The Friday the 13th Mystery

Josh Mankiewicz Correspondent • Profile

Your first love can be your last, or it can be just a distant memory. Either way, it's unforgettable...even if it takes you back to the high-school prom.

Josh Mankiewicz, Dateline NBC correspondent: How'd he look in that tux? 

Stacey Rock: I thought he was adorable then. And I think that that was the first night that I really told him that-- that I was in-- in love with him.

Josh Mankiewicz: How'd he take that?

Stacey Rock: He loved me, too.

It had been almost twenty years since Stacey Rock and Ed Schiller got lost in each other’s eyes on prom night.

Stacey Rock: Our hands were like magnets.  We never just sat next to each other.  We were always, like, melted into each other. 

Josh Mankiewicz: How about when he kissed you?

Stacey Rock: Amazing. I think I kissed him first. (laugh) That's what he liked about me because I-- he was a little shy.

But that was back in high school. Over the years, they'd broken up and gotten back together more than once.  But they never married. Maybe they were too young... Maybe they loved each other too much.

But then came the summer of 2005.They had been apart close to ten years when Ed, now 39, and Stacy, 36, reconnected. And it turned out the magic was still there.   

Stacey Rock: We were kinda crazy about each other. We were protective of each other.  We were afraid of losing each other.

It's the kind of silly fear you have when you're that crazy about someone, but then it came true.  On January 13, 2006, Stacey Rock did lose the love of her life.

This unluckiest of days was Friday the 13th, a cold January morning outside Boston. Ed Schiller was getting ready to leave his car and enter the office building where he worked. But first, Ed made a call to Stacey.

Stacey Rock: Ed called me as he always did.  And we chatted a little bit.  And then I said, "I'll talk to you later." And-- I should've known because he'd always call back.

Instead, someone walked up to Ed and fired a single bullet into his head. 

911 call:

Co-worker:  Can you get someone down here immediately, right now?

Dispatcher: We're getting them out right now.

Co-worker:  I think he's been shot, I don't know. He's been shot in his..

Dispatcher: You think he's been shot?

Co-worker:  In his car in his garage.

Ed's co-worker discovered him in his car in the two story parking garage next to Aronson Insurance, where Ed worked as an agent.  7:45 in the morning. Ed Schiller regularly arrived at work early and he'd sit in his car for about 15 minutes here in the parking garage and listen to music before he went inside. In short, he was a creature of habit.  And those habits made it easier to stalk and kill him.

Police Sergeant Duke Donoghue investigates homicides for the Middlesex County D.A.'s office.  

Duke Donoghue: It seemed to be that it was an execution style murder.

But who would want to execute Ed Schiller?  The photo album of Ed's life shows a man who acted as if he didn't have a care in the world.

Ed didn't just embrace life, he leapt at it: Whether it was on the slopes, or during a quiet moment holding his brother's baby, Ed Schiller seemed to be a guy with a million friends - and no enemies.

Carl Schiller: Ed loved life.  He loved to-- it sounds like a cliché, but Ed loved to live.

Carl Schiller, Ed's younger brother.

Carl Schiller: Part of the-- the-- the real sadness of Ed's murder is that he was turning things around on so many different levels and I think reconciling with Stacey was-- was a part of that. 

When police at the crime scene checked Ed's cell phone, they saw the last number he dialed was Stacey's.   Two hours later, they showed up at her door.

Josh Mankiewicz: What'd you think when you saw them?

Stacey Rock: It's kind of a blur, but they told me that Ed had been shot.  And I'm like, "No, you know, he can't be dead." I wish they had killed me instead. 

In that dark, dingy parking garage detectives could find no eyewitnesses - no obvious motives.   No fingerprints, no DNA. And no gun. There was one bullet casing outside the car.   Eventually police dug out a 9mm slug that passed through Ed and lodged in the car door. 

Now investigators dug through Ed's past.

Josh Mankiewicz: Ed Schiller wasn't a guy with enemies.

Duke Donoghue: Not that we discovered, no.                   

So investigators looked closer to home - at both Ed and Stacey's family circles. Stacey was just getting out of an unhappy marriage and had three kids.  Her divorce from her husband of ten years, Jim Brescia, was almost finalized when she and Ed got together again.    

Detectives asked Stacey if Jim Brescia could have had anything to do with Ed's murder.     

Stacey Rock:  I couldn't let myself think that Jim had anything to do with it. 

When Stacey finally talked to Jim Brescia later that day, he said something that sent a chill up her spine.

Stacey Rock: I think I asked him if he had killed -- my love or Ed. All I remember him saying is, "What, am I supposed to cry?" 

But police checked Jim Brescia's alibi--and it was rock solid. He was at work, far from the murder scene.  And all of that sent police back to square one. Who killed Stacey's love? Who killed a likeable and fun loving guy, someone who didn't seem to have any enemies?

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