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[Music] a family dog witnessed a brutal murder whoever entered knew the victim knew the
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dogs an animal expert finally got the dog to talk just not in the usual way [Music]
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[Music] um there are two sides to palm beach county florida it's home to some of the wealthiest
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people in the world but a few miles away lived people struggling just to pay their rent
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we have great neighborhoods and really bad neighborhoods a lot of crime for the for the size of the community we
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are we have a with an extensive amount of violent crime a lot of murders kathy and jeffrey lamb
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didn't live in one of the palm beach mansions jeff was a tow truck driver kathy worked
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for the walgreens drugstore chain i liked jeff he was a good kid he was good to kathy and the main thing was she
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loved him and therefore i loved him on june 15 2004 jeff got home from work around 7pm
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but when he walked inside he found blood everywhere what's the problem there
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he was hysterical on the phone uh he was crying so much i think that 911 dispatcher kept referring to him as a
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woman okay ma'am i need you to take some deep breaths take some deep breaths okay
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breathe in and breathe out okay now are you having an asthma attack no my wife my wife is on the
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the blood spatter was completely up the one wall where the side of her head was and then on the opposite wall behind her
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head which was a good five or six feet blood spatter was all over a desk and it flew underneath the desk to the wall
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through a chair it was a lot of blood and it was it was very gruesome when the ambulance crew arrived they
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pronounced kathy lamb dead at the scene she had been beaten to death this wasn't an injury that was caused by
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one blow or two blows there were multiple blows to the head this was something heavy that that made these
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that could create these injuries and between the first blow and what eventually killed her
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she had to have been suffering she was in pain and she had to have been thinking why
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the murder weapon wasn't found at the scene although it looked like it was a blunt
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object with a hexagon shape at the end two of the couple's three dogs were badly beaten too they were found
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unconscious nearby they were both euthanized because of the head injuries the severe head injuries
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the dogs had blood on their paws and mouths an indication they probably attacked the
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killer as he was striking kathy the pac thing would have kicked in and the two of them would have packed up on this one
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individual so you would have had in my opinion you would have had probably quite a bit of damage
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and the killer would be bleeding profusely from those wounds it was decided that we would go ahead
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and clip their nails and swab their mouths because again if this was a home invasion type
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situation there's a good chance that these dogs had scratched or bit the intruder
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the couple's third dog was found in a closed bedroom apparently unharmed it was a mystery why anybody would
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choose to go into this residence with the three dogs especially being large dogs
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whenever i talked to detective kim bradley she told me we will get justice for kathy
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we are going to find the person that did this with no clear suspects at least none
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that we're being told about the sheriff's department is turning to the neighborhood for help passing out these
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flyers with kathy lamb's picture on them and asking anyone who may have had any
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information about what happened here to give them a call kathy lamb's murder scene was stranger
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than any investigators had ever encountered at first they assumed the motive was
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robbery kathy's husband jeff said the only thing missing was a pair of kathy's
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gold diamond earrings the master bedroom all the drawers are pulled out nothing has been disturbed though the
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clothes sit in there still folded up and there's no there's lots of jewelry and
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items on top of the dresser the medical examiner estimated that kathy was murdered between 4 30 and 5 in the
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afternoon since jeff lamb found his wife's body he was naturally considered a suspect
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jeff lamb had a very good alibi he's at his employment and there's several
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people there that can vouch for his whereabouts at the time soon other suspects emerged
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while police processed the crime scene a woman named joey steidel arrived and introduced herself as
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jeff lamb's fiancee it's curious that the husband the grieving husband is now being
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consoled outside of the crime scene by his fiancee i think human nature would tell you when
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a guy is telling you he has a good relationship with his wife and a girlfriend or a fiancee shows up at the
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crime scene it's gonna start making you think something's going on here while jeff admitted he had an affair
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with joyce tydell he claimed their relationship was over jeffrey's story was that he had
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reconciled with his wife and that they were going to be permanently living together again
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and it was contradictory that joey stedel would come into it and say oh no we're moving over to this house in
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jupiter joyce steidel was now a suspect too but she had an alibi for the time of the
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murder she worked as a waitress at a nearby restaurant and dozens of customers saw her
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next jeff's cell phone records identified yet another suspect on the afternoon of the murder jeff lamb
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spoke with another female friend on the telephone the first phone call that was made after
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we believe the murder took place was made to lisa adzabel who turned out to be joey stedel's neighbor
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lisa adzerbelle was a married mother of two children when questioned by police lisa admitted
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she too had a relationship with jeff lamb in fact lisa's husband had caught them together
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in a compromising situation just a few weeks before kathy lamb's murder so i kicked my front door in and he was
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on my couch you know shirt on and he had shorts on her pants on or something no shirt inside shoes and grabbed it well i
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got mad at him and chased him out the backside glass door ray then said he called jeff on the phone
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and then i left him a message on the cell phone that if he came around my house or family again that you know i
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was mad you know said i would kill him you know i'll do anything protect my family and i don't want him around
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when we first learned that raymond had been so angry with jeff he was somebody that we were interested in
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we certainly had to investigate both ray and lisa adzerbel had an alibi for the day of kathy's murder and were
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eliminated as suspects but police were still troubled by lisa's telephone calls to jeff on the afternoon
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of the murder lisa said they were purely social phone records proved that lisa made these calls from home
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but jeff's cell phone records indicated jeff wasn't at work as he claimed
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we get the phone records which showed he is down by that house the phone towers are hitting off of
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phone towers closer to the house than they are where he claims to be and investigators found
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another contradiction jeff said his dog bandit was in a locked bedroom when he found his wife's body
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but investigators found bloody paw prints in the bedroom and the blood was kathy's
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this meant the killer put the dog in the bedroom after kathy's murder but why
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an unknown assailant not only attacked kathy lamb but also her two dogs nipper and dakota
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presumably with the same weapon kathy's friends and even mr lamb himself said that those dogs that were in that
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house would have torn apart a stranger but investigators couldn't understand
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why the dogs weren't all together why were her two smaller dogs beat so severely
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and yet the biggest dog of the group was never struck and the dog was also locked in a bedroom
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the third dog was a hybrid a wolf mix that was owned by the husband investigators thought the blood on the
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dog's mouths and paws had come from kathy's attacker but forensic testing disproved that
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the swaps and clippings that had been taken from the dogs came back negative for any human dna
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the couple's third dog bandit was initially believed to be unharmed but the humane society discovered he
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suffered injuries too but not from the killer we discovered that bandit actually had
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several puncture marks which had indicated that he had been in a fight and probably
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had been in a fight with the other two dogs so the dogs attacked one another but not the killer even while the killer
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was beating them and they stood there and they took their beatings and then they went and they hid
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to animal behavioralists the reason was clear and then a stranger wouldn't wouldn't
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have been able to beat those dogs brutally the way they were beaten without them fighting back somebody
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obviously knew the dogs so it had to be somebody that you know they weren't going to
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fight back it seemed pretty clear from the evidence that only one person could have done
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this crime but prosecutors had a problem the surviving dog banned it obviously couldn't tell police what happened
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so investigators had to dig deeper and started by looking into jeff lamb's finances
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a few years earlier jeff's former employer accused him of stealing almost thirty thousand dollars
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he returned the money and agreed to pay an additional 20 000 fine he wasn't a dumb man
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but you didn't think he was like real bright and was going to set the world on
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fire his current job as a tow truck driver didn't pay particularly well and these payments were a hardship
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twenty thousand dollars in a lot of money to most people but to some people it's it's like a million dollars
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police also discovered that jeff was the beneficiary of kathy's 29 thousand dollar life insurance policy
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he was making restitution for prior criminal activity um i think he had was tired of making those payments
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uh it was a very small life insurance policy but i think to him it was the answer to
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what he needed and it didn't matter how he got it in a search for forensic evidence
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investigators had the presence of mind to confiscate the clothing jeff was wearing the day of the murder
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the clothes that we took from him at the scene was a t-shirt with the tasmanian devil on the front making
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an l shape like this and underneath the caption loser he was wearing a pair of dark blue jeans
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and black boots a forensic analysis found no blood on the shirt and boots but blood spatter expert
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stuart james examined the genes section by section under a stereo microscope well the dark color of the gene
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certainly made it more difficult to see blood but at 60 times magnification james could see things invisible to the
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naked eye deep within the fabric on the gene's left leg near the inside of the thigh
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james saw tiny specks of what appeared to be blood the suspected blood stains were actually down within the weave and
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between the weave of the fabric which indicated to me that these stains were not the result of
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transfer which would have just been on the top of the weave but rather down driven into the weave much more
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consistent with impact spatter the blood spatter was the same size and shape as one would expect to find after
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inflicting a beating with a blunt object dna testing of this blood revealed it was kathy lamb's blood
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we have impact spatters at the scene on the wall and we also have impact spatters
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on the left interior thigh area of the dark jeans of jeffrey lamb this was definitive proof
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jeffrey lamb struck the fatal blows the splatters were so deeply embedded in the fabric
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that it couldn't have just been an incidental contact that it had to be with force and
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you know thank god he didn't change his pants and blood spatter expert stuart james
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found one more thing he just happened to reach into one of the pockets just checking to see if
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there was anything in there and he found an earring a little diamond earring that
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belonged to kathy and jeff lammett told the police that those earrings were missing
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investigators now had everything they needed except the murder weapon two months after kathy lamb's murder a
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workman found a tire iron on the roof of his building he'd been on the roof because he'd been
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leaking over at the tow company and he'd found a tire tool that was used on one of their big big
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tow trucks it was the office building of the tow yard where jeff flam worked the tire iron had hexagonal heads for
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loosening and tightening nuts it was tested for dna we tried everything to test the tire
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iron but the problem is it's south florida and it rains all the time the tire arm was on the roof for two and a
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half months the sun would have evaporated any dna as well as the water washing it off
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but since it was so distinctive as were the wounds on kathy's body the tire iron was still a valuable piece
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of evidence the hexagonal head was placed over photographs of kathy's wounds
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and you look at the injuries on kathy's face like there's no way in the world
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anything other than this did it and it was so unusual i've never seen anything
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like it in your life jeffrey lamb was arrested and charged with first degree murder
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prosecutors believe jeff wanted out of his marriage he often told friends that kathy was a
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poor housekeeper but apparently jeff was no better you know he called her dirty and yet his
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truck was filthy i mean he had more garbage in his truck than you would throw out in the street i don't know if
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you call him a hypocrite or something but he didn't live a better lifestyle than his wife
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the couple separated for a few years but even after they reconciled jeff continued to have affairs
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kathy tolerated his infidelity but she didn't like it i felt very sorry for kathy i felt very
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bad because i knew that she loved him very much and i thought that she would be very
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hurt over that jeff was paying off a twenty thousand dollar fine for embezzlement
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and a divorce would have left him with even less money to make those payments jeff had a friend he had told him that
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i'm i'm not going to lose my stuff and i'm not going to give up her life
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insurance policy i'll kill her before she divorces me prosecutors believe jeff planned to use kathy's life
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insurance proceeds to start a new life with his fiancee on the afternoon of the murder
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jeff was at work his fiancee's car was at the tow yard for repairs according to co-workers jeff said he was
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taking the car to get gasoline and left sometime between 4 30 and 5 o'clock the evidence suggests he went home
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waited for kathy to return from work and when she did beat her to death with the tire iron
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in the process he got blood spatter on his jeans the dogs didn't attack him but in their
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agitation they attacked each other to separate them he hit kathy's dogs and took his dog bandit into the bedroom
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and closed the door [Music] he took kathy's diamond earrings to make it look like a robbery
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one of those earrings was later found in his pocket jeff changed his shirt and shoes
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but not his jeans he probably didn't see the blood on them jeff's friend lisa called him on his
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cell phone just after 5 pm the call bounced off a cell tower near jeff's home proving
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he wasn't at work as he claimed there's no evidence lisa knew anything about the murder
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when he returned to the tow yard he threw the murder weapon up onto the roof thinking
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no one would ever find it [Music] his co-worker did however two months later while repairing a leaking roof
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the blood spatter was supported by these cell phone records and it was further supported by
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the actions of the dogs it was planned he took my daughter from us her family and her friends
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for 29 000 in september of 2006 jeffrey lamb was convicted of first degree murder
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he was sentenced to life in prison without parole we were confident going to trial
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because the case wasn't just based on science it was based on common sense i
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don't believe he gets up one morning of one day and says how could i have done that to that human
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being beside the fact that she was my wife besides the fact that i've known her since she was a teenager
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his first mistake was not to change his clothes after he'd killed his wife the second mistake would be
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throwing a tool up on a roof where it doesn't belong and somebody may discover
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it his clothing was the key to the case if if the detectives had not asked him to remove his clothing we could never
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have convicted on the crime he would he definitely would be walking free today you