Catching Canada's Smartest Bank Robbers: The Stopwatch Gang | Exhibit A | Real Crime

they were the stopwatch gang they had great timing brilliant planning outrageous [Music] disguises the FBI didn't have a clue as to their identity they were Unstoppable or were they [Music] enter the world of forensic science the science of crime where a suspect's guilt or innocence can hang on a single piece of [Music] [Music] evidence [Music] [Applause] [Music] you can do a lot in 90 seconds you can listen to the minute Walts with time to spare you can boil an egg or you can rob a bank that was exactly how three Canadian bank robbers gained notoriety in the US in the 1980s they were known as the stopwatch gang because they use one of these to time their robberies down to the second at the Pinnacle of their success they hit a bank a week without firing a single shot but they weren't always successful they weren't always known as the stopwatch gang and they weren't always always bank robbers the gang first got together in 1973 in Canada's capital Ottawa a crate of gold bars en route from a mine up north to the Royal Mint in Ottawa was being stored overnight in a poorly guarded airport warehouse Patty Mitchell who had become the brains of the stopwatch gang viewed stealing the gold as a personal challenge Patty's foot soldier was Lionel Wright Lionel looked after the details getaway cars guns disguises but for this job they needed a third guy someone audacious enough to do anything that's when they recruited a recent prison escapee 22-year-old Steven Reed Patty I met in Ottawa I had escaped from a place called workw worth in the fall of 73 and he was sort of the you know kind of one of the kingpins in Ottawa so a friend of mine that I had gone to in Ottawa to sort of hide you know to hide out and you know get some new clothes and you know just get put away for a while uh say you know I've got the guy for you and he brought Patty in and and we hit it off right away the future stopwatch gang just needed one more thing an inside man an airport worker who could tip them off to win the gold was in so Patty organized a game of cards with an airport where worker named Gary guton the trio purposely let guton win it seduced him into becoming their Inside Man a few days later Patty got the signal from guton that the gold shipment had arrived now came the tricky part to get the gold they had to get into the locked room with a guard who was under strict orders not to let anyone in so Patty pretending to be an Irate airport supervisor demanded to speak to the maintenance man he'd sent over when the guard said No Such man was there Patty launched into a tiate about how that damn maintenance man better call him the moment he showed up as if on Q There was a knock on the door assuming it was the errant maintenance worker the guard told him he was in serious trouble that's when the maintenance worker pulled a gun and told the guard he was the one in serious [Music] trouble it would be the biggest gold heist in Canadian history you know gold is you know held such a Fascination over there and I understood why after I handle it you know when you handle gold it's quite it is the Seducer of mankind as the US was on the eve of allowing private citizens to own gold bars the gang plan to fence the booty in the US where it would net them a hefty 5 million bucks the best part they had gotten away cleanly or so they thought but the cops had caught guton and cut a deal with him to turn Informer wir Taps recorded Patty Mitchell recounting details of the airport gold Heist but detectives still need physical evidence linking the trio to the [Music] gold though Patty had fenced the gold in the US when the police recaptured Steven Reed for being a prison escapee they find gold flakes in his closet when the government mints gold bars they are 99.99% pure [Music] gold but mine gold is never pure what the mines do is extract the gold and make it into Dory bars Each of which has a different percentage of gold mixed with silver and base medals such as bronze the mine up north had records of the exact percentages for each of the stolen gold bars when the gold flakes found in Steven's closet are analyzed they are consistent with the percentages in one of the Dory bars stolen from the airport based on this and other evidence Patty and Lionel were picked up and the trio was convicted as a repeat offender Steven Reed had 10 years tacked onto his previous sentence for taking part in the gold Heist Patty Mitch and lion Wright for their role in The Heist and other crimes were each given 20 years for most robbers the story would end here but these three were not your average criminals as of one mind they began to plot their separate escapes the mild-mannered Lionel Wright was the first one to escape call it beginners luck he followed a group of fellow convicts through the prison fence to a waiting car Steven Reed was next on an escorted community visit Steven convinced he's unsuspecting guard to stop for a fishing Chip's lunch but Steven had plans to skip [Music] dessert with these two friends now free Patty Mitchell realized if he was going to escape he would have to come up with an extraordinary plan he'd heard from a lifer that drinking water mixed with tobacco made your heart speed up then he did push-ups till he dropped it looked like a heart attack an ambulance was called to take Patty to the hospital but two doctors who if anyone had bothered to notice looked an awful lot like Lionel and Steven intercepted the gurnie and escaped with Patty in the back of a waiting van It Was 1980 and the trio was free forced to flee Canada they slipped into the us Americans were like Canadians with twangy accents too many guns and a big problem with crime the trio would blend in perfectly we knew we were in this thing together and I think there was a real defining moment when we became the stopwatch gang and and really went to work the stopwatch gang was about to become Alle Legend I think that's an interesting thing this one piece will make 52 layers watch on mobile devices or the big screen all for free no subscription required the stopwatch gang was about to go on a bank robbing spree in the southern us the likes of which had never been seen before the first bank they hit was in San Diego on April 15th 1980 their goal to be in and out in 90 seconds their approach a unique Canadian Mo the Takeover robbery it's going in taking the bank over as opposed to going in and oh please can I have some money from the teller you know it's going in and commod during the bank putting everything down and and knowing you know what you're going [Music] for the game hit four San Diego banks in quick succession the Precision of these robberies quickly captured the fascination of the American media and the attention of the [Music] FBI Most Bandits um remain in the bank by feel um it's just how long they feel that they've been in there and what they need to get done but these guys actually timed it right down to about 90 seconds with the use of a stopwatch so you knew that you were dealing with with a group that uh had its act together this was not going to be an easy case I knew that from the very outset the gang cut a swath through the American southwest pulling jobs in Texas New Mexico Arizona and along the California coast as far north as Seattle polite and professional they never once fired a single shot between Patty and I and figuring stuff out and doing the the showboating of a score and and Lionel doing the detailed work we we got pretty good as as good as you can get at it I had one banded tell me uh once that bank robbery was the most uh potent drug that he had ever taken and that once he started that kind of activity there was just no turning back the the level of excit the adrenaline rush uh was stronger than any drug he had ever taken the FBI had no clues as to the identities of the stopwatch gang we can usually identify and track groups of Bandits like the stopwatch gang from one area to another because uh they do the same thing over and over what's been successful for them in the past they're going to of course do again we were able to um track them to some degree but they were very good uh they're planning in particular uh I took notice of and uh they were far and above the the regular Bandit that I had come across previously the FBI turned up the heat and Steven Reed felt it cuz they didn't stop working just because I did I mean they did just work during the time of Bank Roby this was the stopwatch gang's hday but any careless word contradictory story spurned acquaintance and the whole deck of cards could come crashing down people are pretty smart you know you can't just appear out of nowhere with a bunch of money of course Patty and I were our own worst enemies we get drunk and start telling all lies and our lies would be all crossed up and so I would worry a lot about people uh beginning to mount suspicions about us in our Circles of friends the gang had another problem the more they stole the more they spent their Solution One fabulous dream score big enough to retire forever in September 1980 Steven cased a bank or every Tuesday a security guard carded a fortune stuffed into three money bags from the bank safe to an armored truck waiting outside to snatch the money the gang would have to totally change their MO no stopwatch instead of rushing into the bank and taking it over the money had to be intercepted between the safe and the armored [Music] truck that meant sitting in the bank and waiting instead of gloves they would have to wrap their fingers in Band-Aids in order to avoid leaving fingerprints and instead of masks they would have to resort to other disguises to out Fox the security camera it was way riskier they took up their positions to wait for the guard to arrive but this time the Clock Was be ticking against them the stopwatch gang was accustomed to being in and out of a bank in 90 seconds this time they would be at the mercy of someone else's punctuality and as fate would have it on this day the Brinks truck was late they took a little longer than they should have comeing and than than our research showed they should have anyway anyway it was hard because we were I had makeup on um strangely enough and and there was never a sense nobody paid much attention to us and you know I mean here's you know two dorks in a bank one with you know full beard and sweating you know looking like a you know an Arab terrorist the other guy looks like you know L look like little Van Dyke beard and everything you look like Colonel Sanders or something I don't know you know weird you know the blond it was really weird and we both look weird we're just hanging around hanging around [Music] finally the guard showed [Music] up as the guard started Wheeling the money bags out of the safe to the armored truck waiting outside his conversation with the bank teller was about to be rudely interrupted [Music] Steven told the guard don't try to be a [Music] hero the job netted a quarter of a million the largest bank robbery in San Diego [Music] history once they dumped anything that connected them to the heist they'd be [Music] free after the San Diego score we were all back at the apartment we start throwing this apartment stuff back together we got garbage bags full of stuff and I don't know what happened there is some we we fell off the we fell off the game plan on this one we put the wigs in the bank bags up into garbage bags Lionel generally would burn that stuff he'd sit it an outside barbecue or he would just take it home with him back back to where we were living at that time and we would dispose of it slowly you know the stuff the the stuff that puts you in jail from the audacity of the robbery and its meticulous planning the FBI suspected the robbery was the work of the stopwatch gang but they still had no clue about the gang's identity the FBI's first break came from the bank surveillance system which had been taking photos at 302 intervals the photograph certainly will give you a lot to go by even though they may be completely uh clothed and have a mask on because at least you know what kind of evidence you're looking for it cuz you're looking right at it and uh certainly now if we can recover those clothes it's of Great Value to you while Steven and Patty went one way with a stolen money Lionel was left to dispose of the incriminating garbage he pulled in threw the stuff into the dumpster you know and he just thought well I'll put it there I'll sit here until this Stu gets gone and then two cops pulled in and he panicked with the two cops there Lionel knew if he was nabbed with stuff from the robbery he might as well plead guilty on the spot that's when he decided to take a chance that the garbage truck would pick it up as scheduled it was to be the costliest mistake of his life an elderly wno found the bag minutes before the garbage truck arrived and thought it might be of interest to the police he was right the police handed it over to the FBI exhibit a a green garbage bag the FBI now had the clothes used by the robbers in the surveillance photos plus a blow up from one of the surveillence photos revealed that the robber in the dark beard had lost a Band-Aid from his left thumb when the garbage bag and its contents were dusted for prints the lab turned up a latent thumb print on the garbage bag itself well fingerprints don't lie and certainly um a fingerprint is worth a thousand words so to speak the FBI still needs to match it to a known print to come up with a name but when they check the print against known felons they come up empty-handed it means none of the members of the stopwatch gang have ever been arrested in the US the FBI is [Music] stumped unaware of the FBI's evidence the gang had been in touch with a big-time crook who promised that for a chunk of cash he would introduced them to a surgeon who could alter their fingerprints but when the crook got busted for drugs he ratted out the gang in exchange for his freedom he gave the FBI their names and a copy of their fingerprints they could now connect Steven Reed to the San Diego robbery the stopwatch gang had been caught by its [Music] fingertips meanwhile the stopwatch gang were unaware that this would be the last time the three of them would be together the FBI had broken the [Music] case Lionel was arrested while still in bed Steven was stopped for a minor traffic violation and found himself surrounded by armed FBI agents but they couldn't find Patty the FBI expected that Steven or Lionel would rat on Patty in exchange for a deal they were wrong according to Steven Reed with Canadians there was honor among Thieves Canadians are know I mean even you know the FBI and different people as were arrested would you know have talked about you know we're known for holding our mud you know you get caught you stand up and take you know take one on the chin Patty Mitchell put on the FBI's 10 most wanted list was caught in 1983 then escaped in 1995 FBI agent Steve chenowith put together a profile on Patty and appealed for public help through a TV program The Move paid off someone gave the FBI an address time had run out on the stopwatch gang Patty Mitchell was sentenced to 68 years in prison he'll be in his late 80s before he's eligible for parole Lionel Wright was finally released from prison in 1994 he had run the prison canteen so meticulously that he was subsequently hired by Corrections Canada in 1985 Steven Reed wrote a novel Jack Rabbit parole that caught the attention of poet Susan Musgrave they were married in prison and a year later Steven was paroled but in 1999 Steven Reed was charged with committing a new bank robbery our interview with him was conducted in prison it's fine to romanticize about guys like the stopwatch gang and think their actions only hurt the big bad banks on the other hand maybe the only reason no one was seriously hurt was simply because they were never challenged during one of their robberies we could debate this for hours but it's important to know when to go a mother's only son dead from a shotgun blast [Music] his best friend swore it was a suicide but she knew it was a murder bad science let a killer walk free could good science put it right again enter the world of forensic science the science of crime where a suspect's guilt or innocence can hang on a single piece of [Music] [Music] evidence [Music] for a single mother losing your only son through violent means is absolutely devastating what's even worse is watching the person responsible for his death walk free at 2:40 on a February morning police receive a 911 call the Frantic caller say says that his best friend has just shot himself in his parents' basement police find the body of Adam Matthews lying dead on the floor in a pool of [Music] blood according to Greg Connor they had been drinking when Adam took Greg's shotgun into the workroom and killed [Music] himself but Greg Connors is acting so erratically police have no choice but to cuff him and bring him down to the station coroner Jim Karn who would later review the case the scene was was secured by police and various photographs were taken off off the scene before the body was moved but that was the initial scene was a dece flying on the floor with a shotgun in his hand there are one was a conclusion reasonably early on that this was a [Music] suicide back at the station Greg Connors tells police that he and Adam had been drinking and watching a video in the recck room while Greg's parents slept upstairs Adam wanted to see Greg's shotgun he left it with Adam when he felt sick and went to throw up [Music] that's when Adam went into the adjacent workroom and shot [Music] himself maybe it's just a detective's Instinct but there's something about Greg Connor's response to the tragic loss of a close friend that just doesn't ring true plus it's rare for a suicide victim to impulsively shoot themselves with someone else's gun in someone else's house hoping to get more evidence the detective sends a new ident person back to videotape Greg Connor's [Music] basement [Music] then comes one of the hardest parts of a detective's job breaking the tragic news of a son's death to his [Music] mother Linda Matthews is devastated she refuses to believe that her son killed himself she knows her son he lived at home it is impossible if anything was bothering him enough to kill himself she would have known about it Adam was a well adjusted young man it doesn't make any sense of course it's not the first time the detective has seen a parent unwilling to accept her child's suicide back at the station he studies the pathologist report in basic summary the conclusions of the pathologist reach to that time was that this was a contact wound to the neck of of the deceased so that the end of the barrel was against the deceased neck when the trigger was [Music] pulled that's when the detective turns to the new ident videotape of what may now be a crime scene and discovers to his dismay that the basement has been totally cleaned [Music] up the blood soak carpet is gone and the blood has been cleaned off the workroom wall the detective now has a serious problem he will have to rely solely on the original crime scene photos taken in the first hour after the police arrived at the scene of what was called in as a suicide as the detective studies the photos something nags at him the shotgun in Adam's hand he can't remember ever hearing of a shotgun suicide where given the force of The Recoil the victim caught the gun in a pistol-like grip [Music] the preliminary ballistics report states that considering the length of Adam's arm and the length of the shotgun barrel Adam could barely have reached the trigger to shoot himself but if it is a homicide why why would a friend kill a friend Linda Matthews is tortured by the same question she has been rethinking everything that happened the day Adam died she remembers coming home from work and seeing her son outside talking to his friend Rick something seemed to be bothering Adam he'd also gotten four phone calls from Greg Connor that day the last one just as he walked in the door then he left immediately for Greggs she didn't like Greg didn't like the way he treated Adam didn't like the fact that Greg had run-ins with the police she is convinced Greg had more to do with Adam's death than he told police when she contacts Rick what he tells her and the detective adds a crucial piece to the puzzle the month before Adam and Greg had gone out driving in Greg's truck and Greg had total his truck against a tree Greg got Adam to go along with a l he made up that the truck had been stolen and the thieves had crashed it that way Greg could collect the $223,000 insurance [Music] money but Adam told Rick he had decided he wasn't going to lie for Greg anymore he was going to come clean with the insurance [Music] company that was the day Adam died the detective now has a motive Greg Connors is arrested and charged with criminal negligence causing death because he was intoxicated at the time of the [Music] shooting but despite the arrest nothing lessens Linda Matthews unbearable pain as she awaits the trial she sinks into a deep depression her only hope is that Justice will suffer somehow be served because blood tests indicate that Greg Connor was drunk when he allegedly shot Adam Matthews he had not been charged with murder rather with criminal negligence causing [Music] death as Linda Matthews gets herself ready for the trial she has every reason to believe that Greg Connors will be convicted of killing her son but the alleged motive is discounted and the science she's counting on turns out to be her worst [Music] enemy the original Firearms expert surprised Everyone by claiming that Adam Matthews could have shot himself a second Firearms expert who reviewed the case years later was floored by this claim the only way he could have fired it is to blid it along his arm lustly held the muzzle up to the throat lustly and pushed the trigger with his finger an incredibly awkward way to kill yourself with a firearm incredibly I've never seen anything like that before but at Greg Connor's trial the original Firearms expert is believed the uh further opinion of of the Firearms examiner was that this was possible and that once he pulled the trigger he could in some way managed to grab onto the gun and fall with the gun uh in in his hand in the manner in which it was found at the scene with a pistol grip on the shotgun the judge agreed the charges against Greg Connor were reduced to giving a loaded shotgun to an intoxicated [Music] person and at the same time the judge made a ruling that uh the deceased had died as a result of his own action so that the deceased had in fact committed suicide Adam's mother was outraged it was hard to say what hurt her more the courts officially ruling that her son had committed suicide which was impossible or his murderer being allowed to walk [Music] free she swore to Greg Connors that he was not going to get away with her son's murder but what could she do as a first step to having the case reopened she obtains the crime scene photos through the Freedom of Information Act [Music] if she wants others to one day believe that Adam never killed himself she must first be willing to face the evidence [Music] herself in order to build a case for an appeal she sends copies of the crime scene photos to Leading forensic experts in the US for their independent opinions she mounts a onew woman campaign to clear her son's name for the first time since her son's death Linda Matthews feels [Music] alive the results begin to come back and they're [Music] positive according to these experts she's right her son's death is not a suicide it's a homicide armed with these reports she goes to the detective to try to have the case reopened that's when she's floored by two words two words that are going to haunt her Double Jeopardy according to the law no one can be tried for the same crime twice it would be easy for her to give up and sink back into her depression blaming the system for the rest of her life but at her core Adam's mother is a fighter she's come too far to give up now it's not just about her son's death it's about truth itself there has to be another [Music] way she sends her findings to the one person who may be able to help her deputy coroner Jim [Music] Kens though Double Jeopardy protects Greg Connor from ever being retried an inquest can at least establish a public truth Jim Kars is impressed she has done her homework and is willing to let the science speak for her you are looking for scientific truth and uh it's important it's just as a important to correct a bad science as it is to have good science Jim Karn decides to convene an inquest a five-person jury will now decide whether or not they agree with the original findings that the first trial was right and Adam Matthew's death was a suicide or the first trial was wrong and his death was a homicide and a murderer walked free will the system fail in the Matthews a second time it would all come down to exhibit a the original crime scene photographs Linda Matthews needs to know and needs the public to know what happened to her son in that basement workroom 6 years ago an inquest will finally determine whether her son committed suicide or was murdered a second set of experts will have to reexamine what had been presented as forensic fact by the first set of experts all the experts have are these exhibit a the original crime scene photographs taken in the first hour after the police arrived at the scene of what was called in as a suicide the inquest returns to the story presented in the original trial that Adam Matthews shot himself in the neck and somehow managed to hold on to the shotgun as he fell to the floor the first witness Jim calls upon is Firearms expert Jim MCA The Recoil of this shotgun is quite severe and tests that I did from a a table with this shotgun and and the same type of ammunition it launched itself 23 11 in from the table how could he hold that gun the original Firearms expert had testified that the shotgun had somehow ended up in the victim's hand what are the odds of it boun bouncing back and landing in his hand well the odds are so remote as to be totally Unthinkable uh bounce off the ceiling the wall the floor and then just happen to come back and land in his hand so that his finger is through the trigger and his other fingers are wrapped around the grip it's beyond my comprehension that this could could occur um I'd have to believe in the tooth fairy working with the same photos bloodstain analyst Vince Hawks agrees with MCA and disagrees with the original pathologist report that the shotgun had been against Adam's neck at all it's physically impossible for that end of that weapon to have been tight against the individual's neck and leave the amount of backspatter that was left on that wall physically impossible as we make that scenario change a little and move that weapon further away from the blood source the further you move the weapon away from the blood Source the larger the impact area and hence the more projected stains that can contact the blood the various surfaces and that's what we have in this case but proving where the shotgun was not is one thing proving where it actually was is another so to determine this I fire tests at various distances using the same shotgun same type of ammunition and measuring the spread of the shot I can say with some degree of certainty that the shot was fired between these two distances somewhere between 3 ft and 5 ft someone else must have been holding that weapon from this Distance by analyzing the photographs of the blood stains on the victim's left hand Vince Hawks is able to determine something even more remarkable this individual's hand has to be in an orientation that it's up in front of his face like this with the index finger extended as well as the thumb extended so it cannot be in the position extended straight out pushing that trigger it has to be in a position like this physically impossible to be in any other position based on the blood stains now we have the scenario of the individual standing up against the workbench we have the scenario of the right hand having no projected stains on it Associated to holding the weapon and we have the left hand in a position like this to me that is a defensive position at the time of impact so the victim was trying to defend himself from something or someone I was able to calculate uh the height of the wound in in the deceased throat uh if he was standing uh and I was able to correlate the center of the pattern with the wound in his throat and I was able able to determine that the shotgun itself was at shoulder height when that shot was fired this particular shotgun was up here and this is the the position that a shotgun is intended to be fired from the jury has three choices suicide homicide or accidental death it takes him exactly 2 hours to decide and when they return they rule Adam's death a homicide this is the scenario that they now believe took place on that February morning 6 years [Music] ago they had been drinking watching TV maybe Adam told Greg he was going to come clean about Greg's false Insurance claim maybe what we do know is that somehow Adam was lured or forced into the workroom then as he tried to defend himself someone holding the shotgun in the aim position from 3 to 5 ft away shot him and placed a shotgun in his hand to make it appear like a suicide by his own testimony the only other person in the basement at the time was Greg [Music] Connors the world would now know what Linda Matthews had never doubted that her son had been murdered it's very powerful when you think about that one woman's desire to learn the truth caused all this to happen and end up the way it has it's uh it's pretty important I think for her to have sat through the the corners inquest and to see uh what she truly believed come true based on physical evidence not based on what people think happened based on the truth true physical evidence this certainly was was a case where where a an individual went free initially because of Science and at least as far as the true facts were then able to be corrected by by by once again by science uh so there was there was some validation of the science but it did involve uh breaking down the previous scientific conclusions that were reached the world would now know what Linda Matthews never doubted that her son had not committed suicide he had been murdered she had her verdict but ultimately was Justice really served despite 6 years a trial and an inquest Greg Connor could not be tried for the same crime again that would be double jeopardy a killer walked free [Music] 2 years after the inquest verdict Linda Matthews died of cancer she is buried next to her son [Music] Adam police are up against the ser rapist an odious criminal and one of the hardest to [Music] catch but can a tenacious investigator using a new forensic tool geographical profiling zero in on where the rapist lives and NAB [Music] him enter the world of forensic science the science of crime where a suspect's guilt or innocence can hang on a single piece of [Music] evidence [Music] we tend to think of criminals as Outlaws out there thinking totally differently than we do but investigators tell us that's a mistake criminals are so much like us they're often invisible unsuspected it was the summer of 1987 in Lafayette Louisiana like the Gators he was always looking for prey and he found her the woman seemed to live [Music] alone he would come back later he snipped the telephone wire what he do is he break in while the victims are asleep demand money go through their purses having them empty their purses but afterwards then he would he he' actually commit the sexual assault he was what profilers call a power reassurance rapist his approach I'm in control and if you do what I say nothing will happen to you then he intimidated The Woman by telling her he wouldn't have come in and raped her if only she had kept her window locked finally he warned her that if she reported him to police he would come back and hurt her or her loved ones in 1987 M gallan was a patrolman accompanying the detective called in to investigate the rape little did he know that this would become his career defining case well at that time there were no suspects also we didn't use DNA at that time we had we had really nothing to go on there are no evidence that we could use at that particular time to to make an arrest the rapist had cleaned up after himself and left no fingerprints no hairs no fibers but a vaginal swab yielded a sample of the rapist Seaman though the sample wasn't of immediate use it was preserved as for the woman she was traumatized ahead of her were years of overwhelming fear and mistrust broken relationships and black holes of depression and the terror of knowing that the rapist was still out there 7 years [Music] passed M gallion had risen in the ranks and had become a detective himself that's when he was called out on another rape case I had an opportunity to actually speak with the victim she was later taken to the hospital where she was examined and evidence was collected there the woman described how the man had attacked while she was [Music] asleep he wore a bandana he said he was there to rob her and then raped [Music] her the description was that of a power reassurance rapist you see rapes are are not acts of sex but more of an act of power to to to cons to power upon a person a vaginal swab in this 1994 assault also yielded a seaman sample of the rapist though by 1994 DNA testing had been added to the forensic Arsenal the sample didn't match any of the likely suspects this rape too seemed unsolvable then a year later in 1995 Mack overheard a conversation between a detective and a sergeant about a third rape it sounded like the were reading from his 1994 case File it's starting out as a robbery the bandana blaming it on the woman herself another Power reassurance rapist excited by control ma asked them for a biological sample from this new rape case when the DNA was compared to the sample from his 94 case it was a match he had asked me to see if two unsolved cases might possibly have come from the same Source he felt that Theos of the cases were similar enough to um be the same person we compared the two DNA profiles and we did find that they were identical and that's when we knew we had a serial rapist operating thought about the case from 1987 and had that biological sample tested as well it too came back a match Mac went back into the Lafayette Police files with uncanny skill he picked out more than a dozen other unsolved cases between 1987 and 1995 where the rapist Mo seems similar DNA confirmed they were all the same rapist because all the assaults took place in one particular area he was dubbed the Southside rapist but what was the underlying pattern all the women were white but of different ages all the women were attacked in their homes but their homes ranged from upper class to lowincome housing projects Mack was put in charge of the investigation certain questions would play him who was this rapist what did he look like where was he what would it take to catch him and how many more women would be raped before he was caught the Southside rapist had struck at least 15 times between the years 1984 and 1995 I always felt the sense of urgency on this case because I could never tell when he was going to go out and actually uh do this again and I mean the individuals who are attacked like that I mean their lives are just completely thrown out of regular Norms it really does horrible things to them in 1995 Mac helped set up a special task force but amazingly the rapist didn't strike that year or the next so by the end of 1996 the task force was disbanded once again it was just Mac then he got a break the Survivor of the 1994 rape had a nightmare in which for an instant she glimpsed the rapist [Music] face upon waking she realized it was a memory she had suppressed but she couldn't recall the rapist face clearly enough to describe him to a police sketch artist [Music] that's when Mac decided to enlist the help of a hypnotist it said that we we we can recall anything anything that we hear see feel taste or touch it's permanently ingrained there it's just a matter of a getting back to it but through hypnosis we can take you back in time to that place and tap into your subconscious and get that information though the woman was scared about reliving The Experience she consented to a session with a notist and a police sketch artist anything to help catch the rapist as the event was too brutal and traumatic to put the woman directly back in the past the hypnotist uses the movie theater technique where the subject is told she is watching a movie of the event a documentary of her life is she going to still experience some of the anxiety certainly but it's not quite the same as taking her back through that experience he gives her a remote control control so she can control the movie it's just like a regular remote but with one additional special button a panic button whenever she needs to she can stop the movie and all her fears and anxieties will melt into the chair and drain away then it's time to start with her eyes closed he mentally guides her into a movie theater down the aisle and to her seat the movie begins the day before and takes the woman through everything that led up to the rap in hypnosis we can cover a day in and in 30 minutes um we can fast forward we can rewind we can steal time we can freeze frame time so to speak and in her particular case we took her back to that day in [Music] time when we started to get into the actual sexual assault the victim started sweating profusely she was very red in the face there were several times where we had to just stop in a Ste frame and assure her that she was very safe and very secure actually what we did was rewind the film and then had her go back through step by step in this process where she went through the actual rape up until the point in time where she told us that the rapist in fact did remove this handkerchief at a specific point in time momentarily to kiss her and then pushed it back up at that point in time we rewind we froze that that frame and then we were able to go through step by step starting with the eyes then the nose then the mouth the cheeks the neck area the ears the overall head the hair the eyebrows the forehead getting all of that information during that hypnosis session as the composite sketch artist would sketch it suspects Who Bore a resemblance to the sketch were questioned about being the sell-side rapist some had solid alibi those who didn't were asked for DNA samples but there was no match but Mack refused to give up he knew the survivors would never feel closure until the rapist was caught he read books on psychological profiling and reread the FBI's file on the Southside rapist in 1997 police had called a meeting of all the known victims of the Southside rapist one similarity many of them reported was that the rapist carried a large black flashlight one woman said that she could feel its heat next to her and that the way the rapist held it was just like a policeman now you can buy one of these types of flashlights at the local hardware store but back in the 1980s they were pretty much only used by police firefighters utility workers and security guards this fit the FBI profile that the Southside rapist might be a police officer or a police wannabe then something strange happened in Ma's own house he and his wife had gone to a function at his daughter's [Music] school when he came home his front door was wide [Music] open nothing had been stolen or [Music] disrupted was the Southside rapist Now searching for Mac as much as Mac was searching for [Music] him DNA hadn't cracked the case nor had the police sketch so Mac contacted Canadian Kim rosmo who had pioneered a new forensic tool geographical profiling Geographic profiling comes out of a theoretical area called environmental criminology which doesn't ask the question why did Johnny become a bad boy it says assuming Johnny is a bad boy what is the influence of the environment on his crime patterns more specifically it asks where should investigators look for Johnny rather than figure out where crimes will happen the question was if we already known where they've taken place what can we say about where the person responsible for those crimes most probably lives exhibit a a map of Lafayette Louisiana profilers would try to zero in on the rapist's hunting area the most likely area where this Predator lived in May of 1998 geographical profilers Kim rosmo and Brad Moore flew from Vancouver to see if they could help detective Mt gallan catch the Southside rapist our goal is to see the crime sites both during the day because that's when you can actually see them but also during the time that the Defenders committing the offenses cuz the world is very different for example it is very different at 400 p.m. than it is at 4:00 a.m. and it's different on a Sunday than it is on a [Music] Wednesday at each location they look at what surrounds the house what was at the End of the Street what was around the corner where people parked the foot paths the hiding places the possible Escape Routes anything that could help them zero in on the Predator's hunting pattern they're hunting the hunter so they try to put themselves in the Predator shoes and see the world as he does it could be whether the lights appear to be on and we can tell that from the road whether or not there's a um a two-car garage where only one car is parked there with draperies or curtains are left open signs of maybe Decay or an indication that a man is not present might be Rel for sexual assault type of crime one thing all the targets shared was that they were quite accessible from the street and it would have been easy for the rapist to check it out from the sidewalk or appearer in a window it suggested the rapist was not a stalker who followed women home but rather a Prowler a predator who roamed the area hunting for prey it's been said that uh humans are just more complicated forms of animals and I think we see that with hunting Behavior animals need to eat and animals need to avoid being eaten we can see the same thing with criminals they need to find victims but they also don't want to get caught by the place after three exhaustive days Kim rosmo flew back to Vancouver and fed all the data into Riel his software program named for a star in the belt of Orion the hunter we take all the crime locations and we put them in as coordinates or or um uh we digitize them directly onto onto the uh map of the area and then the computer will generate in this case about half a million um calculations and will produce for us what we call a Jeopardy surface the most likely area of a fender residence lafayette's total area is about 61 Square km or 24 sare Mi the profilers had narrowed down where the rapist probably lived to a 1 squ M area then on December 1st 1998 police receive an anonymous tip to check out Randy KO who is an officer in the lofty at Sheriff's [Music] Office Mack gets a trusted friend at the Sheriff's Office to secretly fax him Randy Ko's personnel file Randy Ko's home address is well inside the geographical profilers Jeopardy Zone even more damning the house he lived in prior to 1991 when most of the rapes took place is dead center now he checks the composite sketch these days Randy KO has changed his overall appearance he wears glasses and sports a new hairstyle but photos of Kom before 1995 show a remarkable resemblance to the suspect the lab has a DNA sample of the Southside rapist now they need Ko's DNA so an investigator working under cover obtains one of kom's discarded cigarette buds then on Christmas Eve 1998 Matt calls Arthur Young at the [Music] lab I watched as the information came off the computer and it I equate to being a um lottery winner on a Saturday night watching the numbers roll down and I'm looking at at my ticket one match two match three match four match and after a certain point I just said this is it um this case can finally be closed and I can get it off my desk it had been sitting there for that long 6 years Ernest Randall KO was arrested afterwards after he was handcuffed he appears as though he just he came very down it's like it was all over which is what I told him I told him it was over he didn't have to worry anymore it was over he confesses for 6 and 1/2 hours even admitting to two rapes investigators had known about it turns out KO was a Prowler not a stalker when he saw a house that appeared to be without a man he would come back later with his rape kit and look for an open window what made Ko's mental and physical assault on these women especially odious was that he had worked in Youth Services with teens who' been raped I look at it as Randy comoo is a rapist trying to be a police officer not a policeman out raping folks because nobody that's sworn to do what we're sworn to do would go out and do a thing like that Ernest KO was sentenced to 25 years on 19 counts of rape there are a lot of women who can now have some closure in their lives knowing that the person who traumatized them has been caught and is finally being punished I think Lafayette and the surrounding areas of Acadiana were very fortunate to have an individual like M gallion on this case because I am certain that without him this case would not have reached a conclusion but for MC gallion the real heroes of the case are the forensic scientists and the women themselves and in particular one woman who was willing to journey into her subconscious to help capture a dangerous [Music] predator two sisters both promising [Music] athletes but a powerful presence stalks their young lives his sights are set on one and he must control her every move when his desire turns to Violent Obsession Poli must find this man [Music] possessed enter the world of forensic science the science of crime where a suspect's guilt or innocence can hang on a single piece of [Music] [Music] evidence [Music] to love means to cherish and protect but a stalker pursues harasses and threatens a stalker cannot love but might be willing to kill it's late August 1995 Jolene Samuels is only days away from The Greatest Adventure of her life at 19 she's about to leave her Toronto home with a track scholarship to the University of Alabama she's going to miss her mother and younger sister Bethany her mother Maryanne is divorced she's proud to see her oldest daughter spread her wings and head out on her own Jolene is taking the last few days before she departs to relax and do her packing she sees her mother and Bethany off to [Music] work it hasn't been a good year for Jolene and she's glad to be leaving her old life behind [Music] a knock brings her to the door it's [Music] Bethany Maryanne returns home from work that evening at her regular time she yells hello to the girls but gets no [Music] reply something's not right jolene's t-shirt is lying crumpled in the [Music] hall there's a red smear on the door to the basement at the foot of the stairs she discovers an unspeakable Horror in shock she runs to a neighbor who calls the police are Jolene and Bethany innocent victims of a break and Enter gone terribly wrong investigators rush to the scene things aren't what they appear to be well the flag started to go up for us uh as soon as we walked in the door long before we got to the basement and uh and saw the bodies a TV stereo equipment and a toaster have been piled together by a back door but these aren't the usual targets of break and Enter thieves small valuable items are left in plain view untouched the kind of loot thieves find easy to conceal and quick to sell but it didn't look like any break and Enter that any of us had ever seen before by the time we got down to the basement we knew that this was not a break in inter gone bad there was something much more personal and intimate to uh to this particular crime investigators believe that evidence of a break and Enter was staged to cover up a premeditated murder forensic identification officers scour the scene searching for Clues all they find of the murder weapon are two shattered pieces of a knife handle the bodies of the murdered girls are sent to the morg where they're examined by pathologist Dr Toby Rose this is a diagram that I made When I Was preparing my report and it shows the large wound to the younger sisters the front of her neck I think the younger sister was murdered first because she has absolutely no injury to her hands or her arms at all so it appears that she wasn't able or was so surprised in time that she wasn't able to fight back at all I thought that the older sister was murdered second the wound to her neck was quite similar to the wound to the younger sister's neck the younger sister had only a single stab wound on the skin of her chest but the older sister had multiple stab wounds and I estimated them as 19 stab wounds I also thought that she was murdered second because she does have evidence of having fought back she has knife wounds to both hands Dr Rose performs one more standard procedure a simple act that will prove vital later in the case we always clip their fingernails if they have long enough fingernails to do that and we submit the go in an envelope a sealed envelope to the center of forensic Sciences for analysis and that's to see if there's any kind of evidence or tissue or material under their fingernails that can be analyzed and used the ident unit spends many intensive days searching the house hoping to find fingerprints or any clues that might identify the killer they find no fiber or hairs which might help their investigation but 30 sets of identifiable fingerprints are successfully lifted from the house the problem is that all 30 sets of fingerprints belong to either Jolene or Bethany so the standard forensic evidence that you glean from homicide scenes the fingerprints things of that nature weren't there for us in any beneficial way the killer may have worn gloves he'd been careful to cover his tracks investigators call in detective inspector Kate lines an expert in behavioral profiling she views police videotape of the crime scene in order to understand the nature of the killer it's almost like you could just feel the anger that the person that was inflicting these injuries on these young girls must have felt cuz they were very emotional very deep very penetrating Kate Lions thinks that Jolene was the primary target because of the particularly brutal wounds on her body this is absolute explosion of Rage to be able to inflict these type of injuries on these victims and it was certainly clear to me that that this was someone again who who had a [Music] relationship we call that an intimate stalker that they've had an intimate relationship ship stalking is a very common occurrence prior to a [Music] homicide Jolene and Bethany were two innocent young women with Bright Futures ahead of them but someone they knew wanted them dead why investigators know they are dealing with a Savage and clever criminal they know the staged break and Enter is a cover for a frenzied murder the day after the murders Maryanne tells police a chilling tale Jolene had been going out with a young man named Rohan Ranger for several years she'd broken off the relationship 11 months ago and started seeing other boys but Ranger was obsessed with her he followed her everywhere Rohan Ranger couldn't accept that Jolene wasn't his [Music] anymore that's more than enough for police to pick up Ranger for an interview but Ranger surprises them by being open and Cooperative he doesn't act like a man with anything to hide he volunteers to give police a blood sample for DNA analysis and he tells a very different story than Maryanne about his relationship with Jolene he claims she wasn't dating anyone else and that she wanted him to visit her in Alabama they were still in love in one case you have this relationship that's broken up and she wants nothing to do with them on the other hand you're talking to Ranger and you think my God they're they're going to they're planning on getting married the two stories are so contradictory that police suspicions of Ranger are only increased they Place him under surveillance they see him at the girl's funeral among the 3,000 other MERS they wait to see if he will appear at the more intimate memorial service at the local high school investigators are shocked to learn that strangely enough Jolene had made arrangements for her own funeral asking a friend to sing Amazing Grace at whatever service might be held and she made a bet with another friend that she would be murdered the friend agreed to pay $10 of Jolene one Ranger appears near the very [Music] end he actually went up to the mother and expressed his condolences and uh gave her a hug that she described to me as the coldest moment that she can recall Mark mendleson becomes even more suspicious of Ranger because he has discovered that the only things missing from the house were personal items of [Music] jolene's out of this entire home and all the ransacking and the moving around of stereos and toasters and VCRs and The Dumping out of drawers from dressers there were only three things that were missing from that home gone is a videotape of Jolene playing [Music] soccer her electronic organizer including the phone numbers of her friends is missing but most importantly was a gold necklace that Ranger had purchased just for the older sister some years back this necklace never left her neck she ran track and field events with it she swam with it she played soccer with it she slept with it on the the necklace that she was not allowed to take off because if Ranger ever saw her without it he would get upset is missing in jolene's last weeks her growing Independence was constantly being thwarted by Rangers obsessive control it may be difficult for some of us to understand but again for some individuals they sometimes feel that their lives become so out of control that this person no matter how much they try to pull away from them seems to be coming back into their lives and trying to control them as much as they try and pull away that other person seems to be so obsessive about them that sometimes and again this is not uncommon that victims almost become accepting of whatever Fate has in store for them they don't see that they really have a lot of choices to make Maryanne tells police that she saw Jolene struggling to free herself from Rangers [Music] control but Jolene told her in an ominous tone that if anything happened Rohan Ranger was [Music] responsible Maryanne tells police that 2 days before the murders she overheard Jolene and Ranger having a vicious argument in the basement of her [Music] home he demanded that Jolene give up her track scholarship and stay with him in in Toronto she refused for a moment in her life she stood up and she said no I'm going and if you're a defiant controlling conniving individual That Could set you off I think as easily as anything four month mon after the murders forensic biologists conclude their examination of jolene's fingernail clippings what they find becomes exhibit a DNA from a tiny amount of skin tissue under the fingernail that does not belong to jene finding DNA foreign DNA under fingernails is in our experience a rare and significant finding investigators hope that DNA from this material will identify the person Jo colen must have deeply scratched only moments before her death the results stun the investigative team if we have for example in Sample number a the profile from the fingernail scrapings and Sample number B is the profile from Rohan Ranger then I can tell you instantly that Rohan Ranger is not the source of the same example of the fingernail scrapings those profiles do not match they're different he is excluded as the source of the foreign DNA and the fingernail scrapings this information turns the investigation upside down is it possible that all the circumstances which point to Ranger as the murderer are mere coincidence if so then who is the [Music] killer [Music] despite the startling DNA evidence Mark Mendelson can't shake his belief that Rohan Ranger must be involved in the murders you still can't remove him from the investigation and the reason is you've got the motive she's leaving he doesn't like it you have the stalking the following you have the threatening he has to remain in and we have to keep our Focus open and our minds clear that there's a second person [Music] involved police intensify their surveillance on Ranger and his circle of friends one by one they are checked out they all give blood samples none of them can be implicated in the crime but maybe there's someone they've missed they follow Ranger to a park where he seems to be waiting for someone a car pulls up and a stranger gets out we didn't know who this guy was we had no idea who this guy was but it was the first person that Ranger had contact with that we had never seen before this is Adrien kin Cade investigators had heard about him but they were told he had left the country he's Rohan Ranger's cousin and before he dropped from sight the two were inseparable investigators find out that Kincade is a vicious character with a violent temper everyone who knows kin Kade says that he cares nothing for other people even his own child the mother of the child told us about him hanging this 9-month-old child out a nine-story window cuz the kid was crying and he said he would stop the child from crying so he has no respect for anything let alone human life but when police try to locate him for an interview and a DNA sample he has vanished but they do locate his former girlfriend and child they receive permission from her to perform what's known as a reverse paternity test they take blood samples from both the mother and the child to establish their separate DNA profile every child's DNA is made up of the combined DNA of its parents a reverse paternity test subtracts the mother's DNA profile from her child's what's left is the Father's DNA profile investigators then send conca's DNA profile to Pam Newell for her analysis now when I compare the profile from Adrien Kincade in Lane C to the profile that I see from the fingernail scrapings in Lane a I cannot distinguish them they could have come in fact from the same Source investigators know they have identified a killer but now they learn that concade has fled the country with the help of American police he's Tracked Down arrested in Miami and brought back the cannada under intense questioning Kincade admits to being at the girl's house the day of the murders but he denies killing the sisters and fingers Rohan Ranger as the murderer and Mastermind behind the Slavs K Kade said that Ranger is a mind controller that's what he told us the man's very powerful he can control your mind you do what he tells you to do when police Ra's apartment they find over 40 books stolen from a local library not of all these books comes Ninjutsu the art of invisibility which is a book about ninjas and essentially teaches you how to commit an [Music] assassination and sure enough ninju talks about using a knife as the weapon of choice to commit these killings police now think they know how Ranger enlisted kin Kade to join him in his vicious crime if you have to fix your pipes in the house you don't call the minister you call the plumber and I think that Adrien King Kate was the man for this job in his cousin Ranger had found the accom he needed Ranger needed conc to gain access to the girl's house because he wasn't welcome there anymore Bethany was the unwitting key to the plan police still don't know exactly what happened next but they do know that by the time Ranger and concade left the house the two young women had been slaughtered Rohan Ranger and Adrien concade were convicted of the murders of Jolene and bethney Samuels and sentenced to 25 years in prison with no chance of parole [Music] one thing is for sure we have two girls that did nothing in their lives to deserve this they lived fantastic pure prosperous lives with all the future in the world ahead of them and didn't deserve this when desire turned to Obsession murder became the ultimate form of control the stories on exhibit a are based on true cases the forensic scientists and investigators are the actual individuals who worked on the cases the names of the victims are fictitious the names of the guilty are real

Channel: Real Crime

Views: 312,454

Keywords: Real Crime, Stopwatch Gang, cadaver dogs, cold cases investigation, crime investigation, crime punishment, crime reconstruction, crime scene analysis, criminal behavior, criminal justice advocacy, criminal syndicate activities, criminal trio, documentary filmmaking, dubious forensic evidence, evading capture, evolution of crime detection, miscarriage of justice, notorious criminals, organized crime syndicates, prison system, smartest bank robbers

Id: TelF9lV5tgE

Length: 92min 56sec (5576 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 20 2024