
Explosive Secrets
20/20- 390 views
- 25 Jan 2025
A loving father is killed when his car explodes. Could a fresh look at DNA change the case?
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This is Brad Milke, host of the Start Here podcast with ABC News. Families affected by the 2025 California Wildfires urgently need support. Help the American Red Cross provide meals and shelter to these families.
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Org/abc or calling 1-800 Red Cross. Tonight, a loving father and major real estate developer killed when his car car explodes.
A pipe bomb designed to obliterate everything. But could a fresh look at DNA change what we know about the case? An all-new 2020 starts right now.
When they killed Gary, they killed Gary.
I still can see it when I close my eyes.
This windshield pops off the car and goes, How many feet?
Four hundred feet. I'm the killer. I got my gym bag, which fits in the country club scenario. Open the door, put it down, close the door. I walk away.
It is one of the most notorious murders in Tucson history.
He was a wonderful father. He was a true gentleman and a true kind person.
They rubbed shoulders with people in high society.
Everybody thought car bombing has to be a mob hit. Very spectacular. We're sending a message.
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.
It was pure obsession. His hatred was pure obsession.
We're going to reident enact the bombing. Everybody's under. To see how it could have been done. Two, one.
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 order out of it is remarkable to us. So what specifically did you find as you looked at all that evidence?
It was titled To Kill. Right at the top of the list was Gary Trano.
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.
La Paloma Country Club is nestled in the Tucson foothills. It's absolutely beautiful.
You can see the city, you can see the mountains. It's Jack Nicklaus' golf course.
Typical Friday, very busy golf day, Wednesdays and Fridays were gambler days. And so about 5: 15, 5: 20, I was standing at the bar and all of a sudden there was this thunderous boom.
I heard this huge bang, and I rushed over there, tried to see if there's something I could do. What's going on there? There's some an explosion in the country club parking lot. I'm not sure we have. One of the victims has no pulse.
They've begun CPR.
I guess it's a massive fire. It was some an explosion.
The building shook. I'd never I felt anything like that. I immediately turned. I went out to the parking lot, and there was a car on fire, split open like a sardine can.
I found a man still sitting in his seat No pulse, pale. Blood's gone out of him, just white.
Dr. Sam Buttman had come up alongside the car towards me. He looked at me and he said, Damn, he's dead.
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.
There's a member, and he was playing with Gary, and he was sitting on the floor next to his locker, and he was just sobbing. They killed Gary. 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 Golden Avado watch at 5: 38 PM. The 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.
Gary was a tall person who would command a room when he walked in. Dark hair, always had a nice sun tan, always had a smile. He was larger than light.
Starting in the 1980s, this former car salesman, he had 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.
One of Gary's most successful projects was Indian gaming. You're talking about a high volume slot machine operation. Gary's personal take was $1 million a month.
Gary Trioana was not shy about spending that mega money on the finer things in life, limos, leerjets, even a yacht.
He loved spending $25,000 a week on wine while he was cruising around the Adriatic Sea with his financing partners.
Let's have a look at some of these. This one you were just telling us is very special to your heart.
This picture is because it was on my birthday, 15, 16 days before he died. He was very kind and gracious and generous.
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.
It changed my life. He was the only person that really believed in me and made me feel like I could be successful with anything.
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.
Pamela Phillips was very elegant. She played the part of a socialite. She always looked very put together.
Gary told me that he met the love of his life, and he was really taken aback by this beautiful, intelligent woman.
And Gary, who is so smitten, the story goes that he calls his wife up, who's on vacation in Europe with their two children, and he just announces, I'm leaving you.
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?
I think I remember that now that you say that.
You did hear that?
Gary bought Pam a beautiful diamond ring, which he claimed was worth $250,000. They had twin jaguars. They had this beautiful home at the base of the Catalina Mountains.
Pam and Gary would have two kids of their own while rubbing shoulders with some powerful peers.
Pam and Gary knew Donald Trump, Marla Maples. Donald and Marla came to a University of Arizona basketball game with Gary and Pam.
He invited Donald Trump to be his partner at the member guest. And of course, he had to make sure that everybody in the club knew a month before.
So on that fateful day of November first, 1996, Gary Trian was approaching his 53rd birthday with a note of optimism, unaware of the big surprise that waited him as he stepped off 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.
Around 4: 30, Gary was in the bar with a couple of his buddies at a table. One of the members actually walked up to him and actually said, Happy birthday. I had no idea it was his birthday.
Gary is walking towards his Lincoln town car, and he's sliding into the seat, and he sees a blue canvas bag on the passenger seat.
An early birthday gift left at his unlocked car by a friend, perhaps, Gary leans over to unzip the bag and...
The impact of the explosion was incredible. The front windshield flew 200 feet into the air and landed in the swimming pool.
I'm at home. It's after-hours, and I get a call from my sergeant, and basically he says, There's been a car explosion at the La Paloma Country Club.
Detective James Gamber was a newly minted detective with the Tucson Sheriff's Department, and he was brand new to homicide. This was his second case.
When he arrived on scene, you could see the victim vehicle. It blew the car doors open, tore the roof off the car. Gary's body is still in the driver's seat.
When Melissa Triano heard there had been some incident with Gary, she immediately rushes over to the country club. So what do you remember feeling as you were running towards the car?
Just panicked, shocked. I didn't think it was real. The whole top of the car was gone. I still can't see it when I close my eyes.
Immediately, cops were asking, who could have wanted to kill Gary in in such a spectacular fashion. They would quickly learn a lot of people.
Was it to send the message, Don't ever mess with us?
So in the movie Casino, Robert De Niro's character, closely based on the real-life mobster Frank Lefty Rosenthal, climbs into his 1983 El Dorado, turns on the ignition, and is engulfed in a fireball.
A bombing has Mafia written all over it. Who would want to detonate a bomb at a posh country club in broad daylight with over 100 witnesses watching?
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. Don Bowles is a 47-year-old investigative reporter for the Arizona Republic. He's been working on a series about the Mafia.
And when Bowles returned to his car, a remote control 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 making what killed Gary Trianna was not a car bomb. It was a pipe bomb on the passenger seat, detonated by remote control. And as Detective James Gamber began looking into Gary's murder, the mob was top of mind.
Everybody thought car bombing has to be a mob hit. Very spectacular. We're sending a message, Don't ever mess with us.
Somebody sent a message, and you don't know if they're coming for you next or if it's the whole family. I didn't know if he was involved with something that might want to hurt us all. You were on guard all the time.
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.
He owed four and a half million dollars to four casinos in Las Vegas that were, supposedly had mob ties.
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, Carol Caine, Will gear and an orangutang. Isn't he too big for her to handle?
No, he's not. Normally, yes, perhaps, but he's very gentle.
Did you ever see your uncle's movie?
Oh, my gosh. Yes. In fact, I had a horse once, and I named it Mafou. And we joke about it still because that movie was just horrible.
It was horrible. But it wasn't movies like that or real estate that was making Gary Rich. It was Native American gambling. He was making millions until he wasn't.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs threw him out of the administration of that contract. Gary personally lost $1 million approximately in monthly income.
So suddenly now he's at a zero income, but it's His expenses and his lifestyle continued.
These things were happening during the real estate recession, so things hit the fan at once.
Investigators set their sights on Gary Triano's financial dealings because he owed large sums of money to a lot of people.
There were any number of suspects that the Sheriff's Department was looking at. There were Chinese investors, there were Mexican investors, there were Mafia investors, all of whom Gary purportedly owed money to.
It was a house of cards that was crumbling fast. He was promising investors collateral on property that he didn't own. He was promising Mexican investors money that he didn't have.
He had that gambler mentality, so he was quite a challenge to manage as a member. I constantly chased him financially. He was very good at tipping, but not very good at paying his bills.
And at one point, Pam got a phone call and picked up the phone and heard on the other line a threat from one of the investors saying, We don't get paid. We're going to kill you. Gary became extremely paranoid and he starts to sleep with a loaded gun in his bed.
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.
When Gary ran out of money, his marriage started to disintegrate.
Pam had had enough. She had married this man who was worth millions, and now he wasn't.
So Pam's done, and she files for divorce, and she flees, and she heads off to Aspen with her children.
A bitter divorce and financial ruin left Gary scrambling to stay afloat.
Things were so bad in Gary's life that he went from living in the nicest houses wherever he was around the world to sleeping on a friend's couch.
One of Gary Treano's friends from high school met with Gary Treano the day before he died. Gary was trying to get him and his father to give him a $50,000 loan. His friend described him as anxious and desperate. That loan never happened, and tomorrow never came.
That summit's a plummet journey meant it wasn't even his Lincoln town car that Gary had driven to La Paloma that day. He borrowed it from a friend to keep up appearances. Before Gary was even buried, Detective Gamber already had a long list of persons of interest.
We monitor the funeral, as morbid as that may sound. Who shows up? Who didn't show up? Who wasn't appropriate? Who was appropriate? It was a good way to see who should we go talk to.
And Gamber noticed one particularly interesting absence.
Pamela Phillips wasn't at the funeral. She was conspicuously absent. But based on the acrimony and the separation, that didn't really surprise us.
But associates of an eccentric billionaire say he had reasons of his own to want Gary Trianno very dead.
He had the capacity and the resources and the henchmen, if you will, to construct the bomb that blew up Gary Trianno.
And this doctor claims he saw a kill list written in that man's daily plan.
And it was titled To Kill, and it was numbered. Right at the top of the list was Gary Trioano.
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 Trianno. This is the car he was driving.
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 This roof is supposed to be flat, essentially, isn't it?
Essentially, right. It should lay right along this line. If you get a look down here, it's a frame. You can see where the floorboards have been blown off of the side body panels. Wow. By the force of that blast, downwards.
The whole arc of this is the result of that bomb also.
If you looked at this, almost looks like the path of travel of a bullet. Well, technically, it was. It's a projectile, shrapnel.
Everybody knew it was Gary's car. The one thing Gary never did was lock his car.
Lock his car, lock his doors. So I'm the killer. I walk up here, I got my Duffle bag, my gym bag, which fits in the country club scenario. Open the door, put it down, close the door. 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.
I mean, anytime you have a crime scene this large and this many witnesses, you have to follow every possible lead.
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.
There's a lot of people that talk about how volatile Robin Gardner was.
Robin Gardner was pregnant when Gary left her.
And according to investigators, Robin was so angry, she'd thrown a glass face at his head.
And this, of course, sent Detective Gamber down another path of like, Okay, is this somebody else who might have wanted Gary dead.
But having met Robin and talked to her, it's like, No. If it was going to happen, it was going to happen right there. It wasn't going to be she was going to come back in six months and blow his car up.
Even though she was angry at Gary, it was an anger that had dissipated. There wasn't really a reason to investigate her further.
There were a lot of rumors going around about threats that Gary may have received. A lot of the early focus was on people had invested, then Gary lost the money.
There was no shortage of them to check out. When Gary went bust in May of '94, he left $27 million with the creditors holding the bank, 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 Thou, a Tucson trusteefarian named Neil McNeice.
Neil McNeice was, in all accounts, a billionaire by inheritance. He was a trust fund based maybe, if I could use that term, and he had a lot of money. His own Learget, I think it was, traveled a lot.
Even at his own personal doctor, Lawrence D. Antonio, accompanying him on his travels.
My job was to keep him alive. He was a terrible drug addict and an alcoholic.
He became acquainted with Gary Triano. They probably frequented the same clubs or things of that nature. Neil McNeice was somebody who had a lot of money to invest or spend on people.
According to investigators, Gary Triano had approached Neil for 80 grand to invest in him immediately. But McNeice wanted collateral for his $80,000 loan, and newly divorced Gary had just the answer.
Gary Triano gave Neil McNeice Pam Phillips's supposed diamond ring that Gary represented was worth a quarter million dollars.
About five days later, he goes to his juror who tells him, You're the proud owner of a ring worth about $7,000. It's a cubic Zirconium. And Neil went crazy. Went crazy in the jeweler shop, went absolutely crazy.
And so Neil McNeice did not want to be taken as a fool. And so it was said that he had put Gary on a kill list.
It was titled To Kill. Right at the top of the list, the day I originally saw it, was Gary Trianno. And he never stopped saying, I'm going to kill Gary Trianno from that day.
And his former associates allege, along with his vast wealth, McNeice also knew the right people, people that had the capacity to make a bomb.
The moment I heard on the newscast on my car radio that the victim was Gary Trano, I absolutely believed 100 % that he was assassinated by Neil McNeice.
What we could find out about Neil McNeice is that he was in a lot of loud mouth, but very little follow-through. Nothing to connect McNeice to a device. If he killed Gary, that didn't get him his money back. He wasn't so financially hit that he was down to his last dime. So did he do it? Again, not a strong connection.
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?
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Today's Stream on Hulu. 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.
What I was hearing was He had a great line to get into your business. He was going to do all these great things for you. I'm so awesome, and I'm going to make you a ton of money.
Ron Young was someone who was, even for the mid-90s, fairly in-depth at computers and establishing an online presence even back then.
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.
If Ron became your business manager, he would instantly want all the books, access to all the financials, which gave him an opportunity to transfer money out of your bank account to his own bank account, get credit cards issued in his name on your account.
So Crowley gets search and arrest warrants and sets out to pay Ron Young a visit at his place on Snow Bunny Lane.
So this is Snow Bunny Lane where Ron Young lived at one point. On the corner with the carport was Ron's house. So we get there and he's gone. He's nowhere to be found.
Ron Young is 6'6, maybe 300 pounds. But where is he gone? Six months later, Detective Crowley gets a call from the cops in Yorba Linda, California.
What happened was that police in California to find an abandoned van, and it's a rental van out of Aspen.
Authorities discover that the abandoned Dodge caravan was rented by Ron Young and was parked outside his parents' house.
It's an unlocked van, and So when police do come and they open the van, they discover some very unusual things inside.
And as Detective Crowley learns, more than one of those things has Gary Triano's name on.
There's divorce documents between Gary Triano and Pam Phillips. There are maps of Tucson. There are a list of names of associates with Gary Triano.
And they discover something else that's unusual. It's a sought-off shotgun. I mean, fraud suspects, they're not usually violent.
It was Crowley's first encounter with Gary Trianno'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.
In investigating Ron, there were two fraud cases initially, and then Pamela had come in to report the third fraud case.
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 Trianno from Tucson, Arizona? Then came November first, 1996, and the morning after.
I was sitting at my desk in the investigations office and reading the paper and saw the headline It was the shocking pipe bomb murder of Gary Trianna. When you get an adrenaline dump and you get that metal taste in your mouth, and that's what it was.
And so Detective Crowley calls the Pima County Sheriff's Department I said, Here's what I have.
You might be interested in this.
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.
So what was an Aspen fraud case now is firmly interwoven with our homicide case.
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.
They brought it to me, and in that notebook was Melissa Triano, license plate, Missy, my license plate said Missy on a black Corvette, and that was my car. So he had been following me, and it was terrifying.
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.
People think when the explosion occurs, everything goes away. Well, it doesn't.
Here we are in New Mexico, Anthony. Yes. A typical land of enchantment landscape around us here, right? Kind of desolation. Mountain desert area. So a decade after the murder of Gary Trianno, 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, something of Los Alamos, right?
Yeah, a little a little bit south there, but yes.
You guys got to hold on.
Hold on. 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, Emertech, for short. It's a research and training division of New Mexico Tech. It's a place where highly skilled bomb specialists do their work with explosives. We're blowing something up today, aren't we?
Yes, we are. We're going to reenact a bombing that occurred in 1996 that ended up taking Gary Treano's life.
Today, Anthony May is going to take us inside his field of explosive expertise to tease, and show us just how this detective work can help authorities identify a killer. What car is this that we're looking at right here? It's a Ford Mercury Grand Marquis.
It's not the exact vehicle, but it is similar in body style and chassis.
Melaton Flores is a research engineer and assistant director here at Emertec. He and his team are the ones who found the car and put together a pipe bomb, all closely resembling Gary Trianos car and what was inside it on the evening of November first, 1996. We'll be safely tucked away in the upper bunker.
We have a flag that you'll see behind your shoulder there. That flag is currently in the down position, which means that testing is imminent.
The Emertech engineers have these high-speed cameras ready to film the explosion at 20,000 frames per second. Morning, everybody. So today we got a recreation shot of a 1996 in Arizona. It's going to be a pipe bomb. Once the bomb goes off, we're going to wait until for Merkel, he'll give it the all clear. It's a desert, it's hot. So drink plenty of water. We got snakes, we got scorpions, we got spiders. So watch out for all that.
Tesla.
Yeah, hold on.
Let me do a quick roll call up here. Like with the TrioNo case, the A pipe bomb is placed in a blue canvas bag, and it's positioned on the passenger seat. The technician spools out the firing fuse. We take cover in a bunker some 2,000 feet away. Everybody's under cover? All right, we're all good here.
Kastler, you're on your range. Okay, you're ready to stop? Two, one.
That sound was amazing.
I think it could have been the back window that was flying out.
Oh, is that right?
Start to see some smoke now.
It's, I think, smoldering a little bit. Yeah, it looks that way.
The The car is 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 first, '96. 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.
It would be up, most of it is going to be up over that ridge. Well, we're going to walk into the blast scene. Now we're starting to pick up some heavy components, and now we're going to decide, is it from the car? Is it from the bomb? What I'm seeing is car parts here, the door handle. As I can see already, the roof of the car is over here. Looking at the roof of the car, most of our fragments went straight up.
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 order out of it is remarkable to us.
That's the objective. Take a look at what the crime scene is telling you, what the evidence tells you, and then go from there.
It is one of the most notorious murders in Tucson history. Openings.
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 cold.
This is actually a picture of when Jim brought the evidence up to me. It's just like a puzzle now. I am trying to match pieces. This is the pieces of the pipe.
So what specifically did you find as you looked at all that evidence?
People think when the explosion occurs, everything goes away. Well, it doesn't. There's 95 to 99% the device still there. It's just different configurations. I was able to determine the size. It was about a 17-inch pipe bomb.
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 Trianno would have seen that bag in the seat next to him?
Well, he, in fact, did see it. There was a witness that said that he saw Gary Triano get in the car and then lean over into the passenger seat, meaning that the bomber was also somewhere close by with the remote control device. When he saw him lean over the bag, that's when he initiated the device.
Just like any puzzle, once the pieces start to fit together, there's a picture that emerges that would eliminate some suspects and start to bring others into sharper focus.
We had found a piece in the debris here of parts that were soldered together. There were globs of solder.
The globs instantly told you, not somebody who does this on a regular basis.
That they do it on a regular basis. The question to me was, is this a professional hit? Are we dealing with a mafia? From the design, the construction, the soldering, the battery, I don't see that.
Turns out the outdated six a nine-volt battery used on the bomb was also a clue about the bomber's age.
That indicated to me that we're not dealing with some young individual who has experience with double A batteries or nine-volt batteries 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.
So the way the device was built fit Ron's profile. So it's just another brick on the wall thing.
And as investigators continue to build that ball, 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. I don't even want to talk about it right here.
If I ever found out that you compromised me, you're a fried duck.
It's a story about sexualizing audio tape and a sensational bombing.
It was something that absolutely shook Tucson to its core. It was horrific. It was violent.
I'm the killer. I got my gym bag, opened Open the door, put it down, close the door. I walk away.
The ex-wife, the business manager, the murder. How do they all fit together?
Kamala Phillips was a socialite, a beautiful blonde bombshell. She was the quintessential trophy wife.
Why would she have been so mad at him?
Nothing went her way through that whole divorce, and she was furious by it.
She's on the hunt for her next husband.
She said, I need to find a husband that is worth $20 million or more.
Finding them would be the real problem.
Is it okay to talk? Yeah. Copy down what you need to copy in your own code and throw this away.
To this day, I keep calling it the treasure trope of evidence. It was astounding what was there.
If he was a real hitman, why is he not threatening her with her life or threatening her family or kids?
It's a sensational trial, complete with sex, money, and murder.
It's summed up in one word: greed.
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.
It was almost like lifestyles of the rich and famous.
But after the real estate boom went bust, Gary went bankrupt.
Pamela began to realize maybe Gary wasn't all that he was cracked up to be. Maybe there were a little cracks in this armor here because Gary started to let her in on some things. He's indebted to multiple people.
Following their divorce, Glam Pam and their two kids moved to Aspen.
I saw Gary as being somewhat downtrodden, somewhat sad. Sad he was losing his family, sad he had lost all his earthly riches.
But ever the optimist, Gary felt confident he'd be on top once again soon. Until November first, 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 Trianno dead? 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.
It was great because we had no association with Pam and the murder until then. Before we had Pam was in Aspen, When the bomb went off in Tucson, how could Pam have pushed the button? Okay, now we have that connection. We have Ron Young bridging that distance for us.
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 Snow Bunny Lane, where Ron Young lived. Pam was practically his next door neighbor.
At the time, Snow Bunny Lane in that area was where working people, doctors, lawyers, normal people in Aspen lived.
It was not Pam Phillips' 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 star babies. Com.
If your baby was born under a certain time, you could get their zodiac and all that. It was that type of thing that Pam wanted to do and start up a little business like that. And he helped set that up.
A new-in-town ski instructor who'd gotten a side gig as a live-in manny for Pam's two kids, Kevin McDonald says he saw a lot of Ron Young.
He would come over and spend time with Pam and was helping her with the star babies, and then he would have dinners with her. I could see that there was more than just being the down-the-street neighbor. After the kids were asleep, Pam didn't want them to see them being intimate or being more than just friends.
Kevin would recall Pam as a good and caring mother to her kids. But according to Pam's friends, star babies. Com and Ron Young were only part of her plan to return to the top of the mountain here in ski country.
Pam was always out in the different private bars and private clubs in Aspen, trying to meet rich men. And because she said, I need to find a husband that is worth $20 million or more.
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 Treana. Out. Why would she have been so mad at him?
Nothing went her way through that whole divorce, and she was furious by it. And she wanted money. She needed money to continue her lifestyle.
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.
Pam told me one The night after I put the kids to bed, she just said that she was down to her last $60,000. I knew that she was worried about it.
She was bleeding money.
She wasn't making any money.
Pam was convinced that Gary was hiding assets, so allegedly, she asked Ron Young to find them.
Pam's chief complaint during this entire relationship is she's not receiving enough child support from Gary, and he must be hiding assets. But Ron is still really pissed off that he's not being paid for his services.
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.
After Pam came in the initial time, and I asked her to provide follow-up documentation, she never came back.
Ron Young is nowhere to be found, but Pima County sheriffs decide to talk with Pam.
And then when you go to interview Pam, she minimizes Ron Young. Oh, he was not involved in my life. He gave me a little financial advice and things like that.
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?
Pam had two million reasons to kill Gary.
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 end.
Ron was not her type. She was used to handsome, charismatic, wealthy men, and Ron was nothing like that.
When Pam moved up to Aspen, she purported not to have any money. It was in financial hard times.
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.
They were the beneficiaries with the proviso that if they were under the age of 18, then Pam was the one that would receive the money and appropriately apply it to the children's lives.
Now, even with a friend's assistance, Pam's financial straits were affecting her ability to pay for that policy.
And then we find out that when Pam learned of Gary's death, she was actually almost 30 days in a rear on her premium payment.
Pamela Phillips became hysterical. Not hysterical over Gary's death, but hysterical over the fact that the premium had not been paid for the month of November.
And they rushed a fed X payment to the insurance company that got there too late. The insurance company, though, honored it anyway.
And 15 days later, Pamela makes a claim on Gary's life.
So it took until January of 1997 before the insurance the company paid. Pam got a little over $2 million.
Pam Phillips wastes no time. As soon as she gets this $2 million life insurance proceeds, she goes out and she buys her dream mansion. And it's this home in Meadowood. It has its own ski lift. It's buttressed against the mountains. It's got these massive wooden doors. It has marble all over the floor.
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.
If I said my name, I get a million questions or a million comments on the matter. Are you related to Boom Boom Triano? Horrible things people would say.
They would refer to your uncle as Boom Boom.
Boom Boom Triano was one. There was all kinds of weird name, weird things that they said.
So by 2005, this case had really become a cold case.
So we had this one anomaly, Ron Young, and it was Where's Ron Young? Where's Ron Young? Aspen PD had the arrest warrant, so he could be arrested anywhere within US jurisdiction, and just nothing was coming of it. He was like a puff of smoke.
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. The manhunt for November 19th is now in progress. Then in 2005, a segment on Ron Young goes on the air.
Could this accused conman also be a cold-blooded killer? Well, cops in Arizona want to find that out.
Right after the America's Most Wanted episode airs, it happens to catch the eye of a chiropractor in Florida whose patient is none other than Ron Young.
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.
That's a huge break in the case because now law enforcement, America's Most Wanted, they can all descend on Florida and make the capture.
Sure enough, Ron Young shows up in time for his appointment.
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. Back behind your back.
What's your name?
Hey, man.
I asked your name.
Ron Young.
Authorities hold Ron Young on fraud and weapons charges because when Ron's 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.
We walk over to this box and there's some microcassettes sitting in there. It's like, Anybody have a microcasset recorder? What was on there is, to this day, I keep calling it the treasure trove of evidence. It was astounding what was there.
I don't even want to talk about it right now.
What I'm saying is if I ever found out that you compromised me for your benefit, it would be really unfortunate for you.
Hello, it's Robin Roberts here. Hey, guys, it's George Stefanopoulos here. Hey, everybody, it's Michael Strahan here.
Wake up with Good Morning, America.
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Back behind your back.
Ron Young is arrested in Florida. Hey, man.
I asked your name. Ron Young. Crowley, he calls us and says they got him. So they start talking to Ron Young, and Ron says, Sure, you can search my apartment. And, Yeah, you can search the storage locker I have.
He gives them an extraordinary gift. It's like he's opening up his treasure trove of evidence for law enforcement. What they discover is a major break in the case.
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. 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.
So there was obviously more of a relationship than she was letting on.
But then, as far as evidence goes, the coup de grav.
We walk over to this box and there's some microcassettes sitting in there. And it's like, Anybody have a microcasset recorder? And so we pop one of the tapes in, we hit play, You sent my money at my principal.
I am not going to keep sending you more and more money unless I know that you can honor our agreement.
It's Ron Young's voice and Pam Phillips' voice. We immediately turn the tapes off. We box those up immediately, and those go to the lab to be professionally transferred.
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.
I'm really happy that you 1. 6 was tax-free.
Just say, yes, I will take the floor. I feel like it's been coming, and I'd like the balance of it as quick as possible. Yes.
Yes, I want it all. I want it all. I want it all as soon as possible. We have no disagreement.
You start to listen to the phone calls, and the next thing you hear is, You got your two, I want my four. Well, you have a $2 million insurance policy, and you have Ron getting $400 and some odd thousand dollars in cash from Pam.
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.
You start following Ron telling Pam, This is how you hide taking the money from your accounts and sending it as cash to me. And He gives her a detailed process to follow. He was instructing her to take out certain amounts of money at different locations, use different accounts, don't mail from the same place twice, vary your pattern so no oneits lives.
Is it okay to talk? Yeah. There's absolutely nothing that shows me having any contact since I left in the past, but never, ever, really. If you, for any reason, need to keep dates or numbers or anything else, obviously, just transpose it into codes.
For investigators, this game of subterfuge and these under-the-radar payments from Pam Duran starting to smell like a murder conspiracy.
What he had on his computer was astounding. Pam was paying him on a monthly basis, and he had his own amortization table of the money Pam was paying him with the interest that was due, and it totaled something like $440,000.
Army with this new evidence, police get a warrant to search Pam's place. The Aspen mansion her slice of the insurance money paid for.
In September of 2006, Pima County Sheriff's Department joined forces with the Aspen Police Department and it's around her house, and they knock on the door and they say, We have a search warrant.
Pamela answers the door, and they tell her, We have a warrant to search your house, and she said, No, and closed the door in their face.
Pamela Phillips is completely surprised by this. She tells the police, Yeah, my lawyer's on the way, and the detective says, I have a search warrant, so they come in, and the way she describes it is like they're scattering across her marble floors like rats.
While we're executing the search warrant, Pamela decides to leave, and we don't have an arrest warrant for her at that point, so she's free to leave.
She gets into her little Mini Cooper and drives off.
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.
He gets extradited to Aspen to face the fraud charges. And it's there that the fraud charges get dismissed. After the charges were dismissed in Aspen, we don't have enough to charge him with a homicide yet. So he is free, but he's on parole from the federal prison.
Ron Young moves to his parents' US in Yorba Linda, California.
So there's all this stuff that's coming together. There's the suspicions about the life insurance policy. Now we've got Ron Young, who's an associate of Pam Phillips, and all these things in the van in California, the names and a notepad of people associated with Gary Trianno. Maps of Tucson, receipts from a hotel in Tucson, near where Gary was living at the time.
After nearly 12 years, the police finally obtain arrest warrants, hoping to bring long-awaited justice in the case of Gary Trianno.
We're going to do a simultaneous arrest. We've already put surveillance teams in Aspen, surveillance teams in Yorbalinda. We hit Ron and we arrest him. We go to hit Pam and we do a records check on her, and we find out she flew out of the country to destinations unknown. She was gone.
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 Triana.
We have the arrest warrant. We've already put surveillance teams in Yorba Linda. We've coordinated with local law enforcement. We hit Ron and we arrest him. We extradite him back to Tucson.
But when it comes to arresting Pam, they have a rude awakening.
Pam Phillips We have very reason to believe is still living at her house in Aspen. We go to hit Pam and we do a records check on her, and we find out she flew out of the country. She was gone.
Pima County investigators named Young Antriano's former wife, Pamela Phillips. As suspects in the case, they're still looking for Phillips and believe she may be out of the country.
So we have to put out a notice with Interpol. So now the United States Marshal Service and the FBI become involved.
Unbeknownst to police, Pam is in Europe, and she's leaning into the Alpine lifestyle in a swanky Lakeside town in Switzerland called Lugano. She has just picked up where she left off.
She's recreated her world over there. She's hobnobbing with the elite. She's off hunting again for a rich eligible bachelor. In fact, has been spotted with several.
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.
I'm sitting at my desk and I get a call. There's a gentleman who'd like to talk to you. He thinks he knows where Pam is. So everybody's poised to go arrest Pam in Lugano, Switzerland.
But there's a hitch. See, the Swiss government wants a guarantee that the US won't invoke the death penalty. Gamber and his team are able to work out the details.
But when the Swiss police went to arrest her, she wasn't there.
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.
The trial itself started in March of 2010. We had been doing trial litigation for at least a year and a half leading up to that point.
Some of the challenges that the prosecution faced in Ron's trial was that it was a circumstantial evidence case. They didn't have any direct evidence that linked Ron Young to the bomb.
The prosecution acknowledges no one reported seeing Ron in Tucson on or around November first, 1996, nor did he have anything in his possession specifically tying him to Arizona or to Gary Trianno on the date of his murder. However, the prosecution does have Anthony May.
My job was to determine what was used and build a reconstruction of the device, and then the device was used to present it in court for his prosecution.
He was able to recreate the entire bomb all the way down to the battery purchased from Radio Shack, the remote controlled air switch used to operate it, to detonate it, and even down to the duffle bag purchased from Walmart.
That was an impressive display in front of the jury, I think.
And the prosecution also had those microcasset tapes.
I helped you on something that was beyond what anybody else in the world would probably do. And I think that serves some consideration since you're living off the benefits of it.
The prosecution makes the case that in their conversations, Pam Pam and Ron were talking about the murder of Gary Trianno. I am not going to keep sending more money unless I know that it's in honor of reason. The 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. What Ron did. He's not proud of you. He's black and white. 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.
He looked me in my face. He said, Andre, I blew that in his car.
For the prosecution, Ron Ron Young's one statement to Andre Mims, how he blew Gary Trianno up, might as well have been a confession.
But the defense claimed this testimony was made up and immediately called for a mistrial. Motion was denied.
I think we felt confident. I mean, as a prosecutor, even on a strong case, you're always concerned about the potential one outlier juror that could lead to a hung jury.
After 13 hours, the jury reached a verdict.
We found the defendant, Ronald Kelly Young, guilty of the offense of first-degree murder.
Ron Young was found guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
Ron Young is sentenced to life in prison.
We can't tell you how many times we thought we would never see who killed my father.
But for Gary Trianos family, the story is far from over, and justice has not been served yet.
We still need Pam, and there's a long road still with that.
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.
I think her flight came in at midnight, and we stood outside of the airport and watched her come off the plane.
Pam's comment to the US marshals was, If Gamber's in the airport, I'm not getting off the plane. They walked her out of the jetway, turned her over to me. They got to walk her all the way out to a patrol car.
I wanted her to see our faces and to know that we were never giving up on bringing her to justice.
As Pam prepares to go on trial, her public defender would mount an ambitious murder trial defense. This will not be a short trial when it starts Philip's has listed about 100 witnesses.
He's making these threats to embarrass her. He knows that she is in all these newspaper articles.
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. For anyone who likes a sensational trial, complete with sex, money, and murder, this one was worth the wait. It has it all.
The trial began February 2014, there was a ton of attention and anticipation. All eyes were on Pamela Phillips.
I think it was probably the biggest case we've ever had.
The Aspen socialite on trial for killing her ex-husband with a car bomb. Pamela Phillips maintained regains her innocence, but prosecutors say they can prove she's a killer. For the Triana family, this case represents the ultimate hope in finally bringing justice for Gary. How was that trial for you and your family?
It was very difficult to sit through when photos or evidence was going to be shown that would be hard. I would get up and walk out.
What made it imperative that you be there then?
It was knowing the truth.
The Prosecutors argued that the main reason that Pamela Phillips orchestrated this murder on her ex-husband was the $2 million life insurance policy.
The bulk of our evidence came from Ron Young, the FedEx receipts, the phone calls, the emails that Ron Young had saved.
With records taken from that abandoned minivan in 1996, prosecutors argue how Ron Young closely surveilled Gary Trianos' comings and goings, as well as those of Gary Triano's relatives, which included very specific details about Melissa Triano, who took the stand. The last line has your name on it again, correct?
Yes. Melissa Triano. Just above your name, what does it say Corvette convertible niece.
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.
She She said that she should just hire a hitman, have him taken out, and that the insurance policy was a $2 million insurance policy.
She said it would just be really easy to do because he was so predictable because he played golf every day.
The defense claimed Laura's memory was faulty and that Pam was not desperate for the life insurance money because she lapsed on that last premium payment.
If you're going to do a murder for hired for the insurance money, aren't you going to be sure the insurance policy is in place and has been paid.
But for the prosecution, big piece of the puzzle were those tape 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. Right now, I want to know that we're capping it for.
I don't want this nebulous thing out there that was supposedly supposed to- It's not nebulous.
Listen to me. I am very serious about this.
Well, I tell you, you're going to be very serious when you sit in a women's prison for murder. Oh, yeah. That for the jury was our smoking gun.
But defense attorneys assert Ron and Pam were not talking about the murder of Gary Trianno. Instead, he was distorting Pam for money. He's terrified of everything. I know. I'm living in total fear.
He's making these threats to embarrass her. He She knows that she is in all these newspaper articles as a suspect in her ex-husband's bombing. He wants to threaten her reputation in the Asking community. If he was a real hitman, why is he not threatening her with her life or threatening her family or kids? That's what happens when you have a cold-blooded killer.
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 McNeice, out that 80 grand to Trianno and enraged by his lies and deceit. Neil McNeice.
Neil McNeice. He lends Gary $8,000 and gets a ring for collateral. He finds out the ring is only worth $8,000, and he's livid. He's furious. He threats to kill Gary, her Dr. D. Antonio.
Remember, Dr. D. Antonio had come forward after Gary died, claiming that Gary Triano was on Neil McNeice's alleged kill list, and that he was responsible for Gary Triano's death.
Lawrence D. Antonio was called to the stand, and this was really the crutch of the defense's argument.
I wouldn't describe Neil as a friend. I heard Neil say he was going to kill Gary Tarano probably 10,000 times. It was pure obsession. His hatred was pure obsession.
The defense argues that McNeice not only had motive, he also had the means, with a woodworker friend named Jerry Campoano, who they claim had a shop and the know-how to make a remote-controlled pipe bomb.
The other things found at Mr. Capuano's shop. You saw that little red thing that was used to put together wires. There was one of those at Capuano's shop. There's an exact one of those in the bomb, the bomb parts that were found.
It makes for an interesting story. They're saying, Oh, look at this. Neil McNeice was the real killer, and Capuano was the person who made the bomb. All of them are deceased, so we're not able to follow up on this.
Authorities continue to assert there's no evidence tying McNeice or Capuano to the murder. The McNeice family issuing a statement in 2014, maintaining their belief in his innocence and relief that justice might prevail.
But the bottom line is we don't have any question whatsoever that Pam Phillips Ron Young to kill Gary.
Pamela Phillips never testified during the entire trial. We got glimpses of her personality, right? During the trial, she would look at the camera, she would smile at the camera, even mouthing the words at one point, I love you, to the camera during court proceedings.
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.
The lights flickered in the courtroom. My cousin Heather was sitting in front of me and she turned and looked, and we just lost it.
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We're on verdict watch as jury deliberation continues in the Pamela Phillips murder for higher trial. The Aspen socialite is accused of higher- After 26 days of testimony with 100 witnesses, 670 the fate of Pam Phillips lies in the hands of the jury.
Do you find the defendant Pamela Ann Phillips guilty of first-degree murder?
Quiet cries of joy and justice. Tarana's family says today's verdict has been a long time coming. Seconds after the judge said guilty, the lights flickered in the courtroom.
It was surreal.
What did that tell you, those lights?
That he was there. That he knows.
Gary's family was relieved by all this. The murder was in 1996. Our trial was now 18 years later. I don't think they wanted it to be Pam, but they knew it was.
Pamela Phillips' attorney maintains his client is not responsible for her ex-husband's death. The fact that she's going to prison is going to eat away at me the my life.
Pamela Phillips was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
After hearing her sentence, the once prominent socialite turns to address a packed courtroom. The only way she could do so without facing questions.
I am innocent.
I am innocent.
I am innocent. Okay? This is hard. It's so hard for me. It's a nightmare.
She showed no remorse. She actually turned around to the gallery for the first time. At this point, she was just pandering to the camera.
I don't understand how this can even happen, right?
Never any mention as to the loss of life, but everything came back to the impact it had on her personally.
Outside the courtroom, after losing their father almost two decades earlier, Gary's children expressing both gratitude and sadness at the outcome.
We'd like to thank all our friends and everyone who supported us through this entire time. We're sorry that it had to come to this because this woman was actually part of our family.
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.
We found DNA on threads of two screws that were embedded into the platform, which was wood for the pipe bomb. When that came in, we were able to exclude Ronald Young Pam's appellant attorney maintaining that new, more sophisticated DNA technology will prove that someone other than Ron Young and Pam Phillips murdered Gary Triana.
Well, the next step in the process, we did file our petition for conviction relief. I'm hopeful that we can do some genealogical testing if we can find the money to do that.
They get better DNA that come back and tie to Jerry Capuano, then that might get her a chance for a new trial.
Prosecutors stand by the verdict. They continue to say that neither billionaire Neil McNeice nor his friend Jerry Capuano were in any way responsible for Gary's murder.
Where I find fault with this is that the aid didn't submit Gary Trianno as a reference sample. Now, whose DNA do you think is probably all over that scene? How do you buy screws at a hardware store? You don't buy screws that have never been touched by another human being. So finding some lone DNA profile in a blast debris doesn't impress me.
How do you like to remember your Uncle Gary?
Every November first, I would go to La Paloma golf course and put flowers in the 18th hole.
At a local cemetery, there's a bench inscribed with his name and Gary's favorite poem, Rudget 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?
If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same. If you can make one heap of all your winnings and risk it on one turn of pitch and toss and lose and start again at your beginning and never read the word about your loss. That's just how my uncle lived.
Family filed a $10 million wrongful death civil action against Pam Phillips.
The judge ruled in the family's favor for that $10 million. That is our program for tonight. Thanks for watching. I'm David Muir.
And I'm Deborah Roberts. From all of us here at 2020 and ABC News, good night.