00:00:05
amid the rustic beauty of rural idaho a
00:00:08
retired school teacher vanished
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but even though he was missing his bills
00:00:14
were paid on time and he continued to
00:00:17
correspond with his family but they
00:00:19
couldn't contact him
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making this one of the most bizarre
00:00:25
missing persons cases in u.s history
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[Music]
00:00:38
[Music]
00:00:49
[Applause]
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[Music]
00:00:56
for 22 years
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the most popular teacher at incline high
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school near lake tahoe nevada was paul
00:01:04
grouper
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it was his passion for travel that
00:01:07
fueled his love of foreign languages
00:01:10
he loved that he could go to these
00:01:12
places and speak their language
00:01:14
and he emphasized that very much that
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that was really one of the main benefit
00:01:19
of learning a foreign language is that
00:01:21
traveling the world you could take care
00:01:22
of yourself
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i went to mexico with him um my junior
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year of high school
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[Music]
00:01:33
that was fun we went dancing that was
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kind of embarrassing
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but anyway we had a good time
00:01:41
when he was in his early 50s paul gruber
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inherited some money and retired from
00:01:46
teaching
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he moved to sandpoint idaho and bought a
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home on the shores of muskrat lake
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he just liked that slow pace
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when i actually saw sandpoint i could
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see why he liked it it was you know has
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the same lake tahoe feel
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shortly after christmas in 1993
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paul sent his three-year-old grandson a
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birthday card as was his custom
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[Music]
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but his daughter noticed immediately
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that this card was different from all
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the others
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it was a really brief note and wasn't
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very affectionate but it wasn't sitting
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right with me there was just
00:02:23
red flag inside you know something
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wasn't right i pulled out old birthday
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cards and started comparing writing and
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it didn't look like his signature to me
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you know
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shelley left phone messages for her
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father at his home in idaho
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uncharacteristically
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he didn't return them
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so shelley called the local police
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department asking them to check on her
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father's welfare
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the detectives found no one home
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and no evidence of a break-in but
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virtually everything inside
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was gone
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there was a total absence of personal
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items clothing toothbrush airbrush
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nothing just totally vacant
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like no one had lived there or someone
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had rented the house
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stereos you know valuable stuff like
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that tvs were all gone
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shelley decided to set a trap
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she left a bogus message on her father's
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answering machine reminding him not to
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forget her husband's birthday
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can you please send the money that we
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had discussed i think it was just uh
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something that she made up to see what
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would happen
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five days later her father sent
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shelley's husband a birthday card and a
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25 check
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she knew that her dad had never promised
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to send a check for her husband
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and i don't think it was even his
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birthday and so that certainly let her
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believe that something had happened to
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her dad
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[Music]
00:03:52
an idaho state police forensic document
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examiner compared the handwriting on the
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check and envelope to paul gruber's
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known handwriting samples when the
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handwriting analysis came back the
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examiner felt that it was
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gruber's handwriting
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paul's family however
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didn't believe it it didn't look like
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his signature to me my husband agreed
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that it didn't look like his writing
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so i think that's when i started making
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some more calls
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police checked paul's financial
00:04:24
transactions and discovered that he had
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been paying his monthly bills on time
00:04:30
and was using his atm card around town
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for cash
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strangely
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none of the atms got a picture of the
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person using the card
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none of the atms used had a camera not
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one
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so we found that to be a little bit odd
00:04:48
was this merely a coincidence
00:04:51
and if paul was all right where was he
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living
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and why didn't he return his family's
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telephone calls
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[Music]
00:05:05
shelley kepley was convinced that
00:05:07
something sinister had happened to her
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father paul gruber
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on a hunch shelly called the post office
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in sandpoint idaho and asked them who is
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picking up her father's mail from his
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post office box
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a security camera provided a partial
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answer
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unfortunately somebody probably knocked
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it a skew so that all we got was a
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silhouette of the person who entered in
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and went into his post office box
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the silhouette wasn't paul gruber
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to some people in town it looked like 43
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year old daryl kewl
00:05:44
a local handyman who had been doing work
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for paul
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a comparison between the silhouette and
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kul's picture confirmed it
00:05:54
keel from where we could tell had lived
00:05:56
in california and possibly washington
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had a large family wife and six seven
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kids
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jewel admitted he had been picking up
00:06:06
paul's mail he said paul asked him to
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before leaving for a trip to canada
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investigators showed cuell
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a photograph of paul gruber
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and incredibly
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kewl didn't recognize him he said this
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wasn't the paul grouper he knew
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somebody pretended to be paul gruber to
00:06:29
daryl kill hired
00:06:31
daryl kill to be a caretaker
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so we asked him if he would
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provide us with a you know an artist's
00:06:37
sketch
00:06:38
police sketch of the person
00:06:41
what side of the person's face did you
00:06:43
see the best
00:06:44
investigators took keel's description
00:06:47
and keyed that information into a
00:06:49
computer program called compusketch
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i'm entering the answers that they
00:06:55
provide to the question and so the
00:06:57
computer with those answers generates
00:07:00
that sketch then kule provided feedback
00:07:04
on the first image to improve the
00:07:06
likeness
00:07:08
i want to change one item at a time that
00:07:11
way if it's the nose that's the problem
00:07:12
we can pinpoint the nose or if the eyes
00:07:14
don't match the nose we can pinpoint
00:07:16
that
00:07:17
it could be average hour to two hours
00:07:19
to go through it
00:07:22
when finished police released this
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composite sketch to the media hoping to
00:07:26
find the man who had assumed paul
00:07:29
gruber's identity
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but no one called
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[Music]
00:07:36
months went by and there was still no
00:07:39
sign of the real paul gruber either
00:07:43
we still didn't know where gruber was at
00:07:45
we hadn't located him we weren't even
00:07:47
sure
00:07:48
that anything had happened to this man
00:07:51
police continued to keep a close eye on
00:07:54
paul's house
00:07:55
and searched the property repeatedly
00:07:57
even using cadaver dogs
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but something
00:08:03
inside the house bothered detective
00:08:05
sergeant valdez
00:08:07
a small rug in the foyer had been glued
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to the floor
00:08:13
that just drove me crazy i couldn't
00:08:14
figure out why anybody would glue a rug
00:08:16
to the hardwood floor that's great my
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wife would kill me if i did something
00:08:19
like that
00:08:20
so we tore it up
00:08:23
under the rug
00:08:25
investigators found a small gouge in the
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wooden floor
00:08:29
it looked like a bullet had ricocheted
00:08:32
and hit the floor
00:08:34
tests of the wood were positive for the
00:08:36
presence of lead
00:08:38
police used luminol
00:08:40
and discovered
00:08:42
there had been blood on the floor near
00:08:44
the bullet mark and elsewhere
00:08:47
we started spraying up the door
00:08:49
and you could see white marks about
00:08:51
halfway up the door
00:08:53
i mean they stand out if you use bleach
00:08:55
or anything else
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they stick out
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real well
00:09:00
dna testing proved that the blood was
00:09:02
paul gruber's
00:09:04
but where was the body
00:09:07
we don't have a groover we don't
00:09:10
have a body we don't we can't prove the
00:09:12
man's dead
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[Music]
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daryl kewell a 43 year old handyman said
00:09:20
this man identified himself as paul
00:09:23
grouper and hired him to take care of
00:09:26
the group her property while he went
00:09:28
away on vacation
00:09:30
this man was obviously an imposter
00:09:34
and no one had heard from the real paul
00:09:37
gruber for months they continue on with
00:09:40
the investigation
00:09:41
the number one thing that they're
00:09:42
looking for is a body trying to figure
00:09:44
out where
00:09:46
the body of paul gruber is
00:09:49
as for daryl kill he was well respected
00:09:52
in the community and had no criminal
00:09:54
record
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however
00:09:56
a search of his finances showed he
00:09:59
recently deposited over twenty thousand
00:10:02
dollars into his checking account at the
00:10:05
same time
00:10:06
there were similar withdrawals from paul
00:10:09
gruber's account
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hewlett admitted transferring paul's
00:10:14
money into his checking account so that
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he could pay paul's bills
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none of that to me rang true i have a
00:10:20
lot of friends i don't have any friends
00:10:22
that are you know i'm going to go out
00:10:23
and pay their bills for them
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at five six hundred dollars of whack
00:10:28
that i just met
00:10:31
the only evidence detectives had were
00:10:34
the birthday cards and checks paul
00:10:36
gruber sent to his family while missing
00:10:39
a forensic document examiner concluded
00:10:42
that the handwriting on those birthday
00:10:44
cards was consistent with the real paul
00:10:47
grouper's known handwriting samples
00:10:50
paul's family disagreed i was absolutely
00:10:53
persuaded that it wasn't so it's hard
00:10:55
when you got experts saying yes it is
00:10:57
and you're like no it's not
00:10:59
so the materials were sent to another
00:11:01
forensic examiner for a second opinion
00:11:05
once i knew what his signature looked
00:11:07
like what his subconscious
00:11:08
characteristics were then i took some of
00:11:11
the question material looked at it and
00:11:14
it didn't take long to see if it was
00:11:16
counterfeit or if it was valid
00:11:18
the most striking part of the
00:11:20
examination was the writing of the
00:11:22
letter p
00:11:25
paul gruber consistently had a large
00:11:27
loop in this letter yet
00:11:30
in the question documents the p's were
00:11:33
different
00:11:34
the loops weren't as well formed they
00:11:37
were completely missing or they were
00:11:39
elongated
00:11:41
flowberg also noticed
00:11:43
that paul gruber wrote his ms and ends
00:11:47
much differently than those in the
00:11:49
question document
00:11:51
he concluded that paul gruber did not
00:11:54
write these documents
00:11:57
the signatures did look pretty close to
00:12:00
the victims i believe a lot of practice
00:12:02
had gone into duplicating the victim's
00:12:04
signatures
00:12:05
his downfall however was that there's a
00:12:08
lot more writing that goes into a
00:12:09
birthday card and an address
00:12:12
next
00:12:13
floburg analyzed daryl kuhl's
00:12:15
handwriting to see if he had written the
00:12:18
checks and birthday cards
00:12:20
he noticed that kewl used the same
00:12:24
closed loop on the capital p
00:12:27
and other capital letters
00:12:29
and kule wrote his f's in virtually the
00:12:32
same way as the question document
00:12:35
no matter how much time you have to
00:12:37
practice writing it's so hard to
00:12:39
duplicate the writing of another that mr
00:12:41
kuehl was conclusively the writer of the
00:12:43
forged checks and birthday cards and
00:12:46
addressed the envelopes
00:12:49
investigators searched daryl kuhl's
00:12:51
property and found some incriminating
00:12:54
evidence
00:12:55
we found a hidden door upstairs
00:12:58
and found
00:13:00
military type dark camouflage type
00:13:02
clothing throwing stars
00:13:04
a katana which is a big sword it just
00:13:07
didn't fit with
00:13:09
daryl kewley family man father mormon
00:13:12
good mormon type
00:13:14
person
00:13:16
they also found
00:13:17
power tools furniture even a boat
00:13:21
which were all identified as belonging
00:13:24
to paul gruber
00:13:26
we found a small
00:13:28
suitcase or briefcase that had his
00:13:30
sunday go to meeting clothes in it and a
00:13:32
large butcher knife and that really
00:13:34
seemed strange
00:13:36
and in the middle of it all was called
00:13:38
one of paul gruber's power bills
00:13:41
but most alarming
00:13:43
was a 22 caliber handgun with a homemade
00:13:47
silencer
00:13:48
silencers are illegal because they can
00:13:51
alter the ballistic evidence
00:13:54
the
00:13:55
microscopic characteristics which are
00:13:57
imparted to the bullet by the barrel
00:13:58
itself
00:14:00
are usually obliterated by a misaligned
00:14:02
silencer
00:14:04
very very difficult and rare to identify
00:14:07
a bullet with the barrel
00:14:10
of a weapon who has had a which has had
00:14:12
a silencer device attached
00:14:14
and detectives still didn't have paul
00:14:17
gruber's body
00:14:22
[Music]
00:14:25
18 months after paul gruber disappeared
00:14:28
investigators searched his house yet
00:14:30
again
00:14:32
this time in a basement crawl space they
00:14:34
found a shallow depression that wasn't
00:14:37
there before
00:14:38
the ground had apparently settled
00:14:41
we worked for two days we sifted every
00:14:44
five gallon bucket full of dirt we went
00:14:46
square by square
00:14:48
a couple of feet at each square
00:14:51
in a pattern
00:14:52
we finally exposed what appeared to be
00:14:54
an air mattress
00:14:56
and eventually confirmed that there was
00:14:58
a body inside
00:15:00
the body was identified
00:15:02
as paul gruber
00:15:04
he had been shot four times
00:15:08
the medical examiner removed several
00:15:10
22-caliber bullets from gruber's body
00:15:14
but they didn't match test fires from
00:15:17
daryl kewl's 22 caliber handgun or his
00:15:20
silencer which can impart its own
00:15:23
characteristics on the bullet
00:15:25
any slight change in the positioning of
00:15:27
that silencer relative to the weapon
00:15:30
will cause the bullet to strike
00:15:32
different parts of the silencer from
00:15:34
shot to shot
00:15:36
and once that occurs
00:15:38
you're not going to make an
00:15:39
identification
00:15:42
nevertheless investigators had more than
00:15:45
enough evidence to charge daryl kewell
00:15:48
with murder
00:15:50
kewl's first order of business was to
00:15:53
plan his escape
00:15:55
an inmate testified that darrell kill
00:15:58
had offered him money and a car
00:16:01
to
00:16:02
kill the prison transport officers who
00:16:05
were taking daryl back this person was
00:16:07
getting out of jail before daryl was
00:16:09
going to be transported
00:16:12
five thousand dollars for me and five
00:16:14
thousand for harvey and five thousand
00:16:15
per howard
00:16:17
we thought we were going pretty cheap
00:16:18
there
00:16:20
cule thought he'd soon be a free man
00:16:23
but the investigators knew better
00:16:25
the two officers were actually doing the
00:16:28
transport they said daryl we know about
00:16:30
your plot that you're going to have us
00:16:31
killed
00:16:32
those guys turn states evident and
00:16:35
they said that he was just crushed at
00:16:37
that point
00:16:39
prosecutors believe daryl kewell
00:16:41
orchestrated an elaborate plan to kill
00:16:44
paul gruber and steal his money
00:16:47
this was a crime motivated by greed paul
00:16:50
gruber had
00:16:51
things that darrell killed wanted
00:16:53
needed more money and six kids seven
00:16:56
kids however many he had that's a lot of
00:16:58
groceries
00:17:01
apparently paul gruber hired daryl
00:17:03
kewell for handyman work around the
00:17:06
house and soon gained his confidence
00:17:14
sometime after christmas
00:17:17
prosecutors believe kewl went to paul's
00:17:20
home armed with his 22-caliber handgun
00:17:23
[Music]
00:17:24
and shot him four times
00:17:29
one bullet missed ricocheted off the
00:17:31
floor
00:17:32
leaving a gouge in the wood
00:17:35
[Music]
00:17:41
luminol tests show that he dragged
00:17:43
paul's body into the crawl space wrapped
00:17:46
him in plastic
00:17:48
and buried him underneath his own house
00:17:50
[Music]
00:17:54
kewl cleaned the blood from the floor
00:17:58
and glued the rug over the gouge
00:18:00
created when the bullet ricocheted
00:18:09
with paul dead
00:18:11
kewl now had unfettered access to paul's
00:18:15
records
00:18:16
his atm card
00:18:18
his pin number his checks his social
00:18:21
security number
00:18:23
he had everything he needed to assume
00:18:26
paul's identity
00:18:28
he started writing checks in paul's name
00:18:31
and withdrawing money from his accounts
00:18:36
his handwriting may have fooled one
00:18:38
document examiner
00:18:40
but it didn't fool paul's daughter
00:18:42
who knew right away
00:18:44
it wasn't her father's handwriting
00:18:48
she set a trap
00:18:49
by leaving some inaccurate information
00:18:52
about her husband's birthday on her
00:18:54
father's answering machine
00:18:57
kewl
00:18:58
fell right into the trap
00:19:01
sending the birthday card on the wrong
00:19:03
date
00:19:05
it was a takeover homicide where it
00:19:07
wasn't just a homicide but afterwards
00:19:10
the suspect
00:19:12
took over the life of the victim
00:19:14
financial matters
00:19:16
paid bills
00:19:17
paid the mortgage
00:19:19
rode out checks and birthday cards to
00:19:21
the grandkids
00:19:22
tried to keep the
00:19:24
persona of the victim alive so that
00:19:27
he could extract more funds from the
00:19:29
victim
00:19:30
at his trial
00:19:32
daryl kuhl insisted he was innocent he
00:19:34
denied signing paul's name on his checks
00:19:37
and sending the birthday cards to paul's
00:19:40
family
00:19:41
he pointed to the opinion of the first
00:19:43
forensic document examiner as proof
00:19:46
so what did prosecutors do
00:19:49
they asked scientists to swab the back
00:19:52
of the stamp on the birthday cards
00:19:55
and they found
00:19:56
saliva
00:19:58
its dna matched
00:20:01
daryl kewl
00:20:03
there was roughly a million people in
00:20:05
idaho so when you have a one in a
00:20:07
million
00:20:08
on a dna
00:20:10
that tells you that if everybody in
00:20:11
idaho is in the same room
00:20:13
this is still the only person it could
00:20:14
be
00:20:15
i felt
00:20:18
a lot happier to know that i wasn't
00:20:20
going to be the only one testifying to
00:20:22
the identity of the writer but also the
00:20:23
dna was going to corroborate my findings
00:20:28
after a three-week trial
00:20:30
kewl was convicted of first-degree
00:20:32
murder grand theft and forgery
00:20:35
he was sentenced to 25 years to life in
00:20:38
prison
00:20:40
at first we're skeptical the handwriting
00:20:42
tells us don't be skeptical keep digging
00:20:46
later on we find evidence of blood have
00:20:48
confirmed for us that yes you have blood
00:20:51
here yes you probably have a crime scene
00:20:53
putting us on the right track
00:20:56
and
00:20:57
lastly
00:20:59
the dna
00:21:01
i think that's the nail in the coffin
00:21:03
right there
00:21:05
[Music]
00:21:15
[Music]
00:21:22
[Music]
00:21:26
so
00:21:29
[Music]
00:21:35
[Music]
00:21:46
you
