Murder suspect shoots himself live on video call during police interview
A suspect in a 14-year-old cold case murder suddenly shot himself dead during a video interview with police.
Michael Wayne Thomas, 54, has been a person of interest since Julie Mitchell was beaten to death in her home, aged 34, on November 2, 2010.
Julie was found stuffed in the closet of the master bedroom in her house in Oklahoma City with $30,000 missing from the nearby safe.
Her one-year-old daughter was sitting next to her body when police arrived.
Thomas was an associate of Julie's husband Teddy Mitchell, who was on a plane to California at the time of the murder.
He was interviewed by police and the FBI five or six times, denying any involvement in the murder despite his company checkbook being found in her house.
Oklahoma City Police, for reasons they refused to explain, negotiated setting up another interview with Thomas on Saturday.
After initially agreeing, he changed his mind and negotiated a virtual interview with his lawyer Ed Blau also on the video call.
'Beggars can't always be choosers, and this is somebody we wanted to talk to, we needed to talk to. There were questions we needed to have answered by him,' Master Sergeant Gary Knight said.
'He chose to pull out a pistol and shoot himself, ending his life.'
From the moment the call started at 10am, Thomas wouldn't let the police get a word in, constantly rambling about nothing helpful.
'He didn't give me an opportunity to ask him any questions. He controlled the conversation from start to finish,' Detective Bryn Carter told KWTV-9.
'At about 40 minutes through the interview, he produced a firearm and took his own life.
'In 31 years on the police department doing hundreds of hundreds of interviews, I've never had anyone commit suicide in front of me.'
The shocked detectives and lawyer watched Thomas shoot himself, then collapse and his phone clatter to the ground.
'The phone landed right by his head so we got to hear him die, hear the death rattle. It was as shocking and horrific as you can imagine,' Blau told The Oklahoman.
Blau said Thomas told them 'I'm just worried about my daughter's safety' just before he shot himself, and 'I really hope you solve the case'.
Police refused to release any part of the interview, or any officer's reports pertaining to it or why Thomas was being interviewed yet again.
Thomas' body was found in woods outside the Kansas Star Casino in Mulvane, near Witchita, Kansas, where Blau didn't know he was until after his death.
Thomas, then an insurance salesman, was intimately involved in Mitchell's life due to their mutual interest in gambling.
Julie's murder exposed the illegal underground high-stakes poker games Mitchell was running out of their home, along with unlawful sport betting.
Thomas told the FBI in 2011 he played in Mitchell's games and placed bets with him, racking up debts so big he let Mitchell become a partner in his insurance business as a means of settling them.
He also provided the insurance to Mitchell's properties and vehicles.
'Him taking his own life without answering the questions that I needed answered to eliminate him as a person interest,' Carter said.
'It speaks volumes that maybe he couldn't answer those questions.'
Thomas is still considered a suspect in the case after his death.
Mitchell was never publicly accused of involvement in his wife's murder, but he was jailed for 27 months in 2014 for federal conspiracy to commit money laundering, and forced to turn over $1 million in property to the government.
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