Dead Men Do Talk | FULL EPISODE | The New Detectives

in Fairfax County Virginia police find a decomposed body but have no report of a crime in Fort Myers Florida a killer confesses to a grisly crime but the police cannot find a body a serial killer may go free unless police find the evidence to put him behind bars in each case forensic scientists must find proof of the crime in the bones of the murder victim using scientific studies of human decay to find out when the victim died so that killer may be traced hoping to prove there is no perfect crime that dead men do talk [Music] [Music] December 1993 in a wooded area near Washington DC a surveyor has made a gruesome discovery while mapping out a new suburb in the Virginia countryside he has stumbled on a body buried in a shallow grave [Music] officers from the Fairfax County Police Department arrived at the secluded area where the body had been the first homicide detective on the scene is detective Jerry Farrell I don't agree what do you got there's a human skull right over here [Music] the police assume it's a homicide but there are no immediate clues to help identify the victim and lieutenant Wilson he's there you want to take a look [Music] what you're gonna need is start mapping out the area secure this area here and then we're gonna need at least 50 foot area perimeter set up around this one the team of investigators will search a wide area scavengers have dragged parts of the body away the police meticulously documented of the body with photographs sketches and notes detective Dennis Wilson heads the cold-case squad investigating crimes where the trail of evidence has gone cold in such cases every clue every piece of evidence no matter how small may be the key to solving the crime and hair detectives Wilson and Farrell are fairly sure the victim is a woman since decomposition often leaves fatty residues the officers take soil samples near the body chemical analysis could help determine when the victim was buried well you only have one chance at a crime scene and you have to do it right the first time so you slow things down at that point there's no hurry the body's obviously been there for some time we're gonna try to gather all the evidence we can and make sure we don't miss anything there just may be one small little clue here that's gonna lead to either her identity or the identity of the perpetrator because the body is so badly decomposed the detectives make a call to nearby Washington DC dr. Douglas owlsley of the Smithsonian Institution is an anthropologist whose specialty is identifying human remains from soldiers who died in the Civil War to the modern-day victims of homicide he has testified in many criminal trials as a forensic scientist forensic meaning science used as proven in a court of law receiving the call from the fairfax county police he agrees to visit the site where the skeleton has been found [Music] in the usual case murder victims are assigned to medical examiners who dissect the body to find the cause of death but medical examiner's are accustomed to dealing with fresh bodies here only bones are left to tell the tale requiring the special skills of the anthropologist it takes three days of careful excavation to take the body from the ground back in his laboratory owlsley hunts for signs of the victims age sex and the manner of death it is immediately apparent that the victim is female the pelvic bone is wider in females to accommodate childbirth though Osley believes the victim was a young adult it's difficult to be more precise she does not show any signs of arthritis not not severe arthritis if you look at her spinal column there's only minor changes no development of arthritis her pubic bones are showing a stage of maturity that would be consistent with somebody that is about 30 years of age in a young person the sutures of the skull are plainly visible as a person grows older the sutures tend to fuse together in the victims skull the sutures are starting to disappear confirming that the victim was a young adult only 5 feet 1 inch tall she'd been stabbed repeatedly the knife blade leaving marks on the collar bone ribs and vertebrae looking at the pattern of cuts in the bone you can tell that the individual was was behind her at least some of the time she has knife wounds that penetrated in the back and the midline the cut that is in the in the clavicle and the collarbone there's many different positions that could account for that but one would be the individual reaching over her attaching a name to the body will not be easy to shed more light on this mysterious case police must determine the identity of the victim [Music] in fort myers florida police will have the opposite problem a crime without a body [Music] okay one moment sir Betty I have a man on the phone advise he just murdered someone in a police communication Center in Fort Myers Florida a 911 will lead to the discovery of a grisly crime dating to 1989 nine nine one what is your emergency and you did the caller reports a murder he has recently committed why did you he says he's thought of turning himself in but hasn't decided yet all right are you gonna wait there for us the 9-1-1 call is traced to a shopping center phone booth the operator tries to keep the killer on the line while a message goes out to police units in the area [Music] Lee County 211 165 a possible signal fire at Coral Gate shopping center for our children Candela Orange Grove in pond Ella officer Paul Rose monitors the call and finds no one at the shopping center phone booth where the call originated but less than a mile from the shopping center he has spotted a possible suspect the suspect had been walking hurriedly at the side of the road away from the direction of the shopping center the suspect whose name is Paul fly quickly admits he made the 9-1-1 call confessing murder [Applause] [Music] he is advised of his rights and taken into custody the previous night he broken into a house and strangled an elderly woman on the couch where she lay there is no sign of anything missing robbery had not been the motive lieutenant Jeff Taylor entering the house found the victim just as Cline have described her but he would soon find out that she had not been Klein's first victim Klein related to me that he heard voices and the voices made him to become angry and every time he became angry he had to kill someone and when he said that it indicated to me that perhaps there were other victims also and I asked him at that time if he had killed before and he said yes twice fine had murdered one other woman in a trailer of some months before but his first victim had been a friend named Danny Webster killed a year and a half earlier in August 1989 during Webster into the field to look for aluminum cans Klein had beaten him to death with a lead pipe a crime scene search unit scours the area where the killing allegedly occurred [Music] so if I get spin there Wyler we had information that we believed at the time that the crime was committed the original act of the homicide was committed in this field so what we did we did a grid search of this whole field and on doing that we located issue it's early to tell right now if it actually gone through the victim that we believe is a good possibility that it does therefore once we found the the shoe we have to treat it as evidence according to Klein's confession he had returned to the scene of the crime three days after the murder arriving at night to avoid detection he swam with the body to a marshy swamp island where he dismembered the corpse with an axe and a paring knife [Music] after disposing of Webster's body so thoroughly and getting away with his crime for a year and a half mine has now decided to confess the crime scene search officers find a small piece of bone photographed exactly where it is found but they will not find a body without a body police do not have enough evidence to convict detective Jack shale interrogated Klein under tight security Klein had once been a stop sign with his bare hands we needed a positive identification of the body although we had somebody telling us who they killed and they killed them we still have to prove who was killed how they were killed and when they were killed to the best we can it's the corpus delicti the body of the crime we have to be able to establish that yes this person night and that this person did it I don't know just I must actually hit him about I don't know maybe more than 200 times I'm not sure I just kept whacking at everything I didn't know what aids arms everywhere I could get it face I just his head their region was more or I actually had more anything but that was after he's already dead clines confession by itself is not enough to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt the police must find the body Klein pointed out the marshy Island where he says he left the dismembered quarters but even if police can find it it will be hard to identify after a year and a half in the swamp the case will go to dr. William maples of the University of Florida a world-renowned authority on the identification of skeletal remains in 1991 he led the team that Exuma the bones of President Zachary Taylor who died mysteriously in 1850 some historians say Taylor was poisoned making him not Abraham Lincoln the first American president to be assassinated after testing the dead president's hair and fingernails for poison doctor maples laid the body and the assassin theories to rest in the case of Paul Kline it is immediately clear to maples he is dealing with a possible psychopath totally unaffected by death well bodies in Florida tend to bloat very rapidly Florida is known for its sunshine and good weather especially in the area of Fort Myers where this took place so the first thing that our killer attempted to use was a paring knife it is very flexible it is light it may be sharp it may be serrated and may be very very effective sometimes in cutting up bones the so called Ginsu steak knife is amazingly flexible and yet will go right through bone if it's properly used so our killer sticks the knife into this bloated body and out pours all over him yellow and green discharge foul-smelling fluid and this is enough to really disturb anyone even if they weren't disturbed to start with but the killers use of a paring knife may be the key to identifying the victims remains and corroborating Klein's confession if we take a paring knife and rub along a stick or a bone or whatever the case might be you notice that the blade jumps and chatters this chatter produces a an interrupted type of cutting on the bone surface and we look for this evidence of chattering and that tells us how flexible or inflexible the blade is on the other hand if we take a good heavy bladed sharp knife and cut on the bone it doesn't shatter it simply shaves the bone and this is evidence of a heavier less flexible blade crime scene search officers arrived at the island where Klein left the dismembered body if they can find bones that were sliced with a paring knife they'll have strong proof that Klein's confession is real you're gonna earn this one Klein was to have accompanied the officers himself but in the boat going over to the island he'd been much too excited at the prospect of seeing his victims remains for their own safety the officers decided to search without Klein's assistance it's a serious mission for unlike his other crimes the murder of Danny Webster was vicious enough to send Klein to Florida's electric chair or else prove beyond all doubt he's a dangerous psychopath to be put away indefinitely he seemed like a normal person you didn't notice any psychological problems or anything but the more it went on and the more I realized he was telling me the truth and at these gory facts he was telling me really did happen and I'm beginning to think they don't get a real weirdo here they can do this and talk about it so calmly and so intelligently [Music] Klein had a nickname he didn't like because his arms extended out from his body as he walked kids made fun of him calling him Popeye he'd killed Danny Webster for calling him names repeating time after time it was because Webster had harassed him almost a little busy for that matter I need a little bit of something take my medication the island where Klein left the body is partially submerged and subject to changing tides the logistics of finding evidence are very difficult [Music] [Music] finally more bones are found [Music] the body is in pieces just as Klein had said how didn't you take this body apart leaders response was just like I always do I took off the left leg the left arm the head his right arm the right leg in a circular motion like that and he'd used a hatchet axe he told me where the axe was which was in another state him and his father had went to their home in another state and left it there before he came back pieces of bone found on the marshy Island are sent to the FBI for examination the FBI confirms that the bones show evidence of h't trauma an axe or hatchet had been used to cut the body apart but according to his harrowing confession fine had reserved special treatment for the victim's head you've gotta sit home with a paring knife and a head there was more or less like in pieces and I tossed it right on an embankment about 25 30 feet from the main roads and I stuck it there for like seed head there for life my guess is something like three and a half months he told me that he would tuck the head and kept it to come back visiting he would visit it every night talk to him and after about two weeks it got to the point where it was deteriorated to the extent that he didn't want it anymore so he discarded it Klein had carried the head around with him in a paper sack often engaging it in conversation spotting a police car on one occasion he panicked and threw the head into a waterway but he could not remember where a police dive team searches the area where Klein may have discarded Danny Webster's skull it is an area of murky waters frequented by alligators [Music] they find nothing but coconuts [Music] unless the head is found it may be impossible to identify the remains as those of Danny Webster here as in suburban Virginia the police must team up with science to bring a killer to justice at the Museum of Natural History in Washington DC tourists gaze at the wonders of the natural world they are unaware that a few feet away a storage area holds the unnatural work of a vicious killer police in Fairfax County Virginia have called on forensic scientist Doug Owsley to help identify the victim of a brutal homicide the body has decomposed only a skeleton remains House Lee has determined that the victim was a female from 27 to 34 years old she died from repeated stab wounds but who is she and where did she come from when you're when you're working with police cases and working on problems of human identification often when the remains come in to the laboratory or when you're involved in recovery the identification follows very quickly there's someone that's missing there are records that can be obtained dental records or medical records that you can compare against and you can get that person identified within a very short period of time but police in Fairfax County have found no immediate links to a missing person Asli we'll need every piece of evidence he can find to produce a life history of the victim to be matched hopefully with someone who disappeared as many as six years before [Music] personal effects found with the victim are minimal an inexpensive hair clip a hair pick her blue jeans had rotted away her synthetic underwear remained lightweight sandals indicate that the crime was committed in warm weather her hair was a light brown color as as determined from analysis of hair found at the at this at the site we know that our fingernails were painted from fingernails that were recovered at the site it was a dark glossy pink in color so there's a lot of details on the earrings found near the body is a fragment of human tissue the metal of the earring had protected it from bacterial decay the earrings are included in sketches distributed nationwide slowly painfully the haunting details of the victims life are coming into focus in the spinal column are signs of trauma depressions in the vertebra are evidence that the disks between the vertebrae have ernie aided the victim may have held a job that required heavy lifting [Music] she once taken care of her teeth but in the last year's of her life had allowed them to decay she had fillings on the front teeth to maintain her appearance but five of her molars are missing black stains on the teeth are evidence the victim was probably a smoker overall the the impression that she would have but it's an impression based not only on the dentition but perhaps some of the things found with it it would suggest that it was an individual that that did not have a lot of money that fairly fairly limited financial resources [Music] the information gleaned by Owsley is passed on to the Fairfax County Police Department where detective Bruce Guth heads the homicide branch in our jurisdiction many of the murders are committed by people who no know the victim in the normal case once the victim is known the police will talk to neighbors and relatives about the victims lifestyle who her friends were and her enemies a chain of evidence often will lead to the guilty party at that point in this case we don't know the identity so it makes it difficult to to really go much further till we know who it is detail by detail Fairfax County Police re-examine the evidence found at the scene a sketch of what the victim may have looked like is distributed to police across the country along with other details of the case even though this case is two years old I'm still actively pursuing leads that have occurred I received inquiries approximately two to three a month just recently I received one from Philadelphia New York City and Ohio despite the continuing efforts of the fairfax county police there is no match up of the murder victim with a missing person to facilitate the search for the victim's identity Doug Owsley provides data for a second composite sketch using an FBI computer program when you when you look at a skull and you're trying to assess what this individual looked like the basic form is going to be defined by the skull itself in relation to that then you take into consideration the clothing that's found for instance because the clothing helps you you gain an idea as to the size the weight of the individual for instance starting with an image of the skull the computer adds successive layers of detail markers indicate the probable thickness of facial tissue the measurements are based on population studies of similar age and gender hair found at the scene along with the plastic hair clip and hair pic suggest a possible hairstyle the victim had an overbite a gap in her front teeth and a cosmetic filling since these features would have been visible in life the victim is shown smiling in the final illustration but despite the pains taken to create a lifelike image there is still no response when the image is published nationwide part of the problem the police are still unsure when the murder occurred when discovered in 1993 the bones had been dry the flesh had long since rotted away you'd have to say that it would be at least a year and a half before that that this could have happened but in reality I think it could extend back further in time and so if we take the the maximum range one of the things found in a pocket was a quarter that dates to 1980 so looking at the time frame we were in terms of the extremes probably talking between 1991 and 1980 the problem of dating murder victims found long after the crime has occurred may soon have an answer at a body farm in Tennessee an unusual study is underway using the volunteered flesh and bones of the dead in Fairfax County Virginia police continue their search for clues to identify a woman found in the Washington suburbs in Fort Myers Florida a confessed serial killer has led police to a headless body barely identifiable as human in both cases work done at the Tennessee anthropology research facility or tarf will prove invaluable its director is dr. William bass a forensic anthropologist at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville his expertise is the human skeleton when a person is recently dead morphological features such as prints on the fingers and palms can help with identification when these features are gone and only the bones remain the case is one for forensic anthropology basses facility receives on average one body a week for identification parts of Tennessee have become a dumping ground for murder victims we don't think of the interstates as being avenues a crime but they're absolutely having use a crime so you can kidnap somebody in Chicago you can come down i-75 which comes down through Cincinnati through Lexington Kentucky into Tennessee the first real area that you get to on i-75 going toward Florida that is really rural is Tennessee and we get a lot of bodies thrown out there with so many bodies bass has invented a boxing system for storage every skeleton gets his own box so we you want to box them because if you don't they will get lost they will get dirty on the shelves surrounding him are over 2,000 skeletons sent to Bass's facility by Medical Examiner's around the state with the help of graduate students bass assists the police in determining the sex race and other identifying characteristics of unclaimed bodies but in doing his work bass became acutely aware there were no reliable statistics on rates of human decay he established near Knoxville an outdoor Preserve known informally as the body farm here he has planted not living things but dead human bodies left in the open to decompose it's an experiment that will tell him how bodily decomposition is affected by weather climate and the degree of exposure to the elements this is a body that we're studying the effects of the covering of the body that the maggots leave this body has been outside for a year maggots have eaten its inside away but left some of the skin for protection maggots don't like sunlight and what they do is they leave this as an umbrella to protect themselves from the Sun and so you get bodies like this that will have the covering on I'm holding the bones together although there are no internal organs left there at all the specimens used for Bass's experiments come from two basic sources those who have donated their bodies to science an unclaimed body sent to the facility by medical examiner's after the bodies have lain in the open to decompose they are brought back to the laboratory for analysis dissection will tell how their exposure to the elements has affected their skin bones and tissue these statistics will then aid police departments in determining how long a newly discovered homicide victim has been dead [Music] to keep out intruders with morbid curiosities security guards keep the body farm under tight surveillance bass has attempted to duplicate all the common ways in which killers dispose of their victims well we try to keep as honest a sitting as we can we try not to make anything artificial it's exactly the way it is in nature what we have here is a there's a lot of mobile that we have been looking at the decay rates of people in automobiles both in the passenger department and in the trunk a body placed in the trunk for observation has since been removed but its byproducts remain tiny pupil cases from which flies have emerged a matter of minutes after death has occurred flies are attracted to the body to lay their eggs the eggs will hatch into larvae or maggots that feed on the decaying flesh before turning into flies we can tell you that this individual has been in this trunk at least 21 days from the fly pupae that are present from the pupil cases that are present here in the back seat of the car another body has been removed yep again leaving a clue as to time of death hair mass what's called the hair mask falls off a dead body after a week's time vas has found that in enclosed vehicles the buildup of heat often accelerates the process of decomposition some of the bodies have been dead only a week well he hadn't gone very far will you know they're both at about the same stage aren't they [Music] on that bunny others are much older there are are some maggots right there but that maggot is frozen he's gotten away from the warmth to the body and didn't make it back to the body so they're a couple right there I'm gonna push this back just a little bit more here not really sure well you see there are lots of legacy there are hundreds and hundreds of maggots in there and they are either slowed down they're not they're not doing much right now because it's so cold each month bass sends bone and hair samples to the FBI for analysis the samples come from a number of different specimens in a variety of locales within the farm the FBI will study how time exposure to the elements and the environment in which a body is found may alter its DNA you can do DNA analysis on the maggots and they will produce the same DNA if the individual is has been on drugs the maggots will pick up those drugs you can tell from analysis of the maggot also the volatile fatty acids which are that the goo that you see there those are what I call the volatile fatty acids that leach out of bodies now we've been able to take this material and analyze that and determine the length of time since death up to about two years in other parts of the facility bodies lie in coffins above-ground drainage tubes allow the testing of fluids and air samples without opening the coffin lid this is nearby bodies are buried in coffins six feet underground with a culvert allowing access here bass and his associates study how subterranean burial affects the rate of decay since killers have been known to dismember their victims and scatter them around another area is set aside for body parts it is not always an exact science but dr. basses work the first of its kind will help the police with murder victims found long after the crime [Music] in the case of Danny Webster in Florida police have only part of the body the killer has done a thorough job of dismembering and scattering the remains filling in the grisly details of murder and mutilation will be the job forensic science at the Lee County Sheriff's Office in Fort Myers Florida Paul Kline has confessed to the murder of Danny Webster but the killer has carved up the body and disposed of its head the few bones found on a marshy Island are a year and a half old it may be impossible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt they are the bones of Danny Webster Kline had been relentless in attempting to conceal his crime before decapitating the body he had pulled out the teeth knowing they're often used to identify the victim he explained that instead of digging a normal grave type hole that he dug a round hole as if to put trash or something in it he set the victim down in it buttocks first and shoved him into the hole by his shoulders when he didn't go in all the way he jumped up and down on the body until he was able to get it deep enough into the hole that he thought he had it hidden and he pulled weeds and dirt over it and laid on his belly and his words were slithered back into the water like a big Gator and swam back home is Kline a psychopath or is he a man who is and planned the perfect crime okay a perfect crime let's think how about Jimmy Hoffa how far have we gotten on Jimmy Hoffa song we don't even know where he is how can we solve the crime if we don't know where he is you see so somebody I mean somebody's already thought of this is that you know if you leave the body it's a good chance you're gonna be caught because there's always a hair and fiber section of the FBI and the forensic anthropologist the world all over all my colleagues were out there trying to figure this out but if you don't have a body how do you know you've got a crime music detective Harry executed a search warrant at Klein's apartment it was soon apparent Klein may have learned the techniques of killing from books we found probably every true-life murder story that was ever written like Son of Sam the hillside strangler it was just a book after book after book from sparse remains forensic science must identify the body of Danny Webster if not the case may be lost in order to corroborate Klein's confession and make the case hold up in court anthropologist William maples will try to determine the age sex and race of the partial skeletons this is the shaft of the bone this is the epiphysis the end of the bone and they start from separate origins in a child and they slowly change shape as the epiphysis reached the end of their growth they become fused to the shafts of bone on the bones in this case Fusion is not yet complete maples is able to put the age of the victim between 17 and 23 the same age as Danny Webster [Music] determining sex is almost always a matter of studying the pelvic bones narrower in males than females the victim in this case was clearly a male but determining race will be more difficult especially with the head missing doctor maples uses the femur or thighbone to distinguish Caucasian and black in a Caucasian the femur is bowed enough to allow his knuckle to pass under in the case of a black individual the shaft tends to be much flatter and straighter and there is no anterior bowing the amount of curvature in the femur clearly indicated to me that we're dealing with a white male finally maples examines the bones for evidence of the chatter marks that a paring knife would leave if used to dismember the bodies killers by and large aren't stupid enough to use peri knives though we don't have a lot of evidence but the results are positive by the end of his examination maples has conclusive proof that the bones matched the description of Danny Webster the necessary corroboration of Klein's confession is in place for lieutenant Jeff Taylor the case is closed Paul Kline is presently in an institution in Chattahoochee Florida for mentally insane but in Fairfax County Virginia police have a tougher problem our murder victim remains unidentified a killer may go undetected free to kill again more than two years have passed since the discovery of a female body in the Virginia countryside near Washington DC Fairfax County investigators including detectives Jerry Ferrell and Dennis Wilson have sent out extensive information on the case including descriptions of the victim dental charts and a description of some but not all of the wounds discovered by forensic expert Doug Owsley persons have been known to confess crimes they did not commit having learned the details of the crime from public sources by withholding certain information the police can be sure when a confession is fabricated or genuine far from having a confession police in Fairfax County after two years of searching missing person files still do not know who the victim is even today we think a lot about her and are hoping that through the facial reproductions that have been done that someone might be able to recognize her might be able to contact the police and offer new insights because this is this is somebody that we need to get identified and we certainly need to do in order to hopefully prevent this from happening again find out who did this we've sent hundreds of leads out hundreds of posters we're going to probably revise this again at least once or twice a year we try to cover it on the TV stations to media we try to get the newspapers interested to run the picture we want not only the artists renditions but we also run pictures of the clothing this is no way a case that's just sitting on a shelf and nothing being done with a growing population and more and more people on the move many crimes may never be solved victims like the one found in Fairfax County her friends and relatives unaware of her death may remain unidentified her killer free to kill again I think that homicide investigations are getting a little more difficult the national trend is more stranger on Stranger MERS as in past years it was family members domestic kind of murders nationally there's more stranger stranger murders and forensic becomes a very important part of the investigation was this the work of a serial killer Doug Owsley believes not the body was buried in haste the killer lacking the tools to dismember it so it would never be found serial killers like Florida's Paul Klein are far more efficient you don't gain necessarily that same sort of sophistication in this case certainly it led to a tragic end but in terms of accomplishing what he set out to do he was he was much less prepared on the other hand he was able to take someone's life and he's been able to get away with it all these years and so so there's there's just some piece that we haven't been able to put together to get on this trail yet despite the obstacles to solving the case detectives in Fairfax County have not given up somebody sooner or later is going to talk about this that's one of the premises of a cold-case squad that relationships are changing and technologies changing chazar become more advanced I'm optimistic that this case could get solved we keep working at it chipping away at it eventually it's going to kind of unfold oh yeah i optimistic leave we're gonna do it sometimes things just take a little bit longer that's all William maples for one believes that few killers escape detection no no of course not they don't play by our rules they they will take chances do things that we wouldn't do do they just don't play by the rules and that's helpful to us because that means that they make longer stakes by taking chances they invariably you know pinnacle thrill is a big element and thrill means that they're taking chances gotta love them more chances that take more chances we have of catchin [Music] you

Channel: The New Detectives

Views: 1,182,591

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, danny webster, Fairfax County Jane Doe, jane doe, cold case

Id: v6KtGHkzAM0

Length: 51min 10sec (3070 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 16 2019