Where There's Smoke...

One man dead in a garage, a young man missing, and without warning, the investigation suddenly moved to Missouri.

Bob Watson: The hotels in our city are normally patrolled regularly. 

A week after the fire in Ari Squire's garage, Officer Bob Watson was on patrol outside St. Louis in Eureka, Missouri. A parked car with a crooked plate caught his eye and would soon catch the attention of police in Illinois.

Bob Watson: I ran the plate. It came back to a gentleman out of Illinois and there was also an endangered missing person hit on that plate and vehicle.

The car was registered to Frank Testa, Justin Newman's brother. By now Justin was listed as missing and endangered. The hotel register listed Justin Newman in Room 133. Officer Watson called investigators in Illinois.

Bob Watson: He informed me that he was in the process of working an accidental/suspicious death involving a subject by the name of Ari Squire. He thought that maybe Justin Newman had gotten scared and left or had witnessed something and left.

The Missouri officer requested photos of Ari Squire and Justin Newman and returned to the hotel with back-up. They announced themselves and knocked on the door of Room 133.

Bob Watson: We kept calling out Justin's name - just tell him that we wanted to make sure that he was all right, that he was not harmed in any way. But we never got a response.

They asked the hotel clerk to open the door with a master key. But the chain stopped the door.

Bob Watson: It was obvious we weren't going in any further at that point, so we made another announcement, you know, calling out Justin Newman's name, letting him know that we just wanted to make sure that he was okay.

Suddenly a gunshot from inside the room. The officers thought they were under fire. They took up tactical positions, evacuated that wing of the hotel and set up a perimeter. Finally, they went in, and on the floor was a body, a single gunshot to the head. In the man's wallet, a driver's license and a credit card, both with the name of Justin Newman.

But Officer Watson was far from making a positive I.D. He looked around the room and saw boxes of blue-tinted contact lenses and brown hair dye for men. With a beard and thinning hair, the victim looked much older than 20. What's more, he had two tattoos. The officer had been told Justin Newman had only one. And then he received the photos he had requested from investigators in Illinois.

Bob Watson: Ari Squire driver's license photo matched that of the deceased subject that I had in the room.

Ari had been alive all along. It wasn't him in the garage. He'd been on the lam hoping to invent a new life. And now, Ari Squire really was dead. Later that day, his fingerprints were used to confirm his identity. So who died in Ari's garage?  That question sent them back to Justin's family, where detectives collected DNA from Justin's mom and asked his brother, Frank, some troubling questions. 

Frank Testa: They even asked me if he was circumcised identifiers on a person's body. And that was just bone-chilling.

Rob Stafford: What are you going through at that point?

Frank Testa: Denial. I thought that, "Well, if something happened to my brother, somehow I'd be able to feel it, and I didn't have that. And I think it was denial, that I was tryin' to be strong for her. She's calling me up constantly at work and on my cell phone - crying, telling me, you know, "You know, your brother's missing. You know, my baby's gone."

Meanwhile, investigators prepared - again - to break the news of Ari's death to his widow. The first time they told her - after the fire in the garage - they described her as calm and unemotional, but, this time, they say Denise Squire was far different.

Scott Morrison: She was in shock. Legitimately nowIt took her by surprise. She made a statement, "He killed himself?" What do you mean he killed himself?"

Rob Stafford: Surprise that he committed suicide.

Scott Morrison: Disbelief.

David Godlewski: At that point, she did-- she did begin to cry.  Showed-- showed some emotion.

Rob Stafford: More emotion than you'd seen before?

David Godlewski: Yes, absolutely.

Now Denise Squire really was a widow. And detectives say she appeared shocked by the sudden turn of events. But she, too, had something shocking she was about to reveal.

Rob Stafford: She's been talking to Ari Squire?

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