00:00:05
to solve the murder
00:00:07
investigators needed to find the fatal
00:00:10
bullet
00:00:11
but where was it
00:00:14
could the laws of physics solve the
00:00:15
mystery
00:00:17
if not
00:00:18
a killer would walk free
00:00:23
[Music]
00:00:49
world war ii
00:00:51
in the skies over europe american airmen
00:00:54
fought a deadly and dangerous war
00:01:00
for every 100 airmen who flew missions
00:01:02
over europe
00:01:03
70 never came back
00:01:06
one of the highest casualty rates in the
00:01:08
history of warfare
00:01:10
[Music]
00:01:14
walter joachim was one of the fortunate
00:01:17
ones
00:01:18
he was in the eighth air force in world
00:01:20
war ii was a waste gunner and a b-17 and
00:01:23
survived 34 missions over nazi hill
00:01:25
territory
00:01:26
joachim risked his life and almost lost
00:01:29
it countless times
00:01:32
but only his family and fellow veterans
00:01:34
knew it
00:01:36
he never talked about it so
00:01:39
i didn't know what he did in the
00:01:40
military
00:01:41
kind of surprised me because he's such a
00:01:43
conservative fellow you just can't
00:01:45
imagine him
00:01:47
being behind a machine gun in an
00:01:48
airplane
00:01:51
seventy-six-year-old yokum a widower and
00:01:54
retired accountant lived by himself on
00:01:56
the outskirts of boulder county colorado
00:02:00
on a fall day in 1993 his housekeeper
00:02:03
noticed something was wrong
00:02:06
she went and knocked on the door got no
00:02:08
answer she said that's very usual for
00:02:10
him because he's a you know pretty
00:02:11
punctual guy
00:02:13
um
00:02:14
you know was never late was always there
00:02:16
when she was supposed to show up she
00:02:17
went around the back of the house
00:02:20
and decided to knock on the back door
00:02:23
and notice that there was a broken
00:02:24
window
00:02:25
and she got concerned at that point and
00:02:28
decided to notify
00:02:30
the police
00:02:31
[Music]
00:02:32
investigators from the boulder sheriff's
00:02:34
office discovered walter yokum
00:02:36
dead
00:02:37
at the bottom of the stairs
00:02:39
he had been fatally shot through the
00:02:41
neck
00:02:42
i don't think i slept for a couple of
00:02:44
days
00:02:45
it's hard to imagine somebody that you
00:02:47
know has just been
00:02:49
violently murdered
00:02:52
outside detectives noticed several clear
00:02:55
foot impressions in the mud
00:02:59
crime scene technicians took plaster
00:03:02
casts for future comparison
00:03:04
there was a particularly good set of
00:03:06
footprints that were cast from that
00:03:10
and they were a lug soul type of a boot
00:03:12
kind of a work boot kind of a soul
00:03:15
[Music]
00:03:18
the point of entry was through a broken
00:03:20
bedroom window on the ground floor
00:03:24
there were muddy footprints leading to
00:03:26
the foyer
00:03:27
at the stairwell detectives found
00:03:30
gunshot residue as you can see
00:03:33
the pattern of the gunpowder on the wall
00:03:36
left an outline where the barrel the end
00:03:38
of the barrel was it demonstrated
00:03:41
exactly where the the shooter was
00:03:43
standing at the time that he killed mr
00:03:45
yokum
00:03:46
there was an empty gun holster upstairs
00:03:49
on the dining room floor
00:03:52
we called
00:03:53
the son who said did he have any guns
00:03:55
and what were they and he says oh yeah
00:03:56
his my dad had his 45 which he kept from
00:03:59
world war ii
00:04:00
he says everybody kept their guns when
00:04:02
they left the army
00:04:03
this was a distinctive gun it was a cult
00:04:06
semi-automatic used by many world war ii
00:04:09
servicemen
00:04:11
soldiers routinely scraped off the gun
00:04:13
serial numbers after the war
00:04:16
but joachim's gun was missing
00:04:19
so too was his credit card and some cash
00:04:24
adding to the mystery was the awkward
00:04:26
position of walter yokham's body
00:04:29
he was lying on his back with his arms
00:04:31
extended and his knees in the air
00:04:35
someone had come and moved him
00:04:37
after rigor morris had set in because he
00:04:39
was nearly face up with both arms
00:04:41
somewhat in the air and gravity just
00:04:43
doesn't allow you to do that
00:04:46
this meant
00:04:47
the killer was inside the house at least
00:04:50
three hours
00:04:51
maybe longer
00:04:53
our working theory in the beginning was
00:04:55
that this was a burglary was interrupted
00:04:57
and
00:04:59
what was really bad about that is that
00:05:02
burglaries are one of the hardest crimes
00:05:03
to solve
00:05:05
the most bizarre clue was found near
00:05:07
joachim's foot
00:05:09
it was the foil wrapper of a reese's
00:05:11
peanut butter cup
00:05:13
there was an empty bag of peanut butter
00:05:15
cups in the refrigerator
00:05:17
i would have to say that all we knew
00:05:19
about the killer was that he wore
00:05:22
boots
00:05:23
and he enjoyed reese's peanut butter cup
00:05:27
that's a cold-blooded killer
00:05:29
someone that can do that
00:05:30
um
00:05:32
just having just murdered somebody then
00:05:33
go through refrigerator and see what
00:05:34
there is to eat
00:05:36
and then stand there and look at him
00:05:37
while you're eating some of his candy
00:05:38
[Music]
00:05:42
clues from the crime scene indicated
00:05:44
walter yokum most likely heard an
00:05:46
intruder grabbed his gun and was heading
00:05:49
down the steps when the intruder shot
00:05:51
him
00:05:53
at the beginning of the investigation
00:05:54
there's an autopsy and
00:05:56
at that point we discovered that the
00:05:58
bullet's not in the victim's body so
00:06:00
it's like for
00:06:02
the next task for those of us going back
00:06:04
out to the scene is we gotta find this
00:06:06
bullet
00:06:08
this was a problem
00:06:10
without the bullet
00:06:12
investigators would know nothing about
00:06:14
the murder weapon and would have no
00:06:16
ballistic evidence once they identified
00:06:19
a suspect
00:06:21
so everything suggested there was one
00:06:23
shot fired and it went through the
00:06:24
victim and out somebody went on the roof
00:06:27
looked around couldn't find a bullet we
00:06:29
looked in the gutter couldn't find a
00:06:30
bullet
00:06:31
how are we going to find this bullet
00:06:32
because if it exited the house you've
00:06:34
got literally acres and acres and acres
00:06:36
of places that bullet could be and it's
00:06:38
it's a bullet that big
00:06:39
to find it
00:06:41
investigators turned to the science
00:06:43
department at the university of colorado
00:06:47
once it enters the atmosphere then it's
00:06:49
not likely to change its configuration
00:06:52
although it might be tumbling
00:06:55
so the three things you need to know are
00:06:58
the initial
00:06:59
velocity
00:07:01
the initial angle
00:07:03
with respect to the horizontal
00:07:05
and the amount of air resistance that
00:07:07
you could expect we knew from the wound
00:07:09
it was probably a 38 357 9 millimeter
00:07:12
that middle size caliber we knew it
00:07:13
wasn't the 22 it was too big for that
00:07:15
and it was too small for a 45.
00:07:18
a bullet from these caliber weapons
00:07:20
would be traveling at approximately a
00:07:22
thousand feet per second
00:07:26
but the bullet passed through a human
00:07:28
body went through the ceiling then the
00:07:32
roof shingles
00:07:34
it's very difficult to determine how
00:07:35
much energy is lost as the bullet passes
00:07:38
through those three
00:07:40
obstacles
00:07:41
but in order to determine where the
00:07:43
bullet falls you need to know the
00:07:45
velocity just after it passes through
00:07:47
the roof
00:07:49
to study how much velocity was lost
00:07:52
investigators reassembled everything the
00:07:54
bullet passed through
00:07:57
a beef roast was used to simulate the
00:07:59
victim's neck
00:08:02
behind it was a piece of plaster ceiling
00:08:05
and behind that
00:08:06
a section from the roof
00:08:09
when the bullet was fired
00:08:12
its speed was tracked with a chronometer
00:08:15
a device that works very much like a
00:08:16
radar gun
00:08:18
there was a great deal more energy lost
00:08:21
by the bullet in passing through the
00:08:23
victim and the ceiling in the roof than
00:08:26
was originally thought
00:08:31
the next step was to determine the angle
00:08:34
at which the bullet left the house
00:08:37
gunshot residue told investigators
00:08:40
approximately where the killer was
00:08:42
standing
00:08:42
[Music]
00:08:44
they knew where the victim was when he
00:08:46
was struck
00:08:48
and the hole in the roof told them
00:08:50
where the bullet exited
00:08:52
[Music]
00:08:53
investigators used a rod to approximate
00:08:56
the trajectory which was
00:08:59
68 degrees
00:09:01
if the bullet is going almost straight
00:09:03
up
00:09:04
then the horizontal force due to air
00:09:06
resistance is small
00:09:08
and so you can solve the problem of a
00:09:10
bullet going straight up because it's a
00:09:12
one-dimensional problem
00:09:14
and get something that you can work with
00:09:16
analytically
00:09:18
at a speed of approximately 850 feet per
00:09:21
second the bullet exited the house at a
00:09:23
68 degree angle
00:09:26
with gravity and wind resistance
00:09:28
factored in
00:09:29
scientists predicted the bullet would be
00:09:31
fairly close to the house
00:09:33
we asked a local
00:09:35
treasure hunting club to use their metal
00:09:37
detectors and we
00:09:39
marked off the entire yard and field
00:09:41
beyond the house
00:09:43
with a grid
00:09:44
and then we asked people to search this
00:09:46
grid for that bullet
00:09:49
and they found it
00:09:50
just 90 feet from the house
00:09:53
it was a 38 caliber bullet
00:09:56
we were very excited we had our missing
00:09:57
link we we had the bullet we really
00:09:59
believed this this was the boat that
00:10:00
killed walter yokum
00:10:02
unfortunately it was of little value
00:10:05
initially i was pretty excited about it
00:10:07
but then i was discouraged because the
00:10:09
bullet was so mangled that it wasn't
00:10:12
going to give us any ballistics
00:10:14
the base was still relatively intact and
00:10:16
about maybe a quarter of an inch up the
00:10:18
base was intact but other than that it
00:10:21
was it was pretty mangled
00:10:23
now investigators needed to identify
00:10:26
some suspects
00:10:29
there probably was no prior relationship
00:10:31
between walter yoakham and the killer
00:10:35
so investigators checked police records
00:10:37
for anyone arrested for burglary around
00:10:40
the time of the murder
00:10:42
[Music]
00:10:44
there was only one james dobson
00:10:48
he'd been released from prison on a
00:10:50
burglary conviction just a few days
00:10:52
before joachim's murder
00:10:55
and he had a habit of eating at his
00:10:58
crime scenes
00:11:00
he was breaking into houses to steal
00:11:02
food
00:11:03
fact that he's eating food from the
00:11:05
house
00:11:06
at the scene of these burglaries and you
00:11:08
have reese's peanut butter kept wrappers
00:11:10
on the floor
00:11:11
all kind of point to mr dobson it would
00:11:14
it's just logical that you go look at
00:11:16
him
00:11:18
but eating candy wouldn't be enough
00:11:22
investigators would need much more
00:11:27
[Music]
00:11:29
some of walter joachim's neighbors told
00:11:31
investigators about some suspicious
00:11:33
looking men in the neighborhood on the
00:11:35
night of joachim's murder
00:11:38
so they asked the neighbors to view a
00:11:40
lineup that included their prime suspect
00:11:44
james dobson your witness look at them
00:11:46
and decide if any of them are the guy
00:11:49
and
00:11:50
in this case i believe mr dobson was
00:11:53
familiar to the witness but they
00:11:55
couldn't say that's the guy
00:11:58
dobson denied any involvement in
00:12:00
joachim's murder
00:12:02
and there was no evidence he owned a
00:12:03
weapon capable of firing a 38-caliber
00:12:06
bullet
00:12:07
and dobson didn't own boots that matched
00:12:10
the impressions found at the crime scene
00:12:14
so investigators wanted to know if there
00:12:16
were fingerprints on the peanut butter
00:12:18
cup wrapper found next to joachim's body
00:12:23
processing that wrapper
00:12:25
i was not able to obtain any latent
00:12:28
prints off of that surface
00:12:31
in fact there were no foreign prints
00:12:33
anywhere in the house
00:12:36
in order to identify more potential
00:12:38
suspects colorado investigators searched
00:12:41
police records to identify any unusual
00:12:44
criminal activity around the time of
00:12:47
walter yocum's murder
00:12:49
and one incident in particular stood out
00:12:53
[Music]
00:12:56
two undercover officers noticed a pickup
00:12:58
truck with north dakota license plates
00:13:01
leaving the home of a known drug dealer
00:13:03
on the day after joachim was killed
00:13:07
the truck was registered
00:13:10
to kevin doctor
00:13:12
so she called bismarck north dakota to
00:13:14
ask them about who is this kevin doctor
00:13:16
guy
00:13:17
they said well you know it's funny you
00:13:18
should call about him because we just
00:13:19
arrested him yesterday
00:13:22
29 year old kevin doctor was a career
00:13:25
criminal with a history of drugs and
00:13:28
weapons offenses
00:13:30
they said he's a convicted felon so
00:13:32
arrested him for possession weapons by a
00:13:33
previous offender
00:13:35
and one thing led to another you know of
00:13:37
course the next question is well what
00:13:38
kind of guns did he have
00:13:40
when arrested doctor had a 357 and a
00:13:43
world war ii era 45 caliber colt pistol
00:13:47
like the one
00:13:48
missing from walter yokham's holster
00:13:51
but that wasn't all
00:13:53
when kevin was arrested in addition all
00:13:55
the other paraphernalian things like
00:13:57
that that were found in the car there
00:13:58
was coincidentally or not coincidentally
00:14:01
a bag of reese's peanut butter cup
00:14:03
miniatures
00:14:06
the same type that were found
00:14:08
at mr joachim's residence it's not a
00:14:12
scientific thing but to me if i was on a
00:14:14
jury i would put a lot of stock in this
00:14:16
just because it makes sense
00:14:18
the 45 caliber pistol had the serial
00:14:20
number scraped off of it
00:14:22
just like walter joachim's gun
00:14:25
and it had some ammunition in the clip
00:14:28
highly distinctive ammunition
00:14:31
the base of the bullet was stamped with
00:14:33
the letters
00:14:34
r-e-m-u-m-c
00:14:38
it's a remington
00:14:40
manufactured ammunition and umc stands
00:14:42
for union metallic cartridge
00:14:45
i called up remington and the guy
00:14:47
answers the phone says
00:14:48
oh yeah i've worked here 43 years
00:14:51
that ammunition was made from 1912 to
00:14:53
1961.
00:14:55
the same type of ammunition was found in
00:14:58
walter joachim's house
00:15:00
he kept the gun and the bullets
00:15:03
for almost 50 years
00:15:05
it's kind of winning three numbers on a
00:15:07
lottery ticket you know
00:15:08
you can't go down to the hardware store
00:15:10
or the gun store and buy that ammunition
00:15:12
there were 38 caliber bullets in doctors
00:15:15
357
00:15:16
which were subjected to inductively
00:15:19
coupled plasma emission spectroscopy
00:15:23
a bullet from the crime scene was
00:15:25
compared to
00:15:26
the bullet from a cartridge
00:15:29
and mr doctor's gun
00:15:31
and three
00:15:32
bullets from cartridges recovered from
00:15:34
his truck
00:15:36
and they were found to be
00:15:38
analytically uh indistinguishable that
00:15:40
is they all had the same composition of
00:15:42
lead having two batches of lead that are
00:15:45
similar the fbi uh rated that at about
00:15:48
one and two thousand five hundred so as
00:15:51
far as circumstantial evidence that's
00:15:53
pretty good
00:15:55
scientists went one step further
00:15:58
kevin doctor was wearing work boots when
00:16:01
he was arrested
00:16:03
impressions were made
00:16:05
and compared to plaster casts of boot
00:16:07
prints found outside of joachim's house
00:16:12
the cast from the crime scene didn't
00:16:13
have enough detail to show any
00:16:16
accidental characteristics which are
00:16:18
marks that result from everyday wear and
00:16:20
tear
00:16:22
the class characteristics the size the
00:16:26
tread patterns and the manufacturing
00:16:28
impressions
00:16:29
were there for comparison
00:16:32
the overall characteristics
00:16:34
on the different
00:16:36
cast
00:16:37
were consistent with what was present on
00:16:40
the boots that were submitted
00:16:43
so the evidence against kevin doctor was
00:16:45
mounting
00:16:47
he owned boots like the impressions at
00:16:50
the crime scene
00:16:51
he had the same taste in candy as the
00:16:54
killer and had no explanation for why he
00:16:58
was in possession of walter yocum's gun
00:17:01
and ammunition
00:17:06
[Music]
00:17:08
kevin doctor was the prime suspect in
00:17:11
the murder of walter yoakham and
00:17:13
apparently he was a big talker
00:17:16
investigators spoke to doctors friends
00:17:19
who said doctor bragged about committing
00:17:22
a robbery in colorado and said his
00:17:24
friend 21 year old jason fowler acted as
00:17:28
a lookout
00:17:30
we went to uh jason fowler and said look
00:17:32
we've got another person ready to give
00:17:34
you guys up and you're gonna go down do
00:17:36
some hard time in a mainline joint and
00:17:38
he says
00:17:39
well okay i think i'm ready to talk
00:17:42
jason fowler told us that he and kevin
00:17:44
doctor had a drug habit
00:17:47
that they supported their drug habit by
00:17:49
breaking into homes and stealing items
00:17:55
fowler told investigators that he and dr
00:17:57
case joachim's house since no lights
00:18:00
were on
00:18:02
they assumed no one was home
00:18:05
doctor left his boot impressions in the
00:18:08
mud as he broke the downstairs bedroom
00:18:10
window
00:18:14
the noise apparently woke walter yokum
00:18:17
who grabbed his world war 245 pistol and
00:18:20
went to see what was going on
00:18:26
doctors saw him first and fired one shot
00:18:30
killing joachim instantly
00:18:34
fowler says they left the scene and went
00:18:36
to a local bar
00:18:38
[Music]
00:18:41
after several drinks they decided to
00:18:43
return to joachim's house to rob it
00:18:49
[Music]
00:18:51
doctor ate the peanut butter cups as he
00:18:54
searched for items to steal
00:18:57
he moved joachim's body to look through
00:18:59
his pockets
00:19:00
after rigor mortis set in
00:19:04
all they took was twenty dollars in cash
00:19:07
a credit card and joachim's highly
00:19:10
distinctive 45 caliber handgun
00:19:14
he pulled out a green
00:19:16
45 and he had blood all over his
00:19:18
fingertips just kind of wiping that off
00:19:21
and he pulled the chamber open
00:19:23
and there's no bullet he says this
00:19:24
stupid old man didn't have a bullet in
00:19:26
the chamber even he died for nothing
00:19:29
this truly was a senseless killing
00:19:32
um
00:19:33
not that there's any killing that makes
00:19:35
sense but this one was particularly
00:19:37
senseless
00:19:39
the day after the murder
00:19:41
undercover officers saw kevin doctor's
00:19:43
truck leave the home of a known drug
00:19:46
dealer
00:19:47
it was the break
00:19:49
investigators
00:19:50
needed had they not gotten that license
00:19:53
plate doing that drug deal
00:19:54
we probably never would have
00:19:56
had that name certainly not as directly
00:19:58
as we did
00:20:00
kevin doctor pled guilty to
00:20:02
second-degree murder and was sentenced
00:20:05
to 40 years in prison
00:20:08
jason fowler pled guilty to burglary and
00:20:11
was sentenced to 25 years in prison
00:20:15
one final note
00:20:17
it's easy to see why the neighbors first
00:20:19
chose james dobson as the man they
00:20:22
thought they saw near the crime scene
00:20:25
dobson bore
00:20:26
a striking resemblance to jason fowler
00:20:30
everybody that worked on this case are
00:20:32
probably
00:20:33
in my opinion the best there is
00:20:35
and so
00:20:37
it really didn't surprise me when it
00:20:39
went into the solve column because of
00:20:41
the the caliber of people that worked on
00:20:43
it it was just
00:20:44
one of those cases of
00:20:47
excellent police work
00:20:48
that and some luck
00:20:50
and they'd all fallen together
00:20:53
in a case that easily could have gone
00:20:55
unsolved and so yeah when i got done
00:20:58
with that and i looked back on it i was
00:21:00
kind of like wow i can't believe we
00:21:01
actually
00:21:02
were able to do that
00:21:05
[Music]
00:21:13
[Music]
00:21:32
[Music]
00:21:45
you
