Material Witness | FULL EPISODE | The New Detectives

canadian police are on the hunt for a missing woman though all indications suggest murder they must rely on a single strand of animal hair to prove it [Music] when an ohio woman vanishes suspicions swirl around her husband what police lack is hard evidence in missouri a man is found brutally murdered to catch his killer police must piece together his final minutes [Music] sometimes the murder suspect is immediately apparent but the proof remains elusive when there are no witnesses to speak for a victim forensic scientists must transform the smallest clue into a material witness [Music] tucked away in the gulf of st lawrence in the southeast corner of canada lies the remote and sparsely populated prince edward island on october 7th 1994 the royal canadian mounted police or rcmp responded to a complaint about an abandoned vehicle found on private property when the constable arrived he discovered the car resting a few hundred yards off a private road no tags were present 41 to base a check on the vehicle identification number revealed it was registered to a woman named shirley duguay number ig4 ab69 police arranged to have the vehicle impounded and then began trying to track down the owner but when the woman failed to return their calls detectives decided to go to her address there they were met by shirley duguay's father and her children's babysitter the news of the abandoned car concerned them [Music] surely they said had not been heard from in some time the babysitter said that she last saw the 32 year old mother of five four days earlier shirley was leaving to run some errands she never mentioned where she was going she said goodbye and promised to be back in a few hours for rcmp inspector alphonse mcneill the story had raised a troubling question we wondered why they didn't report her missing they said that they were concerned that an ex-common-law spouse by the name of douglas beamish who she had had three the three young children with would end up getting the children if social services found out that she was missing or gone so they tried to hold back that information as long as they could hoping that they would find her for investigators the time for waiting was over fearing that harm may have come to shirley de gay police processed her abandoned vehicle for clues what they found was not encouraging dozens of tiny reddish-brown stains tested positive for human blood and barely visible blood stained patterns found on the windshield [Music] and larger ones on the seat were consistent with having been caused by someone being punched or bludging there was blood in the vehicle shirley dugay had been missing for four days so we were concerned that shirley duguy had met some form of demise in that vehicle investigators returned to the area where the abandoned car had been found for hours the search for clues to the young woman's fate turned up nothing then 500 meters from where the car was discovered investigators found something it was a pillow stained with what appeared to be blood and a short distance away lay a blood-stained t-shirt a shovel was also found nearby all of the findings pointed to murder and the shovel led police to believe that shirley had likely been buried somewhere close by but a thorough search failed to produce the victim's body now police wanted to speak with a man who had the most to gain from her disappearance her ex-common-law husband and the father of three of her children doug beamish admitted that he and shirley's relationship had been troubled in the past and he realized that her family probably blamed him for her disappearance [Music] but he insisted he knew nothing about him for the sake of the children he and shirley had managed to work out their problems he said he last saw her a week or so earlier he had been having car problems and surely offered to give him a ride to a job site where he was employed as a construction worker on the way there they had a pleasant conversation about their kids and planned to speak more later she then dropped him off at the site and the two said goodbye [Music] he hadn't heard from her since doug beamish sensed that something was bothering shirley he speculated that she had left town to visit some friends in toronto but it turned out that no one there had heard from her in some time [Music] a woman who had been following the case in the media believed she had important information this lady called she said you know i remember back around the time that shirley dugay went missing i saw a car similar to hers on a road called the allen road which would be about 20 kilometers away from where we found the car i remember it was in the evening it was it was dark i saw two people on the side of the road a tall man a very small woman they appeared to be arguing and i just went drove by and i don't know if it's any good to you or not the woman couldn't be certain she had in fact seen shirley duguay still the information was enough for police to search the area where the caller had seen the couple but to cover the several square miles they knew they needed help personnel from the canadian army agreed to participate in the search for several days their efforts turned up nothing but then they found something that seemed out of place one group came across a white plastic bag we had a police officer with every group of searchers from the military the police officer seized the back the search of the area failed to produce any additional evidence [Music] at the crime lab examiners carefully removed the contents of the plastic bag they recovered an old pair of white tennis shoes [Music] there was also a large man's jacket stuffed inside several fibers and a single white hair were recovered [Music] but further scrutiny revealed the presence of tiny stains that tested positive for human blood based on the information provided by the witness police believed it had originated from shirley duguay now they needed to prove it but there was a problem we didn't have shirley dugay so we needed to be able to develop a dna profile the way we did that's what's called in some cases reverse paternity we took a sample from her father her brother and her two sons though everyone's dna is unique a genetic family resemblance exists among blood relatives [Music] when the genetic profiles were compared examiners concluded that the blood found on all of the evidence had originated from shirley duguay [Music] though the 32 year old mother's whereabouts remained uncertain all the evidence suggested she had been the victim of a violent crime police on canada's prince edward island continued searching for missing 32-year-old mother of five shirley duguay though efforts to find her had gone unsuccessful authorities had found clues suggesting she had met with a violent fake among them was a man's jacket found stained with blood that had originated from shirley looking for clues as to who might want to harm the young mother officers from the royal canadian mounted police questioned shirley's friends they all believed that shirley's ex-husband doug beemish was somehow involved in the disappearance [Music] recently shirley had started dating again that had enraged her possessive and jealous ex-husband now that she's with somebody and doug beamish had a history of violence okay when was the last time you saw those guys but the friend didn't recall if beamish owned a jacket like the one found with shirley's blood on it doug beamish was emerging as the prime suspect in shirley dugay's disappearance [Music] but so far investigators had no physical evidence to prove it but you know without that jacket being able to tie it to someone we don't have much how did you make out then they got a break we've got something my dentist came back uh they found some white cat hair on the inside of the jacket and all i could think about all the way down here was beamish and his white cat his house that was all rcmp inspector alphonse mcneill needed to hear we knew that he had a white cat and there were white hairs in the jacket so the process then was to find a lab that could examine these if we were able to seize from blood from the cat with a warrant in hand police and a local veterinarian returned to doug bemish's house the suspect continued to deny any involvement in shirley's disappearance and claimed that he didn't own a jacket like the one stained with her blood veterinarian though it seemed like a long shot authorities took possession of his cat snowball hopeful they could somehow establish a genetic link to the hair found on the bloodstained jacket blood and hair samples were collected from beamish's cat but now investigators had to find someone who was an expert in analyzing cat dna at the national cancer institute in frederick maryland they found one there biologist dr stephen o'brien has looked to the feline genetic code for help in medical research when contacted he agreed to help canadian police [Music] but dr o'brien and his team never imagined that by cracking the feline genetic code they might also help crack a baffling criminal case the request to match a cat's dna was unique in medical and legal history first examiners generated a genetic profile of the white hair pulled from the bloody jacket once completed the results were then compared to the profile generated from the samples taken from snowball what we discovered was that the genotype was identical to what we had seen in the jacket hair so we were pretty sure that the jacket hair had come from a cat which had the same genotype as snowball though the scientists felt confident about the results they could not be absolutely certain of them [Music] it was possible that the few thousand cats roaming on the isolated prince edward island shared a common ancestry to find out biologists needed to generate more dna profiles of other cats on the island we had to determine what the status of the population was so that we could make the calculation of how likely it was that we were wrong in in pronouncing a match examiners went to work developing the genetic profiles of 20 randomly selected cats on the island [Music] when o'brien compared the results he found that none shared a dna signature similar to snowballs in fact the odds that the hair found on the jacket had not come from beamish's cat were 45 million to 1. [Music] through snowball authorities had established a link between doug beamish and a jacket stained with his ex-wife's blood [Music] but inspector alphonse mcneill wasn't satisfied next he obtained a warrant to collect impressions of the suspect's feet [Music] now he hoped to tie the suspect to the pair of white running shoes found with the jacket we thought well if we can put those running shoes on the feet of douglas beamish somehow that would be pretty solid evidence besides his cat dr keith bettles a forensic podiatrist received the evidence he began by creating plaster casts of the suspect's feet in order to reveal all of the unique characteristics people's feet are unique because we walk on them all the time we have lots of different stresses lots of different forces on our feet feet are practically as individual as fingerprints the casts of beemish's feet lined up perfectly with all of the wear patterns observed on the insoles of the white shoes [Music] a single strand of cat hair and a discarded pair of shoes had given investigators the evidence they needed to implicate doug beamish in the disappearance of his ex-common-law wife [Music] then seven months after shirley duguay went missing badly decomposed human remains were discovered buried in a remote wooded area dental records later confirmed that the victim was shirley dugay and the medical examiner classified her death as a homicide a short while later douglas beamish was placed under arrest and charged with first degree murder [Applause] investigators believe that beamish couldn't handle shirley duguay dating other men somehow he manipulated her into giving him a ride in her car and directed her to a remote spot [Music] once there he beat his ex-common-law wife to death he then buried her body in a remote area and abandoned the car douglas beamish was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison no place is immune from violent crime and even the friendliest towns have their problems mansfield ohio has been called one of america's most livable cities which makes what happened here all the more surprising on january 2nd 1990 a woman came in to speak with mansfield police [Music] she was concerned that something had happened to her friend 44 year old noreen boyle when she last saw her friend a few days earlier noreen was shaken and visibly upset her marriage of more than 22 years was falling apart [Music] and not only was her husband moving nearly 200 miles away to erie pennsylvania but he would likely take the couple's two children with him noreen was devastated when she tried to contact her noreen's husband a prominent local physician said noreen packed up and left town after a fight [Music] but the friend couldn't believe that noreen would walk out on her two children mansfield police agreed to look into the case and their first step was to question noreen's husband dr john boyle [Music] when lieutenant david messmore arrived at the residence he learned that john boyle was out of town john boyle's mother explained that he had driven to erie pennsylvania a few days earlier where he was opening up his new medical practice [Music] a few days earlier and she was watching the couple's children until her son john returned home the woman excused herself to check on the boyle's baby daughter then the couple's son approached the detective [Music] he said he was afraid something bad had happened to his mother but before he could explain his grandmother i'm returned sorry i have no more information when she saw what was happening she ended the interview and asked the detective to leave i really have nothing more to tell you i really need to have evie the encounter troubled police and lieutenant mesmore couldn't ignore that dr boyle had left town around the same time his wife was reported missing i'm not sure where it's at but he soon learned that the reason for the doctor's trip to pennsylvania checked out he had been hired by a very large medical corporation in erie pennsylvania so he was basically traveling back and forth between mansfield and erie for some period of time but where was noreen boyle later that evening detective messmore returned to the residence [Music] his visit had been anticipated [Music] dr boyle's lawyer answered the door you uh you represent dr boyle i do oh okay is he home right now well his client had in fact returned home from pennsylvania but because of the strain caused by the impending divorce dr boyle did not wish to discuss noreen with police all right well i'll get with you it wasn't the response investigators expected i was somewhat stunned that in the event of a missing person in your family you would hire an attorney to represent you when there's no accusations or even any allegations of of wrongdoing or or even criminal matters involving the family so that was certainly a very unusual situation to find out what dr boyle might be trying to hide police questioned his friends and co-workers professionally all agreed dr boyle had an impeccable reputation [Music] but personally he was known to be a womanizer and rumored to be involved in numerous affairs in fact one of his alleged mistresses was pregnant and everyone speculated that the child belonged to dr boyle though that made him a bad husband it didn't mean he was capable of physical violence [Music] in fact only one person seemed to believe otherwise and that was the boyle's son concerned for the child's well-being lieutenant mesmore caught up with him after school the child was eager to tell his story he said that the night before his mom disappeared the sound of his parents arguing outside his bedroom woke him up he heard a loud thud and then there was silence a few seconds later his dad peeked into his room the boy was afraid and pretended to be asleep the next morning his mom was gone his dad told him that she packed up and left but he didn't believe his mom would leave without saying goodbye did you have a conversation with your dad though police had no evidence that a crime had been committed they began to theorize that the noise heard by the child might have been the sound of his own mother being assaulted or worse police in mansfield ohio continued their search for missing mother of two noreen boyle [Music] and now they theorized that her husband dr john boyle was somehow involved though police had no hard evidence that a crime had taken place they were able to obtain a warrant to search the boyle's ohio residence using luminol a chemical that reacts to the proteins found in blood technicians began scouring the house but their efforts failed to turn up any evidence of a violent crime still investigators persisted to learn more they contacted authorities in erie pennsylvania where dr boyle was setting up his new medical practice mill creek township police department pennsylvania detectives tracked down a real estate agent there who had recently sold a house to dr boyle and a pregnant woman who introduced herself as his wife she recalled that dr boyle was particularly interested in the home's concrete basement floor he said he was eager to tear it up in order to build a playroom for his children he offered to pay the asking price as long as he could take possession of the house immediately [Music] the real estate agent turned over the sales agreement which was signed by both the doctor and his wife pennsylvania authorities forwarded a copy to mansfield police lieutenant david messmore in that copy it was noted that dr boyle signed it and also an end sherry boyle and checking further into the background it was quite obvious that noreen noreen's name was not sherry for a middle name dr boyle had purchased the home with a woman pretending to be his wife investigators subpoenaed the suspect's most recent credit card statements they learned that he had used his card to rent a jackhammer and to purchase indoor outdoor carpeting and a load of concrete suddenly all of the pieces were adding up i had the feeling and very strong suspicion that the body would be in that location pennsylvania authorities issued a warrant to search the basement of dr boyle's new home [Music] beneath some shelving and the indoor outdoor carpeting they found a badly poured patch of concrete it was roughly the size of a makeshift grave a crew was called in to dig up the concrete floor after some time they recognized the unmistakable smell of a decaying body then a few feet down they discovered a tarp and inside were the badly decomposed remains of a human body after carefully excavating the grave the remains were transported to the medical examiner's office a watch and other pieces of jewelry worn by the victim matched the description of those worn by noreen boyle and dental records confirmed that the victim was in fact the 44 year old mother of two noreen had been savagely murdered [Music] on january 26 1990 almost a month after his wife disappeared dr john boyle was arrested in ohio for suspicion of killing noreen despite the evidence against him the doctor maintained his innocence [Music] that seemed ridiculous to investigators to ensure a conviction they needed an eyewitness or physical evidence directly linking him to the homicide [Music] and so far they had neither it was possible that dr boyle could get away with murder but then nearly a week after dr john boyle's arrest a mansfield ohio resident made a strange discovery a pile of concrete had been dumped on the remote property the field was nearly 200 miles away from where noreen boyle's body had been unearthed but the man had followed the case in the media and thought there might be a connection a crime scene technician was dispatched to the scene after photographing the area the concrete was collected into evidence police later determined that the property was owned by a close friend of dr boyles the doctor had been there on numerous occasions [Music] but to prove murder police now needed to show that the concrete found in ohio had originated in the suspect's pennsylvania home police had found missing 44 year old noreen boyle buried in the basement of her husband's new pennsylvania home [Music] though investigators had a strong circumstantial case against her husband they hoped a pile of concrete found in an ohio field could physically link him to the murder the samples collected from the field along with concrete taken from the crime scene were sent to ctl engineering in columbus ohio [Music] there lab supervisor larry piscitelli is an expert in analyzing the microscopic nature of rocks and concrete without being told where the individual samples had come from he was asked to determine if any of the concrete pieces had originated from the same source [Music] to analyze the internal structure of the concrete the samples are cut into cross-sectional pieces using a diamond tip saw once completed the surfaces are smoothed and polished then piccitelli subjected the evidence to a high-powered microscope concrete is a mixture of stones gravel and sand called aggregate bound together by a cement paste and some trapped air with the help of a computer piscitelli measures and counts each of these components to the average eye all concrete looks pretty much alike but in fact each chunk has a unique story each piece of concrete is usually different because the components vary slightly even if they come from the same load of concrete two different samples from the same truckload can be different because the percentages of the air voids the small and trained or entrapped air voids can be slightly different piscitelli was unable to find significant similarities between most of the samples but when he analyzed the results he found that two of the pieces stood out from the rest they shared the exact same number of unique components these two pieces of concrete had some unique characteristics that were peculiar just to those two pieces of concrete and based on all the data and analysis the numbers being exactly the same i was able to show that those two pieces of concrete came from the same structure of the two samples that matched one had come from the pile of rubble found in mansfield ohio the other was collected in the basement of the suspect's new home in erie pennsylvania police now had enough to charge dr john boyle with murder police believe that john boyle murdered his wife in the couple's home in order to start a new life with his pregnant mistress after the kill he drove her body to pennsylvania and buried her in a grave he had dug in the basement of his new home investigators theorized he then returned to ohio and dumped the leftover concrete on his friend's property dr john boyle was convicted of aggravated murder and abuse of a corpse he was sentenced to 20 years to life [Music] john boyle thought he'd buried all evidence of his crime [Music] but in fact the trail of evidence spanned 200 miles other murders are more local but the road to solving them can be just as long in harrison county missouri on june 26 1995 a farmer out for a walk noticed a foul odor at first he thought that maybe one of his livestock had died but the reality was much worse hidden among some overgrowth lay the lifeless body of a man after receiving the 9-1-1 call dispatchers contacted officers of the major case squad a group of law enforcement personnel from several neighboring jurisdictions bethany police chief george martz was among the first to respond to the scene we had no idea when we arrived who the victim was there was no identification on the body that we were able to determine at that time but the manner in which he died was clear he had been shot several times police recovered an empty box of ammunition and a few feet away they found several spent shotgun shell casings then sheriff greg kuhn from the nearby grundy county sheriff's department arrived at the location he believed he recognized the victim as a local resident by the name of al pinegur after i looked at the body i felt that it might have been al pinegur who i had dealt with in the past in grundy county really couldn't tell for sure but it just appeared to me that might be who it was unsure what was evidence and what was roadside trash investigators collected numerous items scattered around the area they found and collected a small plastic clock on the back was torn adhesive with tiny synthetic fibers clinging to it they also located a single strand of brown leather lying in the middle of the road police hoped that somewhere among the debris were clues that could explain this brutal murder at autopsy the medical examiner confirmed that the victim had died as a result of several 12-gauge shotgun blasts he'd been shot twice in the back and once in the face the victim's fingerprints were lifted then passed on to harrison county police [Music] investigators requested al pinegur's fingerprint card which was on file in grundy county when they compared those prints with the ones taken from the homicide victim they found a perfect match now detectives from the major case squad had to figure out who wanted al pinegur dead [Music] soon they got their first break [Music] police learned that the victim had been reported missing a few days before his body was discovered okay thank you the report had been filed by his fiancee police immediately arranged for an interview the victim's fiancee told detectives that she and al had been living together for some time she said that she last saw him a few hours before he went missing [Music] she had left the house to go run a few errands al said he was going to cut the grass and do some work around the house he hadn't mentioned any plans to leave that day recently she had been trying to help him overcome a drug problem he had been doing his best to stay far away from his drug dealing usually stay in friends middle of the lawn she suspected however that he had seen some of them that day [Music] when she returned home later that afternoon she passed a pickup truck coming out of her neighborhood she didn't see al in the truck but she knew the vehicle belonged to a couple that he used to deal drugs [Music] she believed al may have been ducking down to avoid being seen when the fiance arrived home she discovered that al and his 12-gauge shotgun were gone the information provided police with their first real lead they ran a background check on the couple identified as john middleton and his girlfriend maggie hodges middleton had an extensive criminal record mostly involving drug related offenses to find out why he may have wanted to harm al pinegar police tracked down middleton's known associates one informant described middleton as an extremely unstable and violent person he said that as a result of police efforts to crack down on local drug dealers john middleton had become increasingly paranoid he threatened to kill people he did business with if he found out they were cooperating with authorities no one doubted him for a minute everyone was afraid of him [Music] all of the information led police to suspect that middleton's paranoia had likely led to the murder of al pinegur [Music] and they hoped that somewhere among the shotgun shells and the assorted litter collected from the crime scene was the means to prove it police in harrison county missouri believed that a local drug dealer and his girlfriend were responsible for the brutal shotgun slaying of 29 year old alfred piniger [Music] to prove it investigators needed to physically link the suspects to the crime scene though several potential clues had been found there an empty box of shotgun shells looked to be the most promising lead a price sticker found on the box led investigators to the store where the ammo had originated an employee there pulled recent sales records according to receipts several boxes of shells were bought on the day of the murder the clerk recalled that two men and a woman had come in together to make the purchases she also remembered something else a few hours after the purchase two of the three customers returned to the store they had unused cartridges and wanted to return them for a refund the clerk didn't recall seeing the other man who had been in with them earlier when shone photographs she picked out al pineager john middleton and maggie hodges as the three who bought the boxes of ammo earlier that day did she come back a second time and she identified middleton and hodges as the two who came back to return the unused ammo though the evidence didn't prove murder it was enough for police to obtain arrest warrants believing that middleton and his girlfriend were capable of great violence police cautiously approached the house they shared together john middleton was quickly subdued moments later maggie hodges was also taken into custody after the suspects were removed from the scene police began searching for proof of murder inside middleton's pickup truck they collected a fringed brown leather jacket as the search continued technicians found a potential clue bethany police chief george martz we took a piece of the dashboard from the middleton truck that had a sticky substance on it and on that sticky substance were fibers uh those fibers appeared to match the clock we found at the crime scene so we removed a piece of the dash the entire dash and sent that to the lab for analysis all of the evidence was forwarded to the missouri state highway patrol crime lab located in jefferson city there criminalist kathleen greene worked the case [Music] almost immediately she noticed that the fringes on the brown leather jacket appeared identical to a piece of brown leather found at the crime scene i looked at the jacket to see if there was any fringe missing from it and did find an area where there was a piece of fringe missing i then compared the question into the fringe to the question area on the jacket to determine if they if it was originally attached to it though the pieces lined up well green was unable to conclusively state that the piece of leather had in fact come from middleton's jacket she turned her attention to the stick on clock found near al pinegar's body when she compared the adhesive on the back of the clap to the adhesive stuck to middleton's dashboard she found numerous similarities it was the same size it had the same coloring they were both made of the same type of material when the torn edges of the two pieces were placed side by side under a comparison microscope examiners found a match next fibers found on the stick on clock were compared to carpet samples collected from the vehicle criminalist jenny smith found one consistency after another we determined that the fiber from the clock face this would have been considered the question fiber was similar in physical and chemical composition to the fiber from the suspect vehicle therefore we would conclude that this fiber question fiber could come from this vehicle when confronted with the evidence middleton was uncooperative [Music] but his resistance didn't matter police had pieced together the motive behind the murder my belief is that mr middleton thought alfred pinagar was about to rat him out to the police department and to law enforcement authorities and mr middleton was not going to allow that to happen but middleton was wrong the victim had made no attempt to contact authorities [Music] police believe that on the day of the murder john middleton and maggie hodges drove to al pinegar's house they asked him to go target shooting and he agreed what he didn't know was that he was the intended target at some point however that became a clear started inside the car pinnager escaped but he didn't get far [Music] john middleton was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death maggie hodges pled guilty and was sentenced to 50 years in prison it takes motive and opportunity to commit a murder and it takes hard evidence to solve one [Music] when clues are few forensics experts provide the know-how to turn the most ordinary object into a material witness [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

Id: aRBpSRnySQ0

Length: 48min 54sec (2934 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 12 2021