00:00:05
up next
00:00:06
three college students are murdered
00:00:08
it looks as if one person had killed
00:00:11
them all he picked on young women picked
00:00:14
on pretty women police immediately have
00:00:16
a suspect in law enforcement terms it's
00:00:19
almost like winning the lottery but not
00:00:21
everyone was convinced he was the one if
00:00:24
he's gonna brag about three why not four
00:00:26
he mentioned all the other cases but
00:00:27
never mentioned susan chummy for 20
00:00:30
years questions remained until decades
00:00:34
old evidence reveals the terrible truth
00:00:38
it's a horrifying thing to think that
00:00:40
there's more than one monster in your
00:00:41
community at one time
00:00:51
[Music]
00:00:53
it was a week before the fall semester
00:00:55
began in 1981
00:00:58
susan schumache moved back to the campus
00:01:00
of southern illinois university at
00:01:02
carbondale
00:01:04
she was anxious to start her senior year
00:01:07
she had just gotten a job at the radio
00:01:08
station and she was going to be doing
00:01:12
some of the uh the broadcast work
00:01:15
she makes section 3
00:01:18
description narration and dialogue
00:01:21
on august 17th susan left the radio
00:01:24
station just before 6 pm
00:01:27
she planned to meet her girlfriend for
00:01:29
dinner
00:01:30
but she never arrived
00:01:33
the friend who she was supposed to have
00:01:36
supper with
00:01:37
called her roommate mary mary did not
00:01:39
know where she was at later into the
00:01:41
night approaching midnight they've
00:01:44
started calling all their friends they
00:01:46
went to places where they thought she
00:01:47
might have gone
00:01:50
the next day with still no word from
00:01:52
susan the police were notified
00:01:57
that night
00:01:58
officers noticed some trampled
00:02:00
vegetation near a dirt footpath students
00:02:03
used to walk from one side of the campus
00:02:06
to the other
00:02:07
as he walked into the the weeds a little
00:02:10
deeper with the flashlight and the weeds
00:02:12
were quite high it was very difficult to
00:02:14
see
00:02:15
then once he saw susan's body
00:02:18
this was something that really undid us
00:02:20
this was it was obviously a horrible
00:02:23
thing and i immediately started crying
00:02:26
it was a very uh terrible moment
00:02:28
for me
00:02:29
it appeared that susan had been beaten
00:02:32
strangled
00:02:34
and sexually assaulted police assumed
00:02:37
the crime occurred just after susan left
00:02:39
the radio station between 6 and 6 30 p.m
00:02:43
which meant
00:02:44
she was abducted and attacked
00:02:47
in broad daylight
00:02:49
this was in the middle of the day that
00:02:51
this happened and i think that really
00:02:53
that was one of the more scary things to
00:02:55
people is that it was so random
00:02:57
police asked anyone who might have seen
00:02:59
anything suspicious to come forward
00:03:02
they also interviewed all of susan's
00:03:04
friends including her past romantic
00:03:07
relationships
00:03:08
there had been a few people who had
00:03:11
attempted to date her that she had
00:03:12
denied so they of course became a part
00:03:16
of a growing suspect pool
00:03:18
police also had to consider whether the
00:03:21
perpetrator was a stranger
00:03:24
because of the location of the murder
00:03:26
and its accessibility to a number of
00:03:28
dormitories they were looking at
00:03:30
dormitory lists and who lived who lived
00:03:32
in the area she was such a blameless
00:03:34
victim the thing that we're all afraid
00:03:36
of is some monster coming out of nowhere
00:03:39
and snagging someone we love or snagging
00:03:41
ourselves and that's what happened to
00:03:43
susan
00:03:45
then police learned of a remarkable
00:03:47
coincidence
00:03:49
on the day susan was murdered a
00:03:51
subcontractor working on the new campus
00:03:54
gymnasium had employed a man who'd been
00:03:57
a suspect in two murders both victims
00:04:01
were students at the university
00:04:04
he was within three or four hundred
00:04:06
yards you gotta remember he's working on
00:04:07
a campus where there are eight or nine
00:04:09
thousand pretty girls walking around
00:04:10
every day the investigators of that day
00:04:13
figured that if if a woman was raped and
00:04:15
murdered
00:04:17
he's the one that did it
00:04:18
[Music]
00:04:23
within days of susan schumache's murder
00:04:26
john paul phillips topped the list of
00:04:29
suspects
00:04:31
he was known about town as kind of a
00:04:32
hellion i met him early in his life he
00:04:35
was a
00:04:36
had a terrible temper i met him when he
00:04:38
was 15 or 16 years old in a fight he
00:04:41
tried to beat some kid to death with a
00:04:42
baseball bat
00:04:44
phillips had been a suspect in the rape
00:04:46
and murder of two other southern
00:04:47
illinois university students five years
00:04:50
earlier twenty-one-year-old teresa
00:04:53
clarke was found raped and murdered in
00:04:55
her apartment off campus
00:04:57
at the time
00:04:59
john paul phillips lived in an apartment
00:05:01
about a hundred feet away
00:05:03
we worked that case to death we didn't
00:05:05
have any fingerprints dna was way in the
00:05:08
future we had no witnesses we didn't
00:05:10
have much of anything to go on
00:05:12
but we felt pretty comfortable he might
00:05:14
be her person
00:05:15
one year later 24 year old kathleen
00:05:18
mcsherry was also found raped and
00:05:20
stabbed in her apartment again
00:05:22
john paul phillips lived in the
00:05:24
neighborhood
00:05:26
again
00:05:26
no dna no fingerprints well where's john
00:05:28
paul now
00:05:30
well it turned out he lived just a few
00:05:31
blocks north
00:05:33
there had been insufficient evidence to
00:05:36
arrest john paul phillips for either
00:05:38
murder but in susan schumache's murder
00:05:40
police finally got a break
00:05:43
at susan's autopsy the medical examiner
00:05:46
found
00:05:47
two foreign hairs on her body
00:05:50
presumably from her killer
00:05:53
homes the body here one was a pubic hair
00:05:55
that was recovered from susan's body
00:05:58
phillips willingly provided hair samples
00:06:00
for comparison
00:06:02
based on microscopic examination
00:06:04
philips hair was not similar so he was
00:06:07
eliminated as a suspect
00:06:10
despite the hair analysis
00:06:12
susan's family was convinced that john
00:06:15
paul phillips was susan's killer and
00:06:18
they didn't take
00:06:19
phillips into custody at the time they
00:06:22
didn't arrest him or charge him which i
00:06:24
didn't understand at the time
00:06:27
because i thought that they had enough
00:06:29
reason to
00:06:31
later phillips committed several
00:06:33
assaults that landed him in jail
00:06:37
he went out to the devil's kitchen like
00:06:39
spotted a young lady and her boyfriend
00:06:42
at one of the campgrounds
00:06:43
approached him with a gun he went over
00:06:46
to
00:06:47
carterville and kidnapped a girl too
00:06:50
but police finally got a break
00:06:52
in susan shoemake's case
00:06:55
first they found susan's yellow backpack
00:06:58
in the piles fork creek behind the
00:07:00
dormitories
00:07:01
her wallet was missing friends said she
00:07:04
usually carried about ten dollars
00:07:06
and the campus worker found a small red
00:07:10
bag with some toiletry items not far
00:07:12
from where susan shoemake was murdered
00:07:15
inside
00:07:16
police found some identification
00:07:19
he finds a pharmaceutical bottle that
00:07:22
has the name daniel willison
00:07:24
but it was prescribed at the bernard
00:07:26
correctional center they did some
00:07:28
checking on him and found that he was on
00:07:30
parole
00:07:31
and so he became a person of interest
00:07:35
twenty-one-year-old daniel willison had
00:07:37
recently been released from prison for a
00:07:40
burglary conviction
00:07:41
he was a handyman working on campus at
00:07:44
the time of the murder
00:07:46
daniel was working at the quad
00:07:47
apartments which is probably about a
00:07:50
quarter mile away from the crime scene
00:07:52
when questioned by police
00:07:54
willison said he had an alibi for the
00:07:57
night of susan shumake's murder that he
00:07:59
was with a friend
00:08:01
and the officers took him to the various
00:08:04
locations trying to find this person
00:08:06
with whom he spent the night
00:08:08
were unsuccessful
00:08:11
willison cooperated with police and
00:08:13
provided hair samples
00:08:16
but the next day when police went to
00:08:17
speak with him again
00:08:19
he was gone
00:08:21
in his room
00:08:22
they found a torn note some of the
00:08:25
pieces were in the toilet the rest were
00:08:27
in a trash can
00:08:29
it ran almost like a suicide note i
00:08:31
don't know why it's always me
00:08:33
i know i can't handle prison again
00:08:36
i know everyone is better off this way
00:08:38
police continued to search for willison
00:08:41
until they examined his hair sample
00:08:45
willison's hair
00:08:46
was not consistent with the hair found
00:08:49
on susan's body so he was eliminated as
00:08:52
a suspect
00:08:54
the case threatened to go cold
00:08:56
until john paul phillips now in prison
00:09:00
for rape and kidnapping allegedly
00:09:02
bragged about his murders to his prison
00:09:04
cellmate thomas maccabee
00:09:07
one day in the cell
00:09:09
he relates all these crimes that he
00:09:12
committed to thomas moccaby and provides
00:09:15
detailed information about these murders
00:09:17
detail
00:09:18
that only the killer would have known
00:09:20
phillips provided details about the
00:09:22
murders of college students kathleen
00:09:25
mcsherry and teresa clark but also
00:09:28
confessed to killing a third woman a
00:09:30
waitress joan weatherall
00:09:32
but he never mentioned susan
00:09:36
if he's going to brag about three
00:09:38
why not four he never mentioned miss
00:09:40
shoemake but the conventional wisdom
00:09:42
back then was that he was responsible
00:09:46
police believe that john paul phillips
00:09:49
killed susan shumake too
00:09:52
but if they were wrong
00:09:54
a murderer was still at large
00:09:57
[Music]
00:10:02
in november of 1986
00:10:05
john paul phillips went on trial for the
00:10:07
murder of joan wetherall
00:10:09
one of the three murders phillips
00:10:11
allegedly confessed to during a
00:10:13
conversation with his prison cellmate
00:10:17
in fact when we were done the judge said
00:10:19
i'm not only satisfied he did this one
00:10:20
but i think he put on a good enough case
00:10:23
i could convict him for the other two
00:10:24
judge said that open court
00:10:26
on the day he was sentenced phillips
00:10:29
addressed the court
00:10:31
he said well
00:10:33
i didn't kill her but i hope she felt
00:10:34
every bit of it
00:10:36
and the judge immediately sentenced him
00:10:38
to death and he went off to prison on
00:10:40
death row
00:10:41
but before the sentence was carried out
00:10:43
he died in prison of a heart attack at
00:10:46
the age of 40.
00:10:49
although phillips bragged to his prison
00:10:51
cellmate about killing three women
00:10:53
he never mentioned susan shumake but her
00:10:57
family still believed he was responsible
00:11:01
we thought that phillips was the
00:11:03
murderer and he went to jail and he died
00:11:05
in jail so my family consequently
00:11:07
thought well
00:11:09
this is done
00:11:10
it's over he's dead
00:11:12
others weren't so sure
00:11:15
for one thing
00:11:16
susan's murder was different from the
00:11:19
others
00:11:20
most of his murders
00:11:22
were under darkness and that wasn't the
00:11:25
situation with susan chummy
00:11:30
minor maybe but just enough that it
00:11:33
didn't quite seem right
00:11:35
lieutenant paul eckles was susan's
00:11:37
classmate in college and had kept the
00:11:40
picture from her case file on his desk
00:11:44
you could just look at that picture
00:11:46
you could see that this was a happy
00:11:48
moment a father standing with his
00:11:49
daughter very proud
00:11:51
and knowing the story that i knew by
00:11:54
that time that she had been murdered
00:11:56
that it was something that
00:11:59
always held my attention
00:12:01
by the year 2000 almost two decades
00:12:04
after susan's murder a new dna process
00:12:08
called pcr made it possible to test a
00:12:11
small biological sample where in the
00:12:14
past much larger samples were needed
00:12:18
essentially that process is just
00:12:20
xeroxing dna so we're just copying the
00:12:23
specific portions of dna that we're
00:12:25
interested in analyzing
00:12:28
so analysts tested the small biological
00:12:31
sample taken from susan schumache's
00:12:33
autopsy and were able to identify the
00:12:36
dna profile of the killer
00:12:39
yeah we're in the game now there's a
00:12:41
good chance now we'll be able to figure
00:12:43
out who killed her
00:12:44
john paul phillips dna sample was not on
00:12:48
file so investigators took the
00:12:50
extraordinary step of requesting that
00:12:53
the state exhumed his body
00:12:55
they wanted to eliminate him as a
00:12:57
suspect
00:12:58
and they needed to get his dna in order
00:13:00
to do that
00:13:01
a dna sample was obtained from phillips
00:13:04
bone marrow it did not match the dna
00:13:08
from the crime scene
00:13:10
i called and spoke with susan's mother
00:13:13
it was a very emotional phone call
00:13:16
she cried as we talked
00:13:18
it's obvious that you never forget the
00:13:20
death of a child like that
00:13:23
and she was very disappointed but you
00:13:26
know i tried to assure her that we would
00:13:27
continue to go forward and try to
00:13:30
identify the suspect
00:13:32
i was angry at the time when this
00:13:34
happened because and probably on a
00:13:36
subconscious level because i felt we had
00:13:38
closure it was done with and there was
00:13:41
more bad news the dna did not match
00:13:44
anyone in the statewide database of
00:13:47
known criminal offenders so we knew it
00:13:50
had to be somebody who's never
00:13:51
participated or contributed to the codis
00:13:54
database
00:13:55
if the killer wasn't phillips or anyone
00:13:57
who committed a felony before the dna
00:14:00
database was created
00:14:02
then who was it where do we go from here
00:14:06
and the obvious answer is let's dig back
00:14:08
into the case and let's see who else was
00:14:11
a suspect in those days
00:14:13
who else can we get a dna standard from
00:14:16
let's just keep going until we run out
00:14:18
of suspects
00:14:19
the first person on their list
00:14:22
was daniel willison
00:14:24
he was originally a suspect he was
00:14:27
working a quarter mile away on the day
00:14:29
of the murder then he ran off when
00:14:30
police tried to question him
00:14:34
police found him in michigan
00:14:36
where he worked at an auto salvage yard
00:14:40
by this time he was divorced with one
00:14:42
child and did not want to talk with
00:14:45
police
00:14:46
wilson told them that he had provided
00:14:49
hair samples and fingerprints
00:14:52
back in 1981
00:14:54
he was not interested in cooperating
00:14:55
with their investigation
00:14:58
investigators wanted a dna sample
00:15:01
woolison refused to provide one
00:15:04
and the courts refused to order one
00:15:07
citing the lack of probable cause
00:15:10
willison's hair was on file from the
00:15:13
original investigation but the samples
00:15:16
didn't contain root material so they
00:15:19
couldn't be used to generate a full
00:15:21
genetic profile
00:15:23
so investigators decided to try an
00:15:26
unconventional method to get woolison's
00:15:29
dna
00:15:34
it had taken a long time
00:15:36
almost 20 years and lieutenant paul
00:15:39
eckles was convinced he was closing in
00:15:42
on susan shumake's killer
00:15:45
but only dna could prove it
00:15:48
and the suspect daniel willison wasn't
00:15:51
willing to provide it
00:15:53
so michigan state police decided they'd
00:15:55
take his dna in a perfectly legal manner
00:16:00
they decided to run surveillance on him
00:16:02
the whole purpose was to try to get
00:16:05
something that might have daniel willis
00:16:06
dna so we could either identify him or
00:16:09
eliminate him
00:16:10
it wasn't easy
00:16:11
since willison worked in an auto parts
00:16:13
salvage yard only other employees could
00:16:16
get close to him without a rousing
00:16:18
suspicion
00:16:20
then police learned
00:16:22
he had recently sold his car
00:16:25
and they knew he smoked cigarettes
00:16:28
so they traced the car
00:16:30
to its new owner
00:16:32
they asked him about the cigarette butts
00:16:34
and the ash tree says i don't smoke and
00:16:37
all my friends throw their cigarette
00:16:38
butts out the window so these were like
00:16:40
when i bought the car
00:16:42
there were more than a dozen cigarette
00:16:44
butts
00:16:45
police hoped at least one was from
00:16:47
daniel willison
00:16:49
they gave the evidence to dna analyst
00:16:51
jennifer andrew
00:16:53
when i gathered from speaking with the
00:16:54
investigator in charge there was a
00:16:56
homicide about 20 years ago of a college
00:17:00
student and you know me being recently
00:17:02
out of college it was a little bit
00:17:03
personal for me
00:17:05
one by one
00:17:07
andrew cut open the cigarette filters
00:17:10
often
00:17:11
a good source of dna
00:17:13
because that's where all the saliva and
00:17:15
skin cells would be deposited
00:17:17
samples were treated with a solvent that
00:17:20
separates the dna
00:17:22
a profile was generated from an unknown
00:17:26
male
00:17:27
people think the job is so cool it's
00:17:29
actually very very stressful and it's
00:17:32
moments like this that really make it
00:17:34
worthwhile
00:17:35
the profile was sent to illinois for
00:17:37
comparison with the 20 year old genetic
00:17:39
material left at susan schumache's
00:17:42
murder
00:17:44
and it matched daniel willison
00:17:47
well i'm ecstatic of course i mean this
00:17:50
is uh
00:17:51
in in law enforcement terms it's almost
00:17:53
like winning the lottery
00:17:55
naturally
00:17:56
lieutenant echols would need another dna
00:17:59
test to confirm the dna results from the
00:18:02
cigarette until then echoes wanted to
00:18:05
prevent williston from fleeing so he
00:18:08
tried a ruse
00:18:10
he confronted willison with some made-up
00:18:13
evidence
00:18:14
it was important for me
00:18:16
to extract some type of information from
00:18:19
him that would give me enough to get an
00:18:22
arrest warrant i give him the story
00:18:24
about the witness which is not true
00:18:26
i tell him that there was a person that
00:18:29
he worked with
00:18:31
at the quad apartments who had stepped
00:18:33
forward and had seen daniel wilson
00:18:35
walking down a path behind the right one
00:18:38
carrying a yellow backpack during the
00:18:40
evening that she was murdered and i took
00:18:42
it just a little bit further and told
00:18:43
him but i had a fingerprint that was
00:18:45
identified to him from that backpack and
00:18:48
then immediately without me saying a
00:18:50
thing he said you know i only took ten
00:18:52
dollars from that backpack so i knew he
00:18:54
was telling me the truth he was pretty
00:18:56
much a sunk puppy there
00:18:59
so willison was arrested and he was
00:19:01
forced to provide an additional dna
00:19:04
sample
00:19:05
that test
00:19:07
left no doubt
00:19:08
he was the source of the dna found on
00:19:12
susan shumake
00:19:13
i knew enough about dna evidence to know
00:19:16
that
00:19:17
the odds of there being a mismatch is
00:19:20
you know it turned out in this case it
00:19:22
was going to be
00:19:23
300 million
00:19:25
to one
00:19:26
was the most conservative
00:19:29
estimate
00:19:31
prosecutors cannot fathom a reason for
00:19:34
susan schumache's murder
00:19:38
they believe willison saw her walking
00:19:40
alone along the dirt path
00:19:43
and he decided to attack her
00:19:47
it was late in the day
00:19:49
no one heard or saw anything
00:19:57
he left behind his dna
00:20:00
then took her yellow backpack
00:20:08
stole ten dollars from her purse dumped
00:20:11
it in the creek then
00:20:13
dropped his bag with a pharmacy
00:20:15
prescription in it not far away
00:20:18
it's that randomness that's so
00:20:19
frightening
00:20:21
she wasn't stalked she wasn't selected
00:20:25
she would just happen to be in the wrong
00:20:26
place at the wrong time
00:20:28
despite the evidence against him
00:20:31
willison pleaded
00:20:33
not guilty
00:20:34
in march of 2006
00:20:37
25 years after susan's murder
00:20:40
daniel willison was convicted of first
00:20:43
degree murder and sentenced to 40 years
00:20:46
in
00:20:46
prison the university has now built a
00:20:50
well-lighted pedestrian overpass so
00:20:53
students no longer have to walk through
00:20:55
the overgrown dirt path where susan was
00:20:58
abducted and murdered
00:21:00
it was named
00:21:01
in susan's honor
00:21:03
my wife had made the comment she said
00:21:05
you know i wonder
00:21:07
how much it costs to have one of these
00:21:09
overpasses built and i said i'll tell
00:21:11
you what it costs cost one human life
00:21:14
that's why we do what we do
00:21:16
you know to bring justice to these
00:21:18
families so the families deserve a lot
00:21:20
of credit as well they're the people who
00:21:21
push us along the way i went back to the
00:21:24
site again after the trial
00:21:27
and i'd been beaten there by quite a few
00:21:29
people there were flowers and balloons
00:21:31
obviously a lot of people had felt that
00:21:33
they needed to go to that site
00:21:35
it was it was
00:21:36
it was overwhelming
00:21:44
you
