Solving a 13 Year-Old Cold Case: The Mysterious Murder of Leslie Wilco | Exhibit A | Real Crime

foreign of forensic science the science of crime where a suspect's guilt or innocence can hang on a single piece of evidence [Music] [Music] [Music] are you coming to crimecon UK this year I'm onidorah Townsend I'm a criminologist and I'm going to be there talking in not one not two but three sessions book your tickets now and join me at Crown con UK June 10th and 11th see you there how important are breakthroughs in science the following case could not have been solved without the most advanced crime tool of the 20th century exhibit a DNA Leslie Wilco was a top student who chose not to go to college so she could pursue a career as an actress she saw becoming a pro football cheerleader as a stepping stone to getting a theatrical agent on that Thursday night in 1982 she'd been at cheerleading practice afterwards the whole cheerleading squad went to a nearby pub around midnight Leslie caught a lift to the subway with one of the other cheerleaders they'd gotten lost which is why she ended up on the last subway and the last bus for safety reasons Leslie sat at the front and talked to the driver was very friendly it was his last run before heading back to the garage he asked her if she'd like to stay on and he'd drop her off on the way back they'd have more time to talk but she was anxious to get home Leslie Wilco only lived five houses away he only got As far as the first house [Music] a neighbor found her at six in the morning and called police [Music] her body was found in what is called the surrender position today identification officers collect evidence and photograph the crime scene back in 1982 detectives did it themselves their work would prove invaluable I recall looking at the scene being concerned that had been exposed to the elements for a period of time from an investigative perspective we had a weak crime scene there wasn't a lot of physical evidence tying the killer to the crime scene there weren't fingerprints left at the scene that we were able to use to identify the killer the body itself is like a second crime scene so detectives hope the autopsy will give them added Clues to the murder [Music] there were various abrasions or scratches on the surface of the neck as well as some contusions or bruises in addition there were the internal injuries that were documented including multiple bruising scattered across the both sides of the neck these are very typical for manual strangulation semen stains in and on her body confirms she's also been sexually assaulted a forensic biologist will find matching stains on her jumpsuit the scrapes on her back and arms suggest she was assaulted against a rough surface Consulting with detectives the pathologist suggests the rough surface is the adjacent gravel driveway based on this investigators surmise that Leslie wilco's assailant grabbed her from behind threw her down onto the driveway then sexually assaulted and strangled her thank you then the killer carried the dead girl over to the front yard where he arranged her in the surrender position and neatly lined up her shoes investigators also find it curious that among the victims scattered clothes they find no underwear interviewing some of the cheerleaders they find out that Leslie hated wearing underwear with her jumpsuit because it made her panty light show instead she wore pantyhose but no pantyhose are found at the scene sometimes sex offenders will take either souvenirs or trophies from crime scenes more often souvenirs souvenirs are items which have no intrinsic value usually a bot will be reminiscent of the actual crying for the perpetrator they will serve as a maspatory reminder of of the event that took place because it would be exciting for them investigators were anxious to interview the bus driver probably the last person to see Leslie Wilco alive the driver tells investigators they'd been chatting very friendly like which is why he was surprised when she jumped up and pulled the cord rather than just telling him that her stop was coming up and he was more surprised when the back door opened he'd forgotten that there was anyone else on the bus he yelled good night and got no answer he never got a good look at the guy [Music] so to Aid his memory police called in a hypnotist hypnosis can be very useful in a forensic context to assist Witnesses or victims in recollecting memory they may not originally have provided in the investigation so it sometimes helps to loosen some of the barriers to recollection to help an individual reinstate internally through a mental process the original context in which they were located or found themselves at the time that the occurrence took place the hypnotist tells the driver to close his eyes and raise one hand then guiding him with suggestions he eases him back into the scene from the driver's answers it's apparent that he was infatuated with Leslie which helps explain why he forgot about the other passenger he remembers thinking he looks like a 40 year old businessman coming home from a tiring day at the office [Music] the driver feels awful about not waiting and watching Leslie till she'd made it home safely was he a suspect yes in my mind he was because he was one of the last people to see the victim another leading suspect is Jim Hutchin Leslie's ex-high school sweetheart though Hutchin has no criminal record what gives police pause is a film he made for an English mass media course in his senior high school year it is about a girl who is pursued by a knife-wielding maniac and is raped and murdered the girl he got to play the victim was Leslie Wilco Hutchin tells investigators one of the reasons Lee was because her fragile looks would add to the movie suspense it was a chilling experience seeing this film of similar type situation that's one thing that we focused on and had to look at it and had to either confirm or eliminate him as a suspect a fellow police officer brings another suspect to detective Harris's attention a week after Leslie wilco's murder he attacked and raped a woman in the elevator of an apartment house not far away his name is William Henson though the method of sexual assault seems similar Henson didn't kill the woman that is one of the calmest individuals that I've ever interviewed he wasn't nervous he wasn't upset he genuinely appeared to be enjoying the interest or the attention that he was receiving it was now up to forensic science to narrow the field exhibit a held the answer these then were the four leading suspects the bus driver the ex-boyfriend the sexual offender and the Mysterious 40 year old passenger whom police even weeks after the murder had yet to identify [Music] are sent to be examined at the center of forensic Sciences in 1982 [ __ ] was the most commonly used blood typing system the [ __ ] classification system breaks the entire population down into four major types group O group a group a b and Group B [Music] 80 percent of the population secrete their [ __ ] blood group types into their other body fluids so if you are a secreter an Asic reader that means that that group a substance will be found in all of your body secretions your saliva semen perspiration Etc from the typing of the semen stains that were evaluated in the early 80s we knew that the semen in the case came from a Type A secretor the [ __ ] system was helpful in narrowing down the field of suspects and particularly useful in eliminating suspects the bus driver returns out was not an ace of career so he's immediately ruled out as a suspect the ex-boyfriend is though he has no criminal record or history of sexual assault police interview him about his sexual relationship with the victim they note he is extremely agitated is this guilt or grief the third suspect the sexual assailant William Henson is also an Asic reader as for the last suspect the mysterious 40 year old bus passenger police still couldn't locate him though an unsolved homicide is never officially dropped new cases keep coming in old cases get put on the back burner the murder dropped from the front page to somewhere in the middle then dropped out of the news altogether another of those items that every once in a while someone wonders about did they ever catch whoever killed that cheerleader 13 years pass [Music] Vic matanovic wants to start a cold case Squad to reinvestigate Old unsolved murders original investigators had some good leads but unfortunately they ran out of time and maybe having a second look through a different set of eyes there's a good potential of having maybe some of these cases resolved his superiors are intrigued by the idea but not convinced they agree to let him use Leslie wilco's rape murder as his test case in a new case you begin to learn information on a day-to-day basis here you may have anywhere from 15 to 20 investigative boxes full of information you've got photographs you've got a pathology report and you've got the center of forensic Sciences report of any exhibits that were tested back in 1982. by 1995 [ __ ] testing had given way to DNA profiling DNA stands for deoxyribonucleic acid and it's the chemical blueprint of life it's the map that that defines who you are who I am and makes us different from everyone else in this world with a single exception of our identical twin should we have one given that DNA profiling can be effective even with 13 year old samples the semen recovered from the victim's body in jumpsuit suddenly takes on new significance Siemens an excellent source it's the the most concentrated source of DNA from any body fluid we were not able to get all the results from the semen staining on the jumpsuit and so we asked myself the question well is there any semen externally in the vaginal area and I looked at the pubic hair sample which was taken as a comparison sample by the during the autopsy by the pathologist and I thought well an outside chance perhaps there's some semen caught up in those hairs and indeed there was and we proceeded to extract the DNA from it and we'd obtained a DNA profile from it which became actually the important specimen indication whereas [ __ ] testing could narrow the field of suspects to a third of all the males in Ontario DNA profiling could narrow it down to three men in the whole province [Music] all of the work that we do compares the the profiles of DNA from an unknown sample to a known sample we had a very clear profile from the spermatozoa on the matted pubic hair from the victim we could generate a clear profile from the boyfriend of the victim and a partial profile from the other suspect the first test gave us very valuable information because it told us that it could not have come from the boyfriend of the victim he could not have left that semen and it tells us further that the other suspect had not been eliminated two things really that are important in any type of homicide investigation number one is that scene very very important and number two is uh the deceased go back and retrace the movements of that person from the time he or she were last seen alive until the time their body is found [Music] studying the crime scene photos and visiting the site even 13 years later matanovic makes some interesting connections in a detail of a detail on a photograph matanovic notices a crushed flower at the base of the tree why would it be crushed maybe that's where the assailant assaulted the victim perhaps the assailant trampled the flower when he slammed the victim's body against the tree and the marks on her back are from the tree's rough bark the implication is that Leslie wilco's killer did not attack her in the open area of the driveway but rather than the Hidden Shadows of a tree matanovic learns not only when the victim's shoes put neatly beside her but all her clothes had been neatly folded by her body which indicates a sexual predator with even more of a fetish than the missing pantyhose suggest in 1982 police had found William Henson with a briefcase full of lingerie when he was arrested on other occasions he had underwear stuffed in his own pants female underwear on one occasion when he was under surveillance back in the mid-1990s he was actually seen going into a department store and sniffing underwear so that becomes important because what was the only item of clothing missing from the crime scene female underwear in addition to Henson's 1982 elevator attack which got him 18 months in jail there was another elevator attack and he was jailed for three years 48 days after being released he attacked another woman in a washroom and served another five years everything now points to Henson as the prime suspect the problem is that some of the samples from 1982 can no longer be tested to run a DNA profile the lab needs a fresh sample of Henson's saliva it could be saliva on a fork it could be saliva on on a cup that a person has been drinking from or a beer bottle that they've been drinking from it could be on chewing gum that's been discarded on a Kleenex in which they blow in their nose and discard it there are any sort of biological sample that you can imagine would be suitable for DNA analysis in our hands detectives are able to recover one of Henson's cigarette butts and have it analyzed we were able to say number one that we did have a match between the saliva and the cigarette butt from Henson and the semen from the sample from the victim Precision of the technique is extremely good in this particular instance this composite profile had a frequency in Caucasians of approximately one in one million seven hundred thousand people but what about the matter of the mysterious 40 year old bus passenger police could never locate as matanovic reviewed the bus driver's transcript yet another time it dawned on him that the passenger might not have been a tired 40 year old businessman at all but a young William Henson trying to seem inconspicuous as he observed his prey after Leslie got off the bus Henson slipped out the back door he started walking ahead of her but found a way to get behind then he grabbed smashed her against the tree sexually assaulted and strangled [Music] almost 15 years to the day after the murder Henson was convicted of the first degree murder of Leslie Wilco and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years Mr Hansen was Tried by a judge and jury he was convicted based on the evidence and it's important thing to me is that he's off the streets and for him being off the streets there's a lot of people that are safer while DNA helped convict William Henson it also exonerated Jim Hutchin Leslie's ex-high school sweetheart who had lived all these years under a cloud of Suspicion [Music] if there's hope to be found in this devastating murder it's the fact that advances in forensic science in the hands of inspired investigators can be used to solve crimes that were once considered unsolvable [Music] enter the world of forensic science the science of crime where a suspect's guilt or innocence can hang on a single piece of evidence [Music] [Music] in ancient Rome trials were held in the Forum so forensic science is any science presented as evidence in court this evidence can be as microscopic as DNA or as large as exhibit a the family van [Music] for late night drivers it is Another Roadside reminder of the fragility of life he's wailing drowns out the ambulance sirens the woman is loaded into an ambulance and rushed to a nearby hospital [Music] but everyone knows it it's already too late a coroner new on the job arrives around 2 am when I arrived in the emergency department uh the place was fairly hectic as many emergency departments are but I focused my attention on the examination of the body of the deceased person which is my responsibility as a coroner and I determined that she had a number of injuries around her face and neck area she had bruising in other parts of her body all of which seem to be consistent with being involved in a fatal motor vehicle accident because the victim carries no identification the body is tagged as Jane Doe and sent to the hospital morgue until funeral arrangements can be made upstairs staff try to find out the victim's identity from the driver but he's agitated and distraught and speaks little English eventually they calm him enough to find out his name is Alberto Perez the victim is Beatrice Perez his wife [Music] an officer is dispatched to tell Beatrice's eldest child Katarina about her mother's death [Music] Alberta was kept in the hospital overnight to check out a neck injury the coroner inquires about the cause of the accident [Music] Alberto says that he and Beatrice work nights cleaning Banks and Office Buildings [Music] they were coming home late from a job and Beatrice had fallen asleep in the middle seat shortly after midnight something woke her up and in her groggy confusion she thought they were going to rear-end the car just ahead of them Beatrice screamed and grabbed his right arm causing him to lose control and crash through a fence her body bounced around into the front seat into him and then into the back [Music] when he realized what had happened he claimed he's mind snapped [Music] [Music] the ambulance arrived first and took Beatrice then police arrived they conclude that Beatrice probably wasn't wearing a seat belt and that she had probably been struck by a loose spare tire or tire iron in the back of the van foreign the coroner fumbles for comforting words meanwhile Katarina has been told that they don't perform autopsies on passengers and traffic fatalities she makes an appointment to see the coroner she explains that Alberta would threatened to kill her mother more than once that Alberta was actually her stepfather and that he and her mother each had Offspring from their first marriages they'd been married three years ago in Uruguay and they had a son Luis they'd always argued but after coming to Canada it got worse Alberta was given to jealous outbursts her mother's way of dealing with him was to walk away soon it got so bad they started eating separately and sleeping in separate rooms but Alberta would demand sex and threaten to take away Luis if Beatrice refused him one day a family friend knowing Beatrice had an interest in meditation introduced her to Hector a spiritual bond developed Alberto knew about Hector and hassled her that Hector was more than just a friend a month ago Alberta went to Hector's and warned him to stay away from Beatrice when Alberto came home he bragged he had just killed Hector Beatrice knew it wasn't true because Hector had just called but Alberto's cruelty convinced her it was time to move out the night of the accident they'd been officially separated for five days Katarina didn't trust Alberto maybe he had purposely rammed the van in the fence to kill her that was why she wanted the autopsy given their concerns I had no difficulty at all in saying fine let's arrange an autopsy so that we can come to some more firm conclusions about what had happened other than what I've concluded from my initial examination and we arranged for an autopsy to be done the next morning the hospital pathologist carried out a complete autopsy at the conclusion he called me up to indicate that his findings were that she had died of injuries that she had sustained to the head and neck area and specifically that she had a fracture high in her neck that in fact had crushed her spinal cord in short the autopsy confirms that Beatrice died from severe head injuries as a result of the traffic accident but fate was about to intervene not once the coroner Bill Lucas called Katarina and told her about the autopsy and her siblings were happier now that they understood that their mother's death was just an accident and Katarina expressed the wish that her mother be cremated but there'd been a glitch with her mother's death certificate the funeral home couldn't accept the body while it still read Jane Doe so a death certificate is prepared in the name of Beatrice Perez to Katarina this is worse she doesn't want her mother buried with her married name it turned out that the family wanted her maiden name on the death certificate so I spoke to a funeral director asked him if it would be appropriate if we just put her maiden name in Brackets after her married name and he felt that that was reasonable it turned out that that was not reasonable in the eyes of the family so that caused a delay of a further day before we could make arrangements to meet with the family and have it altered to their satisfaction the delay was to prove strangely fortuitous a civilian with the Federal Department of Transportation had just finished a course in blood splattering an officer asked her opinion about the van Constable Robertson had been at the scene and was really bothered by the injuries suffered by the female party who had died he couldn't quite understand what happened or why she had died given the severity or lack of severity involved in the Collision so he asked me to take a look at it and see if I had anything to offer when I opened the vehicle right away I was very very evident that there was a tremendous amount of blood I got this horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that I knew it was a murder so it was kind of frightening for me as a civilian saying this is a homicide and watching the wheels all the big guns come out despite the fact that as a civilian her testimony wouldn't be accepted in court the investigation followed her lead because of the concerns that were raised I indicated to the family when I met with him that we had some questions that remained unanswered that needed investigation and that The Cremation would be delayed as a result of those and they were quite happy to accept that information [Music] the body was just about to enter the crematorium oven when officers arrived she was being pushed into the oven to be cremated and we were able to salvage that if she had been cremated the evidence would have been lost meanwhile a forensic engineer is called into the case I use mathematics routinely in accident reconstruction and that gives me an insight into what to expect in accidents what types of curvatures are normal and what types of curvatures are not in this case I did do some calculations to see how fast the vehicle would be going in this final curve as it swung back onto the roadway using physics he attempts to reconstruct exactly what had happened during the accident they the half of the vehicle was across the crest through a shallow ditch at which point it turned around went back onto the grass as it went into the service road it pushed its way through a chain link fence knocked down some fence posts drove along the service Rover short distance and then turned back into the chain link fence and stopped the vehicle stayed on the ground it didn't ramp off a edge of a roadway or a ditch it just drove along through the grass didn't jump and didn't roll it didn't get sideways and roll over it just drove along that's all there was an indication of no trajectories through the air no excessive yawing which is a rotation of the vehicle sideways not even hard steering really from analyzing the drawings the photographs and the vehicle itself he concludes there's no way that the vehicle movements could have caused the occupant to get thrown around the vehicle in the manner that it was alleged leaving blood all over the vehicle from this accident this time the body is sent to the coroner's office downtown to be autopsied by a forensic pathologist obviously whether this is a homicide an accident or suicide determination needs to be made as to podcast every This falls into [Music] there is bruising over the fifth and sixth vertebrae or bone in the neck the spine was intact there was not a fracture in the neck as suspected at an earlier stage the injuries I noted on the side of her chin are most likely an indication of her effort to get somebody's hands off her neck and have been self-inflicted in a defensive fashion in a case such as this case the findings are written on the body and what's happened to this body is clearly evident to have the severe beating which wasn't the result of a car accident and she's been strangled to death so Katarina was right this was no accident her mother had been murdered [Music] a blood-splattering expert from the center of forensic Sciences is brought into the case there was blood staining on the driver's seat on the seat itself on the backrest on the driver's door in the area where the driver's feet would be you can clearly see that there are actually several stains here here there are two here here various locations on the seat if someone is sitting in the driver's seat and there's blood moving through the air it's going to land on the person not the areas that are masked or hidden by the body so blood staining on the driver's seat means no one was sitting in the driver's seat this supposedly happened while they were driving down a major highway where was the driver levitating in the air it's just not possible a close inspection of the stains also reveals something else if someone was sitting on those stands that ends the driver's seat at least could not have gotten there at the time the accident occurred because if someone was sitting in wet blood it I would have expected the stains to smear putting together Katarina's account over mother's last night and the scientists findings this is what the investigators think happened Beatrice in Alberto have only been officially separated for five days on the night in question all of the evidence shows the weeks following a separation especially with a volatile marriage and abusive type of relationship that's a very very dangerous time Beatrice called Hector from work that night and told him she'd had it with Alberto didn't want to work with him anymore and she was tired of having to keep her relationship with Hector a secret if Alberta wanted to know if Hector was her lover she'd tell him she hung up after telling Hector she'd see him within the hour and that she couldn't wait then she called home she asked Katarina about Luis and said she'd see her daughter in the morning shortly after 11 they were packing up the van [Music] the beating started outside the van outside a business that they were working at and he she was thrown inside the van and there was not one spot on the whole interior of this vehicle that didn't have blood on it foreign she tried to get away from him she fought for her life she went right into the front there's a into the this front area here fighting and there was quite a bit of blood dripping down onto the floor there's blood being thrown all around and so she's moved quite a bit they're smearing here she's come into this seat and there's in this area he she was severely beaten she's crawled over the back seat into the rear area here where this where she this is tremendously blood soaked you can see the hair pattern here this is where she finally died the poor woman must have been terrified she was fighting for life and she was a very small woman he was quite a bit bigger than her and she fought for her life and she lost but Alberto had no intention of being caught he wiped the blood off the van windows so it wouldn't be noticed by passing vehicles [Music] drove and drove looking for a place to Stage an accident [Music] John muster's calculations suggest that Alberto actually drove the van off the road and through the fence slowly so that it would look like a horrendous accident the kind that would have killed an occupant but wouldn't have been actually dangerous to him he wanted to get away with murder without getting hurt then he removed Beatrice's body from the vehicle and waited for the emergency crews [Music] Alberto Perez was arrested and charged with murder trial Alberto Perez's defense was that Beatrice provoked and taunted him with news that Hector was her lover Alberto claimed that she spat in his face and insisted that he'd drive her to Hector's house the prosecution's case was weakened on several accounts the coroner hadn't attended the accident scene evidence had not been carefully gathered and even the minivan exhibit a had not been seized and sealed on site it's one of those cases where if anything goes wrong everything went wrong and you wouldn't expect that but it all somewhere along the line it happens and because of the lack of communication this this man literally Almost Got Away With Murder as a result defense was able to plea bargain and Alberta Perez's charge was reduced from murder to manslaughter he was sentenced to eight years served three and deported the sentence infuriated Katarina as well as many women's groups [Music] if there is any solace in this ugly death it is that now coroners attend and investigate all traffic fatalities involving couples we've also been educated through this experience and unfortunately many others about a circumstance that we refer to as intimate femicide and this is the murder of a spouse by their intimate partner unfortunately in the vast majority of circumstances it tends to be the female who is the victim and quite often it is in circumstances that were very similar to this case where there has been a recent separation or a pending separation a very possessive male partner who is basically enraged by the fact that the relationship has or is about to terminate without a daughter's devotion a kenite civilian and a team of dedicated forensic experts this traffic fatality would never have been revealed to be a brutal murder [Music] the stories in exhibit a are based on actual cases foreign [Music]

Channel: Real Crime

Views: 156,684

Keywords: true crime, real crime, true crime documentary, true crime stories, full length documentary 2023, true crime stories 2023, documentary movies - topic, true crime documentary 2023, Forensic science, Guilt or innocence, Leslie Wilco, DNA profiling, Sexual assault, Strangulation, Weak crime scene, Ex-boyfriend, William Henson, DNA technology, Suspects, Arrest and conviction, Alberto Perez, manslaughter

Id: JejjQ8YHaEU

Length: 43min 58sec (2638 seconds)

Published: Tue May 16 2023