Editor’s note: This is the fourth of four stories looking back on the murder-for-hire plot that led to Philip Gattuso’s death in 2009.

FARGO — A successful dentist loses his wife to a devastating heart surgery complication, leaving their three-year-old daughter without a mother.

Six months later, the dentist is murdered, leaving the child temporarily orphaned.

Ten years ago this week, a complicated plot would unfold involving a family dispute and a hired hitman. Surveillance video from near the crime scene would be crucial in finding the people responsible.

“It was like a made-for-TV movie right here in Fargo,” said Fargo Police Lt. Bill Ahlfeldt.

On Oct. 26, 2009, Philip Gattuso, 49, was beaten to death with a hammer in his Fargo condominium.

Cass County prosecutors proved Michael Nakvinda, of Oklahoma City, killed Gattuso, and that Gene Kirkpatrick, who Nakvinda worked for as a handyman, paid him to do it.

Kirkpatrick, of Jones, Okla., is the father of the late Valerie Gattuso, Philip Gattuso's wife.

According to prosecutors, Kirkpatrick didn’t want Philip raising the couple's daughter, Kennedy, after Valerie’s death, and wanted his family — specifically his other daughter, Regan Williams — to get custody.

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Both Kirkpatrick, now 73, and Nakvinda, now 51, were sentenced to life in prison with no chance for parole and are incarcerated at state penitentiaries in South Dakota and North Dakota, respectively.

The police investigation of the murder-for-hire case spanned multiple states and agencies.

Ahlfeldt said his role was minor — checking out surveillance video from a nearby business.

However, that video provided clues police were unable to find through other means and helped them solve the case.

Stealing car suspect's undoing

Ahlfeldt said he was a newly promoted patrol sergeant, working overnights, when he was awakened by a phone call letting him know a homicide had occurred and backup was needed.

Police were called when friends of Gattuso found his body in his condo. They’d gone to check on him because he hadn’t picked up his daughter from day care.

According to police reports, the place had been ransacked, with drawers and closets opened and emptied and furniture overturned.

Gattuso’s body was lying face down on the master bedroom floor, his head in a pool of blood.

There were signs of a struggle — a mattress pushed off the box spring, lamps and pictures on the floor, a shattered mirror and spattered blood.

At first, police thought Gattuso might have been shot in the head.

However, an autopsy showed he died of blunt force trauma from at least 10 strikes of a hammer. There were also injuries on Gattuso’s wrists, which may have occurred when he tried to protect himself from those blows.

After the killing, the suspect made off with valuables from the home and Gattuso’s silver 1999 Porsche Boxster.

Gattuso family friend Julie Willert believes taking the car was the suspect’s undoing.

“It was really dumb on his part. … That, in my opinion, led to him getting caught faster, which was great,” she said.

The first solid clue about that distinctive car turned up on surveillance video taken from The Bowler, just south of the condominium complex.

Early clue from video

The Fargo Police Department was canvassing the area after the crime, asking people if they saw anything suspicious and nearby businesses if they had video surveillance.

Ahlfeldt said police heard early on from a couple of employees at The Bowler.

“They found something, and so they called us to see if it was pertinent or not relevant to the case,” he said.

Ahlfeldt went to the business to watch the footage and was struck by what he saw.

Video from The Bowler’s northwest-facing camera on the day of the murder shows a pickup and transport trailer pull into the parking lot just before 7:30 a.m.

About 15 minutes later, the person inside the truck flashes the lights on and off, almost like a signal; however, police were never able to say that was the case.

Just before 7:50 a.m., a grainy shadow of a person is seen leaving the truck and walking north, behind a restaurant next to the condo complex.

While the suspect is presumably in Gattuso’s condo, activity on the video is uneventful until 10:52 a.m., when a silver Porsche travels east on 26th Ave. S., just north of The Bowler.

The video skips some, so it’s not clear exactly where it went.

But four minutes later comes the “aha moment,” when the truck pulls out of the lot and into a driveway next door, in a secluded area behind a row of apartment garages.

“I thought, ‘Nobody's driving the car, they hauled the car away,’” Ahlfeldt said.

Sure enough, the truck and trailer come into the video frame a half hour later, this time loaded with a tarp-covered vehicle.

They showed up in other surveillance videos going south on University and, minutes later, west on 32nd Ave. S., leading police to believe the suspect hopped on Interstate 29.

Video leads police to Nakvinda, Kirkpatrick

Ahlfeldt said authorities canvassed the entire I-29 corridor from Fargo to Oklahoma, and hit paydirt at a rest area a few miles across the border into South Dakota.

Security video depicts the truck and loaded trailer pulling in a little more than an hour after having left Fargo.

The suspect is seen adjusting the tarp and walking into the rest area lobby carrying a plastic bag, and even looks straight into the security camera at one point.

A dark stain can be seen on the upper thigh of his pants — prosecutors would surmise at trial that it was blood.

The suspect comes out minutes later, wearing different clothing and still carrying the bag.

A video image from a different camera then shows the truck and loaded U-Haul trailer pulling out of the rest stop.

In short order, the clues led police to an Oklahoma City U-Haul business and Michael Nakvinda. The pickup was registered to him and the trailer was rented under his name.

Ahlfeldt said officers found the bloody hammer and Gattuso’s valuables in the silver Porsche inside an Oklahoma City storage unit Nakvinda rented.

After that, they connected the dots to Kirkpatrick, who admitted he talked with his handyman about having Gattuso killed, but they didn’t have a formal agreement.

Some of the damning evidence against Kirkpatrick was a $3,000 payment to Nakvinda, a video he shot of Gattuso’s condo and Porsche a few weeks before the murder and a recorded statement to police about his granddaughter and Gattuso, in which he said, “I thought her future welfare was more valuable than his life.”

Ahlfeldt believes the perpetrators assumed they were so far away — nearly 900 miles from Fargo — that police would never catch up to them, and that Fargo officers weren’t very skilled.

“I think that's what eventually got them,” he said.

Kennedy Gattuso, now 13, was adopted by Philip Gattuso’s niece, Molly Massey, and husband Adam, who did not want to speak on record with Forum News Service.

Ahlfeldt said he’s glad he had a small part in getting some justice for Kennedy, who lost both parents in a matter of months.