Cold Cases | FULL EPISODE | The New Detectives

[Music] police find a frozen body in the arizona desert the chilling discovery sends investigators searching for more victims a small town a brutal murder and a killer who could be anywhere when all leads are exhausted the investigation focuses on a blurry surveillance photo when a young mother disappears detectives are left with few clues but slowly the evidence begins to point to a dangerous and twisted predator a lack of clues may cool down a hot investigation but there's no statute of limitations on murder months or even years may pass before forensics can spark a fire under these cold cases [Music] on june 3 1991 investigators from the costa mesa california police department pulled up to an abandoned car on the corona del mar freeway [Music] they were responding to a call regarding a missing person dennis hubert age 23. no one had seen or heard from her for almost 24 hours and that wasn't like her denise's best friend had found her car on the side of the road while searching for her [Music] investigators examined it closely but aside from a flat tire nothing seemed amiss the only personal article they found was a pair of pantyhose on the front seat denise preferred to drive without them though nothing in the car tipped investigators about what had happened detective ron smith concluded that denise ran into trouble soon after she had pulled off the road what struck us as unusual about the scene and concerned us right from the very beginning was that very near to her car there were emergency call boxes there were pay phones there were all night convenience stores none of which denise went to to call her parents or ask for help we knew right away that something was a mess something was wrong the last person who saw denise was her date from the night before she had dropped him off after a concert denise never made it home bright popular just graduated from college she wasn't the type to worry her parents by going off without a call or note [Music] her family and friends started to look for her the next morning after recovering her car the costa mesa police launched a massive search for denise hubert they notified law enforcement agencies across the country they followed up every clue every lead denise's friends and family put up posters and appeared on news programs begging for information as the months and years passed the tips dried up but police kept denise's case open and as active as they could every day we would do something with the denise huber case we'd review old leads we'd go over old reports again we'd look one more time at the photographs we never gave up even though we never really had anything good to work with after three years no one could tell her grieving family and friends denise hubert had simply vanished [Music] meanwhile more than 300 miles away in arizona's prescott valley authorities were grappling with a mystery of their own on july 9 1994 a woman went to buy paint at the home of a man she met at a swap meet while she waited for him she noticed a padlocked rental truck and the paint and chemical cans cluttering his yard she thought they looked out of place for such a respectable neighborhood and wondered if any laws were being broken suspicious she called a friend who worked for the police her friend thought it sounded like a clandestine drug lab which police find in the most unlikely spots he sent investigators from the yavapai county sheriff's department to check it out the rental truck with the california tags looked like it hadn't been moved in months the electrical cord snaking out of it and the paint cans all around reinforced the notion that this might be a mobile drug lab a check of the tag showed the truck had been stolen armed with a warrant police cautiously opened the cargo door [Music] inside was a freezer ready guys for opening up not knowing what it might contain they suited up in protective gear plastic bags obscured the contents but at the bottom of the freezer lay a pool of frozen blood carefully moving the bags aside the officers expected to find nothing more than a deer instead lieutenant scott mesher uncovered a horrific mystery initially when we opened the black bags and could tell that we had a human a frozen body with handcuffs behind the back ice crystals it was it was grim the homeowner still hadn't returned so police ran the license plates on the white pickup also parked in the driveway the owner was identified as john joseph pomelaro within an hour vamolaro and his mother pulled up to the house sheriff's deputies took camillero into custody charging him with stealing the rental truck they were anxious to find out more about the body in the freezer [Music] mrs familaro who lived next door told detectives that her son was a house painter which explained the paint cans she said the truck had been parked there about two months she didn't know anything about the freezer or its contents except that the electricity in john's house had been turned off for one day and he had asked to run a power cord from her house to the truck at the police station familiaro was polite but uncooperative he refused to answer any questions and asked to see his lawyer without any assistance from their suspect investigators would have to rely on physical evidence at the scene to identify the body in the freezer and to find out how it got there they charged vamolaro with homicide [Music] first of all we need to have a video the next day warrant in hand investigators entered familaro's house hoping to find information about the victim in the freezer in its frozen condition they couldn't even discern the victim's gender look through these things on the chair familiaro's house was crammed with his belongings this was the home of a man who never threw anything away if clues were here they'd be difficult to find after more than two weeks of searching investigators found several promising clues the first was a set of handcuff keys that match the cuffs on the victim [Music] the next clue took investigators by surprise two complete los angeles county sheriff's department uniforms [Music] in the garage the deputies found two boxes marked christmas but there was nothing merry about them inside officers found blood-stained women's clothing and a bloody hammer and nail puller they also found a pair of women's shoes the backs badly scuffed as though the woman who wore them was dragged and that wasn't all we did locate numerous female identifications that included social security cards i believe some driver's license and other identification obviously raising the concern of maybe we had additional victims [Music] yavapai county police had to face the very real possibility that john famalero was a serial killer arizona investigators looking into a murder had every reason to believe that there may be more than one victim to test that theory investigators brought in cadaver dogs to locate more bodies on john familaro's property the dogs trained to detect the slightest whiff of decay alerted their handlers several times officers dug up every spot and still found nothing but they never completely gave up the suspicion that the killer had struck before i just got that paperwork from costa mesa police followed up on every piece of id found in the christmas boxes much to their relief they found that each woman was alive and accounted for except one from costa mesa california her name was denise huber to confirm her id yavapai county forensic technician mike winney lifted a thumbprint from the thawing victim and compared it with the one printed on denise huber's california driver's license the prince matched identifying huber as the victim to authorities in arizona the name meant nothing but to costa mesa detective ron smith it was the news he had waited three anxious years to hear the call i received from lieutenant scott master from yavapai county was that he thought maybe he had a body identified as an east huber and asked us if we were familiar with the new zebra well of course i almost fell out of my chair when he mentioned the name now that she had been found investigators in arizona had to determine how she had been killed working with the frozen and decomposed remains presented a unique set of challenges to maricopa county medical examiner ann buhos in our environment to examine a frozen body is very unusual we deal 99 of the time with people who have been exposed to heat elements and that is more our area of expertise than someone who has been in a cold environment it took the body approximately two days to thaw where we could actually perform the internal examination on friday july 16 1994 yavapai detective scott mesher and costa mesa detective ron smith along with other officers gathered in the medical examiner's lab to observe the autopsy the cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma to the skull resulting in multiple fractures [Music] to identify the murder weapon investigators needed to evaluate the entire skull to see where and how the blows had been struck they called in forensic anthropologist laura fulginiti how many days are we looking at here reconstructing a person's skull is very similar to doing a jigsaw puzzle essentially you have about 50 pieces and you need to put them back into what you know to be the right composition it took full geniti two days to reconstruct the skull never losing sight of the fact that this victim was once a person and i remember standing in this very room thinking to myself how did you come to be in my sphere this is not right it's not natural for you to be here she determined that the victim had sustained more than 35 glows to the head the wounds were consistent with the hammer and nail puller pulled from the box in familaro's garage to be certain the lab ran tests [Music] technicians were able to establish a dna profile from the blood residue on the nail puller it matched the dna profile taken of the victim's own blood the match confirmed that they had found the murder weapon [Music] to build their case investigators had to retrace the events that led from the victim's abandoned car on a california freeway to john familaro's freezer in arizona discovered initially for as far as the search warrants at this point it was very important for both agencies the yavapai county sheriff's office and the costa mesa police department to work together and piece the evidence from california and arizona to one case one solid case in order to successfully prosecute this the costa mesa police department gathered information on familaro's activities during the time he lived in california they learned that he had attended the los angeles sheriff's department reserve but he couldn't make the grade and dropped out after just a few weeks he kept his uniforms which police found at his house further investigation led detectives to a warehouse in laguna hills 12 miles from where denise huber's empty car was found john familaro had stored some paint and supplies in the warehouse then moved everything out when he left the area in august 1992. 13 months after denise huber vanished investigators thought it was likely that familiaro had committed the murder here they hope to recover forensic evidence that would tie the killer to the crime and determine where the killer's trial would take place police searched the unit for evidence of the crime using luminol to expose traces of blood applied to a surface and viewed under an alternate light source luminol reveals blood stains invisible to the naked eye even traces left years earlier we found that the warehouse was huge but i wanted every square inch luminol for blood almost the very last bottle in the very last corner that we looked we sprayed luminol into the corner against the wall and all of a sudden the luminol just lit up this bright glow showed us we found what we were looking for technicians compared this blood to a sample taken from the victim in arizona they matched the forensic analysis gave detective smith of the costa mesa police the proof he needed to make the case the forensic science in testing the blood was absolutely critical number one it established that the crime occurred in california and that established jurisdiction it also positively identified that blood as denise it put denise at that scene vamolaro never confessed the forensic evidence spoke for him the investigators had successfully matched the blood in the california storage unit to the victim in arizona and that placed the victim within deadly proximity of john pamelaro [Music] authorities believe that huber pulled off the road with a flat tire spotting his prey john familaro approached under the guise of lending a helping hand [Music] he abducted denise huber in costa mesa california in the early morning of june 3rd 1991 familaro murdered her sometime later hid her body in a freezer trucked it to arizona and kept it until police discovered his crime three years later john familaro was sentenced to death he awaits execution on california's death row [Music] vamolaro hid his crime by keeping the body close to him other killers are not so conniving but they can be equally elusive it was a december evening in 1990 peggy phillips wondered why her husband dean was taking so long to lock up the launderette they owned in ozona texas it was just next door but he'd been gone 20 minutes [Music] she found him lying on the floor bleeding and barely conscious police and paramedics raced to save him peggy thought that dean must have fallen and hit his head but the paramedics could see that this was no accident dean phillips had been beaten nearly to death peggy watched as the paramedics loaded her husband into the ambulance it was the last time she saw him alive dean phillips died early the next morning december 26th the cause of death blunt force trauma to the head investigators determined that phillips had interrupted a burglary and paid dearly for it they found only one hard clue a single fingerprint lifted from a coin box left on the floor they sent the print to the texas department of public safety like small town police departments all over texas the ozona police depended on the dps crime lab for forensic services this time though the department of public safety came up empty the coin box fingerprint didn't match anything they had on file news of dean phillips's death spread through ozona crockett county chief deputy sheriff alton davis was determined to catch the criminal who had shattered the quiet of this little town we've got a population of probably three to four thousand people so it's a small town everybody knows everybody and it was it was a real shock to the community that something like this could happen in ozona the community stepped forward to help the investigation a witness reported seeing two local men wearing bloody clothes the night phillips was killed a warrant was obtained and their bloody clothes were confiscated before they had time to launder them brought in for questioning the men claimed they were hunters and that the blood was from a deer they had poached last night investigators were skeptical until they got confirmation from the dps crime lab the blood and the men's fingerprints didn't match the one lifted from the coin box at phillips's laundry the case's first promising tip amounted to nothing a clerk at a convenience store right off the interstate gave investigators their next lead got a couple minutes i can talk to you yes a man came in an hour before the murder and asked where the launderette was and we're just checking the neighborhood she described him as stocky with dirty blonde hair and a t-shirt with radio call letters he drove a beat-up blue van with a green door on the passenger side there may have been a passenger in the van investigators hope to see the suspect on the store's surveillance tape okay good okay okay so you have a good evening thanks a lot but the security camera was old the man's face was a blur neither the dps nor the fbi could enhance the image electronically the investigators were convinced they had their suspect on this tape but his image like their chances of finding him were dim how are you doing today as the investigation into the murder of dean phillips continue witnesses reported seeing a strange blue van in town the night of the murder some thought they saw two people in it sheriff alton davis believed that phillips's killer was a stranger just passing through town ozone is right on interstate 10 or more or less out in the middle of nowhere this is the first one we've had where the someone has came off the interstate and murdered one of our local people investigators knew the killer was probably hundreds of miles away by now and then they got the call a van matching the one described by the witnesses was stopped about 200 miles west of town davis sped to the scene we found an old gmc van light blue that had a dark passenger door on it dark primer colored and we took photographs of the van we talked to the there was a hispanic male driving it which didn't fit the description of our our suspect the case had run into another dead end reviewing the clues they'd gathered so far investigators realized that all they had to go on was a blurry surveillance tape and a store clerk's baiting recollection they needed some way to turn these hazy clues into solid information [Music] then they recalled karen taylor an experienced forensic artist with the special crimes service of the texas dps taylor had worked with the ozona police on missing persons cases she is a pioneer in the forensic art and science of facial reconstruction developing witnesses vague descriptions into recognizable faces of criminal suspects my function is to take some bit of information from a crime that occurs produce some sort of a visual image that can be put out in the media and hopefully it will trigger additional information that can be used to connect the crime to the victim or connect the crime to the suspect police sent taylor stills taken from the videotape but after she had evaluated the black and white photos she wasn't sure she'd be able to help so i had a look at those stills to see just what i could determine about the face it was very blurry the quality was was pretty poor so i could see that there wasn't much likelihood we could enhance that video electronically and it would probably boil down to my trying to just do some sort of a sketch based on what i could see taylor knew that while every feature might not be rendered perfectly the sketch's resemblance to the suspect would be strong enough to help the investigation well after years of doing this i've come to believe that the most important thing to capture in a face for a forensic artist to trigger recognition is getting the proportions right each of the component parts in a face each of the features the eyes nose mouth is important but it's not as important as the arrangement of those features on a face taylor wasn't sure the image had enough information for her to work from then she noticed a feature she'd overlooked the store clerk she had talked with the suspect face to face taylor hoped the clerk might provide the missing details she needed to sharpen the picture using the video stills i prepared as much of a drawing as i could maybe 85 percent uh done and then faxed it to the witness got on the phone with her and she was able to make some changes she said she wanted me to make the eyes look light make the lower face look more slim and i did that we hung up i spent about 15 minutes making those alterations and then i refaxed it to her and she checked it and said yes that's right so i was able to get the benefit of of her long-distance input over the phone and and using the facts here he was the most likely suspect in the murder of dean phillips the crockett county sheriff's office prepared a crime bulletin karen taylor's drawing of the suspect's face was circulated across the country and to every radio station where someone might recognize the call letters on the suspect's shirt taylor's drawing represented the investigation's last hope but when all the publicity brought no response the dean phillips murder case came to a dead halt the beating death of dean phillips looked like it was destined to go unsolved sheriff alton davis and his team had exhausted their last leads eventually we would reeled everybody out we were getting and the lead stopped coming in and we didn't have anything to work on and it just more or less went cold and we just had to sit until we got some other type of leads five years came and went without another clue or lead but peggy phillips was determined to bring her husband's murderer to justice she contacted a television crime show and asked if they'd run her story in august 1996 just over five and a half years after phillips was killed the tv show aired the story of his murder and featured karen taylor's drawing that's what got the phones ringing from around the country viewers called in leads texas ranger jerry byrne fielded the calls and directed the investigation one tip led him to paul wesley taylor a convict at utah's minimum security prison in draper ranger byrne contacted draper prison and asked for taylor's records and a photograph when he saw it burn felt that at last they had tracked down their suspect the photograph of paul wissett-taylor was nearly identical to a composite drawing that a dps artist had conducted back in 1991. initially i felt like it was too good to be true byrne sent taylor's records and fingerprint card to the dps they matched taylor's right ring finger with the coin box fingerprint after years without progress this was a giant step forward investigators went back to the original set of clues looking for more connections to the suspect they found out that taylor's brother worked at a radio station with the call letters seen on taylor's shirt they were now certain paul wesley taylor was involved with the murder of dean phillips but they wanted to know about the van's passenger a witness or possibly an accomplice to phillips's murder [Music] taylor's arrest records showed that his girlfriend had been with him at the time of his arrest in georgia georgia authorities located the woman her answers filled the remaining gaps in the case against taylor she told ranger byrne that they had traveled through texas during december 1990 and the tailor had pulled up outside of a launderette and gone in she saw him fighting and he returned to the van with blood on his shirt she she led investigators to a field where taylor had ditched his bloody clothes along with a stolen coin box they now had a credible witness who placed taylor in the launderette at the time of the murder utah extradited paul wesley taylor back to texas on september 15 1998 nearly eight years after the killing he pled guilty to the capital murder of dean phillips on the 21st he was sentenced to life in prison forensic artist karen taylor had turned a single blurry photograph into an image that helped unmask and apprehend a bald-faced killer when that photograph and drawing were presented they knew that it was paul wesley taylor that photograph and that composite drawing is what broke this case open investigators speculate that paul wesley taylor got off the interstate in ozona to get some food and gas short of money taylor got the idea to knock over the launderette after closing time dean phillips was in the wrong place at the wrong time in other cases tragedy stalks its victims august 16 1989 joe gilbreth finished work and arrived at his home in villanow georgia he was looking forward to spending the evening with his baby girl amber and his wife nikia he noticed that his wife's car was gone this was odd nikia was usually home fixing supper at this hour when he went inside he started to worry nikia would never let amber sit in her pajamas all day and there was no way she'd ever leave the baby in the house by herself the doors were unlocked didn't look like they had been tampered with here when nakia's family told joe they hadn't heard from her he called the police the walker county sheriff's department sent officers to investigate joe and his mother-in-law reported three missing items a blue telephone cord that had been ripped from the wall a bedspread that had a sheet stitched to one side and all of nikia's underwear based on what he found in the house detective pat bedford believed that nakia gilbreth's disappearance was more sinister than the simple missing persons case he was originally sent to investigate my first impressions are you know she was taken out here bound somebody fortunately was taking her from this residence when you tie that into the the fact that it was realized that a whole drawer full of her undergarments and lingerie was missing makes you think that we're dealing with on the serious crime here checked around see if there's anything missing by chance um joe gilbreth told the police that the day had started like any other house the alarm went off at 5 30. joe got up and got ready for work nikia went back to bed and by 6 a.m the house was quiet joe and the baby were the last to have seen nakia the squad car was stationed at the house in case she might return but nikian never came home on august 18 1989 the day after she had disappeared the walker county sheriff's department had little to go on we got a tragedy here we got we got a problem um at first no good leaves to follow up on uh her car had not been located she had not been located uh didn't appear to have any leads from talking to neighbors and searching the immediate area we had nothing at that point but that soon changed when nikia's mother found her daughter's car abandoned on a logging road a half mile north of the gilbreath house [Applause] technicians raised fingerprints all over the car but they belong to members of the gilbreath family [Music] officers found indications of a second car parked next to nakia's it was an ominous sign but the tire impression wasn't distinct enough to photograph or print nikia's mother noted that the baby quilt nikia always kept in the back seat was missing and that was it nothing at the scene offered a clue of what had happened to nikia or where she might be now still her family held out hope that she'd come back to them unharmed [Music] though investigators believed she was a victim of foul play they had no evidence and no suspects joe had passed a polygraph indicating that he wasn't involved all they had were a few missing items and an abandoned car but still no sign of nikia [Music] two days later a boy collecting empty cans along the highway made a crucial gruesome discovery [Music] the body was too decomposed for a positive visual id though it was a white female about nikia's size with the clothes and jewelry job had described dental records confirmed everyone's worst fears the autopsy determined that nakia had died from asphyxiation the examination also revealed marks around her wrists and ankles marks that could have been made with telephone cord but there was no other significant forensic evidence no hairs or fibers no fingerprints on the body nothing that might dictate the investigation's next step investigators considered a number of suspects but none of them panned out leads dried up the case went cold unfortunately we were going nowhere in the case we had no good leads no good suspects any tips that we got we did everything from roadblocks uh car to car house to house door-to-door searches searched the area thoroughly we weren't able to really locate anything that was helping us several months went by and we really weren't making any progress in solving this case you cannot let something like this go on you've got to be able to solve this case then four months after nikia gilbreth disappeared investigators heard about a similar case in nearby gordon county a young woman was abducted by an intruder while her child slept for 14 hours he forced her to model lingerie for him and assaulted her repeatedly then he brought her back home before police could identify the woman's assailant the case took a bizarre turn the investigation into the death of nikiya gilbreth had led to a similar account of a woman's abduction the connection was weak but it was their only lead two days after the assault the woman's father reported to police that he saw a strange man drop off a christmas tree at her house [Music] when investigators ran the truck's license plate they discovered that it was registered to james ray ward he worked for a nearby well-drilling company the woman picked out ward's picture from a photo lineup she recalled that during the day she was being held she told her assailant that she hadn't had a chance to get her child a christmas tree officers took ward into custody a short time later ward pled guilty to rape and was just starting a 20-year prison term [Music] in their check-in to his whereabouts prior to his arrest police learned that ward had drilled a well at the gilbreaths a year earlier then he returned to check on it in july 1989 just a month before nikia was killed ward's employer said that drillers were never sent back to check on wells ward had acted on his own the similarities between the abduction of his rape victim and the abduction of nikia gilbreth provided police with their only lead when officers searched the home ward shared with his wife and children they found a stash of women's undergarments that didn't belong to ward's wife detectives also uncovered a receipt for well drilling made out to the gill breaths but it was much more than a receipt i had directions the road name the mileage that would have led me right to the gilbreath residence the description of the victim he had written in there matched her description including an age of a daughter that the victim had then we had her first direct link from the murder to a suspect investigators also found items missing from the gill breaths home a bathing suit bottom a baby quilt a bed spread and a blue telephone cord in order to build the strongest case against ward investigators needed to prove premeditation they obtained a statement ward had written regarding the abduction he'd pled guilty to they wanted to compare this writing sample with the incriminating notes jotted on the gilbreth's receipt found in his home document examiner karen scott performed the analysis a handwriting comparison is basically a side-by-side comparison i look for features in the writing of one set and i see if i find the same thing in the other set and i'm looking for things like how the letters are on the piece of paper how they're formed how they're spaced scott looks for the idiosyncrasies the little details that give a person's handwriting its individual character for instance the f in the word fine it's very uh short very the very bottom of it the d and the word road and side are written opposite the way people are taught staff first and then the round part while this is not in and of itself a unique just to this writer it is not the way it was taught to be done after comparing the note with ward's known handwriting scott was confident that both documents were written by the same person [Music] investigators then examined the bedspread quilt and bathing suit bottom found in ward's house nikia's mother supplied the matching top which she found in the gilbreth's home because hundreds of identical bathing suits were manufactured and sold the prosecution had to prove that the bottom found at wards and the top found at the gilbreaths were parts of the same suit to make that assessment the lab had to compare the amount of fiber wear on both parts of the suit they concluded that the bottom matched the top the suit belonged to nakia gilbreth the investigation turned to the other two items the bed spread and the baby quilt before she even put them under a microscope trace evidence technician terry santamaria recognized their significance i knew that these types of bed spreads did not come commercially from the manufacturer with a sheet sewn to it so i knew that the item had been altered by somebody after determining that i then examined the baby quilt when i pulled the baby quilt out i immediately recognized that this was homemade [Music] santa maria called detective bedford these two items the bed spread and the blanket were absolutely unique one-of-a-kind items they were a direct link from the suspect's home back to the victim this evidence completed the case against james ray ward at ward's trial nikia's mother-in-law testified that she had stitched the sheet onto the bedspread to cover the rough cloth and had sown the baby quilt for her granddaughter the only way that they could have come into ward's possession was if he had gone into the gilbreth home and nakia's car and taken them [Music] ward never confessed but based on the evidence investigators pieced together a scenario for the murder on the morning of august 17th ward watched joe gilbreth leave for work when he saw it was safe he entered the gilbreth home and abducted nikiya i believe he pulled the telephone wires and the cord away from the wall i believe he bound her wrapped her in the quilt and on the way out the door i also took a drawer full of her underwear and lingerie is a trophy prosecutors called ward a meticulous organized stalker with a perverted mind investigators speculated that he fantasized that the women he was assaulting liked him that might explain why he returned to place a christmas tree at the door of one of his victims homes jurors convicted him of murder and in july 1991 after deliberating just three hours he was sentenced to death for murdering nakia gilbreth when the leads disappear and an investigation stalls that doesn't mean a case is closed in a homicide investigators have an arsenal of forensic techniques and all the time in the world to catch the killer [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: The New Detectives

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Keywords: The New Detectives, New Detectives, New Detectives Full Episode, Full Episodes, New Detectives Documentary, Crime, Crime Documentary, Crime Patrol, True Crime, True Crime Daily, Unsolved, FBI, FBI Files, Crime Stories, Crime Documentaries Full Episodes, Unsolved True Crime, Mystery, Solved, Investigation, Police, Criminal, Forensics, Forensic Science, Science, cold cases

Id: 4Q4bWOvvhR4

Length: 50min 19sec (3019 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 12 2020