The Lake Erie Murders

A small michigan town rocked by a brutal murder.

We hadn't a lot of crime in that area. Nothing like this.

A teenager disappears in a nine-minute window.

Quite a few people said, "yeah, she was in there.

She was all alone."

Police suspect a crime of passion.

He said he loved her.

If you loved somebody,

wouldn't you want to help find who killed her?

A veteran detective takes the mystery on...

I had to do it the hard way. I had to eliminate people.

...Before this small community is torn apart.

How do you protect yourself when you don't know who to fear.

...By a soulless killer.

He made his decision on the spur of the moment.

That's what haunts your nightmares.

Northwest of lake erie just past detroit

is the close-knit community of burton.

It's a quiet neighborhood, and the center of town

is not much more than a street corner.

just before dawn,

a customer stops by the local convenience store.

At that time in the morning,

the only place that was open was the gas station.

Somebody had walked in.

The doors were standing wide open.

There was no clerk there.

he called in at that point.

When the police arrive,

there's still no sign of a store clerk anywhere.

They thought maybe she was late.

Well, 20 minutes came, and 20 minutes went.

The clerk was still nowhere to be found.

Officers contact the district manager, who tells them

the employee should be there is a 19-year-old woman

who was working the third shift from 11:00 p.M. To 7:00 a.M.

We got a description of the girl that was the clerk.

We put the name out of wanda musk.

well, wanda was adopted at basically 5 days old

in korea by my brother.

This one. Yeah.

Master sergeant. Master sergeant musk.

There she was. How cute.

Ross musk was stationed in south korea

for a decade.

When he came home,

he and his wife brought an adopted daughter back with them.

Back then, with korean babies,

it was like a registry.

These babies were born,

and there was no place for them to go.

So, pretty much, they were given to couples.

After her parents' divorce in 1983,

wanda stays with her father, who is close

to his sister carol and her family of four girls.

My brother and I, we had made our agreement

that if something happened to ron and I,

he would take care of my kids,

and if something happened to him, we would take wanda.

So, when ross dies in 1989,

14-year-old wanda is formally adopted by her aunt and uncle

and comes to live with their family in burton.

Wanda was always part of us.

You know, there's four of us, and here's wanda.

So it was the five of us.

Wanda was one of those people you wanted to be around.

She lit up the room. She was very positive.

She was going to community college,

was really big into art.

That's her passion.

And she wanted to be a graphic arts designer.

That's some of her art. Some of the artwork.

Her favorite animal was flamingos.

On her senior pictures,

she did this drawing on the wall for them.

Wanda, you know, she was her own self.

She had her own ideas, and she was very independent.

You couldn't tell her what to do.

We never asked her to move out. She wanted to, you know?

After graduating from high school,

wanda gets her own apartment across the street

and starts attending community college.

She was really proud of that.

It's a good feeling to be able to go to school,

have a job and your own independence.

She had a lot of dreams.

To help pay for her school...

All right, yeah.

...Wanda starts working at the local convenience store

2 miles from her apartment.

She had a friend that worked there.

Not my idea.

But at 19, you don't tell a child

what they can do it either.

You let them make their decisions.

After two weeks of learning the ropes,

she starts working the third shift at night.

She basically liked the third shift

'cause you could study.

It wasn't as hard, and she was a night owl.

My mom's worried because she had thought

they had been robbed before.

And I said, "yeah, I don't think it's a good idea."

and they had told her that they'd never had any issues.

And so she felt it was gonna be safe.

Mom said, "well,

you should talk to her 'cause she'll listen to you."

and I never got a chance.

This happened her first night alone at work.

It's been 20 minutes since police arrived at the scene.

Wanda is still nowhere to be found.

The first stop in the investigation

is her family's house.

A city of burton policeman came to my door

and asked if wanda was there.

I said, "no." I said, "why? What's going on?"

he said, "well, she's not at work.

You know, they can't find her."

I said, "is her car there?"

and they said, "yeah."

I said, "she wouldn't have left her car.

And if there'd been a car problem,

she would've called me

'cause she knows I would've been right there to get her."

so, we went over to her place.

no, she wasn't there.

then we walked back across the street to our house,

and he got a call.

...In the genesee district.

Just over an hour since wanda disappeared...

A body has been found on vassar road.

...A paper boy discovers her body.

...In a desolate rural location

6 miles northeast from the 1-stop.

This right here is the area where wanda's body was found.

Her head was pointing south.

She was laying on her right side

with her left leg over her right.

Her shoulders were flat to the ground, and she was facedown.

Her body was nude.

The only thing she had on was tape covering her eyes

and the back of her head.

Blood on the ground near her body is consistent

with the massive trauma to her skull,

proving she died here,

beaten to death with repeated blows to the head

by a blunt weapon.

This is an ideal location because it's so remote,

and most of the houses in the area,

if you look around, the trees are blocking

the windows of the house, so they can't see out.

I think the killer knew that area.

And he took to that area

'cause he knew it was abandoned or remote.

But that's when he killed her.

Being naked, we assumed, and later found out,

that she was sexually assaulted.

Semen was found on her thigh,

but at the time, dna was in its infancy.

It could almost be a year before you get any results.

You've got this pretty young girl

working at a convenience store

in the middle of the night.

You know, I have a daughter.

If that ever happened to my daughter, I don't know what...

you know, what I would do because it was so traumatic.

We hadn't had a lot of crime in that area,

like, nothing like this,

in the first 13 years I worked almost.

So, yeah, it was quite a shock.

It's just like... it was my daughter.

You know, it hurts. It hurts really bad.

Me, I'd rather be told up front.

And he was pretty blunt on what happened to her.

And then the other kids would come home,

and as each child would come in, you had to tell them.

I don't know if I mentally blocked it out

because I couldn't accept it

or if I went deaf because I could not hear a word.

The next thing I remember, it was all over the news.

Just a whirlwind of reporters,

police, and people asking questions.

And we wanted answers.

We were looking for any clues.

And we were looking for her clothes.

You've got to make sure that you document everything

from point a to point b.

Finding no evidence in the 6 miles

between the 1-stop and the crime scene,

police widen their search area.

Did they stop someplace? Is there a third scene?

Did anybody see him where he sexually assaulted her?

Was it at point b where he killed her,

or was it someplace in between?

We were searching by the expressway 3 miles away

and found more of her clothing.

So that added to the confusion about what could have happened.

Wanda's shoes, sweater, and underwear

are eventually found on different roads

in a 9-mile area.