THE HOMICIDE AT THE HOSPITAL (Doctor Margo Prade)

so today's video is going to be another solved true crime case a case that a lot of people still debate to this day it is technically solved and someone is behind bars but are they actually guilty of the murder this one's actually got a real twist towards the end of it and i'm really excited to hear everyone's opinions and theories in the comments at the end of this video but before we get into it this video isn't actually sponsored like it kind of is because i'm sponsoring myself what i'm trying to say is i finally have merch i have merch it's all up on screen right now as well as the website where you can purchase any of it we have hoodies black long sleeves white long sleeves black mugs white mugs phone cases all available at eleanor neil dot shop i'm really really happy with how everything's turned out i've got the phone case on my phone right now i don't know how much longer it's gonna be available for because it's just gonna be available until it's sold out so if you want something first come first serve thank you so so much if you do go and grab something from the merch drop because a lot of my videos are demonetised you're helping to support me and support the channel and support what i do here on the elena needle channel and i really really appreciate it so thank you but yeah before we get into this case i just want to give my usual disclaimer that i mean absolutely no disrespect to anyone that i talk about in this video this video is for educational purposes and everything i'm about to say is just information that i have found on the internet and i'm compiling into one video so today we're going to be talking about the murder of margaret prayed born margot schamberger on september 17 1956 in akron ohio she was the youngest of seven siblings she was very intelligent from a very early age she was yards ahead of all of her classmates so much so that she even skipped the fifth grade in high school she was known as very graceful very classy very of course very intelligent still but also just very graceful very i don't know how to wear it very classy she was just a classy girl she was very focused on her studies all the way through her teenage years so much so that she never got a boyfriend in her teenage years because it just wasn't her focus she was much more set on getting her education done getting a good career don't get me wrong she did go on dates here and there but none of them were really worth the distraction from her work that was until she met one man in particular a man named douglas prayed douglas pride was a young police officer in akron the two of them met at a charity event and he caught margot's eye straight away and he was exactly margo's type exactly what she was looking for he was tall he was handsome he was strong he was brave he was athletic but he also had this like sweet and sensitive side to him he'd previously served in the navy but was discharged for medical reasons and he was quite a bit older than margot like a decade older than marga he was 28 and she was just in her senior year of high school so i think that's around 18 years old and she liked that he was so mature and that he was so like experienced in life and that he'd done so much and had so many stories shortly after meeting doug margot graduated high school in 1974 valedictorian of her class she began studying at kent university where she was studying two different things at once it was all to do with medical stuff can you tell i never went to university and i don't understand university she was studying for her medical degree and a bachelor's degree at the same time i don't know if they're the same thing but one day she wanted to become a doctor that's what she was working towards margot and douglas quickly became an official couple and as soon as she finished university doug proposed and the two of them got married they had two children together two daughters named kenya and sahara and at this point in their lives both margot and douglas were both very advanced in their careers they were very in very high up positions they were very well known and well respected in their area douglas had been moving up in the police force the whole time that he'd been with margaret and by now he was just one promotion away from being the next police chief and margot actually went on to open her own medical practice in the area and because she was so intelligent everyone wanted to be seen by her because they knew that she was going to be a good doctor you know she was incredibly successful and because of the high demand to see margaret she began working longer and longer hours she was earning a lot more money but this came at the consequence of spending less time with her family any time that she did have spare she made sure to spend it with her two daughters who were still growing up they were still very young and of course every spare minute she had she wanted to spend with them but this meant that she was spending barely any time with her husband doug and doug was also working pretty long hours now that he was high up in the police force and sometimes they would even work alternate hours so margo would work through the day sometimes doug would be working into the night so they didn't get a chance to spend quality time with each other anymore and this really took a toll on their relationship as it would with anyone they felt really disconnected from each other like they just didn't really have anything in common anymore they've just kind of grown apart and so after 20 years of marriage margot decided to file for divorce the two of them remained on decent terms because of course they had children together this wasn't a very bitter end they weren't exactly friends after their divorce as you can imagine but you know they kept it very amicable whenever they saw each other they shared custody of both their daughters kenya and sahara and they cooperated very well bringing them up and they would spend like equal time at their mothers and their fathers and margot and doug just still had that same level of respect for each other after the divorce uh everything was fine and now 40 year old margot prayed decided that she wanted to get back out there she wanted to get back into the dating game and so she started going on a few dates with like mutual friends people that her friends had set her up with and that was when she met thomas houston and everything just clicked for margot he was very well educated he was very successful he earned a lot of money as a lawyer and all of that attracted margaret to him he had that same very sweet sensitive polite side that doug had as well this man was perfect for her and a lot of margot's friends have described this connection between marga and thomas as one of those very like when you know you know kind of connections like they met each other and they just kind of knew that they were supposed to spend the rest of their lives together within just a few months of knowing each other they were already talking about marriage and it just seemed as though she'd found her one as time went on margaret's medical practice was just doing better and better she was hiring other doctors and nurses to come and work for her and at one point she had over 9 000 patients on her register everything was just going perfectly for margot period that was until the morning of november 26 1997. it was the day before thanksgiving and margot's medical practice was open as usual around 10 25 a.m a doctor named laurie collins walks outside of the medical practice around the back to go and have a cigarette break and she's out there in the car park she's just kind of people watching and then she notices margaret's van parked in the car park which was odd because margo hadn't turned up for work that morning she'd called in at around 8 50 a.m so she was due in at 9 00 am and she called in around 10 minutes earlier saying that she was on her way and that they could expect her within like five minutes but they hadn't heard from her since she hadn't arrived she hadn't called again they'd called her to see if she was just in traffic or something but she hadn't answered and so when laurie noticed the van she walked up to it to go and see if margot was inside or whatever and when she peered in through the window she saw margot prayed slumped over in the driver's seat covered in blood so laurie panicked and she ran back inside the medical practice and called for police and an ambulance however when paramedics arrived they couldn't find margot's pulse margot prayed was pronounced dead at the scene and it was very clear that this had been a homicide even though there was blood all over her there was no murder weapon around so this can't have been a suicide there was no gun there was nothing it was clear that someone had done this to maga and then taken the murder weapon away with them again so immediately police set out finding who had done this tamago parade one of the first things that detectives noticed on a search of margot prince van was a diamond bracelet in the footwell of the passenger side so it was kind of like this bracelet had fallen off in a struggle maybe this had been an attempted robbery maybe that is why margot was killed because someone was after this bracelet and maybe they just dropped it as they fled the sea and it did seem likely that a struggle had taken place in the van that morning because of how margaret's clothes were left she was already wearing her lab cut which she wore for work as a doctor every single day however some of the buttons had popped off this lab coat but the more evidence police found in margaret's van the more an attempted robbery seemed unlikely so her purse was just on the back seat with her money in with her credit cards in had this been a robbery would that not be one of the first things they took as well as the bracelet why would they just drop the bracelet after murdering a woman trying to get it why would you then just drop it quickly as the case was unfolding this seemed less like an opportunistic robbery gone wrong and maybe more like margaret was intentionally targeted maybe someone had wanted to kill her that morning so detectives tried to piece together a timeline of what margot had been doing that morning hoping that maybe that might point towards her meeting someone or you know just give them a better idea of what she was doing that day her usual daily routine consisted of her stopping off at a local hospital that she had a few patients at she would do that around 8 am 8 30ish and then she would go from there to her medical practitioner's office which was where she was she was in the parking lot of her medical practitioners so police got in contact with that hospital who confirmed that margot had been there that morning and she left around 8 45 am everything had gone fine up until that point and like i said earlier she called the receptionist at her medical practice at 8 50 a.m letting her know that she was on her way and margot was due to start work at 9 00 am she did every single day she was always on time this was her medical practice she had to be on time so it seemed as though anything could have happened to margot from around 8 50 until 10 30 a.m when her body was found but to me it seems more likely that this must have happened around 9 00 a.m otherwise she probably would have gone into work so investigations continued at the crime scene and as time's going on more and more officers are arriving and kind of looking over the situation including margaret's ex-husband doug prayed he was at the gym that morning when he got a phone call from one of his fellow police officers saying that his ex-wife had been shot and killed at work so he arrived at the scene and weirdly enough none of the other police officers knew that maga and doug had divorced now i don't know if he was intentionally keeping this a secret because he was ashamed or embarrassed that his wife had left him or maybe it just never came up after all they'd only been divorced around six months at this point and i don't know did police officers often talk about things like that i don't know i think there might have been like one or two people on the police force that knew like his closest friends knew that he'd been divorced but it wasn't like widely known knowledge at this point so to a lot of police officers that did this was doug pryd's wife that had been murdered regardless this was a woman that he'd loved and shared his life with for 20 years and they'd only been split up for six months they had two children together she was such a huge part of his life and i'm sure there was still a lot of feeling there doug prayed arrives at the scene and at the sight of margare's dead body inside her van he loses it he starts sobbing he's holding his head he's collapsing to the ground i believe he fainted at one point you know there's a real scene of just clear overwhelming immersion in this man a lot of his fellow officers were kind of giving him support saying just wait a few minutes and then we'll speak to you like compose yourself take as much time as you need eventually when he kind of stopped crying and he was a little bit less overwhelmed he knew he wanted to help out he knew he wanted to be as much help as he possibly could in solving his ex-wife's murder and so he said anything you need me for questioning you know if you want me to be on the case i can be on the case he wasn't even in the homicide team i don't know what he actually did inside the police force but he was volunteering his time his resources anything he had to be able to solve this murder of his ex-wife so of course with any murder case one of the first points of action is to question those close to the victim to kind of get an idea of their life and who's in it and if anyone might have wanted to hurt them so that's current boyfriend family you know even her work colleagues and her ex-husband doug prayed but naturally none of his co-workers wanted to be the one to question this very clearly emotionally overwhelmed man about the murder of his ex-wife but someone had to do it eventually one woman in the police force stood forward and said look i'll do it and she began questioning him she got his alibi doug said that he was in the gym on the morning of the murder he said that he'd been in the gym that morning in his apartment complex when he'd received that phone call from his co-worker informing him of this incident and so he grabbed his stuff and he left for the crime scene immediately of course this kind of alibi can't really be confirmed because it's not like these days when you've got like clocking in cards and stuff at gyms and there's cctv everywhere this was back in 97 and gyms were kind of done on like a checking in sheet so anyone could write anyone's name and anyone's time that they checked in so this wasn't too much of an alibi however doug said that while he was in the gym working out there was also a blonde woman in there at the same time as him and so if police were able to track down this blonde woman she would be able to confirm or deny whether she'd seen doug that morning also in doug prayed's questioning the officer asked him if there was anyone else in margot's life that either might want to hurt her or might know some kind of information just anyone else that they might want to question as part of this investigation and doug prayed said well yeah i think she's got a new boyfriend he said he didn't know the boyfriend's full name and sir police would just have to ask margaret's friends or family for that however you know this boyfriend was in margaret's life currently doug wasn't so he didn't really know what was going on with margaret at the time of her death whereas this man probably would before letting him go police did a quick gunshot residue test on doug prade's hands and this test is designed to tell whether the person has fired a handgun recently and so that would easily either rule him out or rule him in as a suspect they're not always 100 accurate so it's not enough to fully rule him out as a suspect however his test came back negative it said that he hadn't shot a handgun that morning and so he was lower down on the people of interest list but he was still her ex-husband and ex-partners are always quite high up anyway police wrap up the questioning with doug prage they're pretty confident that they've got everything out of him at this point and if they need him later he was totally happy to come back in and speak with them again and so police move on to margot's co-workers not just her co-workers but her friends and her family but of course her co-workers might have seen or heard something that morning since this happened in the car park of her business meanwhile an autopsy had begun on margaret's body and police's assumptions were correct that her death was caused by gunshot wounds six of them to be exact she was shot six times and this pretty much confirmed to them that this wasn't a robbery gone wrong you don't shoot someone six times in a robbery gone wrong if you shoot in six times then you're making sure that that person is dead whoever had killed margot wanted her dead it's believed that the murder weapon was a 38-caliber revolver due to the bullet fragments that were found at the crime scene they also believe that these bullets that were fired at margaret had gone all the way through her body so in one side and out the other there was even a bullet fragment found in the palm of margaret's hand so it seemed as though she'd kind of put her hand up at her attacker maybe covered the gun or something and that bullet they believe went through her hand and then into her head but then the pathologist found something else that pointed towards this being a very savage attack there was a bite mark found on margot's kind of shoulder upper arm area but there was something odd about this bite mark it wasn't a full bite mark it was just of the bottom row of teeth which is kind of hard to do if you're biting something you're doing kind of equal force with both sets of teeth the bite had kind of gone through her lab cut and then onto her arm because of course she was wearing the lab cut so they were indents in the lab cut so now the police know that my girl was bitten during this attack this shows that it was a very personal very angry attack like they were wanting to really harm this woman it wasn't just a case of i just want a gun i just want her dead it was i want to kill her and i want her to be in pain so now they're looking at people close to margaret or people that didn't really like her people that she'd had disagreements with but there weren't many like i said margot was a very liked person she was very popular in her area very well respected there weren't many people that had an issue with margot prayed and so objectively in cases like these like i said the ex-husband or the ex-partner is always quite high up on the people of interest just because obviously a relationship had gone bitter it doesn't matter how good terms they say they're on now there might still be some resentment inside and so objectively the police force had to investigate doug prayed a little bit more so they decided to try and check his alibi of being at the gym that morning so police went to his gym and they had a look on this checking in sheet and sure enough doug prid's name was on the sheet on that morning and so was a woman's name a woman named kathy so this must have been the blonde woman that was in the gym at the same time as him so police tracked down this woman and brought her into the police station for questioning and they said was anyone in the gym with you on that morning and she said she remembered a bald man being in there with her that morning so police showed this woman a picture of doug prayed and said is this the man that you saw in the gym and she said yep that's him and with that doug prayed was pretty much ruled out of the investigation not only did he have a pretty solid alibi with a witness he also took the gunshot residue test and it was negative so now police decided to look elsewhere at other suspects naturally the investigation then led to margaret's current boyfriend thomas houston he lived around two hours away from maga in a place called columbus he told police that he had been in columbus that morning he had plans to come and see margot later that day but before he'd even set off from columbus he got that call from her friends and family informing him of her murder he said that they didn't really have any issues at all in the relationship and that things were going really well he said that he was planning on proposing to her and that they were going to spend the rest of their lives together and like i said he was going to come to her house on the day that she was murdered so that he could stay overnight and then spend thanksgiving with her the next day he said that morning when he was in columbus before he planned to drive to margaret he was just running some errands just some personal errands however this meant that it would be pretty hard to confirm that alibi because he was alone who was running these errands by himself however police pretty much believed his alibi due to the distance and the fact that he drove back from columbus to akron for this police questioning on the same day that margot was murdered it would be unlikely that he drove to akron killed her back to columbus got the call and then went back to akron you know what i mean there wasn't really enough time to fit all three of those journeys plus a murder plus a phone call you know but just like with doug prayed they didn't fully rule him out they just thought it's unlikely and so they decided to move on and look elsewhere for now police decided that one of the easiest ways to rule out a lot of people in this investigation was to make everyone that had been in recent contact with margaret right before her murder go for dental impressions so that everyone's teeth could be compared to the bite mark on my girl's body so everyone she knew had to go and get dental impressions her co-workers friends family thomas houston doug prayed however it would take quite a while to get the results of these dental impressions back around a week after the murder margot pride's funeral took place and the turnout was huge the line wrapped all the way around the church it was very clear that margot had had a huge impact on a lot of people her daughters kenya and sahara who were only 8 and 12 years old at the time sat with their father doug prayed and sobbed all three of them sobbed through the whole thing and the youngest of the two daughters went around the church handing out little purple remembrance ribbons for people to wear in margo's honor thomas houston also attended the funeral that day and this was actually the first time he'd ever met any of margot's family at her funeral that same day police were back at the police station still working on this case when they received a letter to the station with no name no return address no nothing this letter was from an anonymous source that claimed that they knew who had murdered maga prayed and they said it was margo's best friend now i'm not 100 sure what this friend's name was because i believe fake names are sometimes used for this particular person in the case and i'm not sure why so i'm just going to call her denise because that's what i've read in a couple of sources but other sources say different things this letter stated that denise margot's best friend had been the one to set up marga and thomas houston and denise was happy for them at first but now she was kind of growing resentful and she was jealous of the connection that margaret and thomas had and thomas houston was a lawyer so it made sense that that would be how they knew thomas and you know introduced him to their newly single friend margaret and soon after this letter arrived police also got a number of calls from a number of different people in akron saying that they'd had posters left on their car windshields that said the exact same thing that implicated denise and her husband in the murder of margot parade this letter claimed that denise was planning to flee from akron to avoid you know being caught for this murder and that her wealthy powerful lawyer husband was helping her get away with it and this was all in the plans so the letter said if police wanted to catch them then they had to act fast and even though there was absolutely no evidence to say that this best friend and her husband had anything to do with the murder police still kind of had to go down that avenue and so they tracked them down and they went to go question denise and her husband in this questioning they found out that this couple had been friends with margaret for over 10 years and they got on very well they didn't have any problems there were no arguments there was no feud there was no resentment there was nothing and when police informed them of this letter that they'd received the couple were very offended saying well this is one of our closest friends that we've known for so long why on earth would we do that and who on earth would say that about us police seemed satisfied with the questioning that they'd done of denise and her husband they gave their alibis i don't know what the alibis were but police seemed happy with it however they did want them to do a dental impression just like everyone else of course the results were gonna take a while to come back but police were happy to move on with the investigation and look elsewhere this definitely seemed as though the real killer was just trying to frame someone else you know as all of this was going on other officers on the investigation were trying to find some sort of like cctv footage security camera footage anything that might help them identify a person or even a car of interest unfortunately margot prid's doctor's office didn't have any security cameras on it so they didn't catch their own car park however there was a car dealership next door that had a camera that only just caught the homicide taking place now i am going to include the footage in this video however you can't really see anything happening because it was from the car dealership next door they've had to zoom in so far that it's literally just like moving pixels however i understand that some people might be uncomfortable so just skip forward a little bit if you don't want to see this security footage however if you do want to watch it you can't see anything taking place really so here you see margo's van arriving the car park of her office around 9 00 9 00 am a car then approaches and parks diagonally although they believe this car had been hanging around the car park for around 10 minutes prior to approaching margot's van a figure then gets out of the car and lets themself into the passenger side of margaret's van after about a minute and a half the figure then gets back out of the car gets into their car and drives away but as i'm sure you could tell from the footage that you just saw this cctv footage really wasn't gonna help in the investigation at all they couldn't identify a person they couldn't identify a specific car not a make not a model all they could really tell was that it was a light colour notice i said the word light instead of a particular colour because this could be any light colour it could be white it could be silver it could be gray it could be any form of light colour this really didn't help too much in the investigation police actually even sent this security footage to nasa for them to try and like clear it up a bit maybe they could make out a make or a model of the car however they couldn't do much with it although it did help with the timeline of the investigation so now because this security footage had the exact time on it they know that this murder began at ten past nine lasted for two minutes and finished around 9 12 a.m and that was when the murderer got back in their car and sped away so police continued to speak with the owner of the car dealership who said he'd actually spoken with margot pride on the morning of her murder she was buying a new car from his dealership at the time of her murder and so that morning she just called him up because she'd already ordered it but she was just waiting for it to get to the dealership so that she could have it so she was just calling him for an update on like where it was how long it was gonna be but this wasn't the first car that margot had bought from this car dealership she'd actually bought the van that she was driving the van that she was murdered in from this same guy the guy at the dealership then told police some very interesting information about a very specific safety feature that margot's van had that he'd installed himself when the van went above 50 miles an hour the doors would automatically lock so that they couldn't you know be accidentally opened at really high speeds maga had requested this when she first bought the van because she had two young children but even when the car stops or even when it's going really slow the doors don't unlock themselves so when they get to their destination maga has got to unlock the car before anyone can get out of it now this means that whoever murdered margot prayed that morning had to have the door unlocked somehow because they got inside the van from the passenger side and sat in the passenger seat now this could be done one of two ways maybe margaret saw her killer outside her van but didn't see them as a threat maybe it was a friend maybe it was a family member and maybe she just unlocked her car door so that the person could get in and sit with her or number two maybe the killer had their own key to the van and let themself in so now police are circling back to their initial suspects those top three suspects doug prayed her ex-husband thomas houston her current boyfriend and denise her best friend doug prayed probably still had a key to the van so he could have let himself in after all this was his ex-wife they probably shared that van at one point and it makes sense that he might just have an old key somewhere so he could have let himself in as for thomas houston and her friend denise this was her current boyfriend and her best friend if she sees them outside the van of course she's going to unlock the door and let them in so all three of them could have got in that van somehow so police decided to keep going with this new information in mind this just kind of solidified everything that they already thought that someone close to margaret had been the killer so now police decided to do a search of margot parade's home to see if they could find any clues that might lead to a perpetrator in there they didn't really know in particular what they were looking for they were just kind of keeping their eyes open for anything of course from the obvious of like threatening letters maybe she was receiving threatening letters from her murderer before this happened or maybe even less obvious things that might turn out to be clues like phone records maybe she was getting calls from a certain number every single day so then they would look into that but one thing police found in margot's home that they found rather odd was that she had a tape recorder hooked up to her home phone so every single phone call that she would get into the house would be recorded police wondered why margot might have this and so they asked doug prade who was her ex-husband of course he lived with her for 20 years so maybe this was something that she'd always had for a good reason and it was doug said that margot had this kind of tape recorder installed herself because sometimes she would give her patients her home phone number of course some patients that required like urgent advice urgent information they could just call her when she was out of work hours in her home and she would be able to give that kind of medical advice however because this was medical advice it needed recording to put on proper records that she'd told patients certain things and that they'd told her things so she had this tape recording thing so that she could record all the calls that happened instead of just sitting there and taking notes every time she answered the phone so police decided to take this tape recorder and a bunch of tips that they found back to the police station and they decided to listen through pretty much everything in the run-up to margot's death to see if anything had happened if there were any kind of suspicious phone calls and while they didn't find anything overly suspicious they did find some pretty interesting phone calls between margaret and some of her friends particularly talking about doug her ex-husband and in one of these conversations there was a particular name that was brought up over and over again a woman named carla smith and they were speaking of carla smith in a very negative way one of them even saying that carla smith made her sick and as soon as the officers heard this name they knew exactly who carla smith was she actually worked on the police force carla smith worked alongside doug prayed and the two of them were very close they would always go for breaks together always go for lunch together and there had been some rumors in the police department that the two of them were maybe seeing each other maybe doug was being unfaithful to his wife i believe carla also had a spouse so they were being unfaithful together and carla smith actually had a son during her time at the police station and these rumors even extended so far that some people were speculating that the father of carla smith's child could even be doug prayed so maybe carla smith had something to do with this maybe she was jealous maybe she was falling for doug prayed and she wanted to leave her husband and be with doug but the only thing getting in between that was my girl maybe carla killed margot out of jealousy maybe doug even helped carla kill margaret so that the two of them could be together so police decided that they needed to question carla as well in her questioning carla smith said that she'd been at work on the morning of margot parades murder her shift started at 8 30 in the morning and the murder took place at 9 10 am so she couldn't have done it she was in work in fact carla was actually one of the responding officers to the murder scene that morning she was the officer that had called doug prayed when he was at the gym and informed him of his ex-wife's murder so the homicide team began tracing carla smith's work day right up until before the murder because of course they knew she was there once the murder had happened but what had she been doing from 8 30 a.m at work that morning until 9 10. so the homicide unit began tracing carla smith's work morning timeline so she got into work at 8 30 in the morning and police began responding to the murder scene at around 10 30 a.m and of course the murder happened around 9am so what was carla smith doing that morning can she be accounted for was she with people that can confirm her alibi but as the homicide team were kind of looking for any record of carla in the police station that morning maybe she'd kind of logged on to the database maybe she'd submitted records or something like that anything that said her name was on the database that morning so she was in the office but they couldn't find anything there was no record of carla smith after she clocked in at 8 30 that morning up until she responded to the murder scene at about half past ten so that's two hours where she'd just kind of gone missing for a while there was no record of her which is of course very suspicious so police decided it might be of use to search carla smith's home to see if there was anything in there that maybe pointed towards her involvement in this murder and from the contents of her home it was very clear that doug and carla had been seeing each other and they were very comfortable with each other so much so to the point where doug prayed's kind of financial papers were in carla smith's home they found like a full folder of like bank statements and just you know other financial records receipts anything that they might need for like tax purposes which first of all this was immediately odd why do you need to be taking your financial papers a full folder of like bank statements and receipts and stuff to your girlfriend's house that's something you would keep at your own house is it not unless you were trying to hide it or you know keep it away from your space that you think could possibly be searched so police took this folder of doug's financial purpose back to the police station and they were looking through it and very quickly they noticed that doug prayed was in a lot of debt he wasn't doing very well financially ever since he split from margot margot was the main breadwinner of the family they had a huge house with i think they had a pool it was really nice they lived a very comfortable lifestyle but now doug had a fraction of that money margot earned most of the money and doug wants to maintain that lifestyle that he once had just for kind of reputation purposes but he doesn't have the money to do that and so he's getting further and further in debt trying to pay for this car that he can't afford trying to pay for a house he can't afford he even had to sell his car along with multiple other belongings that he'd kind of amassed over time to try and make this debt so maybe a potential motive if doug was the killer was bitterness margo had taken his lifestyle away from him his financial support away from him and now he was left with next or nothing maybe it wasn't even bitterness but maybe finances were the motive maybe he was trying to murder margaret for some kind of monetary value maybe he thought that he would inherit things from her being her ex-husband so police began a quick investigation to see if doug would gain anything financially if anything was to happen to marga so see if his name was on life insurance policies or you know if he was in her will and they found that he was margo prayed had a life insurance policy for 75 000 and the sole beneficiary of that amount of money was her ex-husband doug prayed she hadn't taken him off it yet now that is suspicious enough in itself that this man is desperate for money he's in a lot of debt and then something suddenly happens to his wife that meant that he would inherit 75 000 pounds that's suspicious circumstances as it is but this was only made worse for doug prayed when police were looking through this folder of all of his financial records that they found in carla smith's home and they found a receipt in there on the back of this receipt there were about five or six sums of money in the thousands that were subtracted from 75 000. it seemed as though doug had been doing some working out on the back of this receipt to see what he could pay for with the 75 000 from margaret's life insurance policy so following this new piece of evidence doug prayed was brought back into the police station for questioning they wanted to know what this receipt was all about and doug didn't even try and pretend that that wasn't what it was he admitted straight up that that 75 000 was referring to margot's life insurance policy but he'd made those calculations after she'd already died so police saw this receipt and they thought that was written before he killed her and he was just calculating what he could spend the money on if he did kill her but doug was saying no she was already passed away and he was just trying to figure out like funeral costs costs for their children to kind of put them through college and stuff and that was what he was doing straight after the murder which you know is perfectly reasonable the police couldn't determine when he'd written on that receipt so they just kind of had to take his word for it it's a reasonable explanation that he was trying to price up the funeral and other costs that he couldn't afford and that is what a life insurance policy is for at the end of the day and besides doug prayed was being very cooperative in this investigation he came in for every questioning they wanted him for he would explain everything that he possibly could to do with margaret and her life and sir police were satisfied with doug's explanation of this receipt and so they moved on however for about a month the investigation was pretty quiet that was until the dentist got in touch with the police station and said that they'd finally completed all of the dental impressions of all these people of interest that police wanted them to take however they hadn't been taken impressions it turns out that the dentist had just been looking at these people's teeth and kind of taking pictures and stuff to be able to take an impression of every single person that the police wanted them to it would have cost a lot of money it would have taken a lot of time and so the dentist just kind of looked at these people's teeth looked at the bite mark the picture of the bite mark on margot's arm and determined whether he thought in his head that they could be a match or not so it's not 100 accurate but this is still a professional he still looks at teeth every single day for a living and so he has a pretty good idea of what teeth sets could make what kind of bite marks you know so he had kind of crossed off a lot of names on this list that he thought were not a match and there were a few names that he wanted to have a better look at and actually take impressions of one of the names that this dentist had crossed off the list he did not think that this person's teeth were a match to the bimark and that was carla smith there were three names left on the list that he wanted to take impressions of because they were very similar to the buy mark and these three people were doug prayed margot's ex-husband thomas houston her current boyfriend and denise her best friend coincidentally the three biggest suspects in the case so this didn't really narrow much down for police so these three people went back to the dentist and they had like proper impressions taken of their teeth they had like molds done and everything so that was gonna take a while for those results to come back as well so police just continued in the investigation until then at this point police in that department were kind of off the record gossiping about who they thought could be the killer out of the three main suspects and a lot of them thought it was one of their own doug prayed there was just way more evidence for him than there was any of the other suspects there was a motive there when there wasn't really for the other suspects there were some people on the police force that didn't want to believe it and they didn't really want to get involved they didn't want to talk about it they didn't think doug prayed was a murderer however there were a lot of people that were pretty convinced and so the homicide team decided to kind of double down on his alibi that morning to make sure that that was fully checked out so they went and spoke with kathy one more time who was the woman that was at the gym at the same time as doug prayed and they confirmed the times that she was there she said she was there from 9 30 until 10 a.m on the morning of the murder but now police knew that the murder took place at 9 10 until 9 12 a.m because of that security footage that they had with the time printed on the video they knew that the murder happened 20 minutes before she saw doug prayed in the gym this means that doug prayed could have easily committed the murder at 9 10 a.m and been at margot's medical practice at 9 10 and then got in his car driven straight back to his apartment which was only six minutes away from the murder scene got changed really quickly dispersed of the murder weapon whatever and then been in the gym by 9 30 am that morning in order to be seen and have an alibi so now things are mounting up against doug so police decided to go back and look at that gunshot residue test one more time just in case they maybe missed anything maybe he just like washed his hands very well afterwards and maybe there was a little bit of gunshot residue because this had been one of the reasons that doug prayed was practically ruled out from the start he was never ruled out per se but he was looked at in a lot less detail because of this gunshot residue test that showed up negative however when police went back and looked at this gunshot residue test they found that it hadn't been carried out properly whoever had set up this test kit had not taken the tape off of the tester so they tested him with tip on it which kind of acted as a barrier between the tester and his hand so if there was any gunshot residue on his hands it wouldn't have got onto the tester so this test that they thought was negative this whole time was never actually negative it just had no results so now this was no longer a piece of evidence in doug's favor it wasn't that this test was negative it was that it didn't have any results at all and so now not only did doug look very suspicious the evidence in his favor was also dwindling by the hour so police decided to go and speak with all of margot's friends and family one more time because now they were very suspicious of doug and they wanted to know more about their marriage more about their divorce they didn't let on in these questionings that they were suspicious of doug but that's why they were doing it and in doug prayed initial questioning when he told them that he and margot were actually divorced because remember police didn't know that they were divorced when he told police that they were divorced he said it had been a very amicable very friendly divorce because it was just for the better of both of them and they were both kind of mutually agreeing to part ways and move on with their life and it had just been very calm however after speaking with margot's friends and family police learned that it wasn't a mutual divorce at all it actually turned very sour towards the end of it and it wasn't necessarily what both of them wanted margot prayed found out that doug her husband that she'd been with for 20 years had been cheating on her with multiple women for a long period of time and it was then that she realized that this man that she had loved and respected and raised two children with did not love her and respect her back in the way that she did to him and margot knew in her heart that she deserved better than that she didn't deserve to be treated like that and so she decided to leave doug of course this was met with a lot of protest from him he didn't want to split up with margaret he wanted his wife but he also wanted his girlfriends which she was not gonna have and so she told him that she was getting a divorce and she got the divorce papers sent out to him and everything but he just pretended like this wasn't happening he just didn't sign any of the papers didn't go to any of the meetings he refused to acknowledge that she was trying to divorce him and it got to the point where of course margot wants this divorce he doesn't but the court has to award the person that wants the divorce the divorce because you know they can't force them to stay in this marriage that they don't want to be in just because the other person is refusing to acknowledge the whole court proceedings so the court granted this divorce and they also awarded margot parade the family home however it didn't stop there doug still had a key to the house and of course him being in denial about the divorce pretending it wasn't happening he would still use this key and he would come in the house whenever he wanted and margot at first was very patient with him she understood that he was upset and after all this was the house that they were raising their children in and so she was kind of she was very patient with him at first he would let himself in the house and she'd be like look you can't do that i'll let you come over and see the kids whenever you want but you can't let yourself in this is not your house anymore and when their daughters kenya and sahara would go to doug's house he would interrogate them about margaret asking like where she'd been who she'd been seeing does she have a new boyfriend yet what's her new boyfriend like and when doug found out that margot was seeing thomas houston and that they were in a relationship and that things were going well he blew up and he drove to margot's home let himself in as he often did margot was just sat with her nephew in the house and doug comes in and he begins screaming at margaret and her nephew remembers seeing this pure rage in his face and until now margot had not wanted to get the police involved she hadn't wanted to change the locks because she wanted to trust doug with a key to the house because that was where his daughters were and she was hoping that maybe this was just his initial reaction to the divorce and that maybe he would calm down over time and then she could trust him with a key to the house but after this incident when he let himself in and began screaming at her she knew that she had to do something so margo got in touch with her lawyer who got her a court order against doug that said he was not allowed at magga's house and she also wanted to try get the joint custody of their two daughters revoked she wanted full custody of the children because doug would often use that as an excuse he would use the girls as an excuse to come around to the house to speak to margaret to kind of intimidate margaret and so that is what was going on in the background at the time of her murder is that she was in talks with her lawyer to change custody of both their daughters to just her and she also wanted more child support money from doug i don't know what for and i don't know why but that is what was going on behind the scenes she also asked her lawyer if there was anything that they could do about doug using her van like i said doug had a key to this van the same van that margot was murdered in he would often come round to the house and just use it whenever he wanted this was margo's car margo's only car and he would just kind of let himself in and drive away in it which he was not allowed to do and she wanted to try and put a stop to that as well so now suspicion is mounting higher and higher against doug prayed and officers on the homicide team decided it might be of use to search his locker at work because if you're gonna hide anything hiding it in the locker at a police station seems most logical because who's gonna search there you know and they were right because inside this locker they found a bag of cassette tapes from margo's home phone so logged calls of margers between her and doug and these were relatively normal phone calls between an ex-husband and an ex-wife they were talking about like the kids and picking the kids up at certain times and stuff however there was a very hostile turn to all of these phone calls they were very snappy very short very you know you could tell that there was a lot of negative energy between these two people which is not what doug presented to the police at first in his initial questioning when he said that he was on good terms with his ex-wife another one of these cassette tips that they found in doug prayed's locker actually had a phone conversation between margot and her mother on it when margot was expressing concerns to her mother that she thought that doug had tapped her phone margot told her mother that doug had brought something up in conversation with her that he technically could not have known about it was something that she'd spoken about on the phone with her friend a few days before that and that was the only time she'd ever spoken about it so how did doug prayed know about that unless he was listening in to her phone calls and margot's suspicions were correct he had tapped her phone and he was recording every single phone call on these cassettes this wasn't something that margot had set up herself for her medical business purposes this was something doug had set up to keep tabs on margaret and to listen in on her conversations and there was also another recording from that phone call with her mother when margot says that she feels very intimidated by doug and that there'd been an incident recently where he'd got all up in a face he was shouting he was too close to her and she was scared of him however frustratingly none of this proves that doug murdered dr margot prayed none of it it's all very suspicious incredibly suspicious but none of these pieces of evidence prove that doug prayed got into margo's van that morning picked up a gun and shot her six times and that is what police needed they needed solid evidence of that physical act of murder so they continued trying to find this solid piece of evidence that could prove that he did this however at this point the police department was not doing well because of this case i'm sure you can imagine a case like this where one of their own is being accused of murder of murdering their ex-wife it's very polarizing there were a lot of people on the police force that saw all this evidence and thought well it's got to be him we're just looking for some physical evidence now like he everything is so suspicious in relation to doug but then there were other officers on the police force that were very loyal to doug and they insisted that he couldn't be guilty that he was not guilty and that the homicide team were looking in the wrong places they were wasting time they were doing their jobs wrong and these officers that were very loyal to doug and believed in his innocence they were allegedly trying to make the homicide detective's job as hard as it could possibly be and as uncomfortable as it could possibly be to make them not want to do it to make them give up and focus on someone else the homicide team would have to hide their paperwork on doug prayed they used to have to take it everywhere with them because if they left it on their desk while they went for a break who knows what doug's friends could do to that paperwork it could go missing it could be sabotaged somehow and there was one young female officer on the homicide team that was kind of one of the main people in this whole investigation one of the main officers trying to solve this case who was suspicious of doug and she had to take her paperwork everywhere with her to breaks to lunch even home with her on an evening she would have these very important documents in her house with her when she lived alone which is very dangerous because who knows the lengths that these people could have gone to to sabotage that evidence luckily nothing ever happened to evidence or paperwork or anything like that but this was supposedly a very hostile environment to work in for a long time as they were trying to solve this case so anyway police are still pushing for people to come forward with any information to do with this murder in general not even just doug prayed but if they saw anything that day if they heard anything that day they were still appealing for witnesses and one man named howard brooks comes forward and said that he saw something on the morning of the murder however he hadn't come forward before now because he didn't think it was really much of anything however after he told his friends about this thing that he saw they urged him to go to the police because it could be important so howard brooks had been a patient at margaret's medical practitioners that morning he'd been to see a different doctor he'd had his appointment and then he was outside of the building after his appointment waiting for his cab home and that put him in the car park of the medical practitioners around 9 10 a.m just as the murder was happening howard recalled seeing a white car speeding through the car park that day and this is something that you would quickly forget about you know you see cars speeding all the time it's never normally a big deal so he kind of just forgot about it completely but it wasn't until a few days later when howard learned of the murder of margot prayed that he remembered being there that morning and suddenly this image of this white car speeding through the car park comes back to it so howard went to the police station with this new information and they asked him if he got a good look at the driver of the car and he believed that he had and so police showed him pictures of all of their suspects and said was it any of these that was driving the car howard took a brief look at all of these pictures and then pointed to one in particular and said that's them that was who was driving the car and this picture was of doug prayed police asked a few more questions and howard said he thought someone else could have been in the car with doug that day but he wasn't too sure he didn't exactly see another person's face so he couldn't tell them for sure police asked howard a couple more questions he said that he thought someone else might have been in the car but he couldn't say for sure he didn't see a second face so like that was all he could really tell them so now police have even more evidence and this time it puts doug prayed at the scene of the murder at the time of the murder this was the best evidence that they had so far however because howard said he thought someone else might have been in the car this kind of throws that evidence off a little bit because yes it puts doug prayed at the scene of the murder at the time of the murder but it doesn't say he pulled the trigger and if someone else was in that car with him maybe they pulled the trigger so they couldn't charge doug prayed with murder just yet so police called in doug prayed for yet another interview and their plan with this was to just present all the information all the evidence that they had against him and see how he reacts if he tried to defend himself if he seemed suspicious if he didn't have anything to say but the way that he did react in this interview was rather unexpected so like i've been saying he's been very cooperative all the way through this every time they wanted him to come in for questioning he would do it every time they needed anything from him he was happy to help because he wanted to help them solve this murder in this interview he was the complete opposite he got angry he was raising his voice he was telling them that they weren't doing their jobs properly and that they need to stop focusing on him and get out there and find the real killer and this shift in doug's attitude towards the investigation as soon as he realized all of this evidence was mounting up against him was very telling not long after that interview the police department gets a phone call it was the dentist getting back to them with the results of the dental impressions of the three men suspects doug thomas and denise and the dentist said that they had good news they'd found a match one of these three suspects teeth matched the bite mark on margaret's body there was one match and the other two didn't fit it at all and that one match was douglas prayed and it was also found that doug prayed actually had a partial denture so his whole top row of teeth was a denture that he could just take out and put back in whenever he wanted and if you remember that bite mark on margaret's body was of just the bottom set of teeth and that was it that was enough evidence to say that doug prayed had to be the murderer not only had he been seen at the murder scene his face at the murder scene but he'd also been in a vicious struggle with margot so on february 23 1998 almost four months after the murder douglas prayed was arrested on suspicion of the murder of his ex-wife margot prayed and within hours of this arrest this case was city-wide news this was a very high-ranking police officer a man that is paid his job is to protect was being arrested on suspicion of murder in his first court appearance doug prayed pled not guilty to the murder of margot prayed and so that meant that a trial must go ahead if he would have pled guilty then he would have just you know gone to prison straight away he could have easily just admitted it but he said that he wasn't guilty so this went to trial and there in trial all of the evidence was presented for the jury as well as a theorized timeline of events so no one knows exactly what happened in the card that morning because there were only two people there maga and her killer but based on physical evidence and stuff like that and of course the cctv footage the homicide team can theorize a timeline of events and that was told to the jury they believe that doug prade had been waiting in the car park of margot's medical facility in his white car for around 10 minutes before maga actually arrived so he got there around 9 00 am and parked at like the other side of the car park and just watched and waited for her to come in he could have easily killed maga in her home after all he had a key however he knew that if he did it in a car park at her work then it could look like a robbery whereas if he'd done it in margot's own home then that would have led back to him a lot easier and a lot quicker so anyway he drives over to where margaret is now parked in her van he packs his car gets out walks over to the van and it's unknown whether he used his own key to get in the van or whether margot let him in but either way he gets in on the passenger side and sits in the van with margaret they believe that he was sat in this van with a gun pulled on margaret just talking to her for about a minute of course they don't know what he was saying whether he was you know telling her that he was gonna kill her or maybe why he was doing it who knows and margot realizes that she's in a lot of danger and so she puts her hand up grabs the gun by the barrel and a struggle takes place where he's trying to gain control back of this gun margo's trying to get it off him to protect herself and doug realizes that margaret is a lot stronger than he thought and that he might lose this struggle she might gain control of this gun and so that is when he leans over and bites her arm so that she will lose grip of the gun and he can take back control now he finally has the gun again he decides that now is his time to murder margaret he shoots her six times and then gets out of the van jumps back in his white car and speeds away he then disposed of the clothes that he was wearing and the murder weapon the gun somewhere they don't know where they've actually never found his clothes that he was wearing or the murder weapon so no one knows where he disposed of those he then gets his workout gear on and heads straight to the gym in his apartment complex to lock in his alibi he made sure that people saw him working out in the gym that day so that was the theorized timeline that the jury was told they were also told of his believed motive for killing margaret this was a controlling bitter ex-husband fresh out of a very ugly divorce with his very successful very wealthy independent doctor wife he was very much in debt he missed the life that he used to live and he knew that his ex-wife that he now held a lot of resentment for had a life insurance policy with a lot of money that would go to him if anything happened to her on top of that there was the evidence of the bite mark that matched doug prade's teeth perfectly there was his disproven alibi where he wasn't at the gym that morning at the time of the murder there was howard brooks who had seen doug prayed's face as he was speeding away from the murder scene that day there was the questionable cassette tips that he'd stolen from margot's phone and kept in his locker so doug prade was called up to the stand to testify and he said that he didn't hold any resentment for margot pride at all he actually felt he had a very good relationship with the mother of his children he also denied ever fathering a child to carla smith after three weeks of trial the jury went to deliberate and after four hours of discussion they came back and found doug prayed guilty of the murder of margaret and he was sentenced to life in prison but the case doesn't end there i promised you a twist you're gonna get a twist around 15 years into doug's prison sentence so he'd spent 15 years behind bars it was now 2012 2013 time and of course technology is a lot better these days than it was at the time of the murder in the 90s and so doug prid's team insisted that they got evidence retested to see if they could find any dna evidence because you know they could pick up a lot smaller samples in 2012 than they could in the 90s so this might help find a different suspect so they took margot's lab cut because she was actually wearing the lab cut when she was murdered and when she was bitten so that bite mark had gone through her lab coat and onto her skin so on her lab cut surely there would have been some saliva from this person from her killer and so the lab coat was dna tested and they found a dna sample but it was not a match to doug prayed it was a male's dna sample but it wasn't doug's so was it the real murderers had there been a real murderer this whole time and doug had been falsely convicted so with this new evidence doug prid's team decided to try and appeal his prison sentence and get him exonerated get him out of prison because he was clearly innocent now so in order to meet the criteria to be exonerated the evidence this new evidence that's been presented the dna has to be so solid that no reasonable juror would ever find this person guilty of murder had it been presented at the original trial so say this trial had gone down and they had this conflict in dna evidence at the time would any single one of those jurors find him guilty and in january of 2013 a judge named judge hunter decided that no reasonable juror would ever find doug prayed guilty of this murder had that evidence been presented at the time and he was exonerated and let out of prison now this was met with mixed opinions there were a lot of people that felt really bad for douglas prayed he'd just spent 15 years of his life in jail for a crime that he now didn't commit it seemed as though he didn't commit it but there were other people that were saying well no hang on there's still so much evidence that says that he's guilty his false alibi the fact that the bite mark is exactly the same as his teeth and only the bottom set of his teeth who else only has one set of teeth just the bottoms there there was him being seen at the crime there was his motive the receipt of her life insurance policy money and so the prosecution came back and said we really don't think that doug should be out of prison for this just because someone else's dna was on margot prid's lab coat that day doesn't cancel out all of the other evidence that originally helped to convict doug in the first place and besides that lab cut had been just in an evidence locker for 15 years this could be anyone's dna it could be a crime scene investigators it could be a police officers during you know like handling of it or whatever yes they're supposed to wear gloves and it's supposed to be ultimately protected at all times but what if it hadn't you know there's plenty chance for it to get contaminated during 15 years in an evidence locker even if it wasn't a police officers or a crime scene investigators what if that evidence on margot's lab cut was just from one of her patients from the day before what if she hadn't washed it before she put it on that morning and you know it could have been anyone's basically what i'm trying to say is just because another man's dna was on her lab coat that day doesn't mean it's the killer's dna so how can it possibly rule doug out completely and say that he's innocent and so the prosecution got to work trying to get doug prayed back into prison and all they really needed to do was pass this evidence around to a few different professionals and get them all to say that this evidence is unreliable and that'd be it doug would be back in prison and in october of 2014 what do you know they all found this evidence unreliable it was decided that the judge had abused her discretion in exonerating doug and that that verdict should be thrown out and the evidence wasn't enough to free him so after two years as a free man douglas prayed was ordered to resume his life sentence for the murder of margaret of course doug and his team are not happy with him being sent back to prison so i have no doubt that they're working on another appeal right now to try and find some other way to get him out but i really think it's unlikely that that will happen if the prosecution's been able to put him in jail twice now i really doubt there'll be any evidence that is powerful enough to say that he's innocent the couple's daughters kenya and sahara prayed have always maintained their father's innocence they believe that he was wrongly convicted and that there's just a murderer on the loose out there somewhere that hasn't been found or charged and sadly just last year kenya prayed passed away after struggling for months with a very serious illness she was a doctor just like her mother had been and she had kids of her own but that's about all i have on this case feel free to discuss your opinions in the comments below do you think he should have been let out do you think he should have been put back in like i said my merch is available right now and it's linked down below in the description if you want to go and pick anything up this is my personal favorite the long sleeve everything in the store is on screen right now remember that is eleanor neil dot shop thank you so much to all of my channel members for their continued support with the channel especially to tier 2 that helped me choose the cases that i cover but yeah that completes this video thank you so so much for watching if you enjoyed make sure you leave a thumbs up if you want to subscribe there's a circle right here click it if you want to subscribe to my second channel there's a circle right here for that one too and if you want to watch another video of mine there's a playlist on screen here um thank you so much bye bye

Channel: Eleanor Neale

Views: 4,240,508

Keywords: eleanor, neale, eleanor neale, eleanor neale true crime, eleanor neale makeup, mystery, unsolved, unsolved mystery, true crime, solved, documentary, killer, murder, serial killer, buzzfeed, buzzfeed unsolved, podcast, true crime podcast, bbc, itv, netflix, storytime, forensic files, 2020, crime watch daily, dateline, interview, news, creepypasta, horror, doctor, margo prade, prade, douglas prade, doug, margo, margot prade, hopsital homicide, homicide, hospital, doctor death, dr, dr death

Id: eYgDjIuxdGQ

Length: 72min 58sec (4378 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 06 2020