What The Victim's Bones Can Tell Us About Their Death | New Detectives | Real Responders

[Music] police in Connecticut begin to suspect a missing woman was murdered but how can they prove it when they haven't got the body [Music] after a 14-year search a skeleton is found in a well is there enough left to determine what happened a homicide investigation stalls until a dead man helps solve the mystery of his son's disappearance [Music] hiding the victim used to be the key to getting away with murder but no longer even without a body forensics can tear the fabric of lies and expose the bodies of evidence [Music] a dead body it's usually the first clue in a homicide but without a victim how can police catch the killer without a victim how can they prove a murder occurred at all in December 1986 Connecticut State Police were faced with just such a challenge hella crafts a 38 year old flight attendant had disappeared from her home in quiet Newtown Connecticut she left behind her husband Richard and three children her disappearance came as no surprise to Richard Ella had recently filed for divorce after discovering he was having an affair the crafts nanny Marie Thomas was worried her suspicions grew when she noticed stains on the carpet near hellas side of the bed she called hellas best friend who in turn contacted hellas lawyer according to state police detective Joseph de Stefano Ella may have feared for her life how he explained to her attorney that if for some reason she disappeared or wasn't around any longer or something wasn't right and not to take it as being a coincidence that there was something wrong and she had asked her attorney please look into it that is exactly what had happened how he did disappear police questioned Richard crafts though they knew his situation with hello was rocky he seemed an unlikely suspect besides his day job as a commercial airline pilot Richard was a town constable sworn to uphold the law but as state investigators talked to hellas friends suspicions about Richard began to grow when people were asking Richard where Helle was he gave several different answers at one point he said she was visiting her mother another point I believe he said she was visiting her sister another point he said he didn't know where she was things that weren't consistent with what a husband would say if his wife was missing that in itself created some suspicion police had enough information to obtain a search warrant of crafts house but not enough to charge Richard with any crime they still didn't know if this was a criminal investigation or a wild goose chase at this point in time we had no answers all we had were questions they hope to find some answers in the crafts bedroom by the time they obtained the warrant the room was virtually empty apparently to get ready for new carpeting but perhaps also to disrupt the crime scene meanwhile Richard was on his way to Florida for Christmas and miles ahead of the police something happened here but had the suspect erased all the evidence [Music] some of the furniture was discovered in the basement before investigators could examine the bedroom they called in a friend of hellas to tell them how it was arranged [Music] after the room was back in order the forensics team found stains on one side of the mattress blood spatter expert Henry Lee was called in to interpret them the first time when you hit somebody usually don't produce batter you only can create a wound when the blood star deposit around the injury area friend a capillary or Bay now you have poor blood the second time you hidden them you have spatter Lee was able to determine from the size and distance the stains spread on the mattress that the blood spattered at medium velocity that told him a little about the weapon we know is some belong object but I cannot tell you that's a hammer and ax or flashlight could be any type of this blunt object one thing Lee and investigators concurred on they had found the crime scene and it suggested bloody murder a faint pattern of blood on hella and Richard crafts mattress was enough to turn up the heat on what was until then a missing-persons investigation now police felt that hella might be dead and that Richard crafts had killed her but the proof was scant shaky they were relying more on instinct than evidence if mrs. crafts was killed where was her body they'd have to do their homework the next level of the investigation was a review of paperwork that we had found in mr. cash background particularly his credit card receipt on the roster of routine purchases one line stood out we found that Richard crafts had rented a wood chipper from the darién rental agency in Darien Connecticut though it seemed like a shot in the dark distephano sergeant suggested that perhaps crafts used a wood chipper to eliminate the body distephano was skeptical my immediate thought was things like that don't happen they happen on television but they don't happen in real life he went to Darien rental to see if it was even possible to use a wood chipper to dispose of a body the rental agent showed him the chipper that Richard crafts rented on November 18th around the same date Ella crafts disappeared okay essentially what we have then we've got all the material being fed in through this end right and it's coming in contact with the cutters on the wheel over here yeah what's you spin it know about how thick is that wheel yes sir that's solid steel that weighs about 900 pound 900 pounds those blades one on either side so once that once that wheel gets moving nothing stops no no at all the only thing that happens is whatever hitch that gets cut yeah you can throw a piece of steel in there wouldn't make any difference set it up you say that opens up about 12 so 1,200 rpms with a 900 pound piece of metal - 12 inch blades no way anything can stop that not at all though the massive blade could make short work of anything in its path the hopper could only accommodate objects up to a foot wide it would be impractical to dispose of a body that way but not impossible it seemed far-fetched but while d'stefano was investigating the wood chipper other detectives spoke with town workers to see if anyone had seen anything that might resemble a clue [Music] a utility worker reported he was out in the early morning of November 19th he saw someone operating what looked to be a wood chipper on River Road adjacent to the Housatonic River that chance observation propelled an otherwise stalled investigation attention shifted to River Road when the investigators got to that location they didn't in fact find wood chips on the ground and exploring the area all the more they found envelopes with Ella crafts return address on them at this point in time we had the feeling that we've got something here that's totally out of the ordinary investigators gathered 33 bags of debris from the River Road area the bags were sent to the police station to be pored over piece by piece anything that wasn't a wood chip or a leaf was set aside at first we would find one hair and not knowing what to do with it we took a bottle and we began we put the one hair in the bottle we would continue on we find an object that was harder than wood but softer than stone so we felt that will start another bottle for items such as these out of the mulch a grisly scenario was taking shape based on these initial findings a tent was set up to process evidence on-site constantin karazulas the state's chief forensic odontologist or dental expert was called in in hopes of locating human dental remains we would collect evidence and bring it into a tent and we would put it through some water through a filter and look for things that were human human parts circumstantial evidence was piling up the blood in the bedroom the wood chipper rental the unidentified fragments in the wood chips but there was still nobody and without a body there was no crime they needed to find something more definite investigators knew they had to turn the case around or a killer would walk while evidence of a crime was turning up along River Road police continued interviewing potential witnesses one spotted a man with a wood chipper on November 19th on a bridge about a mile south of the River Road site divers were sent to the bridge to see what they could recover [Music] the water under a bridge is the repository of all things broken and discarded it's a dumping ground for vandals and a place where unwanted possessions are tossed and forgotten most are mundane but sometimes the unexpected turns up Dan Lewis was one of the divers what we're looking for was anything that could have been used as a weapon we were looking for anything that any type of a container and certainly any more body fragments underneath this bridge there's many parking meters road signs shopping carts the usual kind of things that you'll find discarded off of a bridge I mean something like a chainsaw or type of weapon will be totally out of place when they came up with that you know we immediately knew that you know we may have something here that pertained to that case [Music] like everything else in this case the chainsaws connection was tenuous the tool was sent to dr. Lee's lab to see if a link could be made meanwhile a mile north at the 10th detective de Stefano was making a gruesome discovery of his own I had just put some debris into the screen I had rinsed it off and my normal course was after I would rinse I would go through with my fingers just to make sure that it was totally Winston as I was going through you develop a certain feel for what you're dealing with and wood chips have a have a certain consistency about them as I went through I felt something that didn't feel like a wood chip have felt slippery and when I held it under the light I found it to be the tip of a finger the evidence of the crime was becoming ever more apparent but it still wasn't strong enough to prove hellas murder or to name her killer the pieces would start to come together in Lee's lab as the chainsaw was studied the chance of deposit in a river must have a reason we initially don't know what's the significance and the linkage but by examining a chisel we found tiny fragment of hair under a higher power magnification microscopic examination we made a determination that's human not only human we noticed this hair was bleached and died to Lee's assistant elaine peg Lee ro the bleached and dyed hairs were all too familiar [Music] over 2,000 of them had already been recovered from the wood chips and examined the roots were of something we call paintbrush type this paintbrush appearance to a root is characteristically found when hair is in tissue and then that tissue starts to putrefy and the chemicals from the putrefaction affect the appearance of the hair root so it ends up looking just like a paintbrush that's important in an investigation such as the crafts case because it indicates that the hair was in tissue and wasn't from a beauty parlor and dumped alongside the the road the hairs were then compared to hair from the victims hairbrush recovered from the crafts house they matched the chainsaw was then taken apart inside the housing were Bluegreen cloth fibers and remnants of flesh and blood the fibers were the same color and fabric as Helles night clothes the flesh in the chainsaw proved to be human and the blood type matched Ella crafts now it was a matter of finding out who the chainsaw belonged to the serial number was corroded from being underwater but Elaine peg Lee ro was able to restore it because of the nature of the way metal is formed the impression goes through several layers so even if you scrape off the top layer if you take away that scraped portion you should be able to raise up the impressed areas below [Music] she applied a chemical to the surface of the plate which dissolved the corroded layers of metal revealing the serial number the number se5 nine two one six one six all my Korea remember that number the serial number was traced back to the dealership the chain saw had been purchased by Richard crafts the forensics on the chainsaw potentially linked victim and killer but investigators still had to prove that hella crafts was truly dead [Music] after combing the banks of the River Road site for more than a week dr. karazulas found the final piece of the puzzle and as I look down I noticed there was an object and that object turned out to be a human tooth in forensics this is the Holy Grail I knew I had everything that I would need to make an identification of a human being a comparison with dental records proved the tooth belonged to hella crafts but it suggested more than that part of the jawbone was still clinging to the tooth and part of the root was cut off if this tooth were just removed you wouldn't see this type of a fracture or you wouldn't see bone attached to it in this way so I believe that some some force broke this tooth from its seat in the jaw and crushed whatever it was holding to pieces that force could have been a chainsaw or a wood chipper Richard crafts could be connected to both objects and now indisputably to the victim his wife Ella crafts the circle was closing in on the airline pilot the condition of the tooth coupled with the hair and skin evidence was enough to allow the medical examiner to declare hella crafts dead two months after she disappeared [Music] based on the trail of evidence police reconstructed the likely scenario of hella crafts death on the night of November 18th hello was preparing for bed when Richard struck her with a blunt object he got rid of the bloody sheets but left telltale stains on the mattress and carpet [Music] he had already rented the wood chipper probably for some legitimate purpose then he realized he had the opportunity to kill his wife and use the chipper to dispose of her body but he knew the opening in the machine wasn't wide enough to fit a human torso that's where the chainsaw came in this isn't something that you would do to an animal it's just not something that you do I mean it's totally beyond the realm of what people do to each other only 6 ounces of material from hella crafts remains was ever recovered less than 1/1000 of a human body but it was enough for the police to make their case most people don't realize two things number one the lengths to which the police will go to investigate a crime and number two the power of forensics they don't realize the new developments that have happened within the past few years that have revolutionized forensics and in Criminal Investigation it's it's incredible what can be done now when you blend science with investigation for his crime Richard Krabs received a 50-year sentence his unconventional way of disposing of the body proved to be his undoing though it took a battery of forensics experts to prove it but not everyone has access to those resources one woman's desperate search for her sister would consume 14 years of her life Ava D Hart was looking for a good time but she fell in with a bad crowd her circle of friends was a motley group of biker wannabes a touch of menace in the otherwise sleepy riverside town of Fredericksburg Virginia in 1982 they hung out at a place called the Joker's wild a loose-knit gang with too much time on their hands Ava's boyfriend was the leader of the group his name was George Posadas but he called himself George sparta he was a man who was more feared than respected Ava had dated him for eight years during that time the relationship grew more abusive occasionally she'd leave him but never for long on July 20th 1982 Ava left her house to go to work at the Joker's wild that was the last anyone ever saw of her [Music] [Applause] after a day had gone by with no sign of Ava her family contacted the Stafford County Sheriff's Department detective Billy bowler explains the investigation when the investigation was first initiated was a missing-persons report and our chef at the time was Chief of Detectives and picked up the case he followed through with interviewed the family he went to interview pet solace pet sales produces a handwritten letter that was confirmed through family members that it was in her handwriting more or less a Dear John type letter I'm leaving the house Pat see you later that kind of thing I'm not coming back if George knew where Ava had gone he wasn't telling neither was anyone else with no leads and no clear signs of foul play the sheriff's investigation could go further I think pet solace of course was targeted as a suspect or an individual responsible right from Jump Street but they could they they had no one coming forward with any information there was no we had nobody we had no forensic evidence we had no Ava DeHart and Ava's family had no consolation Ava's sister Debbie suspected a conspiracy of silence among the gang at the Joker's wild she felt the police weren't taking the case seriously she knew that if Ava was to be found she'd have to go it alone the attitude was a bit hard to deal with in the beginning because I would take them a rumor that I heard or someone that said something and and they would contact me again and tell me they'd followed up on it and and then we'd go through this cycle this whole roller coaster emotional roller coaster of going to them and giving them information and then having nothing come of it and it was very difficult to deal with Debbie was relentless in her pursuit of the truth desperate to find her little sister she bulldogged every member of the Joker's wild gang pumping them for information taking copious notes she knew her only hope lay with the surly gang of bikers who said they were Ava's friends but no one would talk they were all afraid of George pet solace the week's unfolded in two years but Debbie endured even though she was forced to realize her sister was probably dead my friends say that when I get resolved on an issue that I don't let go and I guess I'd wavered in my own heart and mind many times about what I always knew that she was dead but I'd wavered in my own mind about what could have happened in 1996 a news story caught Debbie's eye a story about a woman in a footlocker her remains were found in Frederick Maryland in 1982 the same year that Ava disappeared identification techniques weren't as sophisticated then the body had been misidentified and the new identification was a young girl 22 to 26 the right height the right weight she was found within four weeks of my sister's disappearance and had been missing approximately been in the trunk approximately for four to six weeks and so I just really had a very emotional response to that the search for her sister would lead her to the largest collection of anatomical remains in the United States [Music] in April 1996 renowned forensic Authority Doug Owsley of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington applied his expertise to putting a face on the lady in the trunk well that was then printed in the papers and it turned out that David Hart the sister Aven to Hart happened to see that in the in the newspapers and she thought could that possibly be Ava because Ava had disappeared in 1982 encouraged by the preliminary description of the lady in the trunk Debbie acquired Ava's dental records so Osley could compare them but sadly the dental work didn't match the lady in the trunk was not Ava Dee heart Debbie Dee hearts quest showed no sign of ending but the lady in the trunk provided some unexpected help after all there was so much publicity surrounding it there were TV people and media people pursuing me and I did some interviews and as a result of that I started to get phone calls people were interested again and I got some anonymous calls people with little bits and pieces of information but information I had made it all along after 14 years of pushing Debbie finally felt like she was making progress she knew this could be her last chance she hired private investigator al Baker to help her follow up with the former members of the Joker's wild gang we began making contact with various people which debbie was able to provide us with the names she had done that thorough a job as to know who's part of this group how we could contact most of them nobody knew anything definite many were still afraid of George pet solace but one name kept coming up Barbara Campfield the woman who became pet solace girlfriend after ava and who eventually married him one woman in particular said she helped Campfield clean up some blood at the Joker's wild after Ava's disappearance at the time Campfield told her that the blood was the result of a fight it seemed that barbara Campfield knew something but what Debbie had already tried speaking with her but got nowhere now Baker gave it a try I started off by introducing myself to her providing him my card giving her phone numbers and calmly explained to her that we were now in the investigation with a DeHart family and that we were not going away that this investigation would continue was not gonna stop and we were gonna talk to everybody we could to try and find out where Ava was Baker kept pursuing Campfield realizing that Baker wasn't going to let up she was persuaded to work out a deal she began cooperating with detective Boller in the Stafford County Sheriff's Department she directed them to an abandoned home site outside of town camp field told bowler that on the night a ver disappeared George Pat solace asked Kemp field to help him dump something heavy down a well he told her not to ask any questions she never dared to the well was pointed out to us we subsequently got a search warrant for the property went there with the assistance of the state police in the Orange County Sheriff's Office and called the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue folks to come help us actually in the excavation of the well after making sure the conditions were safe the fire and rescue workers were slowly lowered into the claustrophobic depths of the well the hole was less than two feet square and 19 feet deep soon the workers were hauling up buckets of soil and debris years of accumulated leaves and dirt that concealed whatever lay below then bones started coming out they were laid on the ground beside the well so an anthropologist could see what they'd found and what was missing it was clear the bones were human and female we found a pretty much probably the best part of her whole skeleton in various pieces and forms as we brought those out really that came out in five-gallon bucket pulls at a time out of the well it seemed the mystery of Ava's disappearance had been solved but were these truly her remains a comparison of the jaw with Ava's dental records confirmed the terrible yet reassuring truth debbie DeHart sister had been found well it's certainly better for us to have found her than to have never found her I don't think we realized how deep the wound was or how it would never heal if we hadn't found her for the D Hearts and in the name of justice oz Lee was entrusted with determining how Ava had died my role is is to state what the facts are and to do that what you have to do is pay very careful attention to the skeleton to the bones and if you know how to read the bones they just err it's phenomenal what they can tell you this this particular skeleton of able to heart in it tells you exactly what happened to her and it also provides all all of the clues that helped with the determination of her identification house Lee studied every inch scrutinized every fracture to try to determine the cause of death was she murdered elsewhere then dumped in the well was she killed by the 19 foot drop or was she still alive trapped and left to die the injuries caused by the fall were restricted to the lower half of her body fractures in the foot the lower leg bones the thigh bones and the pelvis are the result of being dropped in the well when she was dropped in the well her feet hit the bottom and that caused breakage of some of the bone as the force goes up the shin bone then it causes jamming at the knee joint and in relation to this then when you look at the distal end of the femur these fit together like this the force compresses into the distal and the femur and it causes this compression fracturing right here from the condition of her remains I was lead attorney that Ava was probably dead before she was thrown into the well this blow to the mid-face where it actually broke four bones it broke part of the right maxilla the left maxilla and both nasal bones it just sheared the nasal bones off and that's that's telling you that it's coming from her right to left but it's also going up because there's a slight oblique angle here in the nasal bones there's no sign of a tool or any being hit with a specific type of weapon this is something that apparently was done with a fist there was not a part of the skeleton that didn't have some type of injury it was it was savage that's that's the only way that you can that you can classify it because I think even the blow to the face would knock most people out he was simply out to kill the girl George Pat's Alice now living in Florida was charged with the murder of Ava DeHart at the trial house Lee presented Ava's remains to the jury through his forensic interpretation she was able to testify against her killer I think that Doug felt that the dramatic way that she died that she would speak to the jury that it would be Ava telling the jury what it had look what happened to me and I believe the Commonwealth's Attorney used those exact words look what happened to me on October 8 1997 George Pat solace was sentenced to life in prison for his crimes the case against Pat Salas was solved through forensics detective work and second-hand accounts but suppose a crime had no witnesses no crime scene and no trace of a body in April 1992 a thirteen-year-old Chevette was towed into an impoundment lot in Louisville Kentucky there had joined the ranks of other abandoned vehicles awaiting their date with the crusher at the time no one knew it but this car held a terrible secret everyone in New Albany Indiana knew that Eric Humbert and Johnathan Whitesides were the best of friends they worked together in the US Geological Survey and they played together after work and on the weekends so it only seemed fitting that John Whitesides was the last person to see Eric Humbert alive on the evening of January 15 1991 after a game of hoops with their coworkers the two drove to the auto shop to drop Whitesides truck off for repairs before heading home [Music] but by 9:30 that night Humbert still hadn't arrived at his house Eric's wife Missy said she found Whitesides to see if he'd seen him Whitesides told her Eric had left just a few minutes ago and assured her he'd be arriving home any minute but the minutes turn to hours at 2:00 a.m. Missy called Whitesides again Eric still wasn't home and she was worried jonathan said he'd be right over Eric never returned though Missy had spoken to the police the day after Eric disappeared she didn't file an official missing-persons report until two weeks later their relationship was becoming strained and she thought Eric may just have wanted a little time by himself but now she felt something terrible had happened Eric was gone too long he wouldn't have left his 18 month-old son that wasn't like him detective Keith Whitlow of the New Albany police led the investigation we began interviewing coworkers there was rumors that Eric may have had a girlfriend in another state we checked with that person and she hadn't seen Eric so his disappearance was pretty mysterious to everyone not only was he gone but also was his automobile we had there was without a trace but something of interest did come from interviewing Missy's co-workers many said that Jonathan frequently picked her up at work some claimed that Jonathan and Missy were having an affair suspicions centered around Jonathan Whitesides but there was not the slightest evidence that anything illegal had happened nothing to link him to any wrongdoing the two may have been guilty of indiscretion but there's no law against that months went by it seemed the earth had swallowed up Eric Humbert and his car meanwhile Whitesides moved in with Missy and her son then in April four months after Eric was reported missing a white Chevette turned up in a state impoundment lot in Louisville Kentucky unclaimed it was about to be sold or scrapped but they decided as a matter of routine to make one last check with the National Crime Information Center to see if this car was in fact stolen and whether they could have located owner when they did they got a hit on the car showing that the car was part of a missing-persons investigation right across the Ohio River from them in New Albany Indiana we were really for very very close to losing a very key piece of the puzzle the car belonged to Eric Humber it was stripped of its tags in the hatchback were traces of blood Louisville detectives interviewed Whitesides the last person to see humbert alive do you know who killed Eric Humbert no he consented to a polygraph exam do you know where Eric Humbert is no he failed did you kill our tempered no when confronted with the results Whitesides admitted he knew more than he let on he told police that after the basketball game on the night Eric disappeared the two men drove to the auto shop to drop off Whitesides truck afterward they drove to Whitesides house to work on another car from there whiteside story took a bizarre twist he says that suddenly Eric went into a rage and accused him of having an affair with his wife and produced a knife and that an altercation a physical altercation between the two men developed there in the garage during the scuffle Jonathan claimed that Eric was accidentally stabbed in the throat in which corn Jonathan proved to be fatal Jonathan panicked he thought nobody would believe the freak accident he loaded the body into the back of the Chevette drove several miles to a remote spot on the Ohio River and dumped it in he couldn't recall exactly where he unloaded it the police were skeptical of Whitesides tail after his statement he was arrested while they checked out his story it just didn't pan out it just didn't seem logical we even had officers simulate the combat that he had described and we found it very difficult to believe that it happened the way that he said that it did unless the body turned up the only physical evidence to prove or refute whiteside story was the blood-stained Chevette the stains in the hatchback were consistent with a wounded body being stashed there but one feature stood out the trunk liner contained an unusual pattern five lines of blood shaped like a chevron some blood-soaked object had been pressed against the liner causing the marks they were parallel so they couldn't be impressions of fingers the stain was notable but meaningless at least so far under the hood investigators found a large spatter of blood in it was a bright green fiber no one could explain how it got there or what it meant inside the engine compartment appeared what looked like human tissue it was sent off for analysis forensics expert rod englert was brought in to study the blood evidence he found the fine mist of blood on the distributor cap wasn't consistent with a knife wound he demonstrates what I'm going to do is take some blood here and let's say that the end of this eyedropper is the end of a knife and let's say that it has gone into my neck and I draw it back to may be stabbed again or just pull it out very quickly well it will cause this what's called cast off and cast off is a resultant pattern that you see there now if you put these two together as we have here there's a an enormous amount of difference between those two patterns a knife wound creates a cast-off that comes from one direction but what Englert saw and the distributor cap was multi-directional and that only comes about through gunshot to Englert the cloudy mist of blood clearly showed that Whitesides was lying in Indiana the pattern of bloodstains in Eric Humberts Chevette raised doubts that he was stabbed in the throat more doubts were raised at the forensics lab in Oregon where the tissue sample collected from the engine was studied by Ray Grimm's bow microscopic analysis revealed the tissue was human but it wasn't from anyone's neck the arrangement of the cells how the cells stained told us that it was brain tissue it was not from the skin or exfoliated issue from some other and this was neural tissue we had to figure out then how does it get out of a neck wound and logically it couldn't happen that way a closer examination of the car revealed a single bullet hole concealed at the base of the windshield wiper two small fragments were recovered and sent to Grimm's beau he confirmed they were fragments of a bullet and its copper jacket but most intriguing was the single tiny green fiber clinging to the bullet he didn't know what to make of it one thing was certain the car was the scene of a shooting not a stabbing whiteside story wasn't washing seeking the truth investigators went to the garage at the house where Jonathan Whitesides was living the garage where he said his friend had accidentally stabbed himself to death the crime scene was now four months old would anything be left at first sight the garage looked clean but soon a nine-millimeter cartridge was found days later a 9-millimeter handgun was retrieved from Whitesides work van it seemed Eric Humbert had been shot the brain tissue and the trajectory of the bullet indicated he was shot in the head but something was missing something didn't seem right well we don't have a lot of blood spatter normally when someone gets shot had we have blood and gore everywhere in this situation we had very little so when we were able to identify that tissue then as coming from brain basically the spatter the bullet fragment all tended to fit together this person probably was shot through the head and the question became how that happened without getting it everywhere well the small green fiber I think that's when the little light went on in my head that we have a green fiber on this bullet bingo that's why we don't have the blood he had a cap on the weave pattern of the bloodied watch cap could also have made the chevron shaped marks in the hatchback the evidence so far was compelling and consistent but was it enough to convince a jury the victim was truly Eric Humbert all attempts to find a body met with failure our body turned out to be a small piece of brain matter and some blood splatters the forensics team performed a DNA test on the blood problem was they had nothing to compare it to to go forward they'd have to work backward blood relatives share similarities in their DNA the forensics team counted on this to approximate Eric's genetic profile to identify Eric Homburg require just a paternity test basically we did a family history we had his mother his two living siblings and his son and his wife and so we type them with DNA and we took the unknown blood in the tissue from the scene typed it to assure that the evidence wasn't contaminated the DNA was tested simultaneously at two separate labs the results were consistent but investigators were still not satisfied the forensics team needed to get DNA from both of Humberts parents to be sure their findings were precise and irrefutable permission was obtained to exhume his father who died several years earlier DNA was extracted from his father's leg bones the genetic codes from Humberts father and mother were compared to the DNA from the blood in the Chevette we were able to show that beyond any reasonable doubt that this would have been consistent with a son of those two people even without Eric Humberts body the prosecution had all it needed to convict Jonathan Whitesides the prosecution alleged that on the last evening of Eric Humberts life he went to Jonathan Whitesides house to help him fix his car he may have suspected that his best friend was having an affair with his wife but he couldn't have known how much his best friend wanted him out of the way while Humbert leaned over his own car to show Whitesides how he'd made a similar repair in his Chevette Whitesides pulled out a nine-millimeter pistol and shot his friend execution-style at point-blank range he then loaded the body into the back of the car disposed of it and abandoned the vehicle he thought that by eliminating the body he'd eliminated all the evidence he was wrong whenever a criminal enters or leaves a crime scene he always leaves something there he always takes something with him and I think that's very very true it's just today we are much more capable finding those things that they take and leave then maybe we were just 10 years ago the jury deliberated only 45 minutes before finding Jonathan Whitesides guilty of murder he was sentenced to 50 years in prison as for Eric Humbert so far his body hasn't been found Eric's mother told me after Jonathan was sentence she grabbed me by the arm and she said please don't quit looking for it and it's kind of ironic every time we get information about a body found locally or something it's like nobody has to say it everybody goes you know I wonder if that's Eric and and not as of yet it hadn't been but you know we're still we're still in some way we're still looking not too long ago when victims went missing killers went free today the rules are changing the laws of justice have allied with the laws of science and even if the victim can't be found chances are the killer will be [Music] [Applause]

Channel: Real Responders

Views: 106,229

Keywords: Real Responders, bone analysis, bone clues, bone decomposition, bone forensics, bone mysteries, bone research, bone specialist team, crime scene evidence, crime scene investigation, criminal science methods, forensic anthropology, forensic detective work, forensic intelligence, forensic laboratory, forensic science techniques, murder clues, murder evidence, murder mystery, orthopedic expertise, skeletal analysis

Id: cr4bquGqmEg

Length: 51min 53sec (3113 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 13 2020