00:00:04
[Music]
00:00:06
in 1996
00:00:08
seattle police faced an unusual
00:00:10
challenge a severely wounded dog
00:00:12
witnessed the murder of his two owners
00:00:17
could the dog identify the killers and
00:00:20
if so
00:00:21
how
00:00:23
[Music]
00:00:49
[Music]
00:00:51
december 9
00:00:53
1996 seattle washington
00:00:56
it was going to be a special day for 22
00:00:59
year old raquel rivera she was starting
00:01:02
a new job as a receptionist in a
00:01:04
downtown office
00:01:06
i seen her the night before
00:01:08
and she was really excited about it she
00:01:10
was a little sick but she wasn't worried
00:01:12
about she was going to make it to work
00:01:13
or not
00:01:15
she was really excited
00:01:18
raquel shared this house in seattle's
00:01:20
south park section with her longtime
00:01:22
boyfriend
00:01:23
jay johnson
00:01:25
the two had been together since high
00:01:27
school and were talking about getting
00:01:29
married
00:01:31
i loved jay he was a great guy
00:01:33
he i i loved him
00:01:36
he was very good to my daughter you know
00:01:39
they were good for each other
00:01:41
just after dawn
00:01:42
neighbors heard gunshots coming from the
00:01:45
couple's home
00:01:47
probably about four or five shots and
00:01:49
then a break and then maybe about
00:01:51
six more shots when police arrived they
00:01:55
found the front door off its hinges the
00:01:58
windows had been shattered by bullets
00:02:01
inside
00:02:03
were two bodies
00:02:05
the only thing we have right now is that
00:02:06
we found two people in the house a male
00:02:08
and a female both shot
00:02:10
raquel rivera's mother who lived only a
00:02:13
block away got the phone call
00:02:16
every parent dreads
00:02:18
when i got there there was
00:02:20
police and everybody they wouldn't let
00:02:21
me in the apartment
00:02:26
and i said it's got to be raquel
00:02:30
the bodies were positively identified
00:02:33
as raquel and jay
00:02:37
the couple's dog chief a six-month-old
00:02:40
labrador mix was also shot
00:02:44
i poked my head around the corner saw
00:02:46
that the dog was up against the door
00:02:49
he was
00:02:50
obviously in pain
00:02:52
he was growling
00:02:54
there were blood traces all over the
00:02:56
door where he had smeared blood against
00:02:58
that wall i said let's get everybody out
00:03:00
get animal control in here and get the
00:03:02
dog out this particular casewood raid is
00:03:05
probably the most severely injured dog
00:03:06
that we've ever seen from a gunshot just
00:03:08
by virtue the face that it received
00:03:12
such a full-on
00:03:13
frontal
00:03:14
bullet right through the
00:03:17
the front of the nose
00:03:20
unfortunately despite undergoing
00:03:22
emergency surgery
00:03:24
the dog died
00:03:25
an autopsy was performed
00:03:28
it revealed the dog had been shot twice
00:03:30
a non-fatal shot in the shoulder
00:03:33
and the bullet through his muzzle
00:03:36
you could liken it to running face first
00:03:38
into the front end of a truck bumper on
00:03:40
that in terms of this given what we
00:03:42
could see in terms of the the bullet
00:03:45
trauma that that did to the front of his
00:03:46
muzzle in his face
00:03:49
the evidence told homicide investigators
00:03:52
that the killer was searching for
00:03:54
something
00:03:55
cabinets have been gone through
00:03:57
doors have been opened
00:03:59
the bed
00:04:00
was tossed around
00:04:02
so clearly the perpetrators wanted to
00:04:04
find something not just eliminate the
00:04:06
lives and witnesses therein but they
00:04:08
were after something
00:04:10
there was no finesse to this
00:04:12
it was a blitz style attack they're in
00:04:15
they shoot
00:04:16
they shoot the dog they shoot the
00:04:18
owners of the dog
00:04:20
mr johnson was shot several times in the
00:04:23
legs which
00:04:24
is indicative of
00:04:26
someone trying to extract information
00:04:28
before
00:04:30
the coroner would later describe the
00:04:32
murders as execution-style killings
00:04:37
the entire community was asking who
00:04:39
would have killed this young couple who
00:04:42
had no known enemies
00:04:48
the only clues to the merger of jay
00:04:50
johnson and raquel rivera were a smeared
00:04:53
footprint at the couple's front door and
00:04:56
some nine millimeter shell casings
00:05:00
blood spatter was on the walls floor and
00:05:03
on the inside of the door
00:05:06
police discovered that a
00:05:08
fifteen-year-old boy living across the
00:05:10
street in an apartment building had seen
00:05:12
the shooting
00:05:14
this person described them as samoan
00:05:16
males dressed in black very large men
00:05:20
and
00:05:22
one wearing a bandanna
00:05:26
the boy said the two men kicked open the
00:05:28
front door
00:05:30
shocked the dog and then moved into the
00:05:32
house
00:05:33
the witness could no longer see them but
00:05:36
he heard the firing
00:05:39
he saw the dog he heard two shots and he
00:05:41
heard the barking
00:05:43
and then he heard the
00:05:45
dogs
00:05:47
yelping and the dogs screams
00:05:51
the boy said the men left minutes later
00:05:53
and drove away in a red camaro driven by
00:05:56
a third samoan man
00:06:00
[Music]
00:06:06
police suspected the men were members of
00:06:08
a local gang
00:06:10
madpack
00:06:12
there's a large samoan community in
00:06:14
seattle are law abiding hard-working
00:06:16
people but with every group you've got a
00:06:19
criminal element
00:06:20
and
00:06:21
the madpack
00:06:23
made up a large portion of their
00:06:25
criminal element
00:06:26
they were a gang in the the sort of
00:06:28
worst sense of the word
00:06:32
just three days earlier in seattle's
00:06:34
chinatown there had been a similar
00:06:36
shooting the victim johnny pake survived
00:06:39
the attack
00:06:41
that being a samoan male
00:06:43
sitting in a red car
00:06:46
a very large samoan mail
00:06:48
shell casings from the chinatown
00:06:50
shooting were compared to those taken
00:06:52
from jay and raquel's apartment
00:06:54
they matched
00:06:56
police now scoured the city looking for
00:06:59
any samoans driving a red camaro
00:07:04
amazingly
00:07:05
they didn't have to look far
00:07:09
on the afternoon following jay and
00:07:11
raquel's murder police noticed a red
00:07:14
camaro slowly driving past the murder
00:07:17
scene
00:07:19
driving back to the crime scene and
00:07:21
checking things out is not an uncommon
00:07:23
thing for a suspect to do it's the old
00:07:25
return to the scene of the crime
00:07:27
cliche
00:07:28
and it happens
00:07:30
the driver of the red camaro was charles
00:07:33
nico a known member of the madpack gang
00:07:41
although nico denied any involvement in
00:07:44
the shooting
00:07:45
the 15 year old eyewitness identified
00:07:48
him as the driver of the getaway vehicle
00:07:53
when threatened with the death penalty
00:07:55
nico finally told police what happened
00:07:59
he said the motive was drugs
00:08:01
the madpack gang members heard that jay
00:08:04
and raquel had cocaine in their house
00:08:07
and they decided to steal it
00:08:10
but after breaking in
00:08:12
the couple said they had no cocaine and
00:08:15
then the men started shooting
00:08:17
[Music]
00:08:21
nico identified the shooters as
00:08:23
twenty-two-year-old kenneth leia luala
00:08:26
whose street name was sabo claus
00:08:28
and 24 year old george tu ilofano whose
00:08:32
street name was scooby
00:08:35
both were high-ranking members of the
00:08:37
mad pack
00:08:39
i already knew who they were because you
00:08:41
know they ran around south park they
00:08:43
were always they were bullies they were
00:08:45
always beating everybody up
00:08:48
both men denied any involvement in the
00:08:50
shooting and said they had alibis
00:08:53
a search of their apartment did not
00:08:55
produce the nine-millimeter murder
00:08:57
weapon
00:08:59
the smeared footprint on the front door
00:09:01
could not be matched to either suspect
00:09:05
and eight red stains found on the right
00:09:07
sleeve of sabo claw's jacket was sent
00:09:10
for dna testing but it wasn't the
00:09:13
victim's blood
00:09:15
they get a result that is not human
00:09:18
based because the genotype does not come
00:09:20
back to genes associated with a human
00:09:23
being at all
00:09:24
they then
00:09:25
are scratching their heads heads with
00:09:27
hey what's going on here
00:09:30
in fact investigators weren't sure what
00:09:32
it was
00:09:34
with no forensic evidence to tie the
00:09:36
suspects to the crime
00:09:38
seattle police feared a conviction
00:09:41
might be impossible
00:09:44
[Music]
00:09:49
as jay johnson and raquel rivera were
00:09:51
laid to rest side by side in a seattle
00:09:54
cemetery
00:09:56
their families demanded justice
00:10:00
to decipher exactly what happened at the
00:10:02
crime scene investigator o'keefe needed
00:10:05
to distinguish between the dog's blood
00:10:08
spatter and that of jay and raquel
00:10:12
i requested through my sergeant cindy
00:10:14
tallman
00:10:15
that an officer followed the dog to the
00:10:17
vet and draw blood from the dog
00:10:19
immediately
00:10:21
my thinking at the time
00:10:22
was to
00:10:24
differentiate between the human blood at
00:10:26
the scene and the dog blood
00:10:28
the blood spatter and bullet casings in
00:10:31
the apartment and the eyewitness account
00:10:33
of the 15 year old boy who lived across
00:10:35
the street gave police a rough idea of
00:10:39
what had happened
00:10:41
after the intruders kicked open the door
00:10:46
dog was shot in the shoulder
00:10:48
then the men went into the bedroom
00:10:52
where they shot raquel
00:10:54
[Applause]
00:10:56
they took jay into an adjoining room
00:10:58
and shot him in the leg while demanding
00:11:01
the couple's cocaine
00:11:03
one of the men left to shoot raquel once
00:11:06
more
00:11:08
and when jay said the couple never had
00:11:10
any drugs
00:11:11
they killed him
00:11:16
[Music]
00:11:17
despite his shoulder wound chief again
00:11:20
tried to protect his owners and ran into
00:11:22
the bedroom to attack the killers
00:11:28
[Music]
00:11:29
but why wasn't the victim's blood on the
00:11:32
suspect's clothes
00:11:35
investigators say both jay and raquel
00:11:38
were shot from a distance and were also
00:11:40
wearing clothes pajamas and t-shirts
00:11:43
which absorbed the blood spatter
00:11:46
but with chief
00:11:48
there was nothing to absorb the blood
00:11:50
it was short-haired and had
00:11:53
not long hairs around the muzzle or face
00:11:55
or neck area so any kind of a serious
00:11:58
wound causing a lot of blood is
00:11:59
obviously going to spill or spray or go
00:12:02
off it's not going to cling to the coat
00:12:04
because there's such a short smooth coat
00:12:05
it's going to roll right off
00:12:08
chief was very close
00:12:11
to kenneth when he was shot and we know
00:12:14
also that chief was shot in the muzzle
00:12:16
area
00:12:18
now police discovered the possible key
00:12:21
to the mysterious red stains on the
00:12:23
right sleeve of sabo claws jacket
00:12:28
detective o'keefe and myself decided to
00:12:30
see if we're dealing with
00:12:32
a non-human source namely a dog
00:12:36
so with that we needed to
00:12:38
seek out laboratories that do
00:12:42
dna testing with non-humans
00:12:45
and through
00:12:47
some research
00:12:48
we came upon a lab in davis california
00:12:51
headed by dr joy halvorson
00:12:54
dr joy halverson is an expert in
00:12:57
investigating the parentage of world
00:13:00
class show dogs
00:13:04
championship caliber show dogs can be
00:13:07
worth thousands of dollars and where
00:13:08
there's money
00:13:10
there's often corruption
00:13:12
dishonest breeders engage in a practice
00:13:14
known as litter loading where pups from
00:13:17
inferior dogs are mixed in with pups
00:13:20
from champion dogs and sold at inflated
00:13:23
prices
00:13:25
knowledgeable buyers now analyze the dna
00:13:28
profiles of their new pups in order to
00:13:31
confirm their dog's championship
00:13:34
parentage
00:13:35
dog dna is exactly like human dna
00:13:40
the only difference would be we use a
00:13:41
different set of dna markers
00:13:44
but in terms of its chemical properties
00:13:46
and the way it behaves with these
00:13:48
testing procedures it's exactly the same
00:13:53
police suspected
00:13:54
the red spots on sabo claw's right
00:13:57
sleeve came from the victim's dog chief
00:14:01
dr halverson cut out a piece of the
00:14:03
sleeve with the red stains on it and
00:14:05
analyzed it with a pcr based dna test
00:14:10
a little piece of that fabric is
00:14:13
taken and put into a tube and various
00:14:16
buffers and so on are added to it blood
00:14:18
cells will come off the fabric into the
00:14:22
liquid
00:14:23
and then the
00:14:25
various treatments are done to extract
00:14:28
the dna from that
00:14:30
the results were consistent with the
00:14:32
blood from a dog
00:14:35
but was the blood from the victim's dog
00:14:38
chief
00:14:40
dr halverson compared the dna markers
00:14:43
from the blood on the suspect's sleeve
00:14:46
to the blood taken from chief during his
00:14:48
autopsy
00:14:51
the result
00:14:52
was a perfect match
00:14:55
the blood on sabo claw's right sleeve
00:14:58
was the blood of chief
00:15:02
prosecutor tim bradshaw knew he'd face a
00:15:05
challenge from defense lawyers
00:15:08
we were unable to find any other case a
00:15:11
homicide case in the country where
00:15:13
canine based dna had been admitted into
00:15:16
evidence
00:15:19
the defense lawyers not only would
00:15:21
challenge the admissibility of the
00:15:22
canine dna evidence they described it as
00:15:25
hocus pocus and boldly predicted
00:15:29
their clients would walk free
00:15:34
[Music]
00:15:36
the two gang members charged with
00:15:38
killing jay johnson and raquel rivera
00:15:40
were facing first-degree murder charges
00:15:44
prosecutors not only had the teenaged
00:15:47
eyewitness from across the street who
00:15:49
identified the two in a police lineup
00:15:52
they also had dna evidence from the
00:15:54
victim's dog on kenneth laila ali'i's
00:15:58
sleeve
00:15:59
also on his sleeve
00:16:01
were hairs
00:16:03
they were not human
00:16:05
but they were compared to chief's hair
00:16:08
and found to be consistent
00:16:10
[Music]
00:16:11
this wasn't as good as the dna evidence
00:16:14
but certainly wouldn't hurt the
00:16:16
prosecution's case
00:16:19
the main suspect kenneth
00:16:23
became so disruptive he had to be
00:16:26
restrained in a wheelchair for the
00:16:28
eight-week trial
00:16:30
he taunted the judge the family members
00:16:33
saying
00:16:34
he'd never get convicted
00:16:37
every time we walk in he would just look
00:16:39
at us and and laugh at us and
00:16:42
you know
00:16:42
throw kisses at us when the girls would
00:16:44
walk in
00:16:46
i just
00:16:48
i
00:16:52
prosecutors presented their theory of
00:16:54
how the murders were committed based on
00:16:56
the blood spatter evidence
00:17:00
prosecutors believe that the suspects
00:17:02
kicked open jay and raquel's door and
00:17:05
immediately were confronted by the dog
00:17:07
chief
00:17:09
they shot the dog in the shoulder
00:17:14
[Music]
00:17:27
oh
00:17:33
[Music]
00:17:35
after killing both rachel and jay
00:17:38
chief once again tried to protect his
00:17:40
owners
00:17:43
chief was shot at point-blank range
00:17:46
the blowback blood spatter landed
00:17:49
on ken's right sleeve
00:17:53
when presented with the dna evidence
00:17:55
linking ken's jacket to the dog
00:17:58
the judge ruled that legally the animal
00:18:01
dna was the same as human dna
00:18:05
if the testing was the same
00:18:08
then
00:18:09
so was its value as evidence
00:18:11
we took advantage of the fact that the
00:18:14
science is is no different than the
00:18:16
human
00:18:17
testing that's done now in in the
00:18:18
forensic community and
00:18:21
there's really no there's nothing
00:18:23
groundbreaking about it it's just a
00:18:26
different set of dna markers developed
00:18:28
for dogs
00:18:30
it was the first time
00:18:32
animal dna was used in the united states
00:18:34
as evidence in a criminal case
00:18:39
kenneth laialuala
00:18:41
took the stand
00:18:43
and said he had an explanation for the
00:18:45
dog blood on his sleeve
00:18:47
he told the jurors that a few nights
00:18:49
prior to the murders he was at a dance
00:18:51
club in tacoma got into a fist fight
00:18:54
with another man there and that
00:18:56
thereby explains the blood
00:18:59
that did give me an opportunity to ask
00:19:02
him whether the man he was fighting with
00:19:04
had hit him with a dog
00:19:07
and he um really couldn't explain that
00:19:12
after 12 hours of deliberation
00:19:14
the jury sentenced both men to life in
00:19:18
prison without parole
00:19:21
kenneth laialuala alii laughed as the
00:19:24
verdict was read
00:19:27
but the last laugh was reserved for
00:19:30
chief
00:19:31
the victim's courageous dog
00:19:34
i had a few puns about her case in chief
00:19:36
but the third victim here chief was
00:19:37
exceedingly important to our case
00:19:40
and you know we're grateful to that but
00:19:42
we're also
00:19:43
this will sound a little hokey but
00:19:44
grateful to the scientific community for
00:19:46
making a contribution to justice and
00:19:48
that's exactly what happened here
00:19:50
jay and raquel had bought chief for
00:19:52
protection little did they know that he
00:19:54
would someday bring their killers to
00:19:57
justice
00:19:59
one
00:20:00
a piece of evidence the one victim who
00:20:02
could never speak
00:20:03
ended up providing perhaps the most
00:20:06
eloquent of testimony and that was from
00:20:09
the the dna profile
00:20:11
that
00:20:13
clearly placed defendant lealah lee at
00:20:16
the crime scene
00:20:19
the verdict brought small satisfaction
00:20:21
to raquel's mother who now makes a point
00:20:24
of keeping a dog around the house
00:20:28
her only child who she raised by herself
00:20:32
is dead for no reason
00:20:34
leaving a great void in her life
00:20:38
that no amount of justice
00:20:40
can ever fill
00:20:43
we were so close
00:20:45
her and i she was growing up just her
00:20:47
and i
00:20:49
what i learned from this case
00:20:51
is that if it's alive it has dna
00:20:56
detectives can use
00:20:58
dna
00:20:59
in their cases
00:21:01
in ways that we never thought of 10
00:21:03
years ago
00:21:04
there is plant dna there is animal dna
00:21:07
every domestic animal has a dna data
00:21:09
bank now the department of interior has
00:21:12
a laboratory where they do dna on
00:21:15
wild species
00:21:17
just from my own experience of owning
00:21:19
animals i mean i'm sure if i looked on
00:21:21
my clothing right now i'd find some
00:21:23
animal hairs and if somebody kidnapped
00:21:25
me and put me in the trunk of their car
00:21:28
they'd probably a few of those hairs
00:21:30
would end up on the trunk of their car
00:21:32
so if if someone's being alert and
00:21:35
thinking about these things i think
00:21:36
there are valuable sources of evidence
00:21:40
and so it's a constant reminder for
00:21:42
investigators to be vigilant in your
00:21:44
approach to any sort of crime scene and
00:21:47
to be quite open-minded and imaginative
00:21:50
about what application
00:21:52
you can do as far as what science is
00:21:55
available because
00:21:57
to a large degree science is leading the
00:21:58
way and we got to keep up
00:22:02
[Music]
00:22:12
[Music]
00:22:16
so
00:22:17
[Music]
00:22:36
you
