Worst Neighbor Ever (2026) s01e02 Episode Script

1
[crackling softly]
[crackling intensifies]
[tense music playing]
[woman] Our street in the neighborhood
certainly was like family,
but you never truly know who people are.
[music distorting]
[dispatcher speaking]
[woman 1 speaking]
[man speaking]
[woman 2 speaking]
[woman 3 speaking]
[voice breaking] I've lived this
every night for years.
-[people shouting]
-[sirens blaring]
-[woman] My God.
-[man 2] Get out!
[man 3] I don't know of anyone
who would have thought
that their neighbor would turn on them
in such a depraved way.
[gentle music playing]
[Doug] Some people left.
I get it.
I understand that.
What happened here is too much for people.
I stayed here.
I love living here.
I love my neighbors.
You know, they don't call me the mayor
of Richmond Hill for nothing. [chuckles]
[music becomes upbeat]
My wife and I moved to
Richmond Hill in 2001.
They were still
building houses at the time.
We got to meet
all the new people that came in
until the addition was full
with 125 houses.
[woman] We were
a pretty social neighborhood.
It was one of those neighborhoods
where everybody stands in their driveways
with whatever, you know,
drink everybody brought,
talking and hanging out.
The biggest activity we did was watch
our kids playing outside. [laughs]
We had a community pool.
We had a community park.
You had adults who,
at night in the summer,
would pull out fire pits
into the front yard.
They'd just sit around and talk
while kids just got to play outside.
It was a great neighborhood
to grow up in overall.
[tense music playing]
I always tried to make
new residents feel welcome.
I remember Moncy and her husband
moving in the neighborhood.
She was a nurse,
and I noticed that she had an accent.
I couldn't pin where it was from,
but it wasn't your normal Hoosier accent.
But, you know, I didn't care.
I mean, she was a neighbor.
[Gloria] My ex-husband and I
moved to Richmond Hill
with our two daughters in 2007.
We met Moncy
probably within a month of moving in.
We were out back grilling,
and we met up at the fence
between our house and Moncy's house.
It was Moncy, her husband John,
and then their daughter,
who was about the same age as my girls,
and their cat.
The cat was her baby.
That cat was everything to her.
The first time I met Moncy,
she told me she'd had her boobs done,
and as long as there
was plastic surgeons on this Earth,
there was never a reason to look old.
[chuckles]
Moncy was not shy
about what she wanted out of life.
As a kid, I always thought,
"Oh my gosh, this is a rich lady."
Designer bag, nice car.
This lady has money.
[woman] Moncy and I were together
more than probably
any of my other friends at that time.
My family and I moved
to Richmond Hill in 2003,
and I just fell in love with it.
Just the people there,
it just felt like home
in such a short amount of time.
I loved my neighbors.
We were all best friends.
Their parents were like extended parents.
My mom and us kids
had a close relationship
with Moncy and her daughter.
Moncy was from Puerto Rico,
and she taught herself English
and put herself through nursing school,
which is something
that I really admired about her.
We went down to Moncy's house probably
at least three to four times a week
and had dinner.
She literally would go out the door
and say, "Jacksons, ready for dinner."
I definitely saw Moncy as someone
I knew I could always go to for help.
Like, Moncy's right down the street,
or we would go hang out in her living room
while Mom was running errands.
[Abby] We talked a lot about religion.
She knew that I was a Christian
and that I went to church every Sunday.
We even had a Bible study in our home
for a few of the neighbors.
Her and John and Brooke
came to church with us a few times.
And then about a month later,
she asked if I would baptize her.
And, of course, I was honored.
So I baptized Moncy.
[Gloria] Jennifer and Dion
lived two doors down
on the other side of Moncy's house.
I had met Dion and Jennifer
in my travels through the neighborhood.
You know, just a nice, young couple.
[crowd cheering]
[man] Jennifer had grown up in the area.
they're looking for something
that was in their price range,
safe, and with nice people.
That was Richmond Hill.
Jennifer was a teacher
at an elementary school there.
She was really into it.
Dion was an electrical engineer.
Okay, now it's filming.
-[Jennifer] It's filming.
-Look at the frog I caught.
[Jennifer] There we go,
there's a good shot. Now pet it.
-Aw!
-[frog croaking]
Isn't he cute?
[John] They had a dog named Pepper.
A lot of people knew Dion
from the fact that they met him
when he was out walking the dog.
[Dion] My morning glory.
[Gloria] Dion was always out gardening.
He loved his flowers
and he took
meticulous care of those plants.
But Moncy hated his garden.
She thought his lawn looked like weeds.
She wanted a big,
fancy array in her garden,
and his was a butterfly garden.
I'm not part of the garden.
[Dion] But you're pretty.
Jennifer was usually…
if she wasn't right alongside him
helping him pull weeds,
she would bring him stuff, like a drink.
-[Jennifer] What are you drinking?
-[Dion] Boom Chugga Lugga.
-[Jennifer] Let me see.
-[Dion] Soda.
[Jennifer laughs]
Dion had a older GTO
that was in his garage
that he was restoring.
And I'm a car guy.
If I'd see him
out there working, I'd ask him,
"Hey, how's that
car project coming along?"
So, you know, it was your typical
Midwestern neighborhood.
-[man] Whoa!
-[people laughing]
We've got good people down here.
[man] Oh, the man… [echoes]
[eerie music playing]
[Abby] After a few years,
Moncy let me know a few things
that were going on in her marriage
that were not going well.
So she told me that
she wanted to file for divorce.
One day, John was there,
and the next day, John was gone.
[Abby] It was a pretty big house.
So it just being
her and Brooke, I thought,
well, maybe she's gonna downsize.
But she stayed there.
This was after her divorce.
And when she started
getting into her wild…
You know, going out to bars,
seeing doctors at the hospital,
and just being with all kinds of men,
and… only talked about herself… [sniffles]
I just could not be around her
as much as we were,
like, when we were doing
dinner and stuff like that,
because all of her stories, I was like,
"Oh, we can't be doing that," you know.
[Faith] I definitely knew there
was sort of a shift
in the relationship
between my mom and Moncy.
Everyone's relationship
just sort of changed
and was a little bit more distant.
[Abby] My focus is raising
my kids with morals,
and I couldn't be the mom
that I needed to be to my kids
and continue that relationship with her.
So I just told her
that I had to walk away
from the friendship.
[sobbing]
And honestly, at that time,
I look back…
and I don't even think she cared. [sniffs]
[dramatic music playing]
[Abby] Moncy and I had gone
a few years and not talked.
We would wave,
but it was just nothing like before.
My husband at the time
and I were walking to the pool,
and Moncy came running out and said,
"Hey, I want you to meet Mark."
"He's an amazing guy
and he makes so much money."
That was her big thing.
"He makes so much money."
We shook hands,
and I just can't even describe…
It was just a gut feeling.
It just didn't feel right.
We learned that
Mark and Moncy met at a bar,
and just, like, a few weeks later,
he was already moving
his stuff into her house.
And I'm like, "That doesn't make sense."
"If he had so much money,
why wouldn't you be moving in with him?"
As we were walking away,
my husband and I noticed
an ankle monitor on Mark's ankle.
My husband made it very clear
to stay away.
[Gloria] There was something about him
from the day he moved in I didn't like.
It could have been something
as simple as the really bad frosting job
he had done on his hair
when I first saw him.
He had the puka shell necklace,
the fake tan, the whole bit.
From the day Mark moved in,
my mom had new rules
about us going outside,
because he was… creepy.
[Gloria] After Mark moved in,
Moncy became a different person.
She quit waving hi,
there wasn't that
friendly interaction anymore.
It was just all about her and him.
[Kat] They were very public
with their displays of affection.
They would be outside hanging out
and they would just start
making out with each other intensely.
She started riding
the motorcycle with him.
[engine roars]
[Gloria] They were coming and going
at all hours, which was pretty unusual.
There was a lot more traffic to the house.
There was always people coming and going.
[Abby] Mark's van was
always backed in, always.
We saw a lot of furniture
coming in and out.
[Doug] We just saw
that white van all the time.
But for the most part,
nothing ever stuck out
that there was trouble brewing.
We had no idea.
[eerie noises playing]
[woman] I know there's
a lot of good men out there.
They're not all Mark Leonards.
But for the few
that are Mark Leonards, unfortunately,
they do not care about who they hurt
or who they have to hurt
to get what they want.
They worship one thing,
and that's the almighty dollar.
[dramatic music playing]
[Joann] In October of 2009,
I was a nurse and
just had recently lost my husband.
I didn't like being alone.
I was used to being married
and I was ready to start dating again.
So I went ahead
and signed up for a dating site.
I was probably on there maybe two weeks.
And then Mark Leonard reached out to me,
and I looked at his profile.
He had the beautiful blond hair
with the highlights
and the blue eyes and very slim physique.
And I was pretty excited
about hearing from him.
Our first date, he was a gentleman,
pulled my chair out for me.
Things that I wasn't used to
after being married for 30 years.
We had a good date.
Just about everything that I said
that I liked, he liked too. [laughs]
He told me that he was a contractor,
that he made plenty of money.
And when the bill came, he said,
"As long as you're with me,
you won't pay for anything."
We continued to go on dates after that.
He would call me three or four
times a day saying, you know,
"I just wanted to hear your voice."
"I'm kinda having a bad day,
but now that I've heard your voice,
it makes the day so much better."
I thought, you know, "Wow, how lucky am I
to meet somebody so perfect?"
Sundays, we would go to church.
And I just loved it.
But that Sunday, we get to church,
and Mark was just flush and nervous
and, you know,
just didn't look like himself.
He said, "I've got
a really bad situation at work."
"A piece of equipment
got stolen last night."
"The job pays $300,000,
but without this equipment,
I can't finish the job."
He goes, "And there's
only one piece of equipment
that I have been able to find
that will replace it."
He goes, "It's in Kentucky
and it costs $10,000."
I was sitting there thinking to myself,
"Well, if you think I'm going
to give you $10,000, you're wrong."
Then we go into the service.
The preacher…
Of course he's preaching on generosity.
So, you know, against that inner voice
that tells you
not to do something… [laughs]
…I decided to go ahead
and go to the bank and get the money.
And I watch enough Court TV
that I thought,
"I better have some documentation."
So I went ahead
and I wrote up an agreement.
And so when he came over,
I had the documentation
and the stack of cash,
and he couldn't sign it fast enough.
The next day, he didn't call me,
which… he'd been calling me every day.
So I called him a few times.
[tense music playing]
I guess it'd been maybe a week and a half
since I had given him the money.
[phone rings]
And then I get a phone call,
and it's his friend.
And he said, "Mark has something
that he wants to tell you."
He goes, "But I'm going
to be the one to tell you."
-"Mark wants to break up with you."
-[dramatic beat]
And I said, "Oh, okay, that's fine."
"But I do want my $10,000 back."
[tense music playing]
[Joann] That week went by,
didn't hear from him.
Another week went by.
It was like he fell off
the face of the Earth.
I decided to try to get my money back
through small claims court.
And when it went before the judge,
he goes,
"I hate to be the one to tell you this."
"But there's three other people
in front of you
that have lawsuits against him."
Then I just had to come to the fact that,
hey, I've given this money
away to a con man,
a very good con man, unfortunately.
I wish I'd have never met Mark Leonard.
[intense music playing]
[Abby] November 10th, 2012
was like any other ordinary day.
It was beautiful outside.
I actually remember a lot of us neighbors
standing out on the street,
like, for a couple hours,
just because it was so nice.
We actually had our windows open,
enjoying the nice breeze,
because we knew that in a matter of weeks,
we'll be getting cold weather and snow.
That night, Notre Dame
was playing Boston College.
So I had made my way
up to our bedroom to watch the game.
My son and my wife
were in our family room watching TV.
[Gloria] My youngest daughter
and my husband,
we just kind of were hanging around,
watching TV,
doing the typical family thing.
My oldest daughter went to sleep.
Couple hours later,
I looked up at the mantel clock.
[clock ticking]
As I turned to look at my husband to say,
"I think I'm gonna go up to bed now…"
[music intensifying]
[clock continues ticking]
[ticking speeds up]
-[deep boom]
-[Gloria] Everything went black.
[loud explosion]
[silence]
-[people shouting]
-[dramatic music playing]
[Abby] At first,
we thought we were being bombed.
Our whole house
lifted up off the foundation.
[man] Oh my God!
Water!
It was like one of those mortar fireworks
going off right next to your house.
[loud boom]
It just went through
the core of your body.
-[people shouting]
-[phone dialing]
[dispatcher speaking]
[Gloria speaking]
[Doug speaking]
[Abby speaking]
[Gloria speaking]
[Abby] Insulation
and drywall were falling down,
and I did not want us
to get trapped in that.
So my main thing is,
get out of this house.
I hear, like, my dad, in the hallway,
"Get out of the house."
[man screaming]
We got the kids, we were barefoot,
there was glass everywhere.
My God, it's so dark.
You could hear people
coming out of their house screaming.
-[people screaming]
-[Abby] Oh my God, look.
[man] There could be gas…
[Faith] The flames were just massive.
The street looked like it had snowed,
but this bright light of fire
is in the distance.
[sirens blaring]
[dispatcher 2 speaking]
[Abby] When my husband walked out,
he yelled to me,
"It's Moncy's house,
it's the one that's on fire."
He just screamed to me and said,
"Can you get the kids?
I've got to go help."
"People are stuck."
[Abby speaking]
[firefighter speaking]
I was pushed completely over to my side,
and I couldn't sit back up.
Something was holding me there.
All I could see
were trusses from my roof on my lap.
I was completely stuck there.
I remember sitting there thinking,
"Am I even alive right now?"
Because it was so dark, it was so quiet.
After a few seconds, I said,
"What just happened?"
My husband answered, "Hell, I don't know."
I said, "Well, come help me.
I can't move."
And he goes, "I can't move either."
I could feel
that there was weight on top of me.
I felt something on my head,
so I reached up, and I could feel
that my head was bleeding.
[Gloria] I hear my youngest daughter,
Katherine, start yelling,
"I'm bleeding.
I'm bleeding from my head, I'm bleeding."
I wanted to get to my daughter.
I couldn't move.
No matter what I did, I could not move.
[Kat] My mom starts screaming for help.
So, I joined her
and started screaming for help.
[Gloria] Some neighbors came to the
back door when they heard me scream.
One of them kicked in my front door
to get into the house.
[Kat] One of the neighborhood kids
came and dug me out,
told me that
he needed to get me out of there.
When we walked out of
the back of the house, um…
Moncy's house was engulfed in flames.
I thought that our house was gonna be next
and my mom and dad were still in there.
[radio beeps]
[first responder speaking]
This remains a very active situation.
You can see the plumes of smoke
just coming out of that neighborhood.
In 2012, I was a reporter at WRTV,
the ABC affiliate in Indianapolis.
There were so many
ambulances, police cars,
sheriff's deputies' vehicles, you name it,
those lights lit up the sky.
The information that was coming in
was very limited because
first responders were trying
to figure out what was going on.
We had no idea.
We had no idea what was to come.
[Doug] I made it down
in front of Moncy's house
and there was no house left.
[dramatic beat]
[Doug] I turned and looked
at Dion and Jennifer Longworth's house.
It was, uh, blown apart.
[phone dialing]
[line ringing]
[Dion speaking]
[woman speaking]
[Dion speaking]
[responder speaking]
[woman] November 10th, 2012,
I went to turn on the TV
and I saw the fire
on the local news channels.
And when I saw the address,
I was like, hold on, Fieldfare?
Isn't that my brother's street?
I called Dion and he didn't answer.
[John] My grandson Tyler called and said
there were reports of an explosion
at the 8400 block of Fieldfare Way.
I pulled on some clothes
and drove over there.
[Doug] Mary Bryan Elementary School
was becoming the focal meeting point
after the explosion.
It was something
like out of a horror movie,
all these people coming en masse.
[Rafael] It was eerily quiet.
We were seeing people emerge
from the darkness.
Coming in from all sections of this field,
they were carrying their dogs
and their blankets and their kids.
[Faith] We walk in,
and it's like everyone
from our neighborhood.
[Doug] They started taking roll call.
And you started signing your name in,
what street you lived on.
The people that
they didn't have on the list,
we started calling.
And there was quite a few residents
that we couldn't find.
I had went to the elementary school,
and they weren't there yet.
They hadn't checked in.
[John] When I arrived
at the elementary school,
I could see
this plume of smoke and the flames
over about where Dion's house was.
My first thought was,
"I gotta run over there."
But then the thought entered my head,
"No, he's safe."
I continued to tell myself that
because of the thought that
if I kept thinking positively,
it would work out.
[radio beeps]
[first responder speaking]
I started to black out.
But this guy comes over to me
and kneels down next to me.
And I asked him, you know,
"Has anybody called the fire department?"
And he looked at me and he goes,
"Honey, I am the fire department."
And he started using
a two by four to create a lever
to lift the roof off of me.
And I hear somebody
outside the house yelling that,
and their exact words was,
"You have to leave her and get out now."
And that's when he grabbed me
and literally pulled me out.
And they helped my husband, Glenn, up.
When I got outside,
I was reunited with the rest of my family.
[man] Engine 62, I actually at this time
have one of the victims with me.
[Gloria] They put me in the fire truck
because I had an enormous gash on my leg
and they didn't want me walking on it.
They took us all into the hospital.
I got 33 stitches in my leg
to close it up.
[faint siren wailing]
[Gloria] We still knew nothing.
The only thing anybody could tell us
was there was an explosion.
I remember hearing
there were two black flags that night.
I have triage training.
I did a little time in the military.
Black flags are
what they put on people who are dead.
I was scared to death
that it was Moncy and her daughter.
[John] Jennifer's mother
and father had arrived.
So we were all there
and we received the news together.
Somebody from the coroner's office
told us that they'd found
Dion and Jennifer's bodies
and that they were burned so badly
that they couldn't confirm
anything about them.
So the coroner
would have to check dental records.
So, uh, being a dad, I kept… [sobs]
Until they had the dental records
and confirmed it, I still…
wanted Dion to come
walking through the door.
If I keep thinking,
"They're all right, they're all right…"
[sobbing]
…that they would be all right. [sighs]
[emotional music playing]
[Tylor] I wasn't really at an age
to where I understood
how to process what was going on.
Dion had a pretty significant
impact throughout my life
because I had not grown up
with a very strong father figure.
He was an uncle that stepped in
to kind of fill that role
a lot of the times.
[Jennifer] Dion's got a present!
I got a job recently,
I wanted to share
my good fortune with everybody.
So I got everybody
something that I thought you'd like.
There's a new Paul McCartney album
that just came out Tuesday.
There's one for everybody.
[guests] All right.
-There you go.
-[woman] Aw.
There you go.
[Tylor] I was really angry.
I went into the bathroom
at that elementary school
and had punched in one of the doors.
It's just, something didn't
seem real about it.
And we had no understanding why,
how this happened.
[Doug] Something about this
really didn't make sense.
Someone didn't set a match
to the house and burn it down.
Something blew it apart.
[dramatic music playing]
[Doug] We were at Mary Bryan,
and one of the neighbors told me,
"We got ahold of Moncy,
her and her boyfriend
are at a casino in Lawrenceburg, Indiana."
"They're on their way back."
That's when we knew that they were alive.
About three o'clock in the morning,
Moncy and her boyfriend Mark
show up at the school.
She was, uh, visibly upset.
She's like, "My house caught on fire."
I go, "I know."
"And it was
a little more than just a fire."
And I said, "Where is Brooke?"
And she's like, "Brooke is just fine."
She had been staying with a babysitter.
I felt sorry for 'em,
but thank God they weren't home.
No one could survive a blast like that.
[tense music playing]
[man] In 2012,
I was a deputy prosecutor with
the Marion County prosecutor's office.
I had heard that there'd been what was
believed to be a gas explosion
on the south side of Indianapolis.
[reporter] This is what daylight revealed.
Widespread damage and destruction
after an explosion rocked
the Richmond Hills subdivision.
The news media couldn't do justice to it.
The cameras and the helicopters
couldn't do justice
to how extensive the damage was.
I believe 12 people that were injured.
Thirty-plus residents' homes
were destroyed.
Sixty to 80 more homes were damaged.
Dion Longworth and his wife,
Jennifer, they lost their lives.
It appeared to have been a tragic accident
in that the explosion
may be natural gas-related
because there's not a lot of reasons
why houses would blow up otherwise.
[contemplative music playing]
[man] I was based
out of Indianapolis, Indiana
with the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.
As I was driving in, just devastating,
the amount of destruction.
Almost like a tornado
had just torn through
and circled and circled and circled.
[Mark] The fire department took lead
to determine what caused it.
The ATF was contacted.
They came in as an assistant
to the Indianapolis
Fire Department investigators,
given their expertise
in simply explosives.
[Michael] I was immediately escorted
to the epicenter of the blast.
The house was completely gone.
It was just debris fields
in all directions.
But every scene tells you a story.
Looking around,
I wasn't seeing a lot of furniture.
I wasn't seeing a lot of clothing.
No remnants of television sets.
[Mark] TV remote controls were found,
but no TVs.
I don't know if it's from TV shows,
somebody sees a gas explosion,
like a house vaporizes.
No, that's not what happens.
It doesn't vaporize items.
They should still be found.
[dramatic music playing]
[Rafael] In the hours and days to come,
Monserrate Shirley and Mark Leonard
would go on television
and they would express
this disbelief and this horror.
Life is upside down.
I've stressed out.
I'm taking a lot of medications.
[sobs]
I'm devastated, like everybody else.
[woman] How did you find out
your home had been leveled?
Um… we was at the casino and
Moncy had came back from the bathroom
and was in hysterics,
and I thought somebody had
attacked her in the bathroom.
She tells me our neighborhood blew up,
and I was like,
"What are you talking about?"
[Doug] Moncy had just lost her house.
Someone's sticking a microphone
in your face, asking you about this,
"Do you have anything to do with it?"
[sobbing] There's people talking to me
and asking me questions.
I mean, I told everyone the truth.
[sobs] I have nothing to hide.
I have nothing.
It's a big devastation
and we're doing everything we can do
to help the police investigators,
the fire department, the ATF.
But…
[dramatic music playing]
[Mark] Gas company engineers
did a lot of mathematical calculations
on the amount of natural gas
that was in this home,
trying to determine
the explosive power of this explosion.
And the long and short of it is,
the explosion that happened
at the Shirley residence
was roughly equivalent
to about three tons of TNT,
in the middle of
a residential neighborhood.
Obviously, there was an extreme
amount of fuel involved in this.
And as everyone started looking at
the gas components from the house,
there were some pretty
significant things that were missing.
The step-down valve to the inside
of the house had been removed.
And what that valve does
is it regulates the amount of gas
that is coming from the source
into the home.
The removal of the step-down regulator
allowed the free flow of gas
to go through the piping there.
The other thing that was missing was
something they call the Dante valve,
which is an on-and-off switch
for your fireplace.
[Mark] That Dante valve
had been physically removed
to remove any and all restrictions
for the free, full flow
of natural gas into that house.
But to have an explosion,
you have to have an ignition source.
[Michael] As I started going through,
just looking at appliances,
I see the damage on the microwave
was so much more extensive
than the other appliances.
It literally looked like it had been just
twisted and turned inside out.
As I was moving pieces of the microwave,
there was a metal cylinder,
like a water bottle,
but it looked like it had been
jaggedly cut and peeled open.
Rarely, if ever, do you see one
that contains a normal beverage
have that kind of reaction,
unless there's something inside of that
that has reached a point
where the container can no longer hold it,
you know, liquid explosives
or some type of chemical.
I realized that this could possibly be
the source of the ignition
for the explosion.
The manual for the microwave was found.
It was a model that had
a delayed start feature,
which means you could pre-program it
to come on at a certain time.
It started becoming more and more evident
that the microwave, at some point in time,
was programmed to activate,
creating that spark
from the metal object inside it
and igniting the gas
that was in the house.
I got everybody together and told them,
"This is something that's intentional.
We need to treat this like a crime scene."
[dramatic sound effect]
Everything shifted
into high gear at that point.
[tense music playing]
[Mark] As the police investigation
progressed,
the detectives learned that
on the day of the explosion,
a neighbor or two sees a white van
pull up in front of the Shirley home.
[Rafael] Cops say they're now
looking for a white van
that witnesses reported seeing
in that neighborhood.
[Mark] No witness could positively
identify who that was,
but that's a clue,
because somebody had to go in there
to program the microwave.
[Doug] The big question was,
"Who's driving the white van?"
[tense music playing]
[Michael] Soon after the explosion,
we met with the police
at the Southport Presbyterian Church
for an update.
[Abby] Mark and Moncy were there.
I was trying to like talk to her,
but all she kept saying is,
"I know nothing."
[Gloria] Everybody knew that
they were being talked to
and looked at for the explosion.
I couldn't believe
that Monserrate Shirley,
who was a critical care nurse,
and was a good nurse,
and cared about her patients,
could do something like this.
Never in my mind did I have
a second thought that Mark could.
[Mark] As part of the investigation,
a review is done of any
prior law enforcement contacts
with the suspects,
and we got information
that Mark was scamming women.
This person certainly has
the background to suggest to us
that he's a fraudster.
So we focused in on him.
The microwave had
a 24-hour programmable timer.
Well, 24 hours before the explosion,
Mark Leonard and Monserrate Shirley
were already at the Hollywood Casino
in Lawrenceburg, Indiana.
Does that in and of itself
mean that they're innocent
because they had an "alibi"?
No, actually, pretty quickly,
that looked suspicious.
They enter the casino around noon
on November 10th.
Mark Leonard played cards one time.
I think he lost 100 bucks.
Monserrate Shirley played
video games for a few minutes,
and that's it.
They then sat at a bar inside the casino,
hour after hour after hour after hour,
essentially doing nothing.
If you want to waste your day at a bar,
you could find one closer in Indianapolis.
But more importantly,
they didn't have a hotel room
for the night of November 10th.
It's fishy, very fishy.
I submit to you, it's because they knew
they weren't gonna stay there
because their house was going to blow up,
and they would be notified,
and they'd have to
come back to Indianapolis.
[dramatic music playing]
[Gloria] We get a message,
"Hey, we're having a meeting tonight.
Everybody meet at the church."
And officials came out and said,
"Just wanna let you know,
we're now treating this
like a murder investigation."
There was a…
[gasps]
…in the audience.
Because we all knew that they were
looking at Mark and Moncy for doing this.
[Mark] A gentleman who worked
at a restaurant bar
in Indianapolis came forward.
We got information that
Mark Leonard's brother, Bob Leonard,
was involved in this plot.
The night before the explosion,
the Leonard brothers, Mark and Bob,
had gone to the restaurant bar,
at the time was called the Gaslight Inn.
They used this gentleman
to get some basic information
on how to cause the explosion.
They knew this employee,
and that he liked to talk about
what he had done for so many years,
working for the gas company.
He was just talking gas,
answering a few basic questions,
had no idea that the Leonard brothers
were taking this information into account
on how to cause the explosion.
They were careful about it,
not to show their hand.
After the explosion,
the DNA of Bob Leonard was actually found
on the front door of the Shirley home
at 8349 Fieldfare Way.
Between that and Bob Leonard
having access to the white van,
it appeared that he would have been
the primary person
to have been at that house on that day
to be able to set the timer
on the programmable microwave
to cause the explosion to happen.
[tense music building]
[Gloria] It was a few days
out from Christmas.
Mario, who was
one of the lead investigators
on the crime scene team,
he came to me and he says,
"We wanna do something
for you and your family for Christmas.
What can we do?"
And I said, "I want somebody arrested."
"I want somebody
to be held accountable for this."
Mario walked up to me
and said, "Merry Christmas."
I've got breaking news
from the RTV6 newsroom.
There have been three arrests
in connection to that south side explosion
in the Richmond Hills subdivision,
which occurred on November 10th.
I had to get to a TV right away
so I could see it.
The three people that
were arrested this morning,
with local and federal police at hand,
were Monserrate Shirley,
her boyfriend, Mark Ray Leonard,
and Mr. Leonard's brother,
Robert Leonard, was also arrested.
[John] When I found out that
they had arrested these people,
I remember thinking,
"Okay, well,
Dion and Jennifer are still dead."
"This doesn't do anything
to bring them back."
[upbeat music playing]
[Abby] Things started coming back to me,
like seeing them move out furniture.
All those things kept popping in my mind
and I'm like, "Okay, this makes sense."
They were moving
everything out of their house.
It was just so surreal,
and I had a lot of anger too.
It made me realize how much you can change
by who you're with.
[Gloria] Moncy was one of us.
This was personal when it comes to her,
because she knew
the people she did this to.
[Mark] When we went into this trial,
we had a strong case
on Bob Leonard and Mark Leonard,
but there were some holes
that only somebody involved
could fill in for us.
So when Monserrate Shirley's attorney
started to discuss
the possibility of cooperation,
yes, we listened.
[reporter] Legal experts expect
that Shirley will get a reduced sentence
in exchange for testifying
against her co-defendants.
[Mark] The police investigation theory
was that
when we had the explosion,
that this was attempt number three.
There'd actually been two prior attempts
to blow up the house,
to effectuate the insurance scam.
The investigators learned
Monserrate Shirley and Mark Leonard,
well, they'd actually been
in a casino three weeks in a row.
That's odd.
And further, that they boarded the cat
for three weekends in a row
for an overnight stay.
Who boards a cat for a one-day stay?
Additionally, the juvenile daughter
of Monserrate Shirley
was babysat three weekends in a row.
And what was very important about that
is she had to go
someplace else to be babysat.
Until Monserrate Shirley
cooperated in the prosecution,
we didn't know the full details.
Well, the first two attempts,
an insufficient amount of gas
came into the house.
So those attempts didn't work.
If at first you don't succeed,
try, try again,
which is exactly what
happened in this case.
They poured gasoline over the kitchen.
They had the microwave explode.
They did everything to ensure
that this explosion
would happen on the third attempt.
The only issue became
the extent of the explosion.
We were pissed then.
[emotional music playing]
You know, three times.
And the third time,
you end up killing my neighbors.
It did not settle well
with the people in here.
[Faith] Their bases were covered.
Even their cat got
to survive the situation,
but their two neighbors didn't.
[dramatic music playing]
[Abby] A lot of the neighbors showed up
in court when they didn't have to, daily.
We all had each other's backs
and we were gonna
fight for what was right.
[Gloria] Moncy would come in
and she would be all teary.
She would look over at Abby,
"Pray for me," you know.
And it was all an act.
And nobody was falling for it.
She did make eye contact with me,
and I just kept staring at her.
And I just don't feel like she was sorry.
[Gloria] Mark maintained his innocence,
but we just knew it was him.
He was the mastermind.
Nobody wants to call him that
because he wasn't smart.
[Mark] Monserrate fully testified
as to her involvement.
The whole main plot here
was to get the insurance money.
$300,000 was what the goal was
of this entire conspiracy
to commit this arson.
Her defense was that
she had been convinced by Mark Leonard,
"It's gonna be a small fire."
[Abby speaking]
[Gloria speaking]
[Tylor] During the trials,
I learned a lot of details that, you know,
I just had not known before.
And some I had wished
I had not known at all.
I had learned that Dion was still alive
in the basement when it had happened.
Today, new details are emerging
about the two Indianapolis firemen
who ran out of time
trying to dig out Dion Longworth.
My neighbor, Brian,
was holding Dion's hands… [sobs]
…and he couldn't get him out.
I feel guilty that I wasn't there to help.
I've played this scenario in my mind
over and over again.
I've lived this
every night for years. [tears up]
[John] Talking about them,
it's healing for me.
Maybe part of it is that
in keeping Dion
and Jennifer's memory alive,
it will affect somebody to convince them
that they need
to love other people a little more.
They had a very deep love for each other.
And, uh, I know that they loved me.
[sobbing] I have nothing to hide,
I have nothing.
[Abby] My house had to be
torn down after the explosion,
and we sold our property.
There's no way, after that happened,
I could have stayed there.
[Gloria] We ended up not moving back
for our own personal reasons,
but it still feels like home to me
when I go down there
and visit neighbors, still to this day.
Because 13 years later,
what we went through
was that imprinted on us.
If there's any silver lining,
I guess, to this at all is that
it really did show all of us that
in the worst-case scenario,
you can really expect your people
to show up for you.
[dramatic upbeat theme music playing]