The Predator Who Vanished Without A Trace | The New Detectives | Real Responders

in northern california a man sacrifices everything to prove his sister's death was no accident a sympathetic detective with a brilliant theory becomes his only ally a young woman vanishes and everyone's convinced she's been murdered texas investigators have a suspect and a motive but absolutely no proof at least not yet a sexual predator terrorizes a quiet colorado neighborhood when his spree suddenly ends authorities are left with no way to find him anyone can get away with murder at least for a while but as long as a murder remains unsolved it also remains open and justice favors the unforgotten [Music] in this episode some of the names have been changed on february 22nd 1985 palo alto california police were dispatched to the home of james and abigail nebauer 56 year old james niebauer told the officers that his wife abby one of northern california's most acclaimed poets had been accidentally shot when officers made their way inside they found the 47 year old mother of three dead on the kitchen floor she had suffered a massive shotgun blast to the chest police collected a partially disassembled antique shotgun lying on the floor a few feet from abby's body [Applause] on a nearby table police noticed polish rags and other cleaning supplies crime scene technicians photographed the scene [Music] james niebauer a physical education therapist for a local public school system explained what had happened he said that his wife had left to run errands earlier that afternoon james had just returned from a skiing trip with his youngest son he worked to finish restoring an antique shotgun that he planned to give to one of his children as a gift [Music] when abby returned a few hours later he was anxious to show her the progress he had made while she was admiring the workmanship on the barrel the shotgun inexplicably fired james had no idea that the old gun was loaded nor could he explain why it fired he couldn't believe that his wife of 27 years was gone at autopsy the coroner established the official cause of death as a gunshot blast to the victim's heart [Music] abby's death had been instantaneous the examiner also studied the powder burns left on her blouse based on their size and location on the sleeves he concluded the burn patterns were consistent with james's story that abbey had been reaching toward the barrel when the shotgun misfired but as news of the shooting began to spread through palo alto abby's friends came forward to police convinced that her tragic death was anything but an accident one close friend told police that james and abby's 27-year marriage had turned bitter in recent years [Music] the nebauers she said had stayed together only for the sake of their three children in fact abby planned to file for divorce after their youngest son left for college in a few months [Music] until then abby hoped to minimize the tensions in the house by converting the couple's garage into her own apartment but james refused to let go he would often explode into a rage accusing abby of seeing other men despite james nebauer's story to the contrary friends were convinced that abby would never have approached him as he held a weapon [Music] forensic technicians examined the old shotgun [Music] after a thorough analysis they could find no obvious flaws in the trigger mechanism that would explain why the shotgun had spontaneously fired nevertheless when police reviewed all of the facts of the case they concluded that abby's death was consistent with an accidental shooting the shotgun and abby niebauer's clothing were returned to her husband [Music] more than 700 miles away in olympia washington abbey's brother lee sansom had been following the investigation aware of his sister's turbulent marriage he also refused to accept that her death had been an accident i was very much surprised when a friend of my sister sent me a newspaper clipping indicating that the the shooting had been declared an accident by the police that was completely the last thing that i thought would happen abby's brother traveled to the palo alto district attorney's office hoping to convince them that this case demanded a closer look though he had no physical evidence he believed he could establish a motive for murder he said that just two weeks before abby's death the estate of their recently deceased parents had been settled abby's inheritance was 180 000 [Music] she confided to her brother that she planned to keep it in an account where james couldn't touch it however if abby died before her divorce was finalized the money would automatically go to james nebauer which is exactly how it was playing out [Music] but ultimately authorities weren't swayed [Music] and lee sansom quickly realized that if he was going to find justice for his sister he would have to come up with solid physical evidence on his own as he struggled to find a way to expose his brother-in-law's crime he received a letter from authorities in palo alto i got a letter back saying that they didn't really feel that there was any reason that they that the local prosecutor probably knew what they were doing and that there was no reason for them to look further into it unwilling to accept the official ruling sansom made a difficult decision he quit his job as a computer programmer and began investing all of his time and money to finding justice for his sister financially i lost everything that i had put aside for my retirement and that i had inherited from my parents and uh as i say there were huge gaps of time in which i was waiting for some results and it was very difficult it sounds like a good one eight years passed without a break then samsung learned of a survivor's advocacy group called citizens against homicide the group contacted the palo alto police department and persisted until authorities agreed to re-examine abby's death when homicide detective michael yore reviewed the files he was surprised at what he found my first impression in this particular case was that there was a homicide that occurred this was not an accident with lee sansom's help detective yore a firearms expert retrieved the old shotgun and examined it for himself it left him with more questions than answers how could you get a single shot shotgun okay where you have uh 14 pounds of pressure to [ __ ] the shotgun how could you get something like that where you've taken the time to take the fore grip off taking the time to take the stock off unscrew all these parts and then not notice that this is a single shot shotgun that's loaded and cocked take another look the finding compelled detectives to reopen the case they began by interviewing the couple's youngest son who was living at home at the time of the shooting he told police that just hours before his mother was killed he and his father had decided to return home a day early from a skiing trip [Music] when they entered the house he said his father stopped suddenly listening for a sign that abby was there with another man oh nothing uh listen abby wasn't home his father seemed agitated and then suggested he go out and have fun that evening [Music] the son thought this was peculiar since his dad rarely let him go out even on weekends he went and never saw his mother alive again detective yore was convinced that james niebauer had sent his son away for a reason he didn't want any witnesses to the shooting but until investigators could find a way to come up with solid physical evidence to prove murder abby's death would officially remain an accident after 10 years police in palo alto california agreed to reopen the investigation into the death of 47 year old abby niebauer shocked by her husband james as he worked to restore an antique shotgun though they now suspected she had been murdered investigators lacked the physical evidence to prove it convinced that something had been overlooked years before detective michael yore examined the coroner's report the medical examiner had stated that the powder burns on abby's sweater were consistent with her reaching out toward the gun barrel when it fired when detective yore viewed the photos for himself he came to a different conclusion the powder burns he noticed were on the outside forearm area of the sweater that doesn't match up with somebody reaching out and having being shot directly into the chest so that's what initially caused me to sit back and say how else could it have happened once again to find out detective yore devised his own forensic experiment using the antique shotgun with mannequins donated from a department store and white dress shirts from his own closet the detective set out to replicate the powder burns on abby's clothing using james's version of events as his starting point 22 inches from high but that scenario failed to reproduce the same patterns your continued to adjust the position of the mannequin's arms and his firing distance after several days of test firing he was finally able to replicate the burns on abby's clothing at 11 inches away the shotgun blast produced identical burn patterns and the defensive position of the arms suggested that abby niebauer knew what was about to happen to her and now this changes the scenario from she was looking at the bright colors that were on the the weapon itself voluntarily having a shotgun placed at her heart and doing it with her consent to her now having a shotgun placed at her heart and her in an alfred hitchcock terrified position an independent forensics authority confirmed detective yore's test results and now the palo alto district attorney was convinced that james niebauer had murdered his wife [Music] james nebauer now 69 years old was arrested at the seattle tacoma international airport as he returned from a trip to germany [Music] he was extradited to california where he stood trial for the murder of his wife police believe that james nebauer recognized his marriage was over and the only way to cash in on abby's recent inheritance was to kill her before the divorce was finalized after sending his son out of the house james loaded and cocked the old shotgun and waited patiently for his unsuspecting wife as she stepped into the kitchen he fired killing her instantly later he staged the scene to appear he'd been cleaning the weapon in 1999 james nebauer was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to 27 years in prison for the victim's brother lee sansom it was the end of a long struggle for justice but not the end of the mystery i still wonder why chimney bar could uh take my sister's life after being married to her for all those years and do it in a not in an angry way but in a carefully planned way and i still wonder how i could do that though some homicide investigations can linger for years without a break justice has a long memory and advancing forensic technology can heat up an otherwise cold case [Music] houston texas july 25th 1987. [Music] in the afternoon hours a road crew working along a rural highway prepared to finish up their day's work without warning a passing motorist suddenly opened fire one of the workers was hit in the leg co-worker managed to get the pickup truck's license number as the vehicle sped away the information was quickly called into the harris county sheriff's office within a few hours detective marcel dion had traced the tag to a car dealership owned by a man named michael neal police went to the car lot to interview neil about the shooting [Music] but according to an employee there a young woman named tracy joe shine michael neal wasn't around um is he here is michael here detectives asked her about his current whereabouts but she was incoherent and seemed unable to answer any questions tracy joe appeared to have uh probably had a shot or had taken some type of a drug and i tried to get her to tell me where michael neal was because that's who i was looking for the officers asked to look around near tracy joe the detective found a bag containing a powdery substance [Music] hey detective i think in the back room the deputy uncovered a makeshift lab used for manufacturing methamphetamine a potent form of speed is this your stuff in this other room though tracy joe claimed to know nothing about that she was placed under arrest bobby neal michael neal's brother and co-owner of the car dealership was also arrested on drug charges now with drug charges pending tracy joe was willing to talk to police about michael neal she said she and michael were romantically involved in fact the two shared a house though she didn't know where he currently was she told police that he was the man who had shot the road worker [Music] she said that she and michael neal had gone out joyriding in his pickup truck he was firing a handgun at random targets and thought it would be funny to shoot at the workers tracy joe didn't know that he intended to actually hit them she said she would be willing to testify against her boyfriend if police agreed to drop the drug charges against her until then she refused to make an official statement tracy joe was released on bail when she left that uh she told me she would get back with me and help me with the case but more than a month went by without a word from the witness then on september 9th tracy joe's mother virginia shine came in to speak with police she hadn't heard from her daughter in nearly three weeks tracy joe shine the star witness in an attempted murder investigation was now missing police in harris county texas were closing in on michael neal the prime suspect in a random drive-by shooting left one road worker lucky to be alive though neil's girlfriend tracy joe shine had agreed to testify against him she was now missing [Music] though the timing of her disappearance was suspicious investigators had to consider that she had left town to avoid having to testify against her boyfriend but then detective marcel dion received a call a woman who wished to remain anonymous claimed to have information about a man who had murdered his girlfriend in their home supposedly the girl had been placed in a uh 55-gallon drum of muriatic acid and been dismembered just prior to that the informant started relating to me the names involved and she named michael neal and tracy joe shine the informant heard rumors that the victim's remains had been transported to michael neal's car lot in a refrigerator after lying in his home for three days investigators obtained a warrant to search the premises of the car dealership [Music] though michael neal was not at work harris county authorities began searching the area on the side of the building technicians found an abandoned refrigerator it was unplugged and wide open as if it were being aired out it appeared to have been recently cleaned but as examiners soon learned not thoroughly enough debris still clung to its surfaces including what appeared to be a small fragment of flesh investigators collected the sample and sent it off to the lab for analysis in 1987 dna testing was in its infancy and required large samples with such a small sample to work with examiners were only able to conclude that the dna extracted from the refrigerator was human and that it had come from a female [Music] the process had consumed the entire sample precluding any further testing for investigators the finding of female human tissue however supported the anonymous caller's statements that tracy joe shine had been murdered looking to find additional evidence to corroborate the story police searched michael neal's bedroom where tracy joe's dead body had allegedly lane for three days if tracy joe had been murdered there police and forensic technicians could find no evidence to prove it anybody find anything michael neal's whereabouts also remained a mystery in november 1987 four months after tracy joe's disappearance investigators got a break michael neal had been located in san antonio he was in police custody for having shot a man in the face through his lawyer michael refused to make any statements about tracy joe shine's whereabouts though investigators believed he was involved in her disappearance they lacked physical evidence if you bring a case like this in front of a jury and a jury says well you know what if we convict this guy and then tracy joe shows up and it's very hard to when somebody disappears to assume that this person is dead investigators would have to find another way to make their case they interviewed dozens of inmates serving time with michael neal hoping the suspect had bragged about the murder but other than rumors no one had any useful information [Music] for months detectives searched the surrounding area hoping any sign of the missing woman would turn up but the investigation into tracy joe shine's disappearance turned cold and it would remain that way for the next 12 years by 1999 harris county detectives had formed a cold case squad to deal with a growing number of unsolved crimes while assessing old files they came across tracy joe shine's case report they agreed her disappearance demanded a closer look and though more than a decade had gone by detective roger wedgworth believed the passage of time could work to his benefit people get divorced wives are more likely to talk about an ex-husband than they are to talk about a present husband people aren't threatened by individuals anymore they could be incarcerated something like that so time helps us that away one of the people mellowed by time was michael neal's brother bobby who had been imprisoned 12 years earlier for manufacturing methamphetamines his parole hearing was coming up and now he was willing to tell what he knew whatever [Music] bobby said that about the time tracy joe disappeared he'd gone over to his brother's house he found michael in the garage trying to load a taped-up refrigerator into his pickup truck this thing out here where do you want to put it in the truck the place reeked and michael was burning incense to cover the smell bobby helped his brother put the fridge on the truck then they drove it to the car dealership and unloaded it what happened to her bobby said he had no idea what was inside though he was being cooperative investigators felt he had not told him everything we felt that bobby had seen her body in the refrigerator and we wanted him to tell us and we felt that because he was incarcerated at that time that we could possibly pressure him to tell the truth but the suspect's brother wasn't talking collection still the information he provided focused the investigation once again on the refrigerator [Music] unfortunately detective marcel dion who had worked the case 12 years earlier had made certain that the evidence remained in police custody i don't know how many times everyone tried to get me to release that refrigerator so that they could get rid of it out of our property room and i wouldn't let it go because i knew that was the only real piece of evidence that we had after dismantling the appliance technicians went to work searching for evidence they found and collected several biological samples that had gone previously undetected though investigators had no known samples from tracy joe to compare it to the evidence was sent to gene screen a dna testing laboratory that opened in the year after tracy joe disappeared but the police property room where the refrigerator had sat for 12 years was not climate controlled and senior forensic scientist william watson was not optimistic i did not believe that there was a good chance of generating a dna profile from the samples that they had just because of the condition that they were in and the environment that they had been in and in fact the samples were too degraded for conventional dna testing however a new procedure was being developed the technique called mitochondrial dna sequencing looks at a specific strand of dna in the cell nucleus that's passed unchanged from mother to child potentially examiners could determine if the latest evidence recovered from the refrigerator and come from the biological child of virginia shine it was the perfect type of case for this sort of testing because every other type of testing had been exhausted and we were we were up against the wall there was really nothing that we could say about the samples that were found inside the refrigerator except that back in 1987 they determined that they were from a human and that was it so if we didn't get a profile with mitochondrial dna we weren't going to have anything at all the procedure was a success examiners then compared the profile generated from the refrigerator to those of tracy joe's mother virginia shine the results were a match and then we looked at the overall power in a court of law the tiny samples were enough to constitute the victim's deceased body after 12 years of waiting advanced forensic technology had provided investigators with proof that tracy joe shine had been murdered 2000 michael neal imprisoned on unrelated charges was confronted with the evidence that confirmed tracy joe's body had been in his refrigerator [Music] faced with the death penalty he confessed to the murder he said that after learning that tracy joe was cooperating with police in the road worker shooting investigation his anger turned deadly and he strangled her to death three days later he cut up her body placed it into the refrigerator and then disposed of the remains after pleading guilty michael neal was sentenced to 45 years in prison for first degree murder when tackling a crime investigators faced two scenarios a lack of clues to fit the suspect or a lack of suspects to fit the clues fort collins colorado august 29 1989 in the early afternoon hours a real estate agent was showing prospective buyers a home in a desirable neighborhood as they made their way into the master bedroom they stumbled upon a gruesome find the current homeowner 39 year old sarah dean lay dead on the floor after receiving the frantic from the fort 911 police department rushed to the scene there in the second floor bedroom they found the victim with a telephone cord wrapped tightly around her neck [Music] sarah dean had also been sexually assaulted [Applause] right a spilled cup of water found near her body suggested she had been taken by surprise [Music] police searched the nearby bathroom chances are a lot in the bathtub they located debris that had been tracked in from the outside the window was unlocked for investigators this marked the killer's likely entry point [Music] looking to uncover additional evidence crime scene technicians applied a laser wand throughout the area which causes the proteins found in bodily fluids to fluoresce the laser exposed several stains down here the samples were collected and preserved as evidence as police processed the outside of the house they located and collected a palm print on the locked kitchen window but there was no telling when it might have been left there or by whom no ladder marks or any other signs of a forced entry were found at autopsy the medical examiner confirmed that sarah dean had been brutally beaten before being sexually assaulted and then strangled to death the medical examiner collected additional biological evidence and blood typing analysis confirmed that it matched all of the samples collected from the crime scene it had all originated from one individual police turned to the recovered palm print to tell them who that was though the lift had provided a clear image of the palm print a search through databases containing fingerprint records turned up no matches until investigators could find a way to tie all of the evidence to a suspect sarah dean's killer would remain a free man police in fort collins colorado struggled to solve the brutal rape and murder of 39 year old sarah dean and though they had collected incriminating physical evidence at the crime scene they had no solid suspects to link it to [Music] using photographs taken at the scene investigators worked to develop a profile of sarah's killer guy to reach the unlocked second floor bathroom window the suspect had to climb a fence grab the gutter pipe and then swing onto the roof for investigators that suggested that the perpetrator was young and agile most likely a teenager with an overwhelming amount of physical evidence to prove murder lieutenant jim broderick needed to find a way to identify the suspect i guess there was kind of a sense of confidence the whole time we were working at is that we were finding evidence of the intruder it was just a matter of identifying who the intruder was lieutenant broderick ran the victim's name through the law enforcement database sarah dean's name had recently been entered into the system she had filed a police report 10 days before she was murdered according to the reports sarah called police after returning home late one night to discover that her home had been robbed among the items stolen were a tape player a red and blue gym bag two bottles of wine and several pairs of black underwear but the responding officers had found no signs of forced entry and no clues to the robber's identity that investigation quickly went cold for investigators the fetish aspects of the robbery and the sexual nature of the homicide made it easy to connect the two crimes lieutenant broderick speculated that the robbery might have been a sort of dress rehearsal for the young suspect he knew the general layout of the house may have even known based on the amount of time that he'd spent in the house that on the prior occasion 10 days earlier that certain windows aren't locked even though the evidence suggested the crime of a stranger investigators couldn't yet eliminate the possibility that the killer was someone she knew [Music] police interviewed sarah dean's co-workers friends and acquaintances starting with her fiance [Music] he told police that he and sarah had recently become engaged and planned to marry in a few months [Music] they were excited about their future together sarah was in the process of selling her home so they could purchase a new one together he had no idea who could have done this to sarah before releasing the fiance police collected blood samples serological tests later confirmed he was not the killer [Music] over the next several months hundreds of local residents including known sex offenders were brought in for questioning [Music] all were asked to submit blood samples i'll bet you there was three to four hundred people that actually had blood samples drawn from them compared to the evidence at the scene but no one was being matched up the search for sarah dean's killer was turning up nothing [Music] then in september 1989 a month after the homicide fort collins police uncovered a clue a car that had recently been reported stolen was found abandoned along the side of the road inside the officer collected a baseball cap with the initials dt junior written on the brim believing teenagers had stolen the car burglary detectives contacted area high schools and looked for students with those initials thanks for coming in let's take a seat they found one sixteen-year-old douglas thames jr was brought in for questioning when asked about the hat he claimed that he had lent it to some friends of his a few weeks earlier and never got it back [Music] with his mother present thames denied stealing the car within a few hours police had located the two young men they not only admitted stealing the car they also confessed to being part of a gang responsible for robbing a few area homes they showed police where they kept their stolen property among the electronics and other goods police found a red and blue gym bag like the one reported stolen by sarah dean 10 days before her murder officers confronted the teenagers with the evidence linking them to the homicide but the boys denied any knowledge of it and they refused to divulge the names of other teenagers involved in the robberies police collected blood samples and palm prints but none matched the evidence recovered from the crime scene for investigators the setback was frustrating over the course of the next four to five years there's just nothing coming in i mean there's there's good leads based on people arrested in other jurisdictions for similar crimes but you know you do the you do the serological testing and it just doesn't match up with our crime scene six years after sarah dean was found brutally murdered in her home police were no closer to finding her killer [Music] by 1995 six years had passed since 39-year-old sarah dean was found sexually assaulted and murdered in her fort collins colorado home [Music] though police had collected an overwhelming amount of physical evidence from the crime scene they struggled to link it to a suspect the case had ground to a halt [Music] but in july of 1995 all of that changed a heating technician working on a furnace in a rented house made a strange discovery as he worked to fix a clogged air duct he found several pairs of women's underwear stuffed inside recalling the details of the sarah dean robbery and homicide he called police lieutenant broderick responded to the call hopeful that this could be the break that eluded authorities for years up inside there yeah when he saw the underwear he realized they matched the description of those that had been reported stolen by sarah dean 10 days before her murder the detective collected the items and forwarded them to the colorado bureau of investigation [Music] there laboratory agent examiner ted devalus located and extracted biological evidence from several of the items even though the samples had sat for six years in a furnace air duct agent devalus was confident that new dna technology would allow him to obtain valuable evidence i would have been concerned of doing the old abl typing and some of the protein markers which are more subject to degradation dna is very stable and again what we do is we always go ahead and try to develop a dna profile to see if we can be successful or not devalus was able to develop a genetic profile of the suspect from the evidence recovered from the underwear when that was compared to the biological evidence recovered from the sarah dean crime scene devalus concluded that all of the samples in this case had originated from one individual having established a physical link between the crime scene and the rented house investigators raced to find out who had lived there at the time of the murder and we were hoping you might have some paper fortunately the landlord kept meticulous records he told police that in august of 1989 the house was rented to a family who had a few teenaged boys one was named douglas thames jr the teenager who had provided investigators with information six years i earlier yeah they just came in a check of statewide records revealed that douglas thames jr now 22 years old lived several hundred miles away in grand junction colorado armed with a court order to obtain blood samples and fingerprints from douglas thames jr detective broderick headed for grand [Music] junction with thames at his job site where he worked as a roofer [Music] [Music] uncooperative with police convinced he was hiding something investigators took hand prints and collected blood samples before releasing the suspect go straight up [Music] after developing a dna profile from douglas thames junior's known blood samples agent devalus compared it to the evidence found at the crime scene and on the underwear recovered from the furnace all of the samples matched fort collins police had found sarah dean's killer police returned to grand junction this time with an arrest warrant you have the right to talk to a lawyer douglas thames jr was taken into custody and charged with the 1989 murder of sarah dean [Music] police believe that 10 days after breaking into sarah dean's house the 16 year old returned slipping in through the open second floor bathroom window thames caught his victim completely off guard sarah dean probably never knew what hit her for the crime of first degree murder douglas thames jr was sentenced to life when a homicide investigation goes unsolved some killers feel safe to put their deeds behind them armed with patience and the latest forensic technology investigators can heat up a cold case and find justice for the unforgotten

Channel: Real Responders

Views: 314,063

Keywords: Crime Investigation, Crime Scene Investigation, Crime Solvers, Criminal Investigations, Forensic Challenges Solved, Forensic Science Methods, Missing Persons, Murder Mysteries Solved, Real Responders, True Crime Series, Unsolved Murder Cases, Unsolved Mysteries, cold case detectives, crime scene investigation, criminal case studies, forensic examination, missing persons cases, solving crimes, solving murders, true crime reenactment, unsolved mysteries

Id: YZHOTGVoct0

Length: 49min 33sec (2973 seconds)

Published: Mon May 17 2021