00:00:06
up next he promises to avenge his
00:00:08
sister's murder i pray to god that i
00:00:10
would be led to be in the right place
00:00:12
the right time for years he tracks her
00:00:14
killer without success every day with
00:00:17
another blow to the stomach somewhere
00:00:19
deep in the houston crime files are the
00:00:22
secrets to solve the case
00:00:24
he just had to find them houston had 500
00:00:27
000 prints everybody has 10 fingers
00:00:29
that's 5 million prints 34 years later
00:00:32
investigators find the answer i want to
00:00:35
know who killed diane
00:00:38
[Applause]
00:00:46
in december of 1969 diane maxwell pulled
00:00:50
into the company parking lot in houston
00:00:52
texas
00:00:53
it was sunday and downtown was virtually
00:00:57
empty
00:00:59
diane worked for the southwestern bell
00:01:01
company and her shift started at 1pm
00:01:05
but she never made it inside the
00:01:07
building
00:01:10
a half hour later a homeless man saw
00:01:13
someone walking away from an old shack
00:01:15
next to the parking lot
00:01:19
he walked back to the shack and walked
00:01:21
very close to him got a good look at him
00:01:22
and went on to the shack and he found
00:01:25
this young girl lying on her back with
00:01:27
her hands tied behind her back and he
00:01:29
asked her if she'd been assaulted she'd
00:01:31
said yes
00:01:32
she asked him to
00:01:34
untie her and he said no but he agreed
00:01:36
he would go call the police
00:01:38
tragically by the time police arrived
00:01:42
25 year old diane maxwell was dead
00:01:46
she was lying on her back bra pushed up
00:01:49
a small wound just above her navel
00:01:52
probably an inch and width
00:01:54
diane was just 25 years old a single
00:01:58
mother of a four-year-old son
00:02:00
well i would tell you that it was the
00:02:02
most devastating thing i'd ever
00:02:04
experienced my first reaction was denial
00:02:07
that there's no way that you know diane
00:02:10
could be dead
00:02:11
when my father called he could barely
00:02:14
speak
00:02:15
and
00:02:15
my stepmother took over who was much
00:02:18
more composed under those circumstances
00:02:20
and was really able to give me more of
00:02:22
the details
00:02:24
in a search for evidence police scoured
00:02:27
the wooden shack
00:02:28
among the debris they found a rumpled
00:02:31
pink blanket and a man's gray suit coat
00:02:34
it had been used as a storeroom
00:02:37
for a service station
00:02:39
and everything imaginable was in there
00:02:40
from service manuals to old oil cans
00:02:44
the only witness
00:02:45
was the homeless man willie bell
00:02:48
and that the only physical description
00:02:50
was that it was a black male with an
00:02:51
afro haircut
00:02:53
there was no money in diane's purse her
00:02:56
car keys were missing and her car a new
00:02:59
red mustang was gone
00:03:02
police found it nine hours later
00:03:05
a mile away
00:03:07
the car was locked the keys were in the
00:03:09
ignition so it was obvious that whoever
00:03:12
killed diane you know took her keys and
00:03:14
then took her car
00:03:18
at the autopsy
00:03:19
the medical examiner found evidence that
00:03:21
diane had been
00:03:23
sexually assaulted
00:03:25
and she had been stabbed just once with
00:03:28
surgical precision severing an artery
00:03:33
one possibility was that the killer was
00:03:35
a medical professional
00:03:37
and since one of the state's largest
00:03:39
prisons was just 70 miles away in
00:03:42
huntsville
00:03:43
an ex-convict could have been
00:03:45
responsible
00:03:47
houston
00:03:48
was the first stop and usually they had
00:03:51
just the clothes on their back and
00:03:53
probably 25
00:03:55
and wouldn't have been enough to live on
00:03:57
a day or two
00:03:59
until they would start into other
00:04:01
endeavors
00:04:03
diane's brother vowed to help catch her
00:04:06
killer
00:04:07
[Music]
00:04:12
the senselessness of diane maxwell's
00:04:14
murder shocked everyone friends
00:04:16
co-workers and family
00:04:19
i knew that she had been attacked and
00:04:20
murdered and i really never asked for
00:04:22
any other details just because i didn't
00:04:25
think i could really
00:04:26
deal with it the last thanksgiving we
00:04:28
spent together diane had gotten me off
00:04:30
to the side
00:04:32
and said you know david if something
00:04:34
happens to me
00:04:35
i want you to raise my son and i said
00:04:38
okay well i will
00:04:40
and uh and that was less than a month
00:04:43
before she was killed
00:04:44
more than 20 of diane's co-workers at
00:04:47
the phone company
00:04:48
quit their jobs
00:04:50
many of those who remained
00:04:52
armed themselves with ice picks and
00:04:54
knives
00:04:56
it's very very hard and it was very
00:04:58
public
00:04:59
because the news carried quite a bit of
00:05:01
information about it
00:05:03
and you're seeing it on tv and you're
00:05:04
reading about in the paper
00:05:06
and i'm getting phone calls and
00:05:09
even phone calls from people i don't
00:05:11
know
00:05:13
but the killer had stolen diane's red
00:05:15
mustang and abandoned it leaving it a
00:05:17
mile from the crime scene
00:05:20
i printed to the steering wheel
00:05:22
inside the driver's door
00:05:24
and the t-shift the next day went back
00:05:27
over it
00:05:28
and
00:05:29
was successful in getting
00:05:31
i would say 12 or 15 identifiable latent
00:05:34
prints very good prints
00:05:36
and many of them look fresh
00:05:39
the prince
00:05:40
three partial fingerprints and the
00:05:43
partial palm print
00:05:45
did not match those of the witness
00:05:47
willie bell and he was eliminated as a
00:05:49
suspect
00:05:51
in 1969 before computers
00:05:54
someone had to literally compare a print
00:05:56
visually to all the ones in the houston
00:05:59
crime files and there were millions of
00:06:01
prints
00:06:03
let's just say
00:06:04
houston had 500 000 prints well if you
00:06:07
think everybody has 10 fingers that's 5
00:06:10
million prints now if i were to try to
00:06:12
take that late and go look at 5 million
00:06:14
prints well i don't know how many
00:06:16
lifetimes it would have taken it would
00:06:17
have never happened
00:06:19
instead
00:06:20
police compared the prince from diane's
00:06:22
car to everyone arrested for a crime
00:06:25
committed after her murder
00:06:27
police also questioned the people who
00:06:30
loitered in the downtown area
00:06:33
they were looking for a black male
00:06:35
they knew that from from willie bell
00:06:36
told him it was a black male that he'd
00:06:38
seen raping diane they did get a few
00:06:41
leads but they didn't pan out nothing
00:06:43
pointed
00:06:44
to the person that actually committed
00:06:46
the offense
00:06:48
since the fatal wound was made with
00:06:51
surgical precision
00:06:52
police also focused on health care
00:06:55
workers as possible suspects
00:06:58
they just started dragging everyone all
00:07:01
the black males downtown and had them
00:07:02
fingerprinted they were doing some
00:07:03
things that would not be accepted today
00:07:05
i thought that
00:07:07
honestly that the person just slipped
00:07:10
through the crack
00:07:13
diane maxwell's murder started to look
00:07:16
like a random homicide the hardest kind
00:07:19
to solve
00:07:21
everyone assigned to the homicide
00:07:22
division at the time there were like 30
00:07:24
detectives they all worked the case but
00:07:26
as time goes on as you know and the
00:07:28
leads diminish there just comes a point
00:07:31
in time where there's just
00:07:32
there's no more trails left
00:07:35
each week as more and more fingerprints
00:07:37
were added to the houston files
00:07:40
examiners would compare those to the
00:07:42
prince from diane maxwell's mustang
00:07:46
with no success
00:07:48
we were confused we thought we expected
00:07:51
that it would be resolved you know you
00:07:53
had the funeral and everything then you
00:07:54
did begin to think about the resolution
00:07:56
and so it was very
00:07:58
you know upsetting and hurtful that
00:08:02
there was no resolution
00:08:04
eventually
00:08:05
the trail of diane maxwell's killer
00:08:07
turned cold
00:08:09
and for 17 years
00:08:11
there was virtually no progress
00:08:14
nevertheless
00:08:16
diane's father never lost hope
00:08:19
every time i would see him he'd say son
00:08:21
i want you to solve this case before i
00:08:23
die i want to know who killed diane
00:08:26
our parents are
00:08:28
were quite elderly at the time and um
00:08:32
so i know that was an impetus but i
00:08:34
think it was just an ongoing impetus
00:08:37
so at the age of 37 david maxwell was
00:08:40
accepted into the oldest and most
00:08:42
exclusive law enforcement agency in
00:08:44
north america the texas rangers an elite
00:08:48
group with only 134 members
00:08:52
i thought about a great deal
00:08:54
that if i became
00:08:56
in law enforcement if i was able to
00:08:58
eventually get in the texas rangers that
00:09:00
in the and it remained unsolved
00:09:03
that i would be able to reopen the case
00:09:06
and eventually solve it
00:09:08
what happened to diane influenced him
00:09:11
and was certainly part of the reason
00:09:14
that he decided to go into law
00:09:16
enforcement
00:09:17
and by this time
00:09:19
the houston police department had
00:09:21
recently purchased an aphis system
00:09:24
the automated fingerprint identification
00:09:26
system which can instantaneously compare
00:09:29
unknown prints to those in the houston
00:09:32
database
00:09:34
david asked the department to run the
00:09:36
unidentified prince found in his
00:09:39
sister's car
00:09:40
at the time
00:09:42
they actually had to be traced
00:09:44
we don't do that anymore but years ago
00:09:47
the traced image we just had better luck
00:09:49
with the tracing than the direct the
00:09:51
image just wasn't as clear as it is now
00:09:55
unfortunately
00:09:56
there was no match
00:09:58
i began to think that maybe he was dead
00:10:01
because i couldn't imagine that you
00:10:02
would commit that type of crime which
00:10:05
was probably random and never committed
00:10:07
again
00:10:09
and the case turned cold again
00:10:11
for another 17 years
00:10:14
it was becoming clear that david maxwell
00:10:17
would need help
00:10:19
[Music]
00:10:23
for more than 30 years
00:10:25
david maxwell was haunted by his
00:10:28
sister's murder and still hoped to find
00:10:31
some way to solve it
00:10:34
he had been successful in solving a lot
00:10:36
of very complicated crimes and
00:10:38
i i know that it was really important to
00:10:40
him to
00:10:42
try to solve this crime because of
00:10:43
course this was very personal and you
00:10:46
know he felt very deeply about it
00:10:48
and he had promised his father he would
00:10:50
solve the murder before he died by this
00:10:53
time his father was close to 90 years
00:10:55
old and time was running short
00:10:58
and he would tell me that he would dream
00:11:00
of seeing diane and that's all he
00:11:03
thought about he said that's all i can
00:11:04
think about is diane
00:11:06
and this case being solved i want to
00:11:09
know who killed her before i die
00:11:12
with nowhere else to go david turned to
00:11:15
his friend jim ramsey a veteran homicide
00:11:18
investigator with the houston police
00:11:20
department
00:11:21
the two had known each other for years
00:11:23
but david never told jim about his
00:11:26
sister's murder
00:11:28
i was shocked
00:11:30
i was amazed that anyone could could
00:11:32
hold that
00:11:34
in and not talk about it
00:11:36
but if anyone could do it it would be
00:11:37
david i saw no need to tell people about
00:11:40
what had happened in my life i wasn't
00:11:42
looking for sympathy david could have
00:11:44
had just about anybody in the state of
00:11:46
texas work that case i really considered
00:11:48
it a i guess a privilege when he asked
00:11:50
me to look into it
00:11:53
ramsey's first priority was to examine
00:11:56
diane maxwell's clothing
00:11:58
if we could do the dna for the sexual
00:12:00
assault and and get that and put it in
00:12:03
the database because now all the
00:12:05
offenders as they go to prison they're
00:12:07
taking dna samples
00:12:09
and we're getting a lot of cold hits on
00:12:11
the on the dna database
00:12:14
but diane's clothing was gone
00:12:16
to their shock and dismay
00:12:18
it had been thrown away
00:12:20
over a period of years i guess folks in
00:12:23
the property room just
00:12:25
had to make room for new property coming
00:12:26
in
00:12:27
next
00:12:28
ramsay tried to interview the only
00:12:31
witness to the crime
00:12:33
willie bell
00:12:34
we tracked him out to an address in
00:12:37
california
00:12:38
and we eventually learned he had died
00:12:41
back in i think in the mid 80s
00:12:43
then things went from bad to worse
00:12:47
the crime scene photos and the negatives
00:12:49
were also
00:12:50
gone apparently
00:12:53
in violation of police policy someone
00:12:56
had sold them to the british crime
00:12:58
magazine master detective in 1971.
00:13:02
when contacted the publisher no longer
00:13:05
had the pictures or negatives all they
00:13:07
had left was a single copy of the
00:13:10
magazine
00:13:12
i asked him to send it to me because i
00:13:13
didn't have any pictures of the crime
00:13:15
scene
00:13:16
and they were hesitant to do that
00:13:17
because that was their only copy so ask
00:13:19
them to please you know make copies of
00:13:21
the photograph
00:13:23
the photocopies of the magazine pages
00:13:25
were virtually useless
00:13:28
and then
00:13:30
jim ramsey and david maxwell
00:13:32
got even more bad news
00:13:35
the killer's fingerprints found in diane
00:13:37
maxwell's car that was supposed to be in
00:13:40
her police case file
00:13:42
were also missing
00:13:45
it was just like every day was another
00:13:47
blow to the stomach i knew they existed
00:13:49
and now they're gone
00:13:51
so yeah i was
00:13:53
pretty upset about it
00:13:55
with all the evidence gone
00:13:57
david now had to tell his father
00:14:00
that the case might never be solved
00:14:03
and i prayed about it you know
00:14:05
because i knew that physically and as a
00:14:08
as a ranger or whatever
00:14:11
i'm doing what i can do
00:14:13
but i prayed to god that i would be led
00:14:14
to be in the right place the right time
00:14:17
if the prince couldn't be found
00:14:20
there was nothing more anyone could do
00:14:28
investigators literally had no evidence
00:14:30
from diane maxwell's murder
00:14:32
the crime scene photos were gone
00:14:35
the victim's clothing had been discarded
00:14:38
the only eyewitness had died
00:14:41
and the killer's fingerprints were
00:14:43
missing presumably misfiled in one of
00:14:46
the thousands of open case files in the
00:14:48
houston police department
00:14:51
everybody at some point in time was
00:14:53
looking for that case so it wasn't like
00:14:55
okay we'll just do it in our spare time
00:14:58
somebody
00:14:59
every day was looking for that case i
00:15:01
guarantee they went through many many
00:15:03
files a tremendous undertaking debbie
00:15:06
and i have worked together for 11 years
00:15:08
rumor has it that she went to the
00:15:10
director of the leighton lab and told
00:15:12
the director
00:15:13
that sergeant ramsey was threatening an
00:15:15
ied investigation if they didn't find
00:15:17
that print well i never once said that i
00:15:19
respect authority but i don't mind
00:15:23
challenging authority but whatever
00:15:25
happened that got him off of dead center
00:15:27
and there were several people
00:15:29
that were assigned to go through every
00:15:31
hpd case looking for prints
00:15:34
after months of looking through all of
00:15:36
the case files someone finally found
00:15:39
them they just put it in the wrong file
00:15:42
you know it was just a clerical error
00:15:44
of all the evidence lost at least the
00:15:47
fingerprints had been recovered
00:15:50
my goodness what a task to have to go
00:15:51
through all those folders of all those i
00:15:54
mean you're talking about you know every
00:15:55
car burglary every home burglary murder
00:15:57
robbery assault just thousands and
00:16:00
thousands of just print cards
00:16:02
but
00:16:03
they did it
00:16:05
by this time the year was 2003
00:16:08
and sophisticated computerized
00:16:10
fingerprint systems were everywhere
00:16:14
jim ramsey had the prints from diane
00:16:16
maxwell's car compared to those in the
00:16:19
texas statewide database
00:16:21
unfortunately there were no hits
00:16:25
undeterred
00:16:26
ramsay ran the prince through the fbi's
00:16:29
national database
00:16:31
this time there were 20 potential hits
00:16:35
all 20 were then examined visually
00:16:39
and one stood out
00:16:42
this print came up it was like oh my
00:16:44
gosh
00:16:45
this looks awfully good this looks like
00:16:46
we're going to have a hit
00:16:48
the print belonged to 58 year old james
00:16:52
davis
00:16:53
a career criminal
00:16:56
i identified him four different times i
00:16:58
identified him i think fingers right
00:17:00
index right middle and right ring and
00:17:02
then the right palm it's hard to really
00:17:03
describe how i felt
00:17:05
but i was i was absolutely elated about
00:17:07
it
00:17:08
james ray davis
00:17:10
spent the majority of his adult life
00:17:13
incarcerated auto theft forgery assaults
00:17:17
davis was living in a housing project on
00:17:20
the texas arkansas border he had been
00:17:22
out of prison for about 10 years
00:17:25
following a conviction for abducting a
00:17:27
young girl detective ramsey
00:17:30
knocked on his door
00:17:33
i said mr davis i'm from the houston
00:17:34
police department
00:17:36
and you could tell his demeanor changed
00:17:37
drastically
00:17:39
he just stared at me
00:17:41
ramsay pulled out a photo of diane's car
00:17:45
davis
00:17:46
didn't want to look at it
00:17:49
he said i've never ever seen that car
00:17:51
well that's strange it's a red mustang
00:17:53
you've never seen a red mustang
00:17:56
then i pulled out a picture of diane
00:17:58
that david had given me and i handed it
00:18:00
to him but he wouldn't take the picture
00:18:01
i tried to hand it to me wouldn't tell
00:18:03
you
00:18:03
davis initially denied any involvement
00:18:07
but when told of the fingerprint
00:18:09
evidence
00:18:10
he confessed
00:18:12
it was that it happened and i cried and
00:18:15
i prayed but i did wrong
00:18:17
he'd been out of prison five days when
00:18:19
he killed diane
00:18:21
and
00:18:22
his life was was a lifetime of crime
00:18:26
i'm sick now and uh
00:18:28
i'm not able to do no kind of time
00:18:30
nothing kind of changes if i have to go
00:18:32
i just have to go but i would hope the
00:18:35
judge or whatever happens on me
00:18:38
after more than 30 years
00:18:41
the mystery was finally solved
00:18:45
well my father was ecstatic it just
00:18:47
was a huge boost for him you know that
00:18:50
they knew who this who it was i've
00:18:53
worked
00:18:54
scores or hundreds of murders and
00:18:55
they're all important to me but it's not
00:18:57
very often that
00:18:59
that you're personally touched by them
00:19:06
davis said his primary motive was
00:19:08
robbery
00:19:11
[Music]
00:19:14
when he saw diane get out of her car
00:19:17
he abducted her at night point and took
00:19:20
her to the wooden shack
00:19:26
he admitted robbing her but denied
00:19:28
sexually assaulting her although the
00:19:31
evidence clearly showed that he did
00:19:34
then
00:19:35
he stabbed her to death
00:19:37
and stole her car
00:19:44
he abandoned the mustang across town
00:19:47
and left his fingerprints and a palm
00:19:49
print
00:19:50
although it took almost 35 years to find
00:19:54
him
00:19:54
his fingerprints on file had not
00:19:57
degraded
00:19:59
if it had not been for the aphis system
00:20:02
he would have never been identified
00:20:05
on january 15 2004
00:20:09
james davis pled guilty to murder with
00:20:12
malice and was sentenced to life in
00:20:14
prison
00:20:15
i never saw remorse not one time the
00:20:18
only time i saw remorse is when he came
00:20:19
to court and he pled guilty
00:20:21
and the judge sentenced him to life
00:20:23
he didn't care about diane
00:20:25
diane maxwell's father lived long enough
00:20:28
to see her killer brought to justice
00:20:32
david was really responsible for keeping
00:20:35
people looking into this case but it was
00:20:37
always at the top of his agenda it was
00:20:39
always
00:20:40
first in line in terms of what he wanted
00:20:43
to accomplish this database
00:20:47
has been such a boost to law enforcement
00:20:50
to be able to help solve these crimes
00:20:52
that otherwise would go unsolved and now
00:20:56
with the dna database and that's doing
00:20:58
the same thing
00:21:00
i mean it's just been a tremendous boost
00:21:01
to to those of us in law enforcement who
00:21:03
work these kind of cases
00:21:06
investigators believe
00:21:07
the conviction was the result of hard
00:21:10
work cooperation
00:21:12
and perhaps
00:21:14
something else
00:21:16
i really think it's defined intervention
00:21:17
because i mean look at it yourself look
00:21:19
at the odds that we had going into this
00:21:21
thing we didn't have a million to one
00:21:23
chance we'd clear this thing
00:21:26
and i don't know maybe
00:21:28
because of
00:21:30
the unselfish life that david it's their
00:21:33
career that david's committed to the
00:21:35
people of texas
00:21:37
maybe the lord said well i'm going to
00:21:38
give him a break
00:21:44
you
