00:00:05
an employee from a large brokerage firm
00:00:08
disappeared
00:00:09
her computer revealed she was leading a
00:00:12
double life
00:00:13
and among the bits and bytes were the
00:00:16
clues to her final destination
00:00:22
[Music]
00:00:28
[Music]
00:00:47
to friends and family 36 year old sherry
00:00:50
durrell had an enviable life
00:00:54
married with three young children sherry
00:00:56
had a high job with the stock brokerage
00:00:59
firm and the respect and admiration of
00:01:02
her colleagues
00:01:03
she was
00:01:04
selfless she was warm she always did
00:01:07
things for other people she cared about
00:01:09
others a lot
00:01:13
sherry was also
00:01:14
a punctual employee
00:01:16
so when she didn't come to work one day
00:01:19
and didn't call
00:01:20
her co-workers were concerned
00:01:24
they called her husband bob who said
00:01:26
sherry left for work at the usual time
00:01:28
that morning and he didn't know where
00:01:31
she was
00:01:32
so sherry's friends called police
00:01:35
a couple of officers look around knock
00:01:37
on the door nobody answers but they find
00:01:39
an unlocked door
00:01:41
so they go into the house and they walk
00:01:43
through the house everything looks
00:01:44
orderly everything looks tidy
00:01:48
cherries clothes jewelry and toiletries
00:01:50
were still in the house
00:01:53
it seemed very unusual that a woman with
00:01:56
three children would just suddenly
00:01:58
disappear
00:01:59
for the next two days there were no
00:02:01
signs of her
00:02:02
[Music]
00:02:04
then police got a call about a red van
00:02:07
driving erratically
00:02:09
the license plate number identified the
00:02:11
van as sherry durell's
00:02:15
the witness said it was weaving in and
00:02:17
out of traffic slowing down speeding up
00:02:20
to a point where he wouldn't let the
00:02:22
witness pass him
00:02:23
unfortunately the witness didn't get a
00:02:25
good look at who was driving the van
00:02:29
friends distributed missing person
00:02:31
flyers throughout the
00:02:34
community and a convenience store clerk
00:02:37
responded saying sherry was in his store
00:02:40
the day after she disappeared
00:02:43
the clerk there was sure that she'd seen
00:02:45
her on saturday evening came in
00:02:47
purchased gas with cash and then left
00:02:50
there was an initial thought that yeah
00:02:52
she's in the area and the van's been
00:02:55
seen
00:02:56
traveling along the freeway
00:02:59
sherry's husband looked around their
00:03:01
home for clues
00:03:02
and found some information on sherry's
00:03:05
computer
00:03:06
that he turned over to the police
00:03:09
we investigated that and discovered that
00:03:12
mrs darrell had in fact
00:03:14
pursued a relationship outside her
00:03:17
marriage
00:03:18
there were emails and internet chat room
00:03:21
conversations with a man named
00:03:23
kevin johnson
00:03:25
and it was clear
00:03:27
the relationship was serious
00:03:30
i have tried to be indifferent to you
00:03:32
and keep my feelings in check i have
00:03:34
been thinking about this a lot and
00:03:36
feeling bad about my self-respect sort
00:03:38
of feeling like a call girl more than a
00:03:40
friend
00:03:42
the correspondence included talk of the
00:03:44
two running away together
00:03:47
they talked about oh wouldn't it be
00:03:48
great to go to costa rica the cost of
00:03:50
living there is so much cheaper
00:03:53
when police interviewed kevin johnson
00:03:57
he admitted the two had a brief affair
00:03:59
but insisted
00:04:00
he hadn't seen her for the last six
00:04:03
months
00:04:05
police
00:04:06
weren't so sure
00:04:08
[Music]
00:04:12
one week had passed since sherry
00:04:14
durrell's disappearance
00:04:17
she hadn't contacted her children her
00:04:19
husband or kevin johnson the man with
00:04:22
whom she had the affair
00:04:24
i knew that she wouldn't leave without
00:04:26
telling her mom or calling me
00:04:29
we were the two closest people to her
00:04:32
she was too responsible of a mother
00:04:34
and a person to do that
00:04:40
then investigators got their first solid
00:04:43
lead
00:04:45
they found sherry's van in a hotel
00:04:47
parking lot near the seattle airport
00:04:50
that could have been a thought that she
00:04:52
parked there
00:04:53
or she met somebody who came into town
00:04:56
or she hopped on a plane and took off
00:05:00
but there was no record she stayed in
00:05:02
the hotel or took a flight out of town
00:05:06
it was very emotional finding that van
00:05:08
and not her she wasn't anywhere near the
00:05:12
vehicle and so we found a van but we
00:05:14
didn't find our
00:05:16
our friend
00:05:17
and that was that was really difficult a
00:05:20
forensic examination of the van revealed
00:05:23
no evidence of foul play
00:05:25
and there were no foreign fingerprints
00:05:29
even more troubling
00:05:31
sherry's personal bank account hadn't
00:05:33
been touched since her disappearance
00:05:36
she just got a bonus at work and she had
00:05:38
just put that into the bank i think that
00:05:41
week
00:05:42
so
00:05:43
the theory from all the co-workers was
00:05:44
well why would she be putting all this
00:05:46
money away
00:05:47
and then not leave with it and not touch
00:05:49
it
00:05:50
police conducted extensive interviews
00:05:52
with sherry's friend kevin johnson he
00:05:55
insisted he had nothing to do with her
00:05:58
disappearance
00:06:00
and he was later able to
00:06:03
provide some information what he was
00:06:05
doing on the day that she was reported
00:06:06
missing
00:06:08
sherry's co-workers told police about a
00:06:10
comment she made
00:06:12
the day before she disappeared
00:06:15
she said if anything happens to me my
00:06:17
life is in my desk
00:06:19
and in her desk among other things was a
00:06:22
long letter a draft of a letter that
00:06:24
she'd written to her husband
00:06:26
in an effort to try to explain
00:06:29
why she felt it necessary to leave it
00:06:32
my spirit is crushed i feel that you are
00:06:35
too controlling and obsessive and
00:06:36
jealous and i just can't live with those
00:06:38
personality traits anymore i can't go on
00:06:41
pretending that there is nothing wrong i
00:06:43
am unbearably unhappy the bottom line is
00:06:46
i don't love you enough to stay married
00:06:50
also in her desk
00:06:51
were books about divorce
00:06:54
she was planning the separation and
00:06:57
she'd saved up some money and she had
00:06:59
spoke to a couple of lawyers to get some
00:07:02
advice
00:07:03
and she was making her plans to move on
00:07:06
to her new life with her children
00:07:09
and sherry told friends that bob
00:07:12
had been abusive
00:07:13
and no sign of physical violence at all
00:07:15
it was more that she wasn't comfortable
00:07:17
around him he was obsessive
00:07:20
controlling he emotionally
00:07:22
controlled her and she just did not feel
00:07:25
good around him
00:07:27
he would apparently be sort of
00:07:29
monitoring her whereabouts occasionally
00:07:31
she would go out to lunch with some of
00:07:33
her friends mr doral would show up so he
00:07:36
in effect
00:07:38
uh
00:07:39
she describes a situation where you
00:07:41
almost have a husband stalking his own
00:07:43
wife
00:07:45
during police questioning bob dorell
00:07:47
admitted there were problems in his
00:07:50
marriage
00:07:51
as for him being involved in sherry's
00:07:54
disappearance he said that was
00:07:56
ridiculous
00:07:59
police asked bob
00:08:01
what happened on the night before she
00:08:03
disappeared
00:08:05
bob said they went to dinner at a local
00:08:07
restaurant
00:08:08
when they got home
00:08:10
sherry spoke with her sister-in-law
00:08:13
mrs durrall
00:08:14
appeared perhaps slightly tipsy
00:08:18
and told her that she was going to bed
00:08:21
and that her husband robert durrall had
00:08:24
made her a drink
00:08:26
sherry's sister-in-law told police that
00:08:29
she was very suspicious because bob
00:08:32
seldom served his wife usually
00:08:35
it was the other way around
00:08:38
they said that it was extraordinarily
00:08:40
atypical for mr drawl to ever make his
00:08:44
wife a drink of any kind or to serve her
00:08:47
any kind of food or drink
00:08:50
and cherie's best friend had one final
00:08:53
insight it was a dream she had about
00:08:55
sherry
00:08:56
the night before she disappeared
00:08:59
i woke my husband up
00:09:01
like at 12 30 1 o'clock in the morning
00:09:03
and i said oh
00:09:05
i had the worst dream about blood
00:09:08
everywhere and couldn't get back to
00:09:10
sleep
00:09:11
and
00:09:12
and i feel like
00:09:13
that was
00:09:15
a message being passed to me like do
00:09:17
something with this you know
00:09:23
the information found in sherry doral's
00:09:26
desk at work
00:09:27
painted a revealing picture of her
00:09:30
marriage at the time of her
00:09:31
disappearance
00:09:32
[Music]
00:09:33
so investigators decided to search bob
00:09:36
dorell's work computer too
00:09:39
bob was in charge of the computer system
00:09:41
at the king county housing authority
00:09:44
as a government agency bob's computer
00:09:47
was government property so investigators
00:09:49
seized it and turned it over to gordon
00:09:52
mitchell an expert in the growing field
00:09:55
of computer forensics
00:09:58
mitchell copied bob doral's hard drive
00:10:01
to examine the information on it without
00:10:04
altering the original data
00:10:06
this is an important process where they
00:10:08
can actually discover is there something
00:10:10
going on here or is bob just a nice guy
00:10:15
mitchell found evidence that bob deleted
00:10:19
certain files
00:10:20
but they were still on the hard drive
00:10:24
that's because computers don't erase
00:10:26
files they just mark the space occupied
00:10:29
by those files for reuse
00:10:32
that's part of why computers take so
00:10:34
long to start up and shut down
00:10:36
files are being created and files are
00:10:38
being deleted
00:10:39
a lot of the deleted files are simply
00:10:41
information left in place
00:10:44
the deleted information revealed
00:10:46
that bob was dating women he met on the
00:10:49
online dating service
00:10:51
match.com
00:10:53
and was doing so at the same time his
00:10:55
wife sherry was dating kevin johnson
00:10:59
bob's profile on the dating website
00:11:03
was also revealing
00:11:05
mr drawl portrayed himself as a man who
00:11:08
was living separately from his wife
00:11:11
and who was completely unburdened by any
00:11:13
other romantic
00:11:15
or personal attachments and was open to
00:11:18
a relationship with the appropriate
00:11:19
woman
00:11:20
in emails to prospective dates
00:11:23
bob explained why a divorce was
00:11:26
impossible
00:11:27
to one young woman mr durall said that
00:11:30
he really did not want to pursue a
00:11:32
divorce with his wife because it would
00:11:34
be expensive and messy he actually went
00:11:38
so far as to say that he would be better
00:11:40
off if his wife were dead
00:11:44
in another email bob said he had a plan
00:11:47
to resolve his unsatisfactory marriage
00:11:52
and what was
00:11:53
that plan
00:11:56
bob's internet search engine revealed he
00:11:59
looked for information
00:12:01
on all sorts of diabolical schemes
00:12:05
we were shocked to see
00:12:06
these searches on things like poison
00:12:09
herbs death
00:12:11
something about sedation of people
00:12:14
also about smothering
00:12:16
but the most graphic one was actually a
00:12:19
search that drawl did on the words kill
00:12:22
spouse i was stunned i was stunned the
00:12:26
contrast between
00:12:28
the the sort of apparently very high
00:12:30
level functioning man
00:12:32
and the sort of
00:12:36
almost jaw-dropping stupidity of the
00:12:39
evidence they left behind was
00:12:42
really staggering
00:12:45
investigators now had probable cause to
00:12:48
search the doral's home
00:12:50
and they went straight to the master
00:12:52
bedroom
00:12:53
they found a spot on the carpet
00:12:56
that looked like it had been cleaned
00:12:59
they swabbed it with phenolphthalein
00:13:02
and it turned purple
00:13:04
an indication it was blood
00:13:07
under the bed
00:13:09
were two squares of carpet that had been
00:13:11
cut out and replaced
00:13:14
underneath
00:13:15
were large pools of blood
00:13:18
that had been cleaned with water and
00:13:20
detergents
00:13:22
if a cleaning solvent was used
00:13:24
it didn't work very effectively
00:13:27
around the bed
00:13:28
almost invisible to the naked eye
00:13:31
investigators found
00:13:33
the most incriminating evidence it was
00:13:36
just
00:13:37
hundreds and hundreds of very very small
00:13:41
red dots
00:13:43
on the headboard
00:13:45
on the wall
00:13:46
above the headboard
00:13:48
in the corners and on the bureau and on
00:13:51
the door jamb to the bathroom
00:13:54
the blood near the floor
00:13:56
didn't happen
00:13:58
during the beating
00:14:00
that's blood was just coughing out of
00:14:02
the lungs through the mouth
00:14:04
and that was down very low to the ground
00:14:06
so someone was coughing up blood very
00:14:08
close to the ground in the area of where
00:14:10
this
00:14:11
large pool of blood underneath the bed
00:14:12
had been
00:14:14
investigators concluded the blood on the
00:14:17
walls and ceiling was medium velocity
00:14:20
blood spatter
00:14:21
[Music]
00:14:24
consistent with someone
00:14:26
swinging a bloody object
00:14:29
scientists compared the dna from the
00:14:31
blood in the bedroom to the dna profiles
00:14:34
of sherry's parents
00:14:36
and discovered that this was
00:14:40
sherry's blood
00:14:42
investigators also found
00:14:44
a blood stain on the doorway leading to
00:14:48
the garage
00:14:50
and in bob's car
00:14:52
was a receipt for a specialty cleaning
00:14:55
product
00:14:57
and police also solved another mystery
00:15:01
where were the doral's children
00:15:04
on the night of the murder
00:15:07
perfect opportunity for him his youngest
00:15:09
child was going to be
00:15:11
gone that evening his other two were at
00:15:13
camp and they were going to be alone in
00:15:15
the house that night
00:15:17
giving bob
00:15:19
all night
00:15:20
to carry out his plan
00:15:23
but where
00:15:25
was her body
00:15:30
41 year old bob dorell sat in prison
00:15:33
awaiting trial for his wife's murder to
00:15:37
police he denied it
00:15:39
but to his god
00:15:40
he said something else in a jail cell he
00:15:43
was observed and overheard apparently
00:15:46
asking god to forgive him for what he
00:15:48
had done
00:15:50
prosecutors didn't need to find sherry's
00:15:53
body in order to go to trial
00:15:55
no one could have survived the amount of
00:15:58
blood loss found in sherry's bedroom
00:16:01
but for the sake of her family
00:16:03
prosecutors approached bob dorell's
00:16:06
attorneys with an offer
00:16:08
we said we would encourage mr drawl
00:16:11
to lead us to the location of the body
00:16:13
of his wife
00:16:15
and that we would not use evidence that
00:16:18
he had
00:16:19
revealed the whereabouts in trial
00:16:22
surprisingly
00:16:24
bob agreed
00:16:25
and led investigators to the cascade
00:16:28
mountains about an hour's drive away
00:16:31
there at the base of a steep ravine
00:16:35
they found
00:16:36
cherry's body
00:16:37
in a plastic bag
00:16:40
under a pile of rocks
00:16:42
the autopsy revealed
00:16:44
sherry died of blunt force trauma
00:16:47
just as the forensic evidence suggested
00:16:52
prosecutors believe bob was as unhappy
00:16:55
in the marriage as sherry was but
00:16:58
concluded a divorce would be too
00:17:00
expensive
00:17:02
he did not want to incur the costs of
00:17:05
child support or of a divorce a division
00:17:08
of the property
00:17:10
mrs gerald's parents were fairly wealthy
00:17:13
mr drawl didn't want to lose his
00:17:16
inheritance
00:17:18
on the night of the crime
00:17:20
prosecutors think bob drugged sherry to
00:17:22
make her drowsy
00:17:24
although toxicology tests that the
00:17:26
autopsy were inconclusive
00:17:31
[Music]
00:17:37
the evidence proves bob hit sherry on
00:17:40
the head repeatedly with a blunt object
00:17:45
creating the blood spatter on the floor
00:17:48
walls and ceiling
00:17:54
bob wrapped her body in plastic
00:17:58
then
00:17:59
carried her body to the garage leaving
00:18:02
the blood smear on the door
00:18:07
he dumped her body in the ravine near
00:18:09
the cascade mountains
00:18:11
and returned home
00:18:13
to clean up the crime scene
00:18:18
the evidence shows that bob tried to
00:18:20
clean up the blood in the bedroom
00:18:23
but couldn't come close to removing it
00:18:26
all so you've got a guy who fancies
00:18:29
himself an extraordinarily clever and
00:18:32
crafty fellow who's done all months of
00:18:34
research on how to commit a murder and
00:18:36
then he commits a mistake that a sixth
00:18:39
grader would laugh at so he's a very a
00:18:42
very peculiar man a very dangerous man
00:18:45
in some ways was his own worst enemy
00:18:49
police think it was bob driving sherry's
00:18:52
van to the hotel parking lot when the
00:18:55
witness reported seeing it and they
00:18:57
think the store clerk was simply
00:18:59
mistaken when he claimed sherry was in
00:19:01
his store the day after her
00:19:03
disappearance we pulled the videotape
00:19:05
from the store that from that evening
00:19:07
and sherry was nowhere on the table
00:19:09
at bob dorell's trial
00:19:11
despite leading police to sherry's body
00:19:14
he pled not guilty and took the stand in
00:19:18
his own defense
00:19:19
he told an incredible tale of two men
00:19:22
who killed sherry and forced him to
00:19:25
dispose of her body
00:19:27
they said they'd kill him and the
00:19:29
children
00:19:30
if he went to the police
00:19:33
actually i was having a hard time
00:19:35
trying not to laugh because i thought it
00:19:37
was so ridiculous of a story that
00:19:41
after two years in jail you think he
00:19:43
would come up with a better
00:19:46
a better story but in reality i think
00:19:48
that he was putting half the story
00:19:50
together during the trial
00:19:52
in the end
00:19:54
there was simply too much forensic
00:19:56
evidence
00:19:57
the computer forensics and blood spatter
00:20:00
told the story
00:20:02
after only two hours of
00:20:04
deliberation bob dorell was found guilty
00:20:07
of first degree murder and sentenced to
00:20:10
46 years in prison
00:20:13
i will impose a total
00:20:15
of 560 months
00:20:18
despite spending months researching and
00:20:21
planning his wife's murder
00:20:23
he still wasn't able to get away with it
00:20:26
i think the forensic evidence was
00:20:28
everything the direction of the blood
00:20:29
the patterns how they went out around
00:20:32
the room
00:20:33
like in many cases the evidence was
00:20:35
really
00:20:36
overwhelming
00:20:38
not just a single thing but many many
00:20:40
items that helped us feel confident
00:20:42
about what we were doing
00:20:45
mr doral who was professionally involved
00:20:48
in the use of computers the extent to
00:20:50
which he left
00:20:51
evidence of
00:20:53
premeditated
00:20:54
murder
00:20:55
on his work computer in such a sort of
00:20:58
blatant way
00:21:00
really continues to boggle my mind
00:21:05
[Music]
00:21:19
[Music]
00:21:29
[Music]
00:21:35
[Music]
00:21:41
you
