What Happened in Apartment 23? Rebecca Payne’s Mysterious Final Hours

Imagine you're in your senior year of college in love for the very first time, about to graduate and begin the life you've always dreamed of, but just before all of that can play out, your worst nightmare comes true. This is exactly what happened to Rebecca Payne. Hi everyone, welcome back to my channel. My name is Kimberlya. If you've never been here before, nice to finally meet you. First, I want to introduce you to Rebecca Payne. If you're regular to my channel, you know how important it is for me to paint the most thorough picture of these people involved in these heartbreaking cases, and I don't want to glaze over the details, then made these people who they were. Rebecca Payne was born in New Milford, Connecticut to Nicholas and Virginia Payne, who had relocated to the United States from Seychelles. Nicholas was originally from England, and he worked as an electrical engineer. Rebecca's mom had a very heavy French accent, and she taught tennis lessons to children. When I was researching this case and looking through the photos, I couldn't help but think about how beautiful this family really is. It makes this case so much harder when we talk about people who truly brighten this world with their smiles, as well as their love and their kindness, and the pain family embodied all of that. Faith was important to the Payne family, and as Rebecca grew up, she was active in her youth group at St. John's Episcopal Church. She would help raise funds for the disabled. She would also weight tables and an event called the Pancake Breakfast, where they had a charity for underprivileged families. She really had a helping heart. She even sang Christmas carols to the elderly during the holidays, so that she would brighten their season and bring joy to their lives since many of them had lost their loved ones. In high school, she participated in many extracurricular activities. She sang in the school musicals. She was on the editing team for the school yearbook. She ran track. She played tennis and field hockey. She was a very dedicated student. She would even stay after school five days a week. Rebecca graduated from high school in 2004, and she had been living in a two bedroom apartment off campus with a female roommate since the summer before. The apartment complex that she lived in was called the Parker Hill Apartments, and it's in a town called Mission Hill. It's down this winding, hilly road. It's lined with all these three story buildings, and it has a view of the skyscrapers in downtown Boston, so it's a very pretty and popular area, especially for college students. Rebecca was dating a guy named Shane. They met during her freshman year while watching a Yankees Red Sox game, and they were in love. And as a matter of fact, this was the very first time Rebecca had ever fallen in love, and she definitely wasn't shy about letting the world know. According to everyone that knew and loved Rebecca, no one could light up a room like she could. She loved to make people laugh. Rebecca had about a half dozen really close friends who said that she just had a way of bringing people together. She would never worry about anything, and she would say worrying wasn't worth it. Friends could count on her to arrange a get together. She'd invite anyone who could join in, and everyone felt included. It was just the way that Rebecca was, caring and genuinely interested in others. Tara Turner, who grew up with Rebecca, was part of the same church youth group. She said that Rebecca worked really hard to make her feel at home when she first got to Boston. Rebecca invited her into her group of friends and introduced all of her friends to Tara. Let's jump back to 2008. Between studying, hanging out with friends, playing sports, and being in love, she was a very busy college student totally driven in what she hoped to accomplish as she finished up her coursework to graduate and step into her dreams. But in May of 2008, just before she was finally set to graduate with her Bachelor of Science degree, everyone would be left wondering if Rebecca's welcoming personality had invited an unwelcome and irretrievable darkness into her life. How could you not wonder that very thing with as many bizarre and unpredictable twists and turns that the story has? So let's start at the very beginning. On the night of May 19th, 2008, Rebecca came home from work to her apartment and fell asleep on her living room couch. Exhausted, Rebecca probably fell asleep as soon as her head hit that couch cushion. The next morning on May 20th, 2008, a 911 call was placed at 6.30 a.m., and this was from a building maintenance employee in Rebecca's apartment complex. I do have that call for you, so I will play it now. The caller reported that the door to apartment 23 was a jar. He could see enough of the interior of the entryway to be able to observe a red substance that appeared to be blood on the carpet. Boston Police Department arrived on the scene and they met with the building maintenance employee. He directed the responding officers to apartment 23 and they too found the front door a jar. The exterior of the door appeared to have no visible damage. They slowly opened the door and stepped into her apartment. On the floor in the living room in front of the TV, officers saw several pairs of shoes. There were flip flops and sneakers and as they looked past that, that's when they saw the blood. When the officers walked in, there was a significant amount of blood on the carpet and it was shocking even for the most experienced officers to see that much blood that had totally saturated the floor. The trail appeared to lead from the area where the couch was towards the back of the apartment which had a bathroom and then two bedrooms, one to the right and one to the left. Those who saw the crime scene, you know just how bad this really was. As officers went to the back of the apartment continuing to follow the trail, there were almost these track marks on the floor moving toward the back and into one of the bedrooms on the left. This was Rebecca's bedroom. Once first responders entered that bedroom, they immediately saw that there was a woman lying face down on the floor and it was apparent to them that she had been shot multiple times in the head, in the torso, in the arms and in the legs and this was a very brutal crime. Upon closer inspection, the officers could say that they definitely knew there was no other physical contact with her and I think you can understand what this translates to. There was just an obscene amount of wounds all over her. In an effort to begin to piece together the events that resulted in this unbelievable crime, the investigators continued their search for clues throughout the entire apartment, starting in the kitchen and this is where they found one clue that helped them to identify who the victim actually was. Investigators found pieces of mail, all of which were addressed to Rebecca pain. Instead of following that lead that the mail provided, they decided that the best kind of identification that they had available to them was her body. Poor Rebecca was finally able to be removed from her apartment and transported to a Boston city morgue where forensic autopsy took place in order to positively confirm her identity and collect any evidence left on her. Once a positive identification was made, police had the task of tracking down the next of kin and letting them know what happened to their loved one and Rebecca's mom received the call first and then it was left to her to then give this heartbreaking news to Rebecca's father. Rebecca's father Nicholas was at work and he got that call from his wife who was completely unable to explain anything on the phone. But from her tone, he realized that something terrible had happened. Rebecca's father rushed home and that's when Virginia explained that she had gotten a call from Boston police and they said that their daughter had been involved in a crime. That's when she asked them well where is she and they said she's in the apartment and that is when they realized that they had lost Rebecca and that she was dead because in their minds had she been in the hospital there would have been hope. How heartbreaking to know if you would have gotten a call that she was injured and there was hope but knowing that she was still in the apartment and this case really got to me and it's what prompted me to share this story. I felt close to Rebecca and her family and my heart ached for them because I have my own daughter. Rebecca's parents lived three and a half hours away from her apartment which was now a crime scene and they began that journey toward Boston with dread in their hearts. During that time, investigators continued to look through everything in Rebecca's apartment for clues. As they inspected the crime scene as a whole, the story began to reveal itself. It looked as though the killer initially shot Rebecca in the living room. There were four shell casings found in that living room and they were determined to be nine millimeter in caliber and they were located at various places all over the living room with the shell casings left behind. Additional leads were revealed. Could the casings have fingerprints on them or sources of DNA? Could the nine millimeter hang gun be connected to another case? These are the questions that investigators have to answer. What the shell casings couldn't tell investigators was why someone would want Rebecca paying dead. And other questions began to emerge from investigators in this case that were an absolute mystery to everyone. First and foremost, who was Rebecca paying and why would somebody want to kill her? Was this a crime of opportunity or was she targeted? With those unanswered questions, investigators had to find something that would force open this woman's life to reveal the answers. Seeing the way that her apartment looks, it really does help us remember that she was a person. She's a lot like you, she's a lot like me. She has like the empty takeout bags on the counter, maybe from like the last time she had a meal. And the rice crispy is in the kitchen, as you can see here. And this kind of stuff is what pulls at my heartstrings because I sit there and realize that this is someone who expected to wake up the next day and go on with her life. As they continued to search through Rebecca's apartment, they found an open laptop and a cell phone on the coffee table in front of the futon. Then on the floor, they spotted another potential clue. It was a blood-stained, Charlie card. And this was a card used for the local transit system. The card is then collected to be analyzed and investigators move on with their detailed search to try to discover any other clues that could help them figure out what happened and they find one. The sliding glass door, this is the third story apartment, but that sliding glass door was open and it let out to a balcony. I'm gonna show you right here what her apartment building looked like and this right here was the exact balcony. Investigators figure out after seeing the sliding glass door open that this was probably how the person entered the apartment. But they did not find any four-century on the sliding glass door either. So with a lack of damage to both doors, the front and the sliding glass doors. Investigators start to think that maybe Rebecca knew her attacker. The crime scene also suggested something else. Rebecca didn't live alone. With his knowledge and hand, they have to find out who her roommate was and exactly where they were on the night that this occurred. They did notice that the other bedroom was very empty. It looked like the roommate wasn't even living there, so they also wanted to find out where is this roommate. Why is there only a mattress and a bicycle and like a belt and shorts that looked like they stepped out of them and up two pairs of shoes on the floor? This could also help to eliminate somebody from the case. They also could possibly have information about how somebody could access the apartment and they knew that the roommate could. So of course, they want to speak to the roommate. Meanwhile though, investigators decide to speak to the apartment building supervisor and confirm that Rebecca did in fact have a roommate. But through speaking to Rebecca's friends, they actually were the first to confirm they yes. Rebecca lived with a classmate and that classmate was in the same athletic training program. When investigators tracked down the roommate, they were able to confirm that she was in the process of moving out, explains why there was nothing in her room. So essentially, Rebecca was living in that apartment alone. So the investigators were confused, they were stumped. The police figured someone would have had to hear or seen something in regard to this violent crime. It occurred in a densely populated apartment complex. So the investigators decided to canvas the apartment area. The officers brought out dogs and they were trained to sniff for ballistic evidence and they were racing through the entire parking lot. They were looking under cars in front of the building, all through that parking lot, searching in trees and surrounding brush. Rebecca drove a blue mini-cuber and then had been taped off with a yellow crime scene tape and then it was towed from the scene and placed in a forensic garage for testing. Police stayed late into the evening taking photos and video of the building, the lobby and interviewing residents. No one was allowed in the building without identifying themselves. They hoped to find out what the neighbors may have heard or observed during the course of that murder and what they uncovered was chilling. The canvas revealed that numerous people had heard gunshots. Numerous people had heard thuds and moaning and no one called 911. There were so many questions. How is it possible that no one thought to pick up the phone and report multiple gunshots and suspicious noises? Investigators were confused. They just felt there was a total lack of concern for Rebecca and that was sad and disturbing. You really hope that someone would care enough to pick up the phone and immediately call 911. Think about it. Then the police could have come and investigated right away and who knows? One officer said it might have been possible that she could have survived with the right amount of medical assistance it could have been possible. But we don't know that for sure. But how were finally awful to know that no one wanted to help? There was a man named Oscar. He's 21 years old. He lived in the third floor of the building. He said that he heard four or five gunshots at around three a.m. When the police asked him why he didn't call. He said if I called the police every time I heard gunshots, they would be here every night. But he did say I should have called, but that would have been useless because the police would have probably passed by, looked around and drove away. Another neighbor said they would have taken action if they actually heard the shots. This neighbor was 28 years old and they also lived on the third floor. She said that sometimes you just don't know. You think you might be hallucinating and you don't think that anything like that's gonna happen. Rebecca's friend said that she would have done something. She would not have turned her back if she heard something like that. She was there for people when they needed her, but when she needed help that early Tuesday morning, no one responded to the screams or the sounds of gunshots coming from her apartment. One of her friends, David Watson, who graduated with her said that it was sickening to think that someone could hear something like that and not do a thing. As much as investigators wanted to dwell in the injustice and the sheer inhumanity of Rebecca's neighbors, they had a worst task that demanded their full and immediate attention. Rebecca's parents had arrived in Boston to do the unthinkable, to identify their murdered child. And my thoughts go out to anyone who has to do this. In order to spare Rebecca's parents from seeing the horrific trauma to her body, investigators brought Rebecca's parents a photograph and they used it to confirm that the person in the picture was in fact their daughter. The news of Rebecca's murder also went out to all of her friends. And after the initial shock of losing someone like her, they too had questions. How does this happen? Why does this happen? How could it have been stopped or prevented and how could things have been different? Once investigators completed the neighborhood canvas of Rebecca's apartment complex, they turned to another potential source of where the suspect may be hiding. Rebecca's group of friends, which actually terrifies me because most of the time it is someone close to you. Rebecca's apartment was once a place where she and her friends would gather and they would laugh together and they would just have fun and bounce off the walls. It was a place overflowing with happiness. And now it was going to be remembered as the last place Rebecca was when she took her last breath and where this horrific crime was carried out. Rebecca herself would always tell people that her friends were the center of her world. Even at a young age, she bonded with kids from all walks of life and there was no one she met that she didn't want to be friends with. She was definitely very social. She was very outgoing. She was someone who was the president of the Athletic Training Club. Her personality just resonated with others. And they wanted to be around her. It was this inside look at who Rebecca was that led investigators to ask themselves if perhaps Rebecca's sense of adventure in inviting spirit led to her befriending an evil person who intended to do harm. Investigators decided to follow this lead and if nothing else, at least they would be able to rule out Rebecca's circle of friends. They figured as an attractive outgoing intelligent 22 year old college student who had a lot of friends and a boyfriend, there was a focus on making sure that they could account for who those people were, talk to all of her friends that she socialized with and all the people that were in the same program at Northeastern. Rebecca's father was also questioning if the suspect was hiding among Rebecca's group of friends. He theorized that it must have been someone she knew and investigators asked her parents to go through everyone she might have known who they thought could have done this. It was in that moment on the timeline when investigators received new clues because the autopsy results had come back. And as they expected, the manner of death was ruled to be a homicide. The cause of death was multiple gunshot wounds, specifically five, one in each leg, two in the midsection and one in the chin. The report also showed that there were no signs that Rebecca had a chance to fight back against her attacker. No DNA was found under her fingernails. And investigators were disappointed because they were at a loss of the possibility that evidence was there. And that could have helped them in identifying a possible suspect. The autopsy did, however, give them clues and one very important piece of the puzzle. They were able to conclude that she was not physically taken advantage of. Sex was ruled out as a motive for this attack. But now investigators were left with many more questions and no answers. If the killer wasn't there to force himself upon her, he didn't take anything of value, then why did this happen to her? And that's a question we're gonna keep asking ourselves. Investigators brought in the scope of their search and then the media picks up the story. Because of this, the case received a lot of public attention. And Rebecca's dad said it was because of the mysterious circumstances. A lot of people like web sleuths and people like us, We want to. to get involved because we want to figure it out. This is the type of case that does resonate. It's someone's daughter. You can imagine yourself as a college student sometimes. You can put yourself in the shoes of either the victim or the family and friends. You think to yourself, this could happen to me. It could happen to a friend. And therefore, there were a lot of people trying to put together clues. Investigators continue to dig for answers. They spoke to all of the friends they could find and each one of her neighbors. But every time they met with someone, they got the same answer that they didn't see anything. With one exception, there was a man that lived on the first floor of the building. He said that he saw what he called a black van pull around at the time of the shooting. People got in and got out of the van according to him. The witness though, he did not see who was driving the van and he couldn't get a license plate number. He didn't know anything else about this van. And that's just so not helpful but so promising. This potential witness was from Vietnam and he spoke very little English. So that presented a problem. With this language barrier, investigators said that there were some things that just got lost in translation. I'm thinking, why can't you just get someone to translate what he's saying? But anyway, at least it was an opportunity to look for something, a surveillance camera. With the description of this black van, investigators asked the building maintenance employee to get them the video from the apartment surveillance system, but there was a problem. The maintenance employee did not replace the videotape from the prior day and there was no room on the videotape. It ran out and because of this, there was no footage, especially coming from that hallway. Investigators were not able to get any video surveillance for that night. Investigators thought why hadn't the tapes been changed? And they started to look at the possibility that this employee could potentially be a viable suspect. One investigator said that this maintenance man, he ran the entire building. He had a key to get into every apartment. He's the person that found Rebecca. He was also the one I called 911, and it's not uncommon for the 911 caller who reports the crime to have committed the crime, especially with the homicide. In pursuing this lead, it was revealed that this employee also lived in the apartment building full time. Not only that, when police ran a background check, they discovered he had a criminal record. During the same time, boss and police department also received a tip about the building employee. So someone else had called in a tip about this man. In this tip, it was reported that someone noticed a reddish brown stain on his door of his personal apartment. And when investigators found the stain, they thought it looked like dried blood. Why wouldn't he clean it off his door, though? Like, if it was, if it was really him, why would he leave it there? Since this was too much of a coincidence to ignore, a police officer was posted at that door to guard what could be potential evidence. And he had to do this until they were able to find the equipment to swab this stain and then submit it as evidence. While they're waiting for these lab results, the investigators questioned the employee. They had to link the interview with him. And in this interview, he tells them the night the Rebecca was killed, he was home with his wife. And he gives the investigators his wife's phone number. But this is his alibi, his wife. So, of course, they're following up on that lead. And they're waiting to find out about the stain. As they're waiting, investigators turned back to the evidence for clues. They're now focusing on that Charlie card I told you about. This card is used on Boston's mass transit system. And you might be asking why investigators would spend time on this card at all? What was significant about it? Well, it's almost like having GPS. Every swipe of this card at a station or on a bus, it's going to leave an imprint of where that person was. And these transit cards are found and used to retrace people's steps. Investigators take the card from the crime scene and they bring it to the Boston Transit Police. They run it through the system and their thought was, if it's Rebecca's card, it will tell them where she traveled. And then they can use that to pinpoint a camera that could see where she went and if she was with anyone. The transit police did find that the card was used the night of the murder. Then they obtained video surveillance from the transit police. And of course, they queued it up to the time the card was used. What were they looking for? They wanted to find Rebecca on that footage. But even more, they wanted to see if she was with anyone. If somebody was following her, they also wanted to know what time she was doing all this. Where were her movements? Which route was she taking? Investigators found that at 10.22 pm on May 19th, 2008, Rebecca appears alive and perfectly fine in the video surveillance. I'm going to show it to you here on the screen. You can see her coming through that turn style. And she's walking away. And this is the last time that anyone saw her alive. As they were watching this video, they saw Rebecca was alone. And she was headed in the direction of her apartment by herself. It really had to be hard on everyone, especially for this investigation of such good potential. But then they just kept hitting one dead end after another. If someone would have been on that footage, that would have been a casecracker. That would have been something that just blew this case up and they could go in that direction. But since it was confirmed, then no one followed Rebecca home. Investigators once again hit that dreaded point where the trail is seeming to go cold. But then the results come in from the maintenance man's front door. And investigators hit another dead end. It was determined by the crime lab that it was not blood plus his wife did back up his alibi. But couldn't she lie? The maintenance man was not involved in Rebecca's homicide. The only thing he did was the right thing. He called 911 and he let police know what he saw. Once an investigation runs out of viable leads, investigators have no choice but to turn back to the case as a whole and look at everything carefully once again over and over again. And that's exactly what they did. But what do they have at this point? Well, they know that a witness saw a black vehicle that night. There was no available video footage from the complex that night. So they had to look elsewhere because that's the biggest lead they had, a black vehicle. Well, they find another lead at a local hospital. There was a hospital that was located on the top of Mission Hill. And the exterior cameras, they focused down near Parker Hill Avenue. And that was really important. This showed the road near the entrance of Rebecca's department complex. In the video surveillance, there was an SUV and it passed by at the exact kind of time frame. It was a black and white security video. So the quality was not good. You couldn't really tell what color things were, but they saw a black SUV. I'm going to show it on the screen. It was so pixelated. I mean, this was like a really bad quality image. You couldn't see a license play. You couldn't see who was driving. All they knew was in that time frame. A black vehicle passed by the location. They could tell it was a larger size SUV and it had roof racks. And it looked to investigators to be a Ford. At this point, investigators are also looking into Rebecca's boyfriend Shane. He was also attending Northeastern University at the time and investigators decide to question him intensely. They were hoping that maybe at the very least, if he's not a suspect, he could point them in the right direction. One investigator was asking him things like, okay, so you had a relationship with her. Was it good? Was it bad? Was it going sour? Did you have a fight? Did something get out of control? And of course, he said no. Her boyfriend was absolutely distraught. And as they dug deeper into this lead with her boyfriend, they found that he had left Boston right around the same time that Rebecca would have been attacked. This was very suspicious to them. And the way that the crime scene was and how brutal it was, it was pointing in the direction that it might have been a crime of passion. They asked some things like, where were you? Why did you leave? When was the last time you saw Rebecca? Did you have any problems with her? They talked about anything they could think of. They wanted to find anything significant that they could add to what they already knew. But from what they gathered and pieced together, Rebecca's boyfriend's movements leading up to and during and after the murder were innocent. He had gone back to upstate New York where he lives with his parents and he did not know what happened to his girlfriend. He had bus tickets that showed that he took a bus from Boston to Albany on Saturday and from Albany back to Boston on Tuesday. When investigators checked even further into his alibi by going to upstate New York, interviewing his parents and some of his neighbors, they all confirmed that he was in upstate New York the whole time. He could not have been anywhere near Rebecca's place. At this point, investigators were not taking anything at face value. They would not dismiss any lead. Even if it only had a small chance of being one that they needed to finally bring justice to this poor woman. If I were an investigator, I don't think I could ever stop until I found the truth. I wouldn't be able to eat or sleep nothing. I know how invested I get when I research these cases and tell the victim stories. I just cannot imagine how intense it would be when a family is counting on you. The investigators believed that all the facts in this case pointed to a crime of passion where there was just this anger that got out of control. But still, Rebecca's boyfriend had an alibi. He was over 150 miles away from her apartment on the night of her murder. They had to rule him out because there was no way he would be able to get back and forth from Boston to New York in that time period. But they went one step further and they confirmed his cell phone records. It showed that he actually talked to Rebecca the night around midnight before she died. This is good because now they have even more of a timeline. They now know nothing happened to her until after that phone call. And they were able to get tower records that showed that at the time of that phone call, Shane's phone was being picked up by a cell site that was very close to his parents house in upstate New York. They have to go above and beyond. They have to make sure to really rule this person out. Number one, you don't want to charge someone with a crime if they didn't do it. But you also don't want to overlook anything. But eventually they ruled him out having nothing to do with this. And it was another dead end. And so far, just to recap this mystery, investigators have ruled out an interrupted burglary. They don't think that was the crime. They didn't think it was motivated by intercourse. And they didn't think it was committed because something went wrong in romantic relationship. So what was the motive? As much as Rebecca deserved to have her case be laid to rest like she was, the case seemed to run out of leads and grow cold. Just as Rebecca was being buried. It had no DNA evidence, no witnesses, no motive, and no other clues. And it seemed as though this mystery was never going to be solved. There's so much more I need to explain. But first, let me tell you about Rebecca's memorial. 500 people gathered for Rebecca's memorial. And a new gravestone was put in in the Garden of Peace, which was donated by her boyfriend Shane. Mr. Flan again, a former teacher who had Rebecca in his history class, so that he was so touched by Rebecca's parents. Because despite their grief, they were able to share stories of their only child's life and to even comfort her boyfriend. Rebecca's boyfriend shared a memory of meeting her during the freshman year while watching the Yankees Red Sox game. She was a Yankees fan in a Red Sox land he said. He also recalled her compassion. A friend fell in the sidewalk and cut his head open and Rebecca never left his side. Shane said that she had great potential to make a difference in this world. She's a life that was lost far too soon. But he said, "Becca, you'll never walk alone." And when he was saying this, he was overcome with emotion and he just broke down. Her mother and father placed a photo of her as well as a dozen candles on her gravestone. They said even though they were very moved by her memorial, it didn't bring the many closure. He said that a loss of a child never heals. And sadly, six years go by. And at this point, a lot of hope is lost. They don't think Rebecca's case will ever be solved until a tip comes in to the Boston Police Department. In 2013, a person's claiming that they can tell them exactly what happened the night Rebecca was murdered. This tipster's identified as Anthony White. He was well-known by the Boston Police Department because he was a drug dealer and shortly after her murder, Anthony was shot. He was left blind in one eye and paralyzed. It wasn't until he was charged with multiple drug offenses that he came forward and said, "I'm prepared to speak truthfully about what I know of the homicide of Rebecca Payne." Anthony decides to strike a deal with the Boston Police Department. He said he would tell police about Rebecca's murder in exchange for a lighter sentence on his drug dealing conviction. They had no choice. They needed the information, so they made a deal. And that's when he tells them a shocking story. And had he not come forward, they might have never been able to reveal what he told them in this almost impossible lead. How many times lately in the past few cases that I've done have we seen someone coming forward from jail, a cellmate, other prisoners, one of you even mentioned in the comment section of the Michelle Herndon case. And I'll leave it down here in the cards and down in the description box if you want to watch that one. Why do inmates reveal their crimes to each other? Tell me your thoughts. Anthony begins this unimaginable story by reporting that it all started when he got a call from a man named Cornell Smith. Cornell Smith was a street-level drug dealer. And according to what Anthony knew of him, Anthony said he was picked up by another man named Michael Belba, who was a drug customer of Cornell Smith's. Michael drove Cornell and Anthony up to mission hell that night. This is so convoluted. This case is so convoluted. And how all of this plays out is truly unbelievable. Anthony goes on to tell them that Cornell and Michael drive to the parking lot behind Rebecca's apartment. Cornell gets out of the car and guess what? The car they were in happened to be a black SUV that matched the vehicle's description. Cornell told him that he planned to rob and kill one of his rivals. This woman had stabbed him a month earlier according to him and turned him into police. Anthony said the Cornell went into the parking lot where he could see a building. Cornell pointed and said she's up there. I'm waiting for her to fall asleep. Cornell then climbed onto the first floor balcony, then climbed there to the second floor, and then climbed up and entered Rebecca Payne's apartment on the third floor through her side and glass door. Then Anthony heard Rebecca scream, followed by gunshots. Investigators now had the biggest lead in this case. A solid eyewitness who was there. They were confident in filing murder charges against Cornell Smith, but they also had a lot of questions. Why would a drug dealer target Rebecca Payne? He college student who had nothing to do with any of these suspects. They began to follow this lead and they found another devastating truth. An unbelievable and just senseless reality that was hard to imagine was even true. It turned out there was a young woman who lived downstairs in the same apartment complex and she looked just like Rebecca, especially from a distance or at night in the dark. There were two sisters that lived right below Rebecca's apartment and they were involved in drug dealing. They had a history of involvement with the police and they had a history of violence and they had a history with Cornell Smith, not Rebecca. The more the investigators looked into this, the more horrified they became because they realized there was a possibility, one that they couldn't even comprehend. A possibility that Rebecca was killed for no reason. These women both had short length hair. They were similar age, similar build, similar complexion, and Cornell Smith had a grudge against one of Rebecca's local likes. He said this neighbor stabbed him. Then he was arrested for selling drugs. He was convicted because he had been busted by one of those sisters. Investigators could not believe what they were putting together. Rebecca Payne was not Cornell's target that night. Oh my god, it is unreal and it became clear that Cornell went to that apartment complex with the intention to harm the woman who lived two floors down from Rebecca and he apparently mistook Rebecca for that woman. He appeared into the window and he thought it was her based on physical appearance alone. A case of mistaken identity he was here to harm someone else and instead he selected the wrong apartment, the wrong person and in this case Rebecca paid a very very dear price for this. Cornell Smith took the innocent life of Rebecca Payne on an accident because it was a case of mistaken identity. He was there to hurt someone else and he selected the wrong apartment, the wrong person and because of this Rebecca paid the ultimate price for that mistake. Cornell was arrested and charged with Rebecca's murder. However, it still wasn't case closed and this is just unreal as well. Just when Cornell's trial was about to begin, prosecutors receive news that would devastate the case. In 2014, Anthony White, remember him the star witness, the inmate that came forward, he died. Anthony suffered complications from those injuries that he sustained. He was the only eyewitness to the murder of Rebecca Payne and with his death, the case was falling apart. There was no evidence that Cornell did this. Up to this point, there's no DNA, no video surveillance, nobody saw anything. There's no proof he was ever there. So investigators start to get scared and they think it's got to take a miracle to save this case and they receive just that. A miracle, in a sense. Anthony White had mentioned before he died that there was another man in the car. Remember that? That man was Michael Balba. Investigators track him down and they're able to make another connection. The vehicle that Michael was driving was a Ford expedition. they were finally able to confirm it was the one that was on their surveillance camera because it was unique. It had the roof racks, it was the same size, so Michael's brought in and he's questioned by investigators. But he says, "You know what? I'm going to need an attorney. I know nothing. I wasn't involved in this in any way." But the investigators weren't worried because they knew they were on to something with Cornell Smith, so they decided to continue digging deeper and deeper and more aggressively, which results in hitting a very bizarre kind of jackpot. On October 28th, the prosecutor on Smith's other case, his drug case, was trying to put together some more information to build, you know, more charges, and buried in these court records were letters that Cornell Smith sent to a judge that was presiding over his drug trial. The letters were mostly rants. He was describing himself as an activist. Some of it didn't even make sense, however peppered through these rants were statements about Rebecca Payne and he implicated himself. So as this lawyer is scrolling through these documents, one of them caught his eye. It was dated March 4th, 2014. It was six pages long and it was neatly written, and I'm going to show you just an excerpt right here. Some of the parts were incomprehensible, but he talks about being the target of enemies in these street gangs. And on page five, he identified himself as the killer of Rebecca Payne. He wrote details. These details matched Anthony White's statement, especially about how Cornell killed Rebecca, thinking that she was that rival drug dealer. In the letter that investigators read, Cornell claimed that he was set up, and in this set up, it led to the unfortunate passing of Rebecca Payne at the hands of I, Cornell, Alan Smith, senior. Wow. The unfortunate passing is that how we're explaining what happened because ruthless killing would be more fitting. This admission of guilt came while Cornell was incarcerated in 2008 for an unrelated federal drug charge in which he was sentenced to 12 to 15 years. Investigators explained that Cornell felt like he was wrongly placed in some kind of circumstance in which he killed the wrong person and was part of a set up that he had no control over. Why no control over, though? Well, I have some thoughts, but investigators at this point could not believe that this, you know, miracle, so to speak, fell into their hands with this letter that was handwritten by Cornell himself. There it was. It's a confession in his own words and his own handwriting. It's a confession that implicates him in the homicide of Rebecca Payne. Was it luck? Or was it painstaking investigative work that pulled this all together? Maybe it was both. It doesn't matter because it brought Rebecca's case to a close and it led to the trial of Cornell Smith. But here's that question I was going to ask about being out of control. He was a crack cocaine dealer. Did he do drugs or was he just a dealer? Because climbing up to the third story of a apartment complex, that doesn't seem normal. That seems like something you would do on drugs. That seems like something crazy and I'm not in any way making an excuse for Cornell Smith. No. But what I am saying is there was no information because we find this out years later that he was involved. Nobody tested him the night of the crime. We don't know. But when he said he was out of control, I'm sure he meant something else. But to me it was just the thought. How could you make that mistake if you were in your right mind? Finally in 2015, Cornell Smith was given a deal. He took the deal and pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and criminal firearm possession and he was sentenced to 18 years in prison. Rebecca's mother took the stand and she had this framed picture of Rebecca and then her husband was standing there by her side and her voice was just shaking. And she talked about the last time she hugged her daughter. It was when she cooked a mother's day lunch and Rebecca wanted to know how do you know that someone's the one? She said that everything reminds her of her daughter and every single day is a struggle. She told the court that they don't even celebrate holidays anymore. Christmas Thanksgiving, nothing because it was Rebecca who took care of everything. Even in the middle of the night, she would get up, she would get things done and Rebecca's mom still sleeps with a pair of jeans that her daughter wore. She said that Cornell Smith stripped them of everything that mattered and they called him a crusher of dreams for taking away everything that they hope for and dream for for Rebecca. I want to play a video of Nicholas and Virginia talking about what it was like to see Cornell in court. Just like straw again as if he was like he just standing in line for something, you know, he just he didn't seem to care. You know there's that nod in your stomach knowing that looking at that face without that face she would be here with us. Before the judge imposed the 18-year prison sentence, he told Cornell to look at the packed courtroom which was filled with all Rebecca's friends and family members and they were clutching on to her photograph. He said look at the people in this courtroom and Smith stood and he turned to face the nearly 40 people in that courtroom. Some of them were wiping their tears from their eyes and the judge said this is the face of Rebecca pain and Cornell's face was just blank but the judge went on and said this is the collage of the people affected and it is that the collage I hope you see each and every night for the next 18 years. Wow. I hope he never closes his eyes without seeing this girl's beautiful face. Please remember Rebecca because I know I will and she deserved so much more. Rebecca's parents moved back to say shells because they said that every time they hear a pop or a gunshot, they are triggered and everything just comes flooding back and they said that there's so much more violence in the United States. It brings back way too many memories. Five years after Rebecca's murder in 2012, when Rebecca's mom was interviewed about the last time she saw Rebecca, I mentioned it was on Mother's Day. She spent a weekend at home and early Sunday morning her mom was worried. She woke up and Rebecca's car wasn't in the driveway. There wasn't a note or anything but then she sees that blue mini-cooper it comes into the driveway and Rebecca comes out with just bags of groceries and she's there to prepare a Mother's Day breakfast for her mom. This was just a week before Rebecca was killed. In most days, her mom sits at her tombstone telling her about everything that's going on in life and she said you know it's funny I talk to her more than I did when she was in Boston. When they left for say shells, they actually brought the contents of her Becca's bedroom with them and they had maintained it since she died and they set up a new room. Sadly, they were not able to bring Rebecca or even her grave stone or the stone bench by her gravesite and she said it's almost like they had to leave her behind. I will see you next week. Bye!