they could about who Earl was and who would want to kill him.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

My grandmother and Earl's dad, Art, were brother and sister and they were born on this farm. He's half Norwegian, I think, and half Swedish. As a kid, we'd come up here and visit Earl. My memories of Earl are kind of when he was working hard like he always did, just love farming, wanted to be like his dad and like everybody else around him. Many of the folks who live out there have lived there their whole lives. 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 years. Like Earl.

[Community Member / Family Member]

Earl even made the national news once in a story about the secret for living a long and healthy life, no matter how cold.

[Investigator]

73 year old Earl Olander Is up with the cows.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Never been to a doctor, Never been to a hospital.

[Narrator]

Never been to a doctor.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Well, I had something my eye once. That 90 year old was still active in farming and he still liked to bail hay and throw bales around. He could probably throw them better than I could. When I found out, his stomach just kind of sunk.

[Narrator]

While Earl didn't have many family members in the area, he was close to close to his neighbors, the Bokers.

[Investigator]

This one's probably Christmas with Earl. We were the ones that got him on Christmas Eve. We'd have our pirogan and steak and twice baked potatoes. It was the same thing every year and we looked forward to him coming over every year. My first year without him was very sad. One of my earliest memories is going over to his house. We would go into his barns and play on his hay bales and chase his stray cats. The first big event that Earl really missed was my wedding. And he was definitely on my mind that day. He really was a role model. He. He's probably the most patient and kind person I knew. Faith was the utmost important thing to him.

[Community Member / Family Member]

His life and legacy still impact this congregation today.

[Investigator]

Earl invested his funds financially, speaking here in the church.

[Community Member / Family Member]

I think this was his beloved. Earl's body was found on April 11, but it was critical to determine when he was murdered to help figure out who might have killed him.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

There's a lot of first things you want to do in a case like this. One of them is grabbing security footage. We came across San Francisco Township Hall. We found a camera up on the wall. This is about a mile, maybe a mile or so south of Earl's house. There was an SD card that was inside of there. Maybe we get a face, maybe a license plate description on a car. Something to help us with this case because of the detour. This is right along the route that we supposed that the people had taken to get to Earl's house. So this was key footage. And there isn't a lot of traffic along here.

[Narrator]

How did you narrow down the time frame?

[Investigator]

Friday and Saturday, he was a stand in in the card games that he'd play with his cousins and he was supposed to attend and never made it.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

They always play 500 and they'd play so many rounds and Earl wasn't there. So they finally tried to call him and they couldn't get a hold of him.

[Narrator]

The mystery grew when investigators also learned that Earl missed. What I learned firsthand was often the highlight of his week. The hay auction in nearby Bell Plain.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

13. Nice deal.

[Narrator]

We Have a hay auction and a.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Livestock auction every Thursday.

[Narrator]

Been doing it for since 1957 when.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

When our family bought this place. For Earl.

[Narrator]

This was more than an auction. Exactly. It was his day out. He'd come here on every Thursdays.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

He had a spot on the seats where he sat.

[Investigator]

Didn't have a mean bowl in his body at all.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Just to miss him. I can still see him. Earl always had kind of a darker green cap.

[Investigator]

And that's the way he was every Thursday. It just hurts the way it went down.

[Narrator]

Investigators were narrowing down the time frame. They figured Earl had to have been attacked before Thursday. But they needed evidence to point them towards suspects. Even with all they collected, clues were scarce.

[Investigator]

I was excited, thinking we would get evidence back on the gloves under his fingernails. Nothing.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

We didn't find one positive connection to DNA or fingerprints or forensic value.

[Narrator]

What was that like?

[Investigator]

Very, very frustrating.

[Community Member / Family Member]

Investigators had high hopes that the security camera footage taken from the town hall near Earl's home would reveal an image of Earl's killers.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

And what we found was the last recording was from 2012. It was back to ground zero.

[Narrator]

In the end, investigators had just one lead from the crime scene.

[Investigator]

The shoe prints from the scene became important because we didn't get anything else. The shoe prints were only evidence that we had had tying the suspects to the scene.

[Narrator]

Those are the shoe prints of the killers.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

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[Investigator]

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[Detective Chris Wagner]

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[Investigator]

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[Community Member / Family Member]

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[Investigator]

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[Community Member / Family Member]

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[Investigator]

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[Narrator]

Murders in Carver County, Minnesota, are exceedingly rare. But with no DNA or fingerprints at the scene, investigators working to solve Earl Olander's murder had only one piece of evidence to work with. Shoe prints.

[Investigator]

We knew that we had two shoe prints that were found within the house. The third shoe print was outside of the house in the breezeway, and it was at a different angle coming in from the front, front of the home.

[Community Member / Family Member]

Police were not sure if that third print was connected to the case.

[Investigator]

So we knew that we had at least two suspects.

[Narrator]

What would be critical is to learn what brand of shoes left those prints.

[Community Member / Family Member]

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension gave us a rare look at the process they used to determine that.

[Investigator]

So these are photographs of the impressions that were at the scene. So this one here is from the stoop, this one is from the drawer, and then this one is from the chair. The impression in the drawer and the impression on the chair were both dusty impressions. I've set up a dusty impression on a piece of glass. So what we do is we look at it by lighting it from the side and then the impression can become much more visible. I'm going to take this gel lifter and I'm going to actually spread it across the impression and pull the impression off onto the adhesive. And I'm just going to roll this across to get out any bubbles and I'm going to slowly lift it off. So you can see that we have our impression. Now I took a scan of this that allows me to then go and create additional contrast and brightness and bring out that impression even more. I search it in this database called SoulMate. It's got 42,970 reference shoe prints that I can search against. This one, I add the different features. And this one here is very similar to the impression that we're seeing.

[Narrator]

And lo and behold, investigators were able to narrow down those three shoe prints.

[Investigator]

The impression in the drawer, that one was the Crocs. The impressions from the chair were Adidas. And the shoe print impression from the step was the aviation.

[Narrator]

The importance of shoe prints in this case cannot be Overstated. It's all they had to link suspects to the scene of the crime. And based on where they were found at the house, it meant at least two or three killers.

[Investigator]

It was extremely significant.

[Narrator]

Finding the owners of those shoes would lead you to the killer.

[Investigator]

Correct.

[Narrator]

Detectives started taking notes of shoes worn by many of the people they talked to, even Earl's close friends. I sat down with Earl's neighbors, the Bokers, who remember that distinctly because it made them feel uncomfortable.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

They had mentioned they wanted to see shoes.

[Investigator]

I think took a picture of the bottom of my shoe. They had gone through my other shoes.

[Narrator]

Did it make you feel like a suspect?

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Yes. And.

[Investigator]

But we knew we didn't do it.

[Narrator]

The incident with Earl left both Maria and Bill Boker unnerved, especially after what they told authorities happened to them just months prior.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

I remember that night when. When that happened, just. We had all the flashbacks of stuff that happened to us. We had had a burglary incident.

[Investigator]

The Bokers had reported in January. $30,000 stolen out of their closet. They had a little safe that they kept money in.

[Narrator]

$30,000.

[Investigator]

$30,000 in cash. Bill Boker, he was a painter in the area and had stored some of this money in his house prior to leaving on vacation. And he and his wife Maria returned. They found that the money was gone.

[Community Member / Family Member]

Because the Bokers burglary was only a couple months before Earl's murder, neighbors started thinking criminals may have been targeting not just him, but the whole neighborhood.

[Narrator]

When Earl was killed just three months after that theft, alarm bells went off.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

We called to say, hey, we had just had a burglary incident that we had reported, and these things might be be tied together.

[Community Member / Family Member]

The Bokers told police that among the only people who had access to their home during the time that the money went missing were their own kids.

[Investigator]

We asked if the kids had any parties.

[Community Member / Family Member]

The kids told investigators and their parents that they didn't know anything about the stolen money.

[Narrator]

But there was also someone else who may have had access to their home. The Bokers told investigators about a man who had worked with Bill Boker, a painter named Reynolds Vergara.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

From the day I met him, he said, everybody calls me Henry. Henry was great to work with, super nice guy, very pleasant. Henry worked at our house a lot, especially when remodeling.

[Narrator]

You mentioned the theft at your place. Did you think Henry might have done it?

[Investigator]

No, but you never know.

[Narrator]

Henry Vergara also denied involvement in the missing 30 grand, and he said he would never steal from his boss.

[Investigator]

We had spoken with Renal we couldn't prove that Renal had stolen the $30,000.

[Narrator]

Was the case ever solved?

[Detective Chris Wagner]

No, no. I think everybody in the area was wondering if these two cases could have been tied together. And if they were tied together, what did that then mean? Were they going to hit other houses? What was going to happen? And there was a lot of angst and fear.

[Investigator]

We didn't have any details. We didn't know at that point if this person was still in the neighborhood.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Next thing you know, locking the door.

[Investigator]

I took a gun and just sat with a gun.

[Community Member / Family Member]

Then the woman who lived right next door to Earl came forward with a shocking report to the Carver County Sheriff's office. She wondered if she had actually seen one of Earl's killers. About a month before Earl's murder, at.

[Investigator]

10, 10 o' clock at night, I.

[Community Member / Family Member]

Had witnessed somebody walking our property line. I would wondered if that was the person who murdered Earl.

[Narrator]

As Carver county investigators keep chasing leads, another one of Earl's neighbors reports something strange that she saw a month before his murder. And that brings them back to the farm to investigate.

[Investigator]

In 2015, we lived right next door to Earl. We're the closest house to his property.

[Community Member / Family Member]

As I was out on my deck.

[Investigator]

It was about 10, 10:30 at night. I had turned the light on to come out, and that's when I saw somebody.

[Community Member / Family Member]

There's nothing behind here. I mean, it's just acres and acres of land. I had witnessed somebody walking with a flashlight on his head.

[Investigator]

I could see the light, and the person wasn't frightened.

[Community Member / Family Member]

The person didn't change their behavior. When they could obviously see that somebody was watching them.

[Investigator]

It was just really very scary.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

They purposefully had walked out or gone.

[Community Member / Family Member]

Around possibly Earl's property. I didn't know if somebody had been stalking, so I just wanted them to.

[Investigator]

Have that information that how long somebody was plotting this or if that had.

[Community Member / Family Member]

Anything to do with it.

[Investigator]

We went out to the scene and couldn't find any tracks. And it had been weeks and it had rained. And so a lot of that, if there was any shoe prints, were probably destroyed by the weather at that time. We worried a lot. That was Earl Pipped.

[Community Member / Family Member]

So we were always on guard that somebody had been stalking both houses possibly, and was just giving a little time.

[Investigator]

Before they struck and came back to our house. It was very unnerving.

[Community Member / Family Member]

I ended up moving shortly after. What's also interesting about Kim's tip is that during roughly the same time frame, a second neighbor on an adjacent adjacent street also reported hearing what she thought was someone entering her home late at night. She said whoever it was left before she came down 15 minutes later to check it out. At first she thought it was her husband, but it wasn't.

[Narrator]

Folks must have been scared.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

A little bit scared, yeah.

[Narrator]

Really A killer among you, among us.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

You know, like that there. They're right, right? They were. You know, there was a little concern.

[Investigator]

Keep your.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

How is his luck? We had over 300 leads on this case. So we were going all over the place, running all of these down. One of the leads that we had came up at the doghouse bar, which is right over there, which is an iconic bar, kind of a Cheers kind of place. Everybody knows your name there. And the tip that came in was that there was a couple of guys in there that weren't regulars that were causing some trouble. That raised red flags with him.

[Investigator]

In 2015, I was working at the Doghouse in Carver. It's very hometown, extremely blue collar. Typically. I always knew who was coming in on my Friday nights. So on April 10, it was just a typical, normal Friday night. These two gentlemen had walked in that nobody had known. They were extremely loud. Most people don't come in carrying a large amount of money. The one gentleman, he had a wad of hundreds. I mean, probably a couple of thousands of dollars. He had no problem continuously pulling it out of his pocket and just flashing it around.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Here's a couple people got a lot of cash. Kind of outsiders and relatively close. Close proximity to when Time wise to when Earl had been murdered.

[Narrator]

When this happened at the bar, Earl's body hadn't even been discovered yet. But when the news about the murder broke, what happened at the Doghouse really made some people think twice about these strangers.

[Investigator]

Some of the customers within the bar felt that they possibly could have something to do with the murder. The whole room felt uncomfortable. They just kind of gave you that creepy, eerie vibe. They were arguing. The one was hitting his fist on the bar, and then they started to throw the popcorn. They started to get a little bit more, as I like to call, energized, emotional, angry. My normal customers were like, sarah, we just. We don't feel right. I mean, my customers had said, can you do anything about this? And I was like, well, kick him out. We didn't know them, but their behavior the second they opened the door was just not a normal thing to witness. Nobody knew who these guys were, and they were just spending money and buying rounds of drinks and so loud. Loud. And so we had looked into them.

[Narrator]

And turns out they were local, although not regulars. Right.

[Investigator]

Correct.

[Narrator]

And that turned out to be nothing.

[Investigator]

Correct.

[Narrator]

While small town distrust of strangers failed to generate a new lead, two new tips sent to investigators would be enough to trigger an undercover operation.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

What a lot of people did not know was that we had somebody undercover at his funeral that had a camera and a mic on him.

[Narrator]

Ten days after Earl Olander's murder, investigators are frustrated. The few leads they have go nowhere. So they decide to do something bold. They stage an undercover operation on April 20, 2015, at Earl Olanders.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

What a lot of people did not know was that we had somebody undercover at his funeral that had a camera and a mic on him just to get people's reactions and see who all was here and try to get a better handle on what was going on with this case. We had received a tip, I think it was about the day before the funeral, that we should take a look at Bill Boker.

[Narrator]

This is a big twist. Remember, by most accounts, Bill Boker and his wife Maria were like family to Earl.

[Investigator]

They would often invite Earl over for Christmas, for Thanksgiving and other holidays. There were some concerns about that. The Bokers may have financial gain.

[Community Member / Family Member]

According to investigators, the tip they received was that Bill Boker on more than one occasion had approached Earl about selling them his farm or at least part.

[Investigator]

Of his property that he had wanted to buy Earl's land. So there was some suspicion if the Bokers had any connection with his death. During our investigation, we just mentioned Earl.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

A selling land.

[Investigator]

Want to sell? We would buy.

[Narrator]

Did you want to build a dream home on his land?

[Detective Chris Wagner]

There was no dream home, said Earl. Sell us a chunk of land right next to you. We'll build and live right next to you.

[Narrator]

We'd take care of him.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

He was like a grandfather. Earl always said, nope, when I'm dead, everything will get taken care of. That was always his answer to us.

[Narrator]

Now Earl was dead, murdered. And investigators needed to know why. So what did you do to investigate that?

[Investigator]

Well, we spoke with the Bokers, and they obviously denied having any connection to it. They have the story wrong. They don't know us. They don't know how much we loved him. My faith is the only thing that got me through it.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

They won a DNA swab.

[Narrator]

So you gave your DNA.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Yes.

[Narrator]

But everyone was a suspect or.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Yep. That. That included us.

[Community Member / Family Member]

At about the same time investigators were prepping for the undercover operation, they get another to look into someone else. The painter that Bill employed, Henry Vergara. It turns out Henry painted Earl's house less than a year before the murder.

[Investigator]

One of the leads that we had received was out of concern on a paint crew that had painted Earl's home the year before. In 2014, Earl had hired his neighbor, Bill Boker, and Bill Boker's employee, Renal Vergara, whom they called Henry, saying that he thought that Renal was suspicious.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

The guy that we knew that we had trusted in our house, he was my most requested employee. He was asked by name. I want Henry. I want Henry. Everybody trusted him.

[Narrator]

Authorities collected DNA samples from both the Bokers and Henry. But remember, no DNA was ever recovered from, from the crime scene. So there was nothing to compare them to. You did something at Earl's funeral?

[Investigator]

Part of any homicide is that we send detectives to the funeral to see if there's anything that looks suspicious. So we did go and send some detectives to the funeral and just kind of peek around and see if there was anything unusual.

[Narrator]

Wearing a hidden camera.

[Investigator]

Correct. Well, you never know who you're going to talk to.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

The funeral was well attended. The church was packed and there was a lot of people that were coming and going. We had put our officer at the entrance to the church so we could catch everybody that came in. He did see Bill Boker and he did start up a conversation with him regarding Earl.

[Narrator]

And they asked Bill Boker about Henry.

[Investigator]

Correct.

[Narrator]

What did he say?

[Investigator]

That he. He had thought that he was a good person. He had worked for him for 10 to 12 years. But he was also suspicious of the money that had been missing and had thought that maybe he had something to do with it.

[Community Member / Family Member]

The undercover officer got a chance to talk to Bill Boker and other people at the funeral, but it failed to yield solid leads. But then on April 29, about two weeks after Earl was killed, another double murder happens on a Minnesota farm in Line County.

[Investigator]

It's southwestern Minnesota. It's about two and a half hours away from here. Son was driving by, saw his parents house on fire.

[Community Member / Family Member]

The farmhouse was owned by Jim and Kathy Hively. Both had been shot dead. Their house had been set on fire to cover up the evidence and locals were shocked.

[Narrator]

And two hours away.

[Investigator]

Yes. We have contacted the Lyon County Sheriff's.

[Narrator]

Office and the detectives down in that.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Area were trying to get that information and compare it to our own case.

[Investigator]

Both homes were burglarized and rural farm.

[Narrator]

Family investigators charged 20 year old Derek Hexum, 18 year old Theodore Como and 21 year old Kyle Wesseling with the deaths.

[Community Member / Family Member]

The three men were later convicted of the Hively murders. But one more similarity in the two men cases is striking at A location investigated in connection with the crime. One of the suspects left a shoe print behind. An Adidas shoe print.

[Narrator]

Whoever killed Earl Olander also wore Adidas shoes. Did you think that whoever killed the Hivelys could have also killed Earl?

[Investigator]

We were looking into that prior to receiving our tip on Mason 9th. That would open this case wide open.

[Narrator]

And call it chance, luck or a miracle, any Hively connection is ruled out when a man calls Crime Stoppers and sends the investigation in a whole new direction.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

I was cleaning the house a few days ago and I ran across this Bible and I saw the guy's name in the Bible. Okay, the name is Earl. O L A N D E R.

[Narrator]

And that discovery, it wasn't even the last twist I can teach for K.

[Investigator]

Resc needed for a medical at Paisley Park. 7801 Audubon Road. My sergeant asked me to come out. I said, that's where Prince lives. And he looked at me and he said, yep.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

This was one of the most intense murder cases we've had in decades. They attacked Earl, duct taped him, beat him, left him for dead. And we don't have anybody in custody. It was so senseless. We had close to 90 pieces of evidence. We didn't find one positive connection to DNA or fingerprints. We didn't know who killed Merle Olander. We really needed a good break in this case. The Bible gave us the leads that we needed to solve this case and bern Earl's death to justice. I was in a house a few days ago and I ran across this Bible.

[Investigator]

He found a Bible with his name in it.

[Narrator]

The Bible is just one twist in a case that's far from over.

[Community Member / Family Member]

Mr. Earl Olander's community, family and friends deserve to know the actual truth, real motive, true story of his death.

[Narrator]

The thrust of the investigation by that private investigator was to see whether you specifically were involved us.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

I think divine intervention is. God knows how everything is going to happen and play out. I still get chills sitting here. It sent chills down my spine.

[Investigator]

We had a picture of Earl in our investigative unit with justice for Earl. And it was the picture that he had in his church directory. And he was wearing a nice red dress shirt and his hands were folded and we would often, you know, look at him and, you know, I need a sign. We need to figure something out. We're not getting anywhere.

[Narrator]

In the end, what is it that finally cracks this case?

[Investigator]

Earl's Bible. On May 9, 2015, we got a tip from a party who had been cleaning an apartment in St. Paul. For $23 and a bottle of vodka. And this caller had said that he had found this Bible. And he described this Bible as very ornate and old and in some sort of European language.

[Community Member / Family Member]

St. Paul, Minnesota, is a long way from where Earl lived, some 50 miles. So this is a big surprise.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

I saw the guy's name in the Bible, and his name is Earl.

[Narrator]

O L A N E E R okay.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

The Norwegian Bible was the place that I was cleaning up. So yesterday I opened the Bible up and there were two $1,000 bonds in there with his. With his name and address and everything on there. And come to find out he was dead this morning.

[Narrator]

And they said murder.

[Investigator]

He Googled the name Earl Olander and saw that there was a reward and that Earl had been a victim of a homicide in Carver County. Initially, when we had put out a reward for information, we had started at $1,000. At a certain point, when we were not getting anywhere, we increased it to 7,500, and the tips started to come in a lot more.

[Narrator]

Listening to the recording, you can tell that even the dispatcher knew this particular tip was a big deal. She calls her supervisor.

[Investigator]

Like, I have a guy calling saying he was cleaning a house in St Paul and he found a Bible with, like, bonds in them with the name of the guy that died.

[Narrator]

Seriously?

[Investigator]

Yeah. So I feel like that's kind of a big thing.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Yeah, it is kind of a big thing. It was a Sunday, so I was at home when I received the phone call that they had a Bible and had a very important, big break in this case. We've got a break. We've got something we can go on. We've got a direction that we can go with this case and hopefully bring the murderers of Earl to justice.

[Narrator]

Is this a case of divine intervention?

[Investigator]

I believe it is. We didn't have anything until this Bible. And I think the significance of it is Earl's history and his faith was so important to him that this Bible is really what brought us to solving his murder.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

I believe Earl got his Norwegian Bible as either a confirmation gift or was handed down through generations. Earl was Norwegian. His mother was Norwegian. We didn't hold that against him, us Swedes. Faith was very important to him. It was from the late 1800s, early 1900s. The outside was leather embossed. Inside was very beautiful paintings and lithographs and so on. And it's a beautiful, beautiful family Bible. I think divine intervention is. God knows how everything is going to happen and play out.

[Narrator]

So the first question is, why was Earl's Bible in this random apartment to begin with.

[Investigator]

When we get the tip, my partners meet with Barry Kyles. He's the one who was cleaning the apartment. We found out that the people that had lived in that apartment was Edson Benitez Dominguez and his wife. She said her husband had brought it home one evening and said that he got it from a friend. The bible made her uncomfortable and it kind of creeped her out.

[Narrator]

She thought it was creepy.

[Investigator]

It was creepy. It just. It made her uneasy. And so she left the bible behind in the apartment.

[Community Member / Family Member]

In her interview with police, she said Edson her husband and didn't even tell her that the Bible was stolen. And she didn't want to open it because it made her think of spirits.

[Narrator]

Edson Benitez is not a name that had ever been mentioned in relation to Earl Olander's unsolved murder. Sheriff's investigators knew nothing about him.

[Investigator]

After speaking, my partners learned that Edson Benitez worked at Chili's, he was a cook, and that he was currently working.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

From a Francis stand point. The shoe prints were the only evidence that we had.

[Narrator]

And the first thing investigators want to know is what kind of shoes Edson Benitez wears.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Everybody on the sheriff's office wanted to solve this. Earl was like everybody's grandfather. He was just a nice older guy.

[Investigator]

I would drive by Earl's farm on my way into the office every morning. It just felt very nerve wracking.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

There is a misperception the public has from watching these television shows that a crime is solved within hours or within days. From a forensic standpoint, the shoe prints were the only evidence that we had. Someone had pulled out all the drawers and just ransacked the kitchen looking for money or valuables. It was rather dusty in the kitchen. And so they got an excellent print inside this drawer, which you can read C R O C S Crocs. So we knew somebody was wearing crocs.

[Narrator]

Now investigators needed to know, what kind of shoes does Etson Benitez wear?

[Investigator]

Edson Benitez worked at Chili's. He was a cook.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

The police, they talked to him and said, hey, we want to talk to you about this. You know, this book that we found at your apartment.

[Investigator]

As they approached, they noticed that Edson was wearing croc style shoes.

[Narrator]

Edson Benitez was wearing the same type of shoes as one of Earl's killers.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

That certainly did stand out to our detectives. After our detectives saw that, we needed to have some more conversation with him.

[Narrator]

Police have no idea who Edson Benitez is. They don't know what the connection to Earl could be. All they know is that he has a murdered man's stolen Bible. When they ask him about the Bible, what does Etza Benitez say?

[Investigator]

He acknowledges that he had possession of the Bible, but he said that he had gotten it from his friend Hugo.

[Community Member / Family Member]

When authorities go to talk to Benitez at Chili's, they're recording everything. And we got a hold of that recording.

[Narrator]

He said his friend Hugo gave him the book and a bag with some stuff in it. Where does Hugo live?

[Detective Chris Wagner]

In Richfield.

[Narrator]

In Richfield?

[Investigator]

Yeah.

[Community Member / Family Member]

Richfield is a first ring suburb of Minneapolis. This is nowhere near where Earl was killed in Carver County.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

You have a phone number for him? No. He went to Mexico. That was. He threw everything away.

[Narrator]

He threw everything away and went back to Mexico.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

He said he was going back to Mexico. When did he go back to Mexico? Like last week.

[Narrator]

Okay. Police press Edson Benitez for details on Hugo for several minutes, trying to get as much information as they can to track him down.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Did he go back by himself? What's that? I don't know.

[Community Member / Family Member]

He.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

He went by Tower. His friends.

[Community Member / Family Member]

As they talk, investigators start to learn a little bit more about Benitez himself.

[Narrator]

What can you tell me about him? Benitez?

[Investigator]

Edson came from Mexico. He attended high school for a couple of years. He had been married for. For about six months. Their marriage was troubled. Edson would spend a lot of time out at night and wouldn't come home till early in the morning. He was described as a pack rat. He was always bringing things home that he had found or that he had gotten from a friend.

[Narrator]

Or so he said.

[Investigator]

Or so he said.

[Narrator]

Investigators then start questioning Benitez, probing about where he goes.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

We're from Carver County. Okay.

[Narrator]

Do you know where that is?

[Investigator]

No.

[Narrator]

Okay. Do you ever go out beside the metro, Minneapolis, St. Paul or anything?

[Detective Chris Wagner]

No, only here, like, Bloomington or Minneapolis. I don't go out, like. I don't know. I don't know the city there. Cities. Good.

[Community Member / Family Member]

They're trying to see if Edson will admit to being in Carver county where Earl was murdered, but he doesn't. Then they switch to trying to figure out what shifts he works.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Do you work set days or. No, I got my. Like, I work, like, every day. Like, my day off is only Wednesday. Your. Your only day off is Wednesday? Wednesday, Tuesday.

[Narrator]

Authorities believe Earl was killed on Wednesday, April 8th. So having Wednesdays off meant he likely wasn't working the night of the murder.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

I need to Detain.

[Investigator]

Your butt.

[Narrator]

So I need you to turn around of entrance.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Why would you think.

[Narrator]

Well, the book is stolen. And I think you know a little bit more about that than you're probably telling me. But I'd like to give you an opportunity to be honest with me.

[Community Member / Family Member]

Once he's in handcuffs and being brought in for questioning. His story of getting the bible from an alleged friend named Hugo changes.

[Investigator]

Benitez admitted that that was a lie. He made it up.

[Narrator]

We want to talk about that book.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

And how you came into possession of that book. That's why we're here talking to you today. You understand that? Yeah. Okay.

[Narrator]

Here's the thing, Edson. Okay. I don't think you got it from your friend.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

No. I'll tell you what, I'm gonna tell you too.

[Narrator]

No one can anticipate what truths will emerge once Edson Benitez is inside the interrogation room and who he will name as Earl of Olander's killer.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

You threatened to kill him.

[Investigator]

You're going to try. You tell me where the money is.

[Narrator]

Marvel Television's Wonder Man. An eight episode series streaming January 27th on Disney plus a superhero remake.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Not exactly what we'd expect from an Oscar winning director.

[Narrator]

Action. Simon Williams audition for Wonder Man.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

I'm going to need you to sign this. Assuming you don't have superpowers.

[Narrator]

I never work again. If anyone found out.

[Investigator]

My lips are sealed.

[Narrator]

Marvel Television's Wonder man streaming January 27th on Disney.

[Community Member / Family Member]

Finding a hoodie that lasts through the season can be tough. The American Giant Classic Full Zip hoodie is made to last a lifetime.

[Investigator]

So you can count on it year after year.

[Community Member / Family Member]

Every American Giant piece is made in.

[Investigator]

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[Detective Chris Wagner]

Part of your life. Snag the hoodie that will bring you comfort for life.

[Investigator]

The American Giant Classic full zip.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Save 20% off your first order at american-giant.com when you use staple 20 at checkout. We ended up detaining Edson and wanted to have some conversation with him. Go ahead and have a seat on our sofa.

[Narrator]

It would be Greg. Bring us inside his interrogation.

[Investigator]

It was myself and my partner who had interviewed him. And Edson was very personable. We're looking for your help and trying to figure out exactly what happened that night and just for you to help piece together everything that has happened.

[Narrator]

So it's in this interrogation that they learn more about Benitez's connection to Earl.

[Investigator]

He had said that he had helped a friend. He was contacted by a guy named Renal Vergara. I had recognized that name as being Henry, the painter who had painted Earl's house the year before and worked with Boker and worked with Bill Boker and was also a suspect of that theft of $30,000.

[Community Member / Family Member]

So remember, in January of 2015, just a few months before Earl's murder, The Bokers discovered $30,000 was missing from a lockbox in their closet. Vergara was one of the few people who had access to the house. They lived just down the street from Earl and always wondered if there was a connection between their theft and Earl's murder.

[Investigator]

Is Henry the one who organized this?

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Yeah. He said he didn't need his money. I needed help. I didn't have a loan, but. And he loved him.

[Investigator]

According to Benitez, he was contacted the day before, on April 7, by Vergara, who had said that he wanted to do a job and that he had known of a old man who had lots of money that lived near his boss out in the country. What did he say about this old man? How did he know him?

[Detective Chris Wagner]

He said he. He went banking. Technically, he knows him because the owner of the painting, he knows really well.

[Investigator]

Who the owner, he didn't want to use his car because Vergara had said that people in the community recognized Vergara's car. And so he had asked Benitez if he had a car that he could use.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

We made it in halfway. And.

[Investigator]

They had talked. On the day of the 8th, on April, they met at about 9 o' clock in the evening, and they had driven out to Earl's place. Benita says that they saw that there was a light on in the living room.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Would you be agreeable to kind of sketching it out on paper here?

[Community Member / Family Member]

So, like, yeah, Edson drew them a sketch which was a match to the layout of Earl's property. Then he described approaching the house, and.

[Investigator]

They drove the car, which was Benitez's car, back behind one of the barns in the property. According to Benitez, he sat in the car while Vergara had collected a black duffel bag.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

It had the duct tape, maybe the gloves, but it had the gun in it.

[Community Member / Family Member]

That gun is what would allegedly be used to beat Earl.

[Investigator]

What was Renal's plan?

[Detective Chris Wagner]

And then come back? I'm going to do okay. So I asked him. He went over there for 10 minutes and then he came back.

[Investigator]

Vergara returns to the car and says, hey, I need your help. I can't find the money.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Did you go in the front door or the back door?

[Investigator]

Back There.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Man. What did I show the mar? He take him out. Made that noise. They take him out. Well, was he saying anything or was he just kind of grunting? Kind of grunting.

[Narrator]

Could you see his face?

[Detective Chris Wagner]

No. Cuz he was covering with my te.

[Investigator]

Benise had said that Vergara was the one who had swung the gun, taking those blows or those heavy motions over his head, and basically pummeled Earl down to the ground.

[Narrator]

So brutal.

[Investigator]

Very brutal. Laying down with the camp. I.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

What did Renal say to you.

[Investigator]

At one point? Earl was trying to break free. He said to that old man, you're gonna die.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Yeah, you would have died. You threatened to kill him.

[Investigator]

You're gonna die. You tell me where the money is?

[Detective Chris Wagner]

No. Oh, you're going to die. You're gonna die.

[Narrator]

The saddest part about this story is that Earl suffered. Earl endured this and would be left for dead.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Did you see the old man moving at all?

[Investigator]

He was breathing and moving around.

[Narrator]

Okay.

[Investigator]

They left him and they cut his phone line. So he wasn't able to call anyone for help, and they left him there to die.

[Narrator]

If you believe Benitez's version of events, the case seems open and shut. But when it's Henry Vergara's turn to talk to police, he tells a very different story. He says he wasn't even there.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

You and Edson went to Earth.

[Narrator]

You love it.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Maybe Edison.

[Narrator]

All of it leads. Leads to an emotional jailhouse confrontation.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Vanilla talked about Vergara. And Vergara's name certainly did pique our interest, because we knew him. Everybody called him Henry. He had painted at Earl's house.

[Investigator]

He had painted for the bokers for approximately 10 to 12 years. Vergara was also from the same town in Mexico as Benitez.

[Community Member / Family Member]

At the time Earl was killed, Vergara had been arrested for traffic offenses. Nothing like murder. Benitez's criminal record was much the same. Same, though he'd been charged with a burglary about a year before Earl's murder. But those charges were dismissed. Murder charges were a whole new ball game.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

He said he was involved, but Edson wouldn't say that. He hit Earl with the gun. He placed it all on Vergara.

[Investigator]

We did a search warrant and located Vergara. Initially, Vergara denied having any involvement.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

What we need to do is I need you to tell me what happened.

[Narrator]

What happened? What happened when Earl got there? Oh, no. But we do know that's the thing.

[Community Member / Family Member]

For an hour, they question Vergara, and for an hour he says he wasn't even there. Ultimately, it only ends one way.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Arrest for murder.

[Narrator]

There's one other key detail investigators notice before he's taken away. Can I see the bottom of your shoe, buddy? I think those are the shoes you wore the night Earl got hurt. What kind of shoes was he wearing?

[Investigator]

Adidas. And his shoe, actually, that he was wearing during his arrest matched the shoe print impression that was taken off with a kitchen chair.

[Community Member / Family Member]

Between Edson's Crocs and Vergara's Adidas, Two of the three mysterious shoe prints found at Earl's house were now accounted for.

[Narrator]

Back at the Carver County Jail. Vergara starts by denying even being at Earl's house. And then he changes his tune and points the finger at Benitez.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Vergara blamed Benitez for a lot of what had happened. There is no doubt that you were in Earl's house that night.

[Investigator]

You did everything he said.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

You waited in the car while you.

[Investigator]

Did it.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

And your footprints are in the house. And so it's looking like Edson's telling the truth.

[Investigator]

He never, throughout his interview, admitted to having any involvement in Earl's assault.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

There was an awful lot of finger pointing that was going on in this case.

[Narrator]

And then there was still the open question of that third shoe print the avia found on the step of where the killer or killers came in. Whose was it? Weren't there three shoe prints at the house?

[Investigator]

There were.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

We still had this shoe print, this avia that we had not identified as being anybody's that was found in the porch area.

[Investigator]

My partner had mentioned to Vergara. Could there have been somebody else? You know it wasn't you. And Vergara took that and ran. Vergara said it was Benitez and another guy that had gone into the house.

[Narrator]

Who else was with you? Give a hand and hold.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

A guy. Another guy? Yeah.

[Community Member / Family Member]

Who was this third person?

[Investigator]

Vergara gave us an identity of. Of a person named Martine that was responsible. Is that his first name or last name?

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Martin? Yeah. I don't know. I made this for more for the name Picname or Picname.

[Narrator]

As police try to chase down details of this alleged third person murder, charges are filed against the two men who can definitely be placed at the scene. Benitez and Vergara, both defendants were charged.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

With four counts of murder and looked at them as being equally culpable. I believe that Vergara set this up. He knew her all. He set it in motion. But for Vergara, the crime wouldn't have happened. I believe that Benitez was the one that went in and hit him over the head. They both duct taped him, they both ransacked the house, they both covered it up. They're equally culpable of a brutal attack.

[Community Member / Family Member]

Investigators say that Raynal Vergara of Richfield was hired to paint 90 year old Earl Olander's house.

[Investigator]

Unfortunately, the job didn't end there.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

For anybody to go and take advantage of someone after having earned their trust, it's evil.

[Community Member / Family Member]

One of the items they stole, a bible written in a foreign language with.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Two savings bonds inside.

[Community Member / Family Member]

That Bible is what led police to the pair of suspects. It's especially hard for Maria and Bill Boker to come to terms with the news. Remember, Vergara wasn't just any employee. He was someone Bill worked closely with and that the whole family trusted.

[Narrator]

When you find out that Henry Vergara is one of those men arrested, did you feel a sense of betrayal?

[Investigator]

At first we didn't believe it.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Then once you find out they got the shoe print and he had the shoes on when they arrested him that were in the house. And now we're like, okay, now we've been lied to. Now the betrayal sets in.

[Narrator]

Did you think that maybe the cops have the wrong guy?

[Investigator]

Oh, yeah.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

From day one, I was totally miffed. Not the person we knew wouldn't have done this. Maria went down to confront Henry at the jail and she's like, well, are you going? And I said, why would I go? Whatever he tells me, how do I know it's the truth?

[Narrator]

Did you know that your visit to see Henry Vergara was being recorded?

[Investigator]

I didn't.

[Community Member / Family Member]

Prison visits and phone calls are often recorded. In fact, it's fairly customary.

[Narrator]

Would you like to listen to the recording?

[Investigator]

You know, part of me does and part of me doesn't. I'm curious to know what I said, but I know it's going to be hard.

[Narrator]

I start out by playing Maria a clip in which Vergara suggests that there was a third person. A loop that investigators at the time were trying to close. This is the recording of your visit to see Vergara.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

There were three of you? Yeah. Who is this third guy? Maria went to the straight to an investigator, Sheriff, and said that I knew. You're not done. He says there's a third person you need to get. Go find him. We. We. Think 93% sure.

[Investigator]

Yesterday I was sure 93% they would never do this. And today it's 90 paper.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

But it is if I bring a priest to speak you for confession.

[Investigator]

Well, you Can.

[Community Member / Family Member]

No.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Now, baby, will you profess your part.

[Investigator]

So that you can go to heaven?

[Detective Chris Wagner]

I'm going to get you a praise.

[Narrator]

To.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

And I want you to talk to him because more important to me is your soul.

[Narrator]

Maria, what is it like to hear yourself confront him?

[Investigator]

No, it's painful.

[Narrator]

You seemed worried about Vergara's soul. Talk to me about that.

[Investigator]

Well, we are very faith filled. And Jesus died on the cross for us to forgive our sins. And he wants everybody in heaven with him. He loves Henry just as much as he loves me.

[Narrator]

Even a killer?

[Investigator]

Yeah, even a killer. God loves all his children.

[Community Member / Family Member]

With charges filed and Benitez and Vergara heading to court, the investigators continued to build their case, paying particular attention to Benitez's allegations of a third suspect. Someone who might have left that unidentified third shoe prints.

[Narrator]

It was then that investigators would be faced with a brand new challenge when someone else turns up dead on their watch. And not just anyone.

[Investigator]

My sergeant said, I need your help on a death investigation at Paisley park. Paisley Park, 7801 Audubon Road. I said, that's where Prince lives. And he looked at me and he said, yup.

[Narrator]

For 100 days, I'm gonna cross the seven continents because the answers to everything important are out there at the edges of our world. I'm stepping into the unknown. Where are we going to see our planet. This is amazing as it's never been seen before. From Pole to Pole, Pole to Pole with Will Smith from National Geographic. Now streaming on Disney and Hulu.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Show me the way. FX is the Beauty. Imagine the hottest new super drug that makes you effortlessly beautiful. From executive producer Ryan Murphy.

[Narrator]

This is the closest to the fountain of youth anyone's ever gonna get.

[Investigator]

Are there side effects?

[Community Member / Family Member]

I just went in, woke up, and it looked like this.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

I would like the first pope. FX is the beauty.

[Narrator]

Premieres January 21st on FX, Hulu and Hulu on Disney plus for bundle subscribers.

[Community Member / Family Member]

Adequate hearing for Edson Benitez and Reynal Vergara. Prince's death is about to steal the spotlight.

[Investigator]

I was sitting in the back road. My sergeant had come in and he had asked me to come out. And I had thought, right now he said, I need your help on a death investigation at Paisley Park. Second page for Kanhasse. Rescue needed for a medical at Paisley Park, 7801 Audubon. I said, that's where Prince lives. And he looked at me and he said, yep.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Authorities say at 9:43 Thursday morning, Sheriff's deputies responded to the artist's Home where they found 57 year old Prince Rogers Nelson unresponsive.

[Narrator]

They have found Prince dead.

[Investigator]

We went from investigating Earl's homicide to investigating Prince's death. I had to tell Earl's family that I wasn't able to stay and that they would soon learn why.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

We are going to leave no stone unturned with this and make sure that the public knows what happened.

[Community Member / Family Member]

I remember all the mourners and all the fans coming out in celebration of his life. It would take two years to learn that he died after taking Vicodin laced with fentanyl.

[Narrator]

You have said that Earl's case and not the Princess was the most impactful of your career.

[Investigator]

It was, I think that it was very personal. Earl was well loved by everyone. This case was a very hard case to work. We had no evidence and it was all solved by his bible.

[Narrator]

That bible and dedicated detective work. Investigators needed to close the loop on whether a third person was really involved. Someone who might have left that third Avia shoe print. They found evidence to place Benitez and Vergara at the scene, but not anyone else.

[Investigator]

We were able to identify that they had sent each other a text message. If those messages were never sent, we wouldn't have been able to get the cell to tower paintings to get them at Earl's home.

[Narrator]

Investigators decided that mystery third shoe print likely wasn't from the night of Earl's murder.

[Investigator]

We believe that shoe print had been there for some time.

[Community Member / Family Member]

Benitez and Vergara ended up accepting a plea deal.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

The offer was plead guilty to secondary intentional murder and served 37 and a half years in prison.

[Community Member / Family Member]

At the plea hearing, Benitez and Vergara have to face Earl Olander's family.

[Investigator]

What might happen to my uncle?

[Community Member / Family Member]

Earl Lander was pure evil.

[Investigator]

Reynal Vergara sat in his orange jumpsuit, hands shackled, headphones on, listening to his interpreter.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

He had a kind soul and a gentle spirit. A firm handshake with a calloused hand and lived a simple life with grace. That was an example to us all.

[Narrator]

When the defendant painted his house, my.

[Community Member / Family Member]

Uncle offered him water and invited him into the house.

[Investigator]

The defendant even testified that my uncle was always kind to him and even brought him snacks from the store. Both men apologized before being led away by deputies. I just want to apologize to the family. I'm sorry for doing this. I know it will be very difficult to forgive me.

[Narrator]

Earl Olander's family would soon have more to ponder than forgiveness because of something Edson Benitez said at his sentencing. On May 6, 2016, after the allegation of a third person had been thoroughly investigated and dismissed by the authorities, it came up again in a big way. Benitez is on the record with a startling allegation that Vergara's boss orchestrated the whole thing.

[Investigator]

Correct. Benitez came forth and he thought that Bill Bowker had something to do with it.

[Community Member / Family Member]

This was a major allegation coming very late in the game. And to this day, today, it's something the Bokers never knew.

[Narrator]

Did you hear what Edson Benitez said at his sentencing about you?

[Investigator]

We don't know anything.

[Narrator]

At the sentencing, Edson Benitez told the court, he said, I just know that he. Vergara, went to do that because his manager told him to, referring to you.

[Investigator]

He wasn't working for Bill at the time.

[Narrator]

Right. But he knew, you know, you. You had known him. That's what he said. He said that you put him up to it. Did you have anything to do with Earl's murder, Bill?

[Detective Chris Wagner]

No, absolutely not. Zero. Zero knowledge, zero planning, zero inclination. This is the time we've heard.

[Narrator]

It's so shocking and it's upsetting to.

[Investigator]

You, obviously, for someone to say that my husband is the murderer. I mean, come on, he's a kind person. He would never hurt anybody. We get nothing.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Relationship with a grandfather figure, a mentor. And why would I want somebody like that out of my life?

[Narrator]

Even after being. Benitez and Vergara pleaded guilty and were sentenced two years after, in fact, some of Earl's surviving family members were still haunted by the case and specifically by accusations against the Bokers.

[Investigator]

Earl's family had hired a private investigator to look into the case. They continued to believe that the Bokers had some sort of involvement.

[Narrator]

The thrust of the investigation by that private investigator. Investigator. Was to see whether you specifically were involved.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Us.

[Narrator]

Yeah.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Really?

[Investigator]

No.

[Narrator]

How does that make you feel?

[Investigator]

It's upsetting because you have the guy. Obviously you have the guy.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

We love Earl, maybe.

[Investigator]

And I don't know how else we can prove we love Earl.

[Community Member / Family Member]

Contained in the case file is an interview that the PI did with Benitez while he was in Minnesota's Stillwater Prison. Benitez said that Henry told him him. Bill Boker wanted Earl Olander dead because he wanted Earl's land to build a house on. This is years after there had been another tip alleging almost the same thing that the Bokers wanted Earl's land.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

We always joke, earl, we'd love to live next to you. We can come help you out. We always said that we would love to live next door to Earl, you know, even as a caretaker.

[Narrator]

Benitez also made other allegations about Bill helping out Vergara after he was charged with murder.

[Investigator]

He thought it was the Bokers that were paying for Vergara's attorney.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

There was nothing there involving the Volkers that we came up with that would indicate that they were involved.

[Narrator]

Has Vergara ever implicated Bill or Maria Boeker?

[Investigator]

No, never. I had heard visit that Maria Boker had done with Vergara and she was extremely upset at him and was yelling at him, how could you do this? And it felt very real in my opinion and it was very emotional.

[Narrator]

In the end though, was there any credible evidence that either of the Bokers was involved in the killing of Earl?

[Investigator]

No, there wasn't.

[Narrator]

Just as things are getting back to normal for Earl's community, everything changes. Then there is the case of 90 year old Earl Olander. Suddenly Earl's murder is national news. In the lead up to the 2016 election, Donald Trump was campaigning for president. Imagine everyone's surprise when he mentioned the murder of Earl Oliver in a campaign speech. Then there is the case of 90 year old Earl Olander who is brutally beaten and left to bleed to death in his home. 90 years old and defenseless.

[Investigator]

He had done a speech on immigration in Arizona and during that speech where he was talking about undocumented immigrants, he met mentioned this case.

[Narrator]

The perpetrators were illegal immigrants with criminal records a mile long. Earl's case was center stage in a game of political football. What did you think of that?

[Investigator]

Some of the statements were inconsistent. He had said that the suspects had a criminal history a mile long. They didn't, they didn't have very much of a criminal history prior to the murder of Earl Edson.

[Community Member / Family Member]

Benitez and Reynal Vergara have now served six years in prison for Earl's murder. I reached out to them for their side of the story. Benitez wrote me back and I shared that letter with Jim Olson. I got this letter so I wanted to read it to you to see what you thought.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Benitez mailed that.

[Investigator]

Okay? Yes.

[Community Member / Family Member]

I received your letter. Interesting. I reckon that you and your people have reasons to believe that, that there is more to the circumstances surrounding the death of Mr. Earl Olander than what you read in those case files. I went on to read the entire letter in which Benitez never says what they stole. But he continues to suggest that not everyone involved in Earl's murder is currently behind bars. It was a better sale to the white establishment to exclusively vilify two men of color for the murder of an affluent white man, not another white man. When I read that to you, tell me what you think.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

The sheriff's office would always be open. If there is additional information that Mr. Benitez has, especially if there is a third person that's involved, he should come forward and sit down and talk to us.

[Community Member / Family Member]

Edson Benitez refused to answer any more questions in subsequent letters and emails, and Vergara never did respond. The Carver county attorney issued a statement that said, after law enforcement exhaustively investigated the murder and followed up on every lead, there was no reliable or credible evidence that a third person was involved in the murder of Earl Olander.

[Narrator]

Are you confident that all the guilty parties are now behind bars?

[Investigator]

I am. I think that he's deflecting his involvement and that we did a thorough investigation. For that Bible to end up being the way that crime was solved is.

[Community Member / Family Member]

So clearly, to me, a way that.

[Investigator]

God intervened in the story to not only give some peace to his family and his loved ones, but also to this whole community that was really wracked in grief and rocked in fear and all those things.

[Community Member / Family Member]

To just be able to kind of.

[Investigator]

Let everybody rest and be at peace.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

This is one of those cases that stick with you and actually even haunt you because of what happened to Earl. Moving on for us is never forgetting Earl. His stone has a tractor on it, and it's his Alice Chalmers WD tractor that was pretty important to him. So that was a nice little tribute to him. It was just senseless and tragic how he died, and it was over basically nothing that they took from him.

[Narrator]

What I've learned in this case is that Earl should and will never be forgotten. What also won't be forgotten is the way that his senseless murder was solved with what those who knew Earl best say is divine intervention.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

That tap on the shoulder or it's that direction you're pointed from somebody above. His murder being solved because of his family Bible was just incredible to me. There are no coincidences. There's only God incidences. And that's to me, that was. I'm going to close this chapter for earliest.

[Investigator]

I just think he would really, really.

[Community Member / Family Member]

Love that you're here in his church.

[Investigator]

One of Earl's relatives took some of the wood from Earl's farm and fashioned it into this amazing table. Kind of like to think of it as if Earl from heaven is kind of gathering us around. Right? It's just kind of this powerful way that even after his death, he still is a leader here.

[Narrator]

That table is where deceivers for the future of the church and where one of its most beloved members will never be forgotten.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Well, as for that case breaking Bible.

[Narrator]

It'S now in the hands of Earl.

[Community Member / Family Member]

Olander's family and his legacy and his farm continue on. It's still being worked by the same family that helped him farm the land for three generations.

[Narrator]

Thanks for listening to the 2020 True Crime Vault.

[Investigator]

We hope you'll join us Friday nights.

[Narrator]

At 9 on ABC for all new broadcast episodes. See you then. Tell Me Lies is back with an onuc. I'm willing to forgive you after everything you've done.

[Community Member / Family Member]

Everything I've done?

[Investigator]

What about everything you've done now Streaming Every single time you try to make.

[Community Member / Family Member]

Something better, you end up making it so much worse.

[Narrator]

Every betrayal.

[Community Member / Family Member]

Why are you doing this?

[Narrator]

Has consequences.

[Detective Chris Wagner]

Because I want to hurt you and.

[Narrator]

I don't know how else to do it. Tell me Lies New season now streaming Streaming on Hulu and for bundle subscribers on Disney plus terms apply.