Transcript for Inside 20 hours family, housekeeper held hostage in DC mansion: Part 2
Reporter: It’s Wednesday, may 13th, around 6:00 P.M. As Washington, D.C., is closing for the night and people are sitting in traffic, the Savopoulos family, with the teenage girls away at boarding school, are trying to survive the most desperate night of their lives. It begins with a terrifying home invasion. Also inside the mansion, the family’s housekeeper, Vera Figueroa. She had been with the family since her friend and the family’s other housekeeper, Nellie Gutierrez got her the job. You helped her work with the Savopoulos family, right? I took her over there. And it was almost five years ago. Reporter: Authorities now believe that housekeeper is the first person to encounter the intruder. She actually tried to fight him off. And he used a bat, because her DNA was found on the handle of one of the baseball bats. Reporter: Longtime crime reporter Jennifer Donelan covered the story. This started out as a story about a fire, right? We’re trying to figure out, did something more sinister happen before the fire? Reporter: That evening one of the captives, savvas Savopoulos, leaves a voicemail telling Gutierrez not to come in the next day. It’s savvas. I hope you get this message. Amy is in bed sick tonight and she was sick this afternoon and Vera offered to stay and help her out. So she’s gonna stay the night here. Reporter: But Gutierrez doesn’t get the message until the next day. When I got that message on Thursday, I was thinking. And I start calling them. I call her and I say, “Hi, Vera. What’s going on?” No answer. Reporter: Vera’s husband, Bernardo Alfaro, telling reporter John Gonzalez from ABC Washington station WJLA, he begins to worry at 5:00 Wednesday afternoon. He goes home, starts calling her, nonstop, on her cell phone, until the cell phone really stops ringing. Reporter: But at about 9:00 P.M., the strangest call by far. A call for a food delivery. We can confirm that we made a delivery to the house. Reporter: Police say its Amy Savopoulos calling domino’s pizza. She orders two pies, gives a credit card number, and special instructions. Don’t ring the doorbell. I’m caring for a sick child. Just leave it on the front door. Reporter: The domino’s driver leaves the pizza, rings the bell, and drives away, taking with him an opportunity to end the ordeal for the terrified people just inside. There were things that happened that, of course, now we can look back on and say, “What if?” Reporter: This domino’s pizza box later found inside the burned home. Seemingly innocuous evidence of a horrifying night. And to think that the killer actually ordered and ate a pizza during the middle of all this. I couldn’t even eat after I heard about it. This guy’s eating a pizza in the middle of it. Reporter: That night, savvas Savopoulos calls his assistant Jordan Wallace, the man the family had met at that go-kart track. Hey Jordan, it’s savvas. Savas leaves a voice message, a really upbeat message saying, can you stop by the office tomorrow and get a package. Slight change of plans tomorrow. Would you please go straight to the hyattsville office and wait? I’ve got a package that I’m going to need you to bring down to me. Reporter: Police say that Wallace responded by text, “Got your message, I’ll call once I get the package.” The longest night passes on woodland drive. As Thursday dawns, housekeeper Vera Figueroa’s husband, after working an overnight shift, finds his wife is still not home. He goes to the mansion looking for her. Knocks on the door, rings the doorbell. Nothing. But it’s interesting. He says, “It felt to me like someone was inside.” Reporter: Could he hear them? He just says he heard, like, noises, like, someone shuffling inside. Reporter: Just then, his phone rings. It’s savvas Savopoulos, inside the house. They’re just a few feet apart. He says, “Lito, I’m sorry I didn’t call you last night. Vera stayed the night with us.” He said he was apologizing profusely. So the husband, a little more satisfied with that, the fact that he’s heard from someone. He goes home. Reporter: That morning, the next phase of the plan becomes apparent. Jordan Wallace meets another employee at a bank near Savopoulos’ company, American iron works. A couple hours later, we see surveillance video of Jordan Wallace and another colleague of his from taking out $40,000 from a bank of America. And Jordan later testified, “You know, I’d never seen that much money on my entire life.” He tells his assistant to bring the cash to the garage and put it in a car. Reporter: At 10:26 A.M., Wallace sends this text message to his boss, “Package delivered.” The cash is delivered, but for some reason that doesn’t stop the crime. Police say the killing begins. We were getting source information that there was blunt force trauma to the bodies. That there were stab wounds to the bodies. That the bodies also had been tied up. Reporter: Authorities will later piece together the family’s terrifying final moments alive. The three adults, savvas and Amy Savopoulos and Vera Figueroa are held in an upstairs bedroom. The little boy, separated from the grown-ups, in another bedroom. The son is where it appears according to documents is where they set that fire. Reporter: With the house on fire, the killer flees. To think that a human would torture and murder a 10-year-old little boy while his mother and father sit in the next room hearing his scream in order to get money. It’s heinous. Reporter: Before the fire can spread to where the adults are, the fire department gets the alarm. It’s 1:30 P.M. On Thursday. The story blows up. The case that is shaking a neighborhood to its core tonight. Reporter: The media descends on the neighborhood. Early that afternoon, someone notices Amy Savopoulos’ blue Porsche is missing from the house. Police ask the pubic for help. But it wasn’t hard to find. Just follow the smoke. The Porsche, torched in a church parking lot in Maryland. Back at the mansion, authorities are already sifting through the grisly scene. How much more difficult is it for them to try to figure this out with that house being burnt so badly? The whole reason why you set something on fire in a case like that is to get rid of evidence.
This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.
