00:00:05
up next
00:00:06
a college co-ed is left for dead in a
00:00:08
lover's lane the blood is consistent
00:00:10
with her being struck up to ten times
00:00:12
there were plenty of suspects but very
00:00:15
few answers
00:00:16
the samples could have originated from
00:00:18
20 percent of the population was it a
00:00:20
random murder or jealousy if he couldn't
00:00:23
have her nobody else could for decades
00:00:26
the case went unsolved until now
00:00:29
he is a cold-blooded killer they wanted
00:00:32
to solve this
00:00:42
at the end of a long day in may of 1984
00:00:45
a farmer in tennessee made a startling
00:00:48
discovery
00:00:50
he noticed some clothing lying in the
00:00:52
field there was actually a body lying
00:00:54
there
00:00:56
the victim was a young girl wearing only
00:00:58
a bra
00:00:59
her body was covered with two pairs of
00:01:02
jeans
00:01:03
and a dark jacket
00:01:06
one pair of jeans was hers
00:01:09
the other
00:01:10
was a pair of men's jeans
00:01:12
also there was a black jacket across her
00:01:14
body with the sleeve tied around her
00:01:16
neck
00:01:17
and a pair of panties that she was
00:01:18
clutching in her right hand
00:01:20
she was identified
00:01:22
as eighteen-year-old laura salman a
00:01:25
local college student
00:01:27
her life was stolen
00:01:29
her life was stolen
00:01:32
and in such a horrible way
00:01:35
the autopsy revealed laura salman died
00:01:38
of blunt force trauma to the head
00:01:41
the murder weapon appeared to be the
00:01:43
rocks found near her body the blood on
00:01:47
those rocks and other material was
00:01:49
consistent with her being struck up to
00:01:51
10 times in the head with those rocks
00:01:59
the medical examiner found evidence that
00:02:01
laura had consensual sex sometime before
00:02:04
the murder most likely unrelated to the
00:02:06
crime we knew that miss salmon had been
00:02:09
involved in an intimate relationship
00:02:11
with someone
00:02:12
within uh the 24 or 48 hours prior to
00:02:16
her death
00:02:17
there were no injuries that would be
00:02:19
consistent with the forcible rape
00:02:22
on the men's genes found with laura's
00:02:25
body scientists found semen from a
00:02:28
different individual presumably the
00:02:31
killer
00:02:33
earlier that day
00:02:34
laura worked at her cashiers job at the
00:02:36
kroger grocery store
00:02:38
records show she left the store around
00:02:40
1pm
00:02:42
she was supposed to be at an appointment
00:02:44
at middle tennessee state university but
00:02:47
she never arrived
00:02:49
she was supposed to go to mtsu campus to
00:02:52
check on her grades
00:02:53
and meet some of the office personnel
00:02:55
over there after that she was supposed
00:02:58
to go to her grandmother's house to go
00:03:00
swimming
00:03:01
investigators found laura's car near the
00:03:03
store
00:03:04
miles away from the murder site
00:03:07
investigators found no fingerprints in
00:03:10
the car but they did find
00:03:12
a foreign hair
00:03:14
they also found dirt in the wheel wells
00:03:18
the fbi lab determined that they were
00:03:20
consistent and that the
00:03:22
high probability that that vehicle had
00:03:24
been on that road by the crime scene
00:03:31
dan goodwin was laura's friend and had
00:03:34
been out with her a few nights before
00:03:36
the murder
00:03:37
i just asked her if she'd like to see a
00:03:38
movie and we wound up going to the
00:03:40
movies on sunday may 27th of 1984 when
00:03:45
saw matinee show of the natural with
00:03:47
robert redford
00:03:48
at the funeral
00:03:50
dan goodwin promised laura's mother
00:03:53
that he'd helped find the killer
00:03:56
and she just grabbed me and hugged me
00:03:57
and said please help me find who killed
00:03:59
my baby
00:04:00
what they really needed was to find the
00:04:03
owner of the men's genes
00:04:06
[Music]
00:04:08
laura salman's body was found in an area
00:04:11
which often served as a lover's lane for
00:04:13
high school and college students
00:04:16
people went back there to party have
00:04:17
bonfires make out that sort of thing
00:04:20
back there
00:04:21
witnesses placed laura at a local
00:04:24
nightclub on the night before her murder
00:04:26
where she was dancing with an
00:04:28
unidentified young man but investigators
00:04:31
couldn't locate him
00:04:33
the first suspect police interviewed was
00:04:36
laura's high school boyfriend kyle gilly
00:04:40
he had a reputation as the jealous type
00:04:43
but claimed he had an alibi
00:04:46
kyle gilley's alibi had been that his
00:04:49
stepfather was a witness to the fact
00:04:51
that he was home the day of the murder
00:04:54
next a woman in nashville tennessee 40
00:04:56
miles away called police with a possible
00:04:59
lead
00:05:00
she claimed
00:05:02
she'd been date raped by a man named
00:05:04
john taylor and during the ordeal
00:05:07
taylor mentioned laura's murder
00:05:10
the alleged victim said that her
00:05:13
attacker
00:05:14
had
00:05:15
threatened her by saying he would do the
00:05:17
same thing to her as he had to laura or
00:05:19
words to that effect when questioned by
00:05:21
police taylor denied the sexual assault
00:05:24
and denied mentioning laura salman's
00:05:26
name
00:05:27
however a background check revealed
00:05:30
taylor attended the same university
00:05:33
laura did
00:05:34
he was a member of the same
00:05:35
health club
00:05:37
he attended the same fraternity
00:05:39
gathering functions as laura
00:05:42
and taylor was near the university on
00:05:44
the day
00:05:45
of laura's murder
00:05:47
taylor
00:05:48
had somewhat of a history with being
00:05:50
violent towards his girlfriends or
00:05:52
female companions
00:05:54
that too added to his possibility as a
00:05:56
suspect
00:05:58
fbi analysts compared taylor's hair to a
00:06:02
foreign hair they found inside laura's
00:06:05
car we received a report back from the
00:06:08
fbi
00:06:09
that the hair
00:06:11
recovered from her vehicle was
00:06:12
consistent with john taylor
00:06:15
at the time mitochondrial dna testing of
00:06:18
human hair was still years away
00:06:21
so it was impossible to know for certain
00:06:24
if this was taylor's hair
00:06:27
we could never get that one key piece of
00:06:29
evidence that could place him with laura
00:06:31
salmon
00:06:32
on the day of the murder
00:06:35
and the men's jeans found at the murder
00:06:37
scene had a waist size of 30 inches
00:06:41
and a 36 inch inseam
00:06:44
too big for taylor
00:06:46
while it was possible taylor could have
00:06:48
worn them as far as the waist size goes
00:06:51
at the time
00:06:53
he was a much too short of a person to
00:06:56
have worn those on a daily basis
00:06:58
ultimately
00:06:59
investigators concluded a single hair
00:07:02
was not enough to charge him with murder
00:07:05
through all of that evidence
00:07:07
it pointed to him there was still no
00:07:09
smoking gun and nothing to actually tie
00:07:11
them together
00:07:13
and there were other suspects too in all
00:07:16
police investigated over 100 other
00:07:20
suspects
00:07:21
with no success
00:07:23
sure it's very frustrating because
00:07:26
you hate to see a horrendous crime like
00:07:28
this go unpunished unsolved
00:07:31
i made
00:07:32
a promise
00:07:34
to her
00:07:35
at her grave
00:07:37
that i would see
00:07:39
that justice was done
00:07:42
i didn't really know how i would carry
00:07:45
out that promise but
00:07:47
that's the last thing i could do for her
00:07:51
but laureen mackey's promise went
00:07:54
unfulfilled
00:07:56
and 16 long years passed
00:07:59
in the meantime
00:08:01
dan goodwin began a career that would
00:08:03
eventually lead to law enforcement
00:08:06
after graduation i became a
00:08:08
newspaper reporter first at the
00:08:10
shelbyville paper and then i moved
00:08:12
quickly to the daily news journal in
00:08:13
murfreesboro where i became the police
00:08:15
reporter in short order i wrote a series
00:08:18
on unsolved murders in 1987 that
00:08:20
included laura's case but all along i
00:08:23
knew that i was more interested in
00:08:24
police work several years later
00:08:27
dan
00:08:28
left journalism and became a police
00:08:30
officer
00:08:32
the first cold case he was assigned was
00:08:35
laura salmon's murder
00:08:36
i didn't become a law enforcement
00:08:38
officer to work on this case but it was
00:08:40
always on my mind so i was quite happy
00:08:43
that i got to assist bill sharp in this
00:08:46
case
00:08:47
one of the first things dan goodwin and
00:08:49
bill sharp did
00:08:50
was to send all of the evidence to the
00:08:53
forensic lab for testing
00:08:55
obviously through the advancement in
00:08:57
science
00:08:58
through dna
00:09:00
and testing that maybe we could find
00:09:03
the donor of the
00:09:06
biological material and match that
00:09:08
with our killer
00:09:10
while dna testing was underway
00:09:12
sharpened goodwin pursued a new lead
00:09:16
which supposedly came from a local high
00:09:18
school student
00:09:20
now almost 16 years after laura's murder
00:09:24
in 2000 a student at oakland high school
00:09:28
was overheard talking about the laura
00:09:30
simon case saying that his father
00:09:32
had killed a girl and thrown her body in
00:09:35
the quarry
00:09:36
the student's father david patterson had
00:09:39
a police record for aggravated assault
00:09:41
but by the time the rumor circulated
00:09:44
patterson was dead when he himself was
00:09:47
shot to death
00:09:49
we decided of course that we had to
00:09:51
investigate that lead they asked
00:09:53
patterson's children to voluntarily
00:09:55
submit dna samples for testing testing
00:09:58
on david patterson's dna or that of his
00:10:01
family which produced a presumptive
00:10:03
profile
00:10:04
showed no possibility of him being any
00:10:07
of the male dna
00:10:09
profiles that was present at the scene
00:10:11
of her murder
00:10:13
investigators also contacted john taylor
00:10:16
who'd been an earlier suspect in laura's
00:10:18
murder his dna also did not match
00:10:23
and dan goodwin himself provided a dna
00:10:26
sample
00:10:27
he'd gone out with laura just a few days
00:10:29
before the murder
00:10:31
goodwin maintained it was a casual date
00:10:34
and said the two weren't intimate
00:10:37
since i took her out to the movies
00:10:39
just four days before and knew her
00:10:42
they decided it would be advisable to
00:10:44
test my dna and it was tested and i was
00:10:47
not present at the crime scene
00:10:49
but at least
00:10:50
investigators had the killer's dna and
00:10:53
were closer to finding him
00:10:55
a lot closer than they knew
00:11:02
bill sharp and dan goodwin poured over
00:11:05
the original case file of laura salmon's
00:11:07
murder and found one name
00:11:10
that caught their eye
00:11:12
kyle gilly
00:11:14
gilly was laura's high school boyfriend
00:11:17
a year younger than her gilly was
00:11:19
originally a suspect but was eliminated
00:11:22
since he had an alibi one corroborated
00:11:24
by a family member
00:11:27
but they found a curious note in the
00:11:30
case file
00:11:31
there had been a witness
00:11:33
who contradicted gilly's alibi
00:11:37
she identified kyle gilly driving laura
00:11:40
simon's car
00:11:41
approximately a half mile from the road
00:11:44
that led to the quarry
00:11:46
which led to
00:11:47
where laura's body was recovered she was
00:11:49
able to identify kyle through a photo
00:11:51
lineup as well as laura's car through a
00:11:53
photo lineup this lady saw him looked at
00:11:55
him closely she drove by him and said he
00:11:57
was just staring straight ahead
00:12:00
is just a blank expression on his face
00:12:03
and they also discovered
00:12:04
that gilly had a propensity for physical
00:12:07
violence with girlfriends particularly
00:12:10
laura salmon
00:12:12
he would get mad at her grab her by the
00:12:14
head and start banging her head into
00:12:16
cars school lockers whatever was at hand
00:12:19
he would punch her on one occasion he
00:12:21
broke out both of her front teeth we
00:12:24
knew through the investigation that he
00:12:25
and laura had a rocky relationship a
00:12:28
stormy relationship as you will
00:12:30
another incriminating piece of
00:12:32
circumstantial evidence was the pair of
00:12:35
men's genes found at the crime scene
00:12:39
kyle was approximately six feet two
00:12:42
inches tall
00:12:43
and the jeans
00:12:45
would have fit him
00:12:47
the tbi lab did examine the
00:12:50
rustler blue jeans
00:12:51
in 1984
00:12:53
and they were able to determine there
00:12:55
was some blood on there however as to
00:12:57
the type of stains that were present and
00:13:00
to the possible cause they did not make
00:13:02
any determination at that time
00:13:05
under a magnifying glass
00:13:07
crime scene reconstructionist jerry
00:13:10
findlay found
00:13:12
tiny drops of blood embedded in the
00:13:14
fabric
00:13:15
about one thirty second of an inch in
00:13:18
diameter it was medium velocity impact
00:13:22
spatter
00:13:23
the kind usually produced when someone
00:13:25
is hit with a blunt object
00:13:28
medium velocity is an instrument being
00:13:31
wielded by a human
00:13:33
for example a baseball bat or a rock or
00:13:34
something like that it's not going to
00:13:36
generate that much force
00:13:38
the blood stains were clustered above
00:13:40
the knee
00:13:42
indicating the assailant was kneeling
00:13:44
as he attacked he didn't get any impact
00:13:47
stains below the knee but he had plenty
00:13:49
above the knee between the knee and the
00:13:50
waist
00:13:52
so basically what we found was that
00:13:55
the whoever was wearing those jeans was
00:13:57
in close proximity to the point of
00:13:58
impact at the time of impact
00:14:01
and dna testing confirmed
00:14:04
the blood on the jeans
00:14:06
was loras
00:14:08
police tracked gilly down in florida
00:14:11
where he was twice divorced and working
00:14:14
for the manatee county public works
00:14:17
department he also had a police record
00:14:20
with arrests for aggravated sexual
00:14:23
battery attempted burglary and resisting
00:14:26
arrest
00:14:27
when questioned by police in florida
00:14:30
gilly once again denied any involvement
00:14:32
in laura's murder during that interview
00:14:35
kyle admitted that the genes were
00:14:37
probably his when we asked him about
00:14:40
blood spatter
00:14:41
and the fact that we had an expert that
00:14:43
could testify that the killer
00:14:45
wore these genes
00:14:47
kyle gilly
00:14:48
requested an attorney and the interview
00:14:50
interrogation stopped
00:14:52
with the court order investigators
00:14:54
obtained gilly's saliva sample and sent
00:14:56
it to the lab
00:14:58
did gilley's dna match the semen sample
00:15:02
on the genes
00:15:04
we got the results of that testing back
00:15:06
on may 31st 2000 the 16th anniversary of
00:15:09
laurel salmon's murder
00:15:11
that testing showed that kyle gilly was
00:15:13
the donor of the dna
00:15:15
that was on the men's rustler genes that
00:15:18
were draped across her body that was
00:15:20
what we were looking for
00:15:22
we could put kyle gilly in those genes
00:15:24
we could put kyle gilly at the scene of
00:15:26
the murder
00:15:27
that was the final piece of the puzzle
00:15:31
but what was the motive
00:15:37
sixteen years after laura salmon's
00:15:39
murder her high school boyfriend kyle
00:15:42
gilly was arrested and charged with her
00:15:44
murder
00:15:46
laura's mother says she told the
00:15:47
original investigators that gilly killed
00:15:50
her daughter she says his jealousy was
00:15:52
out of control
00:15:54
i'm telling you today
00:15:58
that i am a mother
00:16:01
who keeps her promises
00:16:03
i told them why i thought it was him
00:16:06
or why i knew it was him
00:16:09
and i was very frustrated
00:16:12
that they didn't
00:16:14
take that seriously
00:16:17
kyle gilly is a classic sociopath
00:16:20
he is the center of the universe as far
00:16:22
as he's concerned
00:16:24
he is
00:16:25
what his parents made him
00:16:28
and he is a killer
00:16:30
for the record
00:16:31
no one is willing to speculate why the
00:16:34
original investigators didn't look
00:16:36
deeper into gilly's alibi
00:16:39
it was clear to the cold case unit that
00:16:42
gilly should have been the prime suspect
00:16:45
all along
00:16:46
he's callous cold-hearted and had no
00:16:49
more thought of killing laura than
00:16:51
stepping on a bug
00:16:54
from the time he killed laura he had
00:16:56
thought nothing else of it he is a
00:16:58
cold-blooded killer
00:17:01
gilly and laura dated in high school but
00:17:04
gilly was a year younger and when laura
00:17:06
went off to college
00:17:08
she made a new set of friends
00:17:10
he didn't want her to have any friends
00:17:12
and when she got to college he would go
00:17:15
over there and stalk her
00:17:18
family and friends implored laura to end
00:17:21
the relationship
00:17:23
but she was terrified
00:17:26
i tried to get
00:17:27
her go
00:17:29
and get a restraining order and she was
00:17:32
afraid to go because she was afraid of
00:17:33
what he would do to her
00:17:35
and when she dated other men
00:17:38
kelly felt threatened
00:17:40
howard was very jealous and very
00:17:42
possessive we feel like that was the
00:17:44
motive for the murder that if he
00:17:46
couldn't have her nobody else could
00:17:49
the night before her murder
00:17:51
laura told friend she had a date with a
00:17:52
friend and the two went to a local
00:17:54
nightclub
00:17:56
investigators believe gilly knew laura
00:17:58
was dating others and may have followed
00:18:01
her to the nightclub
00:18:03
that unknown dna was the motive
00:18:06
and kyle was jealous and possessive and
00:18:08
found out that
00:18:09
she possibly was seeing somebody else
00:18:14
prosecutors believe that gilly and laura
00:18:17
had planned to go swimming on the
00:18:19
afternoon of her murder
00:18:26
kyle coaxed her out to the deserted
00:18:28
lover's lane where they talked
00:18:31
then
00:18:32
argued
00:18:33
according to the forensic evidence
00:18:35
gilly struck her in the head repeatedly
00:18:38
with a rock and blood spattered on his
00:18:41
jeans
00:18:45
prosecutors think gilly saw laura's
00:18:48
blood on his jeans which is why he left
00:18:51
them there
00:18:52
but those genes contained other
00:18:55
biological evidence with his dna
00:18:59
on that day gilley wouldn't have known
00:19:01
anything about that of course since dna
00:19:04
testing was still years away
00:19:07
a witness saw gilly driving laura's car
00:19:10
away from the crime scene
00:19:12
why the original investigators gave this
00:19:15
information less weight than gilly's
00:19:18
alibi
00:19:19
is yet another mystery
00:19:22
in september of 2006
00:19:25
kyle gilley went on trial for murder
00:19:28
his defense claimed the presence of
00:19:30
another man's dna was proof that someone
00:19:33
else was at the crime scene and that
00:19:35
individual killed laura kyle gillie was
00:19:38
a jealous piece and he knew no never
00:19:41
mind
00:19:44
the jury
00:19:46
never fell into the trap of thinking the
00:19:48
unknown dna was a plausible other
00:19:49
suspect
00:19:51
the jury found kyle gilly guilty of
00:19:54
murder
00:19:55
and he was sentenced to life in prison
00:19:59
dan goodwin
00:20:01
finally kept the promise he'd made to
00:20:03
laura's mother at the funeral
00:20:06
i don't think miss mackey will be around
00:20:09
when kyle gilly is eligible for his
00:20:11
first parole hearing in september of
00:20:12
2042.
00:20:14
i'll be 83 years old but if i'm alive
00:20:17
and if my partner bill sharp's alive
00:20:18
will be there to testify against
00:20:20
releasing him
00:20:21
my opinion is
00:20:23
that it was a just verdict
00:20:26
and he got what he deserved they knew
00:20:29
what they were doing they were trained
00:20:33
and
00:20:34
they would
00:20:36
leave no stone unturned
00:20:40
that they wanted
00:20:42
to solve this
00:20:44
20 years
00:20:45
is a long time to wait for justice
00:20:48
the evidence in the case never changed
00:20:51
it just took that long for forensic
00:20:54
technology to catch up with the killer
00:20:58
cold cases are difficult the positive
00:21:00
side is that forensic science is
00:21:03
constantly advancing
00:21:05
so that what we couldn't do 20 years ago
00:21:08
now we can do i cannot recall during my
00:21:10
time in the district attorney's office
00:21:13
a case that's ever been worked this hard
00:21:16
that so many hours have been put into
00:21:18
in 1984
00:21:20
we were at a stalemate
00:21:23
we didn't have the
00:21:24
dna the forensic evidence to convict
00:21:27
in 2000 we were able to through the
00:21:29
forensic evidence
00:21:31
put
00:21:32
kyle gilly at the scene we showed that
00:21:35
kyle gilly was the killer without the
00:21:37
forensic evidence
00:21:38
there's no conviction
00:21:44
you
