FBI Cracks 15-Year Cold Case – Shocking Truth Behind a Small Town Murder HT
The FBI is the most sophisticated law enforcement agency in the world. Pursuing the most dangerous criminals. 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 a difficult case is probably an understatement. FBI criminal pursuit It’s the winter of 2009. When FBI Special Agent Brent Isaacson 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 Isaacson. Uh 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 Eley is working a typically uneventful shift. Most of the crimes in this area would be, you know, larcenies from vehicles. Uh just petty crime. 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 drop box at a local shopping plaza. Eley knows the area well. I do know for sure that the stores were closed at this time. Absolutely no reason for anybody to 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 assumed that it 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. Eley 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. Control, send a paramedics. Deputy Eley 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. We were out on another call and returning to the hall when that call came in.
And it was for a possible unattended death behind the uh plaza. And we went lights and siren from the point that we were. Back at the scene, local law enforcement begins arriving. Deputy Eley tracks down the truck’s registration. I called in the license plate to our dispatch. 10-4. 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 Eley doesn’t know Andy but he knows his father, Red. 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 radioed 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. 10-14 received 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 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 have where he would have parked here. It’s a strange spot for Andy to be in the night before a holiday. If he was going 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 canvass the plaza businesses and nearby homes but no one remembers anything suspicious. 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 uh look at the victim, uh 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. Found him dead. He’s dead. No! No! Later that night, Andy’s parents are finally told that their son has been murdered. My reaction? I just told him disbelief.
I didn’t think anything could 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 stop light 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 a 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. So, it was a real whodunit. 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’s 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 him. 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 the Sunday school at church, and he loved loved having friends. In seventh grade, he met Scott Hilts, now one of Yorkshire’s only undertakers. The two stayed close through high school. I would say our mutual interest there is we were both dating high school sweethearts.
And also we got together quite often double dating, things like that. The girl that Andy fancied was Cheryl Jenkins. The two began dating and quickly became inseparable. Cheryl was his prom date. For their senior prom. They were just like peanut butter and jelly. I mean, they were always together. Andy joined the Air Force after high school.
He and Cheryl married in December 1980 and were stationed at Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth, Texas. They quickly had three children. Oh, it’s exciting time being grandparents, but uh we were doing it in a 1,500 mile away situation. But Andy’s wife, Cheryl, reveals a different side to her husband.
She tells investigators that he butted heads with a fellow serviceman who had the name of a famous Prohibition officer from the late 1920s. Uh Cheryl Gasper had told us that he had had some enemies from the service, one being Elliot Ness, which kind of struck us kind of funny. According to Cheryl, Andy turned Ness into the Air Force Office of Special Investigations for inappropriate photos he had taken of himself with young boys.
Outraged, Ness confronted Andy and threatened to kill him. Not long after, Andy left the Air Force and moved back to his hometown. But returning to Yorkshire didn’t solve Andy’s problems. It’s a great place to raise a family, but it’s not always a good place to find a high-paying job that you can support that family with.
The bills began piling up, and Andy and Cheryl began arguing. Before long, Andy was forced to take a job in Miami, Florida, just to support his family. The strain of being away took its toll, and Cheryl begged him to come back home. He had no idea he was returning to his death. So far, investigators have only uncovered one potential suspect in Andy’s murder, the serviceman named Elliot Ness, but their efforts to track down Ness lead nowhere.
In fact, there is no record of an Elliot Ness in the Air Force at all. Is Ness an alias? Or could Cheryl have been mistaken about his name? Detectives desperately look for more leads and get an unexpected break. A neighbor reports that a suspicious out-of-state vehicle was parked just blocks from the Gasper house in the weeks before Andy’s murder.
The neighbor wrote down the license plate number, and it came back to a Randall Knight in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, which the name meant nothing to us at that time. It doesn’t take long before the name Randall Knight means everything. As investigators learn he knew Andy and knew Cheryl even better. Randall Knight and Andy Gasper met in 1988 at Carswell Air Force Base.
Cheryl was living on the base with Andy, and Randall [snorts] Knight was living on the base with his wife. And they got to be friends. The four of them would go out, but behind their spouses’ backs, Cheryl and Knight began a torrid affair. When Andy left the Air Force in 1992, Cheryl and Knight kept the relationship going in total secrecy.
Cheryl actually had a separate post office box, and uh we found that Knight had a separate address, so they were communicating back and forth from separate addresses. Through late-night phone calls, long-distance letters, and rendezvous at motels, the affair continued for two years until they slipped up.
Andy’s mother, Melanie, found one of the letters Knight had written to her daughter-in-law. And it was a letter to Cheryl from Randall Knight. It was like a dirty love letter. The Gaspers knew they had to share the letter with their son. Surprisingly, he took it in stride. He said, “Mom, don’t worry about it.
He’s a nothing.” He just said, “You don’t have to worry about it. I will approach Cheryl with it.” Within weeks, Andy and Cheryl separated. Andy moved in with his parents, where he was living at the time of his death. In all their conversations with Cheryl Gasper, investigators have never heard her mention her secret lover.
They confront her with this new information and ask Cheryl if she’s seen or spoken with Knight recently. Her answer surprises them. She said no to him in a couple years. Cuz I haven’t talked to Randall in years. Why is Cheryl hiding the affair? And more importantly, where was Randall Knight on the day Andy died? It’s 10 days after the shocking murder of Andy Gasper behind a shopping center, and investigators are desperately searching for his killer.
They’ve learned that one of Andy’s friends, Randall Knight, was having a secret affair with his wife, Cheryl. But Cheryl has kept silent about the relationship. Here, the first uh, days of the investigation were hot and heavy trying to find her husband’s murderer. She doesn’t mention one word about Randy Knight.
When confronted, Cheryl claims she hasn’t seen or spoken to Knight in several years. to Randall in years. But her phone records reveal otherwise. What we found was there was numerous phone calls back and forth from Randall Knight to Cheryl Gasper’s house. The love triangle aspect of it was pretty clear.
Uh, there was plenty of evidence that they were having an extramarital affair. Detectives suspect Cheryl is desperately trying to cover up her affair in a small town where hot gossip travels fast. She’s clearly a cheater. But that doesn’t mean she’s a murderer. And she has a solid alibi for the day Andy was stabbed.
But where was her lover, Randall Knight? Investigators travel to Knight’s home in Ohio and question him. Knight claims he learned about Andy’s death from the newspaper and agrees to a search of his house. Randall Knight turned over boxes of letters and, computer discs and everything to the investigators.
There was numerous cards, love letters. It was clear to all the investigators that Randy Knight was desperately in love with Cheryl Gasper. His His letters to her are absolutely glowing. They wanted to have, uh, horses and and carousels and all this dream house stuff. But one letter contains something far more shocking.
This fantastic letter was nearly a confession that, uh, that he authored uh, weeks before the murder. Essentially saying that by the time you get this, your problems will be solved, Andy will be dead, and I’ll be in jail or dead myself. When he was asked what he meant by that, he didn’t answer. Looking through more of Knight’s papers, investigators discover notes that show Knight had been stalking him while he worked in Florida.
He was a fantastic note taker. He’s writing down information about Andy’s comings and goings in Florida and what room what hotel he’s staying at. Police confront Randall Knight about the letters. He doesn’t deny writing them, but insists he had no real plans to kill Andy. When asked where he was on the 3rd of July, the day Andy was murdered, Knight tells police he had driven from his home in Ohio to see Cheryl.
His story was that he came to New York, tried to get a hold of Cheryl, couldn’t reach her, and returned to Ohio. And that he was back home and out of the area before the murder happened. Police don’t buy it. On August 16th, 1994, less than 2 months after Andy’s death, the Cattaraugus District Attorney charges Randall Knight with first-degree murder.
He’s arrested without incident. Details of the scandalous love triangle are front-page news across the region. We don’t get that many murders in Cattaraugus County, so it was definitely a high-profile case, for sure. But the prosecution’s case is built on love letters and personal notes. There is no murder weapon, eyewitnesses, or any forensic evidence linking Knight to the crime scene.
And so, it basically was a case that was circumstantial in nature. And those can be very difficult. The prosecution needs help from one person who’s been keeping a secret. Cheryl Gasper. She was the only person that we could present to testify that Randy Knight was in Cattaraugus County on July 3rd. Cheryl and Randall are no longer involved.
But can prosecutors convince her to testify against her former lover in order to bring justice to her husband? Cheryl agrees to do the right thing, even if it means revealing the details of her secret love affair. And as the trial nears, she comes forward with some new information that seems sure to sink Randall Knight.
She says, “You know, there is one thing that I just remembered.” She says, “I remember that on July 5th of 1994, 2 days after Andy Gasper was killed, she says, ‘I got a phone call from an individual who I recognized as Randy Knight.'” I finally got close And the only thing he said to me was, “I finally got close enough.
” Yet even with Cheryl’s testimony, the case lacks hard evidence. And the jury has too many questions. The trial ends with a shocking acquittal. This I just couldn’t believe that they were letting him go. And, I just I had in my mind that they were going to get him. Did investigators have the wrong man? Or did the murderer just slip through their fingers? And at that point, we just couldn’t go forward.
We had nothing to go forward on. [clears throat] That’s where it ended. The case went in the basement. And in the basement is where it stays for the next 15 years. Will the Gaspers ever find out who murdered their son? Or will a ruthless killer carry his secret sin to the grave? 2009. It’s been 15 years since Randall Knight was acquitted for the shocking murder of father and veteran, Andy Gasper.
Most people in the tiny town have moved on, except for Andy’s parents. Well, I never stopped conversation with the police enforcement officers. I had phone every 4 weeks, 6 weeks at the most, I’d be on the phone. Detective Bill Nick is haunted by the unsolved case. Uncertain whether Knight got away with murder or if investigators had the wrong man.
He’s ready to act when the sheriff’s office forms a new cold case squad. I actually dug that case out of the basement myself. The cold case squad will have to review every single piece of evidence to find what’s missing. Investigators can’t shake the belief that somebody knows about this murder and is keeping their mouths shut.
They track down every witness from the first investigation. And some of them look at us like, “Well, you know, didn’t we do this years ago? What are you guys do talking about?” We were frustrated, there’s no doubt about it. We had nothing to go forward on. Just when hope seems lost, investigators realize everything they need is right under their noses.
It’s an Ohio police report buried for years containing Randall Knight’s own words about killing Andy Gasper. I found a police report from Cuyahoga Falls that Randy had told a friend that I think I screwed up when I gave him the letters. I think I have on there how many times she wanted me to kill her husband.
The cold case squad takes a different tact this time, focusing on Cheryl as a conspirator in the murder. We ordered up all the trial testimony. I wanted to see what she said in court. Careful scrutiny of the trial testimony reveals that not only had Cheryl been cheating on her husband, she’d also been lying to her lover, Randall Knight.
Buried deep in the transcripts, Cheryl admitted to seducing Lanny Lambert, the husband of her good friend, Janet, the night before Andy was murdered. It just upset me that she could go out and do that to somebody’s you know, your own friend’s husband. You know, that’s that’s not right. The transcripts also show that Cheryl deceived police.
I could see where she admitted under oath. I understand that she lied and misled the police during this investigation. And that was huge to find out. Because this is sworn testimony in court. We had the right guy. He slipped through. And not only did he slip through, she slipped through. In the 15 years since Andy’s murder, Randall Knight and Cheryl Gaspar have been walking free.
And Knight’s already been tried and acquitted in state court. To go after him again, Dutchess detectives need help. They turn to the FBI, the federal agency that specializes in cold cases and hard-to-solve murders. Special Agent Rob Webb, a member of the FBI’s evidence response team, brings fresh eyes to the case.
We believe that Cheryl was the mastermind behind this and it was the person that drove Randall Knight to to ultimately do this to her husband. Special Agent Brent Isaacson is struck by how long Andy’s family has waited to see justice. When the sheriff’s office brought us this case, it was both infuriating and fascinating.
It was clear from reviewing the case that Randall Knight did it. It was also clear that Cheryl Gaspar was right in the middle of this. The FBI decides to pursue a murder-for-hire charge against both Cheryl and Randall. The the statute requires that we we have a murder, that they drove across the state line.
And it also required that there was a promise to pay something of financial value. Agents know Randall Knight traveled from Ohio to New York the day before the murder, but had any money exchanged hands between Randall and Cheryl. Agents revisit the letters between the lovebirds and hit the jackpot.
Those letters were saying, “Hey, I was looking for a house for us. I found one for $95,000.” Right there struck us odd because we knew neither one of them had a lot of money. But we did know that there was a $100,000 life insurance on Andy. Investigators now have a strategy for going after Randall Knight and Cheryl Gaspar. But there’s still no solid proof that Knight was the one who stabbed Andy Gaspar.
And to go to trial again without new evidence could mean more pain for the Gaspar family. I just don’t want to promise or say something that I couldn’t do. Cuz they’ve already been hurt enough from that 19 1995 trial with Knight. They all agree the case needs one thing, a confession. But how do they get a man to talk who’s gone scot-free for 15 years? And even more daunting, how do they get a woman who’s never been charged with a crime to admit her guilt? Agents make a risky decision.
We decided to talk to Cheryl first because we knew the most about her. The case file was jammed packed with hundreds of pages of grand jury and trial transcripts from Cheryl Gaspar. So, we had this beautiful window into how she thought, how she spoke. Cheryl readily agrees to the interview. Even so, the agents have their work cut out for them.
Cheryl Gaspar is an intelligent woman who’s kept secrets from nearly everyone in her life and gotten away with it. Special Agents Isaacson and Webb prepare to conduct the interview. They are about to play a game of cat and mouse and they can’t afford to lose. She’s a very intelligent person and we believed that we could actually use that intelligence against her.
FBI Agents Brent Isaacson and Rob Webb are trying to get Cheryl Gaspar to confess that she ordered the murder of her husband Andy more than 15 years earlier. They have just one shot and everything is on the line. We knew going into the interview that it was going to be difficult because we knew she was going to be evasive.
Cheryl shows up for the interview calm, comfortable, and with her new boyfriend. Well, she came through the door with a smile. But when I introduced her to Brent Isaacson from the FBI, I could see that in her eyes. Her eyes were kind of like, “What the heck is going on here?” Well, listen. Well, well, we’ll get down to brass tacks a little bit here.
Um The agents quickly get down to business. We laid out in very great detail that we were there not to learn whether she had killed her husband, but why. Cheryl begins her typical evasive language. In a vague way, yeah. You know, not in a specific, you know. But Special Agent Isaacson is ready for her. on the line.
Just just hear me out for a minute. What I want you to focus on is giving me as direct and plain and concise an answer to my questions as you can. Okay? You just have to be uh committed to uh play a game of of chess with the suspect. Um You’re always thinking several questions ahead. Special Agent Isaacson makes some progress by appealing to Cheryl’s vanity.
The carrot that we gave her was, “If you can tell us why you did this, it will allow you to be portrayed as something other than a than a black widow, than a conspiring evil person.” And in her mind, she saw that as the lesser of two evils. After wearing down her defenses over 6 hours, Special Agent Isaacson cuts to the heart of the matter.
Did you talk about having a life insurance policy with Randy Knight? And that by killing your husband, you’d be able to buy a dream house? She ultimately said yes. Isaacson asks her why she did it. 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 Knight 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.
About what? Cheryl has already told us 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 He actually put a lot of the blame on Cheryl and 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. 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 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.