00:00:05
[narrator] Shortly after
daybreak in Vancouver, British
Columbia, a fire was set to the contents
00:00:12
of a garbage dumpster. No one
saw the arsonist or the fire as
it burned for hours in the deserted parking
lot. But there was more than
garbage in the bin and
00:00:23
it would take sophisticated
science to identify the evidence
in the ashes. b b When Milton Diaz walked towards
the dumpster to empty some
trash, he noticed
00:01:00
that the bin was warm. When he
looked inside, he noticed a
small charred figure in the corner so badly burned it
was beyond recognition.
00:01:09
- I know something was burned.
But what was it? Was it an
animal or was a person?
00:01:16
If it was a person, it was too
terrible to happen. It was too
out of, you know, what I can conceive that someone
would do to another human being.
00:01:30
- [narrator] The charred remains
were carefully removed and taken
to the morgue where the gruesome and difficult
task of identification would
begin.
00:01:40
- Straight away, we knew we
wouldn't have fingerprints and
we knew we wouldn't have
00:01:44
the normal means to identify a
victim because of the condition
of the body. - [narrator] All that remained
was the equivalent
00:01:54
of 35 lbs. of charcoal-like
material. It was an enormous
challenge to Vancouver's medical examiner,
Dr. Laurel Grey.
00:02:02
- Well obviously, we didn't have
a whole lot to work with. We had
no idea what the
00:02:07
cause of death was, whether it
was related to the fire or some
other matter. - [narrator] During the autopsy,
Dr. Grey could not find any
recognizable skin,
00:02:18
but did find a small patch of
hair where the head pressed
against the floor of the dumpster.
00:02:25
It appeared to be reddish blonde
in color, but the intense heat
destroyed the hair
00:02:31
follicles which could have been
used for DNA testing. X-rays of
the victim's
00:02:37
skull revealed several pieces of
metal, and a fractured skull,
evidence of gunshot wounds. Bullet fragments
recovered from brain came from a
.22-caliber weapon,
00:02:52
but they were so badly damaged
they could not be used for
ballistic identification.
00:02:58
Police now knew
that it was a homicide case. - The gunshots had caused
obvious, very severe damage to
the brain. They had
00:03:08
fractured many of the facial
bones. There was a lot of blood
within the facial bones
00:03:15
and the sinuses. - [narrator] The blood
in the sinus cavities meant there was active circulation
when the bullets
00:03:22
entered the victim's brain,
indicating that the heart was
beating when the shots were fired. But the
intense heat altered the
victim's blood chemistry,
00:03:32
making it impossible for any
kind of DNA analysis. An
examination of the victim's
00:03:38
lungs showed no signs of smoke
inhalation, which meant that the
victim was dead before the fire. The internal
organs revealed that the victim
was an adult
00:03:49
female. To help with the
identification, investigators
called in Dr. Larry Chivers.
00:03:55
He's a forensic odontologist
who was asked to study the dental remains of the
victim.
00:04:01
- This was a victim of an
inferno, an absolute,
unqualified inferno. There was virtually nothing
left.
00:04:09
- [narrator] But
when Dr. Chivers looked closer, he was surprised to see
beneath the charred surface
00:04:16
that the jawbone and teeth were
intact. - Because they're surrounded by
barriers, there's saliva in the
mouth, the gasses in
00:04:25
the stomach expand and push the
tongue out and the outer muscles
of the face become
00:04:30
quite leathery. And so the one
thing that survives above all
else is the teeth. - [narrator] By studying
the growth patterns
00:04:36
of the teeth and skull,
Dr. Chivers estimated that the victim was between 24
and 30 years of age. And when
Dr. Chivers looked
00:04:46
closely at the x-rays, he
discovered an important clue.
The victim had an extremely rare dental condition
called mesiodens. It's an extra
tooth which never
00:04:59
grew into place on top of the
two front teeth inside the gum.
The x-rays also showed a lot
of high-quality dental work.
00:05:09
- When you start talking 48
hours past the finding of the
body and you don't have an
00:05:13
idea who the suspect is, that
stage, we didn't know who the
victim was. You start
00:05:18
thinking, "Well, it's gonna be a
long haul. It's gonna be a
difficult case."
00:05:22
- [narrator] Greg Middleton
covered the search for the identity
of the victim and her killer
00:05:27
for the Provence Newspaper in
Vancouver. - They told me at the time that
they thought there was no hope
of solving it.
00:05:33
That there was,
they had so little to go on that they didn't think that they
were gonna get anywhere.
00:05:42
- [narrator] Police now had
a horrific murder but still couldn't identify the
victim or her murderer.
00:05:55
When the police reviewed all
recent missing persons reports,
one in particular caught their eye.
00:06:02
It was for a 30-year old woman
named Lynn Breeden. She had
blonde hair and was last seen on the day before the
charred remains were discovered.
When the dental
00:06:13
records for Lynn Breeden were
compared to those from the
charred remains, doctors
00:06:17
noticed the same extra tooth
above the gum line on top of the
front teeth and the
00:06:23
dental work matched the burned
victim as well. Dr. Chivers was
convinced that Lynn Breeden was the person
burned in the fire.
00:06:34
- There was absolutely no doubt
in my mind the minute I saw the
mesiodens there and
00:06:38
then obviously the other dental
work and they all added up to
the fact that this
00:06:41
was the same individual,
or the same unfortunate victim. - [narrator] Lynn Breeden was a
part-time model who once posed
for Playboy magazine.
00:06:50
She worked here, at a men's club
called No. 5 Orange, as a
cocktail waitress.
00:06:56
- A lot of her friends were able
to tell us about her background.
And unfortunately
00:07:00
I think she'd gone the cocaine
route in the city of Vancouver
and I think she was
00:07:04
well-involved in the use of
cocaine. - [narrator] Lynn Breeden was
last seen late Friday night
00:07:10
walking along Robson Street in
Vancouver. Police learned that
Breeden's former boyfriend lived on Robson
Street in this apartment
building.
00:07:20
His name was Chris Peycook
and he was well-known to police. - He was a local drug
trafficker, was certainly one of
the last persons
00:07:29
to be seen with her. - [narrator] During police
questioning, Peycook admitted he
was
00:07:37
with Lynn Breeden for most of
the night on the Friday in
question. He said she stopped by his
apartment. They had a few
drinks,
00:07:46
talked for a while, and ended up
having sex. Afterwards they went to Celebrities Night Club and
later to a small after hours
club.
00:07:58
b Peycook said Lynn was behaving
badly, flirting with other men.
And after an entire evening of it, he
became angry.
00:08:17
- [Peycook] We're leaving, come
on. - I...I don't want to--
- Back off! - [Lynn] I don't wanna leave!
- No, we're leaving.
00:08:23
I get you high and you're going
home with these guys? I don't
think so. I said back off! We're leaving.
00:08:26
- I'm not leaving this club.
I'm havin' a great time! - You're such trash.
- I'm having a good time.
00:08:30
- No.
- Fine. - [narrator] He left the club
without her and said that was
the last he saw of her.
00:08:42
- In that case, it was a dead
end. Yes, he looked really good
to begin with, but when
00:08:49
we confirmed, his alibi and his
story, yes, it turned out to be
a dead end as far
00:08:55
as that, he was concerned. - [narrator] But detectives
received an interesting tip from
the manager
00:09:02
of Lynn Breeden's bank. A woman
had posed as Lynn Breeden
attempting to withdraw
00:09:07
all of the funds from her
account. - I got up to the counter and I
asked to help her and she signed
a withdrawal slip
00:09:16
for like $4,000, basically what
Lynn had in her account, and it
wasn't Lynn.
00:09:23
- [narrator] Security
photographs showed the impostor
looking out the window, possibly at an accomplice
standing outside but glare from
the sun hid the identity
00:09:34
of whomever was outside.
The woman left the bank quickly when her identity was
questioned.
00:09:40
- We went to our fraud squad and
said, "Do you know this person?"
And we did all the
00:09:45
investigative things in case
this was a chronic fraud suspect
and somehow, someway
00:09:49
we could come up with a name
through that avenue of
investigation. That didn't give us an answer.
00:09:54
- [narrator] Police launched
an all-out effort to find the woman
who posed as Lynn Breeden.
00:10:01
It was their only lead to the
murderer. The local newspaper published a
photograph
00:10:09
of the woman who posed as Lynn
Breeden at the bank and asked
anyone who knew her to
00:10:14
come forward. Within hours, an
anonymous tip identified the
woman in the photograph
00:10:21
as Tanya Forrester. - Given that information, we
went to her, told her what we
was dealing with, and
00:10:31
asked her for cooperation and
why she was in there taking
the...attempting to take
00:10:35
the money from the victim's
account. - [narrator] Tanya Forrester
told police that she was given
Lynn Breeden's wallet
00:10:42
and identification by a man
named Chris Cruz who told her it
was stolen. Together they agreed to clean
out her bank account before it
was reported missing.
00:10:53
- She was unaware, at the time,
that was the victim of a
homicide's bank account.
00:10:59
- [narrator] Chris Cruz was
an unusual character. He was a model and actor, a
student at the University of
British Columbia
00:11:06
who was planning to attend
medical school. Chris Cruz also went by the name
of Tony Devins, the stage name
he used as a
00:11:16
stripper and professional
escort. He reportedly had a
healthy appetite for cocaine. Cruz told police that
he had been out on the night of
Breeden's murder.
00:11:27
First, at the Love Affair Night
Club and later at the same after
hours club that
00:11:34
Lynn Breeden and her boyfriend
attended. Cruz said he only
stayed for 20 minutes
00:11:38
before leaving in a taxi cab to
see a girlfriend. The next day
he said a friend offered him the contents of Lynn
Breeden's purse, telling Cruz it
had been stolen.
00:11:50
- We asked him, "Can we search
your car?" He said yes we could.
We asked him what
00:11:56
kind of a car it was and he gave
his description, gray
Oldsmobile. We asked him where it was and he said,
"It was not running very well.
It's out at my
00:12:05
grandmother's place in Surrey." - [narrator] But Cruz didn't
know that he had been under
police surveillance.
00:12:11
They knew he had driven his car
to police headquarters for
questioning and parked it right down the
street.
00:12:19
- Initially, you think, "Why is
he lying?" So the car must be
playing a part
00:12:21
um, in the lie. So, we locked that up
and that was secured overnight. - [narrator] When photographic
experts reprocessed the bank
photograph
00:12:35
to remove the window glare from
the sun, police could see the
individual standing outside when Tanya
Forrester
00:12:43
attempted to withdraw Lynn
Breeden's money. It was Chris
Cruz. And when forensic detectives
inspected Cruz's car, they found
blood on the outside of
00:12:55
the car and even more on the
inside. - Inside the trunk, I think he
was basically living out of the
vehicle for
00:13:03
time. It was his own clothing
but there was evidence there
that you could only hope for in any homicide case.
00:13:12
- [narrator] Police also found
a .22-caliber rifle, a five-gallon gasoline container
in the trunk,
00:13:20
and the suit jacket Cruz was
seen wearing at the after hours
club. Inside the pocket, police found a
Playboy bunny pendant stained
with blood. It was similar
00:13:32
to one Lynn Breeden wore in this
photograph. Many items inside
the car were covered with blood. The spare
tire, clothing, a photo album,
and the tire iron
00:13:45
found in the backseat. In spite
of all the evidence, police had
a serious problem.
00:13:53
They had no way of knowing to
whom the blood in the car
belonged. - Our difficulty in this case is
what was is it we were going to
compare it to.
00:14:02
The normal things that we would
use from an autopsy and the
toxicology exhibits were so badly damaged that the
DNA exhibit
00:14:09
from those toxicology exhibits
was not possible. - [narrator] If the police
couldn't figure out a way to
match the blood
00:14:16
inside Cruz's car to Lynn
Breeden, it was entirely
possible that Chris Cruz would walk free.
00:14:27
Police had a lot of
circumstantial evidence linking
Chris Cruz to Lynn Breeden. They found
blood in his car, on his
clothes,
00:14:37
and they found hair and blood on
a tire iron found in the
backseat. - It was just incredible how
much evidence we had and it
would be an absolute shame
00:14:47
if the suspect had been
successful, so successful in
destroying the body that none of that evidence could be
used in order to tie him to the
crime.
00:14:57
- [narrator] The fire not only
incinerated Lynn Breeden's body
but also any chance
00:15:03
of a DNA profile. Her skin,
blood, saliva, and hair
follicles, all possible areas
00:15:12
for DNA testing had all been
destroyed. Dr. David Suite is a
forensic odontologist
00:15:19
who had been following the
Breeden murder in the newspapers.
He suggested that scientists
00:15:26
try something which had never
been attempted before, that they
try to harvest the genetic material from inside
Breeden's teeth from the tooth
pulp in order to
00:15:36
generate a DNA profile. - They ran with the idea,
released some evidence to me in
the forms of some bones
00:15:46
and teeth. I was particularly
interested in the impacted
wisdom teeth or the teeth
00:15:51
that was still embedded in the
jawbone, both the upper jawbone
and the lower jawbone. It was my sense that
these teeth were more protected
from the fire than the
00:16:02
other tissues and the other
teeth because they were deeper
in the core of the body
00:16:05
away for the potential heat
source. - [narrator] The pulp was sent
to the forensics lab along
00:16:11
with samples of blood collected
from Chris Cruz's car. - I never thought for a second
that tooth pulp can be used or
any part of the tooth
00:16:21
can be used for DNA testing. - [narrator] Blood cells were
extracted from the tooth pulp
and treated
00:16:27
with a special chemical cocktail and the DNA floated free,
a sticky bundle of complex
00:16:36
molecules. Next, the DNA was cut
into smaller pieces, marked with
a radioactive dye and placed in separate lanes
on electrophoretic gel where it
was subjected
00:16:50
to an electric field. The
separated fragments are then
visualized on x-ray film called an autoradiogram,
which resembles a bar code.
00:17:00
When scientists compared the
blood DNA found in Cruz's trunk,
on his jacket, and
00:17:07
on the photo album, it matched
the DNA profile of Lynn Breeden. - It was very clear. The match
showed that the DNA typing
profile from the various
00:17:17
exhibits submitted to me matched
that of the DNA typing profile from the tooth pulp from the
victim.
00:17:22
- [narrator] Based
on the forensic evidence, Chris Cruz was charged
with the murder of Lynn Breeden.
00:17:30
At the After Hours Night Club,
Lynn Breeden and her boyfriend,
Chris Peycook got into an argument
when she flirted with some other
men she met there.
00:17:41
- Back off! - [narrator] Following the
argument, Peycook left the club
alone. Witnesses said Lynn was looking
for cocaine that night
00:17:51
and at some point made the
acquaintance of Chris Cruz. There was some evidence that the
two already knew one another.
00:18:00
Both were models,
frequented the same night spots, and reportedly shared
an appetite for cocaine.
00:18:13
Shortly after daybreak, they
left the After Hours Club
together and some sort of disagreement
took place, possibly over
payment for some
00:18:21
drugs Cruz may have provided. As they drove home that morning,
police believe their argument
escalated.
00:18:35
Cruz stopped the car and the
disagreement turned violent. - My money. My money, now!
00:18:42
- Aah! - [narrator] In a rage, Cruz
grabbed a tire iron from the
trunk and struck Breeden on the head
and face.
00:18:50
[Lynn screaming] As Lynn Breeden lay near death
with a fractured skull, Cruz
grabbed his
00:18:58
.22-caliber rifle and shot her
three times in the head. Cruz placed the body into the
trunk
00:19:06
and drove to the deserted
parking lot where he dumped the
body inside a garbage bin and emptied a
five-gallon container of
gasoline
00:19:15
he kept in the trunk. No one saw the fire as it burned
for hours shortly after daybreak
00:19:27
on July 6th, 1991. - According to the fire
department, the fire was
probably one gallon of gas away
00:19:38
from a total cremation. And
looking at the victim at the
time of the discovery, you
00:19:43
would have to believe that it
was close to a full cremation. - [narrator] And without
the scientific evidence,
00:19:50
the remains might have gone
unidentified and the blood in
the car unmatched. - Absolutely, it made the case.
It did the ultimate link up to
all this evidence
00:20:00
that we were so happy to find
to our victim of the murder. - [narrator] And the case broke
new ground for forensic
scientists since it was
00:20:08
the first time that DNA evidence
from a tooth was used in a
criminal case. Chris Cruz was convicted of
second degree murder in the
death of Lynn Breeden
00:20:21
and sentenced to life in prison. - Lynn Breeden was a very
beautiful girl and a lot of
people acknowledged that. In
00:20:29
fact, there were a lot of areas
where she could have gone and
things that she could
00:20:34
have done as a result of it.
Unfortunately, she got caught up
in a little bit of this cocaine
problem and the result was that
it brought her to the
00:20:44
circumstances that led to her
death. Very tragic. Chris Cruz
himself, a good-looking
00:20:50
man, a lot going for him. He had
attended the university here in
town and he was
00:20:56
doing what he could that way, so
it was another spoiled life,
really by him being involved
in what had taken place here.
00:21:01
Again, as a result
of the drug involvement. If you take away the drug, I
don't believe any of this would
have happened.
00:21:08
b b b