John Quiñones
Appearances
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
He was a man that just couldn't stand to see his wife leave him. And as turbulent as their marriage was, when she finally said, I need to get away, and she... Hung in there for a long time. But when she finally did, he couldn't take it.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
Certainly, that's the allegation is that he had been very abusive to her. And she had taken pictures of herself with bruises on her arms and neck. And it was pretty clear that she was desperate to get out of there and she needed to get away. And he couldn't stand that. So he came after her.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
Well, when they started questioning him right away, of course, the first suspect is, you know. Of course, the estranged husband. The spouse or the boyfriend. And sure enough, he had an alibi. He said, I was home with my kids and I stayed home until midnight when we went out to buy a six pack of beer. And he stuck to that story.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
So then the investigator started interviewing the kids who were with him. And they stood by his alibi. They kept lying for their father.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
Yeah, yeah. I think these very smart investigators started noticing that there were little cracks in the story. And it seemed like, especially Joe, this 15-year-old boy, was trying desperately to protect his dad. And then they started finding evidence that kind of pointed toward the young boy being at the crime scene.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
He was scared, but he ultimately— confessed and told the police finally after breaking down. They brought in his biological mother from Florida and she pleaded with him to tell the truth. But of course the interrogators also were very gentle and prodding him and getting close to him physically. You know how you start interviewing somebody and you have some distance.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
Well, in this case, the officer got really close to him and the closer he got and he held his hands and he said, look, I need you, Joe, to be honest with him. And his mother is now there pleading with him also to tell the truth. And he ultimately confessed. He really is one of the quiet heroes in this story.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
Police tell me that when they had this young boy in the interrogation room, it was one of the One of the heaviest conversations they've ever had with anyone. It was emotionally heavy to be with this young boy carrying all that weight on his shoulders trying to protect his father until he finally let it all out to the cops.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
And it was just incredible to see the undershare of Jeremy Cobb's interactions. He was sweet, and he was tender, and he was understanding. And very likely, this was something that Joe, by the way, never got from his own father, Paul DeWeiss. But he got it from this Cobb. He never got it from his father because he was fearful of his father.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
He thought Paul DeWise was going to kill him and his sister Natalie. So they were doing everything the father insisted on them doing. He wound up forcing him to come along.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
Yeah, because he would be harmed himself. In the end, neither Joe nor his sister Natalie faced any charges.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
Yeah, and that was amazing. He's now doing very well. Joe, we hear that he's working on rebuilding his life. They're hopeful, the cops are, and the community is, that this resilient young boy is going to wind up doing good things in his life.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
Yeah, that was one of the toughest things that you find out in shooting and filming this story. The most difficult part of the story was learning that Lauren had allegedly been experiencing domestic abuse for quite a while while she lived with Paul DeWise. Her murder came only after she had finally, of course, separated from him.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
As I mentioned, there's pictures of her with bruises. On the night she was murdered, she had even said, according to her roommate, Audria Butler... I feel safer here than I've ever felt. And we both know that abusive relationships are just horrific and that leaving a physically abusive relationship is a major risk factor for homicide or for non-fatal violence.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
Yeah. At one point, Paul tells investigators, well, no, I wasn't physically abusive, but I did punch her in the arm 10 times. 10 times. But I never would have killed her, he said.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
You know the consequences of domestic violence all too well. What do you want people to take away from this?
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
I love her. She's the hero. I mean, after everything she went through, she was so strong in the way she came up.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
Yeah, maternal grandmother, she's being raised by them. And the other two kids, Joe and Natalie, are with their mom in Florida.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
It'll never be the same. I mean, you finally realize it can happen anywhere. It can happen anywhere. And you hear, as we say, we say that all the time. But even in this bucolic, gorgeous little, you know, mountain town with the Rockies, it happened there. And it hadn't happened in decades. There had been a murder in there, in the small town. But I think now everyone's on guard.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
People have started locking their doors because they realize you just never know.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
Yeah, just how human these officers were that worked on the case. You would think that these guys handle these cases every day and they become sort of numb to the horror that we witness. And yet these people took it to heart and lived that story for years to get to the killer and to get a conviction. Which in the end they did. So those two guys were amazing heroes, Lensing and Cobb.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
And of course, Ashley, the strength and the resilience and the power that she has now, despite everything she went through. Boy, what a lesson for all of us.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
It was such a baffling case. You know, initially it was reported as a double homicide and that sort of crime doesn't happen in a town like Belgrade, Montana. We actually headed out to do the story five years ago and then the pandemic happened and we put everything on hold.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
No, Deb. You know, actually, it helped us because so often when we murder like this happens or a tragedy, the media descends on the town and folks close to that crime really don't want to talk about it much further. Five years later, we were able, the community was ready then to talk to us.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
And more importantly, one of the crucial witnesses, one of the victims, Ashley Van Hamert, was willing to talk to us and ready to talk to us. So it really helped us, that delay.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
Because of everything she had been through. We spoke to her and her mother and her family for more than two hours. And then we spent all day with them. It was just beautiful the way she was ready to open up. And what really struck me was that she's so forgiving. After everything she went through, she was shot in the head, lost part of her brain and skull. She can hardly use the left side of
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
of her body and yet uh she is ready to forgive this man and and she um she was telling me that the one thing that she cannot stop thinking about is the dead woman's daughter lauren her roommate's daughter a lot of people would have felt great anger toward this man yeah no i've actually still to this day i've never felt anger at him wow it's just the more of like
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
You know what else she tells me in the interview? She says that she actually prays for Paul DeWise, this man who tried to kill her and killed her roommate. That's what also struck us. Her faith is so amazing. Her resilience, you know, her strength, her willingness to forgive this killer. She's an amazing woman.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
Despite the horrific injury that I said she suffered to the brain, she now is recovering well. Well, that's what I wanted to ask you.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
She lives by herself now. She has a job. And she's back to doing the things she loves. And that's being outdoors in the mountains. She's a snowboarder. And she's beginning to do a little bit of that. And, of course, hiking always with her beloved dog, you know, Bronson, by her side.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
She thinks about her all the time. You know, they had... just moved in together, but Lauren at one point said, this is the safest I've ever felt living here. She was so glad to be away from this husband who it turns out had been abusing her. She had started to open up, but not a lot to Ashley. It's so tragic that it happened before she had a chance to tell them what was going on.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
But one of the roommates certainly believed that this was serious enough to lock the doors. You know, she was a woman who, she says, had not locked her doors as long as she had lived there. But after she heard about Paul DeWise, she started making sure that the door was locked and that they were better protected.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
In the very Montana way, as we like to say, that they find us. This woman was ice fishing at a place called Cattail Lake in Bozeman, Montana.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
Yes. And she's out there with her dog and her husband. And it's a frozen pond, of course. And I got to tell you, I was a little nervous heading out onto that pond. But we had a chart that showed that a car could drive over this frozen lake and wouldn't fall through.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
I wanted to give you a rope so that in case I went down, he would pull me out. But I learned how to ice fish with this woman. She was out there and she notices this gun sitting on top of the ice and it's covered with a little snow. And that's where it was found. She thought nothing of it. She picks it up and she kept it for a couple of weeks. She hadn't heard of the murder.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
And they hunt a lot. So she didn't think much of it until she reads up online about this murder that had happened and the attempted murder of this other woman and how police were looking for the weapon. And she turned it in. And immediately, as we like to say in the story, as quick as you can say exhibit A, the cops were at her door ready.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
Well, prior to this, I had done a story in North Dakota where it was very cold, and I got frostbit in my ear because it was so darn cold. So going into Montana in the dead of winter, and it was a little warmer than January is usually are in Montana, thank God. But, you know, you go, you pack all the jackets and coats you can bring along. I bought some boots that are specifically made to ice fish.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
Congratulations on anchoring the show. I just love having you at the helm with David, of course, of 2020.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
It's always really interesting to see how other folks live and what's normal for them. You know, I grew up in San Antonio, Texas. I had never been ice fishing in my life. So it's interesting. And just the goodness in people, people like Andrea, who... Just go out there and do something that is just part of their daily lives.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
And I learned how to ice fish and how to put the hook and the line down in the water and then wait and wait and wait.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
That's why we're reporters. You know, we're out there. We just want to learn more about the world and life. And this was an integral part of the investigation, what she found. And she eventually, of course, did turn it in. And that was a big break in the case.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
They were so sharp in their investigation for small town cops that when they found boot prints, for example, in the snow, they lightly spray painted the boot print with red paint. To get the imprint. To create a kind of, yeah, 3D model of the prints. And then they went to Walmart where they searched the shoe aisles for the same kind of boots that these prints belonged to.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
And they found the exact same. Kind of boot. And then they gently and methodically interview the characters in this case. It happened on a Sunday morning. They weren't even working. And then they worked seven days a week. It was really a master class on how to conduct these investigations taught to us by two small town cops.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
Yeah, it was a mission. Yeah, that's the police chief, Dustin Lensing. And he's telling us how he just became a father, right? And yet now he's working seven days a week, hardly sees his infant child. And it wasn't just the officers. It was the entire community of Belgrade that felt the impact of these crimes.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
It was rare for them to see any kind of violent crime in this town, as we mentioned, much less an attempted double murder.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
They were truly dedicated to getting answers to this horrific crime. And it wasn't just them. You know, the entire community, as I said, everyone was appalled by what this man, Paul DeWise, did. when they started learning the details of the killer, what he did, and then how he made his 15-year-old son, Joe, come with him on the night of the shootings.
20/20
The After Show: You Left Me for Dead
And then he tried to help get his son, his own son, to help him cover up the crime by lying to the authorities.