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“When an Air Force veteran is found dead in a small-town shopping center…”
“It don’t make sense. Why did he go there that day? Andy didn’t have any enemies whatsoever, anywhere.”
The bureau mobilizes.
“The love triangle aspect of it was pretty clear.”
“You’d have to be committed to play a game of chess with the suspect. To say that it was a difficult case is probably an understatement.”
It’s the winter of 2009 when FBI special agent Brent Isacson is asked to investigate a ruthless unsolved murder. 15 years earlier, in the small town of Yorkshire, New York, a beloved father and veteran was murdered in cold blood not far from his home.
“The cold case is troubling even to an experienced agent like Brent Isacson. It shocked the conscience to read the case and then to understand that there’s still a very real family out there that had lost a loved one under these horrible circumstances.”
Bringing justice to that family will require digging up bones that have been well buried for years. It’s the night before Independence Day, and Cattaraugus County Sheriff’s Deputy Jeffrey Elely is working a typically uneventful shift.
“Most of the crimes in this area would be, you know, larcenies from vehicles, uh, just petty crimes. It’s a very quiet and a very safe community.”
Around 8:30 p.m., he gets a call of suspicious activity near a used clothing dropbox at a local shopping plaza. Elely knows the area well.
“I do know for sure that the stores were closed at this time. Absolutely no reason for anybody to be back there at all.”
The deputy is driving around the back of the plaza when he notices a red truck parked by itself.
“I just assume there was somebody taking a nap or resting. I could see a male in the driver’s seat kind of slumped down but leaning back in a truck. His color was a little bit pale. He wasn’t breathing, from what I could tell.”
Elely tries to wake the man but gets no response.
“When I looked in the passenger side door, I saw the blood.”
The driver is dead. The patrol sends the paramedics. Deputy Elely quickly sends out an emergency call to all first responders in the area. One of those responders is Horace “Red” Gasper, a well-known EMT volunteer with strong roots in Cattaraugus County.
“Command to 11. We were on another call and returning to the hall when that call came in, and it was for a possible unattended death behind the plaza. And we went lights and siren from the point that we were.”
Back at the scene, local law enforcement begins arriving. Deputy Elely tracks down the truck’s registration.
“I called in a license plate to our dispatch. The truck came back to Mr. Gasper.”
Andy Gasper is the son of Red Gasper, the EMT driver. The 32-year-old is an Air Force veteran and loving father of three. Deputy Elely doesn’t know Andy, but he knows his father, Red. He quickly realizes the EMT volunteer is just minutes away from his own son’s crime scene.
“Mr. Gasper is a great guy, he’s a loving father. We knew we could have a, you know, a very bad situation.”
“So we radio out ahead to have the ambulance stay out front and not come back to the scene, as they weren’t needed back here.”
The plan works.
“714, cancellation.”
Investigators start to deconstruct the scene and realize quickly Andy’s death was no accident. It was clearly a murder.
“Uh, he was stabbed, left to die in a little pickup truck behind a shopping plaza. There was no sign of struggle, there was nothing broken, and it took some quite force for that knife to penetrate the sternum. He probably died within the first minute.”
“And what kind of struck as funny at that time was, uh, Andy was still seat-belted in the vehicle, and the emergency brake was on.”
It appears Andy had no idea what was coming. Bill Nichols is assigned as the lead detective. The Buffalo native has more than 20 years in law enforcement and has seen countless crime scenes. The veteran detective is struck by what’s missing at this one.
“There’s no—no weapon. The car keys were taken, and that indicated that there was a certain ruthlessness about this crime. The offender stabbed the victim, reached in, took the car keys so the victim couldn’t drive away, and he was left there powerless to—to bleed to death.”
The detectives find plenty of fingerprints, but they all match Andy or his family. They find no strange hairs, fibers, or tire tracks. The area itself offers few clues. The isolated loading zone is bordered by trash bins and an open field.
“Right here is where he would—where he would have parked. It’s a strange spot for Andy to be in the night before a holiday. If he was going to go back and do any shopping at one of the stores, he would have parked out front. We don’t know the reason why he pulled back here.”
Police canvassed the plaza businesses and nearby homes, but no one remembers anything suspicious. The killer got a good head start on the police in this case. Without a witness, a murder weapon, or any forensic evidence, investigators face a daunting task.
“Well, this is where we have to look at the victim, his activities of the day, and start backtracking.”
But first, Andy’s family has to be contacted. Andy’s wife, Cheryl, who’s been at a barbecue all day, is the first to be notified.
“You found him dead? He’s dead?”
“No, no, no.”
Later that night, Andy’s parents are finally told that their son has been murdered.
“My reaction, I just total disbelief. I didn’t think anything would happen to him, and when they first started talking, it still wasn’t registering in my mind that there could have been something wrong with Andy. I thought they were coming to tell us that something had happened with Cheryl.”
“Well, finally, they said they had found Andy in his truck.”
Melanie remembers that just a few hours before he was killed, she had seen her son at a stoplight in town.
“He saw me and waved, and that was the last time I seen him.”
Now there’s just one question on everyone’s mind: why would someone want to kill Andy Gasper?
“Out here, you know, in the rural area, stranger murders are not that common. None of it made sense. Uh, here was this victim. He was in a low-crime area. It was a real ‘who done it.'”
July 1994, Western New York. Cattaraugus County detectives are trying to figure out who could have killed Andy Gasper, a father of three who was stabbed to death in the driver’s seat of his truck. Interviews with Andy’s wife, friends, and family convinced detectives that this couldn’t have happened to a kinder person.
“Andy Gasper was a family man. He was a young man. He was a good man, and it was just a horrible crime, just an egregious crime.”
Yet someone appears to have had it in for Andy—someone he may have known.
“Whoever was back there with him, he had no reason to be afraid of.”
Andy Gasper was born in Delevan, New York, the first of four children to Horace “Red” and Melanie Gasper.
“He was involved with the Scouts when he was real small. He was involved in his Sunday school at church, and he loved—loved having friends.”
In seventh grade, he met Scott Hilts, now one of York’s only undertakers. The two stayed close through high school.
“I would say our mutual interest there was we were both dating high—”
“I guess the two words that come to mind were ‘greed’ and ‘lust’.”
Within weeks, Cheryl is arrested and charged with second-degree murder in New York State Court. But the Cold Case Squad isn’t ready to stop there.
“Our strategy is to go to Ohio and tell Mike it’s over. We know the whole story.”
The investigators set up surveillance on Knight’s house until they catch him at home with his mother. As he’s leaving his driveway, they cut him off.
“Randall Knight, we need to talk to you.”
“What?”
“Cheryl is already—”
“I told him that it’s a really bad idea to lie to the FBI. We know you did it. We’re not here about that; we want to know why you did it.”
“And he broke down, and said that he did it. He—he truly did feel remorse, and I think this was a weight that he felt after 16 years of getting off his shoulder. He felt a little better about it.”
“He actually put a lot of the blame on Cheryl, and that—that she had been extremely persistent. She kept asking him, telling him, ‘You need to get rid of Andy. You need to kill him. Uh, if—if we’re going to be together, you need to kill him. Kill him.'”
Knight tells investigators that Cheryl’s constant pressure became too much. On the night of July 2nd, 1994, Cheryl called him and claimed that Andy was abusing her. Knight rushed to New York.
“Cheryl hung up the phone and invited over her friend’s husband, Lanny Lambert.”
“She gets off the phone, and Lanny Lambert ends up at the house.”
Now she knows that Randall Knight is on his way to New York. Thinking she’s beat up, Knight arrived in New York and immediately headed to Cheryl’s house. It was dark, so he peeked in the window hoping to get Cheryl’s attention.
“He gets on a stool outside of her bedroom window and peers in through the window, and sees Cheryl, the apparent love of his life, having sex with another man.”
Knight was so shocked he fell off his stool. Devastated, he spent the night driving around agonizing about how to get Cheryl back. The next evening, Andy was doing yard work at Cheryl’s house when Knight pulled up.
“Andy, it’s good to see you, man.”
“I told Andy, ‘Hey, I need to talk to you. Where can I meet you?'”
“And he said he followed Andy down Plaza and behind the store.”
The two drove to the back of the shopping center.
“Randy got out of his car, approached, uh, Andy Gasper. As Andy was seated in his vehicle, he had a knife concealed in his hand.”
“He talked to Andy through the window of the vehicle and told Andy that he needed to stop abusing Cheryl.”
“He just snapped with one thrust.”
“Put the knife into Andy’s chest.”
“After he stabbed him, he reached into the vehicle and took the car keys to ensure that he couldn’t drive away or make an attempt to—to escape.”
“And he drove straight home to Ohio.”
“He threw the keys and the knife in a dumpster, and that’s why we never found them.”
With two confessions in hand, the Cold Case Squad and the FBI can finally tell the Gaspers that their son’s murderers have been caught.
“That was really, really beyond what we could have ever hoped for.”
In November 2010, Randall Knight pleads guilty to murder-for-hire in federal court in Buffalo. He is sentenced to 24 years in prison. One week later, Cheryl Gasper pleads guilty to second-degree murder in Cattaraugus County Court. She is sentenced to 18 years to life.
“She never once, uh, said anything that was the least bit empathetic toward her husband. She never once said that she was sorry about it.”
The FBI can’t bring back the Gasper’s son, but they can rest knowing justice is served.
“They’re a wonderful family. They suffered a horrible loss, and it’s—it’s very satisfying to give them closure.”
