RACE TO JUSTICE-Larry Sells and Margie Porter

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had a reputation for bullying and abuse. He'd immediately become a suspect in Cynthia's disappearance, but with a strong alibi, there was nothing Authorities could do when he decided to take a vacation to Florida and skip a scheduled polygraph test and the search for his estranged wife. Nor could law enforcement charge him when Cynthia's body was found a

few weeks later in northern Indiana minus her head. The case went cold for six years until a newly elected prosecutor allowed his deputies to charge Michael Albrech with murder. But would they be able to prove his guilt. This true crime legal thriller, written by one of the prosecutors, Larry Cells and journalist Margie Porter, runs at full throttle and will leave you on the edge of your seat right up to the checkered flag at the final verdict.

The book that we're featuring this evening is Race to Justice, with my special guest prosecutor and author Larry Sells and journalist Margie Porter. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for agreeing to this interview. Larry Sells and Margie Porter. Well, thank you, Dan, Thank you very much. Margie Porter and Larry Sells. Now, first off, Margie, tell us, as a journalist, how you came to be in a position to write this book, Race to Justice.

joining our writers group because he wanted to write this book. Well, he liked my work, and eventually he asked me to write the book, and I was like overjoyed because everybody was hoping for an opportunity like this, and basically I just felt like, you know, the sky had opened for me because I was getting to write this story. And I think that it is such a vibrant story and

it's a murder. Yes, it's a grizzly murder, and it's tragic, but there is so much inspiration in this story that I just could not have stopped myself from writing it. So basically I was invited to write and thrilled to get the opportunity.

out of her parents' house. She eventually met Michael Albreck at a racing venue and fell in love, and he moved her to Milwaukee where he was involved as a race car mechanic. So she was born to tragedy. But she was the kind of woman who would not be kept down. She loved, loved, loved water sports, and she would get out there and she would try anything, and she was just so feisty, and people loved her and she loved people, and so that developed her. And when

she got involved in the racing business. She started out as a Sioux chef, but she had so much cooking talent that she worked her way up to the executive chef for Roger Penske. Roger Penske was the pinnacle. Everybody wanted to work for Roger Penske. So she was the kind of woman who adored people. I mean, in one situation, the girls were driving to work and Roger Penske said, never ever ever be late, but there was an injured squirrel, and Cindy stopped to help the squirrel, and she felt

that powerfully about an animal in distress. And the people that she meant just adored her. I mean they called her Ellie May because she had such a huge heart and was kind to everybody, and it didn't matter what team they were on. She would make sure that nobody went hungry. So people were just attracted to her, and she was the darling of the race. You know ndy five hundred, the gasoline alley. For decades, women weren't allowed there, but she was so anyway. Working for Penske, she met

Sandy Fink and Becka Miller. These were her two best friends, and the three women ran the hospitality tent for the Penske team. Sandy was a Barbie doll. Bec mean, she was just, you know, this gorgeous blonde girl who had had her own talents, and she was very organized and she could do you know, delightful desserts. And Becca, you know, was just you know, this jazzy, little bright person who everybody adored, and everybody called them the girls in the

racing circuit. They are still the girls now, they're not twenty anymore, but they are the girls and people just love them. And they played practical jokes, they did drive by fruitings, just having fun all the time. And so they were in the big middle of racing, and their husbands were all indie car mechanics, and they were best friends and just having a wonderful, wonderful time the time of their lives, and people adored them. And then of course,

tragedy struck. As you know, this isn't this is a murder, and it's a gruesome murder. And if you read the description of what this killer did to her, you know, your stomach just kind of crumbles, because who would have the right to take such a bright and virbrant life. So this person, this self made person Sndy Allbrick, was destined for tragedy. She brought herself up to the heights of glory and then it was taken from her.

the daughters. What kind of relationship they did have she did have with those daughters, and then some of the things that were characterized in the relationship in terms of socializing with her career and his participation in that socializing or not.

I'm divorcing her. I want you so he did divorce his wife, and when the girls came to visit in Indianapolis, well, Cindy would drop everything, no matter what she was doing, she would drop everything, and she would spend time with the girls and she would take them shopping and two events and just dedicate her whole time to them. But he did not. They were his daughters, but you know, he didn't want them to inconvenience him, so he just did his own thing and let Cindy take care of

the girls. Socially, he was with the Dick Simon team. The Dick Simon team was not the star in the East at the Indy five hundred or any Indy car circuit. He was a lower rated team, but he was the chief mechanic and he made a good salary. Seventy five thousand a year, you know, back in the early nineties was a huge salary, and he was jealous Cindy. Cindy's friends Becca and Sandy started taking Cindy under their wing.

She was kind of a plane jane. She wore you know, men's shirts and jeans and basically she wore her clothes to cover her and they said, no, you should wear beautiful clothes and they they taught her to wear beautiful clothes and to do her hair and her makeup, and she just brightened up and got some self esteem, which did not go well with her husband because he basically wanted to control her. So Marlboro Kinsky had a lot of money and a lot of huge events, and he

started saying, I can't go. I work for Dick Simon. It's against the rules, which was not true. But whenever there was an event, everybody else went with their spouse and she had to go alone because he was controlling like that and was just passive aggressive. You know, I'm going to make sure you don't have a good time because I'm not that kind of attitude. So she would go by herself, and she was still, you know, bright and smartly, and she never let on that anything was

bothering her. Occasionally she would show up with bruises and other team members would say, you know, is he hurting you? And she'd say no, no, no, no, no, hundred times, but it was obvious that he was mentally abusing her and she was afraid of him, and he would he would come by their area to talk to her, and everybody would just stiffen up. Because he was a mean person. I mean he even abused other racers or other mechanics

so and talk down to them. So anytime the girl were together and he came around, she would signal, no, you can't talk about this, No you can't talk about that. You can't talk about us having fun because he wouldn't like it. Yeah, did that answer your question.

from it. And she just had to endure it because her parents were alcoholics, they were poor, they couldn't do anything about it, and she just had to tough it out, you know, pain or no pain, you know, she went to work whether she felt like it or not, and she just endured it. But in eighty nine she had a surgery. It's called, I think a La fort astotomy

if I can remember correctly to correct that. And the jawbone was rebuilt with a cadaver jaw and titanium and put together so that she quit having all that pain, and it aligned her jaw and it made her more beautiful. And Michael claimed that he paid, depending on who tells the story, anywhere from twenty five to forty thousand dollars for this surgery. Of course, other people say no, it was covered by insurance, and he just said that to

make himself look good. But it was a very life transforming surgery as far as her personal comfort, her parents, and her happiness. He, as I said, took full credit, but a number of people seriously doubt that he ever paid anything for that surgery.

about what she confided in Sandy and Becky? What did she say about the relationship you talk about unusual and inappropriate in her mind sexual interests? Tell us what she did confide in these women about? Okay?

to take a shower. He would want to have sex, and during her menstrual period he would want oral sex. And it really sickened her these practices that he was demanding. That it was a change in his behavior, but the more she hated it, the more he demanded it, and there didn't seem to be anything she could do about it. She couldn't please him, and anything he asked of her she tried to do, but she was just sickened and

didn't want him touching her. And eventually she moved into the other bedroom and finally split up from him and got her own apartment.

could come and take care of the cats. However, he came and took care of the cats and started prying into her personal mail and her personal business and raising Cain about things he saw that he thought were suspicious. She would get a card from a friend and he growled that something was going on and obviously get very severe with her. A number of people had seen him yelling at her and making her cry, and she still denied that anything was arrived with that situation except possibly

to back here and standing. So they knew, I mean, they could sense and they could see that she was doing everything she could to hide it. Everything as fine as fine, But it came to the point that she could not allow him in her apartment, she could not allow him access to her life, and she changed the law. However, whenever she was home, she would open the back patio door so the cats could look out, because she loved the cats, but couldn't let them outside. They were inside cats.

had been a chief mechanic. So his job on the Dick Simon team was if you ever watched the hit crew and the guys come out to change the tires, he always changed that left front tire. You know. He was that guy that people keeped in on because it was the hardest to get into. So he was, you know, mister chief mechanic, mister king, and then all of a sudden he was the low life. Her career, Pennskive Course was growing and doing better, and she had been to

visit Roger Pinski's yacht. The entire team went to visit and he had just asked her at the end of the race season to come and be the chef on his yacht. So this was a huge, huge promotion and she would be able to go to Florida and you know, be with her parents, and she was falling in love with Pete Twitty. They'd worked together for over a year, nothing special between them until the end of the race season. They were at Skeleton Lake in Canada and just they

literally fell in love. They were looking and get each other over the fire and literally connected as soulmates, and uh they were. She was going to go to Florida. She was going to live with Pete. She was going to have a great relationship as soon as their divorce was final. Her life was coming up, and she was going to work for Roger Penski's yacht and that was that just made her happier than anything.

Is Michael going to come after me? Is he going to come up behind me? Is he going to do something? And she'd say, no, it's going to be okay. But he had this sense that something dark was going on. He said it was the kind of sensitivity he had had since childhood, and he had a feeling that something was bad, and he wanted so badly to go with her, and she kept refusing and saying, no, everything's fine, everything's great.

He didn't have a chance, and when he got home to Flora, the first thing he did was start calling her and got no answer. It was too late. She got home from the race and she was gone. But he had a sensitivity that that was going to happen. And she left the Allen's Er junior party, the Halloween party.

She was a party girl. She would have stayed till the last minute, but that night she said no, I just want to go to the hotel and be with you, which is not like her at all, And so Pete understood that something was very wrong, but she would not talk about it.

was the day of the divorce. Michael had argued that it was the twenty fourth, but of course you can't be divorced on the twenty fourth, which is a Saturday, because the court's not open. And repeatedly he came to her during this time and said, can we talk, Please take me back. I just want to be with you. And Sandy and Becka heard these conversations, and Cindy just kept saying, no, you know, we're getting divorced. So the twenty fourth was the day, which happened to be the

day after she disappeared. So she disappeared the night before the divorce was final, and it appears that maybe it was not as amicable as the lawyer thought.

She had bought a heart necklace. And given half the heart to her mother and half to herself. And this was a symbol of renewing their relationship because they had been estranged. There had been some bad blood between them. I mean, it was so bad that Cindy's first husband that she had as a teenager beat her brutally into the hospital. And her mother came in and saw her beaten like that and said, what did you do to

him to make him do this to you? So mother was not very nurturing, but now, as a woman with self esteem, she was renewing that relationship. And she talked to her mother and she said that she was waiting for Pete to call and then she was going to get some sleep. So Pete got into Indianapolis about around ten, So we're talking about just the thirty forty five minute time period here. Pete got in and called her, no answer,

and he called again, no answer. And he kept leaving messages thinking, well, you know, did she not get in yet? Is she asleep? What's going on? And he called and called and called and called, and he finally said, Cindy, I know something has happened, or or you would have called me, you know, maybe I hope we're going to laugh about this someday. But there was no answer. So right around nine thirty ten PM, she was gone.

So there was that some appointment possibility that she would be seeing a doctor. Lots of things to do on that Monday. Pete is very worried. Contacts to Sandy and Becky. What do they all decide to do?

Because Cindy had the kind of integrity that at a moment's notice, she could account for every penny of Penske's money, they gave them those girls thousands of dollars in cash to buy all the groceries because they were feeding hundreds of people. So she had a bag with that money, and the girls were coming to look at the receipts, look at the cash, make sure everything balanced, turn it in. They got to the apartment and her truck was there, and they were like, she's just not answering the phone.

But she didn't answer the door either, so they went up the backstairs and it was like instantly they felt this darkness. I mean, the apartment was dark and the cats were crying and there was no music, and they

instantly knew that something was wrong. Plus the door was off on the patio, so Sandy opened the door and they kind of looked in and they called to her and they didn't get an answer, and they were just freaked out and scared, and then they realized somebody could be in there, so they went back to Becca's car and they got a can of Maze and an umbrella because if somebody was in there, they were going to pokem and spray. I mean, that was their big plan.

They went back into the apartment and it was just like this deathly silence, and of course Cindy was a virant person, there wouldn't be any deathly silence in her apartment. They went through the apartment and she was gone. Even the bathroom. She had this ocean blue curtain, and Beca said, I can't look behind it. I can't look behind it, and so Sandy said, I'll look behind the curtain if you look in the bedroom. And they were hoping to

find her, but she wasn't there. So they called the police and Dane Morgan came and got them out of the apartment because he thought it might be a crime scene. And then this detective Steve Turner showed up and he treated it like it was not a crime scene. He was touching absolutely everything. Becca wanted to smoke, said don't

go outside, just you know, use this ashtray here. So it was like you had two officers there, one acting like, oh my goodness, this is a crime scene, and this other guy saying, Oh, she's probably out, you know, doping or boozing or with a guy. No big deal. But the detective was Michael Albreck's best friend. So she was gone and they just thought it would be like TV. Okay, we reported her, somebody go find her, and it didn't happen, so they started calling friends. Racers came from around the

country to Indianapolis. It was late October. We had freezing rain, it was cold, it was miserable. They were out all hours, day and night, going through woods, going through ditches looking for her for weeks. They loved her that much they just dropped their lives. They came to Speedway to look for her.

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to Florida. He was called into the police station. He was questioned and he was he was assigned to do a light detector test. He agreed to do it, but then he took off to Florida. Pete Twitty flew in from Florida, took the first flight he could get, went to the police station and was raising questions. He did know that. He was talking to Steve Turner, who was Michael's best friend, and Turner just said, oh, she's got lots of boyfriends, and he said, no, she's worked for

me for a year. She's not doping, she's not out seeing boyfriends. Something's wrong. But Michael was just taking off the Florida to have a vacation. So all these people were looking for her, and Twitty even went to hire a private investigator. They were all looking for her for three weeks, and of course, after three weeks they found her. Not they, but some hunters found what was left of her, and then it got to be a really sad story.

Becky and Pete Twitty undertook on their own. Tell us a little bit about your background, Larry, where you were at that time, and tell us a little bit about this private eye Campbell and what he found.

it'll cost you ten thousand dollars up front. Pete put the money on the table, he blinked, and the money was gone, and Don Campbell was hired, and he and Sandy Fink went to Milwaukee started interviewing people, even the people that had already been talked to by either the Speedway Police Department or Indianapolis or Indiana State Police, and even the FBI was involved in interviewing potential witnesses. And they talked to all of them and did a pretty

thorough job and competent investigation. I had access to all that information during the course of the you know, my involvement in the case. That's how Don got involved. Tell you something, I remember reading about this case when Cindy disappeared. I mean, I was, just like a lot of other people in Indianapolis, was an avid fan of any car racing, and when I read about it, my first thought was,

you know, this sounds like the husband's involved. But I didn't read much about that or hear or see anything on television about it for a while until her body was found, and that brought more attention to what had occurred. And still thought, well, the husband's probably involved. But I wasn't actually consolted or involved in the case at that time, and I was working on other cases. I had some

definitely cases I was trying, and several other murders. But in the fall of nineteen ninety six, Lieutenant Bill Jones from the Speedway Police Department, who was a lead investigator in the case, and a Sergeant William Kruder with Indiana State Police and some of their co workers got permission to and came to the prosecutor's office and consulted with

me and another deputy prosecutor. I'll tell you the first thing I saw in that case were the gruesome crime scene photos where Cindy was found and their body was found in the barbaric nature in which she had been killed, and I just thought, you know, how could anybody do that to a fellow human being? And I decided at that point, man, if you give me any evidence here, I'm going to go after the person responsible for this and we're going to make them pay for it. That's how I got involved.

all that information, all the crime scene evidence. But you'll have to understand that although there was some evidence in her apartment, really there was no evidence that the person that committed this crime had actually been there and done anything. There was evidence of Cindy being there, and there's evidence of this bag containing funds left over from the last race we're going, the sacred race that the girls were going to go through and then eventually submit that to

Roger Penske's Marlboro Penske team. There was about over two thousand dollars that was supposed to be in that bag. Well, that money wasn't there. It was missing, and only a few people the Sandy, Becca, Cindy, and Pete Twitty and a couple other people Marlbvill Penske were aware of that. There was one other person that was aware of it, and that was Michael, the husband. Well, that money was gone,

but nothing else was taken out of the apartment. Her car keys were there, or truck keys, they should say. Her purse with money and credit cards, other valuables in the apartment weren't even touched. The only thing taken out of that apartment was the money from that briefcase. And Cindy's body, which evidently was wrapped in a comforter that was missing from the apartment. And she must have been wearing her favorite T shirt, a large, extra large Garth

Brooks T shirt that she often wore. After she took a shower and reclined on the couch for the evening. That was what was gone from her apartment.

not there. How you asked about life insurance. When she and Michael actually separated and she filed for divorce, she thought, for all intents and purposes her other divorce, her other life insurance would would be ended because she didn't make the premium payments on it, and she got her own life insurance and eventually named her father as a beneficiary of that policy. What she didn't know, and probably would have caused her considerable concern, is that Michael Finker kept

paying a Michael fin I apologize Michael. Think Michael kept paying those premiums every month religiously. He made those premiums that becomes very important later on. Why would he pay premiums on a soon to be ex wife's the life insurance policy. It's a turn which means that the only way any money can be realized from that is if the person ensured die and then the individuals it's a beneficiary of that policy would get those funds. And Michael,

of course was the beneficiary of that policy. And that's where that stood. But I'll tell you when I started reviewing this case, and there were volumes of materials and records when I started reviewing it, just different things came up to just all of us pointed toward Michael albret. It starts with the fact that the divorce was to be final December the Earth October twenty sixth, and she

goes missing that very evening before. Now that could be a coincidence, I guess, but it's a very perplexing coincidence. Michael Albrecht, as you just heard from Margie, and Margie did a great job of telling you about not everything, and I appreciate that, and you probably understand now why I selected her her right, I couldn't write where the dern But Margie can not only write, she can talk and she explained things very well and I certainly appreciate it.

I'll be forever and gebted to her for writing this book and doing such a great job on it, and everybody that's read it that her friends or were friends of Cindy feel the same way. Well, Michael Albrick was questioned he was supposed to show up for a polygraph the next day based upon the information he provided, the main substance of which is that he wasn't here in Innyianapolis when that happened. He was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and

he had people that could could support that corroborate that. Well, he leaves for Florida the next day, doesn't show up for the polygraph. Everybody else that knows Cindy, that cares about her, everybody in the racing community, comes from everywhere to try to look for her. And where is he. He's vacationing in Florida. He knows at that point she's missing.

He's been told by law enforcement. But this woman that he had tried to convince him just a few days before at the last race and Laguna Seka to come back to him, and he he wants her back, but what's he do when she shows up missing? He goes to Florida. You know, he didn't even get a learn about her once he knew that she was dead.

to prosecute, to move ahead with charges. In this investigation that you conduct along with detectives and with the detective Jones, what tell us the story of a Bill Filter and how that story changes.

the things that I thought. I know, the alibi was an obstacle, but I looked at the things that I thought pointed to the guilt of Michael Aubret as a person, because, in my opinion, if I could show that he committed the murder, and I could deal with that alibi first, but I need to be able to convince in my own be convinced my own mind, to be able to

convince others that he's the one that did it. And I saw that evidence in the files, and I can't blieve in no other prosecutor before I looked at it was willing to dig in there and go through that stuff. I just in ninety six alone, I tried two death penalty cases. I tried some other murders. In nineteen ninety seven while I was still with us this, I tried

fourteen murder cases. But I just I was so affected by the gruesomeness of this murder and what a beautiful person's in the all breck was that I decided, you know, whatever it took, I was going to search through these files and if the evidence was there, I was going to charge the person that was responsible for Now I was on a show called On the Case with Paula's on about this case in the all Breck murder, and she asked me, Larry, why do you think no other

prosecutor was willing to file this case, either the prosecutor in Newton County in northern Indiana where the body was found, or the prosecutor in Marion County in Innnapolis, Indiana, where the crime actually started. So why wouldn't they file his case? I said. Clint Eastwood once said in one of his Dirty Hairy movies that the man's got to know his limitations, and I guess they knew theirs. I know that sounds pretty cocky, but you got to have that attitude in

this business. I'm normally not that type of person, but when I get involved in a criminal case and I'm pretty focused and I feel confident once I've made a decision that I'm convinced that a person's guilt, that I'm going to do everything I can to make sure they're brought to trial and convince a jury that they did it. And that piece by piece I went through here. You know, I talked to you about the fact that divorce was to be final, that he laughed. While everybody went to Florida,

everybody else was looking for a life insurance policy. I mean that jumped out at me. The fact that just a few days after she went missing, Michael Albreck's boss, a guy by name of Antonio Ferrari, had just come back from Italy and he was the owner of the euro Motorsports team that Michael was working part time for him. He liked Michael, Michael did a great job for him, but he couldn't afford to pay him the full salary of a full time racing cancer hired him on a

part time basis. Well, Michael all right. When Ferrari got back into into the States, he read about Sindy's disappearance, and it brought up all those conversations, and he remembered all those conversations. Who did what Michael about about Michael's feelings. Michael so distraught, and it came toward the end of September early October, about the time the Pennsylvania Pennsylvania Race was to take place. Michael asked him if he could find somebody in the mafia that could do something permanent,

in other words, kill Cindy. He said he had a fifty thousand dollars life insurance policy that he could pay that person that did it, and and Antonio put him off. He didn't know anybody in the mafia, but because of his name and I guess his connections to people in

New York, Michael thought he did. But when he read about Cindy's disappearance, even though at the time when Michael was talking to him, he didn't, you know, he just he wrote it off as a rantings of the distraught to be ex husband, And we read that he went to the police and told him that that was really a significant piece of evidence. We also found out that Michael had secreted five thousand dollars in his father's bank account in Milwaukee that he kept there during the time

the divorce was pending. Well, what do you think he did? Monday morning, October twenty sixth He and his father go to the bank and he withdraws that five thousand dollars. Oh yeah, yeah, And they don't have to worry about sharing that with Cynthy anymore. But these that's the type of information that we were collecting. Now, all the phone calls between him and Felder. He hadn't really seen Jill Fielder for a long time. They knew each other when

they were younger. Then they had reconnected in the spring of nineteen ninety two and Mike, well, I guess when it became a strange from sending started developing these plans to do something to it because he was so enraged over the fact that he had lost his position with Dick Simon racing in a top job, and she was doing so well with Marlboro Penske and the fact that you know, he just blamed her for the destruction of relationship, that she was finding love somewhere else, I mean, just

consumed him. And he decided, you know, during that summerfall that he was gonna he was going to do something to her. He's gonna kill her, have her killed.

right in front of him. Michael just going berserk, and he was so enraged, upset, crying one moment, threatening Sindy at other moments, and he tried to get his brother to find a Cuban, somebody in that area, Miami area that could do something to Sindy when she came to Florida to visit her mother in the summer. Of course, his brother said, now, listen, you're upset because the fact that you and Cindia are breaking up. I just give it some time. Uh. And he just tried to talk

Michael down. That Michael couldn't be talked down. Uh, you know, and his brother, just like Antonio Ferrari later on, his brother just kept putting him off and putting him off, and that Michael was determined. Uh. And you know what happened at the end.

plan in action. I filed charges against William Fielder for assisting a criminal, because if Michael had committed the murder, that meant William Fielder was lying about the alibi. So I charged him with assisting a criminal. The lesser crime was a Class C felony carrying anywhere from two to eight years in prison. I got the judge that put one hundred thousand dollars bond on him, and we went to arrest Bill Fielder. We got a lawyer, and the lawyer called me and said, Larry, is there anything we

can do with this case? And I said, well, it depends on what Bill Filler is going to do. He said, I think you don't like what he's going to do. So the lawyer and he came to Innapolis and I sat down with Bill Filder gave him a grant of immunity, meaning that anything he told us as long as he wasn't involved in the murder would not be used against

him so long as he told the truth. And he agreed to do that, and he told us some things that were things we didn't know, and Ashley helped the case considerably.

In early October, Mike Albrich asked well William Fielder to come to Annapolis what she did, and Albrick took him to the wooded area behind Send the Albruck's apartment from which you could actually see Send these balcony and you could actually see into the apartment through the sliding glass doors. And he showed field this and he said, Bill, I want you to help me. Actually, I want you to do it. I want you to kill her. She's ruining

my life and I want you to kill her. He says, Now we're going to have to cut her head off because all of this extensive work she's had done on her jaw. He told Filder about, you know, the titanium that was in her jaw. And you know, if Fielder had to have been there to be able to describe himself what he saw from that wooded area when he looked up to Cindy's balcony, and he had to have been told by Michael Albrecht about that titanium in her jaw to know those things, and that added to his

credibility as witness. And so why he waited so long before he ever said anything, or why he waited until the threat of prosecution and have him make one hundred thousand dollars bond or sitting in jail awaiting disposition. In his case, I can't tell you why he waited that long. He said that he didn't think that Michael is actually going to do it. Although when you're drug out to an area like that, you're told this is what's going to happen. I want you to help me do it.

Philder said that he told him, he says, you're crazy. Just let this woman go, and he said had later on then he said although he wouldn't help him do it, that he would agree to alibi for him because Olbrick did the requested that he do that. You know, I don't know what's going on in his brain. Then all he's got to do is call law enforcement and let him know about it. And Cyndy Aubrucks still lie today.

Let's fast forward to October the twenty fifth, and they're still having both personal contact and telephone communications between them, and they're talking about this stuff well in October the twenty fifth. Let's go one day before that, October twenty fourth, he goes out drinking a filler and again still tries to get him to help him do this, until this says no, hollibi for you. I'm not going to help you do it. On October the twenty fifth, they don't

see you talk to one another. The next time Bill Fielder sees him is the morning of October twenty six, is after Olibert had spent the night with his ex wife there in Milwaukee. He drives out to Bill Filter's work site that Monday morning. Philler sees him, walks out to him. Albert's out of his car and he says. Philler says, did you do it? Albret says, yeah, she's in the trunk. You want to see her. And Philder took a step toward the car and I said, stopped.

He said, I don't think so well. Philler telling us about that incident. I mean, that seems so real, so convincing that that actually happened. That the two things that I thought really establishes credit ability, even though you know you loathe him and what he did, in fact he didn't take action. It convinced that he's telling the truth.

And he fills in other details as well. But those were two very significant parts because it let us know we wondered how he could get the Indianapolis Kill Cindy get back to Milwaukee and the body end up in that wooded area about halfway in between. And how did that happen in an eight or nine hour period because it's over four hours from Indianapolis or from Wukee to Indianapolis and SAME's going back. Those are under normal conditions

with normal traffic. Of course, these were normal conditions. He was in a hurry, but he it told us what happened. Has he probably strangled her in the apartment because they didn't leave any there's no blood evidence or any evidence of that. He in his struggle there, and he was a really strong guy. Strangler killed her, took her, carried her through that wooded area to the back of a supermarket that's right off Interstate for sixty five that led

up to sixty five and then to Milwaukee. Threw in a truck of a car and drove back to Milwaukee. Spent the night with his ex wife with his with Cindy still in the truck of that car dead, and uh, he even had sex with his ex wife if you can believe that. Next morning he goes out to see Fielder and then he goes with his dad to the bank and gets the five thousand dollars. He drives back to the wooded area just off sixty five and uh,

that's see Roselawn DeMott exit. And there's a nudist college just a couple of miles down the road from the wooded area where he dumped the body, cut off her head, probably wrapped it in that comforter he'd taken off the bed and threw in the tront of the car with and you know, he also took that Garth brook and

Brooks T shirt and the head with him. And we believe that he may have He came back to Innanapolis and he left in his little BMW to drive to Florida a couple of days later, and we think he may have taken the head with him to Florida and disposed of it there. But we don't know. We just know it was never recovered. Right. The filler help fill in those holes, helped tell holes, help tell the story of what happened.

I've come across. Knew the law very well and with the help of our UH legal intern who's now a prominent attorney in the Hamilton County areage is North Indianapolis as an extremely brilliant and gifted legal mind, helped us with illegal research and responding to a lot of issues that came up, including extradition issues and UH Kevin regarding light detector tests that somebody else had taken and not done so well on a potential suspect before I addressed

all difficult, complicated traps legal traps that were set up by the defense throughout these proceedings. So he helped us enormously. Allowed the other attorney, John Commons, other deputy prosecut and I had to focus on the witnesses and the evidence, and that was a that was quite a lot as well. We had two weeks of trial in this case as well as unbelievable hearings that lasted from the date of his arrests in June of ninety seven until the trial in June of ninety eight, So it was an ordeal

all the way through. But I wouldn't have had it any other way. I mean I wanted to do it, and he had top flight lawyers, well paid. Who've you know? I have received acclaim elsewhere in other cases. And they did a terrific job. That did such a great job that after the trial and the verdict, there wasn't much left for them to appeal. Yeah, certainly they couldn't retail a case based upon the un effective assistance Council.

impression of these people and their efforts. So tell us about that meeting with these people, their efforts what you thought about them, and then talk about the death penalty versus what actually the sentence was handed down.

Not that he required much nudging, because he was quite willing to do the work, but I think it gave him the motivation to go even beyond what he felt like perhaps needed to be done, to do everything possible to see that charges would be brought. And the person tried. He couldn't get any prosecutor listen to him, but that didn't stop him. He just kept after it and back and Sandy kept after him, kept bugging him Bill when

something going to happen here, get those charges filed. They even went to the governor and the state of Indiana trying to get something done, but he just gave him the cold shoulder too. But Bill didn't at their encouraging encouragement and Pete was after him as well. He just worked and worked and worked, and he finally came and

talked to me and John Commons about this case. You'd seen that we had won a murder case just a year or so before against a lawyer, criminal lawyer that had murdered his wife, and the evidence in that case was entirely circumstantial. He felt like he had a better case than the one we had won, so he talked to the new elected prosecutor, Scott Newman, and Scott said, yeah, you can talk to these two guys. He came in

to see us, and he convinced me right away. But I still had to convince Scott Newman that there was enough evidence there to let me file it. And I told you about all the cases I was handling at the same time. I was going through all these materials. But finally Scott agreed to allow us to file the charges. But uh, the throughout this whole ordeal, Sandy and Becca never lost their drive or will to uh see that that their that their dear friend was avenged, and they

just pushed and pushed and pushed. Now, I never met either one of them or Peach Twitty until after I filed these charges right, and then I couldn't stay away from them. I mean, they kept calling me to know what was going on at different stages. Pete Twitty invited me to Cleveland, Ohio to a big Championship Auto racing team event there in Cleveland and wanted me to attend, and he just wanted me to keep him apprize of everything that was going on to and throughout the period

from the time of arrest until the trial. They were involved themselves and having give depositions or sworn testimony about what they knew. The defense had a right in state of Indiana, they're allowed to take depositions of state's witnesses, and also Pete Twitty had to as well, and they voluntarily applied with all that they wanted to do everything they could from the time she went missing and they knew in her own minds who was responsible for it

until we went to trial. For six long years, they worked so hard that it was hard for either Bill Jones or myself or John Thomas to not work hard as well, regardless of other investigations or other cases we were working on. And they motivated me. I'll say that, I mean the case itself, and the sweetheart that Cyndy Aubreck was, and what had happened to her, you know, the barbaric nature she was treated. All those motivated me

as well. But those girls and Pete kept me alma toes too, And to this day I thanked them for their help in pushing this case as hard as they did, because that assured that everybody involved, at least from the prostitution standpoint, was going to do everything they could to assure to get justice for the for the family, friends, and for Cindy.

the best case. Uh, as far as you know, I walked into the courtroom tried a lot stronger cases than this one. Uh. But this case, I thought we had enough evidence that at least a jury ought to make a decision on guilt or innocence. They ought to be presented to a jury, let them hear the evidence and make a decision. But you know, the elected prosecutor makes a decision constant consulting with the deputy prosecutors that are handling the case whether or not a death the death

meiner should be should be filed. And because it adds so much extra uh impact in more evidence even that needs to be presented for that type of case to convince a jury who's aware of the time they're trying it, that's the deathIn the case, they require even more evidence they might in another murder case. And we didn't want to run the risk, and certainly Scott Newman didn't. They thought he was running and some risk allowed me to

try the case in the first place. But he didn't want to run the risk of losing a case because the jury got hung up on the death in the aspect. So we went with murder. And at that time in the state of Indiana, a murder carried a maximum of sixty years in prison, and a sixty years sentence in Indiana back then didn't mean sixty years in prison. An individual only had as only as he belonged behaving himself in prison, only had to serve half that time or less. Yeah,

the walls changed in twenty fourteen. They changed so that they had to serve seventy five percent of the sentence. But even a sixty year maximum sentence wasn't enough in that case. But that's what we were left with, and that's what he got.

a viciously murderer's wife and then the headitor. That's not right, but that was the law, and that was the most justice we were able to get for the family. Absolutely, I tell you I did even in the court I did get even in the courtroom with him a little bit. He didn't testify in the trial. Of course, probably it wouldn't have helped him if he had. But he was

allowed to what's called allocute. I mean, you're not defenders, not under oath, but he can ask the judge for leniency and he can express his feelings about the case. Well he did that. First. He told the family, Uh, you know, I'm sorry for your loss. He said, I've shed my share tears too. No, I'm not guilted, but a huge miscarriage of justice here. He says, the prosecutor bought and paid for witnesses in this case, and I'm going to fight this forever to get this this conviction overturned.

And he looked at me when he said that about buying and paying for witnesses and using perjure testimony. I wasn't allowed under the law to ask him any questions, but when he finished, I just raised my hand and the judge said, yes, mister Salis, I said, I want to ask him one question. And even though she looked at me skeptically. She said, okay, one. Well, I stood up, I pounded on the table, looking straight in the eyes,

and I said, where's Cindy's head? Man? I talk about a pin drop moment that that courtroom was silent for a couple of minutes except for his two screechy little lawyers say, how we object? We obviously object, and judge sustained their objection, which means, you know, I was out of luck getting an answer. But I stood there and waited and it took a while, but the eventually said,

you're asking the wrong man, sir. And by that time I don't think that anybody in the court room had any question about it Guild at that point, but I just I had to do that. I had to ask him that question. Yeah.