Presenting Spiral: Murder in Detroit | 1. One of 36 Angels

0:06I want to tell you about a synagogue. A synagogue in the middle of downtown Detroit. The building was built in the 1930s, and it has this kind of Art Deco style. It has these striking, brightly colored stained glass windows. And it's shaped like a triangle, almost like the Flatiron Building in New York City. But during fraud times in the 1960s, as race riots upended downtown, the front windows were bricked up for safety. and the colorful stained glass above started to collect dust and grime. The Jewish community had slowly moved away, forcing nearby synagogues to shut down their doors, leaving just this one downtown remaining.

0:51Only a small star of David on the building's bright red double doors and a brass iron sign above it would tell you it even was a synagogue. But recently, I mean, just in the last decade or so, a group of people wanted to change that. They found money and a growing community of Jews moving back to the city. And slowly, brick by brick, they opened the community back up again. Gathering here today celebrates not only the renovation of this beautiful building, but the hope and pride and the ability to be able to gather here today, publicly and proudly, sharing our culture, our history, and our future with our neighbors in this great city.

1:33That's synagogue president Samantha Wall in August 2023 at the grand reopening. She's standing in a lectern in front of a crowd of people, and she's smiling, wearing a bright blue dress. We are a community and a continuity of learning, of praying, of understanding, and of belonging. Come join us. The synagogue Sam helped remodel has windows from floor to ceiling, even in the rabbi's office. From the street, you can see right in. Shabbat is held on the roof deck when the weather's nice. And artists from all over Michigan display their work in the community spaces. It's a place where local kids now celebrate their bar and bat mitzvahs.

2:19And a Jewish day school even held their prom there just last year. Where are we now, Franny? We are outside the downtown synagogue, right in the heart of downtown Detroit, basically. I went to the synagogue on a cold December day in 2024 with my producer, Poppy Damon. The building now bears Sam's name in bold blue lettering, the Samantha Wall Center for Jewish Detroit. And it really does make us think of Sam with her multicolored clothes and life. Sam Wall had both a big vision for the space and the community and an amazing attention to detail. She wanted to build an elevator to make it accessible for everybody.

2:58She wanted rows of books, both old and new, traditional and modern, and the ark, the cabinet where the Torah is held. She helped design it so it looked like spokes on a wheel, just like the streets of the city she loved, the streets of Detroit. She rode her bike here. She would, like, wear basketball shorts and tuck her dress into it and then change. That's Rachel Rudman, the synagogue's executive director, who used to work with Sam almost every day. This was her city. It was her city. One she dedicated her life to. And she knew so many people. Everybody knew Sam. She touched so many people from so many different communities.

3:35This was her home. And yet on October 21st, 2023, she was found murdered here, just minutes away from the synagogue. She was stabbed eight times.

3:51There is shock and sadness tonight over the violent killing of Samantha Wohl, a prominent figure in the Metro Detroit Jewish community who was known for promoting understanding between different faiths. And in the murder investigation that followed, it became apparent that in a city full of cameras, it's a case that lives and dies in a three-hour window of mystery that I've spent a year trying to unravel. We didn't know how it happened, who did it. We didn't know any of that. It doesn't add up. It keeps this lingering doubt. It doesn't put the period on the end of the sentence. We're sitting here with an ellipsis.

4:30It's pretty surreal that she is effectively the subject of a murder mystery saga. It's just heart-wrenching. And all of the details of this are extremely bizarre. I'm Franny Block, and from the Free Press, this is Spiral. Murder in Detroit. Episode 1. One of 36 Angels.

5:04It's 6.20 a.m. on October 21st, 2023, and Kevin Mull, a local tech entrepreneur, goes to walk his dog. As I went out into the little park that's between my building and the building across, where normally we would walk the dog, I noticed something on the sidewalk at the building directly across from my unit. He lives in a townhouse that overlooks a park and a parking lot. The houses face each other, and they're very distinctive. In fact, they're designed by the famous 20th century architect, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. They have flat roofs and big windows, so you can kind of see right inside of everyone's homes.

5:44But on this day, it's rainy, really quite misty. And it's still dark outside. So Kevin can barely see 10 feet in front of him. But across the street, he can sort of make out this dark shape that's on the sidewalk. I couldn't tell what it was. So as I made my way across the meadow, I eventually realized that it was a person that was lying on the sidewalk. A person lying on the sidewalk with their back towards him. in what I would describe as a fetal position. And I noticed that right away that the person did not have any shoes on. He called out. There was no response. As he got closer, he leaned down.

6:27The skin was blue. The feet were blue. I touched that part of the body to try to get some kind of reaction. And I immediately could tell how cold the body was. He noticed a bit of exposed skin on the person's back. And worse still, when he touched the body. No reaction. So he raced back home and told his wife, Jessica Robinson. And she calls 911. My husband was walking our dog. And he told me there is a person, potentially a body, laying on the sidewalk. He attempted to make a person. And they didn't move. And they're still, like, pregnant. and the person's just laying there. A body. Blood present.

7:14And the person is just laying there. Where's the blood? Yeah. Where is the blood? On the sidewalk. On the sidewalk. On the sidewalk around the body. Blood will go look again as well. Jessica stepped outside and noticed the victim had on a familiar hair clip and a Maccabees basketball jacket. I thought that it was my neighbor, Sam Wall. Soon, the police arrived. My name is Lieutenant Matthew Bray. I work for the Detroit Police Department, and I am one of the lieutenants in charge of the Homicide Task Force. Lieutenant Matthew Bray, who is now actually Captain Matthew Bray, wasn't called to the scene, but he was managing the detectives who took on the case.

8:00Tell me about what the blood evidence was telling police. The blood evidence clearly shows that the attack, violence attack, occurred inside of the residence based on blood evidence. The blood evidence is what shows where the violence occurred at. Though her body was found outside, the police found the door to Sam's house was already open. Inside, they found pools of blood in the hallway. There was no blood in the kitchen, from what they could see, but a bowl of fruit was knocked over on the kitchen table. There was no forced entry and no obvious murder weapon. I always tell people that cases are like jigsaw puzzles.

8:36Some of them are 2 ,000 pieces, and you don't even know what the picture looks like, and you're missing 100 of the pieces. And some of them are 10 pieces, and they go together very easily. Here are some other pieces of the puzzle that quickly came together. Sam had been at a wedding that night. She came home around 12.30. Security footage showed her getting out of her car and walking to her house. Her phone records revealed that she sent a few texts, and she opened Netflix. Her phone then went inactive at 1.35. So really the preservation of evidence is the most important part to the beginning of the investigation, because ultimately that's the evidence that we follow to determine who the potential suspect is in that case.

9:21There are other details about Sam's house that are important to point out. On the front window next to the door hung a Black Lives Matter poster and a small image of an Israeli flag and a sign stating Detroit stands with Israel. Inside her home, there was an Israeli flag on the wall, which police found completely untouched. And at this point, the police find themselves faced with even more questions. So just like any other case, each case follows the evidence. Follow the evidence. It's harder than it sounds. In the decades after the racial riots of the 1960s, homicide rates in Detroit have been among the highest in the nation, although these numbers have fallen in recent years.

10:05Police in Sam's case focused their efforts on the cameras. There's a ton of them in the area around Sam's house. Many of them are new, put up by homeowners, businesses, and the city itself. Over the course of the investigation, Captain Bray told us they issued over 150 search warrants, more than he'd ever seen in a case like this. Officers also spoke to neighbors in the area. They hoped someone would have maybe seen or heard something. I felt like incredible guilt. I just think about 24 hours, like I reason why I'm down there. But I didn't. Like, I'm that, I'm that talus. That's James Griffione, another of Sam's neighbors.

10:51In this video, he's sitting in a cop car near Sam's house. He had told police that at between 1.20 and 1.30 in the morning, when he woke up to walk his six-month-old puppy, he thought he heard something. The police officer he's speaking to refers to it as a scream. But later, James would say it was maybe just a woman's voice. He didn't do anything about it at the time. And he's telling the cop that, obviously, he feels terrible. Just at this point, it didn't sound to be like, I'd never heard the word help or anything like that. And having been down here for as long as we have, I felt calloused.

11:29It's not my problem. What exactly James heard becomes important later. It's really unclear what it actually was. But that timing is significant. You see, after Sam came home from the wedding, police believe she laid down on her couch and started using her phone. Her phone records show she sent a few texts, and then she opened Netflix. Her phone goes inactive at 1.35.

11:55And then police also pulled data from Sam's ADT home alarm system, which could detect motion in her living room. And the alarm system showed that she opened her back door at 12.35 and 12.38. Then the system went idle, meaning no motion was detected at 1.24 a.m. And that's not long before Sam stopped using her phone. It's also around the same time that Sam's neighbor told police he might have heard something. The system didn't detect any motion again until 4.20 a.m. The motion lasted for no more than two minutes. It's that two minutes where prosecutors will later build their case. And that's all the police had to work with.

12:44Meanwhile, they still had to find Sam's family and tell them what happened. The day Sam died, her mother Margo was in New York with a friend. And her dad Doug was at home by himself. The doorbell rang. There were four policemen at the door. And the first thing is they said, are you the father of Samantha Wall? And I knew I didn't I knew something awful had happened. And it's like you read in the military when they an officer comes to your door. He had a bad reaction, understandably. As you may know, more observant Jews don't use their phones on Saturdays for Shabbat. And so Sam's sister, Monica Wall Rosen, her husband Ben, and their three kids were coming back from Temple, unaware of what had happened.

13:36Here's Monica and Ben. We were walking home from synagogue and... We had actually invited people over. People were coming to our house for lunch. And a good friend of mine, who is also friends with my parents and uses his phone on Shabbat, I didn't have my phone with me, was driving around the neighborhood looking for me because my dad had texted him, emergency, please find Monica and have her call me right away. The friend didn't know what had happened, but he dutifully drove around the neighborhood and found them walking towards their house. He said, Monica, come here. He had gotten out of his car a couple blocks further, and I was walking slowly.

14:14and he said, no, Monica, come here, run. So I did, and he said, your dad needs you to call him. So I went upstairs and... At this point, what were you thinking? We knew somebody had died. No. I did. It was like, it was a very emergency situation. I thought someone was sick and in the hospital. No one just dies. This is the worst day of my life. Yeah. And I really just couldn't believe it. They say that denial is your first thing, and it's so true. The day Sam was murdered in Detroit, her close friend, Andy Einhorn, woke up in New York City to a text from her. It was my birthday, Saturday the 21st, and she sent a text at 12.01.

14:59She was the first person and said, wishing you happiest of days. I love you. Later that day, Andy was at the opera with his husband. They were seeing a performance of Dead Man Walking, which opens with a brutal stabbing scene. During the scene, somebody Andy knew from back in Michigan kept texting him, saying, call me. At intermission, Andy stepped out of the theater and called his friend. And that's when he learned that Sam had been stabbed. I just remember lulling to the ground because I just couldn't fathom that something this monstrous could happen to somebody like this. And so that's why we left the opera and came home.

15:45By the time he arrived back at his apartment, there was a package already waiting for him. The doorman called and said, you have a delivery. And it happened to be flowers that Sam had sent. And it was a card signed by her entire family and her friends that I knew. And there was something so utterly heartbreaking and fragile and vulnerable and almost enraging to know that just 12 hours prior to that, she had been living. See, that's the type of friend that Sam was. The one who'd make sure you had flowers on your birthday. I spoke to more than 20 people about Sam. Her family, friends, even just acquaintances.

16:35And that's all they could talk about. About how she was the epitome of goodness. Here's Sam's friend, Laura. My 40th birthday, I told Sam, very casually, I said, I'm going to be going up north. I'm going to be in Sutton's Bay. I'm excited to check out a bookstore in Sutton's Bay. I mentioned to her the name of the bookstore. Bay Books. I said, I'll see you when I get back. And on my 40th birthday, I walked into the bookstore and a woman behind the counter kept looking over at me and my mom and eventually asked, are you Laura? I was very startled. I said, yes. She said, happy birthday. And then note that Sam had left for me.

17:25Sam consistently showed up like this in our friendship, and I was just beyond grateful to have a friend like her.

17:38I remember the day Sam was killed. I heard about her murder through my mom. We're Jewish, and she's actually also the president of a synagogue, like Sam was. My mom told me that when she heard the news, she was too scared to leave the house. So many in the Jewish community who heard about Sam's murder thought the same thing. It must have been fueled by anti-Semitism. It was just two weeks after October 7th, 2023, and that day and its aftermath changed so much for Jews in America, myself included. It wasn't just the day itself when Hamas terrorists storm southern Israel, slaughtering 1 ,200 people, mostly innocent civilians, including children and the elderly, and taking over 200 people hostage.

18:29It was the aftermath, too, when hundreds took to the streets of cities like New York.

18:38But rather than condemn Hamas, these protesters were celebrating the slaughter of Jews, which they justified as legitimate resistance. Not everyone in Sam's family thought anti-Semitism led to Sam's murder. But I asked Marco, Sam's mom, what did she think happened to her daughter? In my bone of bones, I really feel it's a hate crime. I remember a week after October 7th, I had a conversation with my sisters out of town and saying, I never used to be afraid before of being Jewish, and now I am afraid. and it was like a week before Samantha was killed. It was around this time that a former leader of Hamas called for a global day of rage, which many of us Jews interpreted was directed at us.

19:30I remember this day so clearly. I was so scared about what might happen that I actually left New York City. I didn't even want to stay at home in my apartment because there was a synagogue on my block and I thought it could become a target. I wasn't alone in that feeling either. Here's Monica, Sam's sister. My kids go to a Jewish day school. They couldn't even have outdoor recess the week before because everyone in the whole country was concerned about violence and anti-Semitic attacks. And then my sister is killed, the president of a synagogue in Detroit. It made no sense. And the way that she was killed with the stabbing, and there's people out there who say you should stab Jews in the neck.

20:11And that's what happened to her. Sam's murder made international news, and Jewish leaders across the country began to wonder if they were next. The fear was even more palpable for Jewish leaders in Detroit, like Rabbi Yisrael Pinson, the executive director of Chabad of Greater Downtown Detroit, and a friend of Sam's. The way I described it to my friends is there is people in the world that want me dead. And if you look at the top five Jewish figures in the city of Detroit at the time, Sam was one of them and I was one of them. So who knows? If this was targeted, maybe they were able to get to her, but I should be on that list too.

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22:06Hey, how are you? Thank you so much. Shoes off? It doesn't matter. Nice to meet you. We just wanted to give you a little thank you. That's very kind. Poppy and I flew to Detroit one snowy December day last year to meet the Wall family in person. Sam's entire family works in medicine. Her dad, Doug, was a doctor, and her mom, Margo, was a dentist. They met at Jewish youth group when they were 14 and 15 years old. And we got married and now we're here. Monica, who's two years younger than Sam, is an OBGYN and her husband Ben works in medical research. Together they have three kids, Sam's niece and nephews, whom she adored.

22:50They are a really close family. Sam often slept over at Monica and Ben's home on the weekends, sometimes two or three times a month. She would also not want to bother you by saying, hey, can I grab a pair of pajamas? She would rather just sleep in her clothes. She would never want to bother anybody. At Monica and Ben's house in Ann Arbor, which is about an hour from Detroit, the family quickly started showing us Sam's things. There was a bookshelf designated for Sam, filled with books about feminist theory, medieval history, Israel, Palestine, and everything in between. And there was her art. Sam was an artistic child, and she continued making art throughout her life, sculptures and paintings.

23:31She didn't aspire to be a professional, but art was another way for her to bring all of her passions together, including her activism. The family showed us this piece she painted of a dove carrying an olive branch in its mouth. I asked Ben, Sam's brother-in-law, about it. What does stick with love mean or signify? I think with the olive tree symbol there, It's like a combination of the Palestinian flag or the Palestinian colors with the Israeli flag. So sticking with love and not resorting to hate and violence. Her art reflected her personality. It was cheerful, colorful, eclectic. Every piece features her unique symbol, a signature she repeated again and again.

24:21It's a spiral, a continuous loop growing from the center. It was painted onto a postcard she'd written her mom when studying abroad in college. It was on her high school graduation cap in pink and blue glitter. And it was on a pillow she painted, which now sits in her parents' office at home. You couldn't look at a piece of Sam's art and not know it was hers. In the early days after Sam's murder, after the police cleared out, the family were left with the awful task of going through her home, giving away her clothes and her books. and they discovered the basement was full of her art pieces, ones they'd never even known about when she was alive.

25:01They did all of this as they waited for news from the police. And that question of whether or not this was a hate crime hung thick in the air. But it didn't take long for the cops to rule this motive out. I want to offer my sincere condolences to the family, friends, and loved ones of Samantha Wohl. This is James White, then the chief of the Detroit Police Department. He's speaking at a press conference two days after Sam's murder. He's saying that investigators have all but ruled out the possibility of a hate crime. We believe that there are no other groups or anyone else at risk in regards to this particular incident.

25:40We believe that this incident was not motivated by anti-Semitism and that this suspect acted alone. We asked the current police captain, Matthew Bray, about this moment. One thing that a lot of people noted was that the police ruled out very quickly that this crime was a hate crime. Can you tell me how police ruled that out and why they ruled that out? Then-Chief James White's statement to the news, I don't think his statement ruled it out. I think his statement provided strong evidence that we didn't believe that to be the case. Ray said it didn't have the hallmarks of a hate crime. Ms. Wool had a Jewish flag in her house.

26:22The flag was not damaged in any way. It wasn't ripped off the wall. It wasn't burned. It wasn't torn. It wasn't cut. There's not one piece of information that demonstrates that this would be any sort of hate crime. The timing obviously does cause people concern, but there's not anything in the investigation that has led us to that conclusion. But it's not like police had any explanation for what actually happened to Sam that night. As far as anyone knew, they had no definite suspects, no murder weapon, no clear motive, no answers for Sam's grieving family and friends. Here's Sam's dad, Doug. The question was, what happened?

27:02We didn't know what happened. We knew she had been killed. We didn't know how it happened, who did it. We didn't know any of that then. I would look at everybody and say, could you have done it? Could you have done it? Could you have done it? I mean, that's a terrible thing, but just didn't know. The Detroit community is gathering for Samantha Wohl's funeral, which starts momentarily. Wohl was the president of a Detroit synagogue who was found stabbed to death outside of her home yesterday morning. police still working to determine the motive and suspects in the killing, will have a strong connection to Detroit's Jewish and political communities.