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About this Episode
A hardworking family man is shot to death in front of his wife.
Season 33 Episode 16
Originally aired: Feb 25, 2024
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Hosts & Guests
Transcript
In the suburbs of Dallas, a husband and wife become victims of an ambush.
She hears gunshots.
And then we saw dark eyes and coming towards me.
We shot her husband three times in a head, three times in the chest area, and one time in the grove.
Detectives felt like that might be somebody trying to send a message.
The suspects include a company full of disgruntled employees.
It was during the pandemic and a lot of people had to be laid off.
I would hope that nobody would have taken that personal.
But after a murder for higher plot comes to light, investigators uncover a chilling story of lies, manipulation, and greed.
She was giving him money. She was allowing him to use her credit cards.
He was more susceptible to be doomed.
He truly believed that she was a victim of this abuse.
We were able to retrieve the cell phone and what it reveals are tens of thousands of text messages and emails.
But began to paint a picture of truly an evil person.
How could you talk to somebody that killed a husband?
I didn't know he killed my husband, but I still don't know that he killed my husband.
The Oak Cliff area of Dallas, Texas is a close knit community with a burgeoning art scene.
It's a very old part of Dallas.
There's a lot of old historical homes built in the late 1800s.
In the mornings in Oak Cliff, you'll see big families walk into school together and kids on their bikes.
But on the morning of October 9, 2020, the neighborhood bears witness to a shocking act of violence.
Around 7.30 a.m., 911 calls started coming in to the Dallas Police Department regarding shooting.
They heard several gunshots and a woman screaming at the top of her lungs.
When the first patrol officer arrived, he saw a hysterical crying woman, a body laying in the street covered in blood.
The female victim, if you feed from the male victim, would duct tape around her hands.
First responders tried to administer aid, but the man's wounds are too severe.
He's pronounced dead at the scene.
They began asking questions and learned that the female victim, her name was Jennifer Faith.
She identified the victim as her husband, James Faith.
Jennifer Faith tells the officers that she had gone on a walk with her husband, with the dog.
They go a few steps and then she hears gunshots.
She turns around and she sees the assailant.
She let go of the dog, the dog ran down the street.
She said it looked like he was going to shoot her, but maybe the gun jammed.
He pushed her to the ground, attempted to duct tape, her arms together.
He reached over and took a ring off James's finger.
You got neighbors coming out, dogs are barking, there's all this chaos going on.
Jennifer Faith's neighborhood, they were all in a panic and terrified
because it seemed like this masked gunman had come and commit this random murder in their neighborhood.
When I first arrived, I observed Mr. Faith.
He was lying in the street.
Paramedics had covered him up to protect the scene from a public view.
He had multiple gunshot wounds to his body.
They started collecting evidence and they found eight shells from a 45 caliber weapon.
Unfortunately, Jennifer cannot provide a detailed description.
Jennifer Faith does tell the detective that the suspect who approached them had on a blue mask.
I have a tight, but nothing particularly identifiable.
Unable to learn more about the attacker from Jennifer, detectives turned to nearby neighbors.
The neighbors were also on edge, so they wanted to have a police presence in and around that neighborhood.
They didn't know what was happening.
Everyone was very confused, very scared, very concerned
for the woman who had just been through this horribly traumatic event.
James Faith Jr. was born in Madison, Wisconsin in 1971.
If I had to describe Jamie to somebody, I would say he's a genuinely nice and caring individual.
He's got a witty and kind of a dry sense of humor, very intelligent.
In 1995, he graduated from the University of Wisconsin and Whitewater with a bachelor's in computer science.
After college, Jamie landed a job as a web engineer for an important export firm in Phoenix, Arizona.
A few years later, he accepted a job with U.S. Airways as a senior manager.
Jamie was really good at what he did. That's a huge reason why he was promoted and moved up within the organization.
He was pretty much a bachelor who was committed to his career.
Jamie's always been the person that said, I'm never going to get married.
If he just didn't want to have the responsibility of being married or having a kid.
But in 2005, Jamie's friends set him up with a young woman named Jennifer.
Jennifer and Jamie met on a blind date. They were introduced to each other through mutual friends.
They were both very intelligent people. I think that they had a lot in common there.
In 1997, Jennifer was married. She was going to school.
She received her masters in speech pathology in 1997.
And that same year, she gave birth to her daughter, Amber.
Jennifer moved in 1998 to Tucson, Arizona, where she and her first husband part ways.
Amber's biological father wanted to be involved and I've seen him give effort to see Amber.
Jennifer remarried in 1999, but when that relationship also ended in divorce,
she decided to focus on her career and raising her two-year-old daughter.
She spent the years between 2012 and 2018,
working as a director of rehabilitation services at a inpatient hospital.
During that time, James met Jennifer.
The couple quickly moved in together and Jamie embraced his new role as a father to Amber.
Jamie was really, really good as a stepfather.
He treated Amber as a shoeer his own. He did everything for her.
He gave her emotional, financial, physical support.
They were a very tight-knit, close family.
After seven years together, a trip to Las Vegas brought on a moment of romantic spontaneity.
I remember somebody telling them, hey, we're in Vegas, you guys should get married.
They kind of just looked at each other and then Jamie says, okay, yeah, like, let's do it.
They got married that night.
There were a few more changes in store as well.
When Jennifer's daughter turned 18, she asked Jamie to legally adopt her.
The following year in 2017, he was offered a promotion with the airline.
His new job obviously gave him more responsibilities, more employees that he had to manage
and most of them were in Dallas.
He was spending five days a week there and two days a week here when he was living in Phoenix.
So I think he was kind of getting tired of traveling as much.
He just made sense for him to make that move.
For the faith, adjustment to life in Dallas seemed effortless.
They moved into a very cute home.
Everyone that had been in that household said that it was just a house that was warm and inviting
and people could feel the love.
It was a safe household.
All the things that a lot of parents do for their kids, he has done for Amber.
Jennifer and Jamie, they both seem, you know, happy, excited.
After three years in their new home, the neighborhood is in shock after a gunman killed Jamie in broad daylight.
It may have been the robbery gone wrong.
He took Jamie-faced wedding ring.
It was 7.30 in the morning.
They were in t-shirts and shorts and walking their dog.
And to do it in such a vicious manner, none of that added up to just a robbery.
Some of the neighbors caught a glimpse of the shooter.
One even managed to record him fleeing the scene in a pickup truck.
There was no license plate that we could view.
And the one thing that stood out about this vehicle was that it had the white decal on the rear windshield.
It had a T emblem on the back window.
We believe it's to be a Texas Ranger sticker being from Texas.
Detectives were on the lookout for a black Nissan Titan.
They did have people driving around and looking.
Oak cliff is right next to a major freeway, I-30.
That was going to be difficult.
Coming up, home security cameras provide a disturbing glimpse of the murder.
And a lie unveils a possible suspect.
He does come across a text describing an emotional affair.
I was shocked. Now I've learned that you lied to me.
Dallas Police are investigating the death of 49-year-old Jamie Faith,
who was gunned down by an unknown assailant outside his home.
We were able to recover eight, four of our caliber casings.
We had no information on the license plate of the truck.
At the time, we were still trying to figure out who would do such a thing
to go to shoot the victim several times right in front of his wife.
As detectives process the crime scene, they make a new discovery.
The face had a ring camera on their door.
The camera saw them leaving the home, but then they're quickly off camera.
Although the shooting wasn't caught on tape, a neighbor's camera partially captured the terrifying moment.
We reviewed the video. It actually captured the audio of the shooting.
With little to go on, investigators turn back to Jennifer, hoping she can provide more details.
I want to interview Mrs. Faith at Dallas Police Headquarters,
where I can have a 101 encounter with her.
We were both wearing masks because it was COVID, but she was crying very emotional.
I'll continue to ask her what happened.
And she just got going.
You know what I call this?
It's so bad.
It's so bad.
It's so bad.
It's so bad.
It's so bad.
It's so bad.
And then I saw the person turned and wiped us.
Dark eyes are becoming torn.
Me.
It's getting worse.
I can't try to turn me over.
And then he had my side and back in the hitting.
And then all of a sudden I saw why I said that it was silver, the gun was silver.
I asked her who could have done something like this.
If he had any kind of incidents, what any one in the past.
We never had it.
It was a three hundred and twenty-study.
But Jennifer says Jamie might have had enemies among his former employees.
She brought up the fact that he was a supervisor at his job at American Airlines and it was during the pandemic.
And a lot of people had to be laid off at that time.
He did say that he had to make some tough decisions at work.
He had to let some people go.
I would hope that nobody would have taken that personal.
But given the time that we were living in right during COVID, almost anything was possible as far as people's mental health.
She was able to give me consent to do a full extraction on her cell phone.
She was very cooperative.
While they weighed on the data, investigators began looking into the possibility of a disgruntled employee.
I went up to his job at the American Airlines Corporation.
They told me that Jamie had laid off probably from the 18 to 20 individuals.
So I did a subpoena for employee records.
As they sort through the potential suspects, the autopsy report comes in and reveals a possible reason why Jamie was shot.
He was shot three times in the head, three times in the chest area, and also one time in the groin.
So a total of seven shots that he sustained.
Detectives felt like that might be somebody trying to send a message.
The number of shots and especially that shot to the groin indicated something more personal.
Through the media, Jennifer makes an impassioned plea to the public for help.
It's been horrible.
Devastating ITter between completely heartbroken and completely devastated every day has been awful.
Oh my God, if you know what happened, I need that for closure.
I need to make some sense out of this.
Investigators receive an analysis of Jennifer's phone.
Revealing her marriage to Jamie wasn't as perfect as she claimed.
One of the other detectives was methodically going through the phone.
And he does come across a text between Jennifer Faith and a friend of hers named Tina Spring,
where Jennifer Faith around April of 2020 is describing an emotional affair.
The text goes back and forth between she and Tina, and she describes him as a guy she knew back in high school
that reconnected with her, is retired from the military, now lives in Tennessee.
And the first name is Darren.
In her texts, Jennifer confessed she'd started talking to Darren in March of 2020,
and they continued speaking for months.
Although they'd never met in person, she said their relationship had become romantic,
but the online affair was short-lived.
She informed Tina that she was going to have to cut ties with Darren because of Jamie.
I believe Jamie had found out, and it was on her situation
where he was uncomfortable or sad about the situation.
Jennifer deleted the messages with Darren from her phone,
but detectives know that doesn't necessarily mean he went away.
I was shocked.
Jennifer had already explained to me that their relationship was good.
There was no one else.
And nowhere that she ever mentioned Darren's name.
Now, I've learned that you lied to me.
My head at this time now, I wanted to continue to read through those three,
to find out everything that I could about Darren.
We were able to check different databases where we were able to find out who Darren was.
And I learned a lot about him.
I learned about his relationship.
I learned about his home.
Through our database checks, we learned he did have a Black Nissan Time truck.
After learning about Jennifer Faith's affair,
investigators use her phone contacts to find the man in question.
He turns out to be 48-year-old Darren Rubin Lopez.
Darren Lopez was Jennifer's high school boyfriend.
There's pictures of them being at prom together.
They were very serious about each other.
They thought they were going to marry each other.
After graduating in 1990,
Jennifer and Darren went their separate ways.
Jennifer attended college while Darren joined the U.S. Army,
going on to serve in the special forces.
Darren Lopez was a decorated U.S. Army soldier.
Darren had six combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.
He was a purple heart recipient.
He was also a bronze star recipient.
While serving in Iraq in 2005,
Darren was caught in a roadside bombing.
19 members of his unit were killed,
but Darren survived with a traumatic brain injury.
He was diagnosed with PTSD.
He was discharged with 100% medical disability.
We knew that Darren was divorced,
that his ex-wife lived out of state,
but that Darren had two teenage daughters that resided with him.
So when Darren comes back,
he's depressed, disabled, hopeless, helpless somewhat.
One day, he got the energy and the urge to reach out to find Jennifer
and see what she was doing in life.
Darren Lopez locates Jennifer Fate online via LinkedIn.
And they vary quickly than exchange email addresses
and start communicating via email.
Investigators find Darren's current address in Comberland,
Furnace, Tennessee, 650 miles away from Jennifer and Jamie's home.
We then contacted one of the local agencies
who did a drive-by of his residence.
Detectives need to know if Darren's truck
has the same tea decal
as the vehicle witnessed at the crime scene.
The property was about 20 to 30 acres,
and it was so far away from the roadway
that you really couldn't get a view of around the house.
So at that point, I reached out to the ATF
and they were able to get aerial surveillance
of Darren Lopez's property.
In the aerial surveillance,
we found a black Nissan Titan pickup truck
and we could see the tea sticker on the back rear glass.
Initially, because the crime occurred in Dallas, Texas,
we believe that that might have been a sticker depicting
the Texas Rangers baseball team.
It turns out that in fact it was a Tennessee Volunteers sticker.
So we now know that that, in fact,
is Darren Lopez's vehicle.
And that is the same vehicle
that is depicted leaving the scene
of the homicide here in Dallas.
It's enough for Dallas police
to obtain a warrant for Darren's phone records.
That kind of information doesn't give the actual content
of their messages,
but it does show the number of messages
that they were sending back and forth.
It was an overwhelming amount of communication
between the two of them.
They were going back and forth,
I think, on average 500 times a day.
What was obtained from Darren Lopez's phone
did not exist on Jennifer Faith's phone.
So it clearly suggested that she had deleted certain things.
It's confirmation of a relationship,
but not proof of murder.
So now the biggest thing is to place them in Dallas.
We began writing search warrants with Google
trying to find his GL location of his cell phone.
Once we were able to get the information back,
we were able to plot and put on a map.
On October 8th, he does leave
Cumberland furnace Tennessee and drives straight through,
except for gas station stops to Dallas, Texas,
which puts him in Dallas, Texas about 230 in the morning.
He's back in Cumberland furnace Tennessee
late in the day on October 9th.
The timeline gives Darren plenty of opportunity
to shoot Jamie that morning and return home.
Investigators immediately place Darren under surveillance.
We were able to covertly place cameras in and around Darren's residence.
On one particular day,
that camera did depict Darren leaving his property.
Detectives realized Darren has removed the Tennessee Volunteers decal
from his pickup truck.
We were a little concerned that Darren might be tipped off.
And so at that point in time, we knew that we need to get Mr. Lopez
in custody as quickly as possible.
On January 11th, 2021, they make their move.
There was a high risk for a violent encounter.
You know, he was very familiar with weapons based on his military career.
And so the last thing we wanted to do was to go on to his property.
The special response team had observed a vehicle leave
Darren Lopez's property occupied by two individuals.
Mr. Lopez was the passenger in a silver sedan that was being driven by his daughter.
They actually engaged his vehicle, weapons drawn,
and they gave very clear verbal orders, you know,
step away from the vehicle with your hands up and he complied with everything.
We conducted a search of the silver sedan and we located a backpack.
There was two credit cards found in the backpack in Jennifer Faith's name.
Further search of the backpack we found a blue mask
which matched the shooter at our crime scene.
Investigators find even more incriminating evidence in Darren's home.
One of the agents that was searching an upstairs room in Darren's house
located a tan rucksack inside that rucksack.
She located a 45 caliber semi-automatic pistol
which was the same caliber of weapon that was used to murder Mr. Faith.
On the upper slide, we noticed a very small smear of what appeared to be blood.
So this was a crucial find.
At that point in time, the primary objective is to get that fire arm to the DNA lab
so that we can conduct forensic testing.
Coming up, Darren denies everything.
I never thought we'd cross like, you know, a threshold where we're probably at.
But recovered messages from his phone reveal a potential motive.
They established that she was buying gifts for him.
Three months after the murder of Jamie Faith, investigators have a suspect in custody.
Former Green Beret, Darren Lopez.
He's spent a lot of time talking to me about Jennifer and how important she was to him.
Darren believed very strongly that Jennifer was his soulmate.
We like to grew up together.
We have a high school friends and we contact each other almost in New York.
I look her up and I got her email address and stuff like that in the center.
I said, no, no.
And so we started working together.
Yeah.
She can vent to me and I can let her vent.
The batch told me it was married.
So, I mean, we never breached.
You know, I never thought we'd cross like, you know, a threshold where it was inappropriate.
And I said, I'd never been down there.
So it's like, I've never had any physical contact.
Although Darren is an open book about his love for Jennifer,
he denies any involvement in her husband's death.
He gave me an alibi that he was out hunting with some of his military buddies.
So I began pressing him and calling him out of some inconsistencies in his story.
The vehicle had a seal in the back of it.
It doesn't have one on it today, but it did have one on it.
Yeah, at the time it was all thanks.
Okay.
Now, what happened to the police?
They started carrying off.
He asked for an attorney.
Hoping to determine whether Darren was acting alone,
Dallas police conduct another interview with Jennifer the same day.
I appreciate you coming down here.
Have you ever heard of a name, Darren?
Darren, both of us.
Yeah.
He was one of my best friends.
We dated in high school, but he doesn't know Jamie.
Tell me more about Darren.
Okay.
Let's see.
I lost contact with him in 93, we broke up.
I know that there's more for you and Darren's relationship.
I don't know what more you're talking about.
The same guy that killed your husband, Jennifer.
It's the same guy that you communicate every day.
Yeah, I have a 24,000.
Six person calls.
24,000.
I have worked.
He's retired.
We talked throughout the day.
I know that Darren killed your husband.
How could you talk to somebody that killed your husband?
I didn't know he killed my husband.
I still don't know that he killed my husband.
I wouldn't do that.
Why would I do that?
That's the question I have for you.
If you were so in love with Darren, that's not the guy.
I wasn't.
Just tell him how this happened.
I was in love with my husband.
I'm telling you the truth.
She asked for an attorney.
And that interview was terminated.
Since there's insufficient evidence to prove Jennifer was involved,
they're forced to let her go.
The case against Darren, however, continues to grow stronger.
We conducted a test comparing the ballistics from the firearm
to evidence found at the scene and it matched.
We also took swabs of the blood that were found on the weapon.
Those swabs were sent to our forensic lab
and compared to blood samples from Jamie.
And it also was a match.
It became very clear that this was, in fact, the murder weapon.
The question is whether Darren acted alone
or if he was manipulated by Jennifer.
During our evidence collection,
we were able to retrieve Darren Lopez's cell phone.
What it reveals are tens of thousands of text messages
and emails between Darren Lopez and Jennifer Faith.
The recovered messages reveal a much closer relationship
than the one Jennifer described.
They started talking and texting incessantly,
but importantly, first day, he was saying,
I love you.
She responded wanting to rekindle a relationship.
His world had been special ops, green berets.
Now it was Jennifer.
Within a few days, they're talking about a five-year plan to be together.
There's no record of the two discussing a plan to murder Jamie,
but there are several texts indicating Jennifer helped cover it up.
She said she had a very bad feeling.
So she asked him to take the bumper sticker off
and she pressed them very hard to get him to take it off.
We knew that the decal was removed,
but now it was significant because it wasn't Darren that took it off.
It was Jennifer that urged him to.
Jennifer was given direction and Darren was following orders
just like he did in a military.
And Jennifer was the one taking charge,
taking control of the situation.
Another incriminating exchange took place just before Darren's arrest.
She instructs him that if he's ever questioned by police
to advise them that he's going through a divorce,
he is in financial straits,
and that they are just old friends from high school,
and that she's helping him out.
It was clear that Jennifer Faith wanted to make sure
that they had the same story.
Detectives believe it's also likely Jennifer's texts
about the breakup were merely a smoke screen.
Jennifer Faith started laying the foundation
to cover for Darren when she texted Tina,
you know, that she had ended the emotional affair
with Darren Lopez, which we know isn't true.
In February of 2021,
we were able to charge Jennifer with obstruction
and tamper with evidence.
Investigators execute a search warrant
for Jennifer's computer and financial information.
They find a life insurance policy for Jamie
in the amount of $600,000.
She's trying to collect financially from the death of Jamie Faith.
She has found out from the life insurance agency
that they were not at this point going to release the money to her
because there was a criminal investigation going on,
and she had not been completely ruled out as a suspect.
Even though she couldn't collect,
bank records show Jennifer was spending an alarming amount of money.
They had found two credit cards with Jennifer Faith's name on them,
and she had given those cards to Darren.
They also established that she was buying gifts for Darren.
She sent him a television.
She was sending money and looking into her bank account,
detectives were able to start determining
where this money was coming from.
Shortly after Jamie was murdered,
neighbors on his street raised about $60,000 in funds
and a GoFundMe account for Jennifer and her family.
Jennifer used a GoFundMe money to pay off any balances
that she had on the two credit cards that she sent to Darren Lopez.
Based on this evidence,
the charges against Jennifer are increased.
She was already arrested for obstruction,
so they upped the charge to murder for hire.
The fact that she was giving Darren money,
the fact that she was allowing Darren to use her credit cards,
that there was obviously a remuneration here
in what we believe was her attempts to convince him to kill her husband.
After a three-month investigation,
Jennifer's faith and Darren Lopez
have both been charged with the murder of Jamie Faith.
It appears Jennifer's motive was money,
but Darren's went much deeper.
During the forensic examination,
we really began to see her attempt to manipulate
Darren Lopez.
Jennifer had created false email accounts,
one being in the name of James Faith.
The forensic examiners could tell us
and show us exactly when and where those fictitious email accounts
were created by Jennifer on her computer.
They were able to determine that they had been created at her IP address.
Jennifer used those email accounts to communicate with Darren
purporting to be Jamie Faith.
It is generally Jamie Faith saying to leave his wife alone
to stay out of their relationship,
and then it turns to become that he is abusing Jennifer Faith
and it turns to that he is sexually abusing her
than it turns to he is gang raping her
and it gets more and more violent as these emails go through.
There were photos of injuries that Jennifer has shared with Darren.
There were burns to her arm, there were cuts on her neck,
and we found out those photos were from a car accident earlier,
about eight years prior to her sending those emails.
Darren, due to his psychological problems and his PTSD,
was more susceptible than the average person to be duped
and to believe these fabricated stories of abuse.
So it began to paint a picture of truly an evil person
who was playing on Mr. Lopez's heartstrings.
When investigators share the truth of Jennifer's manipulation
with Darren, he confesses of his own volition.
I think it's fair to say that he was shocked.
He truly believed that she was a victim of this physical
and of this sexual abuse.
He came to the realization he had killed an innocent man.
He described the crime, you know, very matter of factly,
much as if he were describing a military mission.
Given his background, that's not unusual.
So Darren spends the night in that backyard just waiting
the same thing that he learned to do when he was in combat.
At 7.30 a.m., when Jennifer and James and their dog
exited their home, he came out from the yard,
ran up to Jennifer and James.
And he shot James in the head, the torso, chest,
and the end in the groin.
Darren admitted that he had shot Jamie Faith in the groin
sort of as retaliation, if you will,
for the alleged sexual abuse.
Then he pushed Jennifer to the ground.
He had the duct tape that he sort of half-heartedly tried
to tie her up with.
He said that after he shot him, he took Jamie's wedding band
to make it look like it was a robbery that went wrong.
He jumped into his black car and fled the way that he had planned
in advance.
And somewhere in the middle of Arkansas, he took that ring
and tossed it into the river.
Remarkably, they had not been physically
in each other's presence this whole period of time,
not until the moment of the murder.
She had to have known that she had gone to trial.
Most assuredly, Mr. Lopez would have been called
as a witness to refute any testimony that she would have been given.
Jennifer Faith was facing the death penalty.
And so the defense was presented with the option of a plea
where she would confess in exchange for a lighter sentence.
Jennifer accepts the state's plea deal and on June 21, 2022,
she is sentenced to life imprisonment.
The following year, Darren is found guilty of murder
and receives a 62-year sentence.
But for investigators, some mysteries still linger.
Why did Jennifer snap?
That question will always remain with me until Jennifer
tells why she snapped.
How does somebody wake up in the morning
knowing that that's the morning that you have decided
that somebody that you are supposed to have loved
for their life to end?
I want him to be depicted as a person that he was
and not the narrative that Jennifer tried to create.
But she'll have plenty of time to think about
how she could handle things differently.
She can have plenty of time to reflect.
Thank you.
