00:00:06
it looked like a routine traffic
00:00:08
accident until a patrolman with no
00:00:11
forensic training suspected something
00:00:14
worse but he couldn't prove it until
00:00:18
a bent steering wheel a security camera
00:00:21
and a physics calculation showed what
00:00:24
really led to a young woman's death
00:00:28
[Music]
00:00:35
[Music]
00:00:53
[Music]
00:00:54
highway patrolman tony snyder was
00:00:56
heading home after finishing his night
00:00:59
shift when he got a call about a traffic
00:01:01
accident on route 95 just outside of
00:01:04
princeton minnesota it was maybe 10
00:01:06
miles from my house
00:01:08
so i said i would do it
00:01:11
[Music]
00:01:12
when snyder arrived he saw that there
00:01:14
had been a two-vehicle accident
00:01:17
apparently a jeep collided with an
00:01:20
abandoned car that had broken down and
00:01:22
was parked on the side of the highway
00:01:25
when i was met by the deputy he informed
00:01:27
me that
00:01:29
one person
00:01:30
is deceased the female passenger in the
00:01:32
red jeep
00:01:34
and the other vehicle that was struck
00:01:36
was unoccupied i could see the ambulance
00:01:39
personnel working on a male
00:01:41
who was covered in blood and he was
00:01:43
screaming
00:01:44
the jeep driver steve hollermann was
00:01:47
rushed to a nearby hospital
00:01:49
steve's passenger his 41 year old wife
00:01:52
deborah was dead everybody knew her i
00:01:55
mean she was that well loved
00:01:57
it was just disbelief and shock
00:02:00
if you got to know deb you liked them
00:02:03
she was the life of the party she was
00:02:05
somebody that people gathered around
00:02:07
because she was fun to be with
00:02:10
steve hollerman survived the crash with
00:02:12
only minor injuries and toxicology tests
00:02:15
revealed no drugs or alcohol in his
00:02:18
system
00:02:20
he told investigators that he and
00:02:22
deborah were on their way home from
00:02:24
shopping when he inadvertently drove off
00:02:26
the highway and struck a parked car
00:02:30
i said do you
00:02:31
remember what you hit and he said yeah i
00:02:33
hit a car i said you know where the car
00:02:34
was he said yes it was on the shoulder
00:02:37
i said did you see the car when you hit
00:02:38
it he said yeah i saw the tail lights
00:02:41
and i then asked him if he tried to
00:02:43
maneuver the vehicle or brake to avoid
00:02:44
collision and he said
00:02:46
that he didn't have time to do that
00:02:48
the right front end of steve's jeep
00:02:51
hit the back left side of the parked car
00:02:54
steve said he was driving approximately
00:02:57
60 miles an hour at the time of the
00:02:58
accident and he was wearing his seat
00:03:00
belt but debra was not that was
00:03:04
out of her character
00:03:06
she was
00:03:07
[Music]
00:03:08
pretty religious about wearing seat
00:03:10
belts and
00:03:12
made it a point to everyone else that
00:03:13
they needed to have theirs on also
00:03:15
at deborah's autopsy
00:03:17
the medical examiner found skull
00:03:20
fractures
00:03:21
and evidence that her brain had been
00:03:23
jolted violently inside her skull from
00:03:27
side to side
00:03:29
the finding of the pathologists that did
00:03:33
the autopsy was that
00:03:35
the death was a result of a motor
00:03:38
vehicle accident the blunt force trauma
00:03:40
and the injuries that
00:03:42
were observed the the skull fracture the
00:03:46
bruising of the brain any of those could
00:03:48
have been consistent and would have been
00:03:50
consistent with
00:03:51
being killed in a motor vehicle crash
00:03:54
although patrolman tony snyder wasn't a
00:03:57
doctor or formerly trained in forensic
00:03:59
science he couldn't believe the
00:04:01
coroner's report i was
00:04:04
sick to my stomach when i heard those
00:04:06
words come out of his mouth because i
00:04:07
thought i was at a dead end now
00:04:09
i was not comfortable with it at all but
00:04:10
to be honest with you i
00:04:12
i was tore up inside
00:04:15
i couldn't even sleep at night
00:04:17
snyder was bothered because this
00:04:19
accident didn't seem bad enough to have
00:04:22
caused the fatality as he had seen in so
00:04:24
many other accidents i've been to
00:04:26
accidents like that where people has
00:04:28
actually their head went clean through
00:04:29
the windshield
00:04:30
and they're speaking to me when i get
00:04:32
there and this windshield wasn't broke
00:04:33
out
00:04:34
it was barely cracked
00:04:36
and snyder thought the amount of blood
00:04:39
in the car was inconsistent with
00:04:42
deborah's injuries
00:04:44
there was a lot of blood in the vehicle
00:04:45
more blood than i've ever seen in any
00:04:47
accident in my life
00:04:49
and i've been to
00:04:50
hundreds of accidents but so had local
00:04:53
traffic investigators and they disagreed
00:04:56
with snyder
00:04:57
they came to the same conclusion as the
00:04:59
coroner that the car crash was an
00:05:02
accident
00:05:03
tony snyder's options were dwindling
00:05:06
until an anonymous telephone call shed
00:05:09
new light
00:05:10
on an already mysterious case
00:05:14
[Music]
00:05:18
deborah hollermann's family was angry
00:05:20
with police when they learned some of
00:05:22
the details surrounding the car crash
00:05:24
that took her life how can there be a
00:05:26
car on the side of the road
00:05:29
for a couple of days i mean isn't it
00:05:30
somebody's responsibility to take a car
00:05:33
off of a state highway
00:05:35
highway patrolman tony snyder was less
00:05:38
concerned about the abandoned car and
00:05:40
more concerned with steve hollerman's
00:05:43
driving skills
00:05:45
he was convinced there was more to the
00:05:47
story than steve was telling
00:05:50
i asked him if a deer jumped out
00:05:52
if he was playing with his radio knobs
00:05:54
if he was on the cell phone i'm asking
00:05:56
him if he passed out blacked out was
00:05:58
dizzy fell asleep
00:06:00
and none of those things
00:06:02
were the reason he was off the roadway
00:06:04
he just said he
00:06:06
didn't know
00:06:08
steve told investigators that he and
00:06:10
deborah had been shopping and were
00:06:11
heading home when the accident occurred
00:06:15
so snyder checked steve's story by
00:06:17
reviewing the videos taken by the
00:06:19
store's security cameras
00:06:22
they showed the hollomans at the store
00:06:24
that night but they left several hours
00:06:27
earlier than steve claimed
00:06:30
the last store he left was around 7 30
00:06:33
p.m and i got a call to come to the
00:06:35
crash at 10 pm
00:06:37
so there's quite a bit of time missing
00:06:39
to drive 18 or 20 miles in addition the
00:06:42
items the hollomans bought at the store
00:06:44
weren't in the jeep at the time of the
00:06:46
accident so where were the hollomans
00:06:49
between
00:06:50
8 and 10 p.m
00:06:53
an anonymous telephone call gave tony
00:06:55
snyder a clue
00:06:57
there was no name no way to get a hold
00:06:59
of anybody but just so you know somebody
00:07:02
called and said steve hollerman's been
00:07:04
having an affair well that peaked our
00:07:05
interest
00:07:06
even more to say
00:07:08
geez there's some more pieces to this
00:07:10
that we're unfamiliar with that we want
00:07:12
to look into
00:07:13
surprisingly deborah's friends all knew
00:07:16
about the affair
00:07:18
and apparently
00:07:19
so did deborah she was aware there was
00:07:22
an affair going on and she was going to
00:07:23
confront him that was made clear her
00:07:26
girlfriends have
00:07:28
told us that
00:07:29
investigators eventually discovered the
00:07:31
identity of steve's girlfriend
00:07:34
she was employed by the local hospital
00:07:36
where steve worked as a lab supervisor
00:07:40
when questioned
00:07:42
she openly admitted the affair
00:07:45
she basically said that they had been
00:07:46
seeing each other for a year
00:07:48
they were in love with each other they
00:07:51
went on outings together
00:07:53
and she admitted that they had sex that
00:07:55
day in his cabin
00:07:56
the cabin was the holloman summer home
00:07:59
at green lake
00:08:00
it was just a mile and a half from the
00:08:02
crash site
00:08:03
with a warrant
00:08:04
investigators searched the cabin and
00:08:07
found evidence confirming the story
00:08:09
they'd heard from steve's girlfriend
00:08:12
you could see a bed where it looked like
00:08:14
it had been recently slept in or
00:08:16
used in some way
00:08:18
and they also discovered that steve and
00:08:21
debra had been in the cabin before the
00:08:23
car crash
00:08:25
several items they had purchased that
00:08:27
night were in the cabin
00:08:29
so snyder decided to take a closer look
00:08:32
at the hollerman's jeep
00:08:34
as well
00:08:35
as the accident scene
00:08:37
steve said he was driving 60 miles an
00:08:40
hour when the accident occurred
00:08:42
accident reconstruction experts have a
00:08:44
way of confirming this
00:08:47
if a parked car is hit
00:08:49
the distance it moves after impact
00:08:52
can tell you the speed at which it was
00:08:54
hit
00:08:55
it's based on sir isaac newton's laws of
00:08:58
physics specifically conservation of
00:09:01
momentum
00:09:03
when one object strikes another as in
00:09:05
this demonstration
00:09:06
its momentum is transferred to the other
00:09:10
all things being equal the speed of the
00:09:13
first ball is equal to that of the last
00:09:17
the weight of the two cars plus the
00:09:19
friction between the tires and the road
00:09:22
surface factor into the analysis the
00:09:25
coefficient of friction is basically
00:09:27
just a measure of how
00:09:28
slippery that surface is so
00:09:31
that's that's a very important piece the
00:09:33
other thing is um
00:09:34
the the angles that are involved with
00:09:37
approach and departure from the impact
00:09:40
area for vehicles that are involved in a
00:09:42
collision like this
00:09:44
skuglin used surveying equipment to
00:09:46
measure the distance the parked car
00:09:48
moved after impact as well as the angles
00:09:52
of impact
00:09:53
a computer program performed the physics
00:09:56
calculations
00:09:58
and the result
00:09:59
steve's jeep was traveling between 38
00:10:02
and 42 miles per hour when it hit the
00:10:05
parked car not 60 miles per hour as he
00:10:09
claimed
00:10:10
these calculations also proved that
00:10:13
steve had enough time to avoid hitting
00:10:16
the parked car he had
00:10:18
slightly over two seconds
00:10:20
um from the time that he left the paved
00:10:22
pavement until the impact he admitted he
00:10:25
saw the taillights of the vehicle
00:10:27
he admitted that he didn't swerve he
00:10:29
admitted that he didn't break say he
00:10:30
didn't have time it was obvious that the
00:10:33
crash didn't happen the way steve
00:10:36
claimed
00:10:37
but would evidence found inside the jeep
00:10:41
prove
00:10:41
it was murder
00:10:48
investigators now suspected that deborah
00:10:51
hollermann had been murdered
00:10:53
her family couldn't believe her husband
00:10:56
steve had anything to do with it
00:10:59
it was disbelief going
00:11:01
oh my god the poor guy lost his wife
00:11:03
he's gone through a month of uh
00:11:05
of mourning and and now they do this to
00:11:08
him
00:11:09
but patrolman tony snyder feared steve
00:11:12
may have committed
00:11:14
the perfect crime
00:11:16
i literally didn't sleep at night
00:11:18
several nights easter dinner at my mom
00:11:20
and dad's i hardly ate and they thought
00:11:22
i was mad at them or upset with the
00:11:23
family or sick or something i was just
00:11:25
so
00:11:26
obsessed by this i couldn't eat and i
00:11:28
was worried that i was
00:11:30
i was running out of options
00:11:36
to get this figured out i was running
00:11:38
into a lot of dead ends
00:11:40
since the original autopsy ruled
00:11:42
deborah's death as accidental snyder
00:11:44
asked dr janice amatuzio for a second
00:11:48
opinion
00:11:49
as i looked at those photographs of the
00:11:51
vehicle which i had not seen before that
00:11:54
and i looked at the injuries i said you
00:11:56
know there's something we don't know
00:11:57
here and i think this case deserves more
00:12:00
investigation there's way too much blood
00:12:03
inside the vehicle dr amatuzio wanted to
00:12:06
examine the holloman's jeep herself
00:12:10
because let's face it steve hollerman's
00:12:13
future was at stake here
00:12:15
and the truth about deborah hollerman's
00:12:18
death was at stake
00:12:20
the most important thing for everybody
00:12:22
to remember is that what we were trying
00:12:23
to get at was the truth
00:12:25
dr amituzio was approximately the same
00:12:28
size and weight as deborah
00:12:31
so she did something extraordinary
00:12:34
she donned protective clothing and
00:12:36
climbed into the blood-stained car
00:12:40
it was a little creepy
00:12:42
it was um sobering
00:12:45
i realized i was sitting
00:12:48
on the last spot that debra hollerman
00:12:50
had been sitting before she died the
00:12:52
first thing she noticed was the blood
00:12:54
smear on the windshield had what looked
00:12:57
like a fabric pattern
00:13:00
in fact it looked like the heavy knit
00:13:02
sweater that debra had been wearing at
00:13:04
the time that she died this was a key
00:13:07
finding
00:13:09
because it proved that deborah was
00:13:11
bleeding before the crash occurred
00:13:14
the only way that that much blood could
00:13:17
have been deposited on the inside of the
00:13:19
vehicle at the time of the crash
00:13:22
was was if deborah hollerman had been
00:13:24
bloody before the crash in other words
00:13:28
she had been injured before the crash
00:13:31
that is the only way that she could have
00:13:32
gotten that much blood onto her sweater
00:13:36
onto her hair
00:13:38
onto her face
00:13:39
and there was more evidence that deborah
00:13:42
was bleeding before the crash
00:13:45
on the passenger side rear window you
00:13:48
could see where blood had came from the
00:13:50
seat and was running down the window
00:13:52
the l-shaped pattern demonstrated once
00:13:55
again the physics of momentum
00:13:58
when blood drips down the window of a
00:14:00
jeep traveling at 40 miles per hour and
00:14:03
it stops abruptly
00:14:05
everything in the jeep including the
00:14:07
blood continues to move forward
00:14:10
scientists believe
00:14:12
that's what caused this l-shaped pattern
00:14:17
the final three pieces of evidence were
00:14:19
crucial to understanding events before
00:14:22
and after the crash
00:14:25
depara's blood was found on the lever
00:14:27
used to adjust the driver's seat the
00:14:30
driver's seat where stephen hollerman
00:14:31
was seated
00:14:32
was pushed as far back as the seat could
00:14:34
go
00:14:35
the steering wheel was bent
00:14:38
and investigators found steve's bloody
00:14:40
shoe print on the passenger side window
00:14:44
this indicated that steve moved his seat
00:14:47
back after he was in contact with
00:14:49
deborah's blood then grabbed the
00:14:52
steering wheel to brace himself for the
00:14:54
crash
00:14:58
the evidence also proved that steve
00:15:01
holloman tried to break the passenger
00:15:03
window after the crash
00:15:06
my opinion is he was trying to break the
00:15:08
window out
00:15:09
at the accident scene
00:15:11
he needed glass because there was a lot
00:15:13
of blood
00:15:14
and there was no glass anywhere
00:15:17
lastly dr amatuzio discovered
00:15:20
what really caused deborah's death
00:15:28
forensic experts found what they
00:15:30
believed was the murder weapon used to
00:15:33
kill deborah holloman
00:15:35
it was
00:15:36
the knob
00:15:37
used to adjust the passenger side mirror
00:15:41
that adjustment knob was caked with
00:15:44
blood and long brown hairs it was clear
00:15:46
to me that that
00:15:49
adjustment knob
00:15:51
was the instrument that created the
00:15:53
injury pattern of the four lacerations
00:15:56
or tears on her scalp
00:15:58
and
00:15:59
in all likelihood caused the depressed
00:16:01
skull fractures
00:16:04
this proved that steve killed deborah by
00:16:07
hitting her head repeatedly against the
00:16:10
knob
00:16:11
it was a severe beating
00:16:12
it was it was severe
00:16:14
so when death is the result of an
00:16:16
assault we classify it as a homicide
00:16:20
steve hollerman was arrested
00:16:22
and charged with deborah's murder
00:16:25
he acted surprised dumbfounded
00:16:27
that he was under arrest
00:16:29
when i when i cuffed him and put in my
00:16:31
car he's like tony he wanted to talk to
00:16:33
me he's called me tony you know why is
00:16:35
this why is that
00:16:36
like we were friends
00:16:38
drove down to a park
00:16:40
and sat in my car and read the criminal
00:16:43
complaint
00:16:45
word for word
00:16:47
and
00:16:48
the visions of the pictures
00:16:52
really showed themselves when when you
00:16:56
read what
00:16:57
they had discovered
00:17:01
steve hollerman's lover admitted
00:17:03
spending the afternoon with steve at the
00:17:06
couple's summer cabin
00:17:08
later that night around 7pm
00:17:11
steve and his wife deborah went shopping
00:17:13
together and took their purchases to the
00:17:15
cabin
00:17:17
deborah may have found evidence that
00:17:18
steve had been there earlier with his
00:17:21
lover
00:17:22
regardless the forensic evidence
00:17:24
suggests an argument ensued and turned
00:17:27
violent
00:17:29
while in the jeep
00:17:31
steve repeatedly smashed deborah's head
00:17:34
into the mirror knob inside window
00:17:36
causing the brain injuries that killed
00:17:38
her
00:17:40
then steve tried to devise a plan to
00:17:43
cover up the crime
00:17:47
while driving home
00:17:49
he saw the parked car along the side of
00:17:51
the highway and decided to stage an
00:17:53
accident
00:17:55
he got the jeep into position moved his
00:17:57
seat back with his bloody hands made
00:17:59
sure a seat belt was fastened while
00:18:01
deborah's wasn't then
00:18:03
braced himself for impact
00:18:10
the jeep traveled 130 feet at 40 miles
00:18:13
per hour directly into the back left
00:18:15
side of the parked car
00:18:18
debra's arm and bloody sweater struck
00:18:20
the windshield
00:18:22
proof that she was bleeding before the
00:18:25
crash
00:18:27
after the crash
00:18:28
steve tried to break the side window to
00:18:30
make the crash look worse but a passing
00:18:32
motorist stopped to help before steve
00:18:34
could do it
00:18:36
i'm convinced that he contrived a plan
00:18:38
to try to cover it up
00:18:40
whether he had that already figured out
00:18:42
before he assaulted her and killed her
00:18:44
i believe that he did come up with a
00:18:46
plan to cover it up to make it look like
00:18:48
she died in that car crash we found a
00:18:51
lot of things pretty quickly you know as
00:18:53
far as like the speed limit he was
00:18:55
traveling at and the positioning of a
00:18:57
seat and a lot of the things you know
00:19:01
you know i
00:19:03
i guess after you know we found out
00:19:05
about the beating and that kind of stuff
00:19:07
that happened that night i guess nothing
00:19:09
was really surprised after that you know
00:19:11
at the trial
00:19:13
steve pleaded not guilty
00:19:15
he admitted striking deborah during an
00:19:18
argument but said he was driving her to
00:19:20
the hospital for treatment when the
00:19:22
accident occurred
00:19:24
the judge didn't buy it
00:19:28
steve hollerman was convicted of
00:19:30
second-degree murder and sentenced to 30
00:19:33
years in prison
00:19:35
the most fascinating case that i've
00:19:37
dealt with in my 15 years as an attorney
00:19:40
if you look long enough pretty soon the
00:19:43
scene begins to speak to you it really
00:19:45
just depends on the amount of attention
00:19:47
that you give it
00:19:49
it's really meticulous attention to
00:19:51
detail i've learned over the years
00:19:53
that if we look hard we will eventually
00:19:56
get to the answers
00:19:58
without a careful look at the evidence
00:20:01
and the use of science to reconstruct
00:20:03
the crash
00:20:04
debra hollerman's death might have
00:20:06
remained an accident
00:20:08
and her husband would have walked free
00:20:12
tony snyder
00:20:13
is adopted as our family hero
00:20:15
highway patrolmen don't investigate
00:20:17
murders they give out traffic tickets
00:20:21
and
00:20:22
for him to to do what he did
00:20:25
i mean he didn't have experience in
00:20:26
investigating murders
00:20:28
he went to his uh superiors and they
00:20:31
gave him the opportunity to follow his
00:20:33
heart
00:20:34
and
00:20:36
we just
00:20:38
need to thank everybody that was
00:20:39
involved in it to give our family peace
00:20:43
tony snyder is back to his old job as a
00:20:45
highway patrolman
00:20:47
this case was his first brush with
00:20:50
forensic evidence but might not be his
00:20:53
last
00:20:54
i am sure
00:20:55
i will probably never see anything like
00:20:57
it again in my career
00:21:00
but i'm ready for it if i do
00:21:03
[Music]
00:21:18
[Music]
00:21:32
[Music]
00:21:41
you
