Latest / History Dark / Her Leg Washed Up on Shore with Saw Marks on the Bone _ Brutal Murder of Nicole Mattison

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Her Leg Washed Up on Shore with Saw Marks on the Bone _ Brutal Murder of Nicole Mattison · History Dark

0:02
Speaker 1: Very few people in this world get killed by a stranger.
0:07
Speaker 2: It was a marriage of pure hatred. And they were
0:11
Speaker 2: doing all they could to hurt each other.
0:15
Speaker 3: We got the comment that one of them is going
0:17
Speaker 3: to kill the other one. I opened the body bag.
0:22
Speaker 3: Very obviously, this is a human leg.
0:25
Speaker 2: Despite the fact that there was a lot of suspicion,
0:27
Speaker 2: there wasn't a lot of evidence.
0:31
Speaker 4: Nobody saw anything.
0:38
Speaker 5: Every murder is a mystery. But a victim's body is
0:46
Speaker 5: a sea of evidence. Every fiber is a clue. Every wound,
0:53
Speaker 5: a piece of the puzzle. The medical examiner holds the
0:57
Speaker 5: key to unlock their stories and catch a killer. This
1:03
Speaker 5: is Secrets of the Morgue.
1:17
Speaker 2: Toronto thinks of itself as being Toronto the Good. Kind
1:22
Speaker 2: of a safe place where you can walk in the
1:24
Speaker 2: street at night and everything is fine. It actually isn't
1:31
Speaker 2: that way at all. A lot of violent crime happens here.
1:41
Speaker 6: When you leave Toronto, the Burlington Bridge connects Toronto and
1:43
Speaker 6: the GTA to the Niagara region. Right over the western
1:49
Speaker 6: tip of Lake Ontario. It is a very, very busy bridge.
1:55
Speaker 3: I think it's about close to 200 feet from the
1:59
Speaker 3: road surface down to the water.
2:02
Speaker 5: The bridge is a landmark for the Toronto area. And
2:06
Speaker 5: one day in January, children walking below it discover the unthinkable.
2:12
Speaker 6: In the afternoon, right around the rush hour, I received
2:14
Speaker 6: a call that a portion of a leg had washed ashore.
2:19
Speaker 5: Mark Mendelson is one of the first detectives to inspect
2:23
Speaker 5: the grisly remains.
2:26
Speaker 1: It was a fair-sized grisly.
2:27
Speaker 6: And it was a type of situation where you could
2:30
Speaker 6: look at it and know that this was not a
2:33
Speaker 6: disarticulation of the body part through natural process in the water,
2:38
Speaker 6: that this leg had been removed. There is nothing more
2:46
Speaker 6: important for a homicide investigator to see the body in
2:50
Speaker 6: two locations. One is what we often refer to as
2:53
Speaker 6: in situ. In other words, seeing the body where it is.
2:59
Speaker 6: The second place that an investigator needs to go is
3:02
Speaker 6: to the autopsy.
3:05
Speaker 1: Dr.
3:06
Speaker 5: David King, a forensic pathologist who's performed over 9,000 autopsies,
3:12
Speaker 5: is assigned to the case.
3:14
Speaker 3: Every case is a mystery to some degree or other,
3:18
Speaker 3: and I never quite know what I'm going to find.
3:22
Speaker 3: It's an important part of forensic pathology to answer questions
3:26
Speaker 3: and to get to the truth of what caused the
3:29
Speaker 3: death and we have a duty to the deceased. I
3:34
Speaker 3: open the body bag, and fairly obviously, this is a
3:37
Speaker 3: human leg, apparently divided at the mid-thigh.
3:44
Speaker 5: To start, Dr. King needs to determine if he's dealing
3:47
Speaker 5: with an accident, a suicide, or a homicide.
3:52
Speaker 3: The information I had at that point was that this
3:54
Speaker 3: was most probably a suicide death. There was a man
4:02
Speaker 3: who had committed suicide in that area, had been seen
4:06
Speaker 3: to jump off the bridge, but his body had not
4:09
Speaker 3: been located. I'd seen a number of cases where people
4:14
Speaker 3: had jumped off that Skyway Bridge into the canal. A
4:20
Speaker 3: drop from that height would probably be fatal.
4:25
Speaker 5: After hitting the water, police speculate that the suicide victim
4:29
Speaker 5: then lost a leg in a gruesome way.
4:33
Speaker 3: The freighter had gone through the ship canal and therefore
4:39
Speaker 3: the leg could have been severed by the ship's propeller.
4:45
Speaker 7: Dr.
4:46
Speaker 5: King examines the leg bone for clues to determine how
4:50
Speaker 5: it was cut off.
4:52
Speaker 3: I looked at the femur where the bone had been
4:54
Speaker 3: separated and the first thing I noticed was visible sore
4:59
Speaker 3: marks on the on the seventh end.
5:06
Speaker 6: When you think about sawing somebody's leg off, you know
5:10
Speaker 6: that you're using some sort of blade where you have
5:13
Speaker 6: control and the cut is straight. When people have had
5:21
Speaker 6: a limb cut off by way of a propeller, it's
5:24
Speaker 6: not a clean cut. It's a ripping cut. It's a
5:26
Speaker 6: shearing cut, almost akin to being bitten by a shark.
5:33
Speaker 3: If this leg had been severed by the ship's propeller,
5:38
Speaker 3: there wouldn't have been sore marks on the end of
5:41
Speaker 3: the bone. I called the coroner and told him that
5:48
Speaker 3: this was a very suspicious case, probably a homicide.
5:54
Speaker 5: News of the leg travels fast. Several detectives working on
5:58
Speaker 5: missing person cases show up at the morgue.
6:03
Speaker 6: There was this mad dash of all investigators that had
6:07
Speaker 6: body parts missing to view this leg and see whether
6:10
Speaker 6: it in fact matched the victim I was looking for
6:13
Speaker 6: or somebody else's.
6:16
Speaker 5: Families with missing loved ones are desperate for answers and
6:20
Speaker 5: praying for closure one way or another.
6:22
Speaker 3: At this stage, I want to provide the police with
6:26
Speaker 3: as much information as I can to help them in
6:30
Speaker 3: identifying the person who's lost a leg.
6:34
Speaker 5: With just a leg to analyze, Dr. King looks for
6:38
Speaker 5: any indication of the victim's identity.
6:41
Speaker 3: There are several things I noticed about the leg. It's
6:46
Speaker 3: a large leg, a long leg. It's the leg of
6:50
Speaker 3: a white person. The severed end of the leg, the thigh,
6:55
Speaker 3: there is rather more fatty tissue than muscular tissue. From
7:05
Speaker 3: my experience, women have considerably more subcutaneous fat in relation
7:11
Speaker 3: to muscle, particularly in their legs and in their thighs.
7:18
Speaker 3: This tends to point towards this being a woman's leg.
7:24
Speaker 5: Detectives attending the autopsy have their first clue.
7:29
Speaker 6: You need something to go on, you need some direction,
7:32
Speaker 6: and just by identifying the gender, you have something to
7:35
Speaker 6: work with.
7:37
Speaker 5: The next step in identification is to determine how long
7:41
Speaker 5: the victim has been in the water.
7:44
Speaker 1: As an investigator, you have to have a time frame
7:47
Speaker 1: to work with.
7:49
Speaker 3: This leg was found at the beginning of January. It's
7:53
Speaker 3: been in a very cold environment, so that would tend
7:57
Speaker 3: to preserve the leg. for longer than say if it's
8:02
Speaker 3: recovered from water in the summer. So it's gonna be
8:05
Speaker 3: more difficult to give an estimate when death occurred. My
8:10
Speaker 3: examination shows that in fact there is only very minimal
8:13
Speaker 3: evidence of decomposition. So I give the police a very
8:19
Speaker 3: rough estimate that the leg hadn't been in the water
8:21
Speaker 3: all that long, but probably a month.
8:26
Speaker 5: The forensic timeline connects the leg to Detective Tony Warr's case,
8:33
Speaker 5: a middle-aged woman who disappeared a month ago.
8:38
Speaker 3: I had been assigned to investigate the missing person, Nicole Madison,
8:42
Speaker 3: who had disappeared on December the 2nd. And then on
8:47
Speaker 3: January the 6th, a few days after we started, it
8:50
Speaker 3: came to my attention that there had been a human
8:53
Speaker 3: leg located. I started with the Toronto Police Homicide Squad
9:01
Speaker 3: in 1980. I just always aspired to be a homicide detective.
9:06
Speaker 3: It's a bigger challenge than any other investigation because your
9:09
Speaker 3: victim is unable to communicate to you. In all other crimes,
9:13
Speaker 3: the victim can tell you what happened. So the circumstances
9:17
Speaker 3: of how the person met their death are a mystery
9:21
Speaker 3: until you figure out from the clues of the scene.
9:27
Speaker 1: Dr.
9:28
Speaker 5: King continues his autopsy on the leg, revealing even more
9:32
Speaker 5: similarities to Detective Waugh's missing person.
9:36
Speaker 3: By looking at the epiphyses, these are the ends of
9:40
Speaker 3: the bones of the joints, to see whether they're completely
9:43
Speaker 3: fused with the shafts of the bones, because up until
9:46
Speaker 3: about the age of 20, the early 20s, you can
9:49
Speaker 3: still see some separation of the epiphyses. And in this
9:54
Speaker 3: case they were well fused so this appeared to be
9:57
Speaker 3: an older adult.
10:01
Speaker 5: The forensic clues all suggest that Nicole Madison could be
10:06
Speaker 5: the victim.
10:07
Speaker 3: Nicole was 52 years old. She was a fairly large woman.
10:13
Speaker 4: She was 5'10. Not overweight, but a heavily built woman.
10:21
Speaker 2: She was a mother. She was a homemaker and a grandmother.
10:25
Speaker 2: She looked after her grandchildren. She was a corrections officer,
10:30
Speaker 2: so I think she was multifaceted, but overall I would
10:34
Speaker 2: say pretty strong, pretty tough.
10:39
Speaker 3: It's very difficult to look at a missing person's case
10:41
Speaker 3: and say, this person has been a victim of foul play.
10:46
Speaker 3: So this was why I had to keep reminding myself
10:48
Speaker 3: not to get tunnel vision. that there was still a
10:50
Speaker 3: lot to do and quite possibly she could show up
10:53
Speaker 3: any day now. I don't know how to describe the feeling,
10:59
Speaker 3: but I thought that that was her leg.
11:01
Speaker 4: But I needed to prove it.
11:06
Speaker 5: But the investigation into Nicole's disappearance has a twist.
11:13
Speaker 3: Her husband is David Madison. He's a police sergeant at
11:16
Speaker 3: 52 Division in Toronto.
11:20
Speaker 6: Investigating a police officer, whether you work with them or
11:25
Speaker 6: whether you work for the same police service as them,
11:27
Speaker 6: or whether they work in a different service, is very difficult.
11:35
Speaker 6: And the reason is that police officers are kept to
11:40
Speaker 6: a higher standard. They are in a position of authority.
11:45
Speaker 6: They are in a position of trust. And even though
11:50
Speaker 6: these expectations are placed upon you, they're not superhuman individuals,
11:54
Speaker 6: and they have frailties, and they have problems. It's a
12:00
Speaker 6: difficult concept to wrap your head around, but it happens.
12:06
Speaker 2: Police investigating police would make it a very different investigation.
12:13
Speaker 5: Toronto police are investigating the disappearance of Nicole Madison, Detective
12:19
Speaker 5: Toni Warr's first person of interest is her husband, Sergeant
12:23
Speaker 5: David Madison, a fellow police officer.
12:27
Speaker 3: David said they met in France when he was with
12:30
Speaker 3: the military and they'd been married in France and been
12:34
Speaker 3: married for about 30 years. He said they had a
12:37
Speaker 3: rocky marriage. They fought often and they argued a lot.
12:45
Speaker 2: Nicole was trying her best to keep her life together
12:50
Speaker 2: under very, very trying circumstances. The marriage had completely kind
12:55
Speaker 2: of deteriorated and they were living very separate lives.
12:59
Speaker 5: Nicole had moved into a house in Font Hill, a
13:03
Speaker 5: small town near Niagara Falls, leaving David, the family home
13:07
Speaker 5: in Toronto, 80 miles away.
13:10
Speaker 2: Moving into the house was a fresh start for her.
13:15
Speaker 2: And For her to have a house of her own,
13:17
Speaker 2: I would say was a fortress for her.
13:24
Speaker 5: Detective Vore asks Madison when was the last time he
13:28
Speaker 5: saw his wife.
13:31
Speaker 3: That was December the 2nd. It was about 2 o'clock
13:33
Speaker 3: in the afternoon. He said he was driving with his
13:37
Speaker 3: wife in the area of Spadina and King. They had
13:41
Speaker 3: been arguing all day. And when they got to the
13:45
Speaker 3: intersection of King Street, which is a very busy downtown intersection,
13:50
Speaker 3: lots of pedestrian traffic, lots of car and bus traffic,
13:54
Speaker 3: they were stopped. And she got out of the car
13:58
Speaker 3: and smashed the window of the car on the passenger
14:02
Speaker 3: side and walked away. And that was the last time
14:07
Speaker 3: he saw her. One of the questions being raised right
14:10
Speaker 3: at the time was why did he wait 19 days
14:13
Speaker 3: to report his wife missing? He believed that she would
14:18
Speaker 3: be somewhere, either staying with a friend and would show
14:21
Speaker 3: up at home in a few days.
14:23
Speaker 5: David Madison is surprisingly blunt about the argument with his
14:27
Speaker 5: wife that led to her disappearance.
14:30
Speaker 4: He's very calm.
14:31
Speaker 3: He's a policeman talking to other policemen and just telling
14:35
Speaker 3: us the story about his wife going missing. David was
14:43
Speaker 3: pretty open as to the fact that it was a
14:45
Speaker 3: rocky marriage.
14:48
Speaker 4: He did not hide the fact that he had a girlfriend.
14:54
Speaker 2: Who knows what actually goes on in a marriage? David
14:58
Speaker 2: made no secret of the fact he was having an affair.
15:01
Speaker 2: In fact, he tortured Nicole with that knowledge. It was
15:06
Speaker 2: a marriage of pure hatred. And they were doing all
15:10
Speaker 2: they could to hurt each other. The affair was a
15:13
Speaker 2: good weapon.
15:16
Speaker 5: Detective Warr asks Madison if there's any reason Nicole could
15:20
Speaker 5: be in danger and gets a disturbing answer.
15:26
Speaker 3: He was saying he believed that she'd gone down to
15:28
Speaker 3: Niagara Falls and jumped in. He said that if she
15:34
Speaker 3: ever did commit suicide, that's how she would do it.
15:38
Speaker 5: Madison is brutally honest about his wife and marriage. But
15:43
Speaker 5: detectives need to corroborate Nicole's state of mind.
15:47
Speaker 6: You try and build a picture, so you start by
15:49
Speaker 6: talking with friends, with family, and see if there's any
15:53
Speaker 6: legitimate reason why this person may be missing. Was it financial?
15:57
Speaker 6: Was it mental health issues? Had this ever happened before?
16:00
Speaker 6: Had she gone missing before? Did she leave to go
16:03
Speaker 6: be with somebody else? All of these questions have to
16:06
Speaker 6: be answered.
16:08
Speaker 3: I spoke to friends of hers. And she had told
16:12
Speaker 3: one friend that she had taken, I think it was $ 5, 000
16:14
Speaker 3: out of an account and was keeping it so that
16:18
Speaker 3: if she ever had to leave home, she'd have some
16:20
Speaker 3: money to exist on.
16:24
Speaker 2: Her actions were to try and get out of the marriage. So,
16:29
Speaker 2: you know, she was talking to friends, she was showing friends, like,
16:33
Speaker 2: here's where my money is. I'm going to leave a
16:36
Speaker 2: letter with you in case anything happens. The two of
16:40
Speaker 2: them were in a very violent relationship, and neither of
16:45
Speaker 2: them was giving an inch. I think she felt more
16:50
Speaker 2: threatened than threatening, but backed into a corner who knows
16:54
Speaker 2: what she might have done.
16:58
Speaker 5: It's been 40 days since Nicole Madison jumped out of
17:01
Speaker 5: her car in downtown Toronto and vanished.
17:08
Speaker 3: There was no sightings of her. She made no contact
17:10
Speaker 3: with any of her friends. She had completely disappeared.
17:17
Speaker 6: People disappear for a variety of reasons. They either disappear
17:20
Speaker 6: because they're the victim of foul play, or they disappear
17:23
Speaker 6: because they have made an effort, a conscious effort, to
17:26
Speaker 6: not be found. And if you're dealing with a missing
17:30
Speaker 6: woman who has vaporized off the face of the earth,
17:33
Speaker 6: then that has to be a very large flag and
17:35
Speaker 6: a very large clue That foul play is probably suspected.
17:42
Speaker 5: Detective War analyzes Nicole's medical records. He wants Dr. King
17:47
Speaker 5: to confirm if her blood type matches the leg that
17:50
Speaker 5: was recovered.
17:52
Speaker 3: Another way we can help determine the identity of the
17:56
Speaker 3: deceased is to collect blood tissue and other tissues, in fact,
18:01
Speaker 3: and determine the blood type.
18:06
Speaker 6: If you knew that your victim was O positive, and
18:10
Speaker 6: you could find out through biology testing that the victim
18:17
Speaker 6: was O negative, you could rule that person out immediately
18:20
Speaker 6: as being your victim.
18:22
Speaker 3: In this case, there really wasn't blood present in the leg,
18:25
Speaker 3: so it was going to be touch and go whether
18:29
Speaker 3: blood grouping could be done.
18:33
Speaker 5: But 35 years of forensic experience helps Dr. King find
18:38
Speaker 5: a microscopic amount of blood evidence in the severed leg.
18:43
Speaker 3: It was the same blood type. We knew the leg
18:48
Speaker 3: could still be hers. Our biggest challenge now was to
18:54
Speaker 3: definitively prove that it was Nicole.
18:58
Speaker 5: Detectives reach out to Nicole's family in France for any
19:02
Speaker 5: information on her whereabouts or what could have happened to her.
19:07
Speaker 3: I sent an officer over there who was fluent in
19:09
Speaker 3: French to speak to them, and obviously they were distraught
19:12
Speaker 3: and upset.
19:15
Speaker 5: Nicole's family has no idea she was missing or where
19:19
Speaker 5: she could be, but detectives tell them they can still
19:22
Speaker 5: help find her.
19:24
Speaker 2: DNA today is so much more accurate and acute than
19:29
Speaker 2: it was then. It was still a pretty new science then.
19:34
Speaker 5: Police believe this new leading-edge science could identify their victim.
19:41
Speaker 3: We did not have Nicole, because all we had was
19:44
Speaker 3: the leg, so we could not compare it to her.
19:47
Speaker 3: So we had to recreate her DNA by getting samples
19:51
Speaker 3: of her parents, her siblings, to be able to do
19:55
Speaker 3: a cross match to say, yes, that's the same DNA
19:58
Speaker 3: that's in the leg.
20:00
Speaker 5: But in 1992, DNA tests take months. While they wait
20:06
Speaker 5: for samples from Nicole's family overseas, detectives return to Lake
20:10
Speaker 5: Ontario where the severed leg was found.
20:14
Speaker 3: What we decided to do was to search the ship
20:17
Speaker 3: canal for remaining body parts. We used divers in the
20:22
Speaker 3: canal to search for debris or anything that might contain
20:26
Speaker 3: pieces of the body.
20:28
Speaker 6: When you're searching a harbour or a lake with police
20:32
Speaker 6: divers and police boats, It can only be described as
20:36
Speaker 6: organized confusion. They are feeling around in the dark because
20:41
Speaker 6: the divers themselves can only see five, six, seven inches
20:44
Speaker 6: in front of them. You have old trees and bicycles
20:49
Speaker 6: and shopping carts and garbage and dead animals and everything
20:54
Speaker 6: you could possibly think of in that water.
20:57
Speaker 1: You don't know what you have until you pull it up.
21:01
Speaker 1: It's a time-consuming, frustrating process.
21:06
Speaker 3: About two or three days into the search, the officers
21:09
Speaker 3: located a body. And maybe we've discovered the remains of Nicole.
21:16
Speaker 4: This was what we needed to cement the case.
21:20
Speaker 5: Detectives searching for Nicole Madison find new human remains in
21:25
Speaker 5: Lake Ontario, close to where a woman's severed leg was recovered.
21:31
Speaker 3: Once it's pulled out, we see that it's a male
21:33
Speaker 3: and it was complete. He had two full legs. This
21:39
Speaker 3: turned out to be the man who was seen to
21:41
Speaker 3: jump into the canal a month earlier.
21:44
Speaker 5: It's a disappointing result, but Dr. King has an idea.
21:48
Speaker 5: Because there were eyewitnesses who saw the man jump, they
21:52
Speaker 5: know exactly how long his body was in the icy lake.
21:57
Speaker 5: Now he can compare the condition of that body to
22:00
Speaker 5: the severed leg. and determine a more accurate time of
22:03
Speaker 5: death for their Jane Doe.
22:06
Speaker 3: I cut into the skin and subcutaneous tissues of the
22:10
Speaker 3: thigh to see how they compared to the subcutaneous tissues
22:14
Speaker 3: and thigh of the leg. Subcutaneous tissues are the tissues
22:21
Speaker 3: under the skin between the skin and the muscle. The
22:27
Speaker 3: visual absence of decomposition of the man who jumped was
22:30
Speaker 3: very similar to the absence of decomposition in the leg.
22:37
Speaker 1: Dr.
22:37
Speaker 5: King believes the woman's leg was in the water for
22:40
Speaker 5: a month, which matches the date Nicole Madison disappeared.
22:46
Speaker 3: If he had said it's been in there for two years,
22:48
Speaker 3: it would have kind of ruled it out and we
22:50
Speaker 3: would have maybe not been as interested in it. But
22:52
Speaker 3: when he said you know, a month, which we were
22:55
Speaker 3: almost exactly a month from the day she went missing.
22:57
Speaker 4: It was very, very intriguing.
23:01
Speaker 5: Detectives returned to the location where Nicole supposedly went missing,
23:05
Speaker 5: the busy street corner where she argued with her husband, David.
23:09
Speaker 3: We tried to verify the story of her getting out
23:13
Speaker 3: of the car, because a woman getting out of the
23:15
Speaker 3: car and smashing a car window, somebody probably would have
23:18
Speaker 3: noticed that. So we set up a command post station
23:22
Speaker 3: And we assigned officers to talk to everybody that went by,
23:26
Speaker 3: because a lot of people take the same route to work.
23:30
Speaker 3: Nobody saw anything.
23:35
Speaker 5: Detectives are worried. One of their own is not telling
23:40
Speaker 5: the truth.
23:41
Speaker 2: David's explanation of things didn't really add up. He was
23:45
Speaker 2: behaving really suspiciously.
23:48
Speaker 3: It helped reinforce our belief that it didn't happen the
23:50
Speaker 3: way that David Madison had told us it would happen.
23:54
Speaker 6: Very few people in this world get killed by a stranger.
23:57
Speaker 6: Stranger on stranger murders are rare. Most people are killed
24:00
Speaker 6: by somebody they have some association with, that they know
24:03
Speaker 6: them at some level.
24:07
Speaker 5: Detective War doesn't plan to let anyone, especially a police officer,
24:11
Speaker 5: get away with the murder. He digs deeper into the
24:15
Speaker 5: Madisons' relationship, looking for a motive.
24:19
Speaker 3: There was a marriage counsellor that David and Nicole had
24:21
Speaker 3: seen and we had that doctor interviewed and were given
24:26
Speaker 3: information about the state of the marriage. It's from that
24:30
Speaker 3: interview that we got the comment that one of them
24:34
Speaker 3: is going to kill the other one sometime. We asked
24:41
Speaker 3: our surveillance team to start building a file of his activities,
24:46
Speaker 3: where he goes and what he's doing. The motive for
24:52
Speaker 3: the surveillance is to not necessarily keep track of the person,
24:55
Speaker 3: but to learn the pattern of their behavior. I applied
24:59
Speaker 3: for and got a judicial authorization to intercept his telephone
25:02
Speaker 3: calls so that we could keep track of what he's
25:05
Speaker 3: doing and what he's telling people.
25:08
Speaker 5: They also want to search the car Madison claims Nicole
25:13
Speaker 5: jumped out of in downtown Toronto.
25:17
Speaker 3: According to David, the car they were driving was her car,
25:23
Speaker 3: So we obtained a search warrant to seize the car
25:26
Speaker 3: and examine the car.
25:32
Speaker 5: The vehicle is found abandoned in a cornfield north of
25:35
Speaker 5: the city. David Madison has a curious explanation for the
25:40
Speaker 5: condition they find it in.
25:43
Speaker 4: He was visiting his parents.
25:45
Speaker 3: And while there, there had been a fire started, which
25:51
Speaker 3: he blamed on his grandson. Said he was playing with
25:54
Speaker 3: matches and he set the car on fire. My immediate
25:59
Speaker 3: reaction was it was an attempt to destroy the car.
26:05
Speaker 3: We looked at the inside for the fire and we
26:08
Speaker 3: found that there'd been a newspaper flyer rolled up like
26:12
Speaker 3: a wick and poked down the back between the seat
26:15
Speaker 3: and the seat back. And an attempt to start a
26:19
Speaker 3: fire in a car that didn't succeed.
26:24
Speaker 8: It's a common misconception that you can just light something
26:27
Speaker 8: on fire and that makes the evidence disappear. People think
26:30
Speaker 8: that they can just light a match and everything is erased,
26:34
Speaker 8: and that's often not the case.
26:39
Speaker 5: The limited damage allows detectives to uncover critical evidence.
26:45
Speaker 3: We were examining the trunk of the car and we
26:47
Speaker 3: found blood.
26:49
Speaker 4: Did blood pass?
26:50
Speaker 3: Slattering was not visible with the naked eye. They had
26:52
Speaker 3: to basically look at it with a magnifying glass. So
26:57
Speaker 3: then we started to examine it further and we were
27:00
Speaker 3: able to find some blonde hair. I was reasonably convinced
27:06
Speaker 3: that Nicole had been murdered and that she had probably
27:09
Speaker 3: been transported at some time after she was dead in
27:13
Speaker 3: the trunk of that car. But the challenge now was
27:20
Speaker 3: to prove that.
27:23
Speaker 5: Detectives know blood spatter alone won't catch the killer. They
27:27
Speaker 5: need more direct physical evidence. Investigators turn to Dr.
27:32
Speaker 4: King.
27:33
Speaker 5: If he can identify the saw used to sever the leg,
27:37
Speaker 5: it would give them another key piece of evidence to
27:39
Speaker 5: search for.
27:41
Speaker 3: One of the more important examinations that we carry out
27:44
Speaker 3: is to remove the blood cut end of the femur.
27:49
Speaker 3: This is the part of the bone that has the
27:51
Speaker 3: saw marks on it because we want to carry out
27:54
Speaker 3: a much more detailed examination of these saw marks to
27:57
Speaker 3: try and determine what kind of saw is used.
28:02
Speaker 6: Every saw is different. The striation marks that a saw
28:05
Speaker 6: leaves on skin or on bone is unique.
28:09
Speaker 1: It's like a signature.
28:12
Speaker 6: You can tell if it's an electric saw You can
28:15
Speaker 6: tell if it's a handsaw, you can tell if it's
28:16
Speaker 6: an axe. They are very, very, very powerful pieces of
28:21
Speaker 6: evidence if you can match that saw to those marks.
28:29
Speaker 3: I confirmed that there were what appeared to be saw
28:32
Speaker 3: marks on the bone. In addition, traces of paint, blue paint,
28:39
Speaker 3: on the cut end of the bone. This suggests to
28:43
Speaker 3: me that that the paint came off the saw. And
28:48
Speaker 3: I knew from buying various tools that very often the
28:51
Speaker 3: blades are painted in one color or another. I concluded
28:57
Speaker 3: that it was probably a hacksaw.
29:01
Speaker 5: It's a break for detectives. Now, if they can locate
29:04
Speaker 5: the actual saw, they'll have a direct link to Nicole
29:08
Speaker 5: Madison's killer.
29:11
Speaker 4: We needed to find a hacksaw.
29:19
Speaker 5: Toronto police suspect David Madison killed his wife, Nicole, and
29:23
Speaker 5: then dismembered her with a hacksaw. They search his home,
29:28
Speaker 5: looking for evidence of the crime.
29:31
Speaker 3: We needed to identify the scene of the dismemberment. If
29:35
Speaker 3: our theory was correct, somewhere he cut up his wife's body.
29:38
Speaker 3: So we needed to find out where that happened.
29:43
Speaker 2: Despite the fact that there was a lot of suspicion,
29:45
Speaker 2: there wasn't a lot of evidence. It was a very
29:47
Speaker 2: circumstantial case, and that made it difficult.
29:52
Speaker 6: You know you have a murder, but you don't have
29:54
Speaker 6: a body. That's a frustrating place for an investigator to be, If.
30:02
Speaker 3: We found a saw in that location, we could have
30:04
Speaker 3: that saw examined for traces.
30:06
Speaker 4: Of blood or bone.
30:08
Speaker 5: Detectives search David's house and garage for hours, but there's
30:12
Speaker 5: no sign of the hacksaw that matches the cuts on
30:15
Speaker 5: the leg. Then they uncover another compelling clue.
30:21
Speaker 3: When we made our search on the inside of the
30:23
Speaker 3: garage door, we found a blood spatter. It wasn't a
30:28
Speaker 3: complete pattern, so it obviously.
30:30
Speaker 4: Had been wiped.
30:32
Speaker 3: I would suspect if you're cutting a body with a
30:34
Speaker 3: saw and a knife that there would be quite a
30:37
Speaker 3: bit of spatter.
30:40
Speaker 5: It's not the definitive link they hoped for, but blood
30:43
Speaker 5: in the car and now David's garage is more persuasive
30:47
Speaker 5: evidence that Nicole is dead. Detectives quickly get a warrant
30:52
Speaker 5: and dispatch a forensics team to her house.
30:56
Speaker 3: The search we conducted at Nicole's house in Fonthill took
30:59
Speaker 3: more than a week. because we were not only searching
31:02
Speaker 3: for forensic evidence, we were searching for any kind of
31:06
Speaker 3: evidence that we could use in.
31:08
Speaker 4: Furthering our case.
31:10
Speaker 3: In the garage, in the back wall, we found some
31:13
Speaker 3: blood spattering there as well. I was speculating that the
31:20
Speaker 3: car would have been backed into the garage, the trunk opened,
31:23
Speaker 3: and then the body carried and put in the trunk.
31:26
Speaker 3: And it could cause some kind of blood spattering because
31:29
Speaker 3: there was bleeding.
31:32
Speaker 5: Detectives want to compare the blood from both Madison homes
31:36
Speaker 5: and the burned-out car with the severed woman's leg.
31:41
Speaker 8: I think if police find some blood in an area
31:44
Speaker 8: that they think could be a crime scene, there's a
31:47
Speaker 8: presumption that it's the answer. And it's not necessarily going
31:51
Speaker 8: to be the answer. They might not even be able
31:53
Speaker 8: to use it. It can be potentially very hard to
31:56
Speaker 8: match that blood up to anything meaningful, find out who
32:00
Speaker 8: it's from, and it might not even be relevant to
32:02
Speaker 8: the case.
32:06
Speaker 5: With almost no blood in the leg, investigators must look
32:09
Speaker 5: for another source of DNA to test.
32:13
Speaker 3: The first sampling didn't give us enough material because there
32:17
Speaker 3: was very little blood in the leg. So they had
32:21
Speaker 3: to sample the bone to try and derive DNA from that.
32:27
Speaker 3: I took samples of bone marrow. Bone's good for determining
32:32
Speaker 3: DNA because, particularly when there's some degree of decomposition present,
32:37
Speaker 3: it still contains the material in the bone cells that
32:41
Speaker 3: are necessary to determine DNA. Forensic scientists were able to
32:48
Speaker 3: match the DNA of those blood spots with the leg.
32:52
Speaker 5: Blood from the homes, car, and leg all comes from
32:56
Speaker 5: the same person. but as likely as it is Nicole's,
33:00
Speaker 5: without DNA from her family, they still can't prove it's hers.
33:05
Speaker 1: You're waiting for the body to talk to you.
33:07
Speaker 6: You're trying to learn what you can from that piece
33:11
Speaker 6: of the body that you have. As an investigator, it
33:14
Speaker 6: is extremely frustrating when you're being so painstakingly careful to
33:20
Speaker 6: try and cover off every base, but you're running out
33:24
Speaker 6: of clues, you're running out of ideas, and you're running
33:26
Speaker 6: out of people to talk to.
33:30
Speaker 5: Then another body part washes up on the shore of
33:34
Speaker 5: Lake Ontario.
33:36
Speaker 3: This is a left arm from a white person. It
33:40
Speaker 3: appeared to me probably female. There was slightly more, a
33:45
Speaker 3: little more advanced decomposition changes. When I started to dissect
33:51
Speaker 3: the arm, I noticed early changes of adipocere in the
33:58
Speaker 3: some of the tissues beneath the skin of the left hand,
34:01
Speaker 3: which had not been present in the leg.
34:06
Speaker 7: Adipocere is a change that occurs after death under certain conditions.
34:11
Speaker 7: It's a process that takes time to develop and occurs
34:15
Speaker 7: when it's cold and damp, and it causes the tissues
34:19
Speaker 7: in the body to have a waxy appearance. A body
34:25
Speaker 7: that has adipocere tells you that They had been dead
34:29
Speaker 7: for quite some time.
34:32
Speaker 5: The formation of adipocere in the arm, but not the leg,
34:37
Speaker 5: functions as a forensic timestamp.
34:40
Speaker 3: And this suggested to me that the arm had been
34:44
Speaker 3: put in the water at about the same time as
34:47
Speaker 3: the leg.
34:50
Speaker 5: The closer Dr. King looks, the more similarities he finds
34:54
Speaker 5: between the arm and the leg.
34:57
Speaker 3: One of the first things I noticed is that there
34:58
Speaker 3: are sore marks on the cut end of the humerus,
35:02
Speaker 3: the bone of the upper arm. And I saw traces
35:06
Speaker 3: of blue paint. This was confirmation that this arm probably
35:12
Speaker 3: came from the same victim as the leg.
35:18
Speaker 1: Dr.
35:18
Speaker 5: King now has another piece of a horrific puzzle, but
35:22
Speaker 5: it's not his most disturbing find.
35:25
Speaker 3: The tips of all the fingers of the left hand
35:28
Speaker 3: have been cut off. This is obviously highly suspicious. It
35:34
Speaker 3: suggests that they have been removed to make identification much
35:39
Speaker 3: more difficult.
35:42
Speaker 5: When you cut the fingertips off a victim, you think
35:45
Speaker 5: that you're going to get away with it.
35:46
Speaker 6: This is a killer who believes that they're able to
35:49
Speaker 6: cover their tracks.
35:57
Speaker 5: Evidence suggests police officer David Madison killed and dismembered his wife, Nicole.
36:04
Speaker 5: But detectives still can't prove she's actually dead.
36:09
Speaker 2: The fact that there was no body made it a
36:11
Speaker 2: difficult murder case. And the fact that science didn't help
36:17
Speaker 2: police then as it would help them today made it
36:20
Speaker 2: a difficult case.
36:23
Speaker 3: We didn't know that leg was Nicole's. We were very suspicious.
36:27
Speaker 3: but we hadn't proved it scientifically yet.
36:31
Speaker 5: Investigators hope that DNA from Nicole's immediate family in Europe
36:36
Speaker 5: will finally solve the mystery.
36:39
Speaker 3: It took us one or two months before we could
36:42
Speaker 3: actually get the samples from France. The DNA studies that
36:48
Speaker 3: were carried out on the samples that I took from
36:51
Speaker 3: the left leg, by comparing the DNA from the leg
36:55
Speaker 3: with relatives of the deceased, in France enabled police to
36:59
Speaker 3: confirm the leg belonged to Nicole Matteson. We had the
37:05
Speaker 3: DNA and the chances of this being other than Nicole
37:08
Speaker 3: Matteson's leg is like two billion to one. We now
37:12
Speaker 3: have a body and we have what we believe to
37:16
Speaker 3: have been a murder. So we had enough grounds to
37:19
Speaker 3: then arrest him.
37:21
Speaker 5: On March 26, 1992... Detectives charge Sergeant David Madison with
37:27
Speaker 5: the murder of his wife, Nicole.
37:30
Speaker 3: He was at his girlfriend's house, so we went over
37:32
Speaker 3: there and arrested him when he came out of the house.
37:35
Speaker 4: He appeared to be expecting us. It was not a shock.
37:41
Speaker 5: In custody, Madison stuns police by confessing to the crime.
37:46
Speaker 2: A confession is always surprising. It doesn't happen a whole lot.
37:53
Speaker 2: I think that... Things were unraveling for him, and there
37:57
Speaker 2: wasn't really a lot of room for him to maneuver anymore.
38:01
Speaker 2: And I think that guilt was preying on his mind.
38:07
Speaker 5: As part of his confession, David explains how and why
38:11
Speaker 5: he killed Nicole.
38:14
Speaker 3: On the morning of December 2nd, they were arguing at
38:16
Speaker 3: their house in Font Hill. It was a fairly heated argument.
38:27
Speaker 3: He said that she came at him with a knife
38:33
Speaker 3: and that his service revolver was nearby. He reached out
38:39
Speaker 3: for it and shot her in the chest and that
38:42
Speaker 3: she died from that. David took the body to the
38:49
Speaker 3: car and put her in the trunk of the car
38:51
Speaker 3: and then drove to his house. And that's where he
38:58
Speaker 3: dismembered her. He put plastic around in the garage to
39:05
Speaker 3: catch most of the blood spattering. That's why we didn't
39:08
Speaker 3: find much. And then he took the body parts in
39:16
Speaker 3: separate plastic bags and drove to the Burlington Ship Canal
39:21
Speaker 3: and dropped them over the side into the canal.
39:27
Speaker 5: Madison even reveals the lengths he went to to cover
39:31
Speaker 5: up his crime.
39:33
Speaker 3: When we searched the Fonthill house, we didn't find any
39:36
Speaker 3: bullet holes because, as we found out later, he'd re-drywalled
39:40
Speaker 3: where it had occurred, so there was no trace of
39:42
Speaker 3: a gun being fired. He also admitted that it wasn't
39:48
Speaker 3: his grandson that set the fire in the car, it
39:50
Speaker 3: was himself. in an attempt to destroy evidence.
39:55
Speaker 5: By confessing, Madison avoids a trial, but not a conviction.
40:02
Speaker 3: We charged him with first-degree murder. It was our assumption
40:05
Speaker 3: that time that he planned to kill his wife, and
40:07
Speaker 3: that's why he disposed of the body in the manner
40:10
Speaker 3: he did. But we had no way of disproving his
40:14
Speaker 3: story that he was defending himself from a knife attack.
40:22
Speaker 2: The indications were she was violent as well. There's reports
40:31
Speaker 2: that she did run at him with knives and things
40:33
Speaker 2: like that. Would she actually kill him?
40:36
Speaker 7: Who knows?
40:38
Speaker 5: David Madison pleads guilty to manslaughter and is sentenced to
40:42
Speaker 5: 10 years in prison.
40:45
Speaker 2: I think in the back of her mind, she thought
40:46
Speaker 2: that something might happen. And I think at the same time,
40:52
Speaker 2: She didn't really think it would. Like, it seems kind
40:55
Speaker 2: of incredible that the man you're married could actually do
40:59
Speaker 2: you harm. I think that justice was served, and he
41:08
Speaker 2: did pay a price.
41:14
Speaker 3: Dr. King was a numerous help in this case to
41:16
Speaker 3: get his expertise on what may have happened, when it
41:20
Speaker 3: may have happened, and how.
41:21
Speaker 4: It could have happened.
41:23
Speaker 3: What led to it being identified as Nicole Madison's leg.
41:26
Speaker 3: There's general satisfaction in doing my job to the best
41:32
Speaker 3: of my ability.
41:34
Speaker 4: I'm performing a public duty. That is satisfying. We speak
41:40
Speaker 4: to the dead to protect the living.
41:45
Speaker 6: I don't think there's a better tandem than a good
41:48
Speaker 6: homicide detective and a good forensic pathologist.
41:56
Speaker 4: There was no smoking gun, as they say. There was
41:58
Speaker 4: no eyewitness.
42:01
Speaker 3: It was a matter of the painstaking work of the
42:03
Speaker 3: forensic scientists of putting it together and proving our case
42:08
Speaker 3: for us. Without the forensic work, this case would never
42:12
Speaker 3: have been made.