00:00:05
up next a human skeleton is found in the
00:00:08
marshlands of north carolina the longer
00:00:11
a body's been dead the harder it is to
00:00:12
determine how long it's been dead we
00:00:14
don't know who she is we don't know why
00:00:15
she was killed but it tells a story all
00:00:18
its own
00:00:19
whatever happened to pre-sea death it
00:00:22
probably was sexual a story of anger and
00:00:26
hatred at what point does a person
00:00:28
realize that you know they're dying and
00:00:30
a violent end
00:00:32
had this person remained anonymous we
00:00:34
would have had nowhere to go
00:00:37
[Music]
00:00:42
[Music]
00:00:44
on a cold spring afternoon in 2004
00:00:48
rayleigh jacobs found what looked like
00:00:51
human bones in the backyard of the home
00:00:53
he rented in wilmington north carolina
00:00:57
it was kind of gruesome we came across
00:00:59
these bones it was horrible first we
00:01:01
seen her leg bones and then we came
00:01:03
across her skull you know and ribs and
00:01:07
you know then we realized you know it
00:01:08
wasn't fake it was real
00:01:10
you know so it was was terrible
00:01:14
he called authorities who moved quickly
00:01:16
to collect the remains and any possible
00:01:19
forensic evidence
00:01:21
the bones that had been scattered by the
00:01:22
animals and maybe about a tide coming in
00:01:24
because that was a marshland it was a
00:01:26
dump site
00:01:27
and there's a lot of garbage back there
00:01:30
anthropologist dr midori albert and her
00:01:33
team of student volunteers recovered
00:01:36
about 160 bones
00:01:38
or 80
00:01:40
of the skeleton
00:01:40
[Music]
00:01:42
the victim was a caucasian female about
00:01:44
30 years old and from the length of her
00:01:47
femur about five foot four inches tall
00:01:52
the amount of decomposition indicated
00:01:54
she'd been dead for approximately 18
00:01:57
months
00:01:58
and it was clear
00:01:59
the woman died violently
00:02:07
when i see injuries that were as
00:02:08
extensive as this particular case
00:02:11
i'm sort of perplexed by what the
00:02:14
individual what the victim was going
00:02:16
through while sustaining these injuries
00:02:18
and how long death might have occurred
00:02:21
the woman had a broken nose broken ribs
00:02:25
and had been stabbed with a sharp object
00:02:27
numerous times in the lower abdomen
00:02:30
it indicated to me somebody who might
00:02:33
have been stabbing or mutilating this
00:02:35
individual stabbed 50 times at what
00:02:37
point do you just not feel any more stab
00:02:39
wounds
00:02:41
the lack of clothing found near the
00:02:43
remains was also telling
00:02:46
the nudity would indicate
00:02:49
a certain behavior pattern
00:02:51
they would indicate that
00:02:53
whatever happened to
00:02:55
precede their death
00:02:57
it probably was sexual fennel believed
00:03:00
it was a clear sign of rage
00:03:03
and a possible indication the killer
00:03:06
knew the victim
00:03:11
he also believed the killer was familiar
00:03:14
with the area
00:03:15
someone knew that they could get back
00:03:17
there and hide this body there without
00:03:19
being seen while they were hiding the
00:03:20
body
00:03:22
because ray jacobs had lived in the
00:03:23
rental home only a short time he wasn't
00:03:26
considered a suspect in the homicide
00:03:28
whoever put the bones there or done this
00:03:31
you know i was afraid that they would
00:03:33
probably come back or
00:03:34
you know show up unexpectedly and
00:03:37
you know so i didn't really know what to
00:03:39
think at the time after that
00:03:42
the first order of business was to
00:03:44
identify the victim
00:03:46
a task that wouldn't be easy
00:03:50
according to the doe network an
00:03:52
organization that tracks the number of
00:03:53
unknown victims there were 100 other
00:03:56
cases involving unidentified victims in
00:03:59
north carolina alone
00:04:02
investigators hoped that forensic
00:04:05
anthropology could narrow the search
00:04:08
obviously in order to do any kind of
00:04:10
investigation you have to start with
00:04:12
figuring out who this person is
00:04:17
the victim found in the north carolina
00:04:19
marsh had suffered a violent death
00:04:24
she was beaten stabbed
00:04:26
and her nude body left in the marsh in
00:04:29
the cold of winter
00:04:31
but who was this person
00:04:34
her remains were laid out in the lab and
00:04:37
she was somebody i saw every day every
00:04:39
day i go in the lab and turn the lights
00:04:40
on and work on another case or we hold a
00:04:42
class in there i would look over at her
00:04:45
and often wonder how long it was going
00:04:47
to take to get any kind of confirmation
00:04:50
investigators had a theory that the
00:04:52
killer was local
00:04:54
it had to be someone who had some
00:04:56
familiarity with that particular plot of
00:04:58
land
00:05:00
and if the killer was local the victim
00:05:02
might be as well
00:05:04
so investigators searched missing
00:05:06
persons reports for caucasian females
00:05:09
living
00:05:10
in a 50 mile radius who disappeared in
00:05:13
the last 18 months
00:05:15
this yielded a number of possibilities
00:05:18
but the closest match
00:05:20
was 31 year old
00:05:22
scarlett wood
00:05:25
she was unmarried and living at home so
00:05:27
she could care for her mother who was
00:05:29
suffering from liver cancer
00:05:32
on the night she disappeared she told
00:05:34
her mother she was going to a party with
00:05:36
friends it was in january
00:05:39
it was cold and um i woke up at the
00:05:42
funniest feeling you know you have a
00:05:43
superstition
00:05:44
and i said scroll i got a bad feeling
00:05:45
something's gonna happen i said you just
00:05:47
stay here tonight she said no i'll be
00:05:48
all right
00:05:50
but scarlett never returned
00:05:53
she was always good about checking in
00:05:55
with them saying where she was going to
00:05:56
be if she wasn't going to be home at a
00:05:58
certain time
00:05:59
investigators hope to compare scarlett's
00:06:02
dental records with the unknown victim
00:06:05
but their attempt was unsuccessful
00:06:08
she had dental records but they were 10
00:06:10
years old
00:06:11
and i couldn't find any dentists that
00:06:13
kept their records that long
00:06:15
and initially
00:06:16
scientists couldn't use dna testing
00:06:19
either they couldn't pull the dna from
00:06:21
the remains from the bones
00:06:23
apparently the bones are too dried out
00:06:26
investigators were facing the very real
00:06:28
possibility that their victim would
00:06:31
never be identified
00:06:34
then
00:06:35
forensic anthropologist dr midori albert
00:06:38
had an idea
00:06:40
i've been familiar with a procedure
00:06:42
called skull photo video superposition
00:06:44
where you take an actual skull and you
00:06:46
can take a photograph of a person and
00:06:48
actually blend the two images together
00:06:51
and what we tend to do with that is we
00:06:52
look for different anatomical landmarks
00:06:55
and points of similarity
00:06:57
unfortunately
00:06:58
the university of north carolina didn't
00:07:00
have the facilities to perform this
00:07:02
procedure
00:07:04
the hardware and software can cost as
00:07:06
much as thirty five thousand dollars
00:07:09
so dr albert did
00:07:10
the next best thing
00:07:13
she asked one of her colleagues to
00:07:15
improvise
00:07:18
i went to shane baptista on campus who
00:07:20
is a computer guru and is very familiar
00:07:22
with open source software which is
00:07:24
software that is available to anybody as
00:07:26
a free download
00:07:28
baptista found a free program called
00:07:31
[ __ ] or gnu image manipulation program
00:07:36
[ __ ] is an unfortunate acronym pretty
00:07:38
much feature for feature and equivalent
00:07:40
of adobe photoshop
00:07:42
to see if it worked he performed a
00:07:45
forensic test on himself
00:07:48
i sat myself down
00:07:49
and
00:07:50
set up a web camera on a computer and
00:07:53
took some photographs of myself at
00:07:56
what i tried to get to be the same
00:07:57
orientation
00:07:59
he superimposed his photo
00:08:02
over a plastic skull
00:08:05
he separated both images into quadrants
00:08:09
and looked for consistencies in the
00:08:11
images
00:08:13
as he expected
00:08:15
there were none
00:08:17
i was able to get a creepy image that
00:08:19
showed that that wasn't my skull
00:08:21
which we pretty much knew
00:08:25
baptista moved on to the ultimate test
00:08:28
pictures of scarlet wood
00:08:31
were superimposed over the skull
00:08:34
of the murder victim
00:08:37
the similarities were immediately
00:08:39
apparent
00:08:42
when i started messing around with the
00:08:44
scarlet woods it kind of lined up pretty
00:08:47
quickly and so it was the
00:08:49
ease of the fit got me pretty confident
00:08:52
at the outset that we were on the right
00:08:54
track it's never 100 conclusive but it
00:08:58
was fantastic because
00:09:00
a lot of the anatomical landmarks were
00:09:02
very consistent
00:09:03
it seemed possible that the victim was
00:09:06
scarlet wood
00:09:08
although investigators still weren't 100
00:09:11
certain
00:09:13
but at least
00:09:14
they had somewhere to start
00:09:16
[Music]
00:09:21
with the skeleton found on private
00:09:23
property
00:09:24
investigators first turned to the
00:09:26
property owner and the residents as
00:09:28
potential suspects
00:09:30
investigators learned that there were
00:09:32
two tenants living on the property at
00:09:34
the time of the murder both men in their
00:09:37
mid to late 20s
00:09:39
they both had some histories with the
00:09:40
law enforcement of questionable
00:09:42
character
00:09:43
the landlord told police the men moved
00:09:45
out a year and a half earlier
00:09:47
which would have been around the time of
00:09:49
the murder
00:09:51
they have left in a hurry leaving behind
00:09:54
furniture clothing there was some
00:09:56
women's clothing left in the house
00:09:58
some underwear that kind of thing hoping
00:10:00
for answers
00:10:02
police found one of the men in hampstead
00:10:04
north carolina 28 miles away and brought
00:10:08
him in for questioning
00:10:10
everything did you guys have parties
00:10:11
after the house what kind of road
00:10:14
that's got anything to hide
00:10:16
well
00:10:18
the man said he knew nothing about the
00:10:20
murder and never met scarlett wood
00:10:22
he said he and his roommate weren't
00:10:24
getting along and they moved out of the
00:10:26
rental property after living there only
00:10:28
a few months
00:10:30
just roommates breaking up money issues
00:10:34
police weren't so sure
00:10:36
and sent a forensic team to search the
00:10:38
house
00:10:40
all of the floors walls and ceilings
00:10:42
were sprayed with luminol
00:10:44
but they showed no signs of blood
00:10:47
after interviewing the tenants
00:10:49
and the previous tenants we were pretty
00:10:51
much at a standstill
00:10:53
next investigators interviewed all of
00:10:56
scarletwood's friends
00:10:58
and her best friend lynne bollinger said
00:11:01
she knew where scarlett was headed on
00:11:03
the night she went missing
00:11:06
she said scarlett spent every friday
00:11:08
night at a local motel where there was
00:11:11
usually a party
00:11:15
they were at a motel partying drinking
00:11:18
drinking beer and just having a good
00:11:19
time i believe it was scarlet and three
00:11:22
out of three or four other people
00:11:26
police interviewed several individuals
00:11:28
who attended that party
00:11:30
they said everyone left around 2am
00:11:33
except
00:11:34
scarlett
00:11:35
and a friend of hers
00:11:37
47 year old john wayne boyer
00:11:40
[Music]
00:11:41
boyer is a
00:11:43
truck driver he actually worked at a
00:11:45
different couple of different locations
00:11:46
here in wilmington
00:11:48
boyer no longer lived in the area he had
00:11:50
been interviewed by police after
00:11:52
scarlett disappeared
00:11:54
they were partying and drinking scotland
00:11:56
wanted to leave
00:11:58
and he said he didn't want to leave and
00:11:59
she left
00:12:02
boyer said she left around 3 a.m on foot
00:12:08
at the time
00:12:09
no one really believed boyer's story
00:12:11
that scarlett would have walked home
00:12:13
seven miles away in freezing cold
00:12:15
temperatures
00:12:17
she was not equipped for the cold it was
00:12:19
about 17 degrees at night i believe she
00:12:21
had on just a pair of jeans
00:12:23
and with a light coat
00:12:25
but john boyer had no criminal history
00:12:28
and he and scarlett were acquaintances
00:12:31
she used to babysit his ex-girlfriend's
00:12:33
children so we had a personal
00:12:34
relationship with her
00:12:36
scarlett's friends however despised him
00:12:40
my father had his own trucking business
00:12:41
so we we knew about this man he was
00:12:44
really big
00:12:45
he drank a lot
00:12:49
and he just
00:12:50
he acted he acted fine but i just
00:12:52
there's something about him i just
00:12:54
didn't like i didn't trust
00:12:56
investigators were able to locate the
00:12:58
minivan boyer owned at the time of
00:13:01
scarlet's disappearance
00:13:03
we ended up finding that van and doing a
00:13:05
search on it and we had to find nothing
00:13:08
in it
00:13:09
they also searched the hotel room where
00:13:12
the party took place
00:13:14
the room was examined for blood we used
00:13:16
the luminol to determine if there was
00:13:19
blood unfortunately they had redecorated
00:13:21
that particular hotel room so some of
00:13:23
the furniture was new but there was no
00:13:25
evidence found of any kind of bodily
00:13:27
fluids or blood or anything like that
00:13:30
unsolicited
00:13:32
a psychic called suggesting
00:13:34
scarlett's body was dumped in an
00:13:36
industrial area about a block away from
00:13:39
the hotel
00:13:41
myself and my partner at the time went
00:13:43
out to the scene when i looked around
00:13:45
kicked the bushes that kind of thing
00:13:47
didn't locate anything
00:13:49
again
00:13:50
investigators were at a standstill
00:13:54
they had no dna proof that the skeleton
00:13:56
was scarlet wood they had no blood
00:13:59
evidence to prove that there had been
00:14:01
violence in the hotel room or
00:14:03
in john boyer's van
00:14:06
in fact
00:14:07
they had no evidence at all
00:14:10
[Music]
00:14:15
using a technique called facial photo
00:14:18
superimposition
00:14:19
a forensic anthropologist made a
00:14:22
preliminary finding that the
00:14:24
unidentified skeleton was 31 year old
00:14:28
scarlet wood
00:14:29
but this wasn't an identification that
00:14:32
would hold up in court
00:14:35
investigators had sent the remains to an
00:14:37
outside forensic laboratory hoping to
00:14:40
get a dna profile
00:14:42
but for reasons no one can quite
00:14:44
understand the lab was unsuccessful
00:14:47
[Music]
00:14:48
we would never know for sure who our
00:14:50
victim was
00:14:51
without the dna i'm not sure what that
00:14:54
is but they just couldn't pull the dna
00:14:55
from the bones
00:14:56
so they just advised us like almost a
00:14:58
year and a half later that
00:15:01
just couldn't do it just couldn't find
00:15:02
dna nothing seemed to be coming of the
00:15:05
analysis
00:15:07
and
00:15:08
after the first year passed we were we
00:15:10
were quite disturbed and very upset
00:15:12
about it
00:15:14
undeterred
00:15:16
investigators sent the skeleton for a
00:15:18
forensic second opinion to a private
00:15:21
laboratory this one in pennsylvania
00:15:26
there scientists tried drilling into a
00:15:30
tooth
00:15:31
and found just enough tooth pulp to
00:15:34
generate a dna profile
00:15:37
within three weeks they came back with a
00:15:39
positive identification
00:15:42
and with more digging
00:15:43
sergeant john leonard discovered that
00:15:45
scarlet wood had surgery performed on
00:15:48
her finger just before she disappeared
00:15:51
and
00:15:51
that a biopsy was performed
00:15:54
by law i guess medically they had to
00:15:55
keep these things for seven years i was
00:15:58
told i spoke to a doctor who did the
00:16:00
operation on her and he advised me that
00:16:02
that i could you know go to go to the
00:16:04
place that stored this this uh this
00:16:06
biopsy and i was able to get it
00:16:09
incredibly
00:16:10
dna testing of that biopsy sample
00:16:13
matched the dna profile from the
00:16:16
victim's tooth
00:16:18
it was the best news i'd heard in a long
00:16:20
time it's a long-awaited conclusion to a
00:16:23
mystery and a very tragic death when the
00:16:26
dna came back and it confirmed that my
00:16:28
victim was scarlet wood and that john
00:16:30
boyle was the last person to be seen
00:16:32
with her
00:16:33
we ended up going to
00:16:35
augusta georgia and interviewing john
00:16:37
boyer
00:16:39
at first
00:16:40
boyer repeated what he told
00:16:42
investigators several years earlier
00:16:44
that scarlett grew impatient waiting for
00:16:47
him to give her a ride she decided to
00:16:49
walk home instead and left the motel
00:16:52
room around 3 a.m
00:16:55
sergeant leonard
00:16:57
didn't believe it
00:16:59
i've been talking to you since 10
00:17:00
o'clock this morning all we've heard is
00:17:01
live okay john because i have a body i
00:17:03
have a body now okay so i'm gonna be
00:17:05
able to tell if he lied to me right okay
00:17:09
and with that
00:17:10
his story changed
00:17:13
that's when he told me he wanted to have
00:17:14
sex
00:17:16
she said okay but he couldn't perform
00:17:18
we had a little sex a little bit we
00:17:20
tried to she got pissed off because i
00:17:21
couldn't keep it up with her and she
00:17:23
told me oh you you're just an old old
00:17:26
man
00:17:27
she was belittling him about him not be
00:17:29
able to have perform they end up pushing
00:17:31
her
00:17:32
he wasn't bleeding i know that
00:17:34
she wasn't bleeding no she was not
00:17:36
bleeding after you pushed her and she
00:17:37
hit the nightstand yeah
00:17:40
yeah
00:17:44
boyer said scarlett hit her head
00:17:46
accidentally against the nightstand but
00:17:49
dr midori albert believes it's more
00:17:52
likely her head was pushed into the
00:17:54
table forcibly
00:17:58
prosecutors also believe boyer
00:18:00
broke her ribs
00:18:06
since it was late
00:18:08
boyer was able to carry scarlett's body
00:18:10
outside to his truck without attracting
00:18:12
notice
00:18:17
[Music]
00:18:25
he then took her to the marshy field
00:18:28
near the trucking company where he
00:18:29
worked
00:18:39
the evidence shows he used some sort of
00:18:42
sharp object and repeatedly stabbed her
00:18:45
going so far
00:18:47
as to mutilate her
00:18:52
and then
00:18:53
he left her there
00:18:59
i learned a lot from her skeleton and i
00:19:01
believe in death she made significant
00:19:03
contributions
00:19:05
some of the information boyer gave
00:19:07
police in his so-called confession
00:19:10
was corroborated by the evidence
00:19:12
and i got scared and i picked her up on
00:19:15
my shoulder and
00:19:16
put in the truck took me down there in
00:19:18
the woods okay now do you understand
00:19:20
that that that that's a really different
00:19:21
that's a little bit different story than
00:19:22
what you told us 10 minutes ago and a
00:19:24
big different story than what you told
00:19:26
us three hours ago
00:19:28
but not everything he said was true
00:19:31
he wasn't bleeding i know that
00:19:33
she wasn't bleeding no you were not
00:19:35
bleeding
00:19:36
in april of 2007
00:19:39
john boyer pled guilty to a charge of
00:19:42
second-degree murder
00:19:43
and was sentenced to 12 years in prison
00:19:48
scarlett's family
00:19:49
still have problems accepting the
00:19:52
enormity of the crime
00:19:54
he never gave her true stories as to
00:19:56
what really happened
00:19:58
so i don't guess we'll ever really know
00:20:00
i still don't think miss woods has
00:20:03
got it in her mind her daughter's not
00:20:04
coming home investigators also suspect
00:20:08
boyer was involved in the murder of 26
00:20:10
year old rose marie mallett which took
00:20:13
place about a year before scarlett wood
00:20:16
was murdered
00:20:18
when he saw the photo
00:20:20
he stopped everything and said i know
00:20:22
her she's a prostitute i've had sex with
00:20:24
her i want an attorney
00:20:26
so based on based on that we're on that
00:20:29
um
00:20:30
that
00:20:31
utterance um he's a suspect in this
00:20:33
homicide also
00:20:35
but john boyer is now
00:20:37
behind bars
00:20:39
because simple technology available to
00:20:42
anyone
00:20:43
identified the victim of his crime
00:20:48
without the initial understanding that
00:20:50
we were dealing with a female of
00:20:52
european descent of an adult age the
00:20:55
investigators wouldn't have known how to
00:20:57
target
00:20:58
that group of missing people
00:21:00
and certainly without the trauma being
00:21:02
evidenced on the bone such that it was
00:21:04
i'm not sure that there would have been
00:21:05
a conviction we'd never known that was
00:21:07
her
00:21:09
if it wasn't for forensic evidence
00:21:11
we've never known
00:21:14
i'm glad we got this guy i was really
00:21:17
still am honored to have been a part of
00:21:19
the process and
00:21:21
pleased with how the system can stay
00:21:23
with it to to
00:21:27
help this unidentified person
00:21:31
gain some justice to give the family
00:21:33
some peace and to
00:21:34
take this bad guy off the streets so
00:21:37
that you know he's not able to do it
00:21:39
again
00:21:44
you
