00:00:05
the victim's body was removed from the
00:00:07
apartment and taken to the Philadelphia
00:00:09
police were searching for a sexual
00:00:11
predator who had climbed to the upper
00:00:13
floors of buildings to attack his
00:00:16
victims Geographic profilers predicted
00:00:20
that the perpetrator lived or worked
00:00:22
near his
00:00:23
victims but when identical crimes
00:00:26
occurred 1700 M away in Colorado
00:00:30
investigators either had a perpetrator
00:00:33
with a very long commute or they had to
00:00:36
rethink their assumptions
00:00:40
[Music]
00:00:47
[Music]
00:01:08
writtenhouse Square in Philadelphia
00:01:11
Pennsylvania on sunny days the park is
00:01:14
filled with sunbathers and joggers many
00:01:16
are students at the nearby University of
00:01:20
Pennsylvania in 1998 Shannon sheber
00:01:24
lived just a few blocks from the square
00:01:27
she was 23 and a graduate student at the
00:01:29
UN University's prestigious Wharton
00:01:31
School of Business she was pursuing a
00:01:34
PhD program in insurance but always uh
00:01:38
interested in a challenge she was also
00:01:41
simultaneously pursuing a a degree in in
00:01:44
finance to her parents Vicky and Sil
00:01:47
sheeper Shannon was all they could have
00:01:49
hoped for in a daughter Shannon was a
00:01:52
very happy person she was inquisitive
00:01:55
she wanted to learn about everything
00:01:57
always a bundle of energy thousand and
00:02:00
questions every time you went somewhere
00:02:02
she had to know how did this happen or
00:02:04
what made that do it that way she was
00:02:07
extremely bright uh she was competitive
00:02:11
in her writing she wrode because she
00:02:13
wanted to win
00:02:14
ribbons uh but she had an extremely
00:02:17
caring side about her also she had a
00:02:19
more diverse group of friends I think
00:02:21
than almost anybody I've ever
00:02:23
known Shannon excelled at everything she
00:02:26
did her senior year in high school she
00:02:29
was was president of the student body
00:02:31
when another president came by to
00:02:33
announce he was running for
00:02:36
reelection when attending undergraduate
00:02:38
school at Duke University she was
00:02:41
president of the freshman class and co-
00:02:43
captain of The Equestrian Team she
00:02:46
graduated in three years with a triple
00:02:49
Major in math in economics and in
00:02:53
Philosophy from there Shannon moved to
00:02:55
Philadelphia to attend graduate school
00:02:58
she rented a second floor apartment near
00:03:01
writtenhouse Square because the area was
00:03:03
considered
00:03:05
safe on the night of May 7th 1998
00:03:09
Shannon spent the evening at
00:03:11
home the next day Shannon didn't meet
00:03:14
her friends as planned so they went to
00:03:17
Shannon's apartment and forced open her
00:03:20
door Shannon's friend broke the news to
00:03:23
the sheepers and she just told me I we
00:03:26
needed to get there right away and um
00:03:28
that something bad had happen happened I
00:03:30
said Sam you have to tell me I have to
00:03:32
know she told us that she were
00:03:36
there she had run a bath there was a
00:03:41
paper so we knew that she was
00:03:44
studying the killer had somehow managed
00:03:47
to climb up to a second floor balcony
00:03:50
and enter through a sliding glass
00:03:55
door there was evidence of a struggle
00:03:58
books had been knocked off the shelves
00:04:00
on one side of her bed she was strangled
00:04:04
and sexually assaulted her camera
00:04:07
necklace and Pen were
00:04:09
stolen blood presumably that of the
00:04:12
killer was found on the bed the wall and
00:04:16
on the outside balcony we assumed that
00:04:19
he was either bitten or somehow he got
00:04:23
cut the blood on the balcony railing was
00:04:26
proof he had left this way
00:04:30
police knew the perpetrator was
00:04:32
experienced in gaining entrance to Upper
00:04:34
Floor Apartments but they would need
00:04:37
more information than that to find
00:04:39
[Music]
00:04:51
him Shannon sheber was a brilliant
00:04:53
student with a bright future that ended
00:04:56
tragically on May 7th 1998
00:05:00
when she was robbed and murdered in her
00:05:03
Philadelphia
00:05:05
apartment there had been no Witnesses
00:05:08
and none of the police leads revealed
00:05:10
anything of value after investigating
00:05:13
for 8 months police were at a
00:05:17
standstill the first break in the case
00:05:19
came from an unlikely source and then
00:05:22
that's looking from her an anonymous
00:05:24
informant called the Philadelphia
00:05:26
inquiring newspaper to leak some
00:05:28
confidential and highly embarrassing
00:05:31
information about the Shannon sheber
00:05:32
murder investigation to the
00:05:35
press this person said it's a shame
00:05:37
about Shannon sheber um because the
00:05:40
department has blown off two earlier
00:05:42
cases that were part of this pattern and
00:05:45
we picked it up earlier maybe we could
00:05:47
have headed this off I'm virtually
00:05:48
certain it was a senior police
00:05:52
officer investigative reporters from the
00:05:54
newspaper dug a little deeper uncovering
00:05:58
evidence that the police covered up
00:06:00
several earlier rape cases in order for
00:06:02
the city's crime statistics to look
00:06:05
better than they really were
00:06:07
Philadelphia police had a long-standing
00:06:09
practice of deep sixing sexual assault
00:06:13
complaints of at least 20 years it
00:06:15
wouldn't be coded as a true crime it was
00:06:17
just taken off the books
00:06:19
entirely two of those crimes were rape
00:06:21
cases never reported that happened a
00:06:24
year before Shannon Shea's murder with
00:06:27
the same Mo all of the victims were
00:06:30
young females who lived alone and had no
00:06:33
boyfriends or
00:06:35
animals our reporting showed that
00:06:37
typically it was the most powerless
00:06:39
victims who were subjected to this
00:06:40
treatment homeless women africanamerican
00:06:43
women you know women who had no clout to
00:06:47
protest one of these earlier victims got
00:06:50
a brief look at her as
00:06:53
salant a police sketch artist put
00:06:56
together this composite
00:06:59
he was described as a tall slender light
00:07:02
complected male well groomed in his mid
00:07:05
20s there was a task force created there
00:07:08
were undercover police plane closed
00:07:10
policemen brought in the composite was
00:07:12
circulated we knew we were dealing with
00:07:14
someone very agile very thin probably
00:07:16
very very athletic we had checked the
00:07:19
basically all the athletic clubs in the
00:07:20
City and surrounding
00:07:22
area in July of
00:07:24
1999 Bo and perie turned to FBI
00:07:27
profilers for help
00:07:30
based on knowledge gained from prior
00:07:33
offenders the profilers believed that
00:07:35
the rapist was familiar with the
00:07:38
neighborhood comfortable being out late
00:07:40
at night and had probably been involved
00:07:43
in other peeping Tom or vois activities
00:07:46
in the
00:07:48
past 15 months after Shannon sher's
00:07:51
murder the center city rapist claimed
00:07:54
his sixth victim this time he removed 14
00:07:59
SC cruise from a set of burglar bars to
00:08:01
gain access to a ground floor apartment
00:08:04
we were horribly saddened and we talked
00:08:06
to the parents of the of the young woman
00:08:09
who was attacked and they called us they
00:08:11
reached out to us and and we chatted at
00:08:13
some length with both the father and the
00:08:14
mother but it gave us hope at the same
00:08:17
time we were devastated that now there
00:08:19
was a chance that someday the guy who
00:08:22
caught Shannon would be in prison and
00:08:23
that was always very important to
00:08:26
us after the sixth attack Detective Bole
00:08:30
and perie took another step Bole had
00:08:33
seen an episode of Forensic Files on
00:08:36
court TV about a series of sexual
00:08:39
assaults in Louisiana solved with
00:08:41
Geographic
00:08:43
profiling so Bo contacted Kim rosmo the
00:08:46
investigator who appeared in that
00:08:49
episode we know as a basic principle
00:08:52
that offenders commit the crimes close
00:08:53
to home we also know they do it in areas
00:08:56
that they're comfortable with their
00:08:57
comfort
00:08:58
zone osmo surveyed Philadelphia's Center
00:09:01
City by helicopter and on foot then he
00:09:05
entered Shannon's address and those of
00:09:07
the five other victims into his
00:09:09
Geographic profiling program and then
00:09:12
the computer system generates for us
00:09:14
after a number of calculations up to a
00:09:17
million what's called a Jeopardy surface
00:09:19
a Jeopardy surface is a
00:09:21
three-dimensional probability surface
00:09:23
showing us the most likely location of
00:09:25
offender
00:09:27
residence orange represents the areas
00:09:30
where the center city rapist is most
00:09:32
likely to live or
00:09:34
work the police flooded those areas with
00:09:37
sketches of the rapist but ultimately it
00:09:41
didn't matter the center city rapist and
00:09:44
now murderer never struck again at least
00:09:50
not in Philadelphia
00:09:52
[Music]
00:10:01
shortly after the center city rapist
00:10:03
claimed his sixth victim in Philadelphia
00:10:06
the crimes mysteriously
00:10:09
stopped police had a number of
00:10:12
theories the perpetrator struck only
00:10:14
during the spring and summer when the
00:10:17
summer of 2000 came and went without an
00:10:20
incident police feared he had fled
00:10:23
Philadelphia and might never be
00:10:26
caught investigators suspected the
00:10:29
perpetrator was a college student who
00:10:31
lived in Philadelphia during the summer
00:10:33
but went to school out of
00:10:36
town what they didn't know was 1700 M
00:10:40
away in Fort Collins Colorado there was
00:10:43
a similar rapist committing crimes in
00:10:47
the exact same way the suspect was
00:10:51
entering by removing screens and
00:10:53
climbing in through the windows and then
00:10:54
once inside the suspect was taking
00:10:57
control of the victim while the victim
00:10:58
was sleeping
00:11:01
the attacker struck five times during
00:11:03
the Spring and Summer of
00:11:05
2001 he pulled pillowcases over his
00:11:08
victim's heads and assaulted
00:11:11
them during the fifth attack he made a
00:11:15
mistake he had entered the victim's
00:11:18
apartment by way of a second floor
00:11:21
balcony crime lab supervisor Jeff saboda
00:11:24
took a portion of the balcony railing
00:11:27
back to his lab and sprayed it with
00:11:29
ninhydrin a chemical used to uncover
00:11:32
fingerprints on porous surfaces the
00:11:35
ninhydrin reacts with skin oil causing
00:11:38
fingerprint ridges to turn purple an
00:11:41
hour later he got the results three
00:11:46
perfect Prince put his palms here placed
00:11:50
his left hand leaving his left thumb
00:11:54
print in left ring and left little
00:11:58
finger and then jumped over Fort Collins
00:12:02
mailed photographs of the prince along
00:12:04
with the description of the attacks to
00:12:06
police departments all across the
00:12:07
country asking for
00:12:10
assistance the letter caught the
00:12:12
attention of a police clerk in
00:12:15
Philadelphia she thought of the center
00:12:17
city rapist which was he was called at
00:12:19
the time and she contacted the Special
00:12:21
Victims Unit uh detective lur detective
00:12:25
lur then contacted the Fort Collins
00:12:27
Police Department
00:12:29
when DNA from the rape test kits in
00:12:32
Colorado were compared to blood found in
00:12:34
Shannon Shea's apartment the DNA
00:12:38
matched when they called back to say
00:12:41
that they had in fact done a comparison
00:12:43
and that the samples match um it was
00:12:47
overwhelming I think there was this this
00:12:49
amazing sense of hope that that now this
00:12:53
guy was going to be
00:12:55
caught but why did the rapist leave
00:12:58
Philadelphia for Colorado and how would
00:13:01
police catch him to find out
00:13:04
investigators needed to identify
00:13:06
everyone who lived in Philadelphia
00:13:08
during that crime spree who were later
00:13:11
in Colorado during the crimes there
00:13:15
every person that would have this the
00:13:17
two cities in common we would want to
00:13:19
talk to them computer crime expert
00:13:22
Lieutenant Ed Monahan asked a college
00:13:24
friend Bill news to help with the search
00:13:28
we can do that we can finish 's happened
00:13:29
to work for Lexus Nexus an information
00:13:32
retrieval service containing more than
00:13:34
30,000 public
00:13:36
databases not all of the search
00:13:38
parameters will be revealed in this
00:13:41
program a lot of it was Geographic and
00:13:43
and I really don't want to go into any
00:13:44
further than
00:13:46
that they called through credit bureau
00:13:48
records and found 319 males who had been
00:13:52
making Financial transactions in
00:13:55
Philadelphia and then did the same in
00:13:58
Fort Collins
00:14:00
Colorado they further narrowed the
00:14:02
search by looking for males between the
00:14:04
ages of 20 and 30 years old who had been
00:14:07
living in or around the areas of the
00:14:09
Philadelphia attacks zip Cod is a short
00:14:12
and easy way of identifying a geographic
00:14:15
area Monahan got the list down to 83
00:14:18
names which he immediately sent to
00:14:20
police in
00:14:22
Colorado those names were added to a
00:14:24
list of more than 800 suspects the
00:14:27
Colorado Police gathered
00:14:30
before they all could be checked there
00:14:33
was a seventh
00:14:34
assault police needed to work quickly
00:14:37
before there was an
00:14:42
[Music]
00:14:47
e by now police knew that the center
00:14:51
city rapist in Philadelphia was now in
00:14:55
Colorado committing similar crimes there
00:15:00
there had been a total of one murder and
00:15:02
12 sexual assaults five in Philadelphia
00:15:05
seven more in Fort Collins
00:15:08
Colorado in September
00:15:11
2001 Colorado police were methodically
00:15:14
investigating potential suspects and
00:15:17
running DNA tests when they received
00:15:20
this letter I'm sorry but I can't let
00:15:23
you catch me yet not in Colorado I don't
00:15:26
even like it here I'm not a fan of cold
00:15:28
weather
00:15:29
I don't even like going up to Fort
00:15:31
Collins anymore you guys are everywhere
00:15:34
I admit I want to get caught I don't
00:15:37
like what I do it keeps me at a distance
00:15:39
from people and I can't talk to anyone
00:15:42
it gets lonely the letter contained
00:15:45
details of the crimes only the
00:15:47
perpetrator could have
00:15:50
known but it didn't contain any DNA or
00:15:55
fingerprints ultimately detective
00:15:57
Cochran concluded that the rapist was
00:16:00
trying to Sidetrack the
00:16:02
investigation we allowed the suspect to
00:16:05
lead us in a different direction because
00:16:06
of this letter um that ultimately we
00:16:08
might miss
00:16:10
somebody Colorado Police had received
00:16:12
more than a thousand
00:16:14
tips one call was from a woman who said
00:16:17
she had dated a man who resembled the
00:16:19
police sketch the man's name was Troy
00:16:23
Graves a name that appeared on the list
00:16:26
of suspects generated by Philadelphia
00:16:28
police computer
00:16:30
experts Graves had worked for a bank in
00:16:33
Philadelphia not far from the victim's
00:16:38
homes after the last attack in
00:16:40
Philadelphia Graves joined the Air Force
00:16:43
and was sent to Fort Warren in
00:16:45
Colorado Graves lived in Fort Collins
00:16:49
just a short distance from the Colorado
00:16:51
crime
00:16:52
scenes the investigator was told by the
00:16:55
girlfriend that Troy like to take walks
00:16:57
late at night that he trouble sleeping
00:17:00
that uh there might have been a prior
00:17:03
sexual sexual abuse
00:17:07
history Graves had once been reprimanded
00:17:10
for peeping into a woman's room on the
00:17:13
Air Force Base and he was thin and
00:17:16
athletic physically capable of climbing
00:17:19
up to Second Story
00:17:21
Windows detective Neil heisen contacted
00:17:25
Troy Graves and asked him to come in for
00:17:27
an interview
00:17:29
he was very well spoken very polite um
00:17:33
so I was a little taken aback by that
00:17:35
but he did look and match the physical
00:17:39
features heum asked the usual questions
00:17:42
that had been asked of hundreds of other
00:17:45
suspects I asked him if he would be
00:17:47
willing to take a polygraph exam again
00:17:51
this was something I could use to
00:17:52
exclude him and he was definite on his
00:17:55
answer to that he told me not right
00:17:57
now he then asked Graves if he would
00:18:01
agree to be
00:18:02
fingerprinted and his response was that
00:18:05
felt weird to
00:18:08
him nevertheless Graves was taken to the
00:18:12
police fingerprint expert who ran a
00:18:14
complete set of prints paying close
00:18:17
attention to the little finger ring
00:18:19
finger and thumb on the left hand once
00:18:23
Miss fton had rolled his
00:18:25
fingerprints um I could tell by her
00:18:27
reaction when she rolled him that she
00:18:31
knew Troy Graves fingerprints matched
00:18:34
the prince from the fifth victim in
00:18:37
Colorado and when Grave's blood was
00:18:40
analyzed his DNA matched the blood left
00:18:45
the Channon sher's
00:18:47
apartment Troy Graves multi City Rampage
00:18:51
was
00:18:53
over police and prosecutors believed
00:18:56
that Grave's motive was sexual assault
00:18:59
but Shannon sheber fought back somehow
00:19:03
cutting or biting Graves which produced
00:19:06
the blood on her bed and
00:19:08
walls Shannon was the only victim
00:19:14
murdered when confronted with the
00:19:16
forensic evidence Graves
00:19:19
confessed he later plad guilty and was
00:19:23
convicted at his sentencing hearing in
00:19:26
Colorado several of his victims got a
00:19:28
chance to confront their
00:19:31
attacker I hate you Troy graes with
00:19:34
every ounce of my being I hate you how
00:19:37
dare you ever think you could violate
00:19:38
someone the way you did me and now you
00:19:41
are going to pay your future holds not
00:19:45
only a complete absence of freedom but
00:19:48
nights of getting raped and toyed with
00:19:51
in ways that even someone as sick as you
00:19:53
can't imagine yet Troy Graves was
00:19:57
sentenced to life in
00:20:00
prison I had given up hope a long time
00:20:02
ago they'd ever find him I really did I
00:20:05
really did but um it was good not to
00:20:08
have any more victims and that's a
00:20:10
personal very personal
00:20:12
feeling as a mother of a victim
00:20:17
definitely Shannon's parents keep her
00:20:20
room as it was when she was alive filled
00:20:24
with her Championship ribbons her books
00:20:27
her photos of family and
00:20:30
friends we were extremely close and to
00:20:33
think of somebody who was so alive and
00:20:34
so part of you uh who's now gone so
00:20:37
suddenly it's it's just
00:20:40
horrendous the hunt for Shannon's killer
00:20:43
was a classic needle in the hyack
00:20:46
investigation its solution solid
00:20:49
detective work behavioral and
00:20:52
geographical profiling and computer
00:20:56
forensics here's the locations of the
00:20:59
offenses the bank the graves worked at
00:21:02
the location of his girlfriend's home
00:21:05
his first
00:21:06
residence the assaults all took place
00:21:09
along routes that Graves would have
00:21:11
traveled from his two rented Apartments
00:21:13
to his girlfriend's home and to
00:21:17
work these crimes are usually of the
00:21:19
more serious nature and any Edge that
00:21:22
you can give to help the investigators
00:21:24
great we like to think of geographic
00:21:26
profiling as just one more tool in their
00:21:29
toolkit I think it's important to
00:21:31
realize that no profile can solve a
00:21:33
crime you need physical evidence and
00:21:35
witness or a confession to do that and
00:21:38
it's going to be the detective in charge
00:21:40
that solves it we just play a a small
00:21:42
support role but to the degree that we
00:21:44
can assist in helping them Focus or
00:21:47
understand the crime or prioritizing
00:21:48
suspects then you feel very good
00:21:51
computers don't commit crimes and
00:21:52
computers don't solve crimes detectives
00:21:54
solve crimes and even in this instance I
00:21:57
think it's a really great example of
00:21:58
effective work and
00:22:00
Technology powers of of the DNA evidence
00:22:03
today and the specialist that you can go
00:22:04
to from the geographical profiler to the
00:22:07
FBI profiler to the use of the computers
00:22:11
it's changed how we do our job how we do
00:22:14
an investigation forensic science is is
00:22:16
where it's at today
00:22:19
[Music]
00:22:27
[Music]
00:22:28
w
00:22:29
[Music]
00:22:44
[Music]
