S1: E4 – Murder in the Desert, Part 1

Nobodies had gone over to do a welfare check.

What they walked into was a murder scene.

They had found three bodies.

And all roads led to one suspect.

Who he knew who the killer was, but we didn't have any physical evidence.

He was a hothead and you if you said the wrong thing, it pressed the button and the fuse was lit. I would tell these guys watch your back. I will get my venion when I get them out of here.

That's all accounted, Okay.

He knew the vehicles that we were driving, the detectives that were involved, so it brought some concern to us. And this is going to get bad.

This is American Homicide, a show where we take you across the country to investigate some of America's deadliest crimes. We'll explore how these murders are shaped by their unique landscapes, and in turn, how these tragedies have shaped the fabric of these American communities forever. Today we're in Las Cruces, New Mexico. This is part one of Murder in the Desert. This podcast also contains subject matter which may not be

Las Crusis is on the far south end of New Mexico.

It's a place Bob Senecal calls home.

It's a very harmonious setting. People are very comfortable with each other and gracious to each other.

It could have something to do with all that vitamin D. Las CRUs as sea sunshine three hundred and fifty days a year and consistently ranks on the list of best places to retire.

Think about the moon with lots of sun. This is a desert landscape.

And it's also rich in history.

This is home to Billy the Kid and a lot of the desperadoes and characters.

The notorious outlaw Billy the Kid is known for evading authorities in the late eighteen hundreds. He's the subject of several old Western TV shows and movies.

Billy the Kid was sentenced to death here in the town of Messia, which is just to the south of us.

Bob moved to Las Cruces in the early two thousands and had no idea there was an outlaw living among them. We'll get back to that in a minute. Bob's home sat in the hills of an affluent section of Las Cruses, It's a neighborhood where numerous seniors lived, including a couple named Jill and Helga Delile.

There was a lot of commonality between us, especially myself and Jill. We were kind of brethren. I think you could say. Helga and Jill very educated. They both got their doctorates in language. Helga came out to New Mexico State University with the intent of taking over the language department, in which she did.

She spoke four languages and was active in the local arts scene. She and her acrylic paintings were well known in the area. As for Jill, he was an inventor who created a device that dug up a Christmas tree without severing its roots, and in twenty ten he was about to sell another device that would extend gas mileage and he planned to donate the proceeds to charity. But he spent most of his time in real estate.

He started developing real estate investment trusts and he and his partner did this on a regular basis.

Without any children. Jill and Helgo were always traveling back and forth to Mexico, Costa Rica, and South Africa. Jill had heart issues that caused him to slow down, so he put his name on the waiting list for a transplant. His spock came up in nineteen ninety.

Six, and he was very, very grateful to be alive, expressed itself.

Jill adopted the expression carbe dim seized the day.

He was French Canadian, impulsive and fun loving and daredevil if you will. He was a good man. He was a buddy.

Jill was also a guy with a problem. He hired the contractor who built his palatial estate in Las Cruces to build some other properties, but the deal fell apart. The contractor blew through his budget and then took out a loan from Jill, but didn't pay him back. When his tab climbed over a million dollars, Jill sued him.

They've been in court several times over the last three years.

Their long legal battle was finally supposed to come to an end in April twenty ten, which thrilled Jill.

We were at his out for dinner and Jill said, the judge is going to make a ruling on Thursday and declare him bankrupt and take his assets.

That Thursday, Jill, Helga and their business partner Peter White never showed up to court. They're a lawyer called nine on one.

I'm a lawyer here in town. We had a special master sales schedule for this morning and my client intended to be there. He his wife and their friend that was also my client. We can't get a hold of them on cell phones or on their house phone.

Okay, if i'm we're sending someone out there to go ahead and check it out, and we'll get back to as soon as we find some information out. Okay.

The Deliles home sits in a remote part of Las Cruces that's accessible by just two roads.

It's to the west of the Rio Grande River and an a fairly affluent neighborhood.

That morning, just after eleven am, Sergeant Joe Renault was one of the first responders.

This house is kind of up on a hill. It's called a very long dirt driveway.

Officers walked past a Cadillac parked on the driveway and approached the home. They knocked on a large class door, but no one answered.

We had the fourth entry and to get into the house, so they broke the window and entered the house through that way, and there was shattered glass all over the floor, and I can remember my feet crunching the shards of glass on the floor. It opens up into a wide open living space and the kitchen was to the right, and I immediately saw a missus Delile lamb face down on the floor.

I've got doll on the ground the kitchen A code thirty means homicide. Police found the body of seventy two year old Helga Delile lying on the kitchen floor. Next to her body was her purse and cell phone, along with a small plastic bag of groceries. A narrow pool of blood extended from her head to the edge of the kitchen, where the hardwood met the tile of the dining area.

The sergeant of patrol then took me to the other side of the kitchen counter or I saw mister Delile.

Sixty nine year old Jill Delile, was faced down on the floor. His entire body was soaked with blood.

I just couldn't believe how brutal it was. That's what was going through my head, that this was just brutal. So upon seeing it scene like that, I always go through a lot of different scenarios of possibilities in my head and one by one kind of mentally check them off. As I'm walking through a scene, and to me it appeared to be an intentional homicide. Whoever did this just absolutely hated these people.

With news of a double homicide, Prosecutor Amy Orlando joined the team of officers at the scene.

When you then enter the front door, and you didn't see anything disturbed. The house was in pristine, like someone had just come and cleaned it. There wasn't anything turned over, nothing had been knocked on.

The floor aside from the two bodies and some shellcases from a nine millimeter gun. The kitchen was relatively clean.

You saw some somebody had tried to clean up some blood, and there was smears.

The smears indicated that Helka's body may have been dragged into the kitchen next to her husband, who took multiple gunshots to the legs, chest, and.

Head, so we believe that he tortured him to some degree before he finally killed him. Helgo was still holding her purse, her wallet was in there.

So far, it looks like two victims were executed, but nothing appears to be taken from the victims or even the house.

There's a long hallway going down the house and then at the very end of the house where there's nothing else left is a walk in shower.

This is where they make another gruesome discovery. There was another victim, a male, who was slumped against the shower.

The third victim had clearly ran down there. He was still holding his grocery bag and was clutching it and had literally ran to the end of the house where he could run no more. And I just think of how terrifying that fear must have been, to know that there was nothing else you could do.

The third victim was identified as Peter, wife, the Delials business partner. He was the owner of the Cadillac part in the driveway. Investigators found an important clue inside Peter's grocery bag, a receipt that, along with the receipt inside Helga's grocery bag, helped the detectives piece together in an approximate timeline. They believed the killer was inside the Delials home between four thirty and six thirty PM.

It had to be someone that at least knew him or was familiar with the place, because when you have three people that have been killed, it would not be in a pristine condition as if it had literally just been cleaned by a professional. There would be blood droplets someplace there wasn't other than the blood smears, there was no blood. We found one blood droplet on the garage door.

In their garage. Police noticed that one of the Delial's vehicles was missing, so a bolo alert went out to be on the lookout for their white niece on Pathfinder. But a key piece of evidence came from the delios landline telephone. Keep in mind it was twenty ten and landlines were still common.

The police officers investigators had looked and had seen some call IDs that would have come about during the timeframe that the murders happened.

The caller idea on the Delio's phone showed a series of calls from pay phones. Detectives wanted to know more about these calls, but getting answers wouldn't be easy.

It was a landline, and because they live in kind of an outskirts area, it was a phone company that wasn't real cooperative with us. But we were trying to track down those calls.

But there was something else on that phone, A mysterious and angry voicemail.

A little spoiled to keep down call.

Detectives listened as this person rattled off a series of threats to Jill, but just before the thirty second message abruptly ended, there was one final threat.

He can understand that.

Fuck it.

It's not easy to hear all of what was said, but the caller threadned to murder Jill Delile. So the question for police was whose voice was on the other end of that call. The answer would lead detectives directly into harm's way. On the afternoon of April fourteenth, twenty ten, Jill and Helga Delile and their business partner, Peter Wythe were murdered in the Delile's home. Sergeant Joe Renault investigated.

I could tell that it wasn't a robbery immediately. It didn't appear that the house was ransacked, it didn't appear that the bodies had been rummaged through, and for a husband and a wife fal being elderly, it puts an exclamation point on on what that killer wanted to do.

This was a triple murder inside of a home. But the crime scene was surprisingly clean.

So what we had was the three bodies and evidence on the bodies, nine milimeter case things, and a missing vehicle that belonged to mister Delile.

There was also a series of phone calls to the Delile's landline. These calls originated from payphones around the time of the murders. Plus there was the mysterious voicemailstand.

He was very angry. He was leaving a message in a very threatening voice, and ALTI stated, I will put a bullet in your head.

Detectives learned that the person who left that message was the same contractor the Delios had sued, Yes, the same contractor who they were to square off against in court the day after they were killed.

He was a business associate, if you will, and his name was Geno Ferri.

Prosecutor Amy Orlando quickly learned that Gino had been a thorn in the Delio side for years.

These people had been through just a nightmare of trying to protect their business from Gino. He had taken assets, he had mismanaged their property.

Gino owed them money. By the time his tab climbed over one million dollars. Ji'll suit him. But Gino filed for bankruptcy.

He had filed bankruptcy fraudulently. And so that morning that hearing was going to solve it all. It was going to end that relationationship once and for all, to the detriment of Geno.

But instead of collecting that money from Gino, the three never meet it to court that Thursday because they were murdered that previous afternoon. Police found the bodies in the Deliles Las Crusis home.

And so it was shocking to everybody. We never had a case where three people had been killed, all in one home and all at one time.

When investigators returned to the initial nine on one call, the Delials lawyer even mentioned Gino by.

Name, subjects that they're afraid of a guy named Ferry Fbrri. The first name is Geno.

Okay, another they ever expressed any.

Oh yeah, all the time. Yeah, we were concerned. We talked about it a number time.

He tended to act like a bully. Gino fancied himself what we believed to be kind of a big, scary person.

So it's pretty obvious what's going on here. Gino was behind these more and he wasn't afraid. On top of that, no one was really sure what Gino did for a living other than run his mouth.

He just seemed to be one of those people that tried to have his fingers in a lot of different people's business. He never really owned anything or really did anything successful in his own right. He just always was like trying to make the next dollar, in other words, a scam artist, a connartist.

Sergeant Joe Renault took a closer look into Gino Ferry's past and found numerous front charges.

We started to piece together as modus opera, and I of how he got investors to give him money. He would ask for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars from this guy to buy this apartment complex, and then I promise, I'll remodel it and it'll be a fifty percent additional return on your investments. And then when this guy that loaned on the money started yelling, then he'd go out and find another investor to do the same thing, but he'd take that investor's money to pay back that investor.

So we know that Gino threatened the Delios, but could detectives prove Gino was responsible for their murders.

We had what I would classify as very little evidence. It was circumstantial pointing to Gino.

When Sergeant Renault questioned Gino at his home, a few things stood out.

He portrayed himself as being a soprano, He was Italian, he wore a gold necklace, he wore a gold medallion, and his shorts were always unbuttoned down to mid chest, and he had a hairy chest. He just he tried to portray himself as as you know, don't screws me. And his cell phone even had a ring back tone which was the Sopranos theme song.

And all of this would be laughable for a lot of people, but but Gino, it was terrifying.

He wasn't your typical suspect. I don't care. Do it come to my house? I don't care.

Sergeant Renaut asked him if he had anything to do with Jill Delio's murder.

Basically says, yeah, I didn't like Musker, but I wasn't there. It wasn't me. I can prove where I was. I was an Alpasso and I was at the gym. I have receipts. He said he was at the gym at nine o'clock in the morning, and that turned out to be false because he had to use a key card to check in and they had no record of him checking in.

Gino also claimed that he took his girlfriend's shopping at an outlet mall in El Paso.

We confirmed that he was an Alpasso, but he was back in town at about four o'clock four fifteen, the four thirty eighth.

Keep in mind the police leave. The murders took place that afternoon between four thirty and six thirty pm.

He said, Yeah, I got back into town after some shopping with my girlfriend and my shoulder was hurting, and I took a biket and I laid down for a couple hours, and to me, that was a red flag. To me, that was okay. He just gave us the time span in which we believe the homicides could have occurred.

That evening. Gino said he went to a friend's house that got gas, dinner, and groceries before heading back to his mother's house.

Whenever suspect gives me an alibi of a certain time period that is impossible to confirm. In other words, I was by myself and I was asleep, or I was driving in the middle of the desert for two hours and it can't be confirmed. That's that's a red flag to me. And I put my pen down, and I looked and straight in the eye, and I said, did you kill those three people? For a guy who always had an immediate response, he did not. This time took come about ten seconds.

No, I didn't have anything do with that.

You know that you're wasting your time.

Detectives question family, friends and anyone with a motive. But all Rhodes kept leading back to Gino Ferry, who seemed to almost dare investigators to prove he did it.

He was cocky. He was extremely cocky.

On the tenth day after the murders, things took a strange turn when the Delia stolen vehicle turned up right in front of their eyes.

The missing car was recovered across the street from the Sheriff's department. And that was kind of odd.

Jill's missing me, some half finder sat in a parking lot across the street from the Sheriff's department. It was empty, and it had been wipe clean of any fingerprints, leaving Prosecutor Amy Orlando to wonder if someone was trying to send a message.

It was as if the car was left as like to mock law enforcement. Literally you could walk from the sheriff's department to where the car was.

Investigators believed Gino was playing a dangerous game of catch me if you can. Jill and how Thea Delia were found murdered in their Los Cruces, New Mexico home in April twenty ten. Their business associate, Peter Wythe, was also executed.

I'd lost a good friend friends, so I'm sad about that.

The loss affected their neighbor, Bob Senecal.

We had a service forum at the Farm and Ranch Museum. Heavily attended because they had a lot of friends. But one of the tragic parts of that service was that Jill's heart was donated by the mother of a girl that died in a motorcycle accident, and she was at the services and it felt like she had lost her daughter twice.

That mother must have been absolutely devastated. As weeks turned into months without an arrest, Bob, like many others, lost patience with the investigation.

And I was disturbed because almost a year had passed and we've had no results. Nothing has happened. Obviously, the Sheriff's department doesn't know what they're doing, and I think it's time to turn this over to the federal authorities.

Bob put his frustration into words and sent a letter to the editor of the local loss Crusis newspaper.

I don't want to sound macho. I just I've seen too much in the way of death. This was another person we were laying to rest, and it was sad. Police very quickly said this is not a random event. This was a plan killing.

For Bob, it was a no brainer who the killer was.

Gino was the culprit, no question, because Gino hated him, didn't hate Helga, and I don't think he hated Peter that much, but he hated Shield because Jill foiled him every time he tried to do something, and I think that's what got him killed.

Prosecutor Amy Orlando didn't publicly name Geno Ferry as their main suspect, but that's who they were building their case against.

It's like we knew who the killer was, but to prove it, we didn't have any physical evidence.

Gino claimed to have an alibi, but the police were slowly chipping away at it. Their biggest obstacle was the local phone company. Police knew three calls came from payphones to the Delials house on the day they were murdered, but investigators had been waiting for weeks for the phone company to turn over information about the location of these payphones. It wasn't until the spring of twenty eleven that they

House, and we went in and asked him if they had cameras.

But Prosecutor Andy Orlando's team did so under the radar.

They tried to do it very inconspicuous because we also believed that Gino was watching a lot of the police work.

Think about that the police were the ones looking over their shoulders.

My personal opinion was he was getting like some satisfaction after watching us kind of chase our tails.

When officers showed up at the gas station, they were thrilled to find surveillance cameras pointed right at the payphones.

And so then I get a call later that afternoon and they're like we found it, and I'm like what.

Detectives managed to retrieve footage from the day of the murders, which occurred nearly eleven months earlier.

Luckily we got the cameras before they were raised.

After reviewing hours of footage, the police finally found Geno's vehicle. The video showed Gino's silver Lincoln Navigator enter the gas station around the same time the phone calls were placed to the Delia's house.

A car pulls up. It has two people in it. They make a call. They get back in the car, and it kind of looks like it fits the description of Gino.

There's also someone else driving the car, but that person never exited the vehicle.

The car leaves and heads towards the direction of the victims.

But there's a problem. The video was grainy and the car is parked in the distance where shadows make it difficult to see who the two men are. Police kept searching the footage and discovered that a little while later, another car pulled up and parts near the same payphone, but again the phone is far off in the distance, making it difficult for police to tell who it was.

The building sits here and it's a ways on the whole other side of the parking lot.

This time there's just one person in the vehicle. He got out of the car, made a phone call, and then walked towards the convenience store attached to the gas station.

Comes into the store Buyasa soda we believe to get changed.

The video from the camera inside the store is much clearer, but there's still a problem.

You can't really make him out completely because he has a baseball cap on.

The white male appears heavyset. He wore blue shorts with a red and blue striped shirt. This person wasn't Geno. The video shows this unknown man by a soft drink and then exit the store. He used the change from his purchase to make another phone call from the payphone. Seconds later, he hung up, got in his car, and drove away.

So now we know that those two calls in the timeframe from the video matchup to the calls that came in on the victim's home. Now we have to find out who that person is.

Using Geno Faeri's phone records, the police learned the man from the gas station is named Ricky Huckabee. Ricky was a convicted felon who served ten years in prison for armed robbery. He was in his mid fifties, did odd jobs for Gino and even lived in a building that Gino's mom wants to owned. When the police searched Ricky's home, they found that red and blue striped shirt he wore at the gas station, But they also found a gun.

We bring him in and the investigators talk to him about how he knows Gino, what's going on with Gino.

We would like to hear your side of the story.

Okay, okay.

The way those surveillance videos work, their time stamped.

You're there. You stopped out there at the.

Phone move and made a phone call. It was made to the Delao's residence, and you're standing there at the payphone making it. You don't remember calling over there, don't.

Oh well you did.

That's the thing.

At first, Ricky was on offered it and said he didn't remember much. The detectives kept pushing. They pulled out copies of Geno's phone records to refresh Ricky's memory.

You know, Gino talked throughout the day. There's about a two hour or something, that window that he doesn't call anybody, and there's about a three hour window that you don't call anybody, but you're there at that pay phone making a phone call the victim's residence after all this happened. So I don't know if you helped him out.

If you got has planned it, and you guys are trying to implicate me in something I had nothing to do with.

And I would have no part for something like that. That's a factor. Well, no blood on my hand.

Ricky Huckabee denied having anything to do with the murderers, but police wondered was he holding back because he was afraid of Gino?

He likes the people to have the fear of him. It's just too ego, you know.

After some back and forth and some assurance from law enforcement that they protect Ricky and his family, Ricky did a one eighty and shared what happened the night of the murders.

So his version was that he got a call from Geno. Gino tells him I need you to meet me at the Rio Grande River. Don't bring a cell phone, and I need you to meet me here at a certain time. Mister Huckaby thinks it's a little bit odd, but he goes and meets him there.

Gino gets into Ricky's car and asked Ricky to drive him to the Delaios house. Gino then said he wanted to try to negotiate with them one more time before they went to court.

This is my last meeting time with them, so I need you to take me there.

On the way there, Gino had Ricky stop at a gas station to make a phone call. This was captured in the surveillance footage. Gino told Ricky he wanted to be sure Jill was home, but police believe Gino called to make sure that no one was home. There was no answer, so Gino hung up the phone and got back in the car.

So mister Huckabe drives him there, drops him off. He's carrying a devil bag and he gets out and he's like, well you need me, and he goes, no, no, I'll get a ride back. Don't worry about it. I'm just going to meet him here. This way, they have to talk to me, he says, meet me back at the river. Mister Tugaby goes back to the river and sits. After about an hour, he starts to get nervous, and he kind of is thinking, well, how is Gino going to come here? Maybe I should call.

So Ricky Huckabee drives back to the gas station, where surveillance cameras captured Ricky calling the Deliles house again. There's no answer, so Ricky drove back to the river and waited for Gino. Thirty to forty five minutes past before Gino showed up in the Deliles Nissan Pathfiner.

Mister Hugaby doesn't ask any questions. You know, something probably isn't great that happened, but he doesn't know that they were killed.

Gino explained that he had to get rid of the car and instructed Ricky to follow him. Gino then parked the Nissan across the street from the Sheriff's office and had rick him back to get his vehicle.

He goes into the little restroom there, it's an outhouse kind of restroom, and he is still carrying Duffel bag. And when he comes back out, duffel bag is gone and his clothes were changed.

Ricky later met Gino at a frozen yogurt stand where he shared some shocking details.

He just convided and it means that he had the triple home side?

When did he do that same meeting the same evening?

Meaning and just.

Did the man first.

The other guy in the woman?

Since Gino built the house, he had a key and knew the layout, he let himself in, wore a mask and gloves and waited for the Delias to arrive, but he wasn't expecting Peter Worthe to show up. When Peter arrived, Gino chased and shot him in the bathroom.

What did you shoot him with?

I think no leader ROUSI or something something like that.

I know Vader RUSI, I think soon.

Okay, what made Ricky Huckabee go from saying he didn't know anything to writing out Gino?

We have to tread lightly on trusting him, so we said, well, you wear a wire, and he says he will.

The hope was that Ricky would record Geno confessing to the triple murder, but things got off to a rocky start.

Well every time it just seemed odd to us because it wouldn't turn on, it would stop, So again we were a little suspicious of him, like why is it not working?

When the wire finally started working, detectives heard something startling.

Gino kept telling Ricky Huckaby, I think there's somebody snitching me out. He knew somebody was giving us information, and he told Ricky, I'm gonna kill whoever it is. I'm just gonna kill.

Was Gino sending a message to the police or to Ricky.

We were getting worried because we were thinking that he might be catching on and how's he finding out this information? And this is going.

To get bad With Ricky Huckabee potentially in danger. Detectives had to work over time to put Geno Faerry away.

Gina was just hoted. If you said the wrong thing, it pressed a button and the fuse was lit, and so we had to commence the DA We've got chargist guy. He's too dangerous.

But Gina wasn't going down without a fight.

He was going to make us pay.

He's going to make our families pay.

And the battle turned into a full out war.

We had to have the bomb dogs come. We had snipers on the roof. In my career, I've never seen anything like it.

All of which would push the people of Las Cruces to their limits.

Nerve wrecking, very nerve wrecking.

This was not your typical game of canon Mouse. Keep in mind police were contending with a cold hearted, cold blooded murderer. Here are the links law enforcement had to go to in order to put Geno Ferry behind bars. That's next time on American Homicide. You can contact the American Homicide Team by emailing us at American Homicide Pod at gmail dot com. That's American Homicide Pod at gmail