New eyes on a 1993 Missouri cold case caught a suspect making lewd comments when police left the room during a 2015 interrogation.
As the detective walks away and closes the door, Loril Harp is seen talking to herself and chatting on the phone, saying things like, “I’m not under arrest, but I probably will be before I get out of here.”
At the time, he was being questioned about the death of Steven Weltig, a 40-year-old liquor store owner in Arnold, Missouri.
Cpl. Brett Ackermann and Det. Corporal Josh Wineinger took up the case again in 2020, including a review of hours of 2015 interviews.
That’s when they noticed Harp talking to himself.
In one of the seven videos, obtained and reviewed by Fox News Digital through a public records request, Harp curses at a woman.
In another, he yells at himself, saying he didn’t kill Weltig.
He was constantly twitching, shuffling in his chair, tapping his feet.
“Seeing that dead time helped us,” Wineinger told FOX 2 St. Louis during an on-camera interview.
“I was 100 percent sure at that point.”
Ackermann showed the phone calls Harp made when no one was in the room and summarized the conversation.
“He was on the phone with someone saying, ‘I’m going to jail.’ Things that show he is guilty of this,” said Ackermann.
That was enough for detectives to bring Harp back for questioning in 2020 when he was 68 and frail.
New eyes on a 1993 Missouri cold case caught a suspect making lewd comments when police left the room during an interrogation in 2015. Arnold Police Department
He dodged questions, played dumb and evasive for more than three hours of the 3½-hour interview, which was recorded on audio tape and shared with Fox News Digital through a public records request.
Toward the end of the interview, Ackermann tells Harp that they know he was in the store at the time of Weltig’s death, and they know the gun went off.
They need to know how.
“How did it happen?” Ackermann asked Harp.
“How did it happen that (Weltig) got a bullet hole in his head? And you’re the only one there, Loril?”
As the detective walks away and closes the door, Loril Harp is seen talking to herself and chatting on the phone, saying things like, “I’m not under arrest, but I probably will be before I get out of here.” Fox News
He denied shooting Weltig twice and claimed Weltig charged him with a gun.
Harp began to describe the argument and then paused.
“Go ahead,” said Ackermann.
“I grabbed his hand and hit him until he dropped the gun. And then I hit him again, and then I was out the door,” Harp said.
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“I hurt him. I know I hurt her. Like I said, I struggle. I hit him f—— hard. But I didn’t shoot him.”
The shooter used the store’s side door to escape, so the detective’s ears perked up when Harp mentioned the side door.
They asked him what he did when he got home.
“I took a shower, I had a pool of blood on me,” Harp told detective Arnold.
One of the detectives repeated what he had said.
“Do you have blood?” the detective asked.
“I must have if I shot him. Or he shot me,” Harp said.
“You weren’t shot,” one of the detectives replied.
Harp tries to back off and says the blood is from a fist fight.
But it was too late.
The detective has him.
He was arrested on September 30, 2020, and charged with first-degree murder and armed criminal action.
At the end of the interview, Wineinger asked Harp, “Wouldn’t that be better? After 27 years, to know that you don’t have to worry the rest of your life with this hanging over your head.”
He died a year later at the age of 69 from an undisclosed illness.
Fox News Digital’s Jasmine Baehr contributed to this report.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
