foreign Athens Georgia and I'm here for another sad tragic story today you see back in 2002 a brutal murder was discovered here at this close-knit apartment complex right here behind me it was a murder That Shook this entire Community to its core everyone loved this woman and they couldn't believe that she had been murdered right here amongst all of these people right after the discovery of this brutal murder law enforcement had very few leads and this murder case very quickly went cold it wound up taking 15 years before one of those few leads that they had had since the very beginning actually LED them to a culprit it's a crazy story that took detectives in multiple directions but law enforcement never gave up today like I said I'm back here in Athens to tell this story I'm going to show you the crime scene photos from the brutal murder that took place right here in this building behind me and we're going to talk about the murder of Pamela Chrysler it's very sad today's story takes us all the way back to 2002 right here at this apartment complex neighbors here in this building they started noticing a Faust Mill that lingered in the area for a whole day it seemed like so they called and they reported it and after a little while officers arrived here on scene and they immediately knew what the smell was and they tracked it down to this apartment right here apartment 408. the officers they didn't even go in they immediately just called detectives and they blocked off the scene and waited once detectives arrived on scene they made entry into the apartment for the first time where they found a woman laying on the bedroom floor deceased the woman was only wearing a t-shirt and panties and she was laying face down on the floor with a sheet thrown over the top of her head this woman had been stabbed more than 20 times in her neck and in her chest area in a brutal attack that appeared as if it were an ambush attack now the apartment really wasn't destroyed stuff wasn't dumped out everywhere and the apartment looked fine it's just that there was blood all over the place it was clear to the detectives that the killer had actually come through the sliding back door on the back of the apartment here that's how they made entry into the apartment but that was really it detectives went through the apartment with a fine-tooth comb looking for any evidence that may have been left behind from the Killer they searched for some kind of murder weapon but they never found anything they did find however on the kitchen counter there was a newspaper sitting on the edge of the kitchen counter and on that newspaper there was a single drop of blood and it looked as if it had fallen straight down now this single drop of blood it was out of place it I mean compared to where all the rest of the blood in the apartment was which kind of stayed towards the bedroom area this one drop of blood being on the kitchen and nowhere else around the kitchen area made it out of place so initially investigators believed that it belonged to the killer immediately those detectives sent that blood droplet off to be tested and they compared it up against their DNA database but they got no match they were able to confirm however that it did not belong to the victim and that it did belong to a male meaning it was more than likely her Killer's blood and like I said it looked like it had just Fallen straight down so they believed that the killer had been standing over that newspaper at some point when he dropped the uh the single blood drop there on the paper law enforcement was able to determine from the autopsy that the victim this woman that they found in the apartment was not sexually assaulted despite her only having panties on apparently she was only wearing panties to sleep in that night and then the killer broke in and the attack happened and it woke her up so she had no other clothes on so the detectives go back to the apartment and they continued looking for something or anything that could give them a clue as to who this woman was they they still had no clue what her name was and they were looking for some kind of motive here eventually the detective spoke with the neighboring apartment residents and they spoke with the apartment managers who told law enforcement that the apartment was being rented to a man named Richard Elam now that just created more questions for law enforcement who was he and where was he and did he do this and yet they still had the question lingering who was this woman that was laying dead in his apartment detectives managed to track down this Richard Elam they got him on the phone and he was actually down in Florida working he was a contractor he was down in Florida working on a big job Richard was immediately able to tell law enforcement that he was bledding this woman stay in his apartment and her name was Pamela Chrysler he told them that he had just recently met Pamela and he thought she was nice and he was just letting her stay there while he was down in Florida working he told them that he normally talked to her on a daily basis they spoke on the phone regularly but that he hadn't been able to get in contact with her for the past four days finally law enforcement had identified the woman they found deceased in this apartment as 49 year old Pamela christler Pamela worked as a mental health and drug abuse counselor here in Athens Georgia and she was loved by just about anyone who knew her right away detectives started suspecting Richard Elam may have had something to do with this because he started doing some strange things so they get him on the phone and they tell him that Pamela has been murdered in this apartment so Richard immediately left from Florida and started driving back to Athens well while he was on the way here he called the apartment complex managers and he asked them to cut a piece of the carpet out that had blood stains on it and he said that he was going to take that piece of carpet and have it tested himself which was very weird and the apartment complex immediately called the detectives and told them what he said so as soon as Richard arrived back here in Athens they sat down with him for a conversation and during this conversation he didn't really do anything to dispel the officer's suspicion of him if anything he made it worse at the beginning because he would go on to say a few things that caught the detective's attention like at one point he just came right out and said that Pam would always go to sleep with that sliding back patio door open to let air in so she told me she said what I'm doing is I'm sleeping with the sliding glass door so I said now run the acting shot almost for me you know I'm comfortable when he said open you mean she just open it up I'm like she was sleeping now law enforcement already knew that that sliding back door was the Killer's point of entry into the apartment but they did not tell Richard this so they thought it was very suspicious that he made sure to mention that during his interview that she slept with his back door open in the end though Richard Elam was able to put law enforcement in touch with people down in Florida that 100 confirmed that Richard had been down there for some time and was always in their sight giving him a an ironclad Alibi he could not have been involved with her murder so that excluded him as a suspect now for investigators this meant they pretty much had to go back to square one they still had the blood droplet that they were consistently checking against their database but they never got a hit but really that was it they had nothing else the detectives did spend some time investigating Pamela's job as a mental health counselor and a drug abuse counselor they thought maybe that it had something to do with it and maybe one of her patients may have attacked her either due to mental health issues or a drug abuse person who was looking to rob her and buy drugs or something like that but those investigations never never really LED them anywhere either and eventually again they were back to square one so after Richard Elam was cleared as a suspect he went back to the apartment because law enforcement had asked him to go make an inventory list of everything that was inside of the apartment and they wanted to know if anything was missing and Richard was able to confirm with law enforcement that only one item in the whole apartment was missing it was a rolling shop vac that he had had inside of his closet law enforcement tracked down this shop vac and confirmed that just days after the murder the shop vac was sold to a pawn shop here in Athens by a black male who appeared to be in his 20s but because he was selling it to him the pawn shop never got an ID or a name from him and they didn't have any security cameras up so even though they had recovered the shop back it led them nowhere a short time later Richard was here at the apartment complex and some of his neighbors were out in the parking lot here talking and Richard just went up to them and asked if they saw anyone taking a shot back out of his apartment prior to Pam's murder now him saying this triggered one of the the neighbors who lived down the hall that neighbor recalled that on the night of Pam's murder she was still awake and she heard some noises coming from out in the hallway area so she got up and she looked through the people in her door and she saw an African-American male coming out of Richard's apartment where Pam was rolling a Shop-Vac she stood there at the door looking through the people watching him for a moment and she said that she had a can of Coke in her hand so she popped the tab on it to open it and at that point apparently the person who was rolling that shop back heard it because they stopped and they stood up and they looked at her door as she was looking through the peephole at them and uh this neighbor said that the man stood there and looked at her door for just a moment and then he bent back down and started rolling that shot back and he went down the hall and he left and she never saw him again for whatever reason she had forgotten this information when law enforcement came and talked to her at that point it had been several days passed at the time in the middle of the night it didn't seem suspicious to her so after it happened she went to bed and forgot about it until Richard brought it up that day out in the parking lot and it reminded her so this neighbor immediately called the investigators and told them everything that happened how she had forgotten about it and how Richard had asked her and it caused her to remember and she had seen Pamela's killer and she didn't even know it so she was able to go sit down with a police sketch artist and they were able to make a sketch of who their suspect was they plastered this sketch in newspapers and magazines and everywhere they could hoping that someone would come forward and tell them who this person was but no one ever did no one ever came forward to tell them who it was no new leads came in after this and Pamela's case went cold for over a decade nothing else happened on Pamela's case it just set there cold other cases were coming in and the detectives were having to work those nothing happened on Pamela's case and then all of the sudden 15 years later in 2017 Pamela's case would get thrust right back into the spotlight and very very quickly it would escalate it all started when one day out of the blue the detective who was responsible for Pamela's murder case he got a codus match on his computer system from the blood droplet that was left on that newspaper on the counter that DNA belonged to a man named Abdus salaam LaRoche Abdus LaRoche was actually known to law enforcement outside of Athens Georgia because of a situation that happened in Eatonton Georgia when abnus was just a young kid so there was this man named Dwight York and he started this group of people that was called the nahubian nation it was a cult so they moved down here to Georgia from New York he came down and he bought this large pot of land out in a rural area in Eatonton Georgia and he built this massive black and gold Egyptian temple pyramid and it was crazy because you could just be driving down the road and you would have nothing but trees on both sides of you and then all of a sudden You Came Upon This massive shiny gold Egyptian pyramid it was crazy and Abdus was part of this coat the narubian nation abdis LaRoche was one of a group of young children who actually came forward and accused this Dwight York or Dr York as the cult called him they accused this Dr York of molesting now Dwight did have a federal trial in Atlanta and Abdus testified against him in that trial but later on in 2008 AB just came forward and provided a statement claiming that he had lied in that federal trial that sent Dwight York to prison it didn't make any difference though Abdus coming forward and saying that he lied none of the other people came forward and recanted so Dwight York is still sitting in prison to this day so abdis had gotten arrested for selling bootleg pirated CDs in Athens which is a misdemeanor so he went to court for it and he was sentenced to probation and while he was on probation he got stopped by police again and he was caught with methamphetamine this time which was a violation of his probation and it was a felony and anytime you're arrested for a felony they take your DNA and they put it into their CODIS system as Abdus salaam LaRoche was put into jail they swapped his mouth they uh the DNA was sent off to be put into the system and the detective got a match law enforcement immediately began trying to trace La rocha's whereabouts back in 2002 and unbelievably they learned that he lived in the same apartment complex here as Pamela did it was just in a different building so Pamela lived over here in this building back in the corner and Abdus LaRoche lived all the way in this apartment over here across the way and that's why you they never talked to him so there's an old saying in law enforcement you know they don't really believe in coincidences and it wasn't a coincidence that this man lived in the same apartment complex as where the murder took place so they went even further and they pulled his old high school yearbooks to get a picture of what he looked like in 2002 and then they matched it up to the sketch that had been made with the neighbor from down the hall and as you can see they are almost identical immediately law enforcement went from one day they had this cold case and they had no leads and they had no answers and they had no hope to the very next day they had a DNA match and now they had a suspect so they bring Abdus LaRoche in for an interview during this interview with abdis LaRoche of course initially he denied having anything to do with Pam's murder um David Norris this is Jerry Salters we just wanted to talk to you a little bit we're with Athens Clark County and we work uh cold cases and we're going back over some cases and while we were going back over some we were viewing some of the reports and stuff and we saw that there was a uh your last name of LaRoche maybe lived over in an area where an incident happened at years ago and we didn't see where anybody had talked to anybody either you or your family or anything like that so we just wonder if you ask us you know help answer a few questions and kind of go over some stuff like that well my sister detective Norris actually informed abdis that they had his DNA all over the apartment here and over the course of the two-hour interview Abdus changed his story multiple times unsolved case put your DNA and we were we knew from the physical evidence that who ever because we're just trying to be honest with you we knew for a fact that we've had this profile on record for the last 15 years okay and we knew that if we ever got a DNA hit through CODIS which is the the National Database that that is going to lead that's going to lead to the person responsible for it I've just tried to explain away his DNA being in the apartment at first by saying that Pamela had actually paid him a few dollars to come in and take some trash out if I was trying to make extra money I made 40 dollars like taking out traffic I knocked on doors here and there he then started claiming that he walked into the apartment and found Pamela dead but because he was just a young kid he ran off scared but to law enforcement he put himself at the scene I mean I don't know what happened before we try to move you know budgeting you know but I ran out like like ran up after Story then changed into his DNA was in her apartment because he and Pamela were having an affair which wasn't true at all and he actually wound up calling Pamela a cougar multiple times throughout this two-hour interview which was all untrue none of it was true at all we're talking to the right guy we want to know what happened I don't know if it was that same person but I did hope I started off helping her but it wasn't you know but adapted to go in there fighting and murdered nobody detective Norris asked Abdus at one point how his DNA got under her fingernails and Abdus doubled down on his claims of them having an affair by saying that she was rough in bed and she scratched him all the time I mean somebody and I got like you know she has short nails after two hours abdis eventually got up and said if he wasn't under arrest he needed to leave because he needed to go to work and detective Norris then served a new search warrant on him for another swab of DNA so they could confirm it against what they had I mean if I'm not I mean I didn't do nothing you know I mean I just I want to go to work because I didn't or if I got to get a lawyer let me know that's up to you yeah you only need a lawyer if you've done something wrong yeah I know but yeah you saying I did something wrong we believe he did oh yeah I mean um we do have a address for me right y'all got my address yeah one thing we do need to do is we got a search warrant for your DNA okay so we're gonna execute that now at the same time that they were talking to LaRoche unbeknownst to him the FBI received a call on their tip line from someone who claimed to be part of abnus LaRoche's family this family member calls the FBI tip line and he tells them that abnus LaRoche had actually confessed to him years prior that he had killed Pamela christler thank you for calling Ezra and how can I help you today um I'm calling to give you guys a tip and um I guess just to confirm what you guys have already been working on has been the Abdul Salam LaRoche and he's like a suspect in the case against Pamela Chrysler who was murdered in 2002 yeah he basically told me that he did it okay he told me he told me how it happened and everything and I didn't believe him when he told me this about five years ago okay and what exactly did he say at that time he told me that um he had went inside of this ladies in this house to uh invade it to you know take some things and Rob it and he ended up um she ended up waking up and he ended up having to uh to kill her absolutely I know for a fact that he's guilty and then you guys have to stand for every intervention and the reason why that I'm actually calling is because I'm actually mad at him as my brother because um uh a year a year or two ago I didn't I don't I didn't know but he ended up setting me up to get Rhymes and I got robbed before by him so it's like I'm kind of doing this like in like the retaliation to get back at him but this type of excessive honesty and that like he literally did tell me this and I'm not on his side he's not my brother or anything anymore like I I haven't been having relationships within for the last three or four years I I I cut him off okay yeah so they have everything out in there and I'm just calling to be a good citizen and to say that I I heard of this before and that he did it he's guilty so with the DNA match and this family member calling the FBI tip line officers officially arrested abnus LaRoche and charged him with Pam's murder Pamela's family couldn't believe it they had I guess gotten to the point where they just expected this person was going to get away with it and now all of a sudden out of the blue someone was arrested and charged for her murder now as time went along abdis was sitting in the Clark County Jail just waiting for his trial the district attorney here in Athens began trying to build a case against him and he started worrying that this case was going to be very difficult to prove so this district attorney went to abnus LaRoche and they offered him a plea deal where if he pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter and burglary he would get out of prison one day versus getting convicted for murder and possibly getting life in prison or a death sentence Abdus salaam LaRoche actually took the plea deal without hesitation and he pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter and burglary in open court and he was sentenced to 20 years in prison for Pam's murder Abdus LaRoche is currently serving his 20-year sentence right here at Wheeler correctional facility which is where he will reside until the year 2038 but then once he's released he will have to serve an additional 20 years on probation meaning he will be on Department of Corrections supervision until he's a very old man because he's probably close to 40 now meaning he'll be about 55 when he gets out and then it'll be what a 20 years after that so he'd be 75 by the time his probation was over and if he does wind up violating his probation at any point during that 20 years they're just going to send him right back to to prison for the rest of his time for the rest of those 20 years so it's unlikely that Abdus LaRoche will be causing any more problems for society as I said earlier I have Abdus LaRosa's interview with law enforcement it's just the audio but I am going to post it on my channel tomorrow if you want to hear it it's actually pretty crazy but um that's going to do it for this episode today from here in Athens Georgia and the murder of Pamela Chrysler I want to thank you all so much for watching I really appreciate it if you're new here go down hit that subscribe button then hit that notification Bell so you get notified every time I upload a video thank you all I will see you again in the next one please all of you stay safe and stay healthy much love to you all [Music] thank you foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music]