Latest / History Dark / She Hid the Fact She Murdered her Best Friend 30 Years Ago - But She Made a Mistake

Transcript

She Hid the Fact She Murdered her Best Friend 30 Years Ago - But She Made a Mistake · History Dark

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: She's just kind of an all-American girl.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: I was shocked beyond belief. It's not that it's so
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: easy to remember. It's just that it's so hard to forget.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Was there some double life? Was she involved in something
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: no one knew about?
• 0:24
  Speaker 3: Everything that she ever did in her life, she became
• 0:27
  Speaker 3: obsessed with.
• 0:29
  Speaker 4: One of the amazing things about the medical examiner's job
• 0:32
  Speaker 4: is that you see the bad side of everybody, all
• 0:36
  Speaker 4: the dirty stuff that they didn't want people to know about.
• 0:42
  Speaker 5: Every murder is a mystery. But a victim's body is
• 0:50
  Speaker 5: a sea of evidence. Every fiber is a clue. Every wound,
• 0:57
  Speaker 5: a piece of the puzzle. The medical examiner holds the
• 1:01
  Speaker 5: key to unlock their stories and catch a killer. This
• 1:07
  Speaker 5: is Secrets of the Morgue.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: Mobile is a wonderful city. If you had to describe
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: it in one word, friendly would be a very applicable description.
• 1:28
  Speaker 6: The University of South Alabama is academically a very tough
• 1:31
  Speaker 6: school to go to.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: Crimes just didn't occur as often as in other parts.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: They had security guards who wrote some parking tickets, and
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: that was basically it.
• 1:47
  Speaker 5: One Saturday morning, staff and students come together for something
• 1:51
  Speaker 5: much darker than academics.
• 1:54
  Speaker 6: It was spread everywhere that this particular student, Catherine Foster,
• 1:56
  Speaker 6: was missing.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Katherine Foster is a great student, very respected, very popular.
• 2:05
  Speaker 4: The Mobile Police got involved, the campus government got involved,
• 2:10
  Speaker 4: and so they've got people from all over the campus
• 2:13
  Speaker 4: who joined together and just did a walkover of the campus.
• 2:19
  Speaker 4: They started close around where Katherine normally was, her room,
• 2:23
  Speaker 4: her dorm area, and then expanded from there.
• 2:29
  Speaker 6: There was a wooded area several hundred yards from the dorms.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: 150 feet from the paved road, one of the participants
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: saw something ahead as they were walking and got fairly
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: close and realized it was a body. One of the
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: friends identified her. This is Catherine. She just looked like
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: she had walked out there and laid down on the ground.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: It's one of those things that just sticks with you.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: It's not that it's so easy to remember, it's just
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: it's so hard to forget. This is a 18-year-old female
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: on the campus of the University of South Alabama, and
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: now she's laying here dead.
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: Why?
• 3:31
  Speaker 5: Detective Williams works with Dr. Gary Cumberland to help discover
• 3:35
  Speaker 5: what happened to Catherine Foster.
• 3:38
  Speaker 4: Ironically, I was at our facility here at the campus.
• 3:44
  Speaker 4: I was actually doing my fellowship in forensics. My supervisor
• 3:48
  Speaker 4: at the time was Dr.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: Leroy Riddick.
• 3:51
  Speaker 5: Dr. Riddick takes the lead as medical examiner on the case,
• 3:55
  Speaker 5: with Dr. Cumberland assisting.
• 3:58
  Speaker 4: Dr. Riddick and I both had this compulsion to do
• 4:00
  Speaker 4: a good job on everything we did and be thorough.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: One of Dr. Riddick's principles was absolutely do not touch
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: the body. So no one had touched the body. No
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: one had moved it. She was laying on her back.
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: Immediately it was obvious that she'd had two gunshot wounds
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: to her head. One of them was an indeterminate range
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: gunshot wound, which means that the body The barrel of
• 4:28
  Speaker 4: the gun was far enough away that there wasn't any
• 4:30
  Speaker 4: powder stippling around it. The other one was a closer range,
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: almost contact wound.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: This appears to be a professional hit job.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: It's not a robbery. It's not random. It's not spur
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: of the moment in a confrontation. There's a story behind
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: an execution-style killing.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: All the reports we had was she was such a
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: fine person. Christian person. She was doing nothing that should
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: have put her in this position, but yet here she
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: is dead.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Katherine is a great student. She's pursuing a physical therapy degree,
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: so she's serious about college and making the most of it.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: She was very involved in her church, the parents very
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: involved in the local school where they knew everybody.
• 5:26
  Speaker 7: When a young person goes away to college, they often
• 5:29
  Speaker 7: begin to lead a much more independent life. And parents
• 5:33
  Speaker 7: are often in the dark when it comes to how
• 5:35
  Speaker 7: that person is leading their life. Folks who come from
• 5:38
  Speaker 7: a very strict religious upbringing are often very quick to
• 5:42
  Speaker 7: hide different parts of themselves from their family members.
• 5:48
  Speaker 6: There was an effort put into trying to really do
• 5:50
  Speaker 6: a good background on Catherine Foster. Was she involved in
• 5:55
  Speaker 6: any at-risk behavior? Was she dealing with drug dealers?
• 6:00
  Speaker 5: Doctors Riddick and Cumberland begin to analyze Catherine's body, looking
• 6:05
  Speaker 5: for answers.
• 6:08
  Speaker 4: It's one of the amazing things about the medical examiner's
• 6:11
  Speaker 4: job is that you see the bad side of everybody.
• 6:15
  Speaker 4: All the dirty stuff that they didn't want people to
• 6:17
  Speaker 4: know about. We run toxicology on everybody. If you don't
• 6:22
  Speaker 4: run it, then you don't know whether she is addicted
• 6:24
  Speaker 4: to some certain type of drug and that was what
• 6:27
  Speaker 4: caused all the involvement.
• 6:29
  Speaker 5: While investigators await the toxicology results, they interview Catherine's family
• 6:34
  Speaker 5: to uncover a possible motive.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: If Catherine is the last person your family would ever
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: expect to have someone hate her or to have any
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: kind of conflict that might have led to something like this.
• 6:50
  Speaker 5: Katherine's friends are also interviewed.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: She had her one great friend, Tish, who she knew
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: very well from high school, and her friend, Jamie. Essentially,
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: these young girls living a pretty innocent life.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: They're worried.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: They're kind of overwhelmed.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: We couldn't establish any criminal contact or anything that would
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: have resulted in some professional hitman coming to Mobile and
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: killing Catherine Foster.
• 7:27
  Speaker 5: The results from the toxicology tests on Catherine come back.
• 7:33
  Speaker 4: Her toxicology screen was basically negative.
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: She hadn't been drinking.
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: There are no drugs of abuse in her system, so
• 7:41
  Speaker 4: it tells you that that she wasn't under the control
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: of any illegal substances or alcohol, so she probably had
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: her wits about her when all this occurred.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: She had a group of friends, just living a normal life.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: She was not putting herself in the way of danger.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: To find her, murder just steps away from her dorm.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Just was baffling.
• 8:03
  Speaker 6: And what was the motive here? This particular one seemed
• 8:09
  Speaker 6: almost motive-less.
• 8:11
  Speaker 5: Police consider if sexual assault could have been the trigger
• 8:14
  Speaker 5: for this shocking crime.
• 8:16
  Speaker 4: We start going over the external surfaces to look for
• 8:19
  Speaker 4: any signs of interaction with some force in the environment.
• 8:24
  Speaker 4: Her clothing is not in disarray. There was no evidence
• 8:28
  Speaker 4: that she had had a violent altercation with someone. There
• 8:32
  Speaker 4: was no evidence of any type of sexual involvement.
• 8:37
  Speaker 5: A model student and perfect daughter vanishes and is then
• 8:41
  Speaker 5: discovered executed. For the detectives, nothing makes sense.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: One of the most confusing, one of the most frustrating
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: things about it was to try to figure a motive.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: But this young lady's life was taken from her in
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: a very brutal way. Somebody should pay for taking Catherine's life.
• 9:12
  Speaker 5: Detectives can't find a motive in the murder of Catherine Foster.
• 9:17
  Speaker 5: In order to make sense of what little information they have,
• 9:21
  Speaker 5: police focus on when she disappeared.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: One of the things that we did, we established a
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: timeline for everybody involved in the case.
• 9:34
  Speaker 5: They interview Catherine's friends, Tish Consolini and Jamie Kellum.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: We had determined that a Thursday morning, Jamie and Catherine, Tissy,
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: they were going grocery shopping.
• 9:47
  Speaker 5: Catherine and Jamie are to meet Tish at the car.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: Jamie reported that Catherine made the statement, I forgot something.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: I will go get it and I will meet you
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: at your car. Jamie tells us that Catherine leaves and
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: she goes to her car to wait.
• 10:07
  Speaker 5: Jamie thinks maybe that Catherine has run up on someone.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: They've gone here, gone there. There was no sense of
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: worry because it was just campus life.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: Remember, this is not the age of a cell phone
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: or the ability to text, so you just kind of
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: had to go with the flow. But as the day
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: goes on, this very responsible straight-A girl misses her 2
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: o'clock class, which Tish was in. Suddenly, there's a sense
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: of worry of, what's going on with Katherine?
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: The dentist called Mr. and Mrs. Foster and said, hey,
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: have you heard from Catherine? She's missing. We don't know
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: where she is. We thought maybe she had come home
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: or whatever. And, of course, the parents reported no.
• 11:06
  Speaker 5: Catherine was last seen on Thursday, two days before her
• 11:10
  Speaker 5: body is found.
• 11:13
  Speaker 6: You usually wait 24 hours before that missing report is
• 11:16
  Speaker 6: actually filed. So that report is not filed until the
• 11:19
  Speaker 6: Friday after she's missing, which led to a lot of
• 11:22
  Speaker 6: the confusion as far as time of death.
• 11:27
  Speaker 4: Core mystery was time of death. You go down a
• 11:31
  Speaker 4: decision tree, and once you set an estimated time of death,
• 11:35
  Speaker 4: then you work within those parameters.
• 11:40
  Speaker 5: Dr. Riddick uses a variety of factors to establish her
• 11:44
  Speaker 5: time of death.
• 11:46
  Speaker 4: He does his examination, again, looking for our classic things,
• 11:49
  Speaker 4: the rigor, the loss of body temperature, looking for any
• 11:54
  Speaker 4: evidence of insect infestation, which usually happens fairly quickly on
• 11:58
  Speaker 4: a dead body. The flies will get on the body
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: almost immediately after death. Flies just look for moisture to
• 12:04
  Speaker 4: lay their eggs. Rigor is one of those things that
• 12:08
  Speaker 4: when you're young and athletic like she was in her
• 12:10
  Speaker 4: early 20s, that tends to be fairly consistent. He said, well,
• 12:14
  Speaker 4: you know, we're looking probably at the eight hours to
• 12:16
  Speaker 4: 20 hours, based on the body temperature. She didn't have
• 12:22
  Speaker 4: any of the signs that made us think that it
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: had been an extended period of time.
• 12:28
  Speaker 5: The timing of Catherine's death raises a new question in
• 12:32
  Speaker 5: the mystery of her murder.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: We are looking at a bracket of from Friday morning
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: till Saturday morning. to fit the estimated time of death.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: But then the question was, where has she been since Thursday?
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: Jamie was the last person that reported seeing Katherine Foster.
• 12:54
  Speaker 5: Police turned to the medical examiner to see if any
• 12:56
  Speaker 5: evidence from the autopsy can point them to who may
• 12:59
  Speaker 5: have killed her.
• 13:01
  Speaker 4: The entrance wounds were both in the back of her head.
• 13:04
  Speaker 4: There was still enough time for her heart to beat
• 13:07
  Speaker 4: that it allowed the brain to swell up before the
• 13:08
  Speaker 4: second The fact that the swelling was there is indicative
• 13:15
  Speaker 4: of the fact that she was still alive. Her heart
• 13:16
  Speaker 4: was still beating, was pumping blood before the second bullet
• 13:19
  Speaker 4: was fired. So there was a time interval between the two.
• 13:26
  Speaker 8: That should be an immediate indicator to you that this
• 13:30
  Speaker 8: is an overkill because most people will never survive the
• 13:33
  Speaker 8: first gunshot. To me, it generally rings of some intimacy.
• 13:38
  Speaker 8: or some familiarity between the victim and the deceased. And
• 13:42
  Speaker 8: that should be the first clue for you as to
• 13:44
  Speaker 8: where you should be looking for a suspect.
• 13:50
  Speaker 5: The detectives take a hard look at everyone in Catherine's
• 13:53
  Speaker 5: social circle.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: Pish is Catherine's closest friend.
• 14:01
  Speaker 6: She had this alibi that was solid. Where she was,
• 14:03
  Speaker 6: there were witnesses to it.
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: Well, Jamie's whereabouts was accounted for from the time Catherine
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: went missing until the time her body was found.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: Jamie goes to Pascagoula and stays with her family.
• 14:22
  Speaker 5: Tish and Jamie are ruled out. So the investigator's attention
• 14:27
  Speaker 5: turns to Catherine's love life.
• 14:30
  Speaker 7: In about half of the cases where a woman is murdered,
• 14:33
  Speaker 7: police know that the primary suspect, the person who is
• 14:37
  Speaker 7: likely behind their killing, is the romantic partner.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: She had a boyfriend. Her boyfriend, Tom, was around.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: Tom knew Catherine all of his life. They were high
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: school sweethearts and then college sweethearts. But there had been
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: this incident just recently at Mardi Gras where she saw
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: him kiss another girl. That was certainly a little bit
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: of a flag to investigators.
• 15:10
  Speaker 5: Detective Williams looks into Tom's activities at the time of
• 15:14
  Speaker 5: Catherine's death.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: There were a couple of instances where on the Friday
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: night leading into Saturday morning, it was a six-hour period
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: of time when Tom was not accounted for.
• 15:29
  Speaker 5: As they question other students... One of them reports a
• 15:32
  Speaker 5: surprising event within that exact span of time.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: There was a young lady living on campus that suffered
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: a severe asthma condition. This young lady suffered such an
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: attack that Saturday morning at approximately 2 a.m. And she
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: immediately got up and opened her window. As she pushed
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: her window open, she heard what she thought was two gunshots.
• 16:05
  Speaker 5: Police press Tom, but he maintains he was alone at
• 16:09
  Speaker 5: the time the shots were reported.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: If you don't have a concrete alibi, you offer them
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: the opportunity to take a polygraph.
• 16:18
  Speaker 8: A polygraph is an electronic analysis of certain bodily functions.
• 16:24
  Speaker 8: They look for the changes. in the perspiration, in the respiration,
• 16:28
  Speaker 8: in the body temperature. By and large, they give you
• 16:31
  Speaker 8: a fairly good indication as to whether somebody's been deceptive
• 16:33
  Speaker 8: or not.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: Tom's failed the polygraph test. But when I looked at
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: the report of the polygraph that he had failed it,
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: I think that his feelings for her and his caring
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: for her is what caused him to fail the polygraph test.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: There was nothing else beyond the fact that he must
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: have done it because he's the boyfriend.
• 17:07
  Speaker 5: Tom remains a suspect, but investigators reach out to the
• 17:11
  Speaker 5: public and receive a startling lead.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: They have this father come forward. His story was that
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: his son, who was kind of trouble, obviously had some issues,
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: had left that Thursday, of all things, with a gun.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: And he was mysteriously gone. He came back. He seemed rattled.
• 17:38
  Speaker 5: Investigators have a suspect in Catherine Foster's murder. A young
• 17:43
  Speaker 5: man identified by his father for behaving strangely and carrying a.
• 17:48
  Speaker 5: 22 caliber handgun.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: The gun seemed to fit the description of whatever gun
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: had killed Catherine.
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: If there are bullets retained in the body, that's incredibly
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: good evidence. You can relate it back to the gun
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: that actually caused it to the exclusion of every gun
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: in the universe. The bullet that was retrieved from her,
• 18:07
  Speaker 4: it was with a. 22 caliber bullet. We thought we
• 18:09
  Speaker 4: were home free.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: We had our man.
• 18:13
  Speaker 4: Each gun has its own set of lands and grooves
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: that twist the bullet as it's coming down the barrel.
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: So when the bullet comes out the end of that barrel,
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: It's being scraped a certain way so that if you
• 18:25
  Speaker 4: put it under a comparison microscope, you have one bullet
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: that you know was shot from that gun, and you
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: have your unknown bullet. You can put them and compare
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: them side by side and say, this is the gun
• 18:35
  Speaker 4: that fired this bullet.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: You have to really admire this father for coming forward
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: and caring enough about the case to want us to
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: speak up, knowing it was his son that he was implicating.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: but then happily to realize, once they tested everything, that
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: it was not his son.
• 18:59
  Speaker 5: The bullets that killed Catherine do not match the young
• 19:02
  Speaker 5: man's gun.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: Not being able to reach a firm belief and being
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: able to prove what had happened was so frustrating and disappointing.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: We certainly had not given up.
• 19:18
  Speaker 5: With no clear suspects... Investigators consider the campus location itself.
• 19:24
  Speaker 6: We began to look at who has access to the dorms, students,
• 19:27
  Speaker 6: who could move about the campus pretty much unnoticed. And
• 19:29
  Speaker 6: so they began looking at employees of the campus.
• 19:34
  Speaker 5: They find one with a highly suspicious past.
• 19:39
  Speaker 6: This particular maintenance man was a National Guardsman. In 1979,
• 19:42
  Speaker 6: this particular suspect tried to abduct a medical student. And
• 19:47
  Speaker 6: when the medical student tried to escape, shot her. with
• 19:50
  Speaker 6: an M16. He became such a suspect here in Catherine
• 19:55
  Speaker 6: Foster's homicide.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: How was he later hired at a college campus as
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: a maintenance man? That was baffling, but it also tells
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: you about the innocence of Mobile at that time.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: She's been missing since Thursday. There was a theory that
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: she had been kidnapped and held against her will, and
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: that the person that had kidnapped her finally realized, oh,
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: what am I going to do?
• 20:31
  Speaker 5: Detectives turned to the medical examiners for any signs that
• 20:35
  Speaker 5: the maintenance man could have held Catherine against her will.
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: We look at the body and there are no external
• 20:42
  Speaker 4: signs of being handcuffed or bound in any way. The
• 20:45
  Speaker 4: first thing you think of, obviously, is drugs. You know,
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: something had been given to her to make her compliant.
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: But the absence of drugs eliminates a whole bunch of possibilities.
• 20:56
  Speaker 9: You can have restraints that consist of a locked room
• 21:02
  Speaker 9: or a locked closet. It doesn't have to be physically
• 21:07
  Speaker 9: applied to the body.
• 21:11
  Speaker 6: The original theory was that Catherine Foster was imprisoned in
• 21:14
  Speaker 6: a room of some sort. And her clothing at the
• 21:17
  Speaker 6: time that she was found was clean. And so the
• 21:20
  Speaker 6: other theory was that she was kept nude. The reason
• 21:28
  Speaker 6: for the abduction or the attempted abduction of the medical
• 21:30
  Speaker 6: student was sexual assault. The problem I saw with the
• 21:35
  Speaker 6: original suspect on that was there was no sexual assault
• 21:39
  Speaker 6: with Catherine Foster.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: We also checked employment record and people that had seen
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: the maintenance worker. He was accounted for for most of
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: the hours from Thursday to early Saturday morning. So he
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: had an alibi for that period of time. That kind
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: of took him out of the picture. It was just
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: another one of those leads that withered on the vine
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: and didn't produce anything.
• 22:13
  Speaker 5: Despite the best efforts of the homicide unit, Catherine's case
• 22:18
  Speaker 5: goes cold.
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: The hundreds and probably thousands of people that were interviewed,
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: the thousands of miles traveled, the thousands of hours spent
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: investigating it. And regardless of what road we went down,
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: then it ended up being a dead end. If you
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: are a human being with any feelings at all, you
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: want to solve that case immediately.
• 22:46
  Speaker 5: Three years later, a mysterious fatality gives detectives a break.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: We received a call of an unattended death a mile
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: or so from the campus. The person was identified as
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: a security guard employed by the University of South Alabama
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: at the time that Catherine Foster was killed.
• 23:09
  Speaker 6: The security guard died for almost three years to the
• 23:12
  Speaker 6: day after Catherine was killed.
• 23:15
  Speaker 5: The timing of his death and the fact that he
• 23:17
  Speaker 5: worked on Catherine's campus raises alarms.
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: No one had seen him at work and so they
• 23:23
  Speaker 4: went to his house to find out what was wrong
• 23:26
  Speaker 4: with him and he was in his house and he
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: was decomposing so he was dead at that time.
• 23:33
  Speaker 5: Police identify the man as Michael Maris. His body is
• 23:37
  Speaker 5: sent to the morgue for autopsy.
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: There was no evidence of trauma to the body and
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: so you automatically start thinking what else causes death in
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: someone who's a relatively young individual like this. An overdose
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: of medication of some sort or a poison is number
• 23:52
  Speaker 4: one on your hit list. We draw the toxicology, we
• 23:55
  Speaker 4: draw blood, we draw urine, vitreous fluids, anything that we
• 23:59
  Speaker 4: can get.
• 24:02
  Speaker 5: As police process the crime scene, they make a startling find.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: One of the most prominent things that we observed was
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: a copy of Katherine's autopsy report.
• 24:16
  Speaker 9: Mr.
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: Marish had secured that from the University of South Alabama
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: Medical Center, and in the margins were handwritten notes, apparently
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: made by Mr. Marish, comments about what that said.
• 24:33
  Speaker 7: Killers who are obsessed with their own work are often narcissists.
• 24:38
  Speaker 7: Sometimes they have this sense of gratification that comes with
• 24:41
  Speaker 7: knowing that the public is still confused as to what happened.
• 24:48
  Speaker 5: When investigators move through the rest of the house, they
• 24:52
  Speaker 5: find a number of disturbing clues.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: We found an area that had been fenced off with
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: what we know as chicken wire. And inside this, there
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: was a mattress, some sheets, a pillow.
• 25:09
  Speaker 6: That kind of fit the theory Catherine was kept somehow
• 25:12
  Speaker 6: in prison away from campus for 24 to 36 hours.
• 25:17
  Speaker 6: There's almost a shrine about Catherine Foster's homicide, pornography, and,
• 25:21
  Speaker 6: you know, the sex dolls.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: There was kind of this assumption that Michael Maris had
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: this terribly guilty conscience, and he had committed the crime,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: never got over it.
• 25:34
  Speaker 5: Detectives looked to Dr. Cumberland to confirm their suspicion about
• 25:38
  Speaker 5: Michael Maris.
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: We opened up his stomach and looked at his gastric contents.
• 25:43
  Speaker 4: There was just a whole handful of undissolved medicine in
• 25:46
  Speaker 4: his stomach. And so we classified it as a suicide
• 25:49
  Speaker 4: due to the overdose of his medicine. We thought we
• 25:54
  Speaker 4: found our man. He's killed her. He feels guilty about it.
• 25:58
  Speaker 4: He knows he's going to get caught. He's committed suicide.
• 26:05
  Speaker 5: Investigators feel they are closing in on Catherine Foster's killer.
• 26:10
  Speaker 5: Suicidal security guard Michael Maris. Now they need to prove it.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: He was uniformed. He was armed. He could possibly have
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: had access to a security guard car. He could have
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: exploited his position to affect the capture or the taking
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: of Catherine. The question was, where was she and where
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: was he taken? in the ensuing hours that led up
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: to 2 a.m. on Saturday morning.
• 26:43
  Speaker 5: Detective Williams checks Michael Marris' timesheet.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: Thursday night, he was on duty, showed up, worked eight hours,
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: got off Friday morning. He showed up Friday night, worked
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: all night as far as we can determine, and was
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: actually in the presence of a second security guard when
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: we thought the Shots were fired that killed Catherine Foster.
• 27:09
  Speaker 5: The police realized Maris could not be the killer.
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: Now, then the question became, what was his involvement with
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: the Foster case?
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: He had applied for a number of police departments, but
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: had been rejected.
• 27:25
  Speaker 4: He had been turned down because he couldn't pass the
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: psychological tests. And so as a result, he was hoping
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: that if he solved this case, which was the big
• 27:32
  Speaker 4: case in the area... then they would have to hire
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: him and bring him on board.
• 27:37
  Speaker 5: The final piece of the puzzle is the holding cage
• 27:41
  Speaker 5: found in his apartment.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: The grandfather had suffered dementia, and he would wander off
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: into the neighborhood and go missing. Mayors had apparently used
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: that area to seclude granddaddy and keep granddaddy from wandering
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: off up the street. He committed suicide, his mother committed suicide,
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: and we were able to document four other members of
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: the immediate family that had committed suicide.
• 28:14
  Speaker 5: Michael Maris was troubled, but he wasn't the killer.
• 28:18
  Speaker 4: We thought we had it, and we didn't. And so
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: it was back to the drawing board and back to
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: square one to try to figure out what we were
• 28:24
  Speaker 4: missing and where we could go from there.
• 28:28
  Speaker 6: When you see somebody that's that young, that's got their
• 28:31
  Speaker 6: whole life ahead of them that's involved in absolutely no
• 28:34
  Speaker 6: at-risk behavior whatsoever, to be executed in this manner really
• 28:38
  Speaker 6: drove home a lot of the feelings within homicide detectives,
• 28:43
  Speaker 6: who are usually pretty tough guys. Not only did it
• 28:46
  Speaker 6: affect them, but the generations of homicide detectives that came
• 28:50
  Speaker 6: after the original homicide detectives were completely obsessed with the case.
• 28:54
  Speaker 6: And so there was constantly this review of the case
• 28:57
  Speaker 6: that kept going.
• 28:58
  Speaker 5: On Catherine Foster's case becomes legendary. 20 years pass with
• 29:06
  Speaker 5: no break or leads. And yet Catherine's mysterious death is
• 29:11
  Speaker 5: never forgotten by the police, the community, or the media.
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: Amy Greer was a reporter. And we had gotten to
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: be friends over the years with so many cases. Amy
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: approached me one day and said, we've got this new format.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: I can do a longer report And I said, well, Amy,
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: if the parents will agree with it, why not put
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: it out there?
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: There was this hope that it would jog some memories
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: or a sense of guilt from someone out there who knew.
• 29:46
  Speaker 5: A few days after the program airs, detectives get a
• 29:49
  Speaker 5: tip from a mysterious man named Ricky.
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: One of his employees had confessed to him that she
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: had killed someone on the campus. back in 1980. This
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: person has met Ricky at an AA meeting and formed
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: some type of friendship. One of the things that was
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: interesting is that he, in fact, did not even believe
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: her at first when she's telling him the story. So
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: she had to convince him. She went to the local
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: library and printed out news articles about Katherine's murder in
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: 1980 showed him and said, this is the girl that
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: I killed. I'm telling you the truth. Part of this
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: AA thing that they were a part of was going
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: through these 12 steps. One of these 12 steps was
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: trying to make amends to the person that you have wronged.
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: If the person you've wronged is deceased, it's normal to
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: write them a letter.
• 30:52
  Speaker 5: When investigators ask who the woman is, they are shocked
• 30:55
  Speaker 5: by Ricky's reply.
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: The name of the suspect was Jamie Letson. In the file,
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: the only name that was close to that was Jamie Killam.
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: In fact, it was the same person. She had been
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: married and had a new last name at that time.
• 31:19
  Speaker 5: During the initial investigation of Catherine's murder, Jamie had been
• 31:23
  Speaker 5: cleared of any suspicion, so police are skeptical of Ricky's story.
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: He has a past himself. He had been arrested for
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: manslaughter and he had been arrested for perjury, lying.
• 31:39
  Speaker 8: If you're dealing with a suspect who spent time in jail,
• 31:43
  Speaker 8: you have to be very careful about what they're telling
• 31:46
  Speaker 8: you and why they're telling you. They're not stupid. They've
• 31:48
  Speaker 8: been there before and they understand how the police work.
• 31:53
  Speaker 8: We used to always say, if a criminal tells you
• 31:55
  Speaker 8: today's Thursday, get out your calendar and have a look.
• 32:01
  Speaker 5: To confirm Ricky's account, Detective Morgan searches for any evidence
• 32:05
  Speaker 5: that Jamie wrote a confession letter.
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: I tracked down her stepfather. I knocked on his door,
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: talked to him, and asked if he had ever found
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: a letter written by Jamie concerning Katherine's murder. His response was,
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: you mean the letter? So I'm like, yes, the letter.
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: And that's when he told me, he said, well, I
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: will let you read it for yourself. What Jamie said
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: was that she lured Catherine out into the woods under
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: a false pretense and that out there, she shot her
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: in the back of the head. When she fell, she
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: said that Catherine was making a noise, so she walked
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: up to her, put the gun to her temple, and
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: shot her at close range. She immediately left the woods
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: And she went back over to the dorm and threw
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: the gun into a dumpster. And then she just played
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: it off as, where's Catherine? The whole time, Jamie is
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: acting as if nothing had happened.
• 33:21
  Speaker 5: The letter is a stunning confession. But Jamie's stepfather raises
• 33:25
  Speaker 5: a red flag.
• 33:27
  Speaker 6: Jamie did have a history of just lying and exaggerating
• 33:31
  Speaker 6: and telling these really crazy, you know, stories. And so
• 33:35
  Speaker 6: it completely destroys the credibility.
• 33:39
  Speaker 7: It might seem strange to think that anyone would lie
• 33:43
  Speaker 7: about killing another person. But in some social circles, the
• 33:48
  Speaker 7: fact that you've killed someone can become a sign of respect.
• 33:53
  Speaker 6: Ricky had been involved in a homicide investigation. Because Jamie
• 33:57
  Speaker 6: was such a bragger, it was believed at the time
• 34:00
  Speaker 6: that she was just bragging that she had killed Catherine
• 34:02
  Speaker 6: Foster just to make herself more interesting or more appealing
• 34:07
  Speaker 6: to Ricky. I met with the prosecutors from the homicide team,
• 34:12
  Speaker 6: and they were very much convinced Jamie Letson is nothing
• 34:15
  Speaker 6: but a bragger and lying about her involvement.
• 34:19
  Speaker 5: Detective Morgan has his doubts, but continues the investigation into Jamie.
• 34:25
  Speaker 5: He contacts Dr. Cumberland, who is now the main medical
• 34:28
  Speaker 5: examiner in the area.
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: If Jamie was telling the truth, time of death became
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: the issue in the case.
• 34:39
  Speaker 4: The time of death didn't fit the parameters that Dr.
• 34:42
  Speaker 4: Riddick had given at all. They were much longer. And Dr.
• 34:46
  Speaker 4: Riddick said it was up to 20 hours. You've got
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: to understand Dr. Riddick's reputation in this area. I mean,
• 34:51
  Speaker 4: he is the guru of forensic pathology.
• 34:56
  Speaker 5: Detective Barber and Dr. Cumberland visit now-retired Dr. Riddick to
• 35:01
  Speaker 5: examine the original calculations. Back then, Dr. Riddick had used rigor,
• 35:07
  Speaker 5: insect activity, and body temperature to establish Catherine's time of death.
• 35:14
  Speaker 5: In the review, they discover a file lost in the
• 35:17
  Speaker 5: shuffle for 20 years. Dr.
• 35:19
  Speaker 6: Riddick, as he began going through his notes, ended up
• 35:22
  Speaker 6: pulling out a handwritten note on a legal piece of
• 35:24
  Speaker 6: paper from back in 1980. And it was a vitreous
• 35:28
  Speaker 6: potassium test that they did back then.
• 35:31
  Speaker 5: A vitreous potassium test is yet another way of analyzing
• 35:34
  Speaker 5: when death occurs.
• 35:37
  Speaker 4: In the living state, all the cells have more potassium
• 35:39
  Speaker 4: inside the cell than they do outside. So when the
• 35:42
  Speaker 4: body dies, the potassium slowly leaks out. Since we know
• 35:47
  Speaker 4: what the normal level is, when the cell dies and
• 35:49
  Speaker 4: the level starts going up, we could use that as
• 35:51
  Speaker 4: a determination to determine the time of death.
• 35:54
  Speaker 5: A review of Katherine's potassium test reveals an important discrepancy,
• 36:00
  Speaker 5: one that lines up with Jamie's confession.
• 36:04
  Speaker 6: When they did the vitreous potassium test, they written down
• 36:08
  Speaker 6: that the time of death, 44 hours, plus or minus
• 36:11
  Speaker 6: four hours.
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: Dr.
• 36:14
  Speaker 6: Reddick, when he's able to come in with his notes
• 36:16
  Speaker 6: and said, I made an error here, that became the
• 36:18
  Speaker 6: turning point to where time of death was changed dramatically.
• 36:22
  Speaker 5: The original finding of the timing of Katherine's death is
• 36:25
  Speaker 5: now in question. The window could be much larger. Jamie
• 36:30
  Speaker 5: could be her killer. But because so many years have passed,
• 36:37
  Speaker 5: investigators feel they need new evidence to close the case.
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: We need another type of scientific backing to say that,
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: in fact, Katherine, could her body have been out in
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: those woods for 48 hours?
• 36:54
  Speaker 5: Twenty years after the murder of Catherine Foster, investigators discover
• 36:59
  Speaker 5: a discrepancy in her time of death. Now Dr. Cumberland
• 37:04
  Speaker 5: needs to corroborate the finding so police can charge their suspect.
• 37:09
  Speaker 4: University of Tennessee, Knoxville, they have a place they call
• 37:12
  Speaker 4: the body farm. It was perfect because here was a
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: situation that wasn't available back in the early 80s that
• 37:23
  Speaker 4: now they could use They've set up an area on
• 37:27
  Speaker 4: the outside of the city, and then officers who are
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: trying to solve a case based on time of death,
• 37:33
  Speaker 4: they come up to the body farm and they give
• 37:35
  Speaker 4: them all the variables they have. And then they get
• 37:39
  Speaker 4: a body that matches as closely as possible to the
• 37:42
  Speaker 4: individual who died.
• 37:45
  Speaker 5: The body farm takes a woman's body just like Catherine's
• 37:49
  Speaker 5: and leaves it in a forested area for 48 hours.
• 37:55
  Speaker 4: The wind was blowing the blowflies just didn't get access
• 37:58
  Speaker 4: to it like they normally would. And so as a result,
• 38:00
  Speaker 4: very few of them had laid their eggs. And that
• 38:03
  Speaker 4: throws you off because if you're used to having cases
• 38:06
  Speaker 4: where in 24 hours they're really going to town on it,
• 38:08
  Speaker 4: and then you've got a body that's just got a few,
• 38:10
  Speaker 4: it looks like they're just starting, then you think, ooh,
• 38:12
  Speaker 4: it can't be that long. We keep track of it
• 38:15
  Speaker 4: over time to see how fast the decomposition occurs and
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: what it looks like over those time frames.
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: And when they did that, it fit the 48 hours exactly.
• 38:28
  Speaker 5: Dr. Cumberland's findings now prove that Catherine was killed two
• 38:33
  Speaker 5: days before she was found.
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: Catherine had been killed immediately from the time that she
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: went missing. That she had been shot and killed was
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: actually laying in those woods the whole time. It took
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: us going to the body farm and actually just physically
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: looking at a body out in the woods to see
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: that it was possible.
• 38:50
  Speaker 5: But there is still one other question to be resolved
• 38:53
  Speaker 5: from the timeline in 1980. The shots that were heard
• 38:57
  Speaker 5: on Saturday night.
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: The young lady in the dorm heard the two gunshots.
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: But two security officers were on duty, and they both
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: reported hearing what they thought was fireworks. Apparently it had
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: some problems with kids setting off fireworks in that area.
• 39:19
  Speaker 5: The report of 2 a.m. gunshots is dismissed. Police confirm
• 39:24
  Speaker 5: Jamie's confession is true.
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: I was at the point in my career where very
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: few things shocked me, but I was shocked beyond belief
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: that Jamie was the one that was responsible for Katherine's murder.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: Going into this, everyone had this wonder, is it the boogeyman,
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: somebody out of the darkness? It's not a boogeyman. It's
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: someone who knew her. It's someone you would least expect,
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: who was right there amongst everyone all the time.
• 40:03
  Speaker 5: Investigators put out an arrest warrant for Jamie.
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: We learned that Jamie was in a halfway house. We
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: drove to the halfway house. She was literally standing right
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: by the driveway. I walked up to her. confirmed that
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: she was Jamie and we arrested her right there. And
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: she was very emotional, actually. She even said to us
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: that it was a little bit of a relief and
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: that she wanted to talk to us. She wanted to
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: tell us everything.
• 40:36
  Speaker 5: Jamie's motive for killing her best friend has to do
• 40:39
  Speaker 5: with one of the original suspects in the case, Catherine's boyfriend.
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: Jamie actually portrayed to her family that Tom was her boyfriend.
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: She had gotten ahold of some pictures of Tom. She
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: showed them to her family saying this was her boyfriend.
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: Everything that she ever did in her life became over
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: the top obsessed with and just went to extremes about.
• 41:07
  Speaker 5: On January 16th, 2010, Jamie Kellum is convicted and sentenced
• 41:13
  Speaker 5: to life in prison.
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: The investigation proved that she did it. The science proved
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: that she did it. And that was more than enough
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: for the jury. And then afterwards, being able to honestly
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: just embrace that family and them thank you for helping
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: provide some sort of justice for them. There's nothing like
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: that in the world.
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: The job that the M.E. did, it was a professional,
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: it was a complete, it was total. He did everything
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: that he could do. The science and the diligence that
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: was expended resulted in the ability to then get the
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: conviction in 2010.
• 41:57
  Speaker 4: Catch and Foster's family, they've lost their daughter, and I
• 42:00
  Speaker 4: suspect that even after all those years, they have not
• 42:03
  Speaker 4: gotten beyond it. That's weighed on their hearts all those years.
• 42:06
  Speaker 4: Now that at least they know what happened, and they
• 42:09
  Speaker 4: have an answer. Finally, justice is served.
• 42:38
  Speaker 7: Thank you.