00:00:04
first he threatened murder
00:00:08
do you understand then there was a
00:00:10
murder whoever had done it had been
00:00:12
almost a maniac
00:00:13
call me charles manson big three inch
00:00:15
letters front page
00:00:16
he was convicted and put away for life
00:00:19
but he always claimed his innocence and
00:00:22
was determined to prove it he literally
00:00:24
solved his own murder case from prison
00:00:26
he convinced them that wait a minute we
00:00:28
have an innocent man here
00:00:31
[Music]
00:00:39
on the night of may 23 1991
00:00:43
a fire broke out in a rural farmhouse in
00:00:45
upstate new york
00:00:48
by the time firemen got there
00:00:50
it was entirely engulfed in flames
00:00:53
they realized that the occupant sabina
00:00:56
kulakowski was missing daylight was
00:00:58
coming and then they
00:01:00
firemen and
00:01:02
others were basically
00:01:05
looking for her
00:01:07
emergency workers found sabina
00:01:10
kulikowski's body about 100 yards from
00:01:13
the house on an overgrown footpath
00:01:17
she was naked she had been
00:01:19
brutally murdered
00:01:21
stabbed
00:01:22
beaten burned
00:01:24
bitten
00:01:25
sabina was 49 years old
00:01:28
it became pretty obvious right away that
00:01:30
whoever had done it is somebody that
00:01:33
well quite quite honestly had to have
00:01:35
been almost a maniac
00:01:37
the evidence showed that she was in the
00:01:40
house when the fire started
00:01:42
at some point sabine was alive in her
00:01:46
about the structure when it was burning
00:01:48
because she did have some
00:01:50
soot in her lungs
00:01:52
between the farmhouse and sabina's body
00:01:55
police found a red t-shirt stained with
00:01:59
sabina's blood
00:02:01
fire investigators found traces of
00:02:03
accelerant inside the house and quickly
00:02:06
ruled the blaze an arson
00:02:09
investigators thought the crime was one
00:02:12
of passion
00:02:14
rage
00:02:16
pure rage perhaps
00:02:19
motivated by a desire to get revenge
00:02:23
sabina kulikowski lived in the farmhouse
00:02:26
alone her boyfriend ron bench lived
00:02:29
there with her until they broke up a few
00:02:31
months before the fire
00:02:34
by all accounts it was an amicable
00:02:37
breakup and they remained friends
00:02:40
they continued to
00:02:42
associate with one another
00:02:44
but they had ended their
00:02:46
boyfriend girlfriend relationship
00:02:49
ron bench had an alibi for the night of
00:02:51
the fire he was in auburn new york an
00:02:54
hour's drive away
00:02:56
and friends corroborated his alibi
00:02:59
and police had another suspect
00:03:02
sabina was a social worker for the state
00:03:04
of new york her superiors were dealing
00:03:07
with the disgruntled man who threatened
00:03:09
to kill everyone in the office unless he
00:03:12
was given custody of his daughter
00:03:15
he was angry with the child protective
00:03:18
agency because they had placed his
00:03:20
daughter in foster care and he did not
00:03:23
like that
00:03:24
i want her back and i've been using the
00:03:27
method and i've been using the system
00:03:29
and i've been paying attorneys but i
00:03:31
think that if i got a gun in my hand
00:03:33
again then you'll understand what the
00:03:35
[ __ ] i'm all about
00:03:37
a crazy man comes in there and just
00:03:39
starts taking them social service
00:03:40
workers out for the helmet kills himself
00:03:42
can't put a dead man in jail can you
00:03:47
roy brown
00:03:48
spent six months in jail for making
00:03:51
those threats
00:03:52
and was released just six days before
00:03:55
sabina's murder
00:03:57
his alibi was that he was with his
00:04:00
girlfriend
00:04:02
the entire night
00:04:04
and he gave a name and gave a location
00:04:06
where they were
00:04:08
and they checked on it and found out
00:04:10
that his girlfriend actually was in jail
00:04:12
that night so
00:04:14
he obviously was lying to them about
00:04:17
his whereabouts
00:04:19
brown denied any involvement
00:04:22
but he was arrested for arson and murder
00:04:26
he called me up the day before
00:04:29
we're gonna come over and arrest you
00:04:31
come on
00:04:32
are you guys serious
00:04:34
you're not yet come over to arrest me
00:04:36
all right 10 o'clock in the morning
00:04:37
would you sure come pick me up for a
00:04:38
murder charge
00:04:40
yeah then i had to sit on the porch
00:04:43
there 15 minutes late
00:04:50
roy brown was the prime suspect in the
00:04:53
murder of sabina kulikowski
00:04:55
earned that distinction by threatening
00:04:58
to kill everyone in sabina's office due
00:05:00
to a child custody dispute
00:05:04
roy was not a good guy roy
00:05:07
had anger management issues he did have
00:05:10
a criminal record
00:05:11
um
00:05:12
nothing of any great
00:05:14
consequence but enough so that you know
00:05:17
it's not the kind of guy that you'd want
00:05:19
to really hang out with necessarily he
00:05:22
was involving himself in some bad
00:05:24
activities as far as you know drinking
00:05:26
and
00:05:27
whatever else and
00:05:28
he had no real alibi for where he was at
00:05:31
that point
00:05:32
brown insisted he had nothing to do with
00:05:34
the arson or sabine's murder but the
00:05:38
circumstantial evidence was compelling
00:05:41
brown was offered a plea bargain
00:05:44
but refused
00:05:45
i don't go screw themselves
00:05:48
you know i told her i told one lawyer
00:05:51
you know i didn't do anything wrong he
00:05:53
said well it doesn't matter they're
00:05:54
gonna send you to prison anyways
00:05:56
so roy brown went on trial
00:05:59
prosecutors found two witnesses who said
00:06:01
brown was physically abusive
00:06:06
roy brown's wife and a girlfriend both
00:06:09
of them
00:06:10
stated under oath that he was a biter
00:06:14
they said
00:06:15
when he was angry
00:06:17
he would bite them and he used biting as
00:06:19
a form of trying to control them
00:06:22
coincidentally
00:06:24
sabina kulakowski was bitten before she
00:06:27
was killed
00:06:28
and prosecutors asked a forensic
00:06:30
odontologist to compare the bite marks
00:06:33
to brown's teeth
00:06:36
roy brown's bite pattern
00:06:38
matched the uh
00:06:39
some of the bite marks on sabina's body
00:06:42
but the forensic odontologists hired by
00:06:44
the defense
00:06:46
claimed the opposite he said the bite
00:06:49
wounds on sabina's body were created by
00:06:51
someone with six front upper teeth
00:06:55
and brown
00:06:56
didn't have them
00:06:58
and he was very clear and very adamant
00:07:00
in regard to excluding roy as the person
00:07:03
who left those bite marks
00:07:05
the jury sided with the prosecution
00:07:08
and convicted roy brown of sabina's
00:07:11
murder
00:07:13
he was sentenced to 25 years to life in
00:07:16
prison
00:07:17
there was no real evidence that
00:07:20
roy brown knew sabina kolakowski much
00:07:22
less where she lived
00:07:24
when brown got to his prison cell he
00:07:27
refused to sleep on the bed because he
00:07:29
said it belonged to a killer
00:07:32
not him
00:07:33
i told him that when i went into the
00:07:35
first night i'll sleep on the floor
00:07:37
that bed don't belong to me that's my
00:07:39
desk i turned it into an office desk in
00:07:41
their mattress i took some no belt no
00:07:44
piece of string and i made a chair out
00:07:45
of it and sat it down that's my law
00:07:47
school
00:07:48
brown filed several appeals and all were
00:07:51
denied yet he continued to work to clear
00:07:55
his name
00:07:57
you can't get into the law library
00:07:58
unless you bribe somebody or pay
00:08:00
somebody because the first thing they're
00:08:01
going to do is beat the hell out of you
00:08:03
for being there
00:08:04
just to make sure that you know who's in
00:08:06
charge
00:08:08
brown also told his lawyer
00:08:11
i'm learning a lot from tv shows
00:08:14
like forensic files
00:08:17
i studied law books
00:08:19
appeals in other cases
00:08:21
forensic science
00:08:24
anything i could i could try to try to
00:08:26
utilize to prove my innocence
00:08:29
brown petitioned the court for dna
00:08:31
testing of the saliva found on sabina's
00:08:34
t-shirt
00:08:35
but this request too
00:08:37
was denied
00:08:39
i don't know who said the wheels of
00:08:40
justice are turned slowly but they are
00:08:42
flat
00:08:43
and i'm fixing to jack them up
00:08:45
changing tires and shoulders sparing the
00:08:47
trunk
00:08:48
it had to be discouraging and i would
00:08:50
think that it would
00:08:52
you know could very end up say i've had
00:08:54
enough
00:08:56
then
00:08:56
something fortuitous happened
00:08:59
after spending 12 years in prison a fire
00:09:03
broke out in brown's parents home
00:09:05
destroying
00:09:06
all 570 pages of his case file
00:09:11
and that fire
00:09:13
changed the course of the investigation
00:09:20
12 years after his murder conviction
00:09:22
roy brown learned that a fire in his
00:09:25
parents home destroyed his copies of his
00:09:28
case file
00:09:30
all
00:09:30
570 pages
00:09:33
undeterred
00:09:35
brown wanted to replace it using what
00:09:38
little money he had
00:09:40
so he went and paid his you know 15
00:09:42
cents a page that he's entitled to under
00:09:44
law and through the state spring of
00:09:46
information we'll obtain these
00:09:47
statements
00:09:49
brown requested duplicate copies of
00:09:51
everyone who gave statements to police
00:09:54
during the murder investigation
00:09:57
there was like 28.50 i had to sign him
00:09:59
from jail
00:10:01
i only made like four dollars every two
00:10:03
weeks four dollars and twenty cents
00:10:06
the sheriff's office sent brown a list
00:10:09
of every one the police interviewed
00:10:11
and that's when brown realized there
00:10:14
were four affidavits in the file he had
00:10:16
never seen before
00:10:19
roy got the list looked at it and said
00:10:20
wait a minute what what are all these
00:10:22
statements you know who are all these
00:10:23
people whose statements i've never seen
00:10:24
before
00:10:25
there were several statements from barry
00:10:27
bench and his wife tammy heisner who
00:10:30
were part owners of the farmhouse that
00:10:32
burned down when sabina kulikowski lived
00:10:34
there
00:10:35
tammy told police that barry behaved
00:10:38
suspiciously when they got to the fire
00:10:41
scene
00:10:45
[Music]
00:10:49
why are we stopping here look around and
00:10:51
see if you see the evidence like what
00:10:53
like i don't know just look
00:10:56
she claimed he wanted to search an area
00:10:58
a hundred yards from the farmhouse
00:11:02
we had parked down the street from the
00:11:03
farm
00:11:04
and he had mentioned to me that maybe we
00:11:06
should go
00:11:07
on down by the car and start back up on
00:11:10
opposite sides of the road looking for
00:11:13
evidence or something
00:11:14
you know just to see if there was
00:11:16
anything amiss
00:11:17
or whatever
00:11:19
deroy brown
00:11:20
this was a critical piece of information
00:11:24
sabina kulikowski's body was discovered
00:11:27
in that same area around daybreak
00:11:31
they're still battling the blaze you
00:11:33
know and he's not even if they're
00:11:35
helping
00:11:38
you know he's walking down the road
00:11:40
looking way over here if he was so
00:11:41
concerned why wouldn't he be looking up
00:11:43
there
00:11:45
and barry claimed he had an alibi for
00:11:48
the time the fire started he said he was
00:11:50
drinking in a local bar until 1 30 in
00:11:53
the morning
00:11:54
but a bar patron claimed bench left the
00:11:58
bar around midnight
00:12:01
he was unaccounted for for about an hour
00:12:03
and a half my reporting
00:12:05
on barry bench showed that
00:12:09
he had a as i understood it quite a
00:12:11
temper
00:12:13
barry bench had a prior arrest and
00:12:15
misdemeanor conviction for physically
00:12:18
assaulting a young girl who later got a
00:12:20
restraining order against him
00:12:22
one neighbor that i interviewed said
00:12:24
that she actually worked with him and
00:12:26
was afraid of him
00:12:27
he had a problem with women according to
00:12:30
this woman so taking matters into his
00:12:32
own hands
00:12:33
brown wrote a letter to barry bench
00:12:37
accusing him of murder attention barry
00:12:40
bench
00:12:41
i will easily get a court order to
00:12:43
obtain samples from you for dna testing
00:12:46
after such a thing you did to kill that
00:12:48
lady sabina kulkowski and my false
00:12:51
imprisonment for over a dozen years
00:12:53
i still pray for you
00:12:55
i pray not only that you confess to
00:12:56
killing sabino krakowski i pray you
00:12:58
confess to all your sins mark my words
00:13:00
they will eventually find out your guilt
00:13:03
have a merry christmas
00:13:05
but don't count on a happy new year
00:13:08
brown hoped that bench might reply and
00:13:11
lick the envelope flap in effect
00:13:14
sending his dna sample
00:13:18
instead bench walked in front of an
00:13:21
oncoming amtrak train
00:13:24
and killed himself
00:13:26
well actually i was kind of
00:13:28
ticked off because
00:13:30
i figured it's got a way how am i going
00:13:32
to go to court and get a test on this
00:13:33
guy now he's dead
00:13:35
brown needed to find another way to get
00:13:38
bench's dna
00:13:40
he was so desperate he considered
00:13:42
stealing it
00:13:44
i was trying to have my family go to the
00:13:46
funeral and clip his fingernails and cut
00:13:49
his air while he was in the box
00:13:52
figure out everybody get some dna from
00:13:54
him
00:13:56
when you're where i was at
00:13:57
measures become desperate
00:14:00
and consequences for getting caught
00:14:02
don't mean anything when you're serving
00:14:04
life for something you didn't do
00:14:09
for 12 years
00:14:10
roy brown sat in prison for sabina
00:14:13
kulikowski's murder
00:14:15
after failing to get a new trial brown
00:14:18
contacted the innocence project in new
00:14:20
york asking them for help
00:14:23
the innocence project was founded a
00:14:24
little over 15 years ago
00:14:27
to help convicted prisoners use what was
00:14:30
then a new technology dna testing to
00:14:32
prove that they were wrongfully
00:14:34
convicted and innocent of the crimes for
00:14:36
which they were in prison
00:14:37
the innocence project accepted brown's
00:14:40
case
00:14:41
while doing some research
00:14:43
the innocence project learned that
00:14:45
before brown's trial
00:14:47
prosecutors consulted dr lowell levine a
00:14:50
well-known forensic odontologist but
00:14:52
chose not to call him as a witness
00:14:56
we were for the first time given
00:14:58
documents showing uh
00:15:01
that the state's own expert dr lowell
00:15:03
levine had reached some very significant
00:15:05
conclusions uh that cast enormous doubt
00:15:08
on roy's guilt
00:15:09
before his case ever went to trial well
00:15:12
i never finished my analysis in my notes
00:15:15
in fact
00:15:16
i have one note on one of the
00:15:18
photographs that if what i was looking
00:15:20
for if what i thought was an upper was
00:15:22
in fact an upper i would exclude mr
00:15:24
brown so the innocence project
00:15:27
petitioned the court for permission to
00:15:30
test the victim's red t-shirt found at
00:15:33
the crime scene thinking it might
00:15:36
contain saliva
00:15:38
it's not impossible to find dna after a
00:15:40
15 year case but it makes it a little
00:15:42
bit more difficult
00:15:44
analyst tim goble
00:15:46
examined the shirt with an alternate
00:15:48
light source
00:15:50
saliva and some other biological
00:15:52
materials will fluoresce when hit with
00:15:55
this light
00:15:56
there were a number of fluorescent
00:15:57
stains on the t-shirt
00:15:59
and some of them were near the markings
00:16:01
that were made by the previous examiner
00:16:04
not surprisingly
00:16:06
the stains were near the bite holes
00:16:09
an indication they were left by the
00:16:11
person who bit the victim presumably her
00:16:15
killer
00:16:16
gobel removed the fabric and performed
00:16:19
str dna testing which is a more advanced
00:16:23
form
00:16:24
of pcr testing
00:16:26
the result
00:16:28
the dna profile from the saliva on the
00:16:31
t-shirt
00:16:32
did not match roy brown
00:16:35
but whose was it
00:16:38
barry bench's daughter catherine
00:16:40
eckstadt offered to help out
00:16:42
his daughter was a very courageous young
00:16:44
woman who said i want the truth i want
00:16:46
to know if my father committed this
00:16:47
murder and if roy brown is innocent she
00:16:50
actually contacted us after our papers
00:16:51
were filed in court originally and said
00:16:53
if you ever need me i'll give you a dna
00:16:54
sample
00:16:55
the dna analysis confirmed what roy
00:16:58
brown already knew
00:17:00
that the saliva stains on sabina
00:17:03
kulikowski's t-shirt had come
00:17:06
from barry bench
00:17:08
the paternity testing
00:17:10
showed that the john doe dna on the
00:17:13
shirt came from the father of this young
00:17:15
woman catherine nextat who is barry
00:17:17
bench's daughter
00:17:19
unbelievably
00:17:20
when this evidence was presented to the
00:17:23
court
00:17:24
the judge refused to grant a new trial
00:17:27
he said he had no proof that barry bench
00:17:30
was katherine's biological father
00:17:33
you would think you'd be home the next
00:17:34
day you wouldn't think people would drag
00:17:36
this out this is what kind of people i'm
00:17:38
dealing with
00:17:40
with pressure mounting
00:17:42
the state of new york eventually exhumed
00:17:44
barry bench's body and took a dna sample
00:17:48
it conclusively matched the saliva on
00:17:52
sabina kulikowski's t-shirt
00:17:54
and roy brown
00:17:56
was finally released from prison
00:17:58
15 years to the day he was convicted
00:18:04
[Music]
00:18:10
and i was thinking to myself i got
00:18:12
victory see i proved my innocence
00:18:15
without any doubt i showed i didn't do
00:18:17
it and i showed somebody else did do it
00:18:20
okay
00:18:21
they can't take that from me
00:18:24
you know what i'm saying they can't say
00:18:25
open their mouth anymore about anything
00:18:28
i made it very clear
00:18:30
to roy brown that i i regretted very
00:18:32
much
00:18:35
situation that he found himself in
00:18:38
but the question remains
00:18:41
why did barry bench murder sabina
00:18:44
kulakowski
00:18:45
barry bench and sabina were
00:18:48
acquaintances
00:18:49
sabina lived with barry's brother ron
00:18:52
until they broke up a month before the
00:18:54
fire
00:18:56
according to friends
00:18:58
barry bench was in financial trouble and
00:19:00
may have wanted to sell the farmhouse
00:19:02
where sabina was staying
00:19:04
[Music]
00:19:09
no one knows what happened that night
00:19:12
but the forensic evidence shows barry
00:19:15
went to the farmhouse to speak with
00:19:17
sabine
00:19:22
what are you doing here there was an
00:19:23
argument
00:19:24
and things turned violent
00:19:32
the theory is that barry set fire to the
00:19:36
farmhouse and was about to leave when he
00:19:38
realized that sabina wasn't dead
00:19:41
there was another fight outside by this
00:19:44
time
00:19:45
he couldn't take her body back into the
00:19:47
farmhouse the fire was too advanced
00:19:50
so he dragged her body to the footpath
00:19:52
100 yards away
00:19:54
and left her there
00:20:03
this explains why
00:20:04
barry searched that area later after
00:20:07
firefighters arrived
00:20:09
he wanted to make sure
00:20:11
she was dead
00:20:16
i have never had a case where the client
00:20:20
solved his own crime from behind his
00:20:22
prison cell using nothing but a pen and
00:20:24
paper
00:20:25
he really did all the hard work dna
00:20:28
evidence
00:20:29
more often than not convicts people
00:20:32
but it can also exonerate them and now i
00:20:36
think what the case of roy brown serves
00:20:39
as as a
00:20:41
as an example of
00:20:45
the fact that prosecutors and police now
00:20:50
must be must be more thorough
00:20:52
they can't just
00:20:54
be focused on one individual
00:20:57
and
00:20:58
and that's it as they lock me up
00:21:01
and they made me turn a cell into an
00:21:03
office
00:21:04
a bed into a desk
00:21:06
and a mattress into a chair
00:21:08
in law books
00:21:09
i use them instead of weapons
00:21:12
i used that pen in that type letter i
00:21:14
beat the kids with their own sticks
00:21:17
see
00:21:18
fifth grade education goes a long way
00:21:21
when you're playing with a bunch of
00:21:22
corrupt
00:21:24
they can't even frame anybody right
00:21:25
that's how stupid them college geniuses
00:21:27
are
00:21:31
[Music]
