20-20 2025 S01 E24
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00:00:00Tonight a loving father and major real estate developer killed when his car
00:00:04explodes. A pipe bomb designed to obliterate everything. But could a fresh
00:00:10look at DNA change what we know about the case? An all-new 2020 starts right
00:00:16now.
00:00:21And they killed Gary. They killed Gary. I still can't see it when I close my eyes.
00:00:28This windshield pops off the car and goes how many feet? 400 feet. I'm the
00:00:35killer. I got my gym bag which fits in the country club scenario. Open the door,
00:00:39put it down, close the door. I walk away. It is one of the most notorious murders
00:00:46in Tucson history. He was a wonderful father. He was a true gentleman and a
00:00:51true kind person. They rubbed shoulders with people in high society. Everybody
00:00:57thought car bombing has to be a mob hit. Very spectacular. We're sending a message.
00:01:02Turns out according to some who didn't want him dead. A long list of persons of
00:01:08interest. An ex-girlfriend, an ex-wife, ex-business associates. It was pure
00:01:14obsession. His hatred was pure obsession. And we're going to reenact the bombing.
00:01:20Everybody's under? To see how it could have been done. Two, one.
00:01:28Now we're starting to pick up some heavy components. That you can take what seems
00:01:33like a scene of classic chaos and create any kind of order out of it is
00:01:37remarkable to us. So what specifically did you find as you looked at all that
00:01:42evidence? It was titled to kill and right at the top of the list was Gary
00:01:48Trenum.
00:01:58Welcome to Tucson, Arizona. Or even on a sweet golf course like this one. The
00:02:04triple-digit temperatures and the blue skies above can transform in an instant.
00:02:14La Paloma Country Club is nestled in the Tucson foothills. It's absolutely
00:02:19beautiful. You can see the city. You can see the mountains. It's Jack Nicklaus
00:02:23Golf Course. Typical Friday. Very busy golf day. Wednesdays and Fridays were
00:02:30gambler days. And so about 515, 520 I was standing at the bar and all of a sudden
00:02:41there was this thunderous boom. I heard this huge bang and I rushed over there
00:02:54tried to see if there's something I could do.
00:02:58There's some kind of an explosion in the Country Club parking lot. I'm not sure. We have one of the
00:03:02victims has no pulse. He's begun CPR. I guess it's a massive fire. There was some
00:03:06kind of an explosion. The building shook. I'd never felt anything like that. I
00:03:10immediately turned. I went out to the parking lot and there was a car on fire
00:03:17split open like a sardine can. I found a man still sitting in his seat. No pulse.
00:03:25Pale. Blood's gone out of him. Just white. Dr. Sam Buttman had come up alongside
00:03:32the car towards me. He looked at me and he said, damn he's dead.
00:03:39Ken Halligan knew who the dead man behind the wheel of the destroyed car
00:03:43was. He was a longtime member of the Country Club named Gary Triano. There's a
00:03:49member and he was playing with Gary and he was sitting on the floor next to his
00:03:54locker and he was just sobbing. They killed Gary. They killed Gary. But the
00:03:59question was who killed Gary and why would they do it in such a spectacular
00:04:03way? The blast had stopped Gary's gold Movado watch at 538 p.m. End of the line
00:04:10for a wheeler dealer who was unafraid to gamble on the golf course or for that
00:04:15matter in the business world and according to his lawyer Ron Lehman a
00:04:18man always ready to bet big on himself. Gary was a tall person who would
00:04:26command a room when he when he walked in. Dark hair. Always had a nice suntan.
00:04:32Always had a smile. He was larger than life. Starting in the 1980s this former
00:04:38car salesman he sought to take advantage of the population boom in
00:04:42Tucson by getting into real estate and land development and gaming on a Native
00:04:47American reservation. One of Gary's most successful projects was Indian gaming.
00:04:58You're talking about a high-volume slot machine operation. Gary's personal take
00:05:05was one million dollars a month. Gary Triano was not shy about spending that
00:05:11mega money on the finer things in life. You know limos, Learjets, even a yacht. He
00:05:17loved spending $25,000 a week on wine while he was cruising around the
00:05:23Adriatic Sea with his financing partners. Let's have a look at some of these. This
00:05:29one you were just telling us is very special to your heart. This picture is
00:05:34because it was on my birthday 15, 16 days before he died. He was very kind and
00:05:42gracious and generous. That too was Gary Triano, a valued role model and mentor
00:05:49for his niece Melissa Triano. As her uncle and later her employer he was a
00:05:54figure of warmth and encouragement for her after a childhood full of hardships.
00:05:59What was it like for you after all the experiences you've gone through to
00:06:05really get to know this man and to come to respect the way he went through life?
00:06:10It changed my life. He was the only person that really believed in me and
00:06:16made me feel like I could you know be successful with anything. He'd had two
00:06:21children with his wife Mary. Gary was a devoted father of his son and daughter
00:06:26and the couple had become a fixture of Tucson society. That changed after Gary
00:06:31crossed paths with a top-earning real estate go-getter. Her name was Pamela
00:06:37Phillips. Pamela Phillips was very elegant. She played the part of a
00:06:43socialite. She always looked very put together. Gary told me that you know he
00:06:48met the love of his life and he was really taken aback by this beautiful
00:06:55intelligent woman. And Gary who is so smitten the story goes that he calls his
00:07:02wife up who's on vacation in Europe with their two children and he just announces
00:07:07you know I'm leaving you. Pam was a figure of widespread fascination and
00:07:12could be every bit a life-altering sensation. As much of a merger as a
00:07:17marriage Gary and Pam were officially power coupled at a black-tie wedding on
00:07:22a yacht in San Diego. Did you hear that the vows they exchanged included the
00:07:28phrase for richer or for richer instead of for richer or poorer? I think I
00:07:33remember that now that you say that. Yeah you did hear that? Gary bought Pam a
00:07:38beautiful diamond ring which he claimed was worth two hundred and fifty thousand
00:07:44dollars. They had twin dragoirs. They had this beautiful home on the at the base
00:07:49of the Catalina Mountains. Pam and Gary would have two kids of their own while
00:07:54rubbing shoulders with some powerful peers. Pam and Gary knew Donald Trump
00:08:01Marla Maples. Donald and Marla came to a University of Arizona basketball game
00:08:05with Gary and Pam. He invited Donald Trump out to be his partner at the
00:08:11member guest and of course he had to make sure that everybody in the club
00:08:15knew a month before. So on that fateful day of November 1st 1996 Gary Triano was
00:08:25approaching his 53rd birthday with a note of optimism unaware of the big
00:08:30surprise that awaited him as he stepped off the 18th green. In fact this invite
00:08:36had gone out to all of Gary's friends inviting them to a surprise birthday
00:08:40party that was to begin in just a few hours. Around 430 Gary was in the bar
00:08:47with a couple of his buddies at a table. One of the members actually walked up to
00:08:52him and actually said happy birthday. I had no idea it was his birthday.
00:08:57Gary is walking towards his Lincoln Town car and he's sliding into the seat and
00:09:05he sees a blue canvas bag on the passenger seat. An early birthday gift
00:09:11left at his unlocked car by a friend perhaps. Gary leans over to unzip the bag
00:09:16The impact of the explosion was incredible. The front windshield flew
00:09:30200 feet into the air and landed in the swimming pool. I'm at home it's after
00:09:37hours and I get a call from my sergeant and basically he says there's been a car
00:09:43explosion at the La Paloma Country Club. Detective James Gamber was a newly
00:09:50minted detective with the Tucson Sheriff's Department and he was brand
00:09:55new to homicide. This was his second case. When he arrived on scene you could
00:10:00see the victim vehicle. It blew the car doors open, tore the roof off the car.
00:10:06Gary's body is still in the driver's seat. When Melissa Triano heard there had
00:10:11been some sort of incident with Gary she immediately rushes over to the country
00:10:15club. So what do you remember feeling as you were running towards the car?
00:10:22Just panic, just shock. I didn't think it was real. The whole top of the car was
00:10:29gone. I still can see it when I close my eyes. Immediately cops were asking who
00:10:38could have wanted to kill Gary in such a spectacular fashion. They would quickly
00:10:42learn a lot of people. Was it to send the message don't ever mess with us?
00:10:51So in the movie Casino, Robert De Niro's character, closely based on the real-life
00:11:07mobster Frank Lefty Rosenthal, climbs into his 1983 El Dorado, turns on the
00:11:13ignition, and is engulfed in a fireball.
00:11:22A bombing sort of has mafia written all over it. Who would want to detonate a
00:11:29bomb at a posh country club in broad daylight with, you know, over a hundred
00:11:35witnesses watching? Arizona has a past with the mob. In the mid-70s, newspaper
00:11:41reporter Don Bowles, he was investigating organized crime, getting national
00:11:45attention, covered by Walter Cronkite. Don Bowles is a 47-year-old investigative
00:11:51reporter for the Arizona Republic. He's been working on a series about the mafia.
00:11:55And when Bowles returned to his car, a remote-control bomb exploded under the
00:12:00driver's seat. Bowles uttered the word mafia as he lay dying, but police were
00:12:05never able to pin his death on organized crime. Strictly speaking, what killed Gary
00:12:11Triana was not a car bomb. It was a pipe bomb on the passenger seat, detonated by
00:12:16remote control. And as Detective James Gamber began looking into Gary's murder,
00:12:21the mob was top of mind. Everybody thought car bombing has to be a mob hit.
00:12:27Very spectacular. We're sending a message. Don't ever mess with us. Somebody sent a
00:12:32message, and you don't know if they're coming for you next, or if it's the whole
00:12:36family. You know, I didn't know if he was involved with something that might want
00:12:41to hurt us all. You were on guard all the time.
00:12:46But why would the mob, or anyone else, have it in for Gary Triana? Well, maybe
00:12:52because by the time he was leaving that country club on the first day of November
00:12:561996, he was no longer the high-flying millionaire everyone thought he was.
00:13:02In fact, Gary was flat broke. He owed four and a half million dollars to four
00:13:08casinos in Las Vegas that were, supposedly had mob ties. Gary had owned
00:13:14chunks of undeveloped real estate. He'd invested in a radio station, even
00:13:18financed this misbegotten movie, The Mafu Cage, starring Lee Grant, Carol Kane,
00:13:24Will Gere, and an orangutan.
00:13:27Isn't he too big for her to handle? No, no he's not. Normally, yes, perhaps, but he's very gentle.
00:13:33Did you ever see your uncle's movie? Oh my gosh, yes. In fact, I had a horse once, and I
00:13:38named it Mafu. And we joke about it still, because that movie was just horrible.
00:13:44It was horrible. But it wasn't movies like that, or real estate that was making
00:13:48Gary rich. It was Native American gambling. He was making millions, until he
00:13:53wasn't. The Bureau of Indian Affairs threw him out of the administration of
00:13:59that contract. Gary personally lost one million dollars, approximately, in monthly
00:14:04income. So suddenly now, he's at a zero income, but his expenses and his
00:14:10lifestyle, you know, continued. These things were happening during the real
00:14:16estate recession, so things hit the fan at once.
00:14:20Investigators set their sights on Gary Triono's financial dealings, because he
00:14:25owed large sums of money to a lot of people. There were any number of suspects
00:14:33that the Sheriff's Department was looking at. There were Chinese investors,
00:14:36there were Mexican investors, there were Mafia investors, all of whom Gary
00:14:42purportedly owed money to. It was a house of cards that was crumbling fast. He was
00:14:48promising investors, you know, collateral on property that he didn't own. He was
00:14:52promising Mexican investors money that he didn't have. He had that gambler
00:14:59mentality, so he was quite a challenge to manage as a member. I constantly chased
00:15:05him financially. He was very good at tipping, but not very good at paying his bills.
00:15:09And at one point, Pam got a phone call and picked up the phone and heard on the
00:15:14other line a threat from one of the investors saying, you know, we don't
00:15:20get paid, we're gonna kill you. Gary became extremely paranoid, and he starts
00:15:25to sleep with a loaded gun in his bed. By the 90s, Gary was on the hook for 27
00:15:31million dollars. He'd run out of time, he'd run out of ideas, and declared bankruptcy.
00:15:37When Gary ran out of money, his marriage started to disintegrate. Pam had sort of
00:15:43had enough. She had married this man who was worth millions, and now he wasn't. So
00:15:49Pam's done, and she files for divorce, and she flees, and she heads off to Aspen
00:15:55with her children. A bitter divorce and financial ruin left Gary scrambling to
00:16:01stay afloat. Things were so bad in Gary's life that he went from living in the
00:16:08nicest houses wherever he was around the world, to sleeping on a friend's couch.
00:16:16One of Gary Triano's friends from high school met with Gary Triano the day
00:16:22before he died. Gary was trying to get him and his father to give him a
00:16:28$50,000 loan. His friend described him as anxious and desperate. That loan never
00:16:35happened, and tomorrow never came. That summit to plummet journey meant it
00:16:40wasn't even his Lincoln Town Car that Gary had driven to La Paloma that day.
00:16:45He'd borrowed it from a friend to keep up appearances. And before Gary was even
00:16:50buried, Detective Gamber already had a long list of persons of interest.
00:16:56We monitored the funeral, as morbid as that may sound. Who shows up, who didn't
00:17:02show up, who wasn't appropriate, who was appropriate. It was a good way to see who
00:17:08should we go talk to. And Gamber noticed one particularly interesting absence.
00:17:13Pamela Phillips wasn't at the funeral. She was conspicuously absent. But based
00:17:19on the acrimony and the separation, that didn't really surprise us. But associates
00:17:24of an eccentric billionaire say he had reasons of his own to want Gary Triano
00:17:29very dead. He had the capacity and the resources and the henchmen, if you will,
00:17:37to construct the kind of bomb that blew up Gary Triano. And this doctor claims he
00:17:44saw a kill list written in that man's daily plan. And it was titled to kill, and
00:17:52it was numbered. And right at the top of the list was Gary Triano.
00:18:08At the Pima County Sheriff's Office, way in the back corner of the impound lot,
00:18:13after 28 years, is Gary Triano's last ride, that 1989 Lincoln Town Car.
00:18:20Detective James Gamber showing up close just how devastating that pipe bomb was
00:18:25on that huge mass of Detroit metal. And this is Gary Triano. This is the car he
00:18:31was driving. And I know that there's been a lot that's been picked over this, and
00:18:37it's changed over the many years since this crime happened, but you can still
00:18:42see the incredible destruction that took place. This roof is supposed to be flat
00:18:46essentially, isn't it? Essentially, right. It should lay right along this line. And if you
00:18:52get a look down here at the frame, you can see where the floorboards have been
00:18:56blown off of the side body panels by the force of that blast downwards. And the
00:19:02whole arc of this is the result of that bomb also. Right, yeah. This, you know, if you
00:19:06looked at this, almost looks like the path of travel of a bullet. Well,
00:19:09technically it was. It's a projectile shrapnel. So everybody knew it was Gary's
00:19:14car. The one thing Gary never did was lock his car. Lock his car, lock his doors.
00:19:20So I'm the killer. Right. I walk up here. I got my my duffel bag, my gym bag, which
00:19:27fits in the country club scenario. Right. Open the door, put it down, close the door.
00:19:32I walk away. So finding that killer became Detective Gamber's main goal.
00:19:39There was a monumental list of individuals to go through, but only a few
00:19:45on it were known to have explicit feelings of rage against Gary. I mean,
00:19:50anytime you have a crime scene this large and this many witnesses, you you
00:19:56have to follow every possible lead. For Detective Jim Gamber, one person with
00:20:01hints of rage was an ex girlfriend whom he'd broken up with while she was
00:20:05pregnant with his child.
00:20:08There's a lot of people that talk about how volatile Robin Gardner was.
00:20:13Robin Gardner was pregnant when Gary left her. And according to
00:20:18investigators, Robin was so angry she'd thrown a glass phase at his head. And
00:20:23this, of course, sent Detective Gamber down another path of like, okay, is
00:20:26somebody else who might have wanted, you know, Gary dead. But having met
00:20:33Robin and talked to her, it's like, nah, it was gonna happen. It was gonna
00:20:38happen right there. It wasn't gonna be. She was gonna come back in six months
00:20:42and blow his car up. Even though she was angry at Gary, it was sort of a anger
00:20:47that had dissipated. You know, there wasn't really a reason to investigate
00:20:52her further.
00:20:55There were a lot of rumors going around about threats that Gary may have
00:20:59received. A lot of the early focus was on people that invested. Then Gary lost
00:21:05the money. There was no shortage of them to check out. When Gary went bust in
00:21:10May of 94, he left $27 million worth of creditors holding the bag, and that was
00:21:15including those Mexican and Chinese investors. Investigators were able to
00:21:20clear all of them.
00:21:23But there was a man who not only got stiffed by Gary Triano, he got
00:21:28humiliated by Gary, too. A Tucson trust a ferry in named Neil McNeese. Neil
00:21:35McNeese was, by all accounts, a billionaire by inheritance. He was sort
00:21:41of a trust fund baby. You know, if I could use that term, and he had a lot
00:21:46of money. His own Learjet, I think it was, traveled a lot. Even at his own
00:21:53personal doctor, Lawrence DeAntonio, accompanying him on his travels.
00:22:00My job was to keep him alive. He was a terrible drug addict and an alcoholic.
00:22:09He became acquainted with Gary Triano. They probably frequented the same clubs
00:22:15or things of that nature. And Neil McNeese was somebody who had a lot of
00:22:18money to invest or spend on people. According to investigators, Gary Triano
00:22:24had approached Neil for 80 grand to invest in him immediately. But McNeese
00:22:31wanted collateral for his $80,000 loan, and newly divorced Gary had just the
00:22:37answer. So Gary Triano gave Neil McNeese, Pam Phillips's supposed diamond
00:22:44ring that Gary represented, was worth a quarter million dollars.
00:22:50About five days later, he goes to his jeweler who tells him, you're the proud
00:22:55owner of a ring worth about $7,000. It's a cubic zirconium. And Neil went crazy.
00:23:04Went crazy in the jeweler shop. Went absolutely crazy. And so Neil McNeese
00:23:09did not want to be taken as a fool. And so it was said that he had put Gary on
00:23:15a kill list. It was titled, To Kill. Right at the top of the list, the day I
00:23:21originally saw it, was Gary Triano. And he never stopped saying, I'm going to
00:23:27kill Gary Triano from that day. And his former associates allege, along with his
00:23:33vast wealth, McNeese also knew the right people. People that had the capacity to
00:23:39make a bomb.
00:23:42The moment I heard on the newscast on my car radio that the victim was Gary
00:23:46Triano, I absolutely believed 100% that he was assassinated by Neil McNeese.
00:23:54What we could find out about Neil McNeese is that he was a lot of loud
00:23:59mouth, but very little follow through. Nothing to connect McNeese to a device.
00:24:05And if he killed Gary, that didn't get him his money back. And he wasn't so
00:24:10financially hit that, you know, he was down to his last dime. So did he do it?
00:24:17Again, not a strong connection.
00:24:21So little hard evidence pointing to anyone for Detective Gamber. But then
00:24:26out of the clear blue, Pima County receives a call from an out of state
00:24:30detective about an abandoned minivan some 500 miles away in California. It's
00:24:36crammed with stuff that has a name on it. That name is Gary Triano. But why?
00:24:51800 miles away from the Tucson, Arizona desert,
00:24:55atop the snowy mountains of Colorado. Two cases are about to collide, and
00:25:02there's a tantalizing new lead about to emerge thanks to a fraud investigation
00:25:07by Aspen Detective James Crowley into a local named Ron Young. What I was
00:25:13hearing was he had a great line to get into your business. You know, he was
00:25:17gonna do all these great things for you. I'm so awesome, and I'm gonna make you
00:25:21a ton of money. Ron Young was someone who was, even for the mid nineties,
00:25:27fairly adept at computers and establishing an online presence. Even
00:25:32back then, he comes to the attention of Detective Crowley after two local
00:25:37businessmen alleged that Ron has stolen more than $100,000, and they both want
00:25:42to press charges. If Ron became your business manager, he would instantly
00:25:48want all the books, access to all the financials,
00:25:52which gave him an opportunity to transfer money out of your bank account
00:25:57to his own bank account, get credit cards issued in his name on your
00:26:01account.
00:26:05So Crowley gets search and arrest warrants, sets out to pay Ron Young a
00:26:09visit at his place on Snow Bunny Lane.
00:26:13So this is Snow Bunny Lane, where Ron Young lived at one point.
00:26:18On the corner with the carport was Ron's house.
00:26:22So we get there and he's gone.
00:26:25There's nowhere to be found. Ron Young is six ft six, maybe £300.
00:26:32But where is he gone?
00:26:35Six months later, Detective Crowley gets a call from the cops in Yorba Linda,
00:26:39California. What happened was that police in California find an abandoned
00:26:45van, and it's a rental van out of Aspen. Authorities discovered that the
00:26:50abandoned Dodge caravan was rented by Ron Young. It was parked outside his
00:26:55parents' house, and it's an unlocked van. And so when police do come and
00:27:01they open the van, they discover some very unusual things inside. And as
00:27:06Detective Crowley learns, more than one of those things has Gary Triano's name
00:27:11on. There's divorce documents between Gary Triano and Pam Phillips. There are
00:27:18maps of Tucson. There are list of names of associates with Gary Triano, and
00:27:26they discover something else sort of unusual.
00:27:30It's a sawed off shotgun.
00:27:32I mean, fraud suspects. They're not usually violent. It was Crowley's first
00:27:38encounter with Gary Triano's name, but he recognized the name Pamela Phillips
00:27:43because earlier that year she had walked into the Aspen Police Department
00:27:48and accused Ron Young of stealing money from her bank accounts. In investigating
00:27:53Ron, there were two fraud cases initially, and then Pamela had come in
00:28:00to report the third fraud case. Detective Crowley had an outstanding
00:28:04warrant for Ron Young's arrest. So why did his still at large fraud suspect
00:28:09appear to be all up in the business of this Gary Triano from Tucson, Arizona?
00:28:14Then came November 1st, 1996 and the morning after.
00:28:21I was sitting at my desk in the investigations office and reading the
00:28:26paper and saw the headline.
00:28:29It was the shocking pipe bomb murder of Gary Triano.
00:28:34And kind of when you get an adrenaline dump and you get that kind of metal taste
00:28:38in your mouth, and that's kind of what it was. And so Detective Crowley calls
00:28:42Pima County Sheriff's Department and I said, here's what I have. You might be
00:28:46interested in this. And when Pima County gets this call from Detective Crowley,
00:28:50laying out the evidence retrieved from the van, especially those documents with
00:28:54Gary Triano's name on them, they finally have the connection they've been waiting
00:29:00for. So what was an Aspen fraud case now is firmly interwoven with our homicide
00:29:08case. Detective Crowley also hands over to detectives in Tucson a notebook from
00:29:14the van. Inside that notebook, a handwritten list of names, including
00:29:20Gary Triano's niece, Melissa. They brought it to me and in that notebook
00:29:24was Melissa Triano. License plate Missy. My license plate said Missy on a black
00:29:31Corvette. That was my car. So he had been following me and was terrifying.
00:29:40But now no one can find where Ron Young is or get any answers he might have. And
00:29:46so the investigation into the identity of Gary's killer, it stalls for nearly 10
00:29:52years until an expert enters the case who's got decades of experience. And
00:30:00that helps investigators with the identity of Gary's killer from a
00:30:04painstaking reconstruction of the bomb itself. People think when the explosion
00:30:10occurs, everything goes away. Well, it doesn't.
00:30:23Here we are in New Mexico, Anthony. Yes. Typical land of enchantment landscape
00:30:31around us here, right? Kind of desolation and mountain desert area.
00:30:37So a decade after the murder of Gary Triano, the case has gone stone cold. The
00:30:42Sheriff's Department decides to invite one of ATF's top bomb experts, Anthony
00:30:47May, into the investigation just to see if he could help determine who built
00:30:52that bomb that wound up in Gary's car. Anthony, when I think of blowing stuff
00:30:57up in New Mexico, I think of the movie Oppenheimer, something in Los Alamos,
00:31:01right? Yeah, a little bit south here, but yes. You guys got to hold on. So if
00:31:11you go just outside Socorro, New Mexico, you'll find this 40 square mile field
00:31:16laboratory, and it's called the Energetic Materials Research and Testing
00:31:20Center, Emertech for short. It's a research and training division of New
00:31:24Mexico Tech, and it's a place where highly skilled bomb specialists do
00:31:29their work with explosives. So we're blowing something up today, aren't we?
00:31:34Yes, we are. We're going to reenact a bombing that occurred in 1996 that
00:31:40ended up taking Gary Triano's life. Today, Anthony May is going to take us
00:31:46inside his field of explosive expertise and show us just how this
00:31:50kind of detective work can help authorities identify a killer. What
00:31:57kind of car is this that we're looking at right here? It's a Ford Mercury
00:32:00Grand Marquis. It's not the exact vehicle, but it is similar in body
00:32:05style and chassis. Melaton Flores is a research engineer and assistant
00:32:09director here at Emertech. He and his team are the ones who found the car and
00:32:13put together a pipe bomb all closely resembling Gary Triano's car and what
00:32:18was inside it on the evening of November 1st, 1996. We'll be safely
00:32:23tucked away in the upper bunker. We have a flag that you'll see behind your
00:32:27shoulder there. That flag is currently in the down position, which means that
00:32:31testing is imminent.
00:32:36The Emertech engineers have these high speed cameras ready to film the
00:32:39explosion at 20,000 frames per second. Morning, everybody. So today we got a
00:32:45recreation shot of a 1996 bombing in Arizona. It's gonna be a pipe bomb. Once
00:32:51the bomb goes off, we're gonna wait until for Merkel to he'll give it the
00:32:56all clear. It's a desert. It's hot. So, you know, drink plenty of water. We got
00:33:01snakes, we got scorpions, we got spiders. So watch out for all that.
00:33:10Yeah, hold on. Let me do a quick roll call up here.
00:33:16Like with the Triano case, the pipe bomb is placed in a blue canvas bag and
00:33:21it's positioned on the passenger seat.
00:33:24The technician spools out the firing fuse. We take cover in a bunker some
00:33:292000 ft away.
00:33:31Everybody's under cover. All right, we're all good here. Tesla, you're
00:33:40range.
00:33:4421
00:33:47mm.
00:33:59That sounds amazing.
00:34:07I think that could have been the back window. They were flying out. Oh, is
00:34:11that right?
00:34:12Yeah,
00:34:14starting to see some smoke now. I think it's smoldering a little bit. Yeah,
00:34:19it looks that way. The car's on fire.
00:34:25Every bomb scene tells a story and the debris scattered by this bomb is much
00:34:30like the debris that was scattered after the bomb that exploded in Tucson on
00:34:34November 1st 1996
00:34:37debris gathered up by law enforcement that Anthony May would go on to analyze.
00:34:44So after the all clear, we move in for a closer look.
00:34:50It would be up. Most of our is gonna be up over that bridge.
00:34:54Well, we're gonna walk into the blasting.
00:34:57Now we're starting to pick up some heavy components and now we're gonna
00:35:02decide. Is it from the car? Is it from the bomb? And what I'm seeing is car
00:35:06parts here, the door handle. As I can see already, the roof of the car is
00:35:12over here. Looking at the roof of the car, most of our fragments went straight
00:35:17up.
00:35:20Does it matter to you that it went straight up? It'll tell me the
00:35:22orientation of that pipe bomb that you can take what seems like a scene of
00:35:26classic chaos and create any kind of order out of it is remarkable to us.
00:35:32That's the objective. Take a look at what the crime scene is telling you,
00:35:36what the evidence tells you and then go from there. It is one of the most
00:35:41notorious murders in Tucson history. Opening
00:35:45back in 2005. It was Anthony May taking the fragments of that 1996 bomb that
00:35:50killed Gary Triano and reassembling the device, hoping that the process would
00:35:55offer some leads in a case that had grown cold.
00:35:59This is actually a picture of when Jim brought the evidence up to me. It's
00:36:04just kind of like a puzzle. Now I'm trying to match pieces. This is the
00:36:07pieces of the pipe.
00:36:10So what specifically did you find as you looked at all that evidence? People
00:36:14think when the explosion occurs, everything goes away. Well, it doesn't.
00:36:18There's 95 to 99% of the device still there. It's just different
00:36:23configurations. I was able to determine the size. It was about a 17 inch pipe
00:36:28bomb. So it took Tony May about a month to piece back together all the
00:36:33fragments of the bomb, and he showed us the reproduction he was able to
00:36:36construct. So somehow from all this material, you're able to recreate
00:36:41something that looks very much like what the actual bomb must have been. Yes.
00:36:47Is there any indication that Gary Triano would have seen that bag in the seat
00:36:51next to him? Well, he in fact did see it. There's a witness that said that he
00:36:57saw Gary Triano get in the car and then lean over into the passenger seat,
00:37:03meaning that the bomber was also somewhere close by with the remote
00:37:07control device. And when he saw him lean over the bag, that's when he
00:37:10initiated the device.
00:37:13And just like any puzzle, once the pieces start to fit together, there is
00:37:18a picture that emerges that would eliminate some suspects and start to
00:37:22bring others into sharper focus. We had found a piece in the debris here of
00:37:28parts that were soldered together. There were globs of solder, and the globs
00:37:31instantly told you not somebody who does this on a regular, regular basis.
00:37:35The question to me was, is this a professional hit? Are we dealing with a
00:37:40mafia from the design, the construction, the soldering, the battery? I don't
00:37:46see that.
00:37:49Turns out the outdated six-volt battery used on the bomb was also a clue about
00:37:54the bomber's age. That indicated to me that we're not dealing with some young
00:38:01individual who has experience with double A batteries or nine-volt
00:38:05batteries. That it might have been an amateur building their first bomb, and
00:38:10that the choice of battery was suggesting an older suspect excluded
00:38:14organized crime and got authorities focusing on the man with the
00:38:18disorganized van, Ron Young. So the way the device was built fit Ron's profile.
00:38:25So it's just another brick in the wall kind of thing. And as investigators
00:38:30continued to build that wall, they are intrigued by the enticing link between
00:38:35Ron Young and Gary's ex, Pam Phillips. Were they more than business partners?
00:38:41And will unearthed audio recordings reveal whether Pam was possibly an
00:38:45accomplice in the murder of her ex-husband Gary Triano, or a victim of
00:38:51Ron Young?
00:38:52I don't even want to talk about it right now.
00:38:54If I ever found out that you compromised me, you're, you know, a fried duck.
00:39:10It's a story about sex, lies, and audio tape, and a sensational bombing.
00:39:16It was something that absolutely shook Tucson to its core. It was horrific.
00:39:21It was violent.
00:39:23I'm the killer. I've got my gym bag, open the door, put it down, close the
00:39:27door. I walk away.
00:39:30The ex-wife, the business manager, the murder. How do they all fit together?
00:39:36Pamela Phillips was a socialite, a beautiful blonde bombshell. She was the
00:39:42quintessential trophy wife.
00:39:44Why would she have been so mad at him?
00:39:47Nothing went her way through that whole divorce, and she was furious by it.
00:39:53So she's on the hunt for her next husband.
00:39:56She said, you know, I need to find a husband that is worth $20 million or
00:40:01more.
00:40:01Finding them would be the real problem.
00:40:04Is it okay to talk?
00:40:05Yeah.
00:40:06Copy down what you need to copy in your own code, and throw this away.
00:40:10To this day, I keep calling it the treasure trove of evidence. It was
00:40:13astounding what was there.
00:40:16If he was a real hitman, why is he not threatening her with her life or
00:40:20threatening her family or kids?
00:40:21It's a sensational trial, complete with sex, money, and murder.
00:40:26It's summed up in one word. Greed.
00:40:34Here in Tucson, Arizona, handsome, self-confident land developer Gary
00:40:47Triano was married to Pamela Phillips, herself a charismatic player in
00:40:52Tucson real estate.
00:40:57They were a power couple with expensive tastes and the assets to satisfy
00:41:02them.
00:41:02It was almost like lifestyles of the rich and famous.
00:41:08But after the real estate boom went bust, Gary went bankrupt.
00:41:13Pamela began to realize maybe Gary wasn't all that he was cracked up to
00:41:18be.
00:41:18Like maybe there were a little cracks in this armor here because Gary
00:41:23started to let her in on some some things like he's indebted to multiple
00:41:29people.
00:41:30Following their divorce, Glam Pam and their two kids moved to Aspen.
00:41:36I saw Gary as being somewhat downtrodden, somewhat sad, sad he was
00:41:43losing his family, sad he had lost all his earthly riches.
00:41:51But ever the optimist, Gary felt confident he'd be on top once again
00:41:57soon.
00:42:00Until November 1st, 1996, when a car bomb blew his comeback and his car
00:42:08to smithereens in a parking lot just like this one.
00:42:19But who or what wanted Gary Triano dead?
00:42:25Despite Pam and Gary's bitter divorce, investigators could see no
00:42:29immediate connection between Pam and Colorado and Gary's pipe bomb murder
00:42:34in Arizona until cops stumbled across that minivan in California
00:42:40belonging to Ron Young, packed with documents with Gary and Pam's names on
00:42:45them.
00:42:46It was great because we had no association with Pam and the murder
00:42:51until then.
00:42:52Before we had Pam was in Aspen, the bomb went off in Tucson.
00:42:57How could Pam have pushed the button?
00:43:00Okay, now we have that connection.
00:43:02We have Ron Young bridging that distance for us.
00:43:06Pima County investigators needed to understand the complex relationship
00:43:11between Pam Phillips and Ron Young.
00:43:16According to friends, that relationship had begun here on Aspen Snowbunny Lane,
00:43:21where Ron Young lived.
00:43:23Pam was practically his next door neighbor.
00:43:27And at the time, Snowbunny Lane in that area was where kind of working people,
00:43:30you know, doctors, lawyers, normal people in Aspen live.
00:43:34It was not Pam Phillips kind of neighborhood, a long way down from that
00:43:38mansion in Arizona.
00:43:40So she asked her neighbor Ron Young to help out on her business idea.
00:43:43It was an astrology website called Starbabies.com.
00:43:48If your baby was born under a certain time, you could get their zodiac and all
00:43:53that. It was, it was that type of thing that Pam wanted to do and start up a
00:43:58little business like that. And he helped set that up.
00:44:03A new in town ski instructor who'd gotten a side gig as a live in Manny for Pam's
00:44:08two kids. Kevin McDonald says he saw a lot of Ron Young.
00:44:13He would come over and spend time with Pam and I was helping her with,
00:44:18you know, the star babies. And then he would have dinners with her.
00:44:24And I can see that there's more than just being the down,
00:44:30down the street neighbor. After the kids were asleep,
00:44:34Pam didn't want them to see them being intimate or being more than just
00:44:41friends.
00:44:43Kevin would recall Pam as a good and caring mother to her kids.
00:44:47But according to Pam's friends,
00:44:48starbabies.com and Ron Young were only part of her plan to return to the top of
00:44:55the mountain. You're in ski country.
00:44:58Pam was always out in the different private bars and private clubs and Aspen
00:45:04trying to meet rich men. And because she said, you know,
00:45:08I need to find a husband that is worth $20 million or more.
00:45:14If it was Pam's longterm goal, it was fueled by her short-term needs.
00:45:19She was running out of money. And for that, she blamed Gary Triana.
00:45:26I would, she have been so mad at him.
00:45:28Nothing went her way through that whole divorce.
00:45:33And she was furious by it. And she wanted money.
00:45:37She needed money to continue her lifestyle.
00:45:40Once Pam and Gary had cruised on luxury yachts and private planes.
00:45:44Now Pam was steamed that Gary was making her pay to fly the kids back to Aspen
00:45:51after his visit with them.
00:45:53Pam told me one night after I put the kids to bed, she just said that, you know,
00:45:57she was down to her last $60,000. So I knew that she was worried.
00:46:03She was bleeding money. She wasn't making any money.
00:46:06Pam was convinced that Gary was hiding assets.
00:46:09So allegedly she asked Ron Young to find them.
00:46:13Pam's chief complaint during this entire relationship is she's not receiving
00:46:18enough child support from Gary and he must be hiding assets.
00:46:22But Ron is still really pissed off that he's not being paid for his services.
00:46:28Because of their business relationship, Ron had access to her accounts,
00:46:32and he allegedly started taking out money for his own expenses.
00:46:36He's not making out money for himself.
00:46:38That's what led Pam to report Ron's alleged fraud in the first place.
00:46:45Yet it wasn't long after that Ron Young skipped town and vanished.
00:46:49He was one step ahead of an Aspen arrest warrant.
00:46:53After Pam came in the initial time and I asked her to provide follow-up
00:46:58documentation, she never came back.
00:47:01Ron Young is nowhere to be found,
00:47:04but the Sonoma County sheriffs decide to talk with Pam.
00:47:07And then when you go to interview Pam, she minimizes Ron Young. Oh,
00:47:11he was not involved in my life.
00:47:13He gave me a little financial advice and things like that.
00:47:18Yet less than a year later,
00:47:20Pam is out of Snow Bunny Lane and into a million dollar home.
00:47:24Why were authorities so interested in her change of fortune?
00:47:29Pam had 2 million reasons to kill Gary.
00:47:34Pothole number 3.
00:47:44Pothole number 3. Allegedly,
00:47:47that's how the twice divorced Pam Phillips referred to Ron Young,
00:47:51her sometime lover, neighbor, and business associate.
00:47:55The note she wrote to her end.
00:47:57Ron was not her type. She was used to handsome, charismatic,
00:48:01wealthy men. And Ron was nothing like that.
00:48:11When Pam moved up to Aspen,
00:48:14she purported not to have any money was in financial hard times.
00:48:21There was however,
00:48:22a $2 million life insurance policy on Gary Triano's life set up to take care of
00:48:27his two kids with Pam.
00:48:28They were the beneficiaries with the proviso that if they were under the age of
00:48:3318,
00:48:34then Pam was the one that would receive the money and appropriately apply it to
00:48:38the children's lives.
00:48:40Now, even with a friend's assistance,
00:48:42Pam's financial straits were affecting her ability to pay for that policy.
00:48:47And then we find out that when Pam learned of
00:48:52Gary's death,
00:48:54she was actually almost 30 days in a rear on her premium payment.
00:49:01Pamela Phillips became hysterical,
00:49:04not hysterical over Gary's death,
00:49:06but hysterical over the fact that the premium had not been paid for the month of
00:49:11November.
00:49:12And they rushed a FedEx payment to the insurance company that got there
00:49:16too late. The insurance company though, honored it anyway.
00:49:21And 15 days later, Pamela makes a claim on Gary's life.
00:49:25So it took until January of 1997,
00:49:28before the insurance company paid Pam got a little over $2 million.
00:49:33Pam Phillips waste no time.
00:49:36As soon as she gets this $2 million life insurance proceeds,
00:49:40she goes out and she buys her dream mansion.
00:49:43And it's this, this home in Meadowwood. It has its own ski lift.
00:49:48It's a buttressed against the mountains.
00:49:51It's got these like massive wooden doors.
00:49:54It has marble all over the floor.
00:49:58So as Pam was spending that life insurance money and climbing back into Aspen
00:50:02society, Gary's murder remained unsolved.
00:50:06It was a burden on the entire Triano clan, the notoriety haunting their,
00:50:11every move.
00:50:12If I said my name, you know,
00:50:14I get a million questions or a million comments on the matter.
00:50:18Are you related to boom, boom, Triano, like horrible things people would say.
00:50:22They would refer to your uncle as boom, boom, Triano was one.
00:50:27There was all kinds of weird name, weird things that they said.
00:50:35So by 2005, this case had really become a cold case.
00:50:40So we had this one anomaly, Ron Young, and it was,
00:50:44where's Ron Young? Where is Ron Young?
00:50:47Aspen PD had the arrest warrant.
00:50:49So he could be arrested anywhere within us jurisdiction and just nothing
00:50:54was coming of it. He was like a puff of smoke.
00:51:00In hopes of teasing Ron Young out of hiding detective Gamber uses his network of
00:51:05undercover agents and investigators to approach the TV show.
00:51:09America's most wanted the man hunt for November 19th is now in
00:51:14progress. Then in 2005, a segment on Ron Young goes on the air,
00:51:19but this accused con man also be a cold-blooded killer.
00:51:23Well, cops in Arizona want to find that out
00:51:27right after the America's most wanted episode airs.
00:51:31It happens to catch the eye of a chiropractor in Florida
00:51:37whose patient is none other than Ron Young.
00:51:40So this chiropractor out of Fort Lauderdale,
00:51:43Florida informs America's most wanted that not only is his patient Ron Young,
00:51:49but Ron has a scheduled appointment the very next day.
00:51:54And that's a huge break in the case because now law enforcement,
00:51:58America's most wanted,
00:51:59they can all descend on Florida and make the capture.
00:52:03And sure enough, Ron Young shows up in time for his appointment.
00:52:07After his appointment,
00:52:08Ron is returning to his car when Broward County's fugitive unit makes the
00:52:13arrest. All of it captured on America's most wanted.
00:52:19What's your name? Hey man, I asked you your name.
00:52:24Authorities hold Ron Young on fraud and weapons charges because when Ron's
00:52:28apprehended, he's got a loaded Colt three 80,
00:52:31semi-automatic gun in his possession. So now detectives race to Florida.
00:52:37To see what Ron Young might have to say about Pamela Phillips and Gary
00:52:42Triano. But when they touched down,
00:52:44they get a big surprise one that will blow this case wide open.
00:52:49We walk over to this box and there's some micro cassettes sitting in there and
00:52:53it's like, anybody have a micro cassette recorder?
00:52:55And what was on there is I've to this day,
00:52:57I keep calling it the treasure trove of evidence.
00:53:00It was astounding what was there.
00:53:03I don't even want to talk about it right now.
00:53:04What I'm saying is if I ever found out that you compromised me for your
00:53:10benefit, it'd be really unfortunate for you.
00:53:24After being featured on the show, America's most wanted,
00:53:28Ron Young is arrested in Florida.
00:53:32I asked you a name.
00:53:36Crowley, he calls us and says they got him.
00:53:38So they started talking to Ron Young and Ron says, sure,
00:53:42you can search my apartment and yeah, you can search the storage locker.
00:53:46I have.
00:53:47He gives them kind of an extraordinary gift and it's like,
00:53:49he's opening up his treasure trove of evidence for law enforcement
00:53:55and what they discover like is a major break in the case.
00:54:00Among the physical evidence seized from Ron's properties,
00:54:04detectives find spreadsheets, FedEx receipts,
00:54:07thousands of email printouts and letters that shockingly reveal Pam and Ron
00:54:13had been in contact the whole time.
00:54:14Ron was a fugitive.
00:54:16Even after Pam had accused Ron of fraud and minimize their relationship to
00:54:21police.
00:54:22I think the apparent connection between us is best kept at a minimum.
00:54:26She writes, I don't want to appear as too much of a helper though.
00:54:30You know, I am. I love you and count on you.
00:54:35So there was obviously more of a relationship
00:54:40than, than she was letting on.
00:54:43But then as far as evidence goes, a coup de gras.
00:54:47We walk over to this box and there's some micro cassettes sitting in there and
00:54:51it's like, anybody have a micro cassette recorder?
00:54:53And so we pop one of the tapes in,
00:54:55we hit play.
00:54:57You sent my money out, my principal.
00:55:01I am not going to keep sending you more and more money
00:55:06unless I know you can honor our agreement.
00:55:11And it's Ron Young's voice and Pam Phillips's voice.
00:55:15We immediately turn the tapes off and we box those up immediately.
00:55:19Those go to the lab to be professionally transferred.
00:55:24It takes months just for detectives to listen and catalog the dozens of hours of
00:55:28telephone conversations that Ron has secretly recorded.
00:55:32And the contents are stunning.
00:55:35I'm really happy that your 1.6 was tax free.
00:55:38Just say yes. I will take the fourth.
00:55:41Like it's been coming and I'd like the balance of it as quick as possible. Yes.
00:55:45Yes. I want it all. I want it all.
00:55:48I want it all as soon as possible. We have no disagreement.
00:55:51You start to listen to the phone calls.
00:55:53And the next thing you hear is you got your two, I want my four. Well,
00:55:57you have a $2 million insurance policy and you have Ron getting 400 and some odd
00:56:01thousand dollars in cash from Pam.
00:56:05Recovered emails and FedEx receipts detail how at Ron Young's direction,
00:56:10Pam made regular cash payments to him,
00:56:12choreographed authorities believe in a manner to avoid detection.
00:56:17You start following Ron telling Pam,
00:56:20this is how you hide taking the money from your accounts and sending it as cash
00:56:25to me. And he gives her a detailed process to follow.
00:56:29He was instructing her to take out certain amounts of money at different
00:56:32locations, use different accounts. Uh, don't mail from the same place twice,
00:56:37you know, vary your, your pattern. So no one gets wise.
00:56:42Is it okay to talk? Yeah.
00:56:44There's absolutely nothing that shows me having any contact
00:56:49for, since I left Aspen or ever really,
00:56:53if you for any reason need to keep dates or numbers or
00:56:58anything else, obviously just transpose it into codes.
00:57:02For investigators, this game of subterfuge and these under the radar payments
00:57:06from Pam to Ron starting to smell like a murder conspiracy.
00:57:11What he had on his computer was astounding.
00:57:14Pam was paying him on a monthly basis and he had his own amortization
00:57:19table of the money.
00:57:20Pam was paying him with the interest that was due and it totaled something like
00:57:24$440,000.
00:57:26Armed with this new evidence, police get a warrant to search Pam's place.
00:57:31Aspen mansion, her slice of the insurance money paid for.
00:57:36In September of 2006,
00:57:38Pima County Sheriff's department joined forces with the Aspen police department
00:57:42and it's around her house and they knock on the door and they say,
00:57:45we have a search warrant.
00:57:48Pamela answers the door and they tell him,
00:57:52we have a warrant to search your house. And she said, no,
00:57:54and closed the door on their face.
00:57:57Pamela Phillips is completely surprised by this. She tells the police, yeah,
00:58:01my lawyer's on the way. And the detective says, you know,
00:58:03I have a search warrant. So they come in and,
00:58:04and the way she describes it is like they're scattering across her marble
00:58:08floors, like rats.
00:58:10While we're asking the search warrant,
00:58:11Pamela decides to leave and we don't have an arrest warrant for her at that
00:58:15point. So she's free to leave.
00:58:17She gets into her little mini Cooper and drives off.
00:58:26Meanwhile, after pleading guilty to firearms charges,
00:58:29Ron Young is sentenced to 10 months in prison in Florida. After his jail term,
00:58:33he's sent back to Aspen.
00:58:37He gets extradited to Aspen to face the fraud charges.
00:58:41And it's there that the fraud charges get dismissed.
00:58:45After the charges dismissed in Aspen,
00:58:47we don't have enough to charge him with a homicide yet. So he is free,
00:58:50but he's on parole from the federal prison.
00:58:54Ron Young moves to his parents' house in Yorba Linda, California.
00:58:58So there's all this stuff that's coming together.
00:59:01There's the suspicions about the life insurance policy.
00:59:05Now we've got Ron Young,
00:59:07who's an associate of Pam Phillips and all these things in the van in
00:59:11California,
00:59:12the names and a notepad of people associated with Gary Triano,
00:59:17maps of Tucson,
00:59:18receipts from a hotel in Tucson near where Gary was living at the time.
00:59:24After nearly 12 years,
00:59:25the police finally obtained arrest warrants hoping to bring Longaway to justice
00:59:31in the case of Gary Triano.
00:59:34We're going to do a simultaneous arrest.
00:59:36We've already put surveillance teams in Aspen surveillance teams in Yorba Linda.
00:59:40We hit Ron and we arrest him.
00:59:42We go to hit Pam and we do a records check on her.
00:59:45And we find out she flew out of the country to destinations unknown.
00:59:50She was gone.
01:00:01On Friday, October 17th, 2008,
01:00:04cops mount a large scale operation to simultaneously arrest Ron Young and
01:00:09Pam Phillips,
01:00:10the 1996 murder of her ex Gary Triano.
01:00:14We have the arrest warrants.
01:00:15We've already put surveillance teams in Yorba Linda.
01:00:18We've coordinated with local law enforcement.
01:00:20We hit Ron and we arrest him.
01:00:22We extradited back to Tucson.
01:00:25When it comes to arresting Pam,
01:00:27they have a rude awakening.
01:00:30Pam Phillips,
01:00:31we have every reason to believe is still living at her house in Aspen.
01:00:35We go to hit Pam and we do a records check on her.
01:00:37And we find out she flew out of the country.
01:00:40She was gone.
01:00:46Pima County investigators named Young and Triano's former wife,
01:00:49Pamela Phillips as suspects in the case.
01:00:51They're still looking for Phillips and believe she may be out of the country.
01:00:56So we have to put out a notice with Interpol.
01:00:59So now the United States marshal service and the FBI become involved.
01:01:04Unbeknownst to police,
01:01:05Pam is in Europe and she's leaning into the Alpine lifestyle in a swanky
01:01:10lakeside town in Switzerland called Lugano.
01:01:14She has just picked up where she left off.
01:01:16She's recreated her world over there.
01:01:18She's hobnobbing with the elite.
01:01:20She's off hunting again for a rich eligible bachelor.
01:01:24In fact, has been spotted with several.
01:01:29While out in Lugano,
01:01:31it's just not Pam style to keep a low profile.
01:01:33And so sure enough,
01:01:34a local tipster hears news of Pam's murder indictment and picks up the phone.
01:01:41I'm sitting at my desk and I get a call.
01:01:45There's a gentleman who'd like to talk to you.
01:01:46He thinks he knows where Pam is.
01:01:49So everybody's poised to go arrest Pam in Lugano,
01:01:53Switzerland.
01:01:54But there's a hitch.
01:01:55See the Swiss government wants a guarantee that the U.S.
01:01:58won't invoke the death penalty.
01:02:00Gamber and his team are able to work out the details.
01:02:03But when the Swiss police went to arrest her,
01:02:06yeah, she wasn't there.
01:02:10Ultimately,
01:02:10there's a multinational effort that leads to Pam's arrest in Austria.
01:02:15And while she's sitting in a jail cell in Vienna,
01:02:17awaiting extradition back in the States,
01:02:20Ron Young goes on trial.
01:02:24The trial itself started in March of 2010.
01:02:28We had been doing pretrial litigation for at least a year and a half leading
01:02:32up to that point.
01:02:34Some of the challenges that the prosecution faced in Ron's trial was that it
01:02:39was a circumstantial evidence case.
01:02:41They didn't have any direct evidence that linked Ron Young to the bomb.
01:02:46The prosecution acknowledges no one reported seeing Ron in Tucson on or around
01:02:51November 1st, 1996,
01:02:53nor did he have anything in his possession specifically tying him to Arizona or
01:02:58to Gary Triano on the date of his murder.
01:03:01However, the prosecution does have Anthony May.
01:03:05My job was to determine what was used and build a reconstruction of the
01:03:10device.
01:03:11And then the device was used to present it in court for his prosecution.
01:03:18He was able to recreate the entire bomb all the way down to the battery
01:03:23purchased from Radio Shack,
01:03:25the remote controlled air switch used to operate it to detonate it and even down
01:03:30to the duffel bag purchased from Walmart.
01:03:32That was an impressive display in front of the jury.
01:03:34I think.
01:03:35Anthony was able to recreate the entire bomb all the way down to the battery
01:03:40and the prosecution also had those microcassette tapes.
01:03:44I helped you on something that was, you know,
01:03:47beyond what anybody else in the world would probably do.
01:03:50And I think that deserves some consideration since you're living off the
01:03:56benefits of it.
01:03:57The prosecution makes the case that in their conversations,
01:04:00Pam and Ron were talking about the murder of Gary Triano.
01:04:04I am not going to keep sending more and more money,
01:04:09unless I know the farmers are aggrieved.
01:04:14The prosecution points out to the jury,
01:04:15an email that surfaced from Ron to Pam referring to Gary as an 800 pound
01:04:21monster.
01:04:22The communication between Ron and Pam was the crux of the case.
01:04:28The defense countering that Ron was simply extorting money from Pam.
01:04:32What Ron did was not Pam.
01:04:36He's blackmailing Pam.
01:04:38Then there was also an out of the blue prison witness with a prosecution,
01:04:42perfect account to tell the jury, Andre Mims,
01:04:46a cellmate of Ron Young's when he was in prison for the 2005 gun charges.
01:04:59For the prosecution, Ron Young's one statement to Andre Mims,
01:05:03how he blew Gary Triano up might as well have been a confession.
01:05:07But the defense claimed this testimony was made up and immediately called for a
01:05:11mistrial. Motion was denied.
01:05:17I think we felt confidence. I mean, as a prosecutor, even on a strong case,
01:05:21you're always concerned about the potential one outlier juror that could lead to
01:05:26a hung jury.
01:05:28After 13 hours, the jury reached a verdict.
01:05:32Ron Young was found guilty of first degree murder and conspiracy to commit
01:05:44murder. Ron Young is sentenced to life in prison.
01:05:47We can't tell you how many times we thought we would never see who killed my
01:05:51father.
01:05:54But for Gary Triano's family, the story is far from over.
01:05:58Justice has not been served yet.
01:06:01We still need Pam and there's a long road still with that.
01:06:05That long road would lead to a fateful night in July,
01:06:092010 a plane with Pam Phillips on board,
01:06:13making its way from Vienna to an airport in Arizona where Melissa Triano and
01:06:19detective Jim Gamber were waiting.
01:06:22I think her flight came in at midnight and we stood outside of the airport and
01:06:28watched her come off the plane.
01:06:31Pam's comment to the U S marshals was if Gamber's in the airport,
01:06:34I'm not getting off the plane. They walked her out of the jetway,
01:06:37turned her over to me. They had to walk her all the way out to a patrol car.
01:06:41I wanted her to see our faces and to know that we were never giving up on
01:06:47bringing her to justice.
01:06:52As Pam prepares to go on trial,
01:06:54her public defender would mount an ambitious murder trial defense.
01:06:58This will not be a short trial when it starts.
01:07:00Phillips defense has listed about 100 witnesses.
01:07:03He's making these threats to embarrass her.
01:07:07He knows that she is in all these newspaper articles.
01:07:11Could he surprise everyone and get Pam not guilty verdict?
01:07:25Gary Triano had left his first wife to pursue Pam Phillips.
01:07:28Then as a Tucson power couple, they lived high on the hog.
01:07:33Now 17 years after he was killed,
01:07:36Pam Phillips was on trial for Gary's murder.
01:07:39For anyone who likes a sensational trial complete with sex, money, and murder,
01:07:44this one was worth the wait. It has it all.
01:07:48The trial began February, 2014.
01:07:51There was a ton of attention and anticipation.
01:07:54All eyes were on Pamela Phillips.
01:07:57I think it was probably the biggest case we've ever had.
01:08:00The Aspen socialite on trial for killing her ex-husband with a car bomb.
01:08:04Pamela Phillips maintains her innocence,
01:08:06but prosecutors say they can prove she's a killer.
01:08:09For the Triano family,
01:08:10this case represents the ultimate hope in finally bringing justice for Gary.
01:08:16How was that trial for you and your family?
01:08:19Um, it was very difficult to sit through when photos or evidence was going to be
01:08:26shown that would be hard. I would get up and walk out.
01:08:31What made it imperative that you'd be there then?
01:08:33It was knowing the truth.
01:08:35Prosecutors argued that the main reason that Pamela Phillips orchestrated this
01:08:41murder on her ex-husband was the $2 million life insurance policy.
01:08:47The bulk of our evidence came from Ron Young, the FedEx receipts,
01:08:51the phone calls, the emails that Ron Young had saved.
01:08:55With records taken from that abandoned minivan in 1996,
01:08:58prosecutors argue how Ron Young closely surveilled Gary Triano's comings and
01:09:03goings, as well as those of Gary Triano's relatives,
01:09:07which included very specific details about Melissa Triano, who took the stand.
01:09:13The
01:09:15last slide has your name on it again, correct? Yes. Melissa Triano.
01:09:19Just above your name, what does it say there?
01:09:22Corvette, convertible, niece.
01:09:24The prosecution then brings out a key witness, Laura Chapman,
01:09:28a former friend of Pam's who recalls a conversation she says she had with Pam
01:09:33before Gary's death.
01:09:35She said that she should just hire a hit man,
01:09:39have him have him taken out and that the insurance policy was a $2 million
01:09:45insurance policy.
01:09:46And she said it would just be really easy to do because he was so predictable
01:09:49because he played golf every day.
01:09:51The defense claimed Laura's memory was faulty and that Pam was not desperate for
01:09:56the life insurance money because she'd lapsed on that last premium payment.
01:10:00If you're going to do a murder for hire for the insurance money,
01:10:04aren't you going to be sure that the insurance policy is in place and has been
01:10:08paid?
01:10:09But for the prosecution,
01:10:11big piece of the puzzle were those taped phone conversations between Ron and
01:10:15Pam discussing Ron's alleged $400,000 cut of that life insurance policy,
01:10:21where in the view of the prosecution,
01:10:24Ron says the quiet part out loud right now,
01:10:29I want to know that we're tapping it for,
01:10:32I don't want this nebulous thing out there that we're supposedly,
01:10:35it's not nebulous.
01:10:37I am very curious about this.
01:10:40Well, I'll tell you, you're going to be very serious.
01:10:43When you sit in a women's prison for murder.
01:10:46Oh yeah. That for the jury was our smoking gun.
01:10:49But defense attorneys assert Ron and Pam were not talking about the murder of
01:10:53Gary Triano. Instead, he was extorting Pam for money.
01:10:57I'm terrified of everything. I mean, I'm living in total fear.
01:11:01He's making these threats to embarrass her.
01:11:05He knows that she is in all these newspaper articles as a suspect in
01:11:10her ex-husband's bombing.
01:11:12He wants to threaten her reputation in the Aspen community.
01:11:15If he was a real hit man,
01:11:17why is he not threatening her with her life or threatening her family or kids?
01:11:22That's what happens when you have a cold blooded killer.
01:11:25The defense doesn't just try to point out how neither Ron or Pam could be tied
01:11:29directly to the bomb at the scene of the crime.
01:11:32The defense goes one step further and says the culprit is somebody else
01:11:36entirely. Hotheaded billionaire heir, Neil McNeese,
01:11:40out that 80 grand to Triano and enraged by his lies and deceit.
01:11:46Neil McNeese, Neil McNeese,
01:11:50he lends Gary $80,000 and gets a ring for collateral.
01:11:53He finds out the ring is only worth $8,000 and he's living. He's furious.
01:11:59He threatens to kill Gary, her Dr. D'Antonio.
01:12:01Remember Dr. D'Antonio had come forward after Gary died,
01:12:05claiming that Gary Triano was on Neil McNeese's alleged kill list and that
01:12:10he was responsible for Gary Triano's death.
01:12:14Lawrence D'Antonio was called to the stand.
01:12:16And this was really the crutch of the defense's argument.
01:12:21I wouldn't describe Neil as a friend.
01:12:24I heard Neil say he was going to kill Gary Triano probably
01:12:2910,000 times. It was pure obsession.
01:12:33His hatred was pure obsession.
01:12:35The defense argues that McNeese not only had motive,
01:12:39he also had the means with a woodworker friend named Jerry Campolano,
01:12:44who they claim had a shop and the know-how to make a remote control
01:12:48pipe bomb.
01:12:50The other things found at Mr. Campolano's shop,
01:12:54you saw that little red thing that was used to put together wires.
01:12:59There was one of those at Campolano's shop.
01:13:01There's an exact one of those in the bomb, the bomb parts that were found.
01:13:06It makes for an interesting story. They're saying, Oh, look at this.
01:13:09Neil McNeese was the real killer and Campolano was the person who
01:13:14made the bomb. All of them are deceased.
01:13:16So we're not able to follow up on this.
01:13:18Authorities continue to assert there's no evidence tying McNeese or Campolano to
01:13:23the murder. The McNeese family issuing a statement in 2014,
01:13:27maintaining their belief in his innocence and relief that justice might prevail.
01:13:31But I mean,
01:13:31the bottom line is we don't have any question whatsoever that Pam Phillips hired
01:13:36Ron Young to kill Gary.
01:13:37Kimmel Phillips never testified during the entire trial.
01:13:41We got glimpses of her personality, right? During the trial,
01:13:44she would look at the camera.
01:13:45She would smile at the camera, even mouthing the words at one point,
01:13:48I love you to the camera during court proceedings.
01:13:52The camera had always loved Pam right back.
01:13:56Now after two months of testimony,
01:13:58it was time to see what a jury would feel about Pam Phillips as they decided her
01:14:03fate.
01:14:04The lights flickered in the courtroom.
01:14:06My cousin Heather was sitting in front of me and she turned and looked and we
01:14:10just lost it.
01:14:15Okay.
01:14:22We're on verdict watch as jury deliberation continues in the Pamela Phillips
01:14:26murder for hire trial. The Aspen socialite is accused of hiring.
01:14:30After 26 days of testimony with a hundred witnesses,
01:14:34670 exhibits the fate of Pam Phillips lies in the hands of the jury.
01:14:39Do you find it dependent? Pamela and Phillips guilty of first degree murder.
01:14:50Why it's cries of joy and justice.
01:14:53Toronto's family says today's verdict has been a long time coming.
01:14:57Like seconds after the judge said guilty,
01:15:01the lights flickered in the courtroom. It was surreal.
01:15:03What did that tell you? Those lights?
01:15:05Gary's family was relieved by all this.
01:15:08The murder was in 1996. Our trial was now 18 years later.
01:15:13I mean, I don't think they wanted it to be Pam, but they knew it was
01:15:18Pamela Phillips attorney maintains his client is not responsible for her ex
01:15:23husband's death. The fact that she's going to prison
01:15:27is going to eat away at me and my family.
01:15:30I'm going to go to jail and I'm going to go to jail and I'm going to go to jail
01:15:34is going to eat away at me the rest of my life.
01:15:39Pamela Phillips was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
01:15:42After hearing her sentence,
01:15:44the once prominent socialite turns to address a packed courtroom.
01:15:48The only way she could do so without facing questions.
01:15:51I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent. Okay.
01:15:56This is hard. It's so hard for me. It's a nightmare.
01:15:59She showed no remorse.
01:16:01She actually turned around to the gallery for the first time. At this point,
01:16:05she was just pandering to the camera.
01:16:07And I don't understand how, how this can even happen. Right?
01:16:15Never any mention as to the loss of life,
01:16:18but everything came back to the impact it had on her personally.
01:16:26Outside the courtroom after losing their father almost two decades earlier,
01:16:30Gary's children expressing both gratitude and sadness at the outcome.
01:16:36We'd like to thank all our friends and everyone who supported us through this
01:16:40entire time.
01:16:41And we're sorry that it had to come to this because this woman was actually part
01:16:47of our family.
01:16:51Meanwhile, Pam's accomplice,
01:16:53Ron Young also spending the rest of his life in prison and he's exhausted all of
01:16:57his appeals. Pam, however,
01:16:59is still fighting for post-conviction relief based on DNA evidence found back
01:17:04in 2014.
01:17:06We found DNA on threads of two screws that were embedded into the platform,
01:17:13which was wood for the pipe bomb. When that came in,
01:17:16we were able to exclude Ronald Young.
01:17:21Pam's appellate attorney maintaining that new,
01:17:24more sophisticated DNA technology will prove that someone other than Ron Young
01:17:28and Pam Phillips murdered Gary Triano.
01:17:32Well, the next step in the process,
01:17:33we did file our petition for post-conviction relief.
01:17:36I'm hopeful that we can do some genealogical testing.
01:17:39If we can find the money to do that,
01:17:42they get better DNA that come back and tie to Jerry Capuano.
01:17:46Then that might get her a chance for a new trial.
01:17:49Prosecutors stand by the verdict.
01:17:51They continue to say that neither billionaire Neil McNeese nor his friend,
01:17:55Jerry Capuano were in any way responsible for Gary's murder.
01:18:00Where I find fault with this is that the aid didn't submit Gary Triano as a
01:18:05reference sample. Now whose DNA do you think is probably all over that scene?
01:18:10How do you buy screws at a hardware store?
01:18:13You don't buy screws that have never been touched by another human being.
01:18:16So finding some lone DNA profile and a blast debris doesn't impress me.
01:18:25How do you like to remember your uncle Gary?
01:18:35Every November 1st,
01:18:37I would go to La Paloma golf course and put flowers in the 18th hole.
01:18:44At a local cemetery,
01:18:45there's a bench inscribed with his name and Gary's favorite poem,
01:18:50Rudyard Kipling's,
01:18:52the classic tribute to the same endurance and optimism that Melissa always saw
01:18:56in her uncle who in the face of life setbacks and defeats sought always to
01:19:02remain admirably strong.
01:19:04Would you mind reading part of it for us out loud?
01:19:09If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the
01:19:15same.
01:19:16If you can make one heap of all your winnings and risk it on one turn of pitch
01:19:21and toss
01:19:25and lose and start again at your beginning and never read the word about your
01:19:31loss.
01:19:34And that's just how my uncle lived.
01:19:36Okay.
01:19:43The Triano family filed a $10 million wrongful death civil action against Pam
01:19:48Phillips.
01:19:49The judge ruled in the family's favor for that 10 million.
01:19:52That is our program for tonight. Thanks for watching. I'm David Muir.
01:19:55And I'm Deborah Roberts from all of us here at 2020 and ABC news.
01:20:00Good night.