Hidden Evidence: Forensics Exposes Criminal Cover-Ups

[Music] firefighters extinguish a blazing house in the nick of time exposing the murders the fire was meant to conceal a woman's death and her bathtub looks like an accident at least at first [Music] investigating a reported suicide police in New Orleans find certain details suspiciously out of place killers can be masters at disguising their crimes even when their victims are in plain sight it takes a vigilant investigator to realize that first impressions are often dead wrong [Music] in a small town in Virginia office 29th 1994 a passing motorist saw smoke rising from town just before dawn firefighters battled the blaze for several hours before bringing it under control [Music] the patterns of the burns and the speed at which the fire spread told them this was arson and the motor is not called when he did bouncing all it contained when destroyed beyond recognition was not time to save the family who lived there for people including two small children were dead you am a cure [Music] but once the smoke cleared and smoldering ruins were examined it became apparent that this family did not die in the fire downstairs Teresa Hodges had been strangled upstairs 11 year-old winter Hodges and three-year-old Anna Hodges had been shot in the master bedroom the body of their father Blaine Hodges was found with a single gunshot to the head a 22 caliber pistol without a barrel lay near his body [Music] Special Agent Barry Casey of the Virginia State Police had a theory about what happened it was pretty obvious that the evidence was just screaming that's the words I use of murder suicide and as the morning wore on he became even more evident that it was a murder-suicide Blaine Hodges had recently been convicted of embezzling from his employer the United States Postal Service police believed that Blaine despondent over his impending prison sentence had killed his wife and his children then he doused their home with fuel oil set it afire and shot himself in the head at autopsy dr. David Oxley deputy chief medical examiner of western Virginia began to doubt the murder-suicide theory well when I examined the body saw for the bodies I noticed the thing that struck me was that the man Blaine Hodges had been dead considerably longer than the other three the body mr. Hodges was quite decomposed the other bodies were not Oxley told Special Agent could see that Blaine Hodges could have killed his family he died at least 12 hours earlier than they did the gun collected at the scene also raised questions the bullets retrieved from the victims were all 22 caliber the same as the pistol retrieved next to Blaine Hodges and went to the markers a pistol serial number had been filed on making it impossible to trace it's missing barrel also hampered investigators a gun barrel leaves spiral marks called lans and grooves on every bullet that passes through the bullets recovered from the victims had these markings meaning they came from a gun with a barrel forensic supervisor William Conrad of the Virginia division of forensic science was convinced that someone besides Blaine Hodges must have pulled the trigger with the barrel removed and rifling being present on the on the father's bullet that was taken from his head would indicate right away that he could not have fired that shot there's no way he could have shot himself in the head and then removed the barrel that wouldn't have happened Conrad wasn't convinced this was even the real murder weapon the bullets taken from the bodies were marked with six lands and grooves reference manuals for the gun found at the crime scene showed its normal pattern would be eight lands and grooves Conrad concluded the gun found at the crime scene was merely a drop gun intended to fool the police and a crime scene if you're trying to frame someone to try to cover something up you would drop a gun that's unrelated to the incident and try to trick us into thinking that was the actual weapon what looked like a murder-suicide at the crime scene had morphed into plain murder in the forensics lab aside from tipping detectives off the gun was of little use at this stage in the investigation they had no suspects no ballistics to compare and apparently not even the murder weapon all the detectives could be sure of was that someone else had killed the family then tried to make it appear like murder-suicide the killer had hoped the flames would consume the evidence detectives sifting through the ashes at the crime scene now had a new assignment to smoke out the killer police had no idea who killed the Hodges and their two daughters they questioned friends hoping to gather clues about their enemies their closest friend was a man named Earl Bramblett he frequently stayed with the family the kids called him Uncle Earl police ask Bramblett to come to the station and talk with them he seemed genuinely upset about the deaths but in the course of his interview an offhanded comment caught investigators by surprise he spontaneously made a comment and he said that sorry sob he had a beautiful family he did them and did his self but at that moment I knew mr. brand was probably involved in the murders of the Hodges family I knew that in order for somebody to know that outside of the police they would have had to been in there when the murders occurred the media hadn't reported the murder-suicide story and the police hadn't mentioned it to anyone outside of the force Bramblett had revealed the detail only the killer would have known Missy kept his suspicions to himself he needed more evidence before he could have done Bramblett agreed to come in for another interview later when he failed to show the police went to the motel where he was staying since he had no fixed address when he didn't answer the door the detectives obtained a room key from the motel manager to make sure he was all right Bramblett arrived just in time to stop them now belligerent he dared them to place him under arrest [Music] you are rope you think I don't overall believe the police would never be able to prove it bramblett's own words had made him a suspect but words alone proved nothing three days after the Hodges family were killed police set up a roadblock in front of the house the fire had started around 4:30 a.m. by stopping cars around that time they hope to find someone who may have passed the house just before it burned a woman told police she saw a vehicle pull out of the Hodges driveway at the time of the fire she noticed the vehicle because it was so unusual an old white pickup truck with a black tailgate she did not notice the license number or the driver Earl said we'd be back the search work to look at your truck and your room read it while the road blunt was taking place police have turned a Publix motel room with a search warrant as Bramblett stood by they search for anything that might suggest his involvement in the deaths of Blaine Hodges and his family outside stood his white pickup truck with its distinctive black tailgate in the front seat police saw several 22 caliber shell casings they were the same brand and caliber as the casings found at the murder scene when the firing pin strikes a bullet it leaves a distinct impression on the cartridge casing William Conrad hoped to compare the casings from the crime scene with the ones found in bramblett's truck once again he found the killer was one step ahead of him he'd obscured the marks on the cartridges it looked like someone had placed it in fired the gun took them out placed them again and fired them again this that indicated that someone was trying to manipulate the evidence after the fact to try to confuse the laboratory and what was going on Conrad would not be so easily thwarted among the hash of wayward marks he looked for similarities between the cartridges retrieved from the truck and those from the murder scene we can put the marks together see the reproducible patterns that are present and be able to say that the marks that you see represented on both of them were made by the same firing pin impression after close scrutiny he found what he was looking for one of the cartridges from the crime scene had a strike mark identical to a cartridge from bramblett's truck and I found enough of those individual characteristics that I was able to say that both of them had been fired by the same fire in and to the exclusion of any others the cartridge casings were definitely used in the same gun linking the drop gun to Bramblett but that wasn't enough Konrad still needed to find the gun that fired the fatal bullets meantime detectives worked the case from another angle trying to find out if Bramblett could have been the one who set the fire the killer had torched the house around 4:30 a.m. on Monday August 29th to check bramblett's whereabouts at that time police went to the sign company where he worked they learned he was scheduled to be at work at 5:00 a.m. in the day of the fire the same employee that routinely checks the time cards checked most of remnants mr. Bramblett Scott had been obliterated that the time that he punched in on Monday morning August the 29th had been blacked out where you couldn't read what time he might have punched in police called on hend rioting expert Gordon Menzies to find out what was under the marking using infrared lighting techniques I was able to separate the ink of the overwritten entry or the obliterating entry and come up with an entry of 508 M which was apparently 8 minutes after 5:00 Monday the timecard confirmed that Bramblett arrived at work after the blaze was set but that didn't prove he was the one who said it it only proved he had time to do it the search for more evidence continued bramblett's employer told police that the morning after police searched bramblett's motel room Earl arrived at work seething with rage one hour later a co-worker noticed water running under a door we found a pair of blue jeans thought to be Ramblas they smelled of the solvent used at the sign company the manager thought them important enough to turn over to the police authorities hope the jeans still held some clue to link Bramblett to the fire [Music] scientists analyzed them and the water they were soaking in to identify the chemicals in the fabric the jeans were placed in a canister with a solvent called pentane after they had soaked for 15 minutes the pentane was poured off the solvent evaporated under a fume hood leaving behind a soup of the compounds from the jeans the liquid was placed in a gas chromatograph a readout identified each compound soaked out of the jeans one was a commercial solvent used by the sign company the other was fuel oil like that used to douse the home of the murder victims investigators believe that Bramblett had tried to rinse the oil-soaked jeans clean carelessly leaving them where anyone can find them though the jeans were potential evidence and they were like everything else so far circumstantial investigators pressed on hoping that bramblett's carelessness didn't stop there they look for more evidence in a dumpster at the sign come back along with documents belonging to Bradley take on the t-shirt bearing the words William Byrd high school class of 2001 one of the murder victims Oh such a teacher it was missing from the price and unaccounted for the shirt found in the dumpster had apparently belong to the victim investigators were encouraged only Bramblett would have had access to both the shirt and the dumpster still it rude no wrong [Music] as the investigation into the deaths of the Hodges continued Bramblett left town for good though virginia police never let him out of their sight they believed they had nothing to hold they didn't realize they had what they needed all along police were reasonably certain that Earl Bramblett killed the Hodges family but that means nothing in a court of law to prove it they had to place him at the scene the gun seemed to be the crucial element they just didn't know how it fit the killer had taken caves to make sure the weapon wouldn't be identified without a serial number it couldn't be traced without a barrel investigators had no way to perform a ballistics test [Music] they had no reason to believe that the gun from the crime scene was the murder weapon according to William Conrad's reference manual a bullet fired from this gun show eight lands and grooves the bullets recovered from the clutches showed only six the weapons sat on a shelf for a year while the case against Brevik stalled then on an unrelated investigation Conrad ran across a weapon of the same brand as the gun in the Bramblett case [Music] he test-fired the gun and was surprised to find bullets at six lands and grooves instead of eight the reference manual had been wrong Conrad now knew that the gun found in the Hodges house most likely was the murder weapon the killer had removed its barrel because he thought it would make the gun untraceable but through the cartridge casings and other forensic evidence police found their man by linking the gun to Earl Bramblett the police had gathered the final piece of evidence they needed to prove he was the killer then his sister in Indiana provided information about the possible motive Bramblett apparently feeling threatened that sent her a huge number of audio tapes for safekeeping he told her to send them to police if something happened to it when she heard her brother was in trouble she forwarded them to the Virginia authorities in his audiotape the diaries Bramblett spoke of his more than casual attraction to the Hodges 11 year old daughter Bramblett had once been a suspect in the disappearance of two small children but his involvement had never been proved according to the tapes Bramblett began to believe that Blaine Hodges faced with prison for embezzling and become a police informant in his delusions Bramblett had decided Blaine was using his daughter to entrap Bramblett as a child molester the police believed that on Saturday August 27th 1994 Bramblett had been visiting playing at his home while Teresa Hodges and her children were out shopping he took his 22 Magnum pistol shot Blaine in the head according to friends who saw them later that day Bramblett told Teresa when she came home from shopping that Blaine despondent over going to prison needed some time by himself like the good uncle he pretended to be he bundled Teresa and the children into his truck and took them camping in the nearby mountains as Blaine Hodges lay dead in an upstairs bedroom his wife and children went off with his killer they would have only a 24 hour retrieved the next day Bramblett would resume his killing by strangling Teresa Hodges [Music] having killed both parents Bramblett saved his last horrifying act of violence for the children he then put the murder weapon next to Blaine Hodges body to make it appear that plane had killed his family than himself he was sure the fuel he spread throughout the house would ignited an all-consuming fire that the police would buy the theory of murder-suicide but Bramblett had no sooner babies get away and almost spotted the flames called the fire department special agent fairy Cassie acknowledges that Bramblett almost got away with it his primary plan was if the police by this murder-suicide I'm home free and look he would have been home free but see he did not know that the Benton fire department and responded in such a short order that they preserved the bodies upstairs it took the police almost two years to build their case Bramblett had relocated to South Carolina but the Virginia authorities have never lost his trail he was arrested in July in 1996 convicted of four counts of murder and sentenced to death killers can disguise their crimes in many ways but the truth often lies just below the surface on April 29th 1997 police in the suburban Philadelphia community of Merion Pennsylvania arrived at the house of Craig Rabinowitz he'd called 9-1-1 reported his wife unconscious in the bathtub they found Rabinowitz clutching his wife Stephanie still in the tub where he'd found her [Music] he told police he discovered his wife on her side her head underwater of a psychic yeah you no idea what caused his wife to drown revive her no but she was dead one detective Charlie craves on no signs of foul play the death of mrs. Rabinowitz my initial impression of the cause of death after looking at Stephanie after viewing her at the emergency ward after talking with the emergency ward doctor was that was an unexplained death or was an accident what are you doing friends and relatives mourned the untimely death of a woman in the prime of life Craig and Stephanie had met when he was a camp counselor and she was still a teenager after they married Stephanie went to law school and had a promising career as an attorney to their friends they seemed an ideal couple now their happiness had come to a tragic end [Music] Craig told police that on the night of his wife's death he was watching a hockey game while she took a bath he heard a thump coming from the bathroom like the sound of a shampoo bottle hitting the floor when his wife failed to emerge from the bath after 35 minutes he went to check on her that's when he found her submerged in the water her face blue he tried desperately to bring her back to life then called 911 I for inconsistencies though they had no reason to doubt that the death was an accident one fact seemed mother´s the paramedics mentioned that the victim was wearing jewelry including a watch Charlie Craig's partner detective Richard peple asked some of his female friends if they bathe with their jewelry and almost exclusively every woman said absolutely not the first one I did was the first night I got home about 4:00 a.m. and I woke up my wife from a dead sleep Nance if you took a bath would you wear all of your jewelry she looked at me and said no why and I said don't worry about it go back to sleep that eccentric detail motivated investigators to look for other inconsistencies they checked the hospital records again something didn't sit right after death a body's temperature normally drums at the rate of one degree per hour even faster if it's sitting in water when the victim arrived at the hospital her temperature was only one degree below normal indicating she died just 10 minutes before the call to 911 s estimate that 35 minutes passed that we heard a thump in the bathroom didn't add up while detectives suspicions were mounting Chief Coroner Halbert Fillinger requested an autopsy to find out why the healthy 29 year old died so suddenly Craig Rabinowitz refused to allow it asserting the Jewish law demands that the body be interred before sundown the day after death and it must remain intact but in cases of mysterious or sudden death the coroner can overrule religious objection unless he's given the court order by cos of their Jewish faith Stephanie should have been buried before the next Sunday and dr. Fillinger was pressured by the family to release Stephanie's body so that she could be buried in accordance with her faith and dr. Fillinger was persistent that the body would not be released until a complete autopsy was committed when the body was brought in it showed no marks not even a bruise to indicate how the victim fell according to Fillinger that's not unusual their injuries on the front of the body and there occurred just prior to death or a short time and you examine the body right after death you may not see anything at all but by the time the autopsy was conducted 12 hours after she died the victims wounds began to reveal themselves and the truth about her death [Music] the medical examiner's believe they were about to begin a routine autopsy on the victim of a mysterious death though the circumstances were tragic examiner's didn't expect them to be criminal but they soon found themselves face-to-face with homicide the first indication of foul play came with a look at the skin below the bikini line where bruises made a silent accusation as the blood drains away from those sites of injury leaving the surrounding skin quite pale then the area of bruising stands up like a beacon in the night bruises such as these come from lack of oxygen most often when a victim chokes or is choked strangulation was a possibility worth looking into the victim showed no external parties around but beneath the skin the tissue damage confirmed Fillinger suspicions and of course when we first got the body open we found the evidence of severe strangulation great deal of trauma in the neck the mystery of Stephanie Rabinowitz sudden death had been solved and a homicide investigation had begun detectives Charlie praying and Richard peple along with prosecutor Bruce castor had their prime suspect that victim's husband Craig Rabinowitz they questioned him in the presence of his attorney when Charlie came back in and advised both were bennewitz in the attorney which Stephanie had in fact died from manual strangulation the attorney jumped up and said oh my god she strangled herself and both Charlie and I looked at the attorney and I said I don't think so the Rabinowitz marriage seemed picture-perfect what could have driven Craig Rabinowitz to kill his wife police obtained a warrant to search the house for some sign of a motive while his wife worked as a lawyer Craig can supposedly run a business from his home he convinced a number of his friends to invest in his promising venture but a search of the house showed no evidence of a business being conducted there and detectives had almost given up when one of the officers found a plastic bag in a crawlspace above a closet the bag was filled with receipts and financial records they revealed that Craig Rabinowitz had been living a lie when we went through the bag we found some pretty important items including a Lister ledger we also found other receipts from pawnshops indicating that some jewelry had recently been pawned and we also found receipts from furniture stores the furniture that he had bought apparently another woman so during this whole case he was pictured to be this loving happy devoted husband and in this bag we found otherwise a forensic accountant skilled in deciphering complex financial transactions reviewed the records he found that what Craig had called a business was in fact a con game he swindled his investors and convinced his trusting wife to remortgage their home he then spent the money not on business but to support his secret life credit card bills totaling $54,000 came from a single location a strip club in Philadelphia even seeing one of the dancers there showering her with gifts at the time of his wife's death Prague was hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt desperate for money Craig had taken out two insurance policies each for one and a half million dollars one was for his own life the other for his wife in a ledger found in the Attic Craig had calculated his net worth and the event his wife died proving the crime was premeditated after collecting on the insurance and paying off his debts he had one point two million dollars to spare at the end of his rope Craig turned on his unsuspecting wife and stranded her the death he filled the bathtub hoping to create the appearance of an accidental drowning then he called the police it seemed like such a simple plan according to Charlie Craig far too simple a lot of people said to me you know this guy must have seen this in a movie or read it in a book well as it was coming close to trial that kind of stuck in my mind and I got the photos back out because I remembered there was some book that had something to do with death a book on rabinowitz desk had looked out of place when police searched his home the author claimed that few deaths are followed by an autopsy Craig Rabinowitz was a con man when he learned this information that only 13% of the deaths are autopsy Craig Rabinowitz was playing a con he was playing the odds when he learned that information that the odds were dramatic dramatically in his favor that Stephanie wouldn't be autopsy but an autopsy had been performed exposing Craig Rabinowitz as a con man gotten in too deeply for murdering his wife he was sentenced to life in prison without parole [Music] [Applause] you're eight events take on a life of their own on the streets of any town people love of good scandal especially when it involves respectable citizens in New Orleans a town not easily shocked investigators found themselves in the middle of a scandal that made the Big Easy a little queasy [Music] just after dawn on January 27 1984 62 year-old Aaron Mintz frantically summoned his neighbor a doctor MIT's exclaimed that his wife had just shot herself the two men rushed upstairs to the master bedroom there the doctor found the Pam man's lying face up on her pillow a bullet hole in the right side of her head in her hand was a pistol the doctor checked for vital signs as mince waited anxiously nearby solemnly the doctor informed Aaron Mintz that Pam Mintz the woman he'd been married to for 33 years was dead the doctor called the police to notify them of the suicide [Music] detective John Dillman led the investigation shortly before daybreak or right at dawn I received a call of a suicide at the residence of Aron Mintz proceeded to that location thinking that I was gonna handle the suicide investigators assessed the scene expecting nothing out of the ordinary but the position of her body didn't look right they suspected the victim had been moved Pam's right elbow was bent in an upwards direction like this with two bloodstains on her the bottom of a forearm coming up to a point on both sides I questioned those stains as soon as I saw him because as we all know blood can't run uphill it's against gravity the angle of the gun in the dead woman's hand also aroused the investigators suspicions it looked as though it was placed in her hand after the fact the gun was positioned and this is unloaded by the way the gun was positioned in her hand bent in this position close to her head where it would have been almost impossible to pull the trigger except with a thumb the gun was clutched very loosely indicating to me that the arm had been which had originally been lying on the bed had been bent at the elbow and raised into that position and then the weapon had been placed into her hand to make it appear to be a suicide beginning to doubt that this was truly a suicide detectives looked for other signs of foul play they found blood smeared on the bathroom lights which the victim who died instantly couldn't have left it and by his own admission Aron Mintz was the only other person in the house [Music] but even that discovery paled in comparison to what detectives discovered next in another bedroom they found a pillow with a bullet hole in it on one side with powder burns the other side was flecked with blood detective Gilman was convinced that the victim was murdered and the pillow used to muffle the shot but once I followed this blood trail into the front of the house and found the pillow that was hidden it didn't take a brain surgeon to I mean a big light just blew off you know join us this into suicide you have a murderer on your hands police launched a full-scale homicide investigation the case seemed open-and-shut the immediate suspect was the victim's husband Aaron there had been no one else in the house the alarm had not been tripped [Applause] Aaron Mintz was a prominent community he denied murdering his wife anxious to clear his name Mintz agreed that same day to have his hands tested for traces of gunpowder and gun metal if he'd fired the gun the residue would cling to his skin but Aaron admitted he had washed his hands before the test was conducted the results were negative the test failed to prove Aaron killed his wife but neither did it prove him innocent investigators turned their attention to the evidence collected at the house they focused on the bloody pillow found in the other bedroom and the Switchblade from the bathroom in 1984 when the crime occurred DNA testing was not yet available but the blood type matched the victims [Music] blood smears on the front and sleeve of Aaron's bathrobe also matched police theorized that blood got on the road when Aaron rearranged the body his sleeve probably touched the light switch when he went to wash his hands all right so he went downstairs he relaxed watch little TV and fell asleep yes and what happened then it didn't take much digging for police to determine a possible motive they learned that mince was having an affair with a young woman named Lois Porsche Pam Mintz found out about her husband's infidelity two weeks before her death she angrily confronted Aaron she wouldn't let him go without a fight she didn't want him embarrassing her in public and when Aaron began showing up in the circles of their friends with the girl that he was having the affair with she became irate she was going to take him for everything he was worth and he knew it investigators suspected that Aaron killed Pam so he could be free of the marriage without losing his fortune according to their scenario Aaron had gone to his wife's bedroom after she'd fallen asleep [Music] he shot her in the head pillow to muffle the sound so as not to alert the neighbors that would have bought him plenty of time to rearrange the scene making murder look like suicide Mintz was charged with murder to handle his defense he hired prominent New Orleans attorney Michael Fowler like most of those who knew the accused power was surprised by his arrest I would find it most unlikely you know that he would have been a subject of a homicide investigation but by the same token I didn't know that he was having an affair the case was sensationalized in the local press which gave major coverage to the blood-stained pillow in the court of public opinion Aaron's guilt was a foregone conclusion but in a court of law the prosecution faced a serious challenge you realized that you had an ability to win this case but you had to do it in terms of the forensics you had to be able to negate a bunch of different things to clear Erin Mintz the defense relied on forensics to dismantle the prosecution's case one piece at a time a blood-stained bathrobe a smeared light switch and a bullet Pierce pillow this was the evidence presented in the death of Pam Mintz I went upstairs and I found Tom we've been over this before to the prosecution it pointed to Erin Mintz as a murderer I saw my wife dad on the bed but the defense saw things differently they began with Erin's bathrobe smeared with his wife's blood Erin claimed he'd been dozing in front of the TV downstairs in the early morning startled awake by a loud noise he went to investigate when he found his wife's body and the gun in her hand his first reaction is to take her in his arms hugging her according to defense attorney Michael Fowler this scenario also explains the blood on the light switch after Erin had embraced his his wife he turned the light on as he was exiting the room Maddox and every reason why there would be blood there there was blood on the light switch in the bathroom that made sense because his point he went into the bathroom and washed his hand the scenario explained away all but the most dramatic piece of evidence the gunshot pillow the prosecution argued that Aaron Mintz used the pillow to silence his gun then removed it from Pam's bedside to conceal his crime again the defense countered of any crime in a state of shock on discovering his wife's body Aaron removed the pillow almost in a daze he merely wanted to get it out of his sight without thinking how it might appear to police it's only significant if it's a pillow that was used in a homicide if it's not a pillow that's used in the homicide it's like a dirty sock what difference does it make you know it just he just removes it I mean we all do crazy things when were under great deal of stress the defense argued that since Aaron put the pillow where anyone could have found it his purpose was not concealment he wanted to hide and he could have hid it there was a house that sort of was full of nooks and crannies in attic space and all and he just put it this other room the defense was determined to discount the pillow completely they stuck with the idea that Pam Mintz killed herself but they asserted that the fatal bullet wasn't fired through the pillow the defense had the pillow examined by irving stone of the southwestern institute for forensic sciences in dallas he set out to ascertain whether the fatal bullet was in fact fired through the pillow as police had assumed [Music] using a weapon of the same caliber as the gun that killed Pam mins Stoney conducted tests to simulate what would happen if a gun were fired through a pillow into a human head as a target he used a sponge soaked in simulated blood within a heavy plastic bag stone shot the bag through the pillow from various distances he demonstrated that if a pillow had been used to muffle the fatal shot a great deal more of the victims blood would have ended up on the pillow [Music] what would have happened as the bullet passed through the pillow into the head with the pillow being six to ten inches from the head then there would have been back spatter of blood that would have spattered back on the the reverse side of the pillow well there was none of this there the blood on the pillow at the crime scene was hardly noticeable by contrast in the laboratory blood was spattered and stained over a wide area stone also showed that a bullet fired through a pillow would have left fragments of the pillow behind you expect to find cloth fibers some other type of polymeric film material at or around the wound and actually into the wound itself I've seen where cloth fragments have been caught by the bullet and just carried right into the wound there were no reports of remote fragments on the bed where the victim was found likewise the coroner found no traces of the pillow the wound for stones lowest only one conclusion the fatal bullet was not fired through the pillory but a nagging question remained what was the pillow doing there in the first place on the one hand we had no obligation to explain the pillow once we were able to explain it was not used in the in the in a murder in a homicide on the other hand it was there and we had to deal with it the prosecution had portrayed the victim as a wronged woman murdered so her husband could pursue his affair but the defense painted an entirely different picture they portrayed Pam Mintz as a vindictive woman with a long history of emotional distress her husband's betrayal had been too much to bear the defense asserted she plotted the ultimate revenge she would kill herself but in the process she framed her husband for murder the gunshot pillow would play a starring role [Music] the minces housekeeper testified that she'd seen the victim leaving the house the day before carrying would appear to be a pillow along with the dry cleaning earlier in the day she'd seen a gun lying on mrs. Vince's bed [Music] the defense suggested to the jury that Pam out for revenge fired a bullet through the pillow herself she left it at her bedside as she prepared to end her life knowing that it would appear that her husband had killed her but there was no way to prove the victim had fired a pistol the day of her death the police had made no attempt to test her hands for traces of gunpowder power believes this was a critical mistake despite the fact that she was then undergoing ort an autopsy was about to undergo an autopsy and her hands had been begged the police lab never swab her hands so nobody ever knew and to this day they never know if there was any residue on her hands they had every opportunity to do it they just didn't do it if a test had shown that Pam did not fire the gun the police would have had clear evidence the case was not a suicide if the test had shown Pam did fire the gun it would have cleared Aaron of guilt but Dillman thinks the test results might have been misleading I did not order testing on a trace metal test on Pam minces hand due to the fact that it really was irrelevant the we knew that the gun had been placed in her hands metal had touched her hands so any type of a trace metal test would have proved positive that didn't prove anything when the case went to trial the prosecution was confident of the evidence it presented but the jury found otherwise accepting the defendants version of what happened the night Pam Mintz died the defense claimed she'd put a bullet hole in a pillow and placed it at her bedside as she prepared to end her life in this way she hoped to exact retribution on her husband from beyond the grave but careful forensic analysis of the evidence had foiled her plot Erin Mintz was found not guilty in the death of his wife if hiding the body is not an option then hiding the crime is the next best choice but a seamless veil of deception is difficult to weave at a crime scene investigators are always looking to challenge their own assumptions a battery of forensic tests gives that the means to do it whether an alibi is Dios or utterly simple if it's based on a lie it won't withstand close scrutiny and again killers who believe otherwise [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Real Responders

Views: 879,168

Keywords: Real Responders, crime alteration, crime documentaries online, crime forensics, crime scene analysis, crime scene examination, crime scene interpretation, crime scene tampering, criminal investigation, criminal masterminds, criminal minds, detective series, detective work, forensic evidence analysis, forensic evidence collection, forensic evidence techniques, forensic examination, forensic experts, forensic science techniques, police procedures

Id: Rlm9Km4Qx-U

Length: 52min 57sec (3177 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 06 2020