Nightmare In Napa
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Nov. 19, 2005
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Leslie Mazzara moved to Napa in 2004.
(CBS/PJ Clem)
(CBS) The murders of former beauty queen
Leslie Mazzara and her roommate Adriane
Insogna shocked beautiful and quiet
Napa, California.
Who wanted these two women dead?
Correspondent Bill Lagattuta reports on
the investigation, newly-released
evidence and a stunning development that
surprised everyone.
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California's Napa Valley, world famous for its
wine, is a place of almost mythical beauty.
Every day, tourists arrive by the busload to
drink in the local flavors, luxuriating in
resorts and savoring exquisite food and wine.
Kelly McCorkle and her best friend Leslie
Mazzara grew up thousands of miles and a world
away from the golden lifestyle of Napa Valley.
But, Kelly says, Leslie was drawn to wine
country.
Leslie was raised by her single mother, Cathy,
and her two older half brothers on a farm in
rural Anderson, South Carolina.
“She was spoiled. She was a princess. We knew
that. We adored her,” remembers her mother.
“When she was a little girl she used to say she
wanted to be a mother, a teacher and a nurse.
And Miss America before she was 21.”
But her friend Kelly was the one winning beauty
pageants.
“Leslie would come over to my house and put my
crowns on her head,” Kelly recalls. “Finally,
she said, ‘Can I have one of your crowns?’ And I
said, ‘No. Go get your own.’ And she said, ‘You
really think I could win one?’ So I talked her
into doing it. I helped her fill out her
application.”
Leslie won the title of Miss Williamston and
went on to compete in the Miss South Carolina
pageant, making raising money for abused
children her platform.
As for Kelly, she won the Miss South Carolina
title and later went on to be a finalist on the
CBS reality show “The Amazing Race.” Kelly’s
future seemed set, but Leslie, after graduating
from college, was still searching.
Kelly says Leslie was passionate about the arts
but was unsure what she wanted to do. She also
thought about becoming a lawyer, a teacher or a
reporter.
When Leslie’s mother moved to California, she
remembers calling her daughter. “I said, ‘Maybe
you can spend the summer pouring wine in wine
country and just take a break.’"
Leslie headed straight to the winery owned by
“Godfather” director Francis Ford Coppola, and
was hired on the spot.
Leslie found a room in a house on Dorset Street
in Napa shared by two other young women, Lauren
and Adriane Insogna.
One of Adriane’s best friends, Lily Prudhomme,
says the women’s neighborhood was safe and
quiet.
But last fall, something horrible happened in
their quiet neighborhood.
It was Halloween night, and Leslie, Adriane and
Lauren were handing out candy to neighborhood
children.
After the doorbell stopped ringing, the women
headed to bed around 10:30 p.m. Leslie and
Adriane slept in adjacent bedrooms upstairs,
while Lauren’s room was downstairs, near the
back of the house.
At approximately 2 a.m. on Nov. 1, 2004, police
say, an unidentified man entered the house and
went upstairs.
Lauren awoke hearing screams.
“She (Lauren) couldn’t quite make out what it
was, but then things started to get a little
louder. She actually got up and then heard
somebody coming down the stairs rapidly,”
explains police Commander Jeff Troendly.
Terrified, Lauren waited. When she could hear
nothing but her roommates crying for help, she
climbed the stairs, where she found her
roommates stabbed.
By the time police arrived, the two 26-year-old
women were dead.
Nightmare In Napa
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Nov. 19, 2005
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Leslie Mazzara moved to Napa in 2004.
(CBS/PJ Clem)
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(CBS)
The murders shocked Napa. “People were shocked.
Scared,” remembers Napa Register reporter Marsha
Dorgan. “Nothing like this has ever happened in
Napa before.”
Adriane’s friend Lily says everyone had a
theory. “There was talk about the girls were
doing drugs, and that maybe they owed somebody
money.”
Some even thought it might have been a mob hit,
because the three women had Italian last names.
“It was ridiculous,” says Lily.
And as improbable as it might sound, some people
even thought that because Leslie’s boss –
Francis Ford Coppola – had made a famous mafia
movie, he had connections to the mob.
Just hours after Leslie and Adriane were
brutally stabbed to death in the house on Dorset
Street, detectives went into a house one block
away and pounded on Christian Lee’s bedroom
door.
“I was fast asleep and I opened the door and
about five detectives jumped backwards,” recalls
Lee. He says officers asked him if he had any
weapons in the home. “I said I had one and I
asked if I could get it for them. ‘No, no, no.
Just point to where it is.’”
Officers collected a knife from the corner of
his room. Christian says they also took samples
of blood, clothes and bed sheets, and asked him
to come to the station for questioning.
Christian was Adriane’s “on-again, off-again”
boyfriend. He told police he had seen Adriane
late the previous night when she dropped by
after handing out candy to the neighborhood
children. She had left at 10 p.m., Christian
said, and it was the last time he saw her.
Christian says their relationship had been
rocky, and they had been arguing for weeks. She
wanted a commitment, but he says he wasn’t
ready.
“She would say things that would make me mad. I
would say things. I would make her mad. She’d
end up finding someone to go out with,” says
Christian. Adriane told Christian she went to a
party the week before and met a guy, something
he admits made him jealous.
Christian says their relationship had its
problems, but that he has never touched a woman
in anger.
As it turned out, he was just the first of many
people police would talk to as they began to
sort through this brutal crime. Their instinct
was that this was not a random attack, that
either Leslie or Adriane, or both, were targeted
by the killer.
To find out, investigators would have to dig
deep into the victims’ lives. In Adriane’s case,
that included talking to her mother.
Adriane’s mother Arlene was on vacation in
Australia when she got the news about the murder
from her youngest daughter, Allison.
Of all her three girls, Arlene says she had
worried the least about Adriane. After all,
Adriane was the one who had beat all the odds
once already and escaped death. At 16, Adriane
survived a near-fatal car crash. “The car kind
of rolled at least three times and every time
Adriane’s head hit the pavement through the open
window…. It was a miracle she survived,”
remembers Arlene.
A few months later, Adriane was back in school
but still suffering from temporary brain damage.
But over time, she healed and again excelled in
school. A group called “If Given A Chance”
noticed her story and gave her a scholarship to
California Polytechnic State University so she
could pursue her dream of becoming an engineer.
Eventually, the city of Napa hired Adriane to be
an engineer, and she started dating Christian.
Ten years after the accident that nearly killed
her, Adriane celebrated with her best friend,
Lily Prudhomme. “We went out and took the day
off work,” Lily remembers, “and celebrated her
tenth anniversary of what she used to call, ‘The
day she was supposed to die.’”
They spent the day at an amusement park. It was
just four months before a killer would take
Adriane’s life.
The two friends spent hours gossiping about
their love lives. Lily was engaged to marry her
high school sweetheart, Eric Copple. Inevitably,
the conversation would turn to Adriane’s
relationship with Christian.
“She would come to work crying one day. And, of
course, being friends, we would console her. But
you sort off start to get to see Christian in
this negative light. Because she wouldn’t
necessarily tell her friends when they had
gotten back together,” says Lily.
The idea that Christian could be a suspect in
her daughter’s murder didn’t occur to Arlene.
Her first thought was that the killer had to be
someone Leslie knew.
“Leslie was a newcomer to the area, and she
really wanted to make the most of her time here.
She really wanted to go out and meet people,”
says Arlene.
Compared to Leslie, Arlene says Adriane had a
much quieter life. “Knowing Adriane and knowing
she had spent most of her time with people she
had known for years – it was just a completely
different lifestyle. So I believe it was the
lifestyle that Leslie was living that invited
this perpetrator to come in unbeknownst to any
of them and have this murder happen.”
Nightmare In Napa
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Nov. 19, 2005
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Leslie Mazzara moved to Napa in 2004.
(CBS/PJ Clem)
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(CBS)
Police also thought Leslie was the killer’s
intended target.
“The blood evidence really speaks volumes what
happened there. You’re able to start to get a
picture in your mind of where these girls were
and how they fought back the last moments of
their life,” says Detective Todd Schulman.
Schulman is convinced the killer knew his target
and where she slept, and says the killer went
right for the stairs and headed to the bedrooms.
Looking at the wounds on her body, Detective Dan
Lonergan thought Leslie was the killer’s likely
target, certainly his first victim. “I would say
that she was possibly attacked while she was
sleeping,” he says.
Detective Lonergan says Adriane may have been
awoken by the noise and tried to go to the
rescue. “The evidence shows something of that
nature,” he says.
“I went to the viewing of her body, says Lily.
“Looks like she fought pretty hard. She had a
lot of bruising. A lot of cuts on her hands. And
Adriane hated turtlenecks. Hated them, would not
wear them. But she was wearing one in the casket
for obvious reasons.”
The killer was hurt during the attacks and left
drops of blood, crucial DNA evidence.
Police also had a valuable witness, Lauren, the
surviving roommate.
“I was in my bed and just opened up my eyes and
realized something is not quite right. And then
I heard a scream,” recalls Lauren. “I remember
thinking, I need to get out. There was a person
up there that may come for me.”
Lauren, 28, is still terrified, fearing the man
who murdered her roommates will now come after
her. When she agreed to be interviewed by
“America’s Most Wanted,” she asked that her face
be hidden.
What she saw and heard that Halloween night
still haunts her. “I just kept saying ‘Oh my
God. Oh my God,’” recalls Lauren.
Lauren says she jumped out of bed and stood
outside her bedroom door, listening.
Suddenly she heard the killer running down the
stairs. “I was terrified. My gut told me to go
out the back. I mean, it was the closest way
anyway. I remember thinking, ‘I’m opening up the
door for this guy to follow me out,’” remembers
Lauren.
Lauren hid in the backyard and never saw the
killer or heard his voice. She only heard him
leaving through a kitchen window in front of the
house. After that, the only sounds she remembers
were the cries for help from her friends.
Lauren started to panic. With her cell phone,
she got in her car and drove away. She then
called the police (audio).
As police questioned Lauren about what she heard
and saw, they began to firm up their theory that
it was Leslie who was the killer’s primary
target.
Why Leslie? When they began to look at her life,
they began to find a young woman who had an
effect on a lot of people.
Although Leslie had lived in California for just
seven months, she was already incredibly
popular. “Whenever Leslie walked into a room,
everybody stopped and looked,” remembers Vanessa
Schnurr, who had traveled from South Carolina to
Napa with her friend Katie Norris to visit
Leslie a few weeks before the murders.
Leslie dated a number of men while she was in
Napa. At the time of her murder, Vanessa and
Katie say she was seeing two guys, an older man
who they won’t name, and Beau (sp), who they say
Leslie was getting serious with.
Katie and Vanessa recall that the older man saw
some flowers Beau (sp) had sent Leslie and was
furious. “He had this very dark, evil gaze. I’ll
never forget his eyes. Ever,” says Katie.
“He was jealous. I said, you know, ‘Get rid of
him,’” recalls Amy Brown, Leslie’s oldest
friend.
Amy says Leslie was “drop-dead beautiful” and
had a certain aura. “Everybody that I’ve met
through her will come up to me and say: ‘You
know Leslie was my best friend.’ It’s just how
they felt about her. That’s how she made me
feel.”
Napa police wanted to talk to every man Leslie
had ever been involved with and see if they
could match any of them to the DNA the killer
left behind. Detective Lonergan thinks it’s a
possibility that someone Leslie came in contact
with may have become obsessed with her.
“I would say Leslie is a heartbreaker. She never
did it on purpose, but I think that there were
lots of people out there that would have loved
to have won her over, claimed her as their
girlfriend,” says Leslie’s friend Kelly.
Napa police searched through Leslie’s computer
and found an e-mail that interested them, from
an old boyfriend she had met in Alaska when she
was just 20.
“She was the perfect woman. I mean, she’s
everything I was looking for, and then some,”
says Aaron Davis. He proposed, but Leslie turned
him down. And although she broke up with him
more than five years ago, Aaron had recently
tried to contact her.
“I was going to marry that girl. There’s other
women out there, but there’s not another
Leslie,” says Aaron.
Amy Brown says a lot of men fell hard for
Leslie. “Guys just loved Leslie and even if they
weren’t dating they would buy her things. And
she never asked for anything. It was just like
they would give the world to her. I mean this
was the woman they were going marry. They just
loved her to death.”
Amy says one boyfriend’s family sent Leslie on a
cruise, while another man even bought her a car.
“She had no idea that these men, or guys, would
think that they were the one who was going to be
with Leslie. She was just dating to find the
right person for her.”
A month before she was murdered, Leslie went
back to South Carolina for Amy’s wedding,
carrying new luggage another guy had bought her.
Amy says she felt “queasy” that guys were buying
gifts for her friend. And there was something
else that bothered Amy.
She learned that on the night of her best
friend’s murder, the father of one of men Leslie
had broken up with tried repeatedly to reach her
on the phone. “It gives me chills when I first
heard that,” says Amy. “I’ve never had an
ex-boyfriend’s father call me… I think it’s very
weird.”
Nightmare In Napa
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Nov. 19, 2005
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Leslie Mazzara moved to Napa in 2004. (CBS/PJ
Clem)
(CBS)
Almost a year had passed in Napa and there were
still no answers on who murdered Leslie and
Adriane.
Leslie’s mother Cathy was frustrated with the
investigation, and about having to defend her
daughter’s reputation.
“When she would break up with a boyfriend they
were still friends. I mean it’s not like she
left a chain of enemies,” says Cathy. “There
might be a few broken hearts but I don’t think
they were angry at her.”
In Anderson, South Carolina, Leslie is
remembered as a hometown hero.
When she was the local beauty queen, Leslie
raised money for the Calvary Home for Children,
a charity that houses abused kids.
Leslie’s brother PJ wants another home built in
Leslie’s honor. To raise money, he has teamed up
with Kelly, who got some big help from some
famous friends, including Rob and Amber, who
were contestants on the TV show “Survivor,” got
married on television, and competed against
Kelly on the “Amazing Race.”
Together they organized a fundraiser, “The
Raising Race,” a South Carolina version of the
popular TV show. Hundreds turned out to meet
them.
Meanwhile, back in Napa, Adriane’s friends were
dealing with the tragedy in their own way.
Her best friend Lily and her boyfriend Eric
Copple, who had been putting off getting
married, decided life was too short. “We’ve been
together almost eight years now. It was time to
go ahead and get married,” says Lily.
Adriane’s mother Arlene attended the wedding,
and even addressed the couple. In her friend’s
honor, Lily played her best friend’s favorite
song, called She Will Be Loved.
Although the day was joyful, Lily says she
couldn’t get beyond the fact that there had been
no arrest in Adriane’s murder. “Somebody must
know something. Somebody would have had to
notice their friend acting strange or had
bruises. Doesn’t seem like someone could walk
away from it acting fine.”
But by the following summer, police seemed
baffled. Investigators said they had contacted
more than 1,000 people, ruling them out one by
one. They started with the inner circle, people
who knew the victims, including boyfriends,
friends and friends of friends. Two hundred of
the men investigators met with gave DNA samples.
Detective Schulman says all of the men who gave
DNA samples had been ruled out as suspects,
including Adriane’s boyfriend Christian and all
of Leslie’s boyfriends.
Then in September, 2005, almost a year after the
murders, police decided to make public a piece
of evidence.
Police had located several cigarette butts
outside the house, cigarettes that had been
smoked down to the filter. DNA on the cigarette
butts matched the DNA of the killer’s blood at
the scene.
Police think the killer stood outside smoking
cigarette after cigarette.
And, he smoked an unusual brand. Distinctive
markings on the band matched those of Turkish
Gold, a variation of Camel cigarettes that had
only recently been on the market.
“We feel like the cigarette brand is something
that’s going to prompt someone in the public to
make that one phone call that’s going to lead to
the identity of the killer,” says Schulman.
Just five days later, police called Adriane’s
mother to tell her that they had made an arrest.
“I was very stunned. I didn’t know what to say.
And so my next words were, ‘Who was it?’ And I
was not at all prepared for the answer to that
question.”
Nightmare In Napa
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Leslie Mazzara moved to Napa in 2004. (CBS/PJ
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(CBS)
Arlene knew the man well. Police had arrested
Eric Copple, 26, the husband of Adriane’s best
friend Lily.
“When I learned who it was, I was shocked and I
was overcome with grief,” says Arlene.
Knowing that the police believe Lily’s husband
was the killer only brought back thoughts of the
gruesome murders
How did the police finally identify a suspect?
And one who was under their noses the whole
time? It turns out Eric Copple went to them. It
was a Tuesday night, after all of the detectives
working the case had left for the day.
Copple showed up at the police station with his
wife and other family members.
“Eric Matthew Copple was interviewed and made
admissions that link him to this crime,” Police
Chief Richard Melton said.
Napa police always said they would look at the
inner circle, the people in closest proximity to
the victims, but they never even interviewed
Copple. Police say they left phone messages for
him, which he ignored.
Police believe Copple thought he was about to be
caught.
Copple smoked cigarettes, which all his friends
knew, but the police had waited 10 months to
tell the public that they were looking for a
killer who smoked. When Copple heard the police
say the killer smoked the same unusual brand as
he did, he turned himself in and reportedly
confessed.
So did police drop the ball?
“We would have ultimately contacted him. We
would have obtained a DNA sample,” the police
chief said.
When they finally obtained a DNA sample, police
say, they had a match.
Eric, who worked as a land surveyor, had no
arrest record. Police won’t say whether he used
drugs or had a psychiatric condition.
Arlene says she and her daughter were both fond
of him.
Adriane would tell her mother stories about Eric
that Adriane and Lily thought were funny. “Lily
would comment on how obsessive-compulsive Eric
was. “In other words, a neat freak. It’s the
classic, if you would just move something, he
would go back and just quietly move it right
back,” says Arlene.
But there’s nothing Arlene can think of that
suggested Eric was dangerous.
Arlene worries she will lose the friendship with
Lily that pulled her through her grief: “I’m
crying for her, and worried I might lose her.
She might be afraid I would blame her, which I
don’t.”
When Lily did her interview with 48 Hours a year
ago, she told us she couldn’t imagine the killer
would go unnoticed.
Eric Copple was in the room during our interview
as Lily talked about how Adriane must have
fought her killer. “She was a scrappy girl. I
hope she hurt him,” Lily said at the time.
And now, after so many months of focusing on
Leslie as the killer’s primary target, and
thinking Adriane died trying to defend her, the
families now wonder if this was about Adriane.
“It seems logical now that because of Adriane’s
close relationship with Lily and with Eric, that
she would be the target,” says Arlene.
And Arlene apologizes to Leslie’s family. “I’m
so sorry, I’m so sorry it’s someone on Adriane’s
list, you know,” she says. “We’ll have to see
what happens, though.”
“It hurts me that she is feeling any guilt about
it,” says Leslie’s mother Cathy. “He was a sick
person."
The police won’t say what Eric’s motive was but
Cathy doesn’t expect to ever understand it
anyway. “She was just beginning her life. She
had been through so much and she was just
beginning to realize her full potential,” she
says.
Cathy’s terrified to hear the details of what
happened to Leslie that Halloween night,
expecting it will all come out at Eric’s trial.
“I don’t look forward to knowing how my daughter
died. I just know that I’ve been told it’s a
vicious murder. It’s hard to live with that,”
says Cathy.
It’s an emotion Adriane’s mother understands
well. She says, “Each piece that I gather causes
so much pain. I can’t understand how it could
have happened. But I see the devastation it has
left in its wake.”
“Each piece that I gather causes so much pain. I
can’t understand how it could have happened. But
I see the devastation it has left in its wake.”
One long year later, police can now claim they
solved the Halloween murders in Napa.
But why did it happen? The answers may not
becoming anytime soon. Because in spite of the
confession police say he gave them, Copple has
decided to plead not guilty. Prosecutors haven’t
announced yet whether they will seek the death
penalty.
Eric Copple is expected to stand trial next
year. Since Eric’s incarceration, one of his
visitors has been his wife Lily.
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