Return to Transcripts main page

The Hunt with John Walsh

Point Blank Murder

Aired August 10, 2014 - 21:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


(BEGIN VIDEO CAPTION)

JOHN WALSH, CNN HOST OF "THE HUNT": Back in 1981, I had the American dream, the beautiful wife, the house in the suburbs, and a beautiful 6-year-old son. And, one day I went to work, kissed my son good-bye, and never saw him again. In two weeks, I became the parent of a murdered child and I will always be the parent of a murdered child.

I still have the heartache. I still have the rage. I waited years for justice. I know what it is like to be there waiting for some answers, and over those years, I learned how to do one thing really well. And, that is how to catch these bastards and bring them back to justice. I have become a man hunter. I am out there looking for bad guys.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE 911 OPERATOR: What is your emergency?

SAMUEL WELLS, VICTIM'S OLDER BROTHER: Sam Wells over at Spanish Towers. And, there has been an accident. I just walked in, you know the address?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE 911 OPERATOR: What is it?

SAMUEL WELLS: We need the ambulance in a hurry.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE 911 OPERATOR: What kind of an accident?

SAMUEL WELLS: I do not know, ma'am. It looks like my little brother is laying here dead. I do not know what happened.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE 91 OPERATOR: What is your first name?

SAMUEL WELLS: Sam. Samuel Wells.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAMUEL WELLS: Walked in on that, still have a hard time with it today. There was just no sign of life whatsoever. Got to take a time-out. (END VIDEO CLIP)

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JUNE MENGER, VICTIM'S MOTHER: My boys were very typical little boys, and they were very close to the same age, so they almost looked like triplets. And, they were just active, happy little boys.

ROB WELLS, VICTIM'S OLDEST BROTHER: It was a wonderful childhood, absolutely amazing. I had two younger brothers, Sid and Sam, and a great dad who loved the outdoors. I mean, Colorado, it does not get any better than this.

We came from very humble roots. I would say we were lower middle class, but when it came to the richness of love in the family, I think we were at the upper scale. Very, very close family.

SAMUEL WELLS: Sid was fun, outgoing. Could be obnoxious at times. Kind of a joking comic, always kind of a funny attitude.

ROB WELLS: Sid, he is everybody's best friend. He knows no stranger. Very popular in high school band, good athlete. He was just an amazing guy. Everybody loved him.

He was studying journalism and going to the Navy ROTC program there at the University of Colorado as well. Sid was -- had a girlfriend at the time named Shauna Redford. After a couple, two, three dates, he calls me up and he goes, "Rob!" He goes, "You will not going to believe this, but I just found out I am dating Robert Redford's daughter.

(LAUGHING)

MENGER: Sid and Shauna had been dating for almost three years. And, they were just a fun couple to be around, very much in love.

ROB WELLS: We had a condo in Boulder, Colorado called the Spanish Towers. It was great, because Sid was going to school there, so he could live there all through his college days.

MENGER: Sam moved in the summer of 1983.

SAMUEL WELLS: He needed a roommate, so I filled in for the summer. Got to hang out and get to know Shauna a little bit better, his girlfriend.

MENGER: That summer, we still needed a good candidate for a third roommate.

SAMUEL WELLS: Thayne Smika was a new person in our lives, so we did not know him very well. He was from Akron, Eastern Colorado, graduated from CSU. We knew he had some things going on for him. Thayne took the main room downstairs and I had the bedroom upstairs. MENGER: They felt that he was a good candidate for a roommate. They

found after he did move in that he was not very sociable and I think he was having trouble coming up with the rent money.

DAVE HAYES, FORMER DEPUTY CHIEF OF POLICE: On the afternoon of August 1, 1983, at about 12:26 in the afternoon, the Boulder Police Communications Center got a report of a man not breathing.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

SAM WELLS: It looks like -- it looks like my little brother is laying here dead. I do not know what happened.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE 911 OPERATOR: Is he breathing at all?

SAMUEL WELLS: No.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALSH: To be the horribly unlucky person to find a loved one murdered is a scene or a snapshot that you will never be able to forget. It is a gigantic cross to bear for a loved one.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Police and fire officials were met by Sam Wells at the elevator. Sam took them into the apartment and on the living room floor of the apartment, they found Sidney Wells dead of an apparent gunshot wound to the head.

Shauna Redford just had seen Sid a couple hours before. He was alive and well, and then to come back and find out that he had been killed. You have absolutely horrific news.

MENGER: At 4:00, my boss called me to the front of the store and said that there was someone that needed to see me. It was a police officer from Boulder.

(END VIDEO CLIP

WALSH: You are not prepared for anything to happen to your child. You are supposed to nurture those children and they are your immortality. It is unbearable.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MENGER: You know, I was just -- I just could not -- I could not cry. I could not do anything but just stare at him because I could not believe what he was saying. That is how our nightmare started.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAMUEL WELLS: Who would want to kill Sid, you know?

RYAN BRACKLEY, ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY: In this case, the police started their investigation with Sam Wells.

MENGER: It was just almost too much for all of us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROB WELLS: On August 1, 1983, I received a phone call from my brother, Sam. He told me Sid was gone, that he was killed, and murdered, and that he walked in and found him.

BRACKLEY: The first thing the police look for in any type of a homicide scene is sign of a forced entry through the door or window, or a sign of a struggle. And, they did not see any sign that there had been an obvious burglary, robbery or assault in this apartment.

That leads investigators to think that they should be looking from within, they should be looking at roommates or friends or relatives or people who had access to this apartment, people who had access to Sid Wells. In this case, the police started their investigation with Sam Wells.

SAMUEL WELLS: They proceeded to ask me all kinds of questions. Questions like, you know, why would you kill your brother? Why would you do something like that, and they decided it was time to give me what they call a paraffin test to find out whether or not you fired a weapon. And, all they could find was campfire smoke, so that was my saving grace.

HAYES: By mid afternoon we determined that Sam Wells was no longer a viable suspect.

MENGER: We had just gone through losing Sid's dad in 1981 and two years later, this tragedy happened. And, it was just almost too much for all of us. Of course, I just wanted to know, why?

ROB WELLS: Who would want to kill Sid, you know?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALSH: It is the simple question that all victims ask. Before we can really grieve, before we can close that chapter of our lives, we need to see that person held accountable.

HAYES: My initial involvement in this case was being assigned to the crime scene. Mr. Wells was found laying face down on the floor, died from what appeared to be a shotgun wound to the back of his head.

Because it was such a close contact wound, the blast and the gases from the shell being fired all went into the head. There was very little blood splatter, although there was some.

BRACKLEY: Crime scene investigators in 1983 used a substance called Luminol to look for the presence of blood at a crime scene. Once the police have sprayed a crime scene with Luminol, they will turn off the lights and they will apply essentially a black light to the area that they have sprayed. And, if there is a presence or a presumptive presence of blood or any kind of bodily fluid that scene will light up in a fluorescent color.

HAYES: We got quite a bit of reaction. Somebody with something with blood on it had been moving around the apartment.

BRACKLEY: The trail in the apartment went into Thayne Smika's bedroom and it went into the bathroom.

HAYES: In the downstairs' bathroom, we noticed that there was a red ring in that toilet.

BRACKLEY: An inference that the police had was that perhaps the shotgun used to murder Sid Wells had been cleaned in that toilet bowl.

HAYES: Interestingly enough, the bathroom on the first floor was Thayne Smika's bathroom. What was most interesting to us was on the coffee table next to where Sid's body was found. We found a note and an envelope.

The envelope had the numbers $300 written on it. August 1st was rent day. Thayne Smika was due to pay Sid $300 that he was going to take to his mother. We did not find anything in that envelope.

BRACKLEY: The note was a note from Thayne Smika and it was to Sam and Sid Wells informing them that he had gone home to his parents' house and he would be back in a couple of days. What was interesting to the police was that there were a number of small spots of blood found underneath the note that Thayne Smika wrote.

HAYES: It appeared that the note from Thayne to Sid and Sam and the envelope had been placed there after Mr. Wells was shot.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALSH: Somebody placed that envelope after the murder, after the murder. That puts Thayne Smika as suspect number one.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRACKLEY: The police drove to search the house of Thayne Smika's mother.

ROB WELLS: Shock. Absolute complete mystification.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROB WELLS: They say from every murder, there is seven to ten other people directly affected, not just family members, but girlfriends, neighbors, friends and associates, and when Sid was killed, that number had to be in the hundreds. We all want to know the answers to the questions on what happened to my brother.

HAYES: At this point, Thayne Smika was our primary suspect. Friends and acquaintances of Mr. Smika have reported him as behaving erratically. They thought that he was using drugs and just kind of going downhill fast.

We also interviewed another witness. Jeff Cohen was a friend of Sid's. We learned from Jeff that everybody had been up the night before into the early morning hours of August 1st. He told us that what was supposed to happen that evening or early morning was Thayne was supposed to return some money to Sid and in addition to paying the rent, was also going to give Sid some additional money and some cocaine.

Jeff told us that his friend Sid had been selling small amounts of cocaine in the previous months, and that Sid had suspected that Thayne Smika was stealing cocaine from Sid. It is our beliefs that Thayne Smika that night did not have the cocaine or the money to give back to Sidney Wells.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALSH: I am the father of a college student, and I think it would be very naive to not think that your college-aged son might be trying recreational drugs. He might sell recreational drugs here or there. It is not a reason for someone to kill Sid Wells. It is not a reason for police not to investigate this case. Sid Wells was murdered in cold blood. That is what this case is about.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRACKLEY: At this stage of the investigation, Thayne Smika is the focus. Based on the note that Thayne Smika had left his roommates, the police were able to locate him in Akron, Colorado, which is where Thayne's parents were living at the time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

HAYES (voice-over): Testing 1, 2, 3. This will be a taped interview with Thayne, last name Smika.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Mr. Smika did not appear to be particularly nervous. He did not appear to be too surprised that the detectives were there, certainly was not surprised to learn that his roommate had been killed. There was no emotion shown by Mr. Smika.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: So, you say you left about two?

THAYNE SMIKA, VICTIM'S PRIMARY SUSPECT: I think (INAUDIBLE) around instead of 10?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: He left the apartment before you did?

SMIKA: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: Where should the money and the coke be?

SMIKA: It should be in the apartment.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Despite what we heard from Thayne Smika, no money was found on Sidney Wells' person, nor was any money or cocaine found in the apartment.

BRACKLEY: Several days after the murder of Sid wells, the police drove back to Akron, Colorado to search the house of Thayne Smika's mother. Thayne Smika was not at his mother is house at the time of the search.

HAYES: Thayne Smika's mother talked about some not very complimentary character traits. Mrs. Smika thought that her son may be a psychopath and may very well have been involved in the murder of Sidney Wells.

It was pretty significant coming from a parent, and especially a mother. We had a search warrant for the house. One of the first areas that we searched was the bedroom closet. We pulled a box off the shelf and inside that box, we found a 20 gauge shotgun.

We knew that Mr. Wells had been killed with a 20-gauge shotgun. What added to that suspicion was Thayne Smika's sister lived in the house, telling us that they had just cleaned that room and that previous to August 1, 1983, that gun was not in that bedroom. I remember feeling at the time that we probably had our man.

BRACKLEY: In early October, 1983, Thayne Smika was arrested for murder in the first degree.

ROB WELLS: We heard Thayne Smika had been arrested, we were elated. I thought, got the family settled down, law enforcement did their job, boom. We are going to get the rest of the story now and really find out what happened to Sid.

HAYES: I certainly had a feeling of relief that we had solved the case, but within the next few days, the D.A's office who had approved the arrest warrant for Mr. Smika, came back to us and said that they felt there was not enough evidence. As a result, they would not be filing the murder charges against Mr. Smika. Bail was set and he was released.

BRACKLEY: In order to help further the investigation, the Boulder District Attorney's office convened a grand jury into the murder of Sid Wells. At that time, Thayne Smika is essentially out living in society.

HAYES: At the end of a two-year grand jury run, no indictment was issued by the grand jury.

MENGER: When we found out they had not indicted him, you know, we could not believe it.

ROB WELLS: Shock. Absolute, complete mystification. Grief turned into anger that day.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALSH: For this grand jury to spend two years and look at a mountain of solid evidence and not indict Thayne Smika, something was wrong.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: A few months after the grand jury, we got some documents back from the Boulder D.A's office. I started to go through those and I came upon an agreement that had been signed by the then D.A., and the lawyer that was representing Thayne Smika, they agreed in advance that there would be no indictment. This represented to me an abuse of the grand jury system. That is not the way the system is supposed to work.

SAMUEL WELLS: We were left with the pretty empty feeling that we were never going to get any kind of closure on this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROB WELLS: If we can get him in custody, then maybe we have a shot at knowing the rest of the story.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALSH: This guy is dirty and he is going to run.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MENGER: The detectives felt that Thayne Smika was guilty. Everything pointed to Thayne Smika, but we could not touch him because an arrest warrant was not issued. It was just difficult to -- to even get out of bed in the mornings. Shauna quit college. She grieved in ways that I cannot even imagine.

ROB WELLS: We found out that the District Attorney had guaranteed Thayne Smika would not be indicted by the grand jury. To this day, my family does not know why the D.A. made that deal with Thayne Smika.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALSH: Cops are powerless unless there is an indictment, unless that D.A's office says go arrest this guy. So, cops can knock on the D.A's door every day and say we have the perpetrator. He is going to run. If you do not let us arrest him, he is going to run.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: The next thing we hear about Thayne Smika is a few years later, we got a call from the Denver D.A's office. What we learned was that Mr. Smika eventually made his way to Denver, that he had gone to work for a construction company as a bookkeeper. He had written unauthorized checks to himself and that missing money had been discovered and the Denver D.A's office was able to get an arrest warrant for Mr. Smika.

ROB WELLS: Shortly, after that arrest warrant was issued, that is pretty much the last we have heard of Thayne Smika.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALSH: It is three years after the murder. Smika has disappeared but Dave Hayes, caring, determined, dedicated cop, never gives up.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROB WELLS: Every year, he was bringing more information forward on my brother is case. It could be evidence like the shotgun shells and taking all of this evidence and re-evaluating it, reanalyzing it and bringing in new technologies, new forensics in to see how that could be applied in this case. And, he would go in every year with new evidence to the D.A's.

HAYES: We wanted to bring the case to conclusion. No matter how long it took, we were going to stay with it.

BRACKLEY: I started in the Boulder District Attorney's office in 2009. I started under the new administration with D.A's Stan Garnett and sure enough, in the summer of 2009, Dave Hayes showed up on our doorstep with boxes upon boxes upon boxes of the investigative file into the murder of Sid Wells. In December of 2010, 27 years after Sid Wells was murdered, the D.A. signed off on an arrest warrant accusing Thayne Smika of murder in the first degree. HAYES: After getting the warrant, we put together a coordinated

search, which included sending detectives to every place where there was members of the Smika family or close friends of the Smika family. Unfortunately, the family without exception told us they did not know where Thayne was and did not know how to locate him.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALSH: I think mistakes were made. I think this family has suffered what my family did. Incompetence, bad judgment, mistakes, and that precluded the real bad guy, the guy that killed Sid, from facing justice.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROB WELLS: Well, Sid has been gone for 30 years. The things that he has missed out on, while Thayne is out there enjoying his life, such as it is, no justice in that at all. Sid's murder has been agonizing for us. My brother who found Sid, his life has been forever changed. It is almost like he is frozen in that moment in time.

SAMUEL WELLS: There is not a day that goes by that I do not think about it. I would like to see Thayne Smika arrested and charged duly. It would make me very happy. I would be probably the happiest guy alive.

MENGER: Because of a terminal illness, I do not know that I will live long enough to see a resolution in this case, but I would hope that I can, and I have never given up hope.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALSH: Thayne Smika has brown hair and hazel eyes. He may be working as an accountant or bookkeeper. Unconfirmed sightings have placed him in Southern California and in Mexico. If you have seen Thayne Smika, or have any information as to his whereabouts, please call 1-866-the- HUNT or go online at cnn.com/thehunt. You can remain anonymous. We will pass your tip on to the proper authorities and if requested, will not reveal your name.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

THOMAS MARANDA, DEPUTY U.S. MARSHAL: The Jehovah's Witness, they are a very close-knit community. Then here comes Rick McLean and he destroys all of that.

DEBRA WESCHE, MCLEAN'S FORMER FAMILY FRIEND: He was like a wolf in sheep's clothing.

MARANDA: He cannot turn it off. He is not going to stop.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEO CAPTION)

Frederick McLean charged with child sexual assault on the run since September 2004.

(END VIDEO CAPTION)

ORVILLE WESCHE, MCLEAN'S FORMER FAMILY FRIEND: The first time I met Rick McLean was at a meeting at the Alpine Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses.

DEBRA WESCHE: He was a ministerial servant, so he had privileges of helping the elders maybe read during the meeting. I thought he was liked by everybody. He was very easygoing.

ORVILLEWESCHE: I could relate with Rick because he worked on high performance cars, and I have worked on race boats and race cars myself; so, on that level, we had a lot in common. And often, our two families would work together out in a door-to-door ministry.

DEBRA WESCHE: We started doing family things with them right after their daughter was born. They wanted to go on vacation with us in the summers. They invited us over to dinner a lot. So, we ended up doing a lot of things with the McLeans.

ANDREA WESCHE, DEBRA AND ORVILLE'S DAUGHTER: He always wanted to do stuff with us kids, whether it be like, "Do you guys want to go like play games at the arcade or do you want to go get ice cream." He was definitely respected in the church. I felt like everyone got along with him. He was definitely trusted, well-liked.

I remember when it started, he would always have my brother is -- you want to come spend the night, so we would spend the night frequently. He would want to tell us like stories. As time went on, that is when he started molesting me. Basically, right in front of my brothers but they did not even know it.

I mean, lights were off and no one knew what was going on. This started probably around 8. It went on for about -- I would say until I was about 13. I did not really know what to do, so I just did not say anything.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALSH: Paedophiles have a compulsion that they cannot deal with. They will risk family, fortune, reputation, to satisfy that narcissistic desire.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARANDA: The first step in his process would be to gain the trust of the parents of the young girls he intended on victimizing, so he would leverage that fact of how close-knit a Jehovah's Witness community is. He would build on that to get the parents to bring children to him. Finally, in the spring of 2004, the first victim confronted him and

said point-blank, you molested me, and he admitted to it in front of her, in front of the adults, and in front of his wife. That was the dam-busting moment and the floodgates opened from then.

DEBRA WESCHE: Nancy McLean called me and told me someone had come forward and told them that she had been molested by Rick. We said, "Well, do not worry. We love rick." I actually remember doing that; but, then I think I realized, it sunk in.

She said, "You need to talk to your daughter." I called her up to my bedroom and as soon as I said it, I knew that it had happened to her. I could just tell by her face, by the look on her face. So -- and then I said did anything happen to you. She said yes, and she started crying.

ANDREA WESCHE: It is just something that I just tried to forget about for so long. At that point, I had just like suppressed all of this. Like you know, you block out so much.

DEBRA WESCHE: We were very angry. Immediately, we wanted Rick caught.

ORVILLE WESCHE: Absolute betrayal. I just could not imagine anything worse.

MARANDA: More victims started coming forward through summer of 2004. So, at this point, McLean is been charged with 16 counts of sexual assault on four children. Rick McLean's family left him. They packed up all their stuff and moved out, left him on his own.

DEBRA WESCHE: He wrote us a letter apologizing to us and asking for us to remember the good Rick, but I really feel there was no good in him.

MARANDA: He started liquidating his businesses. Sold off race cars. Sold off the properties that he owned. And, I kind of believe he had a plan for a long time. He, some level, knew this day was going to come. At one point, Rick McLean called his wife and asked her and the kids to meet him off a particular off ramp in Southwest Riverside County.

They went out there and they met. And, he said something along the lines of, I cannot go to prison. So, the easiest thing for me to do is just to get out of everybody is life. I am going to disappear. You are never going to see me again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALSH: They are the vampires of our children that live amongst us.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARANDA: We found a treasure map. I am thinking this might be my one shot to get this guy in custody.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARANDA: Rick McLean was revealed as a molester.

DEBRA WESCHE: I could not believe that as hard as we tried to give our kid as good life that these things had happened.

ANDREA WESCHE: It destroyed my family. I mean how would it not? Just basically because of this sick individual.

MARANDA: When this young girl confronted him and outed him for the monster that he is, very shortly thereafter he disappeared. One morning, his father-in-law wakes up. He had dumped his truck in the father-in-law's driveway. Wallet, cell phone, some letters for the family are sitting in the truck.

We also found a treasure map. There was a schematic on it. There were instructions about where to find his buried container. And, McLean wrote this cryptic note to his family. He said, if something happens to me, someone will contact you and tell you where to find the house where this treasure is buried.

So, on the map there was a number, 614. We knew it was part of a house number. We were not sure we had the complete number. We had no idea what street it was on. Did not know what city it was in or even what state it was in.

We looked and looked and looked and worked with the postal service, and looked at maps. We were never able to really break the code of the map. We were analyzing his last business transactions. And, we were able to account for everything except one car. It was described as a three-quarter scale replica 1955 Chevy race car. Pretty unique car.

And, I was actually able to backtrack to the guy who originally built the cars who lives down in Florida. He calls me and says, "Hey, this guy over in Daytona Beach has one of these cars." So, I get a hold of that guy, and he said that he bought it from this dealership in Georgia. Well, I talked to the guy in Georgia. He bought the car from an auction in Arizona in 2005.

Now, I am excited because this falls into my timeline. So, I ended up with this huge stack of paperwork from all of the auctions that happened in Scottsdale in 2005. Found the car, pulled the information. I did not recognize the name. But, as soon as I read the address it was the biggest, most exciting moment of the investigation.

"Oh! My God. I decoded the treasure map," because, the address was the partial from the treasure map. Perfect absolute match for the sketch that he had left behind in the truck. I am thinking it might be my one shot to break this thing open and get this guy in custody. What we found was a cystic retired guy living by himself in this house.

MARTIN, SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA: They showed me a picture and they said, "Do you know this person?" And, I knew it was McLean. A long-time neighbor brought Rick to my house. Rick was going through a divorce. I invited Rick to stay in the spare bedroom. I did not know he had a different side. I only feel badly that I helped perpetuated freedom.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALSH: It is really sad how these guys work society. How they are able to exist amongst us and constantly count on the charity and goodwill of people.

MARANDA: We used the map to identify the exact spot on the side of the house where McLean had indicated on the treasure map that something was buried. We called in a special forensics team. Unfortunately, when they dug it up, there was nothing there. But there was an indentation in the ground that showed a container had been buried there just as he described in the treasure map.

Our best guess is that he hid some money or may be some other important documents in there to try to keep them away from law enforcement. Once he decided to leave the house where he was staying, he dug it up and took it with him.

The hardest part about this case is that I know after nine years that this guy is still out there. His used for the Jehovah's Witness church was his access to victims. There are several other churches and organizations in the country that would take him in that would give him similar access to victims.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALSH: Like what most people do not understand about paedophiles is the depth of their cunning. You have to live in society while you are molesting your best friends', your neighbors or your relative's children. They are the vampires that live amongst us.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDREA WESCHE: I figure they would find rick. I did not think it would be ten years later we are still wondering, where is he? Are we going to find him? We do not even know how many kids he has molested over the last -- however many years.

ORVILLE WESCHE: The best case scenario that could happen is he is caught as soon as possible, trial, life in prison. And, prison population has a way of taking care of business.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALSH: Rick McLean enjoys camping and is a fan of traditional country music. He is a night owl. If you have seen Rick McLean or have any information as to his whereabouts, please call 866-the-HUNT or go online at cnn.com/thehunt. You can remain anonymous. We will pass your tip onto the proper authorities and, if requested, we will not reveal your name.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDREA WESCHE: You know, I even have dreams of it. It is like the same recurring dream where he is there and I cannot get help and -- you know? It would be nice to find him so he can get what he deserves and go to jail and not hurt any more kids.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALSH: I am sure rick McLean is out there. I am sure he is got children in his crosshairs. He is not going to stop. He is out there trying to convince you to let him have your children, so that he can rape.

(END VIDEOTAPE)