Latest / The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories / Serial Killer’s Secret Under The Family Garden - Serial Killer Documentary

Transcript

Serial Killer’s Secret Under The Family Garden - Serial Killer Documentary · The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories

0:00
Speaker 1: Meet John Doe, a quiet, friendly type who likes to
0:04
Speaker 1: keep his yard trimmed and tidy. He's a perfect neighbor
0:08
Speaker 1: in every way but one. John Doe kills women, a
0:13
Speaker 1: lot of women.
0:14
Speaker 2: The bodies are piling up. People began wondering what's going
0:17
Speaker 2: on here? Who are these women? Who's killing them?
0:23
Speaker 1: Seventeen women dead and police can't find him. He's a
0:27
Speaker 1: serial killer with the ultimate weapon. He's a chameleon.
0:32
Speaker 3: Serial killers trademark is their ability to manipulate those around
0:36
Speaker 3: them into believing that they are nothing more than just
0:38
Speaker 3: a regular human being.
0:41
Speaker 4: It was like a puzzle, and I wanted to solve it.
0:44
Speaker 1: A dark, twisted puzzle spawned from the mind of a
0:47
Speaker 1: killer that only forensic science can stop. Spokane, Washington. By day,
1:28
Speaker 1: it's a safe place to raise a family, but when
1:31
Speaker 1: night falls, a darker underbelly emerges. In the past three years,
1:37
Speaker 1: six women have been found dead, shot and dumped in
1:41
Speaker 1: the countryside. Their bodies are so decomposed at least find
1:45
Speaker 1: little evidence, and identifying them takes months. When investigators finally
1:50
Speaker 1: do put names to the victims, they discover they have
1:53
Speaker 1: one thing in common. They are ladies of the night.
1:57
Speaker 3: There is extremely unusual half dead prostitutes in the city
2:01
Speaker 3: of Spokane. Within a short period of time, we had
2:04
Speaker 3: some type of a serial murder situation going on here.
2:08
Speaker 3: There was somebody preying on that segment of our society
2:12
Speaker 3: here in Spokane.
2:14
Speaker 1: Then the streets grow quiet and investigators pray the killing
2:18
Speaker 1: is over. August twenty sixth, nineteen ninety seven, a rider
2:24
Speaker 1: on the outskirts of Spokane sees what he thinks is
2:27
Speaker 1: a dead deer.
2:31
Speaker 2: That is no animal.
2:38
Speaker 1: Detectives Rick Gravenstein and Fred Rooch respond to the crime scene.
2:43
Speaker 1: Is this woman the latest victim of the serial killer?
2:48
Speaker 1: The location of the body strikes a chord with investigators.
2:52
Speaker 3: It was in a rural area, wheat fields and trees.
2:56
Speaker 1: Gravenstein and Rooch know this countryside well.
3:00
Speaker 3: Every single body that was found in this county. Regardless
3:03
Speaker 3: of the reason we responded to.
3:06
Speaker 1: Previous crime scenes have yielded little evidence. This victim's wounds
3:11
Speaker 1: are fresh, potentially offering clues about the killer. A small
3:16
Speaker 1: hole in the skull points to the cause of death,
3:20
Speaker 1: but a.
3:20
Speaker 3: Hole in the back then she had apparently been the
3:22
Speaker 3: victim of a gunshot wound. They had shot with a
3:25
Speaker 3: small caliber handgun.
3:27
Speaker 1: But if they're right, the crime scene doesn't match the crime.
3:30
Speaker 3: Every time you have a head wound, you have a
3:32
Speaker 3: great deal of bleeding, particularly with the gunshot wounds. That
3:36
Speaker 3: blood should be there at the scene.
3:38
Speaker 5: When there's a lack of blood and an immediate location,
3:41
Speaker 5: that generally indicates that the killing did not occure there.
3:45
Speaker 5: And this is what's commonly referred to as a dump site.
3:48
Speaker 3: Every one of the victims had been transported by a
3:51
Speaker 3: motor vehicle to their body found sites. We know we
3:54
Speaker 3: have a car somewhere. More than likely it has a
3:56
Speaker 3: great deal of evidence in it.
3:58
Speaker 1: And the method of transport isn't the only similarity to
4:02
Speaker 1: the previous crimes.
4:04
Speaker 5: The fact that they were in the rural areas, all female,
4:08
Speaker 5: in different conditions of disrobing, and the fact that they
4:11
Speaker 5: all having been shot it did lead you to at
4:14
Speaker 5: least suspect strongly that there was some relationship there.
4:18
Speaker 1: If the serial killer is back, investigators need hard evidence
4:22
Speaker 1: to confirm their suspicion, but first they have to id
4:27
Speaker 1: the victim. Through dental records, they learn her name is
4:31
Speaker 1: Jennifer Joseph.
4:33
Speaker 2: A local prostitute.
4:35
Speaker 1: At the autopsy, the coroner looks for the serial killer's
4:38
Speaker 1: signature mo O.
4:40
Speaker 6: There were generally at least two gun shot wounds to
4:42
Speaker 6: the head region very closely situated, and this is sometimes
4:46
Speaker 6: referred to in police military circles as double tapping. In
4:51
Speaker 6: other words, the habit of firing. If you're going to
4:53
Speaker 6: fire the gun firate twice.
4:55
Speaker 1: But Jennifer Joseph's body tells a different story.
4:59
Speaker 6: In this this particular autopsy, there were some distinctly different findings.
5:04
Speaker 6: She had gunshop wounds elsewhere that included the left shoulder,
5:10
Speaker 6: and there was also a gunshop wound to the chest region,
5:13
Speaker 6: the enteror chest region. This strongly suggested this lady either
5:20
Speaker 6: resisted or it may have potentially almost got away.
5:25
Speaker 1: Bullet fragments indicate the killer used a twenty two pistol,
5:29
Speaker 1: a discovery which gives them pause for thought. Investigators know
5:34
Speaker 1: the previous victims were shot with the larger twenty five
5:38
Speaker 1: caliber weapon. Now they must ask themselves, is the killer
5:42
Speaker 1: changing his mo or worse, could this be the work
5:46
Speaker 1: of a copycat killer. To link Jennifer's murder to the others,
5:51
Speaker 1: they'll need more than circumstantial evidence. The coroner searches her
5:56
Speaker 1: body for traces of the killer's DNA.
6:00
Speaker 6: What we're looking for primarily is seminal fluid that gives
6:03
Speaker 6: us the opportunity if we can recover it for DNA
6:07
Speaker 6: identification of a perpetrator or at least somebody who's had
6:10
Speaker 6: intercourse in a brief interval prior to the death.
6:14
Speaker 1: In previous cases, the massive deterioration of the bodies made
6:19
Speaker 1: DNA retrieval almost impossible.
6:23
Speaker 6: In many cases, putrefaction was so bad that you weren't
6:27
Speaker 6: even sure that you could tell where you were sampling.
6:30
Speaker 1: Despite these challenges, the coroner has managed to get two
6:35
Speaker 1: matching DNA samples from previous victims. Now he searches for
6:39
Speaker 1: male DNA in Jennifer Joseph's body. True to form, the
6:50
Speaker 1: coroner gets his sample and with it the answer investigators
6:55
Speaker 1: have been waiting for.
6:57
Speaker 5: It became very apparent to us that this was the
7:01
Speaker 5: DNA of our killer.
7:06
Speaker 1: Despite the different used in the Jennifer Joseph killing, the
7:11
Speaker 1: DNA evidence leads no doubt that after a year of silence,
7:15
Speaker 1: the serial killer is back on the prow. If investigators
7:21
Speaker 1: want to catch their killer, they have to head down
7:23
Speaker 1: to his watering hole and in Spokane that means East
7:27
Speaker 1: Sprague Avenue, better known as the Track. They spread a
7:35
Speaker 1: wide net attempting to identify regular customers.
7:39
Speaker 3: We briefed the uniform division to try to make as
7:44
Speaker 3: much note as possible of everybody that was utilizing the
7:47
Speaker 3: prostitutes actor. It's quite not.
7:53
Speaker 1: But winning the confidence of these women presents police with
7:56
Speaker 1: a challenge.
8:00
Speaker 3: The relationship between police and prostitutes is typically real adversarial.
8:05
Speaker 3: We're on opposite sides of the lock.
8:08
Speaker 1: The prostitute stonewall the police at every turn.
8:13
Speaker 5: They're reluctant to reporting of this to the police, and
8:16
Speaker 5: because they don't trust the police.
8:19
Speaker 1: The killer chooses his victims wisely. He stalks the track,
8:23
Speaker 1: knowing full well that a missing prostitute attracts little police attention.
8:32
Speaker 3: There were people at higher levels controlling purse strings, that
8:35
Speaker 3: sort of thing. That did make some off the cuff
8:38
Speaker 3: comments about spending that much time investigating the death of
8:43
Speaker 3: a prostitute, But.
8:44
Speaker 1: The attitudes of local citizens presents an even greater obstacle.
8:49
Speaker 2: Because only prostitutes were showing up dead, there was really,
8:52
Speaker 2: unfortunately not a lot of attention paid to this, and
8:55
Speaker 2: this community woke up very slowly to what was going on.
8:58
Speaker 2: If these had been school teachers or nurses ending up
9:00
Speaker 2: dead and tossed into these fields and along the roadsides,
9:04
Speaker 2: something would have been done much quicker.
9:06
Speaker 3: You know, the public's perception of the victims out there,
9:09
Speaker 3: that's a very little concern to me as a detective.
9:11
Speaker 3: I'm the guy at the bottom. My job is to
9:13
Speaker 3: catch who's killing him.
9:15
Speaker 1: That job's about to get a whole lot harder. In
9:18
Speaker 1: a high stakes game of cat and mouse. The killer
9:21
Speaker 1: continues to elude police over the next few months, right
9:25
Speaker 1: under their noses, he strikes again and again and again.
9:31
Speaker 3: This guy is not going to quit killing people.
9:35
Speaker 1: With every murder, the Spokane serial killer is cleaning up
9:41
Speaker 1: his act. In Spokane, Washington, investigators are chasing an elusive
9:48
Speaker 1: serial killer. They have his DNA, but no viable suspect
9:52
Speaker 1: to match it with, and with his latest victim, he's
9:56
Speaker 1: getting better at covering his tracks.
10:00
Speaker 5: I noticed that placed over her head was a plastic
10:04
Speaker 5: shopping bag with a smiley face imprinted on it, and
10:09
Speaker 5: at that time myself and the other detective's present discussed
10:13
Speaker 5: whether this was some kind of a.
10:17
Speaker 7: Sick joke. For lack of a better term.
10:20
Speaker 1: The latest victim is twenty six year old Darla SIUs Scott.
10:24
Speaker 1: Investigators question the purpose of the plastic bag.
10:27
Speaker 6: These are obviously not playing any role in the death,
10:33
Speaker 6: and the reason for that is there are no holes
10:35
Speaker 6: in the bags and there are gunshot wounds of the
10:37
Speaker 6: head underneath the bag. The only explanation that seems reasonable
10:41
Speaker 6: for this is a person who's probably transporting the body
10:44
Speaker 6: and needs to stop the shedding of blood from the wounds.
10:49
Speaker 1: With this new trick under his belt, the killer won't
10:52
Speaker 1: be leaving any more evidence behind in his car. He's
10:56
Speaker 1: cleaning up his act.
11:02
Speaker 6: If I can use the term learning in a perverse sense,
11:05
Speaker 6: that that's what's going on. He's learning from each of
11:08
Speaker 6: his victims as he moves along through the course of
11:10
Speaker 6: these murders.
11:12
Speaker 1: With the death toll rising, Women working the streets like
11:16
Speaker 1: Christine Smith know that every trick is a high stake.
11:20
Speaker 8: Scambal are you doing, honey, It's like playing Russian roulette. Really,
11:25
Speaker 8: everybody was in fear. I mean it wasn't just I
11:28
Speaker 8: don't think it was just the prostitutes. I mean everyone
11:32
Speaker 8: was concerned.
11:34
Speaker 1: Although the track is a hunting ground, many prostitutes stay
11:38
Speaker 1: for one simple reason, drugs.
11:42
Speaker 8: Every penny I made went to Crack, every single penny.
11:48
Speaker 8: I would work twenty four hours a day, seven days
11:50
Speaker 8: a week. Go go go, go, go, go go.
11:53
Speaker 1: And it was it was just to Bi Crack and
11:56
Speaker 1: the women that work the track. The killer knows he's
11:58
Speaker 1: got a desperate, captive supply of victims for Christine Smith
12:03
Speaker 1: and the others, Leaving town isn't an option.
12:07
Speaker 8: I mean, you gotta feed the gorilla on your back
12:10
Speaker 8: no matter what.
12:12
Speaker 1: Pressuring the prostitutes for information isn't working, So investigators adopt
12:17
Speaker 1: a news strategy. They send in officers with special instructions
12:22
Speaker 1: build trust with the women.
12:24
Speaker 3: We had detectives assigned just for that purpose, whose marching
12:29
Speaker 3: orders were basically to overlook any of the misdemeanor or
12:33
Speaker 3: low level criminal activity they may be involved in. Befriend them,
12:37
Speaker 3: become their friend, become their trusted somebody so that they'll
12:41
Speaker 3: call you.
12:42
Speaker 1: Through sheer persistence, they finally succeed in getting one of
12:46
Speaker 1: the women to open up. She reveals a key piece
12:49
Speaker 1: of information about the night Jennifer Joseph disappeared.
12:53
Speaker 8: Last time I saw her, she was getting into a
12:55
Speaker 8: white Corvette, a white Corvette.
12:58
Speaker 1: She get a plate irregular.
13:00
Speaker 5: Now we had a good identification that Jennifer Joseph had
13:05
Speaker 5: been seen in a white Corvette the last time that
13:08
Speaker 5: we could verify that she was seen alive.
13:12
Speaker 1: It's the first big break in the case. But locating
13:19
Speaker 1: the car is not as easy as it might seem.
13:23
Speaker 3: We had about four thousand corvette registrations from eastern Washington
13:28
Speaker 3: and another nine hundred from northern Idaho.
13:32
Speaker 1: Investigators are also concerned that the car's color might have
13:35
Speaker 1: been misreported.
13:37
Speaker 3: Some people's idea of what white is is another person's
13:40
Speaker 3: silver or another person's light blue. So you're worried about
13:44
Speaker 3: excluding cars. It might be the killer's car. So the
13:47
Speaker 3: list is several thousand corvettes long.
13:50
Speaker 9: Right, we got the pictures of the vets.
13:54
Speaker 1: In an effort to focus the list, they re examine
13:57
Speaker 1: their evidence looking for any connection to the car. Forensic
14:02
Speaker 1: technician Kevin Jenkins recovers a red fiber from Jennifer Joseph schu.
14:07
Speaker 10: The characteristics that I look at to determine if something
14:10
Speaker 10: is a carpet fiber is generally the size. Carpet fibers
14:13
Speaker 10: are generally larger than those used for clothing or upholstery.
14:17
Speaker 1: Based on the lifestyle of the victim, he concludes that
14:20
Speaker 1: those fibers are not from just any carpet.
14:23
Speaker 10: The fibers were likely from a automotive source just by
14:28
Speaker 10: the nature of the victims being prostitutes and in and
14:31
Speaker 10: out of cars on a regular basis.
14:35
Speaker 1: Now investigators have a specific tool to pare down the
14:39
Speaker 1: forty nine hundred corvettes on their list. They meet with
14:43
Speaker 1: corvette owners. They check all used car lots and corvette clubs,
14:48
Speaker 1: collecting carpet samples from every corvette they find with a
14:52
Speaker 1: red interior.
14:53
Speaker 10: Carpet samples from several vehicles were sent to the laboratory
14:56
Speaker 10: for analysis to compare against the carpet fibers that were
14:59
Speaker 10: found on for Joseph.
15:01
Speaker 1: But there is no match. Checking almost five thousand vehicles
15:06
Speaker 1: is going to take time, time the killer can use
15:10
Speaker 1: to hunt his next victim. Investigators finally know the make
15:19
Speaker 1: of the Spokane serial killer's car and even the color
15:22
Speaker 1: of its carpet, but they are no closer to determining
15:26
Speaker 1: his identity. They turn to the one piece of evidence
15:29
Speaker 1: they have that might bear the mark of their killer.
15:32
Speaker 6: You were hoping to potentially get a print off of
15:35
Speaker 6: those bags if at all.
15:37
Speaker 1: Possible, Investigators turned to a radical new approach in fingerprint technology.
15:43
Speaker 3: I first became aware of it one night at home
15:46
Speaker 3: watching a television show about forensic work.
15:51
Speaker 1: The new cutting edge technology is called vacuum metal deposition.
15:56
Speaker 1: It's the last chance they have to get the killer's fingerprints.
16:00
Speaker 5: This machine is a large metal tank from which they
16:04
Speaker 5: extract all the air and turn it into virtually a
16:08
Speaker 5: perfect vacuum.
16:10
Speaker 1: The device works by heating zinc and gold within the
16:13
Speaker 1: tank until they vaporize. The metals coat everything except contaminants.
16:19
Speaker 5: The fingerprints show up because that is a contaminant, and
16:23
Speaker 5: any contaminant disrupts the deposition of the metal onto the article.
16:28
Speaker 1: Having now retrieved four smiley face bags from the killer's
16:31
Speaker 1: latest victims, police are confident they'll find something, but the
16:37
Speaker 1: first bag reveals nothing. Disappointed, they return to the drawing board.
16:43
Speaker 1: Three bags from three victims are painstakingly run through the system,
16:47
Speaker 1: but still no sign of their killer. On their last try,
16:52
Speaker 1: they finally catch a break and manage to pull a print.
16:56
Speaker 1: It's not the fingerprint they'd been hoping for. It's a
16:59
Speaker 1: pomp print, and that poses problems for investigators.
17:04
Speaker 5: The palm print has to be compared one to one
17:07
Speaker 5: with a suspect palm print by a human examiner.
17:12
Speaker 1: The trouble is investigators are a long way from finding
17:17
Speaker 1: a suspect.
17:20
Speaker 5: I liken the whole investigation to a roller coaster. We
17:22
Speaker 5: would be up one moment believing that we were on
17:26
Speaker 5: the trail of our killer, only to find that the
17:30
Speaker 5: lab would prove us wrong.
17:35
Speaker 1: With every blind alley they go down, the killer gets
17:38
Speaker 1: another chance to strike, and two weeks after his last murder,
17:43
Speaker 1: he decides to double his efforts. The latest victims are
17:51
Speaker 1: Laura Wason and Sean mcclenahan. Again it's the same mo.
17:58
Speaker 1: The victims are prostitutes found in isolated rural setting. Both
18:02
Speaker 1: have been shot in the head. Both are tagged with
18:05
Speaker 1: the killer's infamous calling card, But this time one of
18:10
Speaker 1: the bodies yields a clue, a strange mark behind her
18:14
Speaker 1: lefty ear.
18:16
Speaker 6: When a contact gunshop wound occurs, there's a good chance
18:19
Speaker 6: of skin is blown back against the end of the barrel,
18:23
Speaker 6: and that can leave an imprint.
18:31
Speaker 1: Based on ballistics, police know the killer used a twenty
18:34
Speaker 1: two caliber pistol. Now forensic technician Ed Robinson hopes to
18:40
Speaker 1: use the gunshot mark to zone in on the specific
18:43
Speaker 1: make and model of the murder weapon.
18:47
Speaker 9: I was provided with photographs of one of the shooting
18:52
Speaker 9: victims which depicted damage to the skin near the ear
18:57
Speaker 9: of the hit. Looking at the photo, I was fairly sure,
19:02
Speaker 9: based on my original list of three firearms, that I
19:05
Speaker 9: was going to be able to narrow it down to
19:08
Speaker 9: one firearm. The process that I used was to put
19:13
Speaker 9: a thin layer of clay on a styrofoam mannequin head
19:18
Speaker 9: and then make impressions with various portions of the firearms
19:24
Speaker 9: that I had previously listed. The process for the photography
19:28
Speaker 9: was just to make everything one to one so that
19:31
Speaker 9: all of the images were the same size.
19:33
Speaker 1: After several attempts, he gets a perfect match.
19:37
Speaker 9: I narrowed the list to raven pistols.
19:39
Speaker 1: Police get a list of raven owners. They compare it
19:43
Speaker 1: to lists of corvette owners and sex offenders.
19:46
Speaker 3: It was felt if we could compare all those lists
19:49
Speaker 3: together and shift it and see what shook out the bottom,
19:52
Speaker 3: whose name appeared the most times and all those lists,
19:56
Speaker 3: that was probably our suspect.
19:58
Speaker 1: Thirteen women dead and police still don't.
20:01
Speaker 2: Have a suspect.
20:03
Speaker 1: As the death toll arises, so does the fear in
20:06
Speaker 1: the community.
20:09
Speaker 2: The pressure was really mounting, and so the public's awareness
20:13
Speaker 2: was really amounting. Even though these women were viewed by
20:16
Speaker 2: many as quote just prostitutes, it still was becoming an
20:19
Speaker 2: issue of significant community concern.
20:22
Speaker 8: I think that the public was also afraid that it
20:25
Speaker 8: was going to stem into like, not just out on
20:28
Speaker 8: Sprague with the prostitutes, if possibly you'd start killing off
20:33
Speaker 8: other just quote unquote normal people.
20:36
Speaker 1: Do police authorities respond to the public pressure.
20:40
Speaker 3: It formed a task force made up of detectives from
20:42
Speaker 3: the city police department, the Sheriff's Department, the worst State Patrol.
20:48
Speaker 3: We have participation from the FBI as well as the
20:51
Speaker 3: worst state attorney General's office.
20:54
Speaker 1: The heightened attention triggers an overwhelming public response.
20:59
Speaker 2: Once the task force was formed, hotline was set up
21:02
Speaker 2: and a lot of people were calling in their neighbors,
21:05
Speaker 2: their friends, their ex boyfriends saying I think you ought
21:08
Speaker 2: to take a look at this guy. And so in
21:10
Speaker 2: quick order, the task force had a long list of
21:13
Speaker 2: people they needed to look at.
21:15
Speaker 1: Despite the outpouring of tips, no credible suspects are put forward,
21:20
Speaker 1: suggesting to police the killer is a master at blending in.
21:26
Speaker 3: Cyyl. Killer's trademark is their ability to manipulate those around
21:29
Speaker 3: them in believing that they are nothing more than just
21:31
Speaker 3: a regular human being.
21:33
Speaker 7: They don't stand out for any particular reason. They don't
21:36
Speaker 7: look like Frankenstein or anything.
21:40
Speaker 1: The man who is killing prostitutes in cold blood could
21:44
Speaker 1: even be a family man, someone his friends and neighbors
21:47
Speaker 1: would never suspect. Someone who's not likely to ever come
21:51
Speaker 1: to the attention of police, someone with an iron clad cover.
21:59
Speaker 1: With the count now at thirteen, law enforcement agencies across
22:04
Speaker 1: the region joined together to catch the elusive Spokane serial killer.
22:09
Speaker 1: Investigators believe they are chasing someone with an ironclad cover,
22:14
Speaker 1: a killer with the ability to hide in plane sight,
22:19
Speaker 1: but with no viable suspects, police follow up on the
22:23
Speaker 1: only concrete lead they have, the killer's brand of weapon.
22:27
Speaker 1: They contact raven gun owners in the area and bring
22:29
Speaker 1: their weapons in for testing.
22:32
Speaker 9: Twenty five auto caliber firearms were submitted to the crime
22:36
Speaker 9: lab for test firing and microscopic comparison to the bullets
22:41
Speaker 9: taken from the murder victims. All of the firearms that
22:45
Speaker 9: were submitted were test fired into a water recovery system,
22:50
Speaker 9: which allows for the collection of nearly Christine or Pristine
22:54
Speaker 9: bullets and the collection of the test fired cartridge cases.
22:59
Speaker 9: The bullets were Hubbard and those test fires were microscopically
23:04
Speaker 9: compared to the bullets from the murder victims.
23:09
Speaker 1: But no matches are made and the frustration wears hard
23:13
Speaker 1: on the team.
23:14
Speaker 6: My biggest challenge in these cases was to have a
23:18
Speaker 6: positive attitude that hopefully, this time we're going to find
23:21
Speaker 6: something that's going to shut down this activity. And over
23:25
Speaker 6: and over again that didn't happen. So it's frustrating.
23:28
Speaker 7: You can't sleep at night.
23:30
Speaker 3: You go to bed at ten o'clock, You wake up
23:31
Speaker 3: at two, you turn the coffee pot on, you get
23:34
Speaker 3: the books out, and you start reading about the case.
23:37
Speaker 3: You can't put it away.
23:40
Speaker 1: Just when they're at their lowest, the killer throws another
23:43
Speaker 1: sucker punch. The fourteenth victim is Linda Mabon, but this
23:48
Speaker 1: time is different.
23:51
Speaker 4: The body had been dumped into a ditch and then
23:54
Speaker 4: buried in the botanical debris. There was quite a lot
23:58
Speaker 4: of it in forensic standards ill on the site, enough
24:01
Speaker 4: to tell that it did not match the local vegetation.
24:05
Speaker 1: After thoroughly examining the debris. Forensic botanist Richard Old makes
24:10
Speaker 1: an expert determination.
24:12
Speaker 4: The evidence that was dumped with the bodies was all
24:14
Speaker 4: horticultural in nature. The site where it was dropped was
24:17
Speaker 4: primarily exotic weeds and a few native plants.
24:21
Speaker 1: The debris provides another clue.
24:24
Speaker 3: There was no pine needles associated with it, and this
24:26
Speaker 3: is largely a pine needle area.
24:28
Speaker 1: Instead, Old recognizes traces of Japanese maple oak and dark
24:34
Speaker 1: bark chips.
24:35
Speaker 4: This was typical of horticultural material that would have fallen
24:39
Speaker 4: in the fall. It was deciduous vegetation.
24:43
Speaker 1: It's the kind of vegetation found in backyards.
24:47
Speaker 3: There's a lot of illegal dumping that goes on in
24:49
Speaker 3: that area, typically from people getting rid of long clippings
24:52
Speaker 3: and cleaning up the yards that sort of thing. But
24:54
Speaker 3: no one would just put lawn debris on top of
24:56
Speaker 3: bodies unless you were the killer.
25:00
Speaker 1: A killer who likes to keep his yard trim and tidy.
25:04
Speaker 1: Based on the materials he found at the crime scene,
25:07
Speaker 1: Richard Old sets about creating a picture of the killer's yard.
25:14
Speaker 1: If he can find that yard, he can find the killer.
25:18
Speaker 4: That yard that that material came from was out there someplace.
25:22
Speaker 4: It was like a puzzle and I wanted to solve it.
25:26
Speaker 1: Old knows that the debris came from a landscape garden
25:30
Speaker 1: based on species type, a natural proximity from tree to tree,
25:34
Speaker 1: he begins to assemble a unique botanical fingerprint of the
25:38
Speaker 1: killer's lair.
25:39
Speaker 4: What I imagined the yard to look like was two
25:42
Speaker 4: bark beds within fifty feet of each other based on
25:46
Speaker 4: the amount of cross contamination, and I knew the species
25:50
Speaker 4: composition of each of those bark beds. To know the
25:54
Speaker 4: vegetation as well as knowing that there are two separate
25:57
Speaker 4: bark beds made this a very unique location that this
26:01
Speaker 4: material had come from. Normally, botanical evidence is used after
26:06
Speaker 4: a perpetrator has been identified. In this case, we had
26:10
Speaker 4: an opportunity to use the evidence to actually identify the perpetrator.
26:16
Speaker 1: But legally they can't just walk into any yard to
26:19
Speaker 1: check the flower beds. Instead, they develop an invaluable investigative tool.
26:25
Speaker 4: The detectives in the case put together a book of
26:29
Speaker 4: the species that I found in the debris and use
26:32
Speaker 4: this when they were visiting suspects homes to see if
26:36
Speaker 4: that plant composition occurred on those sites.
26:40
Speaker 10: This is obviously not the yard.
26:41
Speaker 1: In his lab, doctor Lindholm continues to pore over the bodies,
26:47
Speaker 1: searching for any trace evidence the killer may have left behind.
26:51
Speaker 6: We do take samples of the pubicare of we come it,
26:55
Speaker 6: and we also pulled samples now on the comb and
26:58
Speaker 6: the brushings. You're looking for somebody else's pubic hairs, what
27:02
Speaker 6: you're looking for.
27:03
Speaker 1: Months of examination pays off. Lindholm manages to recover foreign
27:08
Speaker 1: hair follicles from each of the victims.
27:11
Speaker 10: I analyzed the hairs and compared them and determined that
27:14
Speaker 10: these pubicares did not match the.
27:17
Speaker 1: Victims, suggesting one thing, the pubic hairs belonged to the killer.
27:24
Speaker 1: A DNA match to the seamen sample recovered from Jennifer
27:27
Speaker 1: Joseph's body confirms their suspicions.
27:31
Speaker 10: When I analyzed the pubicres, I found them to be
27:34
Speaker 10: light brown and likely from a Caucasian person.
27:41
Speaker 1: Armed with new information about their killer, investigators returned to
27:46
Speaker 1: the track, this time with a new tactic. Undercover officers
27:51
Speaker 1: pose as prostitutes. Every John is a potential suspect.
27:56
Speaker 5: Who had instructed the certain officers who worked that downtown
28:01
Speaker 5: corridor to look for evidence. It was pertinent to our
28:04
Speaker 5: investigations such as grocery and merchandise bags, small caliber weapon,
28:10
Speaker 5: and specifically in any vehicle that might be capable of
28:14
Speaker 5: carrying or conveying a body and a large amount of
28:18
Speaker 5: debris in it.
28:22
Speaker 1: Even if there's nothing suspicious in the car, a john
28:25
Speaker 1: is still fair game for closer inspection.
28:27
Speaker 5: Yeah, if a potential customer contacted them and agreed to
28:35
Speaker 5: a sex act for money that was constituted, the crime
28:38
Speaker 5: is soliciting for prostitution, and they would be arrested. We
28:42
Speaker 5: would get their identification, We would get fingerprints and palm
28:45
Speaker 5: prints when they were booked that could be compared to.
28:51
Speaker 7: Information we already had.
28:53
Speaker 1: Trying to stay one step ahead of the killer, the
28:56
Speaker 1: Task Force adopts a radical approach in dealing with missing persons.
29:00
Speaker 3: We learned real quickly in this investigation to treat all
29:04
Speaker 3: missing persons, particularly females, as if they were homicide victim.
29:09
Speaker 1: Missing at least fear the worst. When a woman reports
29:13
Speaker 1: that her roommate, Melody Murphin has gone missing. The local
29:17
Speaker 1: prostitute was last seen leaving her house with a repeat customer,
29:21
Speaker 1: someone she knew well, someone she trusted.
29:25
Speaker 8: It's not unusual to have repeat customers. I feel safe,
29:30
Speaker 8: he feels safe. We know each other.
29:32
Speaker 1: We know it or not.
29:34
Speaker 8: I'm not out to get him. He's not out to
29:36
Speaker 8: get me.
29:36
Speaker 7: I'm not a cop.
29:37
Speaker 8: He's not a cop.
29:38
Speaker 1: You ready to go? The roommate describes the collar as white,
29:42
Speaker 1: middle aged with brown hair. He fits their serial killer
29:46
Speaker 1: description to a t. It's a killer out there.
29:50
Speaker 2: Don't worry. I'll take care of her.
29:53
Speaker 3: Melody Murfins disappeared near Mother's Day. Although we had no
29:59
Speaker 3: bo with Melody, it was felt that she was had
30:02
Speaker 3: been killed because she wasn't around anymore.
30:06
Speaker 1: Investigators search the city streets and Spokane countryside, but they
30:11
Speaker 1: find no trace of Melody murphin I Get Your Name.
30:16
Speaker 1: Three weeks later, the case takes a dramatic turn when
30:19
Speaker 1: police questioned local prostitute Christine Smith.
30:22
Speaker 7: I got hit with something.
30:26
Speaker 8: A good man, a black van pulled up and I
30:30
Speaker 8: got into the van, and I had Since there was
30:36
Speaker 8: a serial killer running around, I was trying to always
30:39
Speaker 8: put up my feelers out to get an intuition on
30:42
Speaker 8: whether or not the person was, you know, okay or not? Yeah,
30:46
Speaker 8: I'm good, I asked the customer if he was the
30:50
Speaker 8: serial killer. Sure, you're good, and he said that he
30:58
Speaker 8: was a helicopter pilot with the Army National Guard. He
31:01
Speaker 8: was a father of five. Now does that sound like
31:03
Speaker 8: a serial killer to you. We proceeded to drive down
31:06
Speaker 8: the street and I told him that I wanted to
31:08
Speaker 8: go to my spot. He gave me forty dollars for
31:12
Speaker 8: oral sex and nothing was really happening. He said, okay,
31:28
Speaker 8: like he was talking to somebody else. I thought that
31:32
Speaker 8: I had been hit in my head really hard by
31:35
Speaker 8: maybe a a a wrench or or s or crowbar.
31:41
Speaker 8: I jumped out of the passenger seat, ran down the street,
31:46
Speaker 8: screaming to the top of my lungs. My youngest daughters
32:01
Speaker 8: life is what flashed before me, and that's what kept
32:05
Speaker 8: me from passing out. And then I went into the
32:13
Speaker 8: elevator and I started pushing buttons so that the elevator
32:17
Speaker 8: would keep the door closed, hoping not to not see,
32:22
Speaker 8: you know, a hand come in to open the elevator door.
32:32
Speaker 8: And an arm did come through the elevator at one point,
32:36
Speaker 8: and I thought it was, you know, the person that
32:38
Speaker 8: had just hit me, and it turned out to be
32:40
Speaker 8: the security guard.
32:42
Speaker 1: After almost nine years and thirteen murders can someone finally
32:47
Speaker 1: put a face to the notorious Spokane serial killer.
32:52
Speaker 7: I think.
32:54
Speaker 1: After nine years of hunting the infamous Spokane serial killer,
32:59
Speaker 1: police have a put potential eyewitness. Prostitute Christine Smith, has
33:03
Speaker 1: survived an attack with an aggressive John.
33:08
Speaker 8: Because it was a violent crime, the hospital said that
33:12
Speaker 8: I had to.
33:12
Speaker 10: Make a police report to have any idea where you
33:14
Speaker 10: were that's happened, I don't.
33:16
Speaker 1: Smith describes the attack and reports that she was struck
33:20
Speaker 1: in the head with a heavy blunt object. No, I
33:24
Speaker 1: don't remember anything.
33:27
Speaker 3: Christine Smith's case didn't fit the profile that we had
33:30
Speaker 3: of our victims at that time.
33:32
Speaker 5: The most glaring discrepancy was the fact that she in
33:36
Speaker 5: the kid, that she had been hit with something, struck
33:40
Speaker 5: with a club or something different.
33:44
Speaker 3: All of our victims had been shot in the head.
33:49
Speaker 3: We knew of none of them that had been physically assaulted.
33:52
Speaker 1: Back to square one, The elusive nature of the killer
33:55
Speaker 1: continues to baffle police. Who is he and where is he?
33:59
Speaker 3: High We had over seven thousand tips, which ultimately led
34:03
Speaker 3: to about eighty thousand pages of investigative material. To clear
34:07
Speaker 3: those seven thousand tips, It's a needle in a haystack.
34:11
Speaker 1: To cross reference and filter the mountain of leads. Forensic
34:15
Speaker 1: technicians turned to a new program called tip Man. From
34:19
Speaker 1: seven thousand tips, tip Man narrows the field to just
34:23
Speaker 1: forty four suspects.
34:24
Speaker 2: Most these suspects when they were approached, if they were
34:27
Speaker 2: truly innocent, they were rolling up their sleeves and offering
34:30
Speaker 2: up their blood sample. And if they weren't guilty, bingo,
34:33
Speaker 2: they walked.
34:36
Speaker 1: Closing in on a possible suspect, Police turned their attention
34:40
Speaker 1: to finding the white Corvette.
34:45
Speaker 5: The corvette might disappear, I might find it in the woods,
34:49
Speaker 5: burned up after it's been reported stolen, or any number
34:52
Speaker 5: of things which will destroy evidence in it.
34:55
Speaker 1: One by one, investigators approached the forty four Corvette owners
34:59
Speaker 1: on their list of suspects and search their vehicles.
35:03
Speaker 5: I took a number of samples from the interior carpeting
35:06
Speaker 5: of the corvette in different areas.
35:14
Speaker 7: Here it is guys, have a look if you want.
35:18
Speaker 1: Nearing the end of the list, their search pays off.
35:22
Speaker 1: The red carpet fibers strike an immediate cord with investigators.
35:26
Speaker 3: Those fibers were microscopically almost identical to the fibers that
35:30
Speaker 3: were recovered from Jennifer Joseph's shoes and the towel that
35:33
Speaker 3: are with her body.
35:35
Speaker 2: But there's a snag.
35:36
Speaker 1: The car owner only recently purchased the Corvette.
35:40
Speaker 2: I got all the paperwork in that, so they can
35:41
Speaker 2: go get it if you want YEA.
35:44
Speaker 1: Now police have to track down the previous car owner
35:46
Speaker 1: and bring them in for questioning. The Corvette is immediately impounded.
35:51
Speaker 10: As part of our houses We pretty much took the
35:56
Speaker 10: Corvette apart, piece by piece. On the interior of the vehicle.
36:00
Speaker 3: The vehicle was spotless. It was actually a real collector's car.
36:04
Speaker 3: I would have loved to have owned a car like that.
36:07
Speaker 1: The team quickly discovers a small white button encased in
36:11
Speaker 1: the passenger floorboard.
36:14
Speaker 3: I recognized that button immediately as a button that I
36:17
Speaker 3: had seen before.
36:18
Speaker 10: I compared it against the buttons that were still on
36:21
Speaker 10: the Jennifer Joseph jacket.
36:22
Speaker 3: It was an identical match to the one that was
36:24
Speaker 3: underneath this car seat.
36:28
Speaker 1: Despite the fact that the car had been professionally detailed,
36:31
Speaker 1: The forensic team makes out a faint stain on the
36:33
Speaker 1: passenger seat belt. Immediate DNA testing proves the blood belongs
36:40
Speaker 1: to Jennifer Joseph. The evidence in the vehicle confirms what
36:45
Speaker 1: investigators had earlier suspected. The killer viciously murdered Jennifer Joseph
36:50
Speaker 1: then drove her lifeless body to the outskirts of Spokane,
36:54
Speaker 1: dumping her in the countryside. Now police need a name
36:58
Speaker 1: in connection to the car. Who was the previous owner
37:01
Speaker 1: of the white Corvette. Police quickly learned that the car
37:05
Speaker 1: was last registered to a helicopter pilot, a doting husband
37:10
Speaker 1: and a father of five. The man's name Robert Yates.
37:23
Speaker 1: Police move in to make an arrest.
37:26
Speaker 3: We picked a isolated section of highway in case the
37:29
Speaker 3: worst case scenario happened. We weren't going to jeopardize those
37:32
Speaker 3: people in the community.
37:36
Speaker 1: Gotta be that we're taking him down, possibly armed police lead.
37:50
Speaker 1: Nothing to chance, Robert Yates. Let's he both fans out
37:55
Speaker 1: the window. Now hot a car on the ground. Now,
38:03
Speaker 1: when Yates fully complies with police, it begs one question. Blood.
38:08
Speaker 1: In their desperate attempt to catch the Spokane serial killer,
38:14
Speaker 1: have investigators captured the wrong man? After a decade of slaughter.
38:22
Speaker 1: Spokane police arrest forty seven year old Robert Lee Yates
38:26
Speaker 1: and charge him with murder. Investigators are convinced they have
38:30
Speaker 1: finally found their killers. Now they need the evidence to
38:34
Speaker 1: prove it. All units are dispatched to the Yates family home.
38:42
Speaker 3: What I wanted to do is find the weapons in
38:44
Speaker 3: the house first and foremost.
38:46
Speaker 10: I'm sorry to have to do this, but we have
38:48
Speaker 10: a warrant to search the premises.
38:56
Speaker 2: Can you believe it? This guy's a war hero, helicopter pilot,
39:01
Speaker 2: mister average Spokane. He had five children and a wife.
39:05
Speaker 2: He'd been married, he'd been in the Army, he'd been
39:06
Speaker 2: in the Army, National Guard.
39:09
Speaker 1: It's unbelievable. A search of the house turns up nothing.
39:12
Speaker 3: Let's take a look in the yard.
39:15
Speaker 1: Hoping that Yates may have buried his guns in the garden.
39:18
Speaker 1: Investigators move outdoors, but again the search comes up cold.
39:24
Speaker 1: Forensic botanist Richard Old is initially puzzled by the elaborate
39:28
Speaker 1: landscaping in the backyard.
39:30
Speaker 4: It didn't work. It wasn't the way I had pictured
39:33
Speaker 4: it in my head.
39:35
Speaker 1: But a closer examination of the individual plant species draws
39:39
Speaker 1: Old back to his original sketch. That's what I was saying.
39:42
Speaker 10: It's the stuff that we found in the field, right.
39:44
Speaker 1: He determines that most of The plants used to cover
39:47
Speaker 1: Linda Maven's body are present in yates His backyard, but
39:53
Speaker 1: there is one glaring difference, the new red bark. He
39:57
Speaker 1: covered the black bark with red chips.
39:59
Speaker 4: When I saw that old bark that I'd spent so
40:01
Speaker 4: many hours digging through the hair on the back of
40:04
Speaker 4: my neck just stood on end.
40:05
Speaker 1: Old's theory pays off in spades and fuels a search
40:09
Speaker 1: for more evidence. When police discover a black van on
40:13
Speaker 1: the property, they strip it for clues and turn up
40:16
Speaker 1: a bullet fragment, but is it enough to guarantee a conviction.
40:21
Speaker 1: Investigators are then approached by former prostitute Christine Smith. She
40:27
Speaker 1: tells them about the recent visit she made to her doctor.
40:30
Speaker 8: He comes back into the room and he says, well,
40:33
Speaker 8: miss Smith, you have the beginning of osteoarthritis in your neck,
40:37
Speaker 8: but can you tell me what year you were shot?
40:40
Speaker 1: X rays reveal bullet fragments lodged in the bone at
40:44
Speaker 1: the base of Christine's skull. Her attacker didn't hit her
40:47
Speaker 1: with a crowbar, as she had earlier believed. He shot
40:51
Speaker 1: her point blank in the head.
40:53
Speaker 8: I was shot right here, and it being that close
40:57
Speaker 8: to my ear all you hear is in men's ringing.
41:01
Speaker 1: It's a miracle that Christine Smith survived the attack. The
41:06
Speaker 1: fragments are removed from her skull and sent to the
41:08
Speaker 1: ballistics lab for comparison.
41:10
Speaker 9: I was able to say that they were consistent in
41:15
Speaker 9: design with the bullet that had been recovered from a
41:19
Speaker 9: ban where Christine Smith had.
41:21
Speaker 1: Been DNA testing will make or break the case. If
41:25
Speaker 1: investigators can prove that the seamen's samples recovered from the
41:29
Speaker 1: earlier victims belong to Yates, they have their killer. The
41:33
Speaker 1: DNA results are unmistakable. Robert Lee Yates is the Spokane
41:39
Speaker 1: serial killer responsible for murdering fourteen women in Spokane County.
41:45
Speaker 3: I gotta tell you that I started to cry. I
41:48
Speaker 3: sat at my desk and I cried. I was so
41:50
Speaker 3: happy that we had finally done what we'd set out
41:52
Speaker 3: to do.
41:55
Speaker 1: But investigators aren't done with Yates. The prosecution makes it deal.
42:01
Speaker 1: They'll waive the death penalty in exchange for information. They
42:05
Speaker 1: suspect Yates is responsible for the disappearance of Melody Murphin,
42:09
Speaker 1: the prostitute reported missing two years earlier.
42:12
Speaker 3: He drew on a little map that he gave to
42:15
Speaker 3: his defense attorneys, and we follow his defense attorneys from.
42:18
Speaker 1: A helicopter thousands of feet in the air. Our own
42:21
Speaker 1: date mentally.
42:21
Speaker 3: Points to a house in South Smotanne.
42:24
Speaker 1: The map leads them right back to the Yates family home.
42:29
Speaker 7: That's something here.
42:34
Speaker 5: We encountered a badly decomposed body that had obviously been
42:40
Speaker 5: buried for some time. That body that had been buried
42:47
Speaker 5: at mister Yates home for the better part of two
42:49
Speaker 5: years was that of Melody Murphin.
42:53
Speaker 1: In a Spokane courtroom, Robert Lee Yates receives a life
42:57
Speaker 1: sentence in a separate trial, and Pierce County there's no
43:01
Speaker 1: obligation to honor Yeats's plea bargain.
43:04
Speaker 2: Jury ultimately decided he should be put on death row
43:07
Speaker 2: where he's still where he still is today.
43:09
Speaker 3: I can tell you that every one of those women
43:14
Speaker 3: were loved dearly by somebody at some point in their life.
43:18
Speaker 1: The memorial service is held for all the victims, closure
43:22
Speaker 1: for their families.
43:23
Speaker 8: Because the victims, even though they were prostitutes, they were
43:27
Speaker 8: still mothers and daughters and aunts and nieces and you know,
43:32
Speaker 8: grandkids of people.
44:02
Speaker 6: The stas
44:07
Speaker 2: Talking talk