00:00:06
what can a skull tell you about a
00:00:08
person's
00:00:09
life and can their bones reveal how they
00:00:13
died a forensic artist an anthropologist
00:00:17
and a global positioning satellite would
00:00:19
tell more about this victim than anyone
00:00:22
could ever imagine
00:00:25
[Music]
00:00:34
[Music]
00:00:37
[Applause]
00:00:39
[Music]
00:00:45
[Applause]
00:00:51
[Music]
00:00:53
Yellow House Canyon is 200 Acres of very
00:00:56
rough terrain just outside the city
00:00:58
limits of lck
00:01:01
Texas in 1870 it's where the kamanche
00:01:04
Indians exchanged their prisoners for
00:01:08
[Music]
00:01:10
horses
00:01:12
125 years later the area became known
00:01:16
for something
00:01:17
else when some Hunters found what looked
00:01:20
to be a human skull you treat it as a
00:01:24
crime scene making the assumption that
00:01:26
it is going to be a
00:01:28
homicide nearby by were bits of clothing
00:01:31
and a woman's
00:01:34
shoe police sifted through the dirt and
00:01:37
found some smaller bones and a strand of
00:01:41
hair forensic anthropologist Dr Harold
00:01:45
Gil King estimated the bones had been
00:01:47
exposed to the elements for over a year
00:01:51
one piece of bone at the bottom of the
00:01:53
spine called the sacrum indicated the
00:01:55
victim was
00:01:58
female the shape of the sacrum in
00:02:02
females is distinctive it's much more
00:02:05
flared it's all part of the birth
00:02:08
difference between uh females giving
00:02:11
birth and males
00:02:12
not the shape of the skull suggested the
00:02:15
victim was Caucasian and the cranial
00:02:19
sutures were not yet closed meaning the
00:02:22
victim was young between 18 and
00:02:26
24 the Anthropologist also found
00:02:29
evidence of knife wounds I think we had
00:02:32
one to the shoulder blade six to the
00:02:35
vertebrae and then another four or five
00:02:39
so 12 or 13 injuries that we discovered
00:02:42
and mapped uh into the cut
00:02:45
map Dr Gil king ruled the manner of
00:02:48
death to be homicidal
00:02:51
violence when word got out that a young
00:02:53
woman had been murdered in yellow house
00:02:55
Canyon call started to pour in one woman
00:02:59
came up said that she knew her husband
00:03:01
had done it because he was a KN freak
00:03:03
and said oh by the way we're having a
00:03:04
custody battle tomorrow can you give me
00:03:06
a copy of this report from a lawyer so
00:03:10
investigators checked the dental records
00:03:13
of 64 young women reported missing
00:03:15
throughout the United States and none of
00:03:18
them
00:03:20
matched so investigators asked forensic
00:03:23
artist Karen Taylor to try to put a face
00:03:26
on the skull granted it's a sort of a
00:03:29
last ditch effort when the forensic
00:03:31
artist is called in the job of the
00:03:33
forensic artist is to to trigger
00:03:37
interest to create that link I often
00:03:39
refer to it as being the middleman at
00:03:41
that point she was my best hope in fact
00:03:44
she was about our only hope we were just
00:03:46
about out of things to
00:03:48
do Taylor pioneered a technique called
00:03:51
two-dimensional facial reconstruction
00:03:54
which is part science and part
00:03:57
art each race has facial skin which is
00:04:00
different than other races using known
00:04:04
scientific data Taylor applied rubber
00:04:07
markers to approximate the facial tissue
00:04:09
thickness of a Caucasian the tissue
00:04:13
thickness varies on our faces it's if
00:04:15
you feel on your own face it's much
00:04:16
thicker down in this cheek or chin area
00:04:19
and much thinner up on the forehead so
00:04:21
we cut and and apply rubber markers to
00:04:24
those landmarks and that helps give a a
00:04:27
guideline as a starting place to create
00:04:29
the The Contours of the
00:04:31
face Taylor then photographed the skull
00:04:35
and placed a piece of translucent Vellum
00:04:38
on top of the picture she then used her
00:04:41
talent and forensic expertise to
00:04:43
illustrate her most prominent features
00:04:46
the average human eyeball is about 25 mm
00:04:50
in in diameter just so happens to be the
00:04:52
size of US Quarter so I in drawing will
00:04:56
will lay a quarter down within the
00:04:58
aperture and Trace around it the nose
00:05:01
and ears are more difficult to
00:05:03
approximate since they are made of
00:05:05
cartilage and have
00:05:08
decomposed but research shows that a
00:05:11
Caucasian female's nose has skin that
00:05:14
extends roughly 1 fth of an inch to each
00:05:17
side of the nasal cavity the nose
00:05:20
particularly struck me because I could
00:05:22
see a marked asymmetry at the base of
00:05:24
the the nasal aperture the the nasal
00:05:27
opening it's slanted to one side at the
00:05:29
bottom and I learned through experience
00:05:32
of previous cases that that would
00:05:35
probably show up in life investigators
00:05:37
found a single red hair in the soil near
00:05:41
the bones which Taylor used as her guide
00:05:45
that was a very good clue for me but I
00:05:48
made it
00:05:49
interpretable it not blonde blonde and
00:05:51
not dark dark but somewhere in the
00:05:53
middle and I I made a similar decision
00:05:55
with the eye
00:05:57
color when finished the drawing was
00:06:00
released to the media throughout the
00:06:01
state of Texas investigators hoped
00:06:05
someone would recognize
00:06:08
[Music]
00:06:11
her it was like most other days in
00:06:14
Beverly tillery's life having her
00:06:17
morning cup of coffee and scanning the
00:06:19
newspaper before going to
00:06:22
work but the forensic drawing of the
00:06:25
unidentified woman found in yellow house
00:06:28
Canyon immediately caught her eye if you
00:06:31
look at the pictures of my children you
00:06:33
see that they all have practically the
00:06:34
same jawline and same cheek structure
00:06:39
it's kind of a square type thing Beverly
00:06:42
was convinced it was her 17-year-old
00:06:45
daughter Belinda who had been missing
00:06:48
for more than a year she showed me the
00:06:50
paper and she asked me if if I thought
00:06:53
that looked like Belinda you know and I
00:06:55
you know the more I sat there and looked
00:06:56
at it yeah it's got a lot of her
00:06:59
characteristics
00:07:00
dental records confirmed what the family
00:07:04
suspected the skull was
00:07:09
Belinda's at the time of her
00:07:11
disappearance Belinda worked as a dancer
00:07:13
at a local nightclub owned by a gang
00:07:16
called the
00:07:18
Bandidos they're an outlaw motorcycle
00:07:20
gang they're into everything the people
00:07:24
that frequent their clubs are generally
00:07:26
the same type people so the fact that
00:07:30
Belinda Tillery was working there would
00:07:32
would not be a good thing after I heard
00:07:35
Belinda's name I drove down to the bar
00:07:38
where she worked to see if anyone could
00:07:39
talk to me about who she was so I could
00:07:42
have more than just a name to go 6 Ines
00:07:44
of
00:07:45
newsprint but no one at the club was
00:07:48
willing to talk the man selling tickets
00:07:51
he certainly didn't know anyone name
00:07:52
Belinda and this wasn't Bleak enough an
00:07:55
old woman came from the back also a
00:07:57
staff member at The Establishment and
00:07:59
and began to say the same thing he had
00:08:02
said just in a much more emphatic
00:08:04
way according to Belinda's family
00:08:07
Belinda danced at the club on the night
00:08:09
she disappeared her brother had given
00:08:11
her a ride
00:08:13
home last time I spoke with my sister
00:08:15
she wasn't feeling well I just assumed
00:08:18
she would went to sleep so I just went
00:08:19
upstairs and I'd had
00:08:22
a couple drinks myself ear there in the
00:08:25
evening so I was feeling kind of good
00:08:26
too so uh so I went upstairs to
00:08:30
down but the next morning Belinda was
00:08:33
gone and hadn't left a
00:08:36
note Belinda's family told police why
00:08:39
she hadn't been feeling well lately she
00:08:42
kept getting sick and we took her to the
00:08:44
doctor and found out that she was
00:08:45
pregnant and in the very beginning you
00:08:47
know like the first week or so she was
00:08:49
kind of you know stunned about it but
00:08:51
like I said that's what caused her to to
00:08:54
change and want to to settle down and be
00:08:57
the daughter her mother wanted to raise
00:08:59
you
00:09:00
know Belinda had plans to return to
00:09:03
school get her diploma find a better
00:09:05
paying job so she could raise her child
00:09:09
properly Bel Linda's family believed the
00:09:12
baby's father was her ex-boyfriend Troy
00:09:16
Armstrong drank too much that he he was
00:09:19
much older he was 10 years older than
00:09:21
her I I wasn't really infused with him
00:09:25
he was older than me I'm like this this
00:09:27
C be right and uh you know of course I
00:09:30
didn't want to openly criticize binda
00:09:31
said W what are you thinking he had a
00:09:34
long history of just small Petty crimes
00:09:37
very
00:09:38
transient lived in his cars lived with
00:09:41
friends uh had a narcotic
00:09:46
habit when police tried to interview
00:09:49
Armstrong they discovered he had left
00:09:51
town months earlier he was reported to
00:09:54
be living in Roswell New
00:09:56
Mexico I drove to Roswell spent two days
00:09:59
looking for him was not able to find
00:10:04
him but they were able to track down his
00:10:07
current girlfriend Angela Allen she said
00:10:11
she loved him as they stayed together a
00:10:14
while he became more and more
00:10:16
abusive and eventually he beat her up a
00:10:19
couple of times best I
00:10:21
recall Angela said she knew all about
00:10:25
Belinda I'd heard a couple of uh
00:10:27
messages on an answering machine one one
00:10:29
of them was that she was pregnant and uh
00:10:31
she needed to talk to him about
00:10:34
it Angela told police that she and
00:10:36
Armstrong ran into Belinda in a local
00:10:39
bar shortly before she disappeared and
00:10:42
there was a
00:10:45
confrontation she wanted to see him to
00:10:48
to clarify the fact that she was going
00:10:50
to raise this child herself and it was
00:10:51
hers no matter you know who it belong to
00:11:01
Angela told investigators she ended her
00:11:04
relationship with Armstrong when she
00:11:06
learned Belinda was pregnant I told him
00:11:10
that he needed to go talk to her if she
00:11:11
wanted an abortion he needed to pay for
00:11:13
it if she wanted to have the baby he
00:11:15
needed to support her in that you know
00:11:17
no matter what her decision was that he
00:11:18
needed to be a part of it and help her
00:11:20
take care of you know the problem that
00:11:22
he was involved in or else I really
00:11:24
didn't want anything to do with him he
00:11:25
needed to get the hell out of my life
00:11:28
Angela gave police several items
00:11:30
Armstrong had left with her before he
00:11:32
left the area among them a large
00:11:36
knife police asked forensic experts
00:11:39
whether this was the murder weapon the
00:11:42
answer was maybe in my experience people
00:11:46
who attempt to match a particular knife
00:11:49
to an injury Venture a little too far
00:11:53
from the shores of Sanity over time the
00:11:56
bones tend to warp and the the wounds
00:11:59
change a little
00:12:01
bit nevertheless investigators needed to
00:12:05
find Troy Armstrong to ask what he knew
00:12:09
about Belinda's
00:12:11
[Music]
00:12:16
disappearance forensic artist Karen
00:12:18
Taylor was able to put a face on the
00:12:21
skull found in yellow house Canyon which
00:12:23
in turn led to the discovery that it was
00:12:27
17-year-old Belinda artillery her
00:12:31
ex-boyfriend 27-year-old Troy Armstrong
00:12:34
was the Prime Suspect but investigators
00:12:37
had no idea where he was Angela Allen
00:12:41
had dated Armstrong after Belinda did
00:12:44
and was initially reluctant to help
00:12:46
police I had to talk to Angela two or
00:12:49
three times and every time I'd talk to
00:12:51
her I'd get a little more information I
00:12:53
knew the second that I started helping
00:12:55
the police that was you know I was
00:12:57
putting myself in danger
00:13:02
eventually Angela told police that when
00:13:05
Armstrong learned about Belinda's
00:13:07
pregnancy he invited Belinda to go
00:13:09
camping with him in Yello house Canyon
00:13:12
so the two could discuss the
00:13:15
pregnancy Angela said Armstrong acted
00:13:18
suspiciously when he returned from
00:13:20
Yellow House Canyon he showed up on my
00:13:22
doorstep on his return trip and he had
00:13:25
blood on his hands and there was a cut
00:13:27
on his hand Armstrong said he
00:13:29
accidentally cut his hand during the
00:13:31
camping trip there was no reason for me
00:13:33
not to believe it you
00:13:36
know telling somebody else uh without
00:13:39
using the exact words that he killed her
00:13:42
you have the location where the body was
00:13:43
found you have the a method that he had
00:13:46
blood on his hands which obviously means
00:13:48
that she wasn't shot it means it had to
00:13:51
be a close physical attack as with a
00:13:54
knife he was pretty cocky about the
00:13:56
whole thing uh pretty much did not make
00:14:00
it any big secret that he had killed
00:14:02
her when Angela learned that Belinda's
00:14:06
body was discovered in yellow house
00:14:08
Canyon she knew the truth I think it was
00:14:12
one of the first things that came out of
00:14:14
my mouth was uh he really did kill her
00:14:16
didn't he that was whenever it all
00:14:20
hit that everything was real and he
00:14:23
really could have done something you
00:14:27
know to me my family anybody
00:14:31
as the circumstantial evidence Mounted
00:14:34
Police issued a warrant for Armstrong's
00:14:36
arrest but they didn't know where he
00:14:39
was Angela Allen told police that Troy's
00:14:42
best friend worked in California for a
00:14:44
trucking company and suggested they look
00:14:47
for him there I wanted to make sure he
00:14:49
was caught I was uh very much up on that
00:14:54
police asked Trucking Company officials
00:14:56
for the location of Troy's friend
00:14:59
fortunately they knew exactly where he
00:15:01
was because every one of their trucks
00:15:03
was equipped with a global positioning
00:15:06
system or
00:15:07
GPS when detective Watson heard that the
00:15:10
truck had a GPS in it back then you know
00:15:13
he's like me she GP what what does that
00:15:16
do 24 satellites orbit the earth
00:15:20
tracking Vehicles boats and even
00:15:22
airplanes that are equipped with the GPS
00:15:25
receiver it's just like leaving a trail
00:15:27
of breadcrumbs behind so that when you
00:15:29
look at it on a map you see a trail of
00:15:31
dots representing the path of travel of
00:15:33
that
00:15:34
vehicle the GPS satellite tracked the
00:15:37
moving truck driven by Armstrong's
00:15:40
friend as it made its way through
00:15:43
Nebraska they were giving me the
00:15:45
information in real time kept them on
00:15:47
the phone I notified the Nebraska
00:15:49
highway patrol what I was doing asked
00:15:52
them if they could attempt to locate
00:15:54
this truck as it was approaching the uh
00:15:57
York Nebraska
00:16:01
within a few hours Nebraska police set
00:16:03
up a roadblock and stopped the truck
00:16:06
they asked the driver if he knew of
00:16:07
Armstrong's
00:16:09
whereabouts much to their surprise they
00:16:12
found Armstrong hiding in the truck
00:16:15
sleeper compartment I had no concrete
00:16:18
evidence I just knew that he was an
00:16:20
acquaintance of this driver and that he
00:16:23
had been riding with him for at some
00:16:26
point Troy Armstrong was was arrested
00:16:29
and charged with Belinda's murder he's
00:16:32
got these bitty little eyes that makes
00:16:33
you feel uneasy looks like a rat smells
00:16:36
like a rat you know pretty much going to
00:16:38
be a rat and he's you know he had rat
00:16:40
written on him from the
00:16:42
beginning Armstrong insisted he had
00:16:45
nothing to do with Belinda's
00:16:48
murder but among Armstrong's possessions
00:16:51
was the key to a storage
00:16:54
locker inside that storage locker were
00:16:57
items armed Armstrong couldn't possibly
00:17:00
explain why they were
00:17:07
there when Troy Armstrong was arrested
00:17:10
for Belinda tiller's murder he had a key
00:17:13
to a rental storage locker in New
00:17:16
Mexico inside were Belinda's personal
00:17:20
belongings there were the type of
00:17:22
personal items that she most likely
00:17:25
would have been carrying the night that
00:17:26
she was killed a driver's license and
00:17:28
other things that she would have had in
00:17:30
her possession after leaving her
00:17:31
employment at the
00:17:33
nightclub what are you doing here
00:17:35
prosecutors believe Troy Armstrong had
00:17:38
no interest in supporting Belinda
00:17:40
tiller's baby they say he was angry that
00:17:43
his new girlfriend Angela Allen ended
00:17:46
their relationship when she learned of
00:17:48
Belinda's
00:17:51
pregnancy prosecutors uncovered evidence
00:17:54
that Armstrong borrowed sleeping bags
00:17:57
and camping equipment from a friend then
00:18:00
asked Belinda to go camping with him so
00:18:02
they could discuss her
00:18:07
pregnancy later that night Troy picked
00:18:10
up Belinda at her home and went to
00:18:13
Yellow House
00:18:17
Canyon once there prosecutors believe
00:18:21
they argued and the situation turned
00:18:24
violent the forensic evidence suggests
00:18:27
Belinda was stabbed over a dozen times
00:18:29
in her
00:18:30
[Applause]
00:18:31
back and left for dead in yellow house
00:18:36
Canyon later Armstrong went to Angela's
00:18:40
apartment telling her he had cut his
00:18:42
hand Troy Armstrong extremely violent
00:18:46
individual somebody that had no regrets
00:18:50
in stabbing a teenage girl that was
00:18:53
pregnant 12 to 15 times with a large
00:18:55
knife leaving in a field
00:18:59
at the trial Angela Allen revealed a
00:19:02
devastating piece of information he told
00:19:05
me that he'd killed her if I ever said
00:19:07
anything about it and about the blood on
00:19:10
his hands all that stuff that uh he'd
00:19:13
kill my dad he'd kill my kids and my dad
00:19:17
too after a 4-day trial a jury
00:19:20
deliberated for only 2 hours before
00:19:22
finding Troy Armstrong guilty of first
00:19:25
deegree murder my final argument was was
00:19:29
give him a life sentence unless you can
00:19:31
find anything decent about him you know
00:19:34
in less than an hour they came back with
00:19:36
a life sentence I think that says a lot
00:19:38
about Troy
00:19:40
Armstrong even Angela thinks he got off
00:19:43
too easy because Armstrong killed two
00:19:47
people that day I believe that he should
00:19:49
have gotten the death
00:19:51
penalty because uh nobody considers that
00:19:55
baby little man with a big ego and he's
00:20:01
violent
00:20:05
um that's
00:20:07
really him in a nutshell he's a violent
00:20:10
little
00:20:11
man she wasn't famous it wasn't a
00:20:15
high-profile case but it's a case that
00:20:17
took a lot of people to put together it
00:20:19
took a lot of effort and it's something
00:20:21
that you sometimes don't see in somebody
00:20:24
that uh is forgotten
00:20:26
about Belinda tiller family still Mourns
00:20:30
the loss of their daughter but because
00:20:33
of forensic facial reconstruction and
00:20:36
forensic
00:20:37
anthropology they know the truth when
00:20:41
Karen Taylor put the face on the
00:20:43
skeleton that's what broke the case no
00:20:46
doubt forensic art is Art SL science we
00:20:50
use all the scientific inputs possible
00:20:52
but there is a point where art kicks in
00:20:55
and supplements science the forensic art
00:20:58
allowed the dead to speak and and I
00:21:00
think that's a really good thing
00:21:03
[Music]
00:21:13
[Music]
00:21:26
[Applause]
00:21:32
[Music]
