Latest / History Dark / Her Mummified Remains were Hidden for Six Years - and it sparked a giant Manhunt for the killer

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Her Mummified Remains were Hidden for Six Years - and it sparked a giant Manhunt for the killer · History Dark

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: You lift up the tarp, and you definitely see that
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there is a human body there.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: I had never really seen a mummified victim before.
• 0:12
  Speaker 3: Lungs was not there, the intestines, even the brain. Everything
• 0:19
  Speaker 3: is gone.
• 0:21
  Speaker 4: Who is this person? How did they die?
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: We need to figure out what happened, why it happened.
• 0:30
  Speaker 4: And when it happened. Why wasn't she missed? Wasn't she loved?
• 0:38
  Speaker 4: I've never seen anything quite like this.
• 0:43
  Speaker 5: Every murder is a mystery. But a victim's body is
• 0:51
  Speaker 5: a sea of evidence. Every fiber is a clue. Every wound,
• 0:58
  Speaker 5: a piece of the puzzle. The medical examiner holds the
• 1:02
  Speaker 5: key to unlock their stories and catch a killer. This
• 1:08
  Speaker 5: is Secrets of the Morgue.
• 1:17
  Speaker 6: Chester is a little border town, almost to the Kansas border.
• 1:23
  Speaker 6: It's picturesque, some rolling hills and things.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: It's pretty. It's a very small town. Everybody knows everybody
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: else's business.
• 1:34
  Speaker 6: Chester is the kind of place where if you were
• 1:36
  Speaker 6: a person who locked your door and you forgot, you
• 1:39
  Speaker 6: would totally not sweat it.
• 1:43
  Speaker 7: You just don't hear anything about Chester other than something positive.
• 1:49
  Speaker 4: And this was certainly a great departure from that.
• 1:59
  Speaker 5: A phone call to police triggers a mystery that rocks
• 2:03
  Speaker 5: this tight-knit town to its core.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: They said, well, we've got a body that's in a garage,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: and we think it's been there for a while. And
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: I believe it used to be a gas station one time.
• 2:19
  Speaker 6: It was just nondescript, maybe, would be a good word.
• 2:21
  Speaker 6: And it was nothing that you looked at, and you thought, oh,
• 2:23
  Speaker 6: something terrible happened there.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: You open the door. and there's a tarp right behind
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: a van.
• 2:38
  Speaker 5: When officers remove the tarp, they're shocked by what they find.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: This body is mummified. I mean, this body has been
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: here for a while.
• 2:50
  Speaker 8: It is rare to find a mummified body. First of all,
• 2:54
  Speaker 8: the body has to be left unattended, and it has
• 2:57
  Speaker 8: to be in the right environmental conditions.
• 3:02
  Speaker 5: First, detectives need to find out how the body was discovered.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: Some curious neighbors were thinking about purchasing the property.
• 3:14
  Speaker 5: Mick and Becky Gossman live right next door.
• 3:19
  Speaker 6: If you are going to go into an abandoned building,
• 3:21
  Speaker 6: you really aren't worried about finding anything, maybe an animal.
• 3:25
  Speaker 6: You know, you might worry, oh, maybe there's a raccoon
• 3:27
  Speaker 6: in there or a skunk in there, but you would never...
• 3:29
  Speaker 6: in a million years, worry about finding something like this.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Mick Gosman found this key in the door. They peeked in,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: and then they entered the house and was looking through
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: it and then came across this tarp.
• 3:50
  Speaker 5: The Gosmans claim to have no idea where the key
• 3:53
  Speaker 5: came from, but their story is suspicious.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: They had this key. and access to the house, proximity
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: to the house, knowledge of the house. You do want
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: to make sure that they're not involved.
• 4:11
  Speaker 9: Sometimes a killer will insert themselves into an ongoing investigation.
• 4:16
  Speaker 9: Part of the reason they do this is that they're
• 4:18
  Speaker 9: trying to gather intel and figure out if the police
• 4:21
  Speaker 9: are onto their tail.
• 4:24
  Speaker 5: Right away, the neighbors are grilled about the house and
• 4:27
  Speaker 5: its occupants.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: What do you know? What was your relationship with them?
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Did you speak with them? Do you take pieces from
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: that and try to verify whatever information that they are
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: giving you?
• 4:45
  Speaker 5: After checking their alibis, it's clear the Gossman's only interest
• 4:50
  Speaker 5: is to buy the house.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Mick Gossman and his family was not involved with the
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: body that was found.
• 4:59
  Speaker 5: For detectives Kranz and Funkhauser, their next step is to
• 5:04
  Speaker 5: identify the victim.
• 5:07
  Speaker 7: As we looked at the body, you know, it was
• 5:10
  Speaker 7: undetermined as to age or sex because the body had
• 5:14
  Speaker 7: been there quite some time, the skin had shrunk, and
• 5:18
  Speaker 7: facial features were reduced. Those features of the body which
• 5:24
  Speaker 7: would normally help identify somebody just weren't apparent.
• 5:28
  Speaker 4: Who is this person? What's their story? How did they die?
• 5:35
  Speaker 10: Sometimes investigators are faced with unidentified remains, remains that may
• 5:39
  Speaker 10: have been in that position for months. And that's a
• 5:45
  Speaker 10: very difficult situation for any homicide investigator because you need
• 5:48
  Speaker 10: to know who your victim is. That's sort of ground zero.
• 5:52
  Speaker 10: That's where you begin.
• 5:55
  Speaker 5: The body is moved to the morgue. where the coroner's physician, Dr. Okoye,
• 6:00
  Speaker 5: looks for answers. Born in Nigeria, Okoye was chief medical
• 6:05
  Speaker 5: examiner in Washington, D.C., before moving to Nebraska in 1991.
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: In high school, I started reading Agatha Christie novels. And
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: I became very interested to find out why people die
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: and if they are killed. you know, how they were killed.
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: The fascination is that no case is the same.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: Dr.
• 6:37
  Speaker 4: Okoye, he's a unique man.
• 6:40
  Speaker 7: He's highly educated. He's an attorney. He's a medical doctor.
• 6:46
  Speaker 7: He's a well-known forensic pathologist.
• 6:50
  Speaker 4: But in his heart, he's an investigator.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: When we get this body out of the body bag.
• 6:59
  Speaker 6: Dr.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: Okoye flips the body over, and the first thing he
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: says is, well, this is female.
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: We took photograph of the general body, took measurement of
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: the body. We noted there was not much flesh except
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: the mummified skin.
• 7:20
  Speaker 5: The unusual state of the woman's remains makes it harder
• 7:24
  Speaker 5: to identify the body and unlock the cause of death.
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: In mummification, the skin loses the moisture. The skin becomes dry, wrinkled,
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: becomes parchment-like thick.
• 7:43
  Speaker 8: Mummification is the post-mortem process of both decaying and drying
• 7:49
  Speaker 8: out at the same time. Mummification occurs only under certain
• 7:53
  Speaker 8: conditions in which there is a dry environment that would
• 7:57
  Speaker 8: allow for evaporation of water inside the body and leave
• 8:01
  Speaker 8: the tissues on the bones.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: Dr.
• 8:06
  Speaker 5: Okoye uses state-of-the-art technology to get a better look at
• 8:10
  Speaker 5: the leather-like skin.
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: We like to do 3D CT scan of the whole body.
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: I want to look in before I go in.
• 8:24
  Speaker 8: CAT scans will help you identify problems in advance. For example,
• 8:28
  Speaker 8: whether or not there's a projectile or bullet that is
• 8:32
  Speaker 8: in the body that has to be located and recovered.
• 8:35
  Speaker 8: CAT scans can also tell you whether or not there
• 8:37
  Speaker 8: are new broken bones or old broken bones, liver disease,
• 8:42
  Speaker 8: heart disease, any number of problems that you want to
• 8:46
  Speaker 8: know about in advance.
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: You can look at the face.
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: You can rotate the face.
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: You can look from inside of the skull cavity. It's
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: very detailed. I can't handle any case that is complicated
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: without 3D CT scan.
• 9:14
  Speaker 5: The scan of the mummified body reveals evidence that changes
• 9:18
  Speaker 5: the course of the investigation.
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: There are fractures.
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: Of the face.
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: The nasal bones were fractured and also the sinus on
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: the left side was fractured. There are skull fractures, one
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: or two at the back of the head. You could
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: see the long groove with the depressed fracture. Which an
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: implement or a weapon that could have caused that?
• 9:52
  Speaker 5: Dr. Okoye performs a physical examination of the skull and
• 9:58
  Speaker 5: finds more chilling details.
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: You could see duct tape around the head, front, back,
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: and then there was a plastic bag covering over the head.
• 10:14
  Speaker 5: The skull fractures and plastic bag paint a disturbing picture
• 10:18
  Speaker 5: of how Jane Doe died.
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: It suggests that she suffered multiple blows. But why do
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: we have a plastic bag with duct tape?
• 10:32
  Speaker 5: Mummification has prevented investigators from making an ID. But Dr.
• 10:38
  Speaker 5: Okoye has proven that Jane Doe is the victim of
• 10:41
  Speaker 5: a violent homicide.
• 10:44
  Speaker 4: We didn't know why. The killer covered her head with
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: a sack.
• 10:51
  Speaker 7: Whether it was to hide her identity or if it
• 10:55
  Speaker 7: was to suffocate her or it was to contain the
• 10:59
  Speaker 7: blood that was coming out from her head, we knew
• 11:03
  Speaker 7: it was done for a reason.
• 11:07
  Speaker 4: The victim had gone through a horrific experience.
• 11:16
  Speaker 5: Residents of Chester, Nebraska are shocked that a mummified body
• 11:20
  Speaker 5: with a crushed skull has been found in their small town,
• 11:24
  Speaker 5: and police have few clues about the murder.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: We've got some work to do. We need to get
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: this body identified positively, and we need to figure out
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: what happened, why it happened, and when it happened.
• 11:42
  Speaker 5: Detective Roger Kranz has been investigating homicides for 25 years.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: My goal in life was to be a high school
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: science teacher. But I found my way into law enforcement.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: I wanted to apply science to my career as much
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: as I could. My responsibility is to ensure that I
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: have got my facts straight. because I wanted to make
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: sure when our case is done, that it is done right.
• 12:18
  Speaker 5: Investigators focus on the house. It's their only link to
• 12:22
  Speaker 5: the mummified victim.
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: The house had remained empty for several years.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: And the first thing I noticed is that there are
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: quilts everywhere, covering windows, covering the doorway. I'm thinking somebody
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: didn't like the light. There's a bed to your right
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: when you first walk in. Then that bed turns into
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: the kitchen. And then off the kitchen, there is another bedroom.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: We examined the doors. We examined the windows. And we
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: could not find any sign of forced entry into this house.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: There was a purse. If this house had been burglarized,
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: somebody definitely would have taken the time to steal whatever
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: valuables they could because they were everywhere.
• 13:21
  Speaker 7: There were an awful lot of antiques in this home
• 13:25
  Speaker 7: without a lot of other objects that would indicate that
• 13:30
  Speaker 7: someone lived there as a family.
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: There were numerous pieces of.
• 13:37
  Speaker 7: And glassware and vases and things like that that just
• 13:40
  Speaker 7: didn't fit in this place.
• 13:44
  Speaker 5: But antiques aren't the only unusual items they find inside.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: It looked like there was food that had been sitting
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: on a table forever. There was broccoli there, and it
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: looked petrified. There was Christmas decorations up. and everything's dated
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: seven years or so prior. This was February 2003, and
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: a TV guide that's sitting on the bed is a
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: December of 1997. It's like you walked into a place
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: that time forgot, that all of a sudden people are
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: here doing whatever they do, And instead of packing and leaving,
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: they just disappeared, like alien abduction or just walked off
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: the face of the earth.
• 14:51
  Speaker 7: Right away, we wanted to know who were the last
• 14:53
  Speaker 7: people to have lived at this residence.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: We'd find some paperwork in there from the purchase of
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: the house showing that This was purchased by John Mooney
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: and a Janet Brousseau. The house was in Janet Brousseau's name.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: John Mooney's name was found on other documents.
• 15:17
  Speaker 5: In Chester, everyone knows everybody. But John Mooney and Janet
• 15:21
  Speaker 5: Brousseau are a mystery.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: The people that lived here said that John and Janet
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: kept to themselves quite a bit. They were friendly. but
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: you didn't see them a whole lot during the day.
• 15:37
  Speaker 6: They said they worked in antiques. People mentioned that they
• 15:39
  Speaker 6: covered their vehicles right after they got there, and they
• 15:41
  Speaker 6: had tarps up around part of the property. Well, they
• 15:46
  Speaker 6: thought that was odd. People who talked with Janet, they
• 15:51
  Speaker 6: described her as bubbly, intelligent, had a laugh that you
• 15:56
  Speaker 6: kind of remembered. It was a very engaging laugh. People
• 16:02
  Speaker 6: guessed that Janet was in her 40s.
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: She was very pretty.
• 16:08
  Speaker 5: A picture of John and Janet emerges, frozen in time.
• 16:14
  Speaker 6: There was kind of two trains of thought on the couple.
• 16:18
  Speaker 6: The people who didn't know them thought maybe they were
• 16:21
  Speaker 6: just a little bit suspicious because they don't know what
• 16:23
  Speaker 6: they're doing here. Then other people who had interacted with
• 16:29
  Speaker 6: them liked them, especially Janet.
• 16:33
  Speaker 5: But everyone in town agrees on one thing. They came
• 16:37
  Speaker 5: and left quickly.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: We speak with neighbors saying that, yes, they were there,
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: and all of a sudden they're gone.
• 16:46
  Speaker 5: Police wonder when Janet and John left town and when
• 16:50
  Speaker 5: the body was concealed in the garage.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: We realized that we need to find John, Mooney, and
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: Janet Brousseau to find out if they're alive.
• 17:06
  Speaker 7: John Mooney, there's probably 150, 200 John Moonies in the
• 17:10
  Speaker 7: United States.
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: And in 2003, it was a little harder to find
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: them than it is now.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: But with Janet Brousseau, we thought that if she was missing,
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: that there should have been a report or something out there.
• 17:27
  Speaker 4: Janet had not been reported missing by anyone.
• 17:32
  Speaker 8: The cases that frustrate investigators the most are the ones
• 17:36
  Speaker 8: where they continue to hit walls. They've got a murder,
• 17:39
  Speaker 8: they want to solve it, and yet they're blocked every
• 17:43
  Speaker 8: step of the way.
• 17:47
  Speaker 5: While police take the hunt for John and Janet nationwide, Dr.
• 17:51
  Speaker 5: Okoye continues his examination to ID Jane Doe.
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: By looking at the ossification of the bones, and also
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: looking at the sutures of the skull. When they closed,
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: the age was estimated between 45 or 46 and 61.
• 18:18
  Speaker 5: The age of the bones suggests the remains could be Janet.
• 18:23
  Speaker 5: Detectives asked Dr. Okoye to investigate when their Jane Doe died.
• 18:30
  Speaker 5: If they can get a clear timeline, They can compare
• 18:33
  Speaker 5: it to Janet and John's time spent living in the house.
• 18:37
  Speaker 7: The investigators at the scene said she weighed like 30,
• 18:40
  Speaker 7: 40 pounds because all the moisture had left the body.
• 18:44
  Speaker 7: So we had a pretty good idea the body had
• 18:46
  Speaker 7: been there quite some time, but we didn't know exactly
• 18:49
  Speaker 7: how long.
• 18:52
  Speaker 5: He begins by examining the mummified skin.
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: Mummification would have occurred in hot climates within a short time.
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: When the temperature is hot and dry, the early post-mortem
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: decomposition changes start very fast. And in hot climates, like
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: southern part of U.S., you can have mummification within weeks.
• 19:23
  Speaker 5: Nebraska's dry climate with extremely hot summers speed up mummification.
• 19:29
  Speaker 5: So the skin proves to be no help in establishing
• 19:32
  Speaker 5: a time of death. But Dr. Okoye isn't giving up.
• 19:37
  Speaker 5: He looks deeper at the decomposition of the internal organs.
• 19:43
  Speaker 8: There are a number of stages of decomposition. One of
• 19:46
  Speaker 8: the things that happens when you die is bad in
• 19:50
  Speaker 8: your gut begin to proliferate. At room temperature, those sorts
• 19:57
  Speaker 8: of changes become apparent after about 24 hours. When a
• 20:03
  Speaker 8: body is placed in a cool environment it slows down
• 20:08
  Speaker 8: the process of decomposition. It would slow down the overgrowth
• 20:15
  Speaker 8: of bacteria. We refrigerate bodies in the morgue for the
• 20:20
  Speaker 8: same reason that a refrigerator is used to keep food fresh.
• 20:25
  Speaker 8: It slows down the decaying process.
• 20:29
  Speaker 4: If Dr.
• 20:29
  Speaker 5: Okoye can determine how fast or slow the organs decomposed,
• 20:35
  Speaker 5: he may have an answer.
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: There were no organs left with the body.
• 20:41
  Speaker 5: Over time, the cells die in a process known as autolysis,
• 20:46
  Speaker 5: and the mummy's organs dissolve.
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: The spleen was not there, lungs, the intestines, and also
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: outside the intestines. Even the brain, you know, decomposed and autolyzed.
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: Everything is gone. You don't have scientific evidence.
• 21:11
  Speaker 7: As we looked at the body, you know, it was
• 21:14
  Speaker 7: obviously undetermined as to, you know, the exact time of death.
• 21:20
  Speaker 5: After two forensic tests, all Dr. Okoye can tell detectives
• 21:25
  Speaker 5: is that Jane Doe could have been murdered months or
• 21:28
  Speaker 5: years ago. For investigators, it's one more challenge in cracking
• 21:34
  Speaker 5: the mystery of the mummy.
• 21:36
  Speaker 10: If you haven't identified the victim, you have nowhere to
• 21:40
  Speaker 10: look other than missing person reports. And people travel all
• 21:44
  Speaker 10: over the place, and people visit other states and other cities.
• 21:48
  Speaker 10: So that information is always fluid and always changing.
• 21:52
  Speaker 7: We had a mummified body, no apparent suspects. Looking back
• 22:00
  Speaker 7: on the death cases that we investigated.
• 22:03
  Speaker 4: I've never seen anything quite like this.
• 22:11
  Speaker 5: Police believe John Mooney and Janet Brousseau are linked to
• 22:15
  Speaker 5: the murder of a mummified Jane Doe in Chester, Nebraska.
• 22:20
  Speaker 5: But they can't track them down.
• 22:23
  Speaker 7: The fact that it involves people that weren't local residents
• 22:28
  Speaker 7: of Chester, they didn't have family down there, they didn't
• 22:30
  Speaker 7: have friends. They just, they didn't really have a record
• 22:34
  Speaker 7: in the community. So it made it difficult to find
• 22:38
  Speaker 7: out where they may or may not be.
• 22:43
  Speaker 5: They get a lead when an old criminal record for
• 22:45
  Speaker 5: a Janet Brousseau surfaces.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: We did receive a mugshot of Janet Brousseau when she
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: was still in her teens. And it was from the
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Massachusetts area that she had been arrested for some type
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: of moral violation at the time.
• 23:06
  Speaker 5: The mugshot sends the detectives to Massachusetts to find her family.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: It was absolutely critical to find them. Have they seen her?
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: Have they heard from her? Do you know of this
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: John Mooney? You know, there was a relationship, just so
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: many unanswered questions.
• 23:27
  Speaker 5: They tracked Janet's family to Boston and finally get some answers.
• 23:32
  Speaker 7: Fortunately, we were able to identify Janet. We were able
• 23:36
  Speaker 7: to run down a family who had lived there.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: When we got Janet positively ID'd, it enabled us to
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: focus a little more now.
• 23:50
  Speaker 7: Janet was certainly an interesting woman. She was very independent.
• 23:58
  Speaker 6: I was able to talk to the family and I
• 24:01
  Speaker 6: was glad that I had the chance to do that
• 24:02
  Speaker 6: because that human side came out. She was very intelligent.
• 24:07
  Speaker 6: It was mainly self-taught. Maybe had some study in psychology.
• 24:12
  Speaker 6: became kind of a free spirit later in her life
• 24:14
  Speaker 6: and started to travel a lot.
• 24:18
  Speaker 7: Janice had not been reported missing by anyone because of
• 24:22
  Speaker 7: her kind of nomadic travels. It was not unusual to
• 24:26
  Speaker 7: not hear from her for a long period of time.
• 24:30
  Speaker 7: She left her family years before and then started this
• 24:35
  Speaker 7: life with John. Traveling around The South, they were in Louisiana, Nebraska,
• 24:43
  Speaker 7: and Kansas.
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: They were in New Mexico.
• 24:50
  Speaker 5: Detectives believe that Janet is most likely their mummified Jane Doe,
• 24:55
  Speaker 5: but they still need a way to prove it. With
• 24:58
  Speaker 5: so much still unknown, they return to Chester to try
• 25:02
  Speaker 5: and determine where the murder took place.
• 25:06
  Speaker 7: The van that was parked at the garage... belonged to
• 25:09
  Speaker 7: Janet Rousseau, and had New Mexico license plates on it.
• 25:15
  Speaker 5: A forensic team scours the van, looking for any link
• 25:18
  Speaker 5: to Janet or the killer.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: Was there blood traces? Is there any type of hair?
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: You know, there should be hair. Everybody sheds drastically, whether
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: they know it or not.
• 25:29
  Speaker 4: There was no blood in the van.
• 25:33
  Speaker 7: We ended up finding evidence that she had been killed
• 25:36
  Speaker 7: in the van and shed any blood there.
• 25:40
  Speaker 5: The team moves into the house, hoping to find evidence
• 25:43
  Speaker 5: that the murder took place inside.
• 25:47
  Speaker 7: They're looking for signs of a struggle, possible weapons used,
• 25:53
  Speaker 7: blood evidence. What they really found was an area of
• 25:58
  Speaker 7: the house that was much cleaner than the rest of
• 26:00
  Speaker 7: the house. Someone had gone to an effort to clean
• 26:05
  Speaker 7: up in the large room of this basically two-bedroom home.
• 26:11
  Speaker 7: And there were some cleaning materials still around, some cleaners,
• 26:14
  Speaker 7: some paper towels.
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: There was a bucket and a mop.
• 26:20
  Speaker 7: We're fairly certain that something had happened in that area
• 26:24
  Speaker 7: because of the effort made to clean it up.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: The question is, what is going on? What do we think?
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: What do we know? What can we prove? It's a
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: very big mystery because we just didn't know.
• 26:38
  Speaker 5: But detectives are convinced the house is the murder scene.
• 26:42
  Speaker 5: They just need to find the proof that's hidden somewhere inside.
• 26:46
  Speaker 4: We've got to.
• 26:47
  Speaker 7: Figure out where she was killed. And so we had
• 26:52
  Speaker 7: asked Dr. McCoy, how can we prove that this happened here?
• 26:56
  Speaker 7: You know, the scene had been cleaned up and had
• 27:00
  Speaker 7: years of dust settled.
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: Over the top.
• 27:04
  Speaker 5: The abandoned house has been frozen in time since December 1997,
• 27:10
  Speaker 5: when Janet and John lived there.
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: Dr.
• 27:13
  Speaker 5: Okoye believes there is a way to link it to
• 27:16
  Speaker 5: the murder victim. He asks Nicole Wall, a palynology expert,
• 27:23
  Speaker 5: to join his team.
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: Palynology is the study of pollen and other fine filaments
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: or dust particles. In forensic science, it helps with location
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: of death. It can also help with time of death,
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: meaning seasonality or time of year.
• 27:43
  Speaker 5: Evidence of a murder in the house was cleaned up,
• 27:46
  Speaker 5: but plates in the kitchen were left dirty with food.
• 27:50
  Speaker 5: If Nicole can match pollen on the food to pollen
• 27:53
  Speaker 5: inside the victim, it proves that she ate her last
• 27:57
  Speaker 5: meal right there.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: There's broccoli on the kitchen table. There's honey inside the kitchen.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: You know, we have these things there.
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: Because of the fact that she was naturally mummified, soft
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: tissue was still surrounding the body. Dry, soft tissue would
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: indicate dietary-wise perhaps what she ate. Because the inside organs,
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: like the stomach and the intestines, broke down to some extent,
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: we knew that the enclosed abdomen would be a good
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: sampling spot So we sampled from there and we got
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: some really good results from that stomach area. The pollen
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: that we found is one of my favorites, the brassica pollen.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: It's a generalized pollen type that can be attributed to
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: either broccoli or cauliflower.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: In simple terms, what we're determining more and more is
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: that she was killed inside this house in Chester, Nebraska.
• 29:01
  Speaker 9: Finding a location where the victim was killed is often
• 29:05
  Speaker 9: a turning point in an ongoing investigation. It opens up
• 29:09
  Speaker 9: a new realm of possibilities for investigators.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: We know now for a fact that a former resident,
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: somebody that was here should not have been dead.
• 29:25
  Speaker 5: Everything points to a murder inside the house. And Janet
• 29:30
  Speaker 5: Brousseau as the victim.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: Thinking that it's probably Janet. You know, it's probably, but that's...
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: not good enough. You've got to get her identified.
• 29:46
  Speaker 7: We were trying to resolve a mystery. We needed to
• 29:52
  Speaker 7: find a cold-hearted killer.
• 29:59
  Speaker 5: Investigators in Nebraska believe their mummified murder victim is Janet Brousseau.
• 30:06
  Speaker 5: But due to the bloodless state of the body, DNA
• 30:10
  Speaker 5: may be the only way to prove it.
• 30:13
  Speaker 8: Trying to identify an unknown person is really critical for
• 30:18
  Speaker 8: the investigation. Advances in DNA technology have revolutionized identification in
• 30:25
  Speaker 8: forensic science.
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: So now.
• 30:29
  Speaker 8: Toothpult can be used to answer a lot of questions
• 30:33
  Speaker 8: for you.
• 30:34
  Speaker 5: But in 2003, extracting a DNA sample from teeth is
• 30:39
  Speaker 5: a new technique.
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: Not everything is gone. The teeth were all in place.
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: So we took molar teeth from the deceased for DNA analysis.
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: And we were lucky. She contributed some chromosomes and some genes.
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: The DNA profile was used for testing.
• 31:11
  Speaker 5: Investigators turned to Janet's family in Boston to make the comparison.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: We were able to get a sample from her family.
• 31:23
  Speaker 4: Which ultimately matched up to her DNA. and led us
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: to identify her as Janet Rousseau.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: So now it's 100%. We know it's her.
• 31:38
  Speaker 5: Lost and abandoned for years, detectives want to talk to
• 31:42
  Speaker 5: the last person to see Janet alive.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: The mission now that we've got Janet identified, we need
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: to find John because the last that we knew from
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: speaking with the townspeople and from the documents we found
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: inside the house They were together last that we were
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: aware of.
• 32:01
  Speaker 5: But tracking John Mooney isn't easy. No one's seen him
• 32:05
  Speaker 5: in years.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: Finding John was a dilemma. He was a tough man
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: to find. Number one, is he still alive? And what
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: does he know or what can he tell us about Janet?
• 32:21
  Speaker 5: Hoping to get a lead on John's whereabouts... Detectives dive
• 32:25
  Speaker 5: into Chester's town records.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: We're finding out that John Mooney is paying taxes on
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: this house for this entire time, that they're not there.
• 32:42
  Speaker 7: I think the taxes on that house were 80 bucks
• 32:46
  Speaker 7: or $ 90 a year or something like that.
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: It wasn't very much money.
• 32:51
  Speaker 5: Following his tax records... John Mooney is traced to California.
• 32:57
  Speaker 7: Roger Kranz and I jumped on an airplane and flew
• 33:01
  Speaker 7: to Oceanside, and we went and knocked on John's door.
• 33:05
  Speaker 7: And we found him at an apartment there in Oceanside,
• 33:08
  Speaker 7: living with his wife, Toni. Our goal was to find
• 33:15
  Speaker 7: out what happened and how can.
• 33:16
  Speaker 4: We verify that he wasn't involved.
• 33:20
  Speaker 7: If John Mooney didn't kill Janet Rousseau, We had a
• 33:23
  Speaker 7: real mystery because there were no other suspects. There were
• 33:28
  Speaker 7: no other people involved in her life that we knew of.
• 33:32
  Speaker 5: John tells the detectives that after he and Janet split up,
• 33:37
  Speaker 5: he never heard from her again.
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: He denied really knowing anything. It had been a long
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: time ago.
• 33:43
  Speaker 7: He told us.
• 33:47
  Speaker 4: That he had dropped Janet off at a truck stop.
• 33:49
  Speaker 7: In Kansas and that she wanted to go back to
• 33:52
  Speaker 7: Cape Cod, and that was the last he'd seen her.
• 33:56
  Speaker 4: That was going to be a real problem for us.
• 33:58
  Speaker 7: You know, there are probably 80 truck stops within 200
• 34:01
  Speaker 7: miles of Kansas. We knew the chances of anybody remembering
• 34:06
  Speaker 7: these two people was slim to none.
• 34:13
  Speaker 5: Detectives push hard for more details, and John finally opens up,
• 34:19
  Speaker 5: telling them his version of his relationship with Janet.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: According to John, he was being, quote-unquote, treated for depression
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: by Janet, who, in John's description, was a knowledgeable psychiatrist
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: that John would be hit on the head for depression,
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: for his alcoholism, for just John not being the perfect
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: John that Janet wanted.
• 34:56
  Speaker 10: If the person you're interviewing has mental health issues or
• 34:59
  Speaker 10: substance abuse issues, this changes the dynamic of the interview.
• 35:02
  Speaker 10: You can't take everything at face value because you don't
• 35:05
  Speaker 10: understand what's going on in their minds and what stressors
• 35:08
  Speaker 10: they are encountering at that particular time. So it's absolutely vital.
• 35:13
  Speaker 10: that everything they say be confirmed or corroborated.
• 35:19
  Speaker 7: He said she was beating him and he took it.
• 35:23
  Speaker 7: And not only was she beating him to correct his behavior,
• 35:27
  Speaker 7: she was billing him for the hours she spent doing it.
• 35:33
  Speaker 7: She would make him sign an IOU to Janet Brousseau
• 35:38
  Speaker 7: for one hour of psychotherapy treatment. So not only did
• 35:43
  Speaker 7: she have physical control, she also controlled his money, which
• 35:48
  Speaker 7: I think was another driving force in him saying that
• 35:51
  Speaker 7: he'd had enough and he was going to end it
• 35:53
  Speaker 7: on his terms.
• 35:55
  Speaker 5: Detectives quickly realized that John's shocking story is turning into
• 36:00
  Speaker 5: a confession.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: He denied having anything to do with it at first.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: But as the interview went on, Mark said something to
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: the effect of, you know, So what'd you do, just
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: grab a tire iron or something? Then the answer was, well, yeah,
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: it was a crowbar.
• 36:23
  Speaker 5: Detectives from the Nebraska State Patrol have tracked down John Mooney,
• 36:28
  Speaker 5: and he's admitted to the killing of Janet Brousseau.
• 36:33
  Speaker 7: John told us that she regularly would crack him in
• 36:37
  Speaker 7: the head, and she did that.
• 36:40
  Speaker 4: To correct his behavior.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: He said that he told her, stop it, knock this off,
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: walked away, and that she continued to pursue him. And
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: John said that he picked up the crowbar and that
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: he had struck her in the face and that she
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: fell and that while she was on the ground, he
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: hit her a second time. While she was on the floor,
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: he took a plastic bag, white plastic bag, put it
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: over her head because he didn't want her looking at him.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: He said he sat on Janice's bed, smoked some cigarettes,
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: and then decided to move her to the garage. He
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: put a tarp over her, cleaned up the kitchen, and
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: left the house in Chester. the next morning.
• 37:42
  Speaker 5: John confirms that he killed Janet in 1997, six years earlier.
• 37:50
  Speaker 7: At the conclusion of our interview with him, he was
• 37:53
  Speaker 7: arrested for the murder of Janet Brousseau.
• 37:58
  Speaker 5: Despite his detailed confession, John changes his story after his arrest.
• 38:05
  Speaker 4: Initially, he was charged with first-degree murder.
• 38:08
  Speaker 7: And he pled not guilty to that. He started presenting
• 38:14
  Speaker 7: a defense, you know, let's throw out the confession.
• 38:19
  Speaker 9: Sometimes an offender will say that they did this crime
• 38:24
  Speaker 9: in self-defense, and this is a way to mitigate their
• 38:26
  Speaker 9: responsibility in the killing.
• 38:30
  Speaker 5: John claims he only hit Janet to protect himself.
• 38:35
  Speaker 10: Self-defense is a very difficult defense to run in any trial.
• 38:40
  Speaker 10: I had to do what I did because I feared
• 38:42
  Speaker 10: for my own safety. I feared for my own life.
• 38:46
  Speaker 10: But there's always things to look for to defeat that defense.
• 38:52
  Speaker 10: You have to look at the victim and you have
• 38:54
  Speaker 10: to look at the injuries to the victim, differences in size,
• 38:57
  Speaker 10: differences in motivations. All of these things play in to
• 39:00
  Speaker 10: whether self-defense is even a viable defense.
• 39:04
  Speaker 5: Detectives believe John Mooney planned to kill Janet, and his
• 39:09
  Speaker 5: story of self-defense is a lie. To prove it, they
• 39:13
  Speaker 5: turn to Dr.
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: Okoye.
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: You have to use the data you got collected when
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: you were doing the medical investigation and doing the autopsy.
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: I consider causation to be important, and you have to
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: have rational basis for saying anything you say. And it's
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: definitely a homicide. Look at, she has multiple blunt force
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: trauma to the head, at the back, and the strike
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: in the back of the head will be devastating and
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: debilitating to her, and she will fall. But falling does
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: not give you the fractures of the face that she got,
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: because those are due to blunt force traumatic injuries. Now,
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: after that, you have the plastic bag, and then the
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: dark tale. It suggests that he wanted to make sure
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: that she dies. That is, after she suffered the blows
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: on the head, the cause of death was listed in
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: the order of occurrence, blunt force trauma and asphyxiation. It's intentional,
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: that the intent is to kill.
• 40:41
  Speaker 5: Based on Dr. Okoye's testimony, John Mooney pleads no contest
• 40:46
  Speaker 5: to murder in the second degree and is sentenced to
• 40:50
  Speaker 5: 15 years in prison.
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: The science was important. Without the science, we wouldn't have
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: gone anywhere.
• 41:03
  Speaker 7: If it weren't for the incredible value of the scientific
• 41:08
  Speaker 7: analysis done by Dr. Okoye and others, we wouldn't have
• 41:11
  Speaker 7: been able to put together a good murder case. It
• 41:14
  Speaker 7: was science that helped us identify Janet Brousseau as the
• 41:17
  Speaker 7: victim of this crime. It was science that helped us
• 41:21
  Speaker 7: prove that the killing occurred in Nebraska. It was science
• 41:28
  Speaker 7: that helped us prove the cause and the manner of death.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: What John Mooney did here was wrong. It felt horrible
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: for Janet's family and for Janet herself. Nobody deserves that.
• 41:49
  Speaker 6: For the people in Chester, when they talked about Janet,
• 41:52
  Speaker 6: they said, well, why wasn't she missed? Wasn't she loved?
• 41:57
  Speaker 6: And the family was saying, what kind of place is
• 41:59
  Speaker 6: Chester that she was there for years and no one
• 42:01
  Speaker 6: found her? So it was good to bring those two
• 42:04
  Speaker 6: things together. And the family really wanted to emphasize that.
• 42:06
  Speaker 4: She was loved.
• 42:07
  Speaker 6: She was very loved.
• 42:28
  Speaker 4: Thank you.