BLAME

A DNA hit led quickly to formal charges against Alex Christopher Ewing in two notorious Colorado murder cases. But with crimes dating back to the 1980s, in the midst of a pandemic, getting him in front of a jury would be a slow process that would grate on those left behind. Learn more at 9news.com/blame This is a 9NEWS (KUSA) production 9NEWS Website Facebook Twitter Instagram Google+

Alex Christopher Ewing finally faces a jury – and leaves an indelible memory on the woman beaten with a weathered ax handle and the prosecutor who tried him for escape, burglary and attempted murder. This is a 9NEWS (KUSA) production9NEWS WebsiteFacebookTwitterInstagramGoogle+

Park Ranger Mike Meyer patrolled the not-so-tranquil waters of Lake Mead during the go-go ‘80s, a time of cocaine, powerboats and mob hits. But his biggest bust came the day he crossed paths with Alex Christopher Ewing – and had to decide whether to open fire.Learn more at 9news.com/blameThis is a 9NEWS (KUSA) production9NEWS WebsiteFacebookTwitterInstagramGoogle+ 

Nancy Barry heard her baby cry, jumped up to fix a bottle, and walked into her kitchen to find a shirtless man carrying a club. The man savagely beat her and her husband – then vanished into the desert, leaving behind only footprints. Even so, police knew pretty quickly who they were afterLearn more at 9news.com/blameThis is a 9NEWS (KUSA) production9NEWS WebsiteFacebookTwitterInstagramGoogle+.

In 1984, Henderson was a sleepy bedroom community of fewer than 30,000 people 15 miles from the Las Vegas strip. It was seldom in the news. That changed the night a suspect in a middle-of-the-night rock attack fled from sheriff’s deputies during a bathroom break at a Henderson filling station.Learn more at 9news.com/blameThis is a 9NEWS (KUSA) production9NEWS WebsiteFacebookTwitterInstagramGoogle+

It was the early morning of Jan. 27, 1984. A 25-pound rock slammed into Roy Williams, jolting him awake, cracking a rib and tearing open a gash in his head that would require 85 stitches. Just as fast, the shadowy figure that attacked him bolted, disappearing into the desert outside Kingman, Arizona. Only decades later would he learn that the man accused of attacking him had allegedly killed four people earlier that month in Colorado.Learn more at 9news.com/blameThis is a 9NEWS (KUSA) production9NEWS WebsiteFacebookTwitterInstagramGoogle+

A legal opinion from Nevada’s attorney general finally caught up with a man who’d been behind bars there for decades. Suddenly, there was a flurry of activity in Colorado – all of it kept under wraps by police until the day a tip to a reporter led to a stunning scoop. Would it be the answer?Learn more at 9news.com/blameThis is a 9NEWS (KUSA) production9NEWS WebsiteFacebookTwitterInstagramGoogle+

The murders of three members of the Bennett family — and, to a lesser degree, the killing of Patricia Smith — got lots of attention. But they weren’t the first hammer attacks in the area. Before those slayings, there was an attack on a young couple and an assault on a woman who was left for dead.Learn more at 9news.com/blameThis is a 9NEWS (KUSA) production9NEWS WebsiteFacebookTwitterInstagramGoogle+

She knew something was wrong when she arrived at the bus stop after work and her mother wasn’t there waiting for her. After catching a ride home with a cousin, she crept to the front door of her darkened condominium, opened the door, flicked on the lights and walked into a scene of absolute horror.Learn more at 9news.com/blameThis is a 9NEWS (KUSA) production9NEWS WebsiteFacebookTwitterInstagramGoogle+

After a middle-of-the-night hammer attack left three members of one family dead, anxiety spread through the Denver area — homeowners questioned utility workers in their yards, teachers answered difficult questions from children, and neighborhoods hired private security. But most shocking was the news there’d been other, similar assaults that hadn’t gotten any attention when they happened.Learn more at 9news.com/blameThis is a 9NEWS (KUSA) production9NEWS WebsiteFacebookTwitterInstagramGoogle+

Two women are bound together by family ties –- and by an attack that made no sense when it happened. It still makes no sense, and yet they’re similarly pulled apart by the fallout they’ve lived with over all these years. For them, that snowy night 35 years ago might as well have been yesterday.Learn more at 9news.com/blameThis is a 9NEWS (KUSA) production9NEWS WebsiteFacebookTwitterInstagramGoogle+

In this final episode, Jeremy returns to where this series began – Chuck’s home. There, he learns what’s next for the property as a man in an excavator begins to tear down the last remaining piece of Chuck’s life in the physical world. And what about Mystery Mike? A handwritten letter from jail shows up on Jeremy’s desk. And for the first time, Denver’s Chief of Police speaks about Chuck’s case. While Chuck was lost at home, can something be found in his story as the final chapter concludes?

Who was that stranger who came to Chuck’s family with a warning about their father? “Mystery Mike,” as Jeremy Jojola calls him, prompted Chuck’s sons to start searching for their father a year before he was finally found dead in his living room. In this episode, Jeremy takes you along on his journey to find Mystery Mike. What does Mike know?

Compulsive hoarding affects a surprisingly large number of people in the United States. To better understand this disorder, Jeremy sits down with Cory Chalmers, an expert who appears on the A&E show Hoarders. Turns out that Chuck was just one of millions who suffer from this “Hidden Epidemic.”

Jeremy uncovers the original 911 call made by a neighbor 383 days before Chuck was found in his living room. Prophetic words as she warns the city Chuck may dead in his home. However, it took police 9 months to contact Denver's Department of Public Health and Environment, the agency responsible for finally recovering Chuck’s remains. Jeremy questions how this agency took another 4 months to find Chuck Lost at Home.

Finally, police are going on the record to talk about Chuck Frary. Chuck’s remains sat in his home for more than a year even though police visited his house six times during that period. For weeks Denver police denied releasing information in this case, citing a pending investigation. Finally, police agreed to reveal what they did to try and find Chuck. Jeremy sits down with Denver Police Commander Barb Archer to hear how detectives handled the case.

Chuck’s children were a bit reluctant to talk about their father, but after some convincing, Jeremy was able to get all four of them together. They reveal what they did when they first realized Chuck was missing. Who was the stranger that knocked on their door announcing Chuck may be missing or dead? They describe what they saw in his home and also reveal Chuck’s backstory. Did they know he was hoarding? Why didn’t they have a good relationship with their father? Chuck’s kids answer a lot of questions about what they tried to do while questioning how the city handled their father’s case.

So much about life can be revealed by examining death. As macabre and disturbing as autopsy reports can be, they are often loaded with crucial details about a person’s life. After waiting for weeks, Jeremy finally obtains Chuck’s autopsy report. It reveals much about Chuck’s life inside his home. Jeremy also shows the autopsy report to a retired medical examiner who gives interesting insight into what the report really reveals.

Jeremy tracks down one of Chuck’s sons and learns a little about Chuck’s life and what the family experienced when they first realized their father was missing. Many initial questions are answered by talking with Jeff Frary, but more questions arise. Jeff reveals the confusion they experienced when a mysterious visitor came knocking, claiming Chuck was missing or dead.

Every neighborhood has that one homeowner who knows what’s happening on the street. Jeremy sits down with Kristi Petersen who lives two doors down from Chuck. She describes what she witnessed through her living room window and talks about her sole encounter with Chuck in her 15 years living next to him.

Follow Jeremy Jojola along as he first learns about Chuck Frary’s story with a visit to a house in a trendy Denver neighborhood. Jeremy takes us to the corner of W 50th Ave and Tennyson where he finds a home surrounded by overgrown trees and much debris. Inside is where this story begins with a big question: How does a man vanish for a whole year and then end up dead in his own living room?

Kevin Vaughan, the reporter behind the original BLAME series and Jeremy Jojola sit down and talk about what we can expect to hear in BLAME: Lost at Home

It's been three months since we wrapped up an in-depth look at the 2001 shooting death of Jill Wells, a killing her husband blamed on the couple's six-year-old son. Now, there's an update -- one public official saw our reports and took action and another is back at work, trying to answer the lingering question: Was a boy really to blame for his mother's death?

Nearly a year after 9NEWS began investigating the shooting death of Jill Wells, the potential for new developments is real. Various public officials are discussing what steps they ought to take – if any – to try to answer the most important question in the case: Was a 6-year-old really to blame?

At the center of the pursuit of the truth about the death of Jill Wells stands her son, Tanner. He is the only one who knows what he thinks about this pursuit, who knows what he has thought about all these years. Listen as he shares his thoughts on the effort to answer questions about his mother’s death. And as Dr. Max Wachtel, a forensic psychologist, discusses the fallibility of human memory. Is it possible that what Tanner remembers isn’t exactly what happened?

Everyone who has looked into Jill’s death has a theory on the case – and on the role her husband, Mike Wells, may have played in an incident that remains shrouded in mystery. For some, the suspicions took hold almost immediately. For others, the initial seeds of doubt were tremors that grew over time.

In Colorado, anyone can hold the job of county coroner – you don’t need a medical degree or any special work experience. Just as the family of Jill Wells found out how crucial the coroner can be in a death investigation, so have others in cases around the state – cases initially thought to be accidents or suicides that turned out to be something else.

In every report, every interview about Jill Wells death, her husband said she was prone on the ground, target shooting with her left index finger on the trigger. First responders to the scene say they were shocked to learn that. They’re now talking about what one described as the “Aha” moment. It’s why some of them are now talking about the case at all. Find out why on this episode of BLAME. Join the discussion https://www.facebook.com/groups/590724054462662/

Eight Episodes into BLAME and we a hearing a lot of feedback from people connected to the case. We want to hear from you too. Who should we be interviewing? Where should we look next? Have we missed something? Share your thoughts on our Facebook page 9Wants to Know or use #BLAMEpodcast.

If Tanner Wells is to believe he didn’t shoot and kill his mother, he needs to wrap his brain around the fact his own father may be to BLAME. We needed to know if what we were uncovering would be damaging to a young man who had already been through so much. We shared everything we’ve learned about the death of Jill Wells with a forensic psychologist. Should Tanner know about a system that failed his mother? Something we try to answer on this episode of BLAME.

“She was so positive, and that’s why we never knew anything was going wrong”To understand everything that was going on prior to Jill Well’s death her friends say you need to know about who she was and what she talked about in her most intimate moments with friends and family. With her faith playing a more and more important role in her life, those closest to her talk about the chasm forming in a marriage that ended with a gunshot her husband said was fired by the couple’s 6-year-old son.

They say hindsight is always 20/20. But in this case hindsight could mean the difference between an accident and murder. Years after her death, Jill Well’s sister convinced a new investigator to look into the case. He did all the work investigators didn’t do in 2001. Ballistics. Interviews. And, an autopsy. He was ready to ask his prime suspect “the ultimate question” when the investigation changed forever. What that new investigation uncovered, and what those involved think could still happen to change, who’s to BLAME.

The three people who accepted Mike Wells account of how his wife Jill died, reflect on the investigation that they left behind 15 years ago. What do they remember about that day? Did they question the story that her son pulled the trigger? Why didn’t they ask more questions? Whose ultimate decision was it to accept that 6-year-old Tanner Wells was to blame?

What did investigators really know the day Jill Wells died? Did they know enough to definitively put the blame on a 6-year-old boy? We pull the one box of evidence off the shelf of the Lincoln County Sheriff’s department to see what investigators knew and didn’t know. Then, we put a veteran law enforcement officer on the spot, does he think enough was done to investigate the death of Jill Wells?

No fingerprints, no ballistics, no autopsy. And now, 9Wants to Know uncovers several life insurance policies, one taken out just before the shooting. Jill Wells sisters have been asking questions about how their sister died for years but they’ve never heard what we are about to tell them. Investigative reporter Kevin Vaughan walks them through the evidence and the back story he’s uncovered that brings into question Mile Well’s theory that 6-year-old Tanner Wells is the one to blame.

An unintelligible start to a 911 call begins the short and incomplete investigation of the death of Jill Wells. There are very few official records created in the case. A two-page police report. Crime scene photographs. Several recordings, including the only two interviews with the only witnesses to the crime, Mike Wells and his son Tanner, the 6-year-old boy blamed for shooting his own mother. Mike Well’s interview lasted less than a minute. The interview with Tanner took place with the boy on his father’s lap and lasted 1 minute and 31 seconds. But those who responded to the scene say something that wasn’t recorded that day has lingered with them all of these years. Doubt.

Less than 24-hours after Jill Well’s death, the case into her shooting was closed. No one performed an autopsy, no ballistics testing was done and no one conducted formal interviews of the last three people to see her alive, her husband Mike and their 2 young sons. Investigators seemed to accept without question Mike Wells account of the story, that his 6-year-old son Tanner pulled the trigger. For years, dozens of people have carried a nagging doubt about that story, including 9Wants to Know investigative reporter Kevin Vaughan.