It's Unexplainable! The Heartbreaking Case of the Buchanan Family! True Crime Documentary.

[Music] [Music] hi everyone my name is Jack and today we're going to take a look at another horrible case with you Monday September 14th 2015 was remembered by 16-year-old Nolan Buchanan as the best day of his life the day before he had spent Sunday with his girlfriend a traditional morning Mass with his girlfriend's family followed by a get together with friends and a wonderfully romantic evening waking up on Monday morning next to his favorite girl the teenager felt like a free successful and influential businessman before whom the whole world is open after all he was now the owner of Buchanan construction the young man was going to inherit cars a house land monetary assets and made plans how he would manage the family business alone and certainly do it better than his father who brought the company to bankruptcy it would seem that what could go wrong already on October 1st 2015 Nolan Keith Buchanan was arrested at Bonita high school in Bonita California by the El Dorado County Sheriff's Office Nolan was incarcerated at the juvenal treatment center JTC in South Lake Tahoe until June 13th 2018 when an El Dorado County jury of seven men and five women found Buchanan guilty of three charges the jury took just 2 hours to reach a verdict the young man was sentenced to 150 years in prison with the possibility of parole from the 25th year of his sentence this is how his plan to take over the family business ended neighbors and classmates spoke of Nolan as a model kid and a good student as far as I know he was a good kid Bene a high school student camp Campell ruon would later say in an interview he always cared about school he seemed very kind he was very nice I'm even surprised he was arrested but what really happened in the Buchanan family let's break down this horrific case in detail Molly first met Adam Buchanan when she came to apply for a job at his firm as an office manager by the time they met Adam was already divorced and raising his son Nolan from a previous marriage on his own cheerful sociable and cheerful blonde immediately attracted the attention of the owner of the company the interest was Mutual Molly fell in love started a romance that turned into a serious relationship and her move to Adam Molly dreamed of a real loving friendly family and tried to build a wonderful relationship with her stepson soon she became pregnant Gavin was born people who knew the buchanans claimed that they were a fairly close-knit family of four the head of the family who owned a constru Construction Company earned enough to ensure a comfortable life and the family even purchased vacation property in El Dorado County California a small cabin sat on 19 acres in Greenwood a rustic cabin with no electricity water sewer or gas Adam who worked in construction took an active role in remodeling the house and the family began to visit there often on September 13th 2015 at 10:00 a. m. members of The Garden Valley Fire Department responded to a wild fire in Greenwood Township in Western El Dorado County on Highway 193 between Co and Georgetown upon arrival they found the fire had destroyed 10 acres of the property a cabin located on the property was still smoldering but had burned to the ground the fire department personnel observed charred remains in the ashes the scene of the fire was not touched and at 11 am firefighters called the El Dorado County Sheriff's Office no one had yet realized what was at the the scene firefighters were almost certain that the victim of the Wildfire was a pet trapped in the house the arriving coroner was faced with a daunting task the remains of the house were still smoldering and there was no way to examine the inside of the house they had to wait for the Flames to finally die down and for the temperature to drop slightly as the coroner examined the house he smelled the sweet odor of burnt flesh and later discovered a human skull and a burned chest it appeared that the tragedy had claimed someone's life the officer requested backup officers from the Sheriff's Office arrived and conducted a thorough examination of the scene the conclusion was obvious the small secluded and remote cabin was not the primary residence of its owners rather it was most likely a Country Cabin where people came to Vacation a Dodge truck and trailer were found on the property adjacent to the cabin it was possible to run the license plates and find out who the car belonged to the owner may have been the victim of the wildfire it didn't take long to find out that the vehicle and trailer belonged to Buchanan construction a company owned by a man named Adam bucanan the man in question lived 160 mi from the scene of the accident about 3 hours away in Bonita California this information confirmed the Assumption of the police who decided that the house was just a country residence for those who vacation here from the hustle and bustle of the city it remained to be seen who was inside MrBuchanan himself or someone else the name of the owner of the company gave the detectives their first clue with which they began their investigation the Bonita police officers were tasked with checking to see if all of Buchanan's family members were well and at home they went to the correct address and were soon in the Buchanan's driveway where they noticed a white Ford pickup truck at a knock on the door Adam's 16-year-old son from his first marriage came out he greeted the uniformed officers with surprise and asked asked what brought them to him the officers decided to First find out who was in the house so as not to frighten the household perhaps the company car had been taken by someone from the company and not the owner himself Nolan Buchanan said his father Adam had gone away for the weekend to his country estate 160 Mi away with Molly and their 8-year-old son Gavin and they were due back in the evening according to him his father had left him to look after the house investigators did not yet have sufficient reason to believe the remains in the cabin were those of the buchanans but the information received and the discovery of the remains believed to be those of two people by the evening of September 13th was enough to report the family missing in the El Dorado County Fire the next day September 14th Eldorado County Police went to Nolan's home to talk to him more thoroughly and try to figure out who lives the fire had claimed officers were met by Adam's parents Howard and Susan Buchanan they said that their son the owner of the burned out cabin does his own home repairs and therefore travels there very often the parents were very concerned as they had not been able to contact their son or daughter-in-law until now from the story The officers learned that the house is connected to generators but at the time of the tragedy it had no electricity there were however gas cylinders inside this gave two theories the fire could have been either accidental or intent by September 15th the fire scene had cooled down and investigators were finally able to collect evidence including debris from a nearby fire pit according to Deton James Peterson of the El Dorado County Sheriff's Office New remains were discovered that changed the direction of the case police found a piece of skull with a bullet hole at that point we all realized that there was actually a homicide this was not an accidental fire reported the sheriff the remains were collected and sent for forensic DNA testing in the first set of remains the bullet was lodged in the victim's thigh the skull with the Bullet Hole judging by its size belonged to a child the version of fatal accident dropped by itself the version of murder came to the Forefront no one now doubted that the fire was a means of destroying the traces of the crime it remained to find out under what circumstances the crime had taken place was it a burglary that had gone wrong or had the family Tak in their lives deliberately but then by whom and why or could the crime be related to Buchanan construction a company where Adam Buchanan was president and Chief Operating Officer and someone harbored a grudge against him due to a working relationship initially investigators focused specifically on the latter Theory they also looked into Molly's life to determine if she had any enemies capable of the crime once those lines of inquiry stalled officers turned their attention to problems in Molly and Adam's marriage there proved to be plenty of them investigators learned that over time Molly and Adam's relationship began to deteriorate and at the time of the crime they had been sleeping apart for quite some time a diary was found in which Molly described abuse from Adam Witnesses interviewed described rough treatment and abuse according to them Adam was rude not only to Molly but also to the children Molly's mother Susie Slanker admitted to investigators there were were times when I was afraid they would kill each other in one of their arguments Molly did not sever her relationship with Adam but would periodically take her son and leave to go to her parents house and return a few days later until the next fight it also turned out that the couple liked to hunt in the area where their country house was located since everyone was armed the investigators assumed that during another quarrel one of the spouses grabbed a gun and shot and when he realized what he had done he took his own life however there was an inconsistency if the tragedy happened because of a conflict between husband and wife it means that near the remains of one of them must necessarily be the instrument of crime which however was not investigators speculated that the weapon may have been damaged in the fire and may not have looked as obvious as expected over the course of 5 days forensic team members took turns removing ashes from the home the search was conducted with surgical thoroughness but but did not yield the expected result no weapons were found in the house by this time came the data of forensic examination the examination confirmed that the DNA of the bodies belonged to Adam Buchanan Molly McAfee and their 8-year-old son all three victims had suffered gunshot wounds before the fire and the angle of the bullet wounds ruled out the version that someone took their own life the lack of firearms meant that someone else was in the house a fourth person who shot the buchanans and the investigation had to start over police had no choice but to turn to the 16-year-old son of the deceased Nolan told officers that the family drove away in an old Dodge truck according to the son his father decided to use the company vehicle rather than his personal Ford which was parked in the driveway because he had loaded the truck and trailer with rocks that he was going to decorate the area near his Country Cabin it was this truck that police found near the burned structure when asked why Nolan did not go on vacation with his relatives the young man as in the first interview said that he had a duty to look after the house and garden during the absence of his father and stepmother Nolan also said that they had a neighbor growing forbidden grass on the edge of the Buchanan property which caused his father to have frequent arguments with this neighbor demanding that he stop planting the grass and threatening to go to the police talking about the family business Nolan told of the company's financial difficulties things were not going well the company was undergoing downsizing and the number of employees was down to five from what his father said the debts associated with the business were increasing rapidly so now the investigation had a lot of useful information and the detectives had a suspect a neighbor especially since in that area violent crime was often linked to the cultivation of illegal herbs detectives felt that the threat of going to the police could have led to the murder of Buchanan and his family the problem was no one had any idea which neighbor they were talking about investigators canvased the neighborhood interviewing all the homeowners in a row the tactic was successful they found a man who confirmed the story of a quarrel with Adam over growing a forbidden crop but according to him after a sharp conversation the conflict was over the neighbor had an alibi and another version turned out to be untenable what remained to be dealt with was the financial crisis that had hit the family's business on September 18th the police visited Adam's company and interviewed the employees Nolan's words were true the company was in a sorry state it was threatened with bankruptcy as the amount of debts exceeded $30,000 because of this some employees were fired it turned out that some of the former employees were extremely dissatisfied with the reduction and therefore could be involved in the crime crime and that's where investigators got lucky over the weekend the local high school organized a community cleanup day the students were clearing debris from a business park just a mile from Adams Construction Company it was there on September 19th that a small purse with a wallet and identification cards belonging to Molly McAfee and Adam Buchanan was found under one of the bushes a22 caliber rifle was lying nearby detectives immediately went to the scene of the discovery the County Sheriff's Office made a new assumption the perpetrator had massacred the Buchanan family with the found rifle and covering his tracks had taken their documents from the crime scene the discovery was important because it meant that someone had traveled all the way to Greenwood to kill the family and then returned to Bonita to dispose of the bag and murder weapon it appeared to be a Bonita resident the proximity of the evidence found to the location of Buchanan construction strengthened the theory that the boss was massacred by by one of the disgruntled employees detectives sent the firearm and the bag of documents for examination requesting a warrant to inspect the company's records and premises here the investigators got lucky a second time during the search they gained access to a video surveillance camera installed on the firm's premises by happy coincidence the lens of the camera was directed not at the company's territory but at the center of the parking lot after this discovery the case was just days away from being solved since it was already known that the family had gone out of town on Friday investigators reviewed Friday's footage and were surprised to find that Adam had attached a trailer filled with rocks to a Ford F-150 not a Dodge truck as Nolan had told them detectives realized that the young man had deliberately manipulated the investigation if the white Ford had towed The Rock trailer to the cabin then someone must have driven it back and parked it in the driveway of the Buchanan family home investigators reinterviewed Nolan trying to keep him safe while getting as many details as possible Nolan again recounted his weekend where he had been and who he had seen only this time they asked him what movie they had seen at the cinema how he had paid for the shopping at the mall and how he had paid for dessert on a date the unsuspecting Nolan answered with his father's credit card the officers then applied for a warrant to search Buchanan's home in Bonita search the vehicles and check Financial records the Ford automobile was still parked in the driveway it was closely inspected and they noticed reddish soil sticking to the wheels similar to that in Greenwood if the Ford had been used for a trip last weekend or earlier traces of soil might have remained but they would not have been as obvious unfortunately the fire had destroyed the wheel tread marks near the country house but the dirt buildup indicated that the car had probably been to Greenwood recently Detectives Tred the bank card payments and found that Adam Buchanan had used his credit card on Friday September 11th at fast food chain Taco Bell on his way to Greenwood Nolan on the other hand claimed he stayed home did not go with his parents and had the credit card in his possession detectives went to the diner and checked the security cameras they saw exactly what they expected a white Ford instead of a truck when detectives searched the Ford they found a Taco Bell receipt dated September 11th that included not three but four drinks evidence collected at the scene of the fire similarly pointed to four drink cups so Nolan was in the car the next credit card transaction took place on Saturday September 12th at the Valencia club bar in penin about 30 minutes away from the cabin Adam's parents had previously told detectives about the bar they said their son and daughter-in-law likeed to drop in there after renovations to the cabin security cameras recorded the time the couple left the bar and traffic cameras on the highway helped track the couple's route a Ford F150 headed toward the Buchanan cabin around 2:30 a.

m. on the day of the fire and at 3:30 a. m.