Road to Redemption

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1:31The journey of the last 25 years has really tested my faith.

1:39Palm Sunday, 1990. I'm in my choir robe. at the back of my church, where I still sing in the choir today.

1:51This glorious music is playing. The church is full. Everyone is singing. It's this joyful procession. And the last thing I expected was to have the church secretary come to me and put her hand on my arm and say, You have a phone call? And that's when my heart started to pound, because I thought something's wrong, really wrong. And it was my father on the phone. And the first thing he said to me is that Nancy and Richard have been killed. And he said someone killed them. This happy young couple with everything to live for, with no enemies, with no reason that anyone in the world should want to take their lives.

2:34And right before she died, she drew this message in her own blood. By his body, there's the shape of a heart and the letter U. Love you.

2:47My name is Jean Bishop, and I'm the sister of Nancy Bishop Langert and the sister-in-law of Richard Langert. Who could have looked at Nancy's eyes, the beautiful light shining there, and pulled the trigger? Why? Why them? Why Nancy and Richard Langert? It took 23 years to get the answer of why.

3:12Ready? Yep. You can't see too far in front of you. It really is kind of taking one step, and then another step, and another step.

3:27It's about a two-hour drive down I-55, and I go just about every other month. Nancy is always in my heart when I make this drive. This is my one story, and it's been incredibly healing. When I first started in this journey, I had no way of knowing that I would be in the place I am now. We're in front of Pontiac Prison, where I come to visit the person who killed my family members. I can't close him off. He is part of this story. So you believe he deserves a second chance, he deserves an opportunity. Yes. To perhaps get out. Yes. I knew the first time I went there to see him in that prison that I'd be shaking the hand that held the gun that killed her.

4:31Winnicka is this village on the north shore of Chicago, right along the lakefront. More than 25 years after the brutal murder of her sister Nancy and brother-in-law Richard, Jean Bishop still lives in the wealthy Illinois suburb they grew up in. It was such a happy childhood. I was the middle of three girls, my younger sister Nancy and my older sister Jennifer. It's a community where many Chicagoans moved to raise their families, and it was used by filmmaker John Hughes for movies like Home Alone to convey picture-perfect middle America.

5:15It looks pretty idyllic when you're walking down the street. It's a real quiet, safe community. That's what made the sound of sirens so shocking that Sunday in April 1990, Nancy's father, Lee, went to check on his pregnant daughter and her husband.

5:39He had gone to the townhouse and rung the doorbell, and there was no answer. So he let himself in, and then noticing the light on in the basement, he went to the top of the basement stairs, he looked down, and there were Nancy and Richard. And he could see them. Frozen and deaf, his youngest daughter and his son-in-law. But who would commit such a gruesome and deliberate crime? It would take a long time to answer that question, and even longer for Nancy's family to find a path to forgiveness. Two and a half decades later, it is still a work in progress. How would you describe this 25-year long journey that you've been taking since your sister's murder?

6:22Oh, I think it's been this incredible adventure. Oh, the heart of it was Nancy. Every time I get to say her name, every time I get to tell her story, it's a way of making sure that the world does not forget her. She was the comedian, and when she got older, she was kind of the one who could get away with anything. Oldest sister, Jennifer. She was fun, fantastic sense of humor. My mother is a very, very classy, well-mannered, elegant lady, and Nancy would be the one that could just make her laugh to the point where she would say, Oh, that's awful. Oh, that's awful. Joyce Bishop says her daughter Nancy was also a gifted performer, excelling at Winnetka's competitive New Trier High School.

7:16But Nancy's aspirations stayed rooted in family. She wanted to be a wife and a mother. Exactly. And have a home. That was all she wanted. And she was on her way. In her early 20s, Nancy met Richard Langert. I thought he was just this perfect man for Nancy. because he was this tall, handsome jock. And he would just be kind of basking in this glow that she cast. He would kind of look at her like, isn't she the most wonderful thing? I would look outside, and he would be out mowing our lawn without having been asked, now, is that a good guy? That is a good guy. That is a smart guy. I declare that Richard and Nancy are husband and wife.

7:58They married in 1987 and were soon working together for a growing coffee company. Every month she was hoping and praying and wishing that she would get pregnant. Within a few years, Nancy found out she was pregnant. She actually said in 1990, this is going to be our year. Because they had been married three years, they were expecting their first child, they were moving into their first house. She was so happy. But until their dream house was ready, Nancy and Richard were temporarily living in this townhouse owned by her parents. They really were just living out of the suitcase, more or less. On Saturday, April 7th, the family got together at a restaurant in Chicago to celebrate Lee's birthday and Nancy's big news.

8:47Nancy and Richard were just in their heyday. They loved it. I had a baby gift already for Nancy, and we were just the happiest family you can imagine. What do you remember being the last words that you said to her that night? Oh, I remember exactly, because I never say them now. I hugged her goodbye and I said, I'll see you tomorrow. And I never say that to anyone anymore because you don't know that that will be true. When Nancy and Richard returned to the townhouse that night, their killer was already inside, waiting. The husband was executed, shot once in the head with his hands handcuffed behind his back.

9:24The wife was shot three times in the upper body. Everything in me stopped. If you had sliced my wrist, I would not have bled. I was frozen. I didn't cry. I didn't feel a thing. Surreal. Surreal. I didn't cry until the next day. The news of a double murderer hit at the heart of this quiet community. Whoever killed them broke into the house while the couple was away. As neighbors waited for answers, investigators at the crime scene had many questions about the killer. There was nothing taken. Nothing. No jewelry, no electronics,$500 of cash strewn on the ground, almost as if it had been handed to him, like, here, take this, and he had tossed it aside, like, that's not why I'm here.

10:10What did that say to you? That said to me, this is a crime that is meant to be seen as an assassination, as an execution. That it was planned, methodically planned. Yes. A multi-town police task force was assembled, and Sergeant Gene Calvados was put in charge of solving the murder. It was hard to understand. As much as some things look professional, other things just look so amateur. One thing they did quickly determine was how the killer came and went undetected. In the backyard, right near the point of entry to the patio door, there's a fence there. Once you're over the fence, there's a bike trail down there, and you can go all the way to basically Chicago on it.

10:55Rumors spread about an outsider bringing big city violence to Winnetka. But the question of why them remained. You do a check on everybody. I mean, when you have no suspect, everybody is suspect. But what if it turned out there was a connection between the suspect and someone in the Bishop family? Everyone and everything is fair game. I understood that and so did my family. What troubled me was the notion that my sister's investigation was hijacked for some other purpose.

11:41I knew that if someone killed them, that evil had intruded into our lives like nothing that we had ever known before. In the days after the murders, the Bishop family learned from investigators chilling details of what happened in the last moments of the couple's life. Richard died first. The gun was put to the back of his head. He was shot once, execution style. Nancy was shot twice in her side in Antrimon. And then I think at some point she must have realized she was dying. And so she dragged herself by her elbows over to Richard's body where he lay. The last thing that she did before she died was to leave us a message in her own blood.

12:25She took her finger in her own blood and she drew a heart into you. Love you. Well, it's probably the most heartbreaking thing that you could ever imagine. When I saw that heart there, mine broke. When Detective Gene Calvados walked into that basement, he saw the brutality of the slayings firsthand, along with some odd clues. There was blood everywhere. You could smell it. And there was a set of handcuffs laying there. Near the back fence, a single glove. From the onset of that case, we had very, very, very little evidence to go on. Investigators looked into Nancy and Richard's lives. Rumors of a drug connection to the coffee business they worked for were quickly dismissed.

13:12Meanwhile, family members racked their brains for any clue they could come up with. Could you think of anyone who would have wanted to hurt them or any sort of revenge or anything out for Nancy and Richard? Absolutely not. Completely mystified. Not a single thing. But other tips came in, including one that involved a possible link to the IRA, the Irish Republican Army, and to Jean. Jean, who along with being a corporate attorney, was involved with human rights work. The FBI had a theory that because I had been doing human rights work in Northern Ireland, the IRA had thought that my human rights work was actually a cover for being in the CIA, and they had come to Winnicka to kill me and had mistaken Nancy for me, and that they killed the wrong person, and that now I should tell them, everyone I knew in Northern Ireland and all about them so that they could solve the murder.

14:09The FBI also claimed that there had been a death threat made against Jean by the IRA. And given the fact that she had just returned home from a trip to Northern Ireland three days before the murders, investigators had some questions for her. When I confronted her with that threat and she simply denied it, she didn't believe it. I was so shocked at this theory. I said, the IRA doesn't target Americans. I kept expressing that gene. I said, you have to understand where I'm coming from. You have your sister who was pregnant was killed. Her husband was killed brutally. I need to find out who did that.

14:47And I go, I'm kind of surprised that you don't want to help. She wouldn't budge. Did you feel like suddenly there had been a line in the sand drawn between your family and investigators? I felt at the time that they were considering me uncooperative, and that's a thing that you never want to be. But that's how the media in Chicago was playing it. Winnetka police have indicated that Jean Bishop, shown here with other family members, has not cooperated with authorities in the investigation of the double slain. And so on the news, they actually did this kind of little spotlight around me, you know, as if, like, there she is.

15:28And I thought, really, if you believe that my life was being threatened and I'm still a target for whoever didn't succeed in killing me, and now you're highlighting my picture on the news? But the IRA story and a connection to Jean never checked out. As the weeks dragged on, it looked like the killer actually might get away with it. Did you get to that point that you thought, we may never know who did this? Yes, although my heart didn't want to accept it. I mean, I just felt so strongly that, you know, it would be this terrible, you know, shadow over my mother and my father and my sister and myself.

16:07Meanwhile, Gene Calvatus was still holding out for that one perfect tip to come in. I was just hoping that somewhere along the line that we'd get the break that we needed. After following a series of false leads, dead ends, and spending about a million dollars, the task force had been shut down. Then, nearly six months to the day of the murders, two teenagers walked into the Winnetka Police Department with an incredible story and blew the case wide open. So I called Gene Kilvitas, and I said, Gene, you're not going to believe this, but a kid just came in here and told me he knows who killed the Langerts.

16:59Six months after the murders of Nancy and Richard Langert, Winnetka Police Sergeant Patty McConnell was on duty when two teenagers walked into the station asking about the witness protection program. Do you think they're playing a joke or do they look afraid? No, they definitely were not playing a joke. He was clearly very nervous. He was Fu Hong, a senior at New Trier High School who walked in with his girlfriend. He said, you know, I know who did the Winneka murders. My friend, David Biro. He told me that he did it. David Biro had bragged to his good friend about the killings, but said nothing about his motive.

17:42He said, you know, he's got a gun in his room. He showed me a gun, and he said he got afraid that he thought he was going to kill again. Biro was no stranger to the Winnetka police. A small-time punk to me is how I would characterize him. You know, I was very skeptical. I believed that David had told him that he killed him, but I didn't believe David did it. That is until Hong described something Biro had said about what happened at the crime scene. He said, you know, he got nervous after he was talking to them, and he popped off around. And when this kid said that to me, all the hairs on my arm and my neck stood on end because I knew that they had discovered a round in the wall on the first floor just above the baseboard.

18:28And I knew that that detail had not been in the newspapers. So only the killer could have known. Yes. And I was, like, chilled that, oh, my God, he did do it. Vera was arrested the next day without incident outside his family's house and a search warrant was issued for his padlocked bedroom. The first place we went was to look under the bed to see if a gun was laying there, and in fact there was. It was a stolen.357 Magnum, which Tess concluded was the murder weapon. That's not all they found. Birro had handcuffs similar to those found on Richard, and a scrapbook of articles on the killings. But Biro told police he was only holding the gun for a friend.

19:15Did you question Biro? I did. I would say he was very arrogant, smug. Partly, I think, because there was all kinds of speculation in the newspapers about a professional hit. I think he took a great deal of pride in that. He never admitted that he had been involved in it. David Biro was charged with two counts of first-degree murder, Intentional homicide of an unborn child, burglary, and home invasion. He pled not guilty. You have this horrible crime, and the idea is that it's someone coming from the outside. It has to be. It has to be. And in truth, it's, I mean, it's so ironic that it's someone, you know, just a kid from the neighborhood.

20:02No one was more surprised than the Bishop family. I was shocked. I was absolutely shocked that a 16-year-old boy could have put a.357 Magnum revolver to the back of a grown man's head and pulled the trigger. Even more shocking, David Biro was the son of a family friend. I know the Biro's. David Biro's father worked for my husband at one point. I thought, well, that's a mistake, I'm sure. Every year, the bureaus would send a Christmas card to my family with a picture of them, the parents and the kids. And I thought, oh, my God, I've seen a picture of this killer. But as information trickled out, Jean learned more about who that kid on the Christmas card had become.

20:48What did you find out or hear about him? Very disturbing things, that there had been a history of violence, that he had fired out of his window with a BB gun at passersby, that he had lit somebody on fire. David was going down the road of a sociopath. True crime writer Gerilyn Kalarek wrote a book about the case and described a deeply disturbed David Biro, who at age 14 tried to poison his family. His brother and sister are sitting down at the table for lunch, and they drink some milk, and the milk is tainted. Somebody put wood alcohol into the milk. Within hours, Biro's parents checked him into a psychiatric hospital for juveniles.

21:32But after less than two months, they let him come home, against doctors' recommendations for continued treatment. He convinces his father and mother not to let him go back. And they didn't even bother doing any follow-up psychiatric with him. That was it. That's all he ever had. That's it. That's it. A hospital assessment written just after Biro left read, at the time of his leaving the hospital, we believed that he was dangerous to himself or to others. His parents didn't agree. I hold them partially responsible. They knew he was dangerous, and they let him walk around unsupervised with a padlock on his bedroom door.

22:14Behind that padlock, a gun. He sought thrills. They gave him a rush. Now, three years later and awaiting his murder trial, Biro's behavior remained arrogant and cocky. Authorities now believe the Langricks were chosen as victims less because of who they were than where they lived. The motive they believe, an attempt to commit the perfect crime. In the fall of 1991, Biro went to trial, with prosecutors using that perfect crime motive. Their case was strong. They had Biro's confession to his good friend and all that evidence found in his bedroom, including the murder weapon. It was one of the most sensational murder cases in recent history.

22:59As the trial begins, many questions remain about the murders. But in a surprise move, Biro would take the stand. He's accused of two murders, but he's taking the witness stand in his own defense. 18-year-old David Biro is speaking out in public for the first time. Biro stuck to his original story, that he was just holding the gun for another student who had actually committed the murders. Prosecutors and investigators dismissed the claim outright. When I looked at him in the courtroom, what I saw was a brash, cocky young man who pretty much believed he was going to outsmart all of us. Did you ever have any doubt that it was anyone other than David Biro who killed Nancy and Richard?

23:44No, no. And neither did the jury. After a two-week trial, it took them just a few hours to reach a decision. The verdict is in for David Biro. Guilty on all charges. I just exhaled in relief. I think I felt my jaw loosen and unclench for the first time since they were murdered. David Biro received two mandatory life sentences without the possibility of parole for murdering Richard and Nancy. The judge also gave him a discretionary life sentence for the death of their unborn child. The judge made a speech in which he specifically talked about his age, and he wanted it in the record. He had every privilege in his upbringing that he killed them for sheer entertainment and that he was the most deserving of life without parole because he was truly the most dangerous human being.

24:44Did you all have a collective agreement on the sentencing that you wanted for him? Yeah, we wanted the maximum sentence, which is the one he got. He'll die on a cold prison floor like Nancy died on a cold basement floor. The killer was going away for good, and with him went the answers they never got in court. We all wished that part of the sentence would be that he would sit down with us and we could ask him, why? How could you do this? That answer would come, but it would take 22 years, a leap of faith, and an incredible change of heart. There was only one person who knew the answers to the questions that I had, and that was David Bureau himself.

25:30But now I see.

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