Detective James Gamber
Appearances
20/20
Explosive Secrets
That summit to plummet journey meant it wasn't even his Lincoln Town car that Gary had driven to La Paloma that day. He'd borrowed it from a friend to keep up appearances. And before Gary was even buried, Detective Gamber already had a long list of persons of interest.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
But associates of an eccentric billionaire say he had reasons of his own to want Gary Triano very dead.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
And we're going to reenact the bombing. Everybody's under. To see how it could have been done.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
At the Pima County Sheriff's Office, way in the back corner of the impound lot, after 28 years, is Gary Triano's last ride, that 1989 Lincoln Town Car. Detective James Gamber showing up close just how devastating that pipe bomb was on that huge mass of Detroit metal. And this is Gary Triano.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
And I know that there's been a lot that's been picked over this, and it's changed over the many years since this crime happened, but you can still see the incredible destruction that took place. This roof is supposed to be flat, essentially, isn't it?
20/20
Explosive Secrets
So everybody knew it was Gary's cart. The one thing Gary never did was lock his car.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Now we're starting to pick up some heavy components. That you can take what seems like a scene of classic chaos and create any kind of order out of it is remarkable to us. So what specifically did you find as you looked at all that evidence?
20/20
Explosive Secrets
I walk away. So finding that killer became Detective Gamber's main goal. There was a monumental list of individuals to go through. but only a few on it were known to have explicit feelings of rage against Gary.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
For Detective Jim Gamber, one person with hints of rage was an ex-girlfriend whom he'd broken up with while she was pregnant with his child.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
And according to investigators, Robin was so angry, she'd thrown a glass phase at his head.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
There was no shortage of them to check out. When Gary went bust in May of 94, he left $27 million worth of creditors holding the bag. And that was including those Mexican and Chinese investors. Investigators were able to clear all of them. But there was a man who not only got stiffed by Gary Triano, he got humiliated by Gary too, a Tucson trustafarian named Neil McNeese.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
even at his own personal doctor, Lawrence D'Antonio, accompanying him on his travels.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
According to investigators, Gary Triano had approached Neal for 80 grand to invest in him immediately. But McNeese wanted collateral for his $80,000 loan. And newly divorced Gary had just the answer.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
And his former associates allege, along with his vast wealth, McNeese also knew the right people, people that had the capacity to make a bomb.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Welcome to Tucson, Arizona, or even on a sweet golf course like this one. The triple digit temperatures and the blue skies above can transform in an instant.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
so little hard evidence pointing to anyone for Detective Gamber. But then, out of the clear blue, Pima County receives a call from an out-of-state detective about an abandoned minivan some 500 miles away in California. It's crammed with stuff that has a name on it. That name is Gary Trianum. But why?
20/20
Explosive Secrets
800 miles away from the Tucson, Arizona desert. Atop the snowy mountains of Colorado. Two cases are about to collide and there's a tantalizing new lead about to emerge thanks to a fraud investigation by Aspen detective James Crowley into a local named Ron Young.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
He comes to the attention of Detective Crowley after two local businessmen allege that Ron has stolen more than $100,000, and they both want to press charges.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
So Crowley gets search and arrest warrants and sets out to pay Ron Young a visit at his place on Snow Bunny Lane.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Ron Young is six foot six, maybe 300 pounds. But where has he gone? Six months later, Detective Crowley gets a call from the cops in Yorba Linda, California.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Authorities discover that the abandoned Dodge Caravan was rented by Ron Young and was parked outside his parents' house.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
And as Detective Crowley learns, more than one of those things has Gary Triano's name on it.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
It was Crowley's first encounter with Gary Triano's name, but he recognized the name Pamela Phillips because earlier that year, she had walked into the Aspen Police Department and accused Ron Young of stealing money from her bank accounts.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Detective Crowley had an outstanding warrant for Ron Young's arrest. So why did his still-at-large fraud suspect appear to be all up in the business of this Gary Triano from Tucson, Arizona? Then came November 1st, 1996, and the morning after.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
And when Pima County gets this call from Detective Crowley, laying out the evidence retrieved from the van, especially those documents with Gary Triano's name on them, they finally have the connection they've been waiting for.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Detective Crowley also hands over to detectives in Tucson a notebook from the van. Inside that notebook, a handwritten list of names, including Gary Triano's niece, Melissa.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
But now, no one can find where Ron Young is or get any answers he might have. And so the investigation into the identity of Gary's killer, it stalls. For nearly 10 years, until an expert enters the case who's got decades of experience. And that helps investigators with the identity of Gary's killer from a painstaking reconstruction of the bomb itself.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Here we are. In New Mexico, Anthony. Yes. Typical Land of Enchantment landscape around us here, right?
20/20
Explosive Secrets
So a decade after the murder of Gary Triano, the case has gone stone cold. The Sheriff's Department decides to invite one of ATF's top bomb experts, Anthony May, into the investigation, just to see if he could help determine who built that bomb that wound up in Gary's car. Anthony, when I think of blowing stuff up in New Mexico, I think of the movie Oppenheimer. Oh, yes.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
So if you go just outside Socorro, New Mexico, you'll find this 40 square mile field laboratory, and it's called the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center, EMERTEC for short. It's a research and training division of New Mexico Tech, and it's a place where highly skilled bomb specialists do their work with explosives. So we're blowing something up today, aren't we?
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Today, Anthony May is going to take us inside his field of explosive expertise and show us just how this kind of detective work can help authorities identify a killer. What kind of car is this that we're looking at right here?
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Melaton Flores is a research engineer and assistant director here at EmmerTech. He and his team are the ones who found the car and put together a pipe bomb all closely resembling Gary Triano's car and what was inside it on the evening of November 1st, 1996.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
The EmmerTech engineers have these high-speed cameras ready to film the explosion at 20,000 frames per second.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Like with the Triano case, the pipe bomb is placed in a blue canvas bag and it's positioned on the passenger seat. A technician spools out the firing fuse. We take cover in a bunker some 2,000 feet away.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
I think it's smoldering a little bit. Yeah, it looks that way. The car's on fire. Every bomb scene tells a story, and the debris scattered by this bomb is much like the debris that was scattered after the bomb that exploded in Tucson on November 1st, 1996. Debris gathered up by law enforcement that Anthony May would go on to analyze. So after the all clear, we move in for a closer look.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Does it matter to you that it went straight up? It'll tell me the orientation of that pipe bomb. That you can take what seems like a scene of classic chaos and create any kind of order out of it is remarkable to us.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Back in 2005, it was Anthony May taking the fragments of that 1996 bomb that killed Gary Triano and reassembling the device, hoping that the process would offer some leads in a case that had grown coal.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
So it took Tony May about a month to piece back together all the fragments of the bomb. And he showed us the reproduction he was able to construct. So somehow from all this material, you're able to recreate something that looks very much like what the actual bomb must have been. Yes. Is there any indication that Gary Triano would have seen that bag in the seat next to him?
20/20
Explosive Secrets
And just like any puzzle, once the pieces start to fit together, there is a picture that emerges that would eliminate some suspects and start to bring others into sharper focus.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Turns out the outdated 6-volt battery used on the bomb was also a clue about the bomber's age.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
that it might have been an amateur building their first bomb and that the choice of battery was suggesting an older suspect excluded organized crime and got authorities focusing on the man with the disorganized van. Ron Young.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
And as investigators continue to build that wall, they are intrigued by the enticing link between Ron Young and Gary's ex, Pam Phillips. Were they more than business partners? And will unearthed audio recordings reveal whether Pam was possibly an accomplice in the murder of her ex-husband, Gary Triano? or a victim of Ron Young.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
I walk away. The ex-wife, the business manager, the murder. How do they all fit together?
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Ken Halligan knew who the dead man behind the wheel of the destroyed car was. He was a longtime member of the country club named Gary Triano.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Here in Tucson, Arizona, handsome, self-confident land developer Gary Triano was married to Pamela Phillips, herself a charismatic player in Tucson real estate. They were a power couple with expensive tastes and the assets to satisfy them.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
But ever the optimist, Gary felt confident he'd be on top once again soon. Until November 1st, 1996, when a car bomb blew his comeback and his car to smithereens in a parking lot just like this one. But who or what wanted Gary Triano dead?
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Despite Pam and Gary's bitter divorce, investigators could see no immediate connection between Pam in Colorado and Gary's pipe bomb murder in Arizona until cops stumbled across that minivan in California belonging to Ron Young, packed with documents with Gary and Pam's names on them.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
They killed Gary. But the question was, who killed Gary? And why would they do it in such a spectacular way? The blast had stopped Gary's gold Movado watch at 5.38 p.m. End of the line for a Wheeler dealer who was unafraid to gamble on the golf course, or for that matter, in the business world. And according to his lawyer Ron Lehman, a man always ready to bet big on himself.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Pima County investigators needed to understand the complex relationship between Pam Phillips and Ron Young. According to friends, that relationship had begun here, on Aspen's Snow Bunny Lane, where Ron Young lived. Pam was practically his next door neighbor.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
It was not Pam Phillips' kind of neighborhood, a long way down from that mansion in Arizona. So she asked her neighbor, Ron Young, to help out on her business idea. It was an astrology website called Starbabies.com.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
And he helped set that up. A new-in-town ski instructor who'd gotten a side gig as a live-in mani for Pam's two kids? Kevin MacDonald says he saw a lot of Ron Young.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Kevin would recall Pam as a good and caring mother to her kids. But according to Pam's friends, Starbabies.com and Ron Young were only part of her plan to return to the top of the mountain here in ski country.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
If it was Pam's long-term goal, it was fueled by her short-term needs. She was running out of money. And for that, she blamed Gary Triano. Why would she have been so mad at him?
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Once Pam and Gary had cruised on luxury yachts and private planes. Now, Pam was steamed that Gary was making her pay to fly the kids back to Aspen after his visit with them.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Pam was convinced that Gary was hiding assets. So allegedly, she asked Ron Young to find them.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Because of their business relationship, Ron had access to her accounts and he allegedly started taking out money for himself. That's what led Pam to report Ron's alleged fraud in the first place. Yet it wasn't long after that Ron Young skipped town and vanished. He was one step ahead of an Aspen arrest warrant.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Ron Young is nowhere to be found, but Pima County sheriffs decide to talk with Pam.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Yet less than a year later, Pam is out of Snow Bunny Lane and into a million dollar home. Why were authorities so interested in her change of fortune?
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Pothole number three. Allegedly, that's how the twice-divorced Pam Phillips referred to Ron Young, her sometime lover, neighbor, and business associate, in a note she wrote to her aunt.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
There was, however, a $2 million life insurance policy on Gary Triano's life, set up to take care of his two kids with Pam.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Now, even with a friend's assistance, Pam's financial straits were affecting her ability to pay for that policy.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Starting in the 1980s, this former car salesman, he'd sought to take advantage of the population boom in Tucson by getting into real estate and land development and gaming on a Native American reservation.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
So as Pam was spending that life insurance money and climbing back into Aspen society, Gary's murder remained unsolved. It was a burden on the entire Triano clan, the notoriety haunting their every move.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
In hopes of teasing Ron Young out of hiding, Detective Gamber uses his network of undercover agents and investigators to approach the TV show America's Most Wanted.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
So this chiropractor out of Fort Lauderdale, Florida informs America's Most Wanted that not only is his patient Ron Young, but Ron has a scheduled appointment the very next day.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
After his appointment, Ron is returning to his car when Broward County's fugitive unit makes the arrest, all of it captured on America's Most Wanted.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Ron Young. Authorities hold Ron Young on fraud and weapons charges because when Ron's apprehended, he's got a loaded Colt 380 semi-automatic gun in his possession. So now detectives race to Florida to see what Ron Young might have to say about Pamela Phillips and Gary Triano. But when they touch down, they get a big surprise, one that will blow this case wide open.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
After being featured on the show America's Most Wanted, Ron Young is arrested in Florida.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Gary Triano was not shy about spending that mega money on the finer things in life. You know, limos, Learjets, even a yacht.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Among the physical evidence seized from Ron's properties, detectives find spreadsheets, FedEx receipts, thousands of email printouts, and letters that shockingly reveal Pam and Ron had been in contact the whole time Ron was a fugitive, even after Pam had accused Ron of fraud and minimized their relationship to police.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
I think the apparent connection between us is best kept at a minimum, she writes. I don't want to appear as too much of a helper, though you know I am. I love you and count on you, Pamela.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
It takes months just for detectives to listen and catalog the dozens of hours of telephone conversations that Ron has secretly recorded. And the contents are stunning.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Recovered emails and FedEx receipts detail how, at Ron Young's direction, Pam made regular cash payments to him, choreographed, authorities believe, in a manner to avoid detection.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Let's have a look at some of these. This one you were just telling us is very special to your heart.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Armed with this new evidence, police get a warrant to search Pam's place, the Aspen mansion her slice of the insurance money paid for.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Meanwhile, after pleading guilty to firearms charges, Ron Young is sentenced to 10 months in prison in Florida. After his jail term, he's sent back to Aspen.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
After nearly 12 years, the police finally obtained arrest warrants, hoping to bring long-awaited justice in the case of Gary Triana.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
That, too, was Gary Triano, a valued role model and mentor for his niece, Melissa Triano. As her uncle and later her employer, he was a figure of warmth and encouragement for her after a childhood full of hardships. What was it like for you after all the experiences you've gone through to really get to know this man and to come to respect the way he went through life?
20/20
Explosive Secrets
On Friday, October 17th, 2008, cops mount a large-scale operation to simultaneously arrest Ron Young and Pam Phillips for the 1996 murder of her ex, Gary Triano.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Unbeknownst to police, Pam is in Europe, and she's leaning into the Alpine lifestyle in a swanky lakeside town in Switzerland called Lugano.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
While out in Lugano, it's just not Pam's style to keep a low profile. And so sure enough, a local tipster hears news of Pam's murder indictment and picks up the phone.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
But there's a hitch. See, the Swiss government wants a guarantee that the U.S. won't invoke the death penalty. Gamber and his team are able to work out the details.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Ultimately, there's a multinational effort that leads to Pam's arrest in Austria. And while she's sitting in a jail cell in Vienna awaiting extradition, back in the States, Ron Young goes on trial.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
The prosecution acknowledges no one reported seeing Ron in Tucson on or around November 1st, 1996. Nor did he have anything in his possession specifically tying him to Arizona or to Gary Triano on the date of his murder. However, the prosecution does have Anthony May.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
The prosecution makes the case that in their conversations, Pam and Ron were talking about the murder of Gary Triano.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Prosecution points out to the jury an email that surfaced from Ron to Pam, referring to Gary as an 800-pound monster. The communication between Ron and Pam was the crux of the case. The defense countering that Ron was simply extorting money from Pam.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
He's blackmailing Pam. Then there was also an out of the blue prison witness with a prosecution perfect account to tell the jury, Andre Mims, a cellmate of Ron Young's when he was in prison for the 2005 gun charges.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
But the defense claimed this testimony was made up and immediately called for a mistrial. Motion was denied.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Ron Young was found guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
He'd had two children with his wife Mary. Gary was a devoted father of his son and daughter, and the couple had become a fixture of Tucson society. That changed after Gary crossed paths with a top-earning real estate go-getter. Her name was Pamela Phillips.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
But for Gary Triano's family, the story is far from over, and justice has not been served yet.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
That long road would lead to a fateful night in July 2010, a plane with Pam Phillips on board, making its way from Vienna to an airport in Arizona, where Melissa Triano and Detective Jim Gamber were waiting.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
As Pam prepares to go on trial, her public defender would mount an ambitious murder trial defense.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Could he surprise everyone and get Pam a not guilty verdict? Gary Triano had left his first wife to pursue Pam Phillips. Then, as a Tucson power couple, they lived high on the hog. Now, 17 years after he was killed, Pam Phillips was on trial for Gary's murder.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
For the Triano family, this case represents the ultimate hope in finally bringing justice for Gary. How was that trial for you and your family?
20/20
Explosive Secrets
With records taken from that abandoned minivan in 1996, prosecutors argue how Ron Young closely surveilled Gary Triano's comings and goings, as well as those of Gary Triano's relatives, which included very specific details about Melissa Triano, who took the stand.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
The prosecution then brings out a key witness, Laura Chapman, a former friend of Pam's, who recalls a conversation she says she had with Pam before Gary's death.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
The defense claimed Laura's memory was faulty and that Pam was not desperate for the life insurance money because she'd lapsed on that last premium payment.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
But for the prosecution, big piece of the puzzle were those taped phone conversations between Ron and Pam discussing Ron's alleged $400,000 cut of that life insurance policy, where in the view of the prosecution, Ron says the quiet part out loud.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
But defense attorneys assert Ron and Pam were not talking about the murder of Gary Triano. Instead, he was extorting Pam for money.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
The defense doesn't just try to point out how neither Ron nor Pam could be tied directly to the bomb at the scene of the crime. The defense goes one step further and says the culprit is somebody else entirely, hot-headed billionaire heir Neil McNeese, out that 80 grand to Triano and enraged by his lies and deceit.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Remember, Dr. D'Antonio had come forward after Gary died, claiming that Gary Triano was on Neil McNeese's alleged kill list and that he was responsible for Gary Triano's death.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
The defense argues that McNeese not only had motive, he also had the means, with a woodworker friend named Jerry Capuano, who they claim had a shop and the know-how to make a remote-controlled pipe bomb.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Authorities continue to assert there's no evidence tying McNeese or Capuano to the murder. The McNeese family issuing a statement in 2014, maintaining their belief in his innocence and relief that justice might prevail.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
The camera had always loved Pam right back. Now, after two months of testimony, it was time to see what a jury would feel about Pam Phillips as they decided her fate.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Pam was a figure of widespread fascination and could be every bit a life-altering sensation. As much of a merger as a marriage, Gary and Pam were officially power-coupled at a black-tie wedding on a yacht in San Diego. Did you hear that the vows they exchanged included the phrase, for richer or for richer, instead of for richer or poorer?
20/20
Explosive Secrets
The Aspen socialite is accused of hiring... After 26 days of testimony with 100 witnesses, 670 exhibits, the fate of Pam Phillips lies in the hands of the jury.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
After hearing her sentence, the once-prominent socialite turns to address a packed courtroom, the only way she could do so without facing questions.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
outside the courtroom after losing their father almost two decades earlier. Gary's children expressing both gratitude and sadness at the outcome.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Meanwhile, Pam's accomplice, Ron Young, also spending the rest of his life in prison, and he's exhausted all of his appeals. Pam, however, is still fighting for post-conviction relief based on DNA evidence found back in 2014.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Pam's appellate attorney maintaining that new, more sophisticated DNA technology will prove that someone other than Ron Young and Pam Phillips murdered Gary Triano.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Prosecutors stand by the verdict. They continue to say that neither billionaire Neil McNeese nor his friend Jerry Capuano were in any way responsible for Gary's murder.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
At a local cemetery, there's a bench inscribed with his name and Gary's favorite poem, Rudyard Kipling's If, the classic tribute to the same endurance and optimism that Melissa always saw in her uncle, who in the face of life's setbacks and defeats, sought always to remain admirably strong. Would you mind reading part of it for us out loud?
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Pam and Gary would have two kids of their own, while rubbing shoulders with some powerful peers.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
So, on that fateful day of November 1st, 1996, Gary Triano was approaching his 53rd birthday with a note of optimism, unaware of the big surprise that awaited him as he stepped up the 18th green. In fact, this invite had gone out to all of Gary's friends, inviting them to a surprise birthday party that was to begin in just a few hours.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
An early birthday gift left at his unlocked car by a friend perhaps? Gary leans over to unzip the bag and...
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Gary's body is still in the driver's seat. When Melissa Triano heard there had been some sort of incident with Gary, she immediately rushes over to the country club. So what do you remember feeling as you were running towards the car?
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Immediately, cops were asking, who could have wanted to kill Gary in such a spectacular fashion? They would quickly learn, a lot of people.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
So in the movie Casino, Robert De Niro's character, closely based on the real-life mobster Frank Lefty Rosenthal, climbs into his 1983 Eldorado, turns on the ignition, and is engulfed in a fireball.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Arizona has a past with the mob. In the mid-70s, newspaper reporter Don Bowles, he was investigating organized crime. Getting national attention, covered by Walter Cronkite.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
And when Bowles returned to his car, a remote-controlled bomb exploded under the driver's seat. Bowles uttered the word mafia as he lay dying, but police were never able to pin his death on organized crime. Strictly speaking, what killed Gary Triano was not a car bomb. It was a pipe bomb on the passenger seat, detonated by remote control.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
And as Detective James Gamber began looking into Gary's murder, the mob was top of mind.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
But why would the mob, or anyone else, have it in for Gary Triano? Well, maybe because by the time he was leaving that country club on the first day of November 1996, he was no longer the high-flying millionaire everyone thought he was. In fact, Gary was flat broke.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Gary had owned chunks of undeveloped real estate, he'd invested in a radio station, even financed this misbegotten movie, The Mafu Cage, starring Lee Grant, Carole Kane, Will Gere, and an orangutan.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
Turns out, according to some, who didn't want him dead? A long list of persons of interest. An ex-girlfriend, an ex-wife, ex-business associates.
20/20
Explosive Secrets
By the 90s, Gary was on the hook for $27 million. He'd run out of time, he'd run out of ideas and declared bankruptcy.