Chad Wilhite
Appearances
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
Did you kill her? He obviously tells us no. He says she could come back any day. When we asked if she left, was on her own, he responded, she is either not coming back because something happened or occurred against her will. We're like, holy cow.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
So he walks us around the house and shows us where their bathroom's at, walks us to a closet. While we're in the closet, Henry points to several suitcases. There's a silver one and a purple one. And he tells us that when Cassandra left, she took the matching suitcases with her to those other two. So we know now we're probably looking for a silver suitcase and a purple suitcase.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
He goes into the story, but it really didn't make sense to us. Henry deflects blame to everybody else except himself. That is one thing we noticed pretty quick. It's always someone else's fault. It's never Henry Steiger's fault.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
He, at one point, referred to himself as acting like a brother figure to her and taking care of her. Thinking to myself, a brother figure? Who the heck sleeps with their sister then and has a baby with them if you're a brother figure? That's crazy. It's another one of those things that we later figure out that I don't know what to believe when it comes out of Henry Steiger's mouth.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
We directly ask him, did you kill her? And he obviously tells us no, but he makes a couple of statements that we find very, I don't want to say troubling, but something that we want to follow up on. In one of them, he says, she could come back any day. She could be in some type of rehab center or she could be indisposed of. It's pretty telling.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
He responded, she is either not coming back because something happened or occurred against her will. We're like, holy cow. After those two statements, I believe Henry harmed her. And now we just got to figure out how he harmed her and where she may be.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
It was a missing person case at that time. And the missing person was a lady by the name of Cassandra Robinson. She had been reported missing by her sister, Carlisa. Carlisa had told the reporting officer that she had not seen her sister for approximately four months. And the last time she had seen or heard from her would have been on February the 1st of 2018.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
And what we find out is he is involved in a coffee bean roasting business. And the two people he's involved in this business with is a lady by the name of Nadina and a guy by the name of Julian Mazur. Henry refers to Julian as his right-hand man, kind of does everything for him. His driver, his business associate is basically his do-boy. There'd probably be a better way to describe Julian.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
We explained to her why we're there and what we're working. She states during that interview... So it was on around the February 1st or 2nd. She receives a text message from Henry saying, hey, I have a surprise for you. He's like, OK. So she goes over and picks him up. And lo and behold, Henry's holding this child.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
The whole child caught her off guard because, according to Nadina, she believed that her and Henry were in a relationship since about 2013, so about five years.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
Henry tells her that, you know, about Cassandra, just briefly about her. But during that conversation, according to Nadina... He says Cassandra is only used for her breast milk.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
Julian confirmed that, yeah, he is a business associate with Steiger, and they were involved in this coffee bean business. He described his involvement as the driver. He would drive Henry around town wherever he needed to go. And basically, he was at his beck and call. If Henry needed something, he would take care of it.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
For some reason, it stuck out in Julian's mind that he, on that particular day, the morning of, he drove to multiple DMV locations with Henry that were both in Escambia County, which is the county that Pensacola's in, and Santa Rosa County, which is the next county over, and also to several different Wells Fargo banks.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
He said he had had two vehicles put in his name. We learned about a storage unit at the Noah's Ark storage, which is like literally two blocks from the police department.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
Henry had given him $40,000 in cash to deposit in the bank. And Henry had told him he can't put more than $9,999 in 99 cent account at one time. And I asked him, well, did Henry tell you why you can't do that? He told him about the banking reporting regulations, which $10,000 or more, they have to fill out a SARS report.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
So Henry explained that to him, and he needed to do multiple deposits at the various banks, branches of the Wells Fargo.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
So the good thing with being in, when I was in fraud is I made a lot of connections at these banks. I mean, I can call our prosecutor and be like, hey man, I need a subpoena for bank records from Wells Fargo. And literally it'll be in my email in like a couple of minutes. And I'm talking to the people at Wells Fargo. I'm like, look, all I need is this right now.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
I need something official from y'all showing these deposits and they do us a solid and get us what we need.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
Cassandra Robinson was a typical girl her age. She was active on social media. She had worked as a dancer in one of our local clubs. So she was just a normal, stay-at-home person, raising her child, involved with her baby's dad.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
During the search warrant, we find just a lot of money wrapped up in like three by five cards, a lot of that. Money just in weird places.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
Comes across the orange-colored toolbox, and when he opens it up, there's approximately $100,000 in cash wrapped up in the bank wrappers.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
We found some airline receipts. But what we did see was the matching purple suitcase that Cassandra supposedly left with was in that storage unit. And in that purple suitcase was ladies' clothing, shoes, brush, and various other items.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
On July 2nd, we get a call from the sheriff's department, out of all people, that there is a guy named Henry Steiger at a Dollar General store. about 20 minutes from the police department with a child. And he was out there buying like a disposable phone and some gift cards, like Visa gift cards.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
That's when he, again, first learns the terms murder and homicide in this search warrant. I just got such a dumb look on his face.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
We got there just in time that we believed we did. When we took him into custody... Searching him, we find two prepaid cell phones, a bunch of keys, and some cash.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
So he comes down on July the 10th and explains to us that he's actually doing construction work for Steiger at a business in downtown Pensacola that Steiger has the plans to convert into a coffee shop, which we didn't think was too strange because he's in this coffee business.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
By the time Detective Iverson and I get back up to our offices, the officer who's working the front desk calls us and says, hey, Shelby said there's something he forgot to tell y'all and wants y'all to come down. I'm like, oh, OK. So we go down there and he says, hey, I forgot to tell y'all that back in the middle of June, Henry was getting grief therapy.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
The area they were living in, heck, it was, I want to say, like two blocks from the fire department. So it was a nice little area, nice house.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
from his HOA about a trailer he had parked in his driveway. And I told him he could park his trailer out on my empty land lot thing and that he could leave it there for a while.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
We drive out there and this trailer is tucked back in like a wooded area and is surrounded by all the honeybees that he is using to produce the honey. Detective Iverson, she gets out of the vehicle that I'm driving, walks over to the trailer. Me, I don't like pain. I refuse to get out because I don't want to get stung by these bees. I hear Detective Iverson start yelling to get my attention.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
So I walk over there and there's a vent near the front of the trailer. She's like, smell that, tell me what you smell. And it's literally, I about throw up right then. It is obviously the smell of decomposition going on.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
When we open the back of the trailer, the first thing we see is the hot air balloon basket that the people stand in if they're on a hot air balloon. Then we'll remove the basket, which was several hundred pounds. Those things are heavy. We see two green barrels that have a large metal locking device at the top of each one. The first one we open is, there's nothing in it.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
It's like pristine, crystal clean. The second one, once we remove the screw, we find Cassandra inside that barrel.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
It appears that she was stuffed in the barrel feet first. She's wearing a purple shirt, blue jeans, and it's got a bag over her head and. The barrel has a couple inches of bodily fluid in it. It's 100% a homicide. Now, during the search, we just find a bunch of stuff that belongs to Cassandra, a wallet, her ID, Florida Medicare card, gift cards. We find the other missing suitcase.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
Detective Galloway spoke to Henry on the phone. I believe it was June 11th. Henry told Detective Galloway that on February the 1st, which would have been the one year year birthday of their daughter, Evelyn. After the birthday party, Cassandra left in their BMW and she left with some bags. Henry said, I went to bed. She didn't come back.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
And when he woke up, somehow the vehicle and the keys were back at the house and Cassandra was gone. And he hadn't seen from her, seen or heard from her since February the 1st.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
We arrest Julian on the money laundering conspiracy and destructuring the deposits. He spends the night in jail and he comes down on the 26th. His interview is long.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
Then he tells us about a conversation that him and Henry have on the night of the 1st, where he goes into all this philosophical talking stuff.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
mess that he likes to use they're just using plain english and during that he says henry tells him that he basically grabs her by the throat chokes her out the baby she's holding baby at the time the baby slides down hits the ground and then he has to put her in one of those black totes and that's how he gets the body moved out of the house that night
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
I've gotten a pretty good relationship with Evelyn and her adoptive parents. So every year at Christmas, police department sponsors a, like a Christmas party for kids in our area. We've come in contact with whose parents are like victims of crimes. And Evelyn is the only child that gets invited back every year. So I get to see Evelyn every year, which is kind of cool.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
Get invited to her birthday party. So I'm going to her birthday party once or twice. Just a bunch of good folks her family is. And I'm trying not to cry. All she knows is that the family member she's with now is her mom. I haven't told her the story. She'll obviously maybe find out one day, maybe not. But she is thriving.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
Henry told Detective Galloway that she had made statements in the past that when Evelyn turned one years old, she would be leaving.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
Is she just tired and want to go away? Or she was just fed up with life and needed a break? She suffered from some mental health issues in the past. Maybe she went and got herself checked in and didn't tell no one.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
According to her, it was a somewhat volatile relationship at one point. According to Carlisa, Henry had beaten Cassandra up pretty good in the past, but she would never report it to law enforcement. or to anyone that could help her get out of the situation she was in.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
Detective Galloway had interviewed one of Cassandra's friends. Henry had been messing around in their relationship, so she was going to pack her and Evelyn's stuff and they were going to go live in her grandma's house.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
Today's world, just like it was five, seven years ago, everybody's glued to their phone and they're glued to social media.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
She was able to provide us with, obviously, a phone number. She was able to provide us with the social media, her favorite social media site, which would have been Facebook and Instagram. So we were able to get usernames and handle her names off of those in order to help further along the investigation.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
I-110 is a super long road. It runs from literally the East Coast to the West Coast of the whole United States. But it pinged up there. That was the last place it had pinged.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
They searched the inside of the house, outside of the house. They used ground penetrating radar to make sure that to see if there was anything buried in the backyard that maybe would help solve this mystery. All that was done with negative results.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
There was no signs of a struggle or blood or anything found inside the residence that would lead us to believe that she was harmed inside the residence. At least physically attacked maybe inside the residence where she would receive some type of injury.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
There's something going on in her past that we don't know about. Was there people that we don't know about that maybe... harmed her? Did Henry harm her? We don't know. There's a lot of things that were going on or potentially going on that we had to look into.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
We want to start back with an initial interview of the person who has the closest ties to Cassandra, which would be Henry Steiger.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
The house is on a golf course out by the beach. It is very nice out there. In fact, you got to go through a gate guard to get out there. It's called a gated community.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
He doesn't know we're coming. We wanted to have the element of surprise on our side, obviously. Being in law enforcement for 20-something years now, at the time it was only like 15. But any time you have the element of surprise, it's going to be on our side. We don't have time to plan for what he's going to tell us. We don't have time to leave.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
Henry's there, along with Evelyn. And we talked to Henry for two, two and a half hours. We just have pretty candid conversation with him. But what I thought was weird is Evelyn was one years old, a little over one at this point. Kid could barely walk. He held her literally the entire time. And he would feed, while we were there, Evelyn, Apple Jacks.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
Apple Jacks are an orangish color and a greenish color cereal. And I can't remember which one it was, but he refused to give her either the green or the orangish red one. He'd only give them the same as that color. And it was immediately like, this guy, there's something wrong with this guy.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
He seemed to be willing to want to help, seemed to be somewhat concerned. Obviously, the last place he had seen or heard from her was on February the 1st. He had said that during their conversation that evening, Cassandra said she wanted to go on a well-deserved vacation, but he did not know where she had went.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
So we started asking about, well, if she's going on vacation, does she have a passport? How is she going to get in and out of the United States? I'm assuming you got to have a passport. And he didn't believe she had a passport.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
My name is Chad Wilhite. I'm with the Pensacola Police Department. And I was assigned to the Criminal Investigations Division as a detective.
Anatomy of Murder
Hot Air (Cassandra Robinson)
I asked, have you attempted to contact Cassandra? Whether it be through email, text message, phone calls. He said he had not attempted to contact her because he did not want to bother her while she was on her well-deserved vacation. I thought that was very odd. We kind of just put that in the back of our mind and we keep on talking to him.