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Angela Samota was raped and murdered in her apartment on October 13th, 1984, after a night out with her friends. The case went cold for many years until her good friend from SMU, Sheila Wysocki, kept badgering the police and became a private investigator, to assist in getting this case solved. In 2008, the DNA was re-tested and it matched Donald Bess Jr.
Website: https://www.drinkingthecoolaid.com/
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In October of 1984, Sheila Wysocki (Why-sock-ee) received a call. A friend of hers, Barbara said there had been an accident involving Sheila’s good friend and freshman roommate, Angela Samota (sum-oh-tah). Sheila initially assumed this was a car accident, but she found out later, it was much worse. Just after 2:15 that morning, the police had entered Angie’s condo and found her naked and bloody body, lying on her bed. An autopsy showed that she had been raped and she had 18 stab wounds, 10 of which punctured her heart, breaking her breastbone and going through the body. Assistant District Attorneys in Dallas, Josh and Patrick said whoever stabbed Angie, was intent on killing her. She didn’t have enemies, everyone seemed to like her, but there were men that wanted to date her or ex-boyfriends that were potentially mad about being an ex.
Angie was described as amazing and full of life. She was a hard worker and she was very driven. Angela Marie Samota, who went by Angie, was born on September 19th of 1964. She was a 20-year-old junior at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas and she had just bought a condo near the SMU campus. She was a double major in computer science and engineering at SMU and working part-time at Texas Instruments. She was beautiful, intelligent, vivacious, smart, and could be the life of the party. Angie received a lot of attention from guys, and they would leave notes or flowers on her car.
During the first semester, Angie and Sheila didn’t really get along well because Angie had a boyfriend that Sheila didn’t really like. Angie was young and she didn’t pick the best boyfriends, but when they broke up, the girls became pretty close. They both grew up without dads and they bonded over not having fathers in their lives. Angie was very academically inclined and she would stay up late to study, but Sheila was dyselxic, so she was struggling through college. They were total opposites. Angie was the life of the party, but Sheila was more of an observer.
Angie had dated Lance back home in Amarillo (am-a-ril-lo), Texas and through her freshman year in Dallas. She did confide in some of her friends and said that she was afraid of him because he had a bad temper, and he pulled a knife on her one time.
On the evening of Friday, October 12th, 1984, Angie went to the State Fair, then she put on a black silk jumpsuit with black pumps and she went to a club called Studebaker’s with two of her friends, Russell Buchanan and Anita Kadala. She invited her boyfriend, Ben McCall, but he had to get up early for work, so he couldn’t go. At some point, she called Ben again and asked if he wanted to meet her at the Rio Room, which is a club with a members-only backroom, but he declined this offer as well. Anita was originally going to spend the night at Angie’s, but she changed her mind, so Angie dropped both of her friends off about 1 AM. When they drove to Anita’s she was going to grab her curling iron, but she realized Angie was leaving for a football game too early the next morning, that’s why she decided to just go home.
So, let’s start going through the stories that were given to the police during interviews after the murder. Angie was dating Ben McCall and he was older than her, already out of school, and he was a construction supervisor in Dallas. He had to get up early for work, so that’s why he couldn’t go out that night, but he said that after Angie dropped off her two friends, then she stopped at his place briefly to say goodnight. Even though he needed to get some sleep, he’s saying she stopped by and woke him up, to say goodnight. He heard the knock on his door at 1:30 AM and he knew the time because he rolled over in bed and looked at his clock.
Ben says that he talked to Angie for 2 minutes and she stopped by to rub it in that he had to work early the next morning, but he says the conversation was playful, she was just teasing.
Ben says that Angie left, but she called him at 1:45 AM. She was acting strange, and she said a man who had asked to use her phone and bathroom was inside her condo. He could hear noises in the background and a few moments later, he heard Angie tell someone that the bathroom was down the hall. She asked him if there was a payphone at a nearby convenience store and Ben said, I’m sure there is, and she told this to the man in her condo. She said she would call him right back and she hung up. Ben waited for a few minutes, then tried calling her and when she didn’t answer, he decided to drive to her place. He said that during the 8-to-10-minute drive, he repeatedly tried to call Angie, but she never answered. When he got to Angie’s condo, he saw her car and he ran to the front door which was located on the second floor of the condominium and he knocked, but she didn’t answer. The door was locked, so he ran to the back door, but that was also locked. He called Angie’s phone again and he could hear it ringing in the kitchen, but he didn’t hear any other sounds in the apartment.
Since she had asked him about the payphone at the convenience store, he drove there to check for her. He arrived back at her apartment and contacted the police at 2:17 AM. The call was later scrutinized because Ben comes off extremely calm. In 1984, there were no cellphone records, so you couldn’t prove that Angie even called Ben in the middle of the night, so it was just Ben’s word, it may have never happened. But, if it did happen, the call was at 1:45 AM, he drove to her apartment which took about 8 to 10 minutes and he called the police at 2:17 AM which leaves approximately 30 minutes unaccounted for.
Officers arrived in the parking lot of Angie’s complex at 2:40 AM. They knocked on the door, but there was no answer. Since there was no apparent reason to bust the door down, they waited to obtain a key from the property manager. Officer Budjenska said that the first thing he noticed upon entering the condo was a single black pump on the floor and this quickened his pulse because people don’t just take one shoe off, he got a bad feeling, it didn’t look right. He discovered Angie’s body in the second bedroom. She was naked, covered in blood, lying face up with her eyes open; the lower half of her body was hanging off the end of the bed. The officer checked for a pulse, but he couldn’t find one. He said the murder was unlike any other case he had worked and it “looked like it was the result of...evil preying on innocence.” He continued searching the condo in case the attacker was still there and he discovered a smudge of blood on the light switch, blood on the shower curtain, and some residue of blood in the bathtub, where it looked like someone may have washed some blood off. Officer Crowther saw Angie’s body and said her body looked angelic, “like a young person that I could relate to.” She said that Angie’s eyes were wide open, and she remembers her blue eyes. She said that regarding her wounds, “it appeared that her heart had been cut out.”
When the ambulance arrived, the paramedics confirmed that Angie was dead. The officers broke the news to her boyfriend, Ben McCall and they said he was extremely quiet, but cooperative.
At the crime scene, Detective Sparks testified that there were no signs of forced entry: the back door was dead-bolted, the front door had been locked, and the sliding glass door was intact and locked. As far as he knew, Ben McCall did not have a set of keys to the condo. He did testify that he couldn’t remember the locking mechanism on the front door, but he acknowledged that it could have been the kind that locked automatically or with just a turn of the knob when the door was shut. He investigated the possibility that an individual could climb the tree by Angie’s porch to enter the sliding glass door. He was able to lift the sliding glass door off of its track to open it, but he wasn’t sure how someone could get it back on the track if they were in a hurry.
Detective Sparks noted that a knife was missing from Angie’s kitchen knife set, and the murder weapon was never found. Angie’s telephone was on the kitchen counter and Michael Darst of the Medical Examiner’s office said that it “appeared that the telephone had been wiped clean.” On the counter next to the telephone, a necklace was on top of Angie’s black purse, and a set of keys was nearby. There was a black scuff mark next to the black pump in the front of the condo and Detective Sparks said he noticed it because it “was the only scuff mark or soil spot on the whole carpet area.” The other shoe was located in the bedroom near a pile of clothes by the bed, but the clothes weren’t ripped and they didn’t have blood on them.
Billy Shehee testified that they were able to lift comparable latent prints from the hall bathroom, a drinking glass on the coffee table in the living room, a dry cleaning bag on the bed next to Angie’s body, and the lid of the toilet in the bathroom next to her bedroom. None of the comparable prints were bloody, and analysis revealed that they were all Angie’s except for the one palm print on the toilet lid that was never identified. Billy Shehee said that it’s not unusual to have fingerprints that can’t be matched because there’s no way of knowing how long they’ve been there. Bloodstains and smudges were found low on the shower curtain, the bathroom light switch, and the wall just below the light switch, but no comparable prints were lifted from those areas.
David Spence, a supervisor at the Dallas county crime lab said that blood was found in the bathtub’s drain, and the blood droplets found in the tub appeared to have been deposited while the tub was wet. The blood found on the kitchen counter was diluted, which was consistent with someone touching the counter after washing his bloodstained hands. There were not any foreign hairs that were found on the bedding, clothing, or body.
After the police discovered Angie’s body, they told Ben she was dead and he didn’t ask what happened or how she was killed, which obviously seemed very unusual. The police wondered if that meant he already knew what happened to her. They also noticed that Ben was wearing a clean pressed shirt and he smelled like fresh soap. He said he received a call from Angie just before 2 AM and he was worried about her, but he had time to shower and put on fresh clothes?
Ben was interviewed hours after the murder, he provided a written statement, constented to a search of his truck and apartment, gave blood and saliva samples, and agreed to a scraping of his fingernails. No blood or hair was detected in his fingernail scrapings and no items of value were recovered during the search of his truck and apartment.
He wasn’t the only one that the police were zeroing in on though. Angie’s ex-boyfriend Lance Johnson became a major suspect as well. Her friends say that he was obsessed with her and he would show up at her school to see her all the time. On one occasion, Angie called her friend Sheila and asked for help. She said that Lance showed up at her place with a knife and he was shredding all of her clothes and he verbally threatened her.
The third major suspect in the case was Russell Buchanan. The police questioned his friend Anita and said they wanted to know if she thought Russell had any romantic feelings for Angie. The three of them had gone out that night and even though he was dropped off at home, he lived within walking distance of Angie’s condo. The day after the crime, Russell left town for 24 hours and when he got back, the police wanted to talk to him. Even though Angie’s murder had been on the news and in the headlines, he said he didn’t know she had been murdered. It was later confirmed that he had attended a wedding at the Dallas Country Club and then he flew to Houston.
He returned to Dallas on Sunday, October 14th and he became aware of Angie’s murder when numerous officers showed up at his door with guns drawn. Russell was interviewed and provided a statement and voluntarily provided blood and saliva samples.
Anita said that when the three of them went out, she felt like the night revolved around Russell and Angie and she was the third wheel. Russell disagrees and says he hardly knew Angie, they were not on a date, and he was actually sitting alone at the table talking to Anita for quite some time while Angie was out on the dance floor. He said that Angie and Anita dropped him off around 1 AM, then he went to sleep, and that was the end of the night. The police believed that after Angie dropped him off, Russell walked to her place. She let him in because she knew him, that’s why there wasn’t any forced entry. He raped her and had to kill her because she could identify him.
During Russell’s statement, he provided one more person for the police to investigate. Joseph Patrick Barlow was a student at SMU that reportedly had a crush on Angie. Russell recalled that Angie had received harassing notes from “Patrick”, but the police were able to rule him out based on his alibi.
In addition to investigating the 4 main suspects, the police also worked on identifying individuals who had worked on Angie’s vehicle, installed the carpet in her condo, and the maintenance and landscaping crews who worked at the complex. They also investigated individuals who were previously arrested for rape and were not incarcerated during the time of the crime and their fingerprints were compared with the prints obtained at the scene.
Angie’s friend Sheila met with the lead detective and he laid out the theory for her. He believed that Russell snapped, grabbed a knife, raped Angie, and murdered her. They asked Sheila if she would have dinner with Russell and ask him about his alibi. Where was he on the night of the murder? She agreed to do this and she felt so uncomfortable because she believed she was getting into a car with a murderer and eating dinner with one too. It was scary, but Russell stuck to his story. He was at home, in bed when Angie was murdered. The police asked him to take a polygraph test a few weeks later and he was found to be truthful.
In 1984, they could test to see if the individual was a secretor or non-secretor. Roughly 80% of Americans are secretors, meaning their bodily fluids contain markers for blood type. The other 20%, do not have these markers and the killer was part of that 20%, they were a non-secretor. Blood tests revealed that Angie’s ex-boyfriend Lance was a secretor, and he had a good alibi. He was staying with his parents about 370 miles away. He was working at a local gym in Amarillo, so he was eliminated.
Angie’s current boyfriend, Ben was also a secretor, so he was eliminated. This left Russell who was a non-secretor and his alibi was that he was at home in bed, and no one could confirm this. In the days after the murder, the police started picking him up after work for questioning. Russell says this happened about 2-3 times per month for about 6 months. As time went by, the interrogations got worse. Russell says that around month 5, the detective showed him an envelope full of the crime scene photos. He would hold them up and tell him he did this. Also, remember that polygraph test that he passed? Well, the Dallas police department took a second look and they realized he was deceptive. Russell hired an attorney after this point and he was also leaving the country, so the police couldn’t question him any longer.
Russell ended up getting a really famous attorney, Richard “Racehorse” Haynes and everyone knew that if you got Racehorse Haynes, you must be guilty. This case ended up going cold. The police believed that Russell Buchanan was the guy that did it, but they couldn’t prove it.
In 2004, Sheila’s family moved to Tennessee. One evening, she was doing Bible study homework and she saw Angie sitting there, it was a clear vision. She didn’t say anything, she was just smiling at her. Immediately after seeing this, Sheila knew it was time. She grabbed the phone and called the Dallas Police Department. Sheila said she called about 700 times and never received one call back. She eventually learned that not one other person in 20 years had called about Angie’s case.
Sheila began doing research and printed out reports about all the rapes that happened during that time, the locations, and who was arrested. She was determined to find answers. Her family lived in a gated community and one day, she was complaining to the head of security about being blown off by the police and he told her that she’d make a great private investigator. That night, she went home and told her husband that she was going to become a private investigator.
To become a PI in Tennessee, you have to be sponsored by a company, so Sheila’s security guys said they would sponsor her and train her. Every night after dinner, her oldest son would read the Tennessee laws to her, and she would repeat them back. Once she passed the exam, she started getting hired by some of her neighbors. Once she had her private investigator license in 2006, she called the Dallas police and asked that they send her all of the information in Angie’s case, but they refused. Sheila said her first 50 calls went to the lead detective and she got nowhere with him, her calls were not returned. Six months later, she spoke to a receptionist who said he was retired, and she was put in touch with the investigator of cold cases. She kept hounding them for answers and they got so sick of her, that they reopened the case, and it was handed over to Dallas police detective Linda Crum. The detective called Angie and told her that they had testable evidence in this case. They had done a rape kit on Angie; they had her fingernails and they had semen. This wasn’t helpful information in 1984, but it sure was 20 years later. Sheila offered to pay for the DNA testing herself, but she was told that they can’t do that, the police department has to pay for it.
In March of 2008, the DNA was entered into the national database. Sheila was zeroed in on Russell Buchanan and she knew he was working in Dallas. The detective called Sheila and said, we got him.....it’s not Russell. The Dallas Police department called Russell Buchanan and apologized for everything they put him through. Russell says he harbors no ill feelings towards the Dallas Police Department, and he was thrilled to receive an apology.
Russell had spent many years as a suspect in this case. When the real murderer was caught, Russell said, “You don’t realize how stressful it is until it’s over, and then you’re just physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted. That’s when I think I finally realized that it was done, that this chapter had finally been closed.”
The DNA belonged to Donald Andrew Bess Jr. At the time of Angie’s murder, he had been on parole while serving a 25-year sentence for aggravated sexual assault and aggravated kidnapping. In 2008, Donald Bess was in jail again and he was serving a life sentence for another unrelated rape, assault, and kidnapping case and the DNA was a match to him.
At the time of the crime, Donald was 36 years old, about 6 feet tall and weighed between 250 to 260 pounds. The detective interviewed him for about an hour and Lisa Crum said that he was very arrogant initially, but his demeanor changed abruptly when he was told the date of Angie’s murder and he agreed to give a written statement:
“I got out of prison on parole in March of 1984. During that summer, I went to Dallas to visit some friends. Over the next several months, I visited Dallas 3 or 4 times. At the time, I was living and working in Houston. During my visits to Dallas I met two or three women. Mostly I would meet them at a bar in the Oaklawn area. One lady was from California and was in Dallas for a foosball tournament. I went with her to a hotel in Irving and we had sex. Another lady I met. I went with her to Granbury, I think, and we spent the weekend there. I remember another girl that I met at a bar, but I don’t remember anything about her. I have never hurt anyone. Most of the rest of 1984, I stayed home in Houston and worked. During sex with any girl, I have never been violent.”
Prior to this meeting, the police had obtained a search warrant for a buccal (buckle) or cheek swab and this was sent off for DNA analysis. DNA testing was conducted on the vaginal swab obtained during Angie’s autopsy and the swabbings of her fingernail clippings. The lab was able to extract DNA profiles and confirmed that Donald’s DNA matched the seminal fluids in the rape kit to a degree of 1 in 2.69 quadrillion. On May 5th, 2008, the day the DNA result came back, capital murder charges were filed against him.
During the trial, Angie’s boyfriend, Ben McCall testified that his relationship with Angie was exclusive and comfortable. There was very little tension in their relationship. They both had very busy schedules, but they spent all of their free time together.
Angie’s friend Anita Kadala testified that Angie thought Ben was the “cat’s meow.” Her stepbrother Thomas Geantil said that Ben was “significant” to Angie, and she believed he might be the one.
David Spence, a supervisor at the Dallas County crime lab examined photos of the crime scene and the autopsy as an expert witness for the State.
Based on this examination, he performed a blood-pattern analysis, and he stated that he could draw multiple conclusions from the photographs. Angie’s headboard had an upward “cast-off trail” of blood beginning at her head and reaching to the top of the headboard. He also said there were additional blood spatters on the side of the bed going to the wall and there were numerous “void areas” where no blood was present. He said the headboard spatters were typical of a back stroke and that, when a person is stabbing someone with a knife and quickly raises that knife, “droplets of blood would fling off the blade of the knife.”
Spence testified that there were “contact transfers” on Angie’s body “where a bloody object transferred blood from the object onto her body.” He found transfer blood stains on both of her thighs and the upper left thigh stain was consistent with a bloody right hand while the transfer stain on her right thigh was consistent with a fingerprint or thumb print. Angie had transfer stains on her right chin area and upper torso as well, and Spence said the stain near her mouth could have been from someone’s bloody hand.
Spence believed that the attacker was right-handed and was swinging the knife quickly and was probably on the bed, facing Angie while he repeatedly stabbed her. The lack of blood in certain areas was consistent with the attacker’s body being on top of Angie and blocking the transfer of blood to those areas. He could determine that due to the size of the void areas, the attacker was probably a fairly large individual.
Dr. Gilliland of the Dallas County Medical Examiner’s Office performed the autopsy which began approximately 12 hours after her murder. She noticed the blood stains and void areas and agreed that something had blocked those areas on her body. She also noticed the blood on Angie’s face and concluded that a hand may have been covering her mouth. After cleaning the blood stains, Dr. Gilliland found a cut in the web of Angie’s left thumb, a small scratch across the back of her left hand, and superficial cuts on her right hand, which were all indicative of defensive wounds.
Angie Samota had been stabbed in the chest 18 times and at least two of those wounds penetrated her sternum which would require significant force. All 18 stab wounds penetrated her left lung and eight penetrated her heart, one of which entered and exited her heart. Based on the stab wounds, it appeared that the murder weapon was an instrument sharp on one side and blunt on the other and it was approximately 2-4 inches in length which is consistent with a knife.
The jury deliberated for less than an hour and they found Donald Bess guilty of the charges against him and he was sentenced to the death penalty. The murder weapon was never found and he did not admit to the murder. He was 61 years old during the trial and he suffered a heart attack, causing a 3 day delay. Donald waited on death row for many years, an execution date was not scheduled and he died from a heart attack at age 74.
Once Angie’s case was finalized, Sheila was going to retire her private investigator license, but she started receiving letters from other people that needed help, so she decided to stick with it. I want to end on a poem that Angie wrote and this was actually printed on her headstone.
“Through The Children’s Eyes
Standing in the tunnel of time. Farther and farther on down the line. Looking on back to the children so small, laughing and playing with no care at all. Growing and learning as each day goes by. Wondering about all the stars in the sky. Watching the grown-ups while worries surround. While they stack in the mind. Forming great holes and mounds.
Not knowing that grief will clutter inside of them all. When they age with the years. Growing wiser and tall. When the love they get seems to fade slowly away. As the people they care for creep swiftly to lay.
Confused that the people must argue and fight. About things so amazing as knowledge and might. Why must this world be so hard to discern, when the eyes of the children are looking to learn? By Angie Samota”
RESOURCES:
Man on Texas death row for murder of SMU student dies of heart attack (dallasnews.com)
Dateline NBC: In the Middle of the Night on Apple Podcasts
My best friend’s killer got away - until I made police try again - BBC News
