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To enjoy this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, check us out on Patreon. Patreon.com/ForensicTales Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. She was young, bright, and full of promise. Angela Samota was a 20-year-old college student at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.
She had a tight-knit circle of friends, a good boyfriend, and a future that seemed limitless. But on one October night in 1984, everything changed. After a night out with friends, Angela returned to her apartment, and by morning, she was gone. Brutally raped and murdered, stabbed multiple times in what appeared to be a crime of unthinkable violence. But the case quickly went cold.
For decades, there were no arrests, no answers, just silence and a haunting sense that justice might never come. But Angela had one friend who refused to let her be forgotten. And years later, armed with nothing but determination and a relentless need for the truth, that friend would help crack a case that sat frozen in time.
This is Forensic Tales, episode number 279, The Murder of Angela Samoda. ♪♪ ♪♪
In October 1984, 20-year-old Angela Marie Simota was living the dream. Born on September 19, 1964 in Alameda, California, Angela studied computer science and electrical engineering at Southern Methodist University or SMU in Dallas, Texas. She was described as a bright and popular student, was a member of a sorority on campus, and had a boyfriend.
Here's what Sheila Wysocki, Angela's best friend, from 1984, who she called Angie, had to say about her to the BBC. Quote,
The two met on their very first day as college students at SMU back in 1982.
Here's another quote from that same BBC article about the day they met. Quote,
Angie was very academically inclined, and she would study late into the night. But I'm dyslexic and was struggling and just hoping to get through college. We were polar opposites. I'm an observer. I'm friendly, but I'm not going to be the center of a room, end quote.
Sheila wouldn't know it yet, but just two years after meeting, her best friend would be brutally raped and murdered, and she would be the one credited with keeping her case alive. October 12, 1984, the night that started what would eventually become a 20-year mystery.
Angela did what a lot of college kids her age did who lived in Texas. She went to the Texas State Fair with a couple of her friends. Ever since 1886, the Texas State Fair has happened every year starting in late September with a few exceptions for both of the World Wars and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
But otherwise, the Texas State Fair happens every single year in Dallas at the historic Fair Park. That night, Angela wanted her boyfriend to go to the fair too, but he couldn't because he had to be up early for work the next day. So it was Angela and her two friends, Russell and Anita, who went with her to the state fair that night.
After spending a few hours at the fair, Angela and her two friends headed to the Rio Room Dance Club, where they stayed until a little after midnight. All three of them were having a pretty good time. They ate food at the fair, walked around. Now they were out dancing and having a good time at a local dance club, something that any 20-year-old college student probably does.
Now later on, the male friend who was with Anita and Angela that night, Russell Buchanan, would say that Angela was having a really good time. At the club, she was going from table to table, talking to people, and seemed like she knew everyone was there, knew everyone that was there. She was just having fun. She was incredibly social. So none of this was out of character for her.
After hanging out at the Rio room, Angela drove both of our friends home. Russell was dropped off at his apartment around 1 a.m. on Matilda Street, and then Anita was dropped off at her place.
According to Russell, as soon as Angela dropped him off, he went to bed and went to sleep. Anita would eventually say the same thing. After that, Angela briefly visited her boyfriend before returning back to her own apartment, a small place near the SMU campus.
Thinking that was the last time he would hear from her that night, the boyfriend, Ben McCall, tried to fall asleep because he had to be up early for work the next day. But not long after that, he received a phone call from her sometime around 1.45pm.
She said there was a man at her place asking to use the phone and her bathroom. She didn't say who he was, so she was a little scared. She just kept telling him that she wanted him to stay on the phone with her. Later on, Angela's boyfriend said she didn't say whether or not she had invited him inside. All she said was that there was a guy there asking to use her bathroom and asking to use her phone.
She also didn't say whether he was already there or not when she got home. The phone call only lasted a couple of minutes, and Angela eventually told her boyfriend she would call him right back and hung up.
but when the boyfriend tried calling her back just a few minutes later, she never answered. Concerned, Ben McCall drove over to her apartment, and when he got there, he discovered that the front door was left unlocked and immediately called the police. Fortunately, he had brought his early generation mobile phone and was able to call information to be connected to the police.
It was now 2.17 a.m. when police officers first arrived at Angela's apartment. Inside, they found Angela. She was lying in the middle of her bed, naked and covered with blood. An autopsy would later reveal that she had been sexually assaulted and stabbed a total of 18 times, many of which were to her heart.
One of the wounds penetrated her entire body, all the way from the front to the back. Here's what one of the detectives who found Angela's body had to say about what the scene looked like. Quote, End quote.
Another detective said that it looked like she'd been butchered. It appeared to me that her heart was lying on top of her chest, end quote. Those were his own words about what it was like to find her like that.
Nothing about the scene told investigators who they should be looking for, but it did tell a chilling story. There were no signs of forced entry at the apartment, suggesting that she had opened the door for her killer. There was blood found inside of the bathtub and the bathroom sink, like possibly the suspect had cleaned up afterward.
and also the timeline. This happened very shortly after returning home from the club, as well as her boyfriend's house. So it was almost like someone was waiting for her inside of her apartment when she got back home, or they got there within just minutes of her getting back that night. Naturally, the first suspect was Angela's boyfriend, Ben McCall.
18 stab wounds to the heart screams rage. Sexual assault also screams rage. Rape is usually never about something sexual. It's usually about power and it's usually about anger. So whoever murdered Angela was obviously very angry at her. So what better suspect to look at than her boyfriend?
He also just so happens to be the last person that she saw and the last person that she spoke to. She had gone to his house to say goodnight. They talked on the phone somewhere around 1.45 or at least that's what he said. So obviously he's suspect number one. The police need to sit down and question him. This episode is brought to you by Pluto TV.
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Suspect number two was the male friend who Angela went out with that night. He was also considered a suspect because he was with her the night before she was murdered. So from the outside looking in, it looked like investigators had a pretty good start. They had two credible suspects, two males who were incredibly close to the victim. Let's talk more about the male friend first, Russell Buchanan.
The morning after the murder, Angela's murder, the police learned that he attended a friend's wedding in Dallas. After that, his friend drove him to the airport where he boarded a plane headed to Houston to apparently visit some family. Well, the police thought this was a little suspicious. Here he is, right after his close friend is found brutally murdered and raped, he's going to weddings and he's traveling. And that's not even the worst part.
Inside this guy's apartment, the police found a couple old knives and spears, weapons that investigators thought could have been used in the murder. Let's not forget, Angela had been stabbed a total of 18 times. Most of the wounds were to her chest and heart area. One had even gone through her entire body, front to back.
So this Russell guy definitely had the kinds of weapons that could be used to commit a crime like this. Old knives and spears. So the friend was eventually brought down to the police station and questioned, but he denied his involvement. He said the knives and spears belonged to his roommate who had recently traveled to Africa, and he also denied having any motive to kill his friend.
He said he and Angela were extremely close and could have never done something like this. Why would he rape and murder his own friend like that? In Russell's defense, he might have been right. He didn't have a motive to murder Angela. At least, none that could be identified yet. More on that a little later on.
Now, he only went to the wedding in Houston because he had no idea what happened. This was before social media, before cell phones, so he had no idea that his close friend, the friend that he was just out with, had been killed. And the weapons inside of his apartment did, in fact, belong to his roommate. So without any solid evidence against him, there was nothing that investigators could do at this point.
Now, let's talk about the boyfriend, Ben McCall. Like I mentioned earlier, of course the boyfriend was a good suspect for detectives to look at, so not surprisingly, the police questioned him as well.
But just like Russell, the friend, there was no solid evidence against him either. Yes, Angela saw him that night right before going home back to her own apartment, but there was no evidence that he followed her there. More on him as well coming up. Then there came another suspect, suspect number three if you're counting, one of Angela's ex-boyfriends.
Now, it's unclear why or how this ex-boyfriend became a suspect, but at one point during the investigation, the police looked at him but never found the evidence they needed to do anything about it. I think ex-boyfriends usually make good suspects because, well, they're the ex-boyfriend. Early on in the investigation, none of these guys could be ruled in or ruled out, and
But do you notice a trend here? These were all guys in Angela's life. They were people that she knew and probably trusted.
The police never really considered the possibility that maybe this could have been done by a stranger. They had a good feeling that this had to be someone that she knew. No signs of forced entry. The anger. The rage. This had to be over something personal, not random.
They never really considered the possibility that maybe her killer could have been someone that she met at the Texas State Fair or perhaps the nightclub that she was at that night. We know, based on Angela's friend's statements, that she was talking to a lot of people that night. So could her killer have been someone that she met? Did she attract the wrong person's attention? A dangerous person?
The police never really considered that. They just thought and they just assumed that it had to be one of the guys in her life. So without any of them being ruled out, let's go back to the friend, Russell Buchanan.
For several months after the murder, the police honed in on Russell. They watched him for weeks, showing up at his work and his house completely unannounced to question him. At the time, he was 23 years old and working as an architect. And they even enlisted the help of Angela's best friend, Sheila, the one that we talked about a little bit earlier. They asked her if she would wear a wire while talking to Russell.
They wanted to see if he would basically confess to the murder, but he never did. He also offered up another possible suspect, suspect number four. He told investigators about another SMU student who he claimed was infatuated with Angela.
But when the police sat down with this particular student, he admitted to, yes, having this innocent crush on Angela, but he denied any involvement. He even had an alibi for the night of the crime. He was out of town with his family, so he was nowhere near her apartment. But still, that's now the fourth guy in the victim's life who the police questioned and considered a possible suspect.
Okay, so you might be wondering, this seems like a pretty solvable case. The police have three, maybe four if you count the guy that Russell offered, potentially good suspects. These are all men in the victim's life, a close friend, a boyfriend, and an ex-boyfriend.
We know that Angela was the victim of a rage killing. She was raped and stabbed 18 times. Only someone with a lot of rage and a lot of anger could commit a crime like this. So is it the boyfriend? Is it the friend who she was with that night? Is it the ex?
Well, the police were completely stumped at this point. They had virtually nothing to go off of, and therefore, no arrests were made. At the autopsy, the medical examiner was able to recover semen from Angela's body. This was a part of the rape kit that was done on her. And from that analysis, investigators learned some pretty important information about their guy.
Her killer was a non-secreter, which refers to a person's blood typing subsystem. Someone who was a non-secreter does not secrete their blood type antigens in bodily fluids, such as saliva, sweat, tears, and even semen.
Your ABO blood type is based on specific antigens, A, B, or none for type O. They're found on your red blood cells. Now, most people called secretors also have these antigens in their body fluids.
Non-secretors, however, do not have these antigens in their fluids, even though they still have their blood type on their red blood cells. Why does that matter? Well, number one, genetics. Being a non-secreter is due to having two non-functioning copies of the FUT2 gene.
Some health impacts could be non-secretors may have a different risk profile for certain diseases, such as a higher risk of norovirus infection resistance or a slightly higher risk of certain autoimmune diseases like Crohn's disease. Now, number two, why does it matter? Criminal investigations.
At a crime scene, knowing whether someone is a secretor or not may help determine blood type from saliva, semen, or sweat. But if you're a non-secretor, this information can't be determined from those fluids. So in this case, investigators knew that Angela's killer was a non-secretor.
Now, depending on how you look at it, either side of the coin, that could be a good thing or it could be a bad thing for investigators. It's a bad thing because detectives don't know what blood type they're looking for in their suspect. This is bad because we're talking about 1984 here, October 1984. Pretty much the only type of DNA testing that the police departments were doing was blood typing.
So nothing about this emin told them anything about their suspect other than the fact that they were a non-secreter. But on the other hand, some might think that this is a good thing for the investigation. Non-secreters are far less common. So that information might help narrow down their suspect pool. You could also use this information to either rule someone in or rule them out.
If a suspect or a potential suspect was a secreter, they probably weren't the guy. But if they were a non-secreter, they could look pretty good and they could stay on the suspect list.
Either way, no matter how you look at it, the good side or the bad side, the DNA from the victim's rape kit from Angela's rape kit didn't mean anything at the time. The only thing it said was that her killer was a non-secreter. Until DNA testing could improve, this information didn't have much evidentiary value.
As part of their investigation, the police re-interviewed Angela's boyfriend Ben several times. Just like Russell, he maintained himself at the top of the suspect list. So the police asked him if he would be willing to take a polygraph test. If he was innocent and had nothing to hide, why not sit down and take a polygraph to prove your innocence?
Well, Ben McCall, the boyfriend, refused. He wouldn't agree to take a polygraph test. So now he's looking a lot better as far as potential suspects go. He is the boyfriend, the person who's closest to the victim, and now he won't sit down with investigators to take a polygraph test. If you have nothing to hide, why not just take it?
Now, some people hear that and already suspect this guy has to be lying. Some people assume that since someone won't sit down and take a polygraph test, then they must be guilty. But I don't think that's always the case. Maybe Ben had a perfectly good reason not to do it. Who knows?
Well, Ben McCall wouldn't agree to the polygraph test, but he did agree to give the police a DNA sample so they could determine whether or not he's a secretor or non-secretor. Remember, up until this point, that's the only forensic evidence the police have. So they took his DNA swab and tested it to see if he was a non-secretor, just like Angela's killer was.
But when the test results came back, they eliminated him as a suspect. He was a secreter, meaning he was most likely telling the truth. He didn't murder his girlfriend. Next, the other primary suspect, Russell Buchanan, the one who was with Angela that night.
The police already knew that he lived about five minutes away from Angela's apartment, so he would have been very close. They also know that there were no signs of forced entry at her apartment, and we know she would have let him inside. They're friends. They just spent the entire night together.
But the police also learned something else interesting while keeping their eyes on him. He might have seen Angela as more than just a friend. In fact, he might have had a crush on her. But if she didn't return those feelings, was that motive for rape and murder? Unlike the boyfriend, Russell Buchanan did agree to sit down and take a polygraph test. He also agreed to submit a saliva sample.
One of the questions on the polygraph was, did you murder Angela Samoda? Russell said no, and the initial report was that he did pass the test. More on that in just a second. When it came to his DNA, however, tests revealed that he was in fact a non-secreter, just like the killer.
Also interesting, it was initially reported that he did pass the polygraph test and showed no signs of deception when it came to his possible involvement in the crime. Well, upon second review, the result of his test was changed from truth to deceptive. So when the detectives found out about this change, they asked him to come down for a second test.
But at this point, one, Russell had hired an attorney who told him not to. And number two, he was a non-secreter, just like the killer. So again, his attorney wouldn't agree to the second polygraph test. And let's not forget, polygraphs aren't 100% accurate.
So Russell wouldn't do it, and as a result, he found himself on the top of the suspect list. But without any other definitive evidence linking him to Angela's murder, he was never arrested.
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Fast forward several months. Angela's murder case eventually turned cold. To almost everyone's surprise, this wasn't an easy or a solvable case, at least not back then. Detectives were completely stumped, and the case was suspended due to a lack of evidence and leads.
But that didn't mean everyone threw up their hands and gave up hope, especially not Angela's best friend, Sheila Wysocki.
If there was someone out there determined to solve this case, it was Sheila. The person killed was her best friend. So she wasn't going to forget about it and she wasn't just going to move on with her life. No, she wanted to find her best friend's killer and she wanted to put him where he belongs, behind bars.
So for months, and then eventually years, Sheila contacted the Dallas Police Department requesting updates on the case. If she hadn't heard anything in a while, she would pick up the phone and ask investigators for an update. If she heard about a new tip, she would call it in. She did anything and everything possible just to help keep this investigation alive.
I think she knew. She knew that once a case goes cold, it can fall through the cracks pretty easily. People forget about it and they move on. But she didn't want that to happen. She wanted the Dallas PD to keep this case moving forward. So for months, for years, Sheila stayed in close contact with investigators and she remained heavily involved, exonerated.
Again, this went on for years. By the early 2000s, the investigation was several years old, and Sheila was fed up with where the case stood. In her own words, she says she kept badgering the police until they were so sick and so tired of her that they eventually decided to reopen the case. This was now 2006.
Throughout that time, she had called the Dallas Police Department over 700 times. She even became a private investigator to help try to solve the case and work with the police. But not even that seemed to make much of a difference. Here's what she had to say about that. Quote,
End quote. Well, Sheila's persistence paid off. By 2006, Dallas Police Detective Linda Crum was assigned to the case.
Maybe they were sick and tired of Sheila's 700 phone calls over the years. One of the first things Detective Crum did in 2006 was go back to the evidence in the case, specifically the forensic evidence. We already know the crime took place in 1984 when DNA testing was practically non-existent. But by 2006, a lot had changed.
So the first place to start was the physical evidence, blood, semen, fingernail samples, anything that had been collected during the original investigation. And by doing that, Detective Crum got somewhere. The biggest piece of evidence they had in that evidence file was Angela's rape kit.
According to Detective Crum, she was initially told that the rape kit had been lost over the years during what they said was the Dallas floods, but as it turned out, it was still there. So that meant there was a possibility of DNA evidence belonging to the suspect.
We already know the killer was a non-secreter, so what else could they learn about him from the rape kit? By this point, DNA testing had come a long way since 1984.
So in 2008, the semen collected from her rape kit was run through the databases that had been collected through the years. And on February 14, 2008, investigator Linda Crum got a DNA hit on an unknown male profile. So the profile was then submitted to CODIS, the National DNA Database.
Then on March 19th, there was a match. Donald Bess, a man who was already serving a life sentence in a Texas prison for sexual assault.
Although Donald Bess was in prison in 2008 when investigators found his DNA at Angela's crime scene, he wasn't in prison back in 1984. In fact, at the time of her murder, he was on parole. He had been released on parole in March of 1984, seven months before Angela was killed.
Even more damning, he was said to have frequently visited Dallas throughout 1984. Immediately following this discovery, Detective Crum and a few other Dallas cold case investigators went to go speak with Donald Bess in prison. They started the interview by asking him about his previous sexual assault convictions. And according to Bess, he said he never hurt any of his victims. Yes.
Yes, he raped and assaulted them, but he never physically harmed them afterward. In other words, he said he never killed them. But after these questions, the interview shifted to possible crimes he may have committed while visiting Dallas. And that's when Donald Bess shut the interview down. He was done speaking with them and he was done answering their questions.
Since he was already in prison serving a life sentence for an unrelated crime, there was no rush for cold case investigators to build their case against him when it came to Angela's murder. He wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. So they had the time they needed to work together and start to put these puzzle pieces together.
Now, beyond discovering that Bess had in fact been out on parole back in 1984 and that he did regularly travel to Dallas, they also started coming up with a theory about what they believed happened on that night, October 12th, 1984. Detectives theorized that Bess spotted Angela sometime that night.
He saw that she was alone, he targeted her, and then he made his way into her house by asking to use the phone and asking to use the bathroom. There weren't any signs of forced entry because Bess probably knocked on her door and she opened it for him. But something about him didn't sit well with her, and that's why she decided to call her boyfriend.
But before she could call back to say that she was okay, that's when the police believe Bess attacked her and killed her. Of course, no one but Donald Bess and Angela knows exactly what happened inside of that apartment. But based on the forensic evidence, here's what we do know. Angela was assaulted and killed by a non-secreter.
His DNA was left behind at the crime scene through semen discovered during her rape kit, as well as DNA recovered from underneath her fingernails. Both of those samples came back as a 100% positive match to Donald Bess. He's a non-secreter, and his DNA was found underneath her fingernails.
None of the DNA found at the scene matched any of the guys in Angela's life. Not her boyfriend, ex-boyfriend, or her male friend. Based on the forensic evidence, detectives were wrong about Angela being killed by someone that she knew. Based on the forensic evidence, she was killed by a complete stranger.
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In 1978, six years before Angela's murder, Donald Best was convicted of aggravated sexual assault and aggravated kidnapping and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. But here's the thing. He only served about six years of that 25-year sentence.
That's because in March of 1984, he was released on parole. A little over six months later, he assaulted and murdered Angela. So had he not been released on parole so early into that long sentence, maybe this would have never happened. Or maybe it was bound to happen no matter what.
Unfortunately, though, we can't go back in time to change that either way. All we know for sure is that Donald Bess was sentenced to 25 years in prison for aggravated rape and aggravated kidnapping,
But he only served about six years before he was released on parole. And with that newfound freedom, he did commit another rape. And this time was different. That rape led to murder.
In 1985, about one year after Angela's murder and in a completely unrelated case, Bess was sentenced in Harris County, Texas to life in prison for one count of aggravated rape, one count of aggravated kidnapping, and one count of sexual assault. So we only spent about a year on parole, and during that year time, just 12 months, Bess
He committed at least two rapes, the rape and murder of Angela, plus this rape that he was convicted of in Harris County in 1985. So I think it's fair to say that this is a very, very violent and dangerous sexual predator who should have never been released from prison in the first place.
In 2010, Donald Bess was found guilty of Angela's rape and murder. The trial lasted only four days, and the jury deliberated for less than 60 minutes before coming back with a guilty verdict. Then on June 18, 2010, Bess was sentenced to death by lethal injection. Now, the question, are there other victims out there?
Well, during the trial in 2010, several women came forward and testified that they had also been sexually assaulted by him. His ex-wife even took the stand to testify, saying that he not only abused her during their short marriage, but he also abused their child. They got married in 1969, but were divorced just three years later.
So are there other victims out there? It seems like there are, but just how many are out there? We don't know at this point. Three years after the trial, Bess appealed his conviction as well as his death sentence in 2013, but the appeal was denied and the original conviction was upheld.
Then in August 2013, a certiorari petition was filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, but that was also denied on January 13, 2014. If you live in the U.S., then you know the death penalty doesn't happen overnight.
When and if someone is sentenced to death, they usually spend decades on death row before their sentence is carried out. And that's if it's carried out at all. Well, this case is no different. Before Donald Best could die by lethal injection, he died in prison from a heart attack on October 8th, 2022.
He died of natural causes while awaiting his death sentence for murdering Angela. In the aftermath of this case, in 2016, the Dallas Police Department reestablished a unit solely dedicated to researching cold cases.
And in 2021, there was an investigation discovery episode titled Betrayed Co-Ed Killer in which the case and the subsequent identification of her murderer were reenacted.
For Sheila Wysocki, Angela's best friend who helped keep this case alive, she believed she would retire from her work as a private investigator. But instead, she received countless letters from people who heard about what she did to reopen her best friend's case, and they wanted her help as well.
So now, Sheila specializes as a cold case private investigator, and she has worked on over 100 pretty complicated cases. She's been nominated as one of Nashville's top 20 private investigators, and she's been voted as one of the top six most influential female private investigators.
Over 40 years ago, the life of 20-year-old college student Angela Samoda was cut short. Initially, the police suspected she had been murdered by one of the close males in her life. However, the forensic evidence found at the scene pointed in a much different direction. Without the tenacity of her best friend and cold case investigators, a killer might have gotten away.
But thanks to advancements in DNA testing, we now know who was responsible for taking Angela's life all of those years ago. To share your thoughts on this week's episode, follow the show on Instagram and Facebook.
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Thank you so much for joining me this week. Please join me next week. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.
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Forensic Tales is a podcast made possible by our Patreon producers.
Lucretia W., Luz Raquel, Christine K., and Brent E.
If you'd like to become a producer of this show, head over to our Patreon page or send me an email at Courtney at ForensicTales.com. For a complete list of sources used in this episode, please visit ForensicTales.com. Thank you for listening. I'll see you next week. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.
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