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[Music] up next a young girl witnesses her mother's murder and do you say that she's
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pleading but for years the crime goes unsolved this was somebody that crystal knew and
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probably knew well a suspect comes forward with an unbelievable tale it was just the most bizarre story i've
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ever heard in my life it's completely impossible but what if the evidence shows he's telling the truth the dna come back
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and dna doesn't lie [Music] in the summer of 1992 crystal perry bought a small house in bridgton maine
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the single mother thought it would be the perfect place to raise her daughter sarah my mother's number one priority
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was taking care of me and she did all she could to you know buy a house for us as soon as she could and make sure that
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you know i had a really stable upbringing crystal found work in a local shoe factory
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and by all accounts was a good parent whoever you meet to speak with her they would say she
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she worked very hard at the local shoe shop trying to make a better life for for she and sarah it was a steady
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peaceful life but one night after 12 year old sarah had gone to bed she heard an argument between
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her mother and the man [Music] i'm woken right up from sleeping with her saying no as loud as she can and the
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loudest most terrified voice that you could ever imagine sarah didn't know what to do she opened
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her door and looked out but couldn't see anything then she heard a drawer in the kitchen
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open i heard silverware clanging against each other after that i heard a repetitive banging noise
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which i figured was someone killing someone else with a knife then the screaming stopped i realized
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i have to make contact with the outside world and i have to do what i can if she has any chance of living she
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didn't hear the attacker leave she wasn't sure if the attacker was still in the house
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incredibly sarah risked her own life and left her bedroom to check on her mother i saw a body on
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the floor and i saw a lot of blood and as i was approaching it i was hoping that it wasn't her but pretty
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sure that it was her mother wasn't moving sarah tried the phone but there was no
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dial tone so she ran a half mile to a neighbor's house and knocked on the door but no one answered she kept running
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and finally came to a small restaurant and i said someone's killed my mother and i think this person could be after
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me i really need to call 911 when police arrived crystal perry was pronounced dead
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at the scene it's a horrific scene crystal perry is lying on the kitchen floor there's blood
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everywhere there's pools of blood there's footprints and blood there's blood drops
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crystal perry had been stabbed more than 50 times there's a bloodshed event that occurred
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in the living room area and that extended from that area into the kitchen where she was
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found we classified this as a crime of passion because of the overkill which usually 99 of the time leads it to be
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somebody known and some some acquaintance of the of the victim nothing had been stolen from the house
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and there was no forced entry she was in her bathrobe it was later at night and for her to be comfortable um to open
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the door if that's what happened it certainly suggest she either knows them or would
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recognize them it looked as if the killer attempted to clean up while doing so he tracked bloody shoe
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prints over the kitchen floor there were footwear impressions of varying quality and clarity
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all throughout the flooring approximately 20 or more were visible this helped identify the number of
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assailants crystal had bare feet so either there was one suspect at the crime scene
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or there were two with the same type of shoe and the same outsole design so the likelihood of that is low
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bridgeton was a small town only a few thousand people and his residents soon learned one of
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them was a killer because crystal perry had been stabbed more than 50 times there was an extraordinary amount of
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blood at the crime scene the fingerprints were too soaked in blood to be usable but blood spatter analysts noticed a
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series of blood patterns on crystal's body that were distinctive what stood out to us was clearly you
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could see some blood droplets which are on her leg on her exposed leg and when we examined the blood droplets
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it was consistent with a passive blood drop passive blood drops are almost always
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perfectly circular at the point of impact they result from blood dripping straight
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down from a relatively stationary source and since these drops fell on top of crystal's body
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it could mean only one thing they did not come from crystal there's no way that she would be able to
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maneuver her body in such a way that blood drops would come down on the side of her legs
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this was an event that happened after crystal perry was motionless that led to one conclusion the killer
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was hurt during the attack and his blood dripped onto crystal's body blood is slippery blood is consistency
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of motor oil your hand is going to slip down and probably go over the blade and you're going to get
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cut these passive blood drops were also found in the kitchen there was drips of blood in the sink and
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on the counter and appeared that he went to the paper towel dispenser and got some paper towels
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because there was no drips coming back towards the body they were all going towards the sink investigators
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found a shoe in a local store that matched the bloody shoe impression from the crime scene an oak harbor model
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dany shoe so they had an idea of what the shoe of the suspect would look like at crystal's autopsy the medical
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examiner found evidence of sexual assault and collected biological samples for future comparison
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in a search for suspects police turned to crystal's ex-husband thomas who lived only six
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miles away my parents divorced when i was three or four and um i didn't really have a relationship
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with my father he was in town but i didn't know him very well at the time of the homicide crystal and
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tom were not getting along they didn't care for one another it may well have been over child support issues
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thomas had an alibi for the time of the murder he was home with his living girlfriend
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at the time but thomas's alibi was problematic his girlfriend joanne steger had a
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run-in with crystal perry shortly before the murder there was no love lost between the two of them
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joanne is jealous of crystal and to the point where where she had even had a altercation in
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a local bar one night the crystal was punched in the eye and she had a big black eye
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they were quickly pulled apart by the bar owners joanne is actually charged with assault
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those charges were ultimately dropped but thomas and joanne's alibis for the time of crystal's murder
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were now considered suspect joanne's alibi was tom and tom's alibi was joanne police weren't the only ones who thought
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joanne might be responsible somebody was always calling saying joanne's involved
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i'm not saying that she's a girl that could commit murder but but uh she was a tough girl
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but crystal perry's daughter sarah identified another possible suspect on the night of her mother's murder
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sarah said she thought she recognized the man she heard arguing with her mother it was her mother's boyfriend 19 year
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old dennis butler sarah said she'd seen dennis get angry in the past i had seen him go from being irritated to being
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pretty angry very quickly dennis and crystal had a volatile relationship clearly there would be some hurdles with
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her being 30 and dennis being 19. crystal says to a co-worker that there was an incident involving her
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where dennis and her got into a fight and during the fight it was a verbal fight and he had showed a knife and made
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a threat to kill her when questioned by police dennis denied he was at crystal's home that night
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he said he was at his parents house his folks had no idea whether he was there or not
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dennis offered to take a polygraph examination to clear his name twice he took the test and he failed
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both times everything pointed to him everything and i mean the more we get into it the
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more fingers begin to point at it [Music] [Applause] after crystal perry's murder her
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daughter sarah then 12 years old was forced to move to texas to live with relatives
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it was understandably a difficult time when i fell apart i really did fall apart and
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you know cried a lot and had a lot of fear i didn't want to be left alone in the house
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crystal perry's 19 year old boyfriend dennis butler was a possible suspect butler failed
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two polygraph tests it tells us that he being deceptive he was not telling the truth on some of these answers which
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indicated he was either directly involved or he had knowledge of what took place that night
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butler wore the same size shoe as the footwear impressions at the crime scene but investigators did not find oak
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harbor brand shoes in his home when investigators asked butler for his dna sample he
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agreed but in return asked police for a favor in the event they returned to arrest him
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he says i know everything's going to point to me and so when it does just you know try to give me a little
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bit of courtesy here when you come to get me at my place of work would you come in the back door
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because they've been really good to me and i don't want to embarrass the business
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i think in my whole 15 years the homicide unit i don't think i ever had anybody say that to me but when butler's dna was
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compared to dna from the crime scene to everyone's surprise there was no match i was shocked that it did not come back
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dennis's they were all all in shock i think they were all probably 99 sure that dennis was the one
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so shocking that investigators had difficulty believing the results dennis is such a logical
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suspect they ask that it be tested again the results from the second test were the same the dna come back and dna
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doesn't lie and it was not dennis the dna of blood from the crime scene was also compared
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to crystal's ex-husband thomas his girlfriend joanne and several other suspects but again there was no match after the
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dna results came back i think everything was on the table everything was potentially
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possible again the dna from the crime scene was eventually compared to the dna profiles in the database
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of known criminal offenders and again there was no match with that the case went cold the towns people were
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very upset i think any time you have a case that goes unsolved for a long period of time
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it has even more of a dramatic impact it's frightening for the people in town homicide cases are never truly closed
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but the investigation continued with little progress i was on this case for four years before i
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retired and quite frankly i stayed on an extra two years with the state police because of this case
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we knew we had the physical evidence that could nail this person we just had to find a person to match
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over the next 12 years several suspects were considered including a serial killer and a local
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handyman whose romantic advances crystal had once rejected but dna excluded them both
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eventually so much time had passed that i accepted that we weren't going to find this person
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then incredibly investigators got a break the statewide dna database reported a cold hit
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a man named michael hutchinson had recently served six months in a main prison for a
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weapons offense and he was required by law to submit a dna sample for the database it
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matched the semen from crystal perry's autopsy it is his dna it was dna to a mathematical certainty it was
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him to the exclusion of everyone else it was his dna at the crystal perry residence
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michael hutchinson lived within about a mile of crystal perry at the time of this incident occurred
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hutchinson was 19 years old at the time of crystal perry's murder he was never on the screen he was barely
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20 years old his name never surfaced because there was no relationship between the two of
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them they were never seen together when questioned hutchinson made a startling confession
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he admitted he was with crystal on the night of the attack his story is that he was having a secret romance with
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crystal hutchinson claimed he and crystal were in bed when an intruder burst into the house
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[Music] he confronted the man in the kitchen but was knocked unconscious he then wakes up sees the man over
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crystal stabbing her and he runs out the door [Music] did police find a possible witness to
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the crime or had they found the killer michael hutchinson claimed he had an explanation
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for why his dna was at the scene of crystal perry's murder he claimed he was in crystal's home
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having consensual sex when an intruder broke in he said he fled the scene during the
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attack to protect himself and later was embarrassed to admit it he said he was ashamed because he
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couldn't protect crystal or sarah and he got scared and ran out of the house and
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he didn't tell anybody because he was ashamed even hutchinson's ex-wife who had filed two protection
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from abuse orders against him insisted he was no killer i don't believe michael is a mother i
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don't believe he's capable of it and i support him fully but hutchinson who worked in his
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father's construction business was known to have drug and alcohol problems we had called my girlfriend saying that
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you know he was a nut you know he'd drink and get get ugly and get meat people that we
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spoke to just said that he um he was just a real erratic during this time he didn't know what to expect
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from him investigators found numerous problems with hutchinson's story first crystal's bed looked as if only one
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person had been sleeping in it and if hutchinson had been having an affair with crystal
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why hadn't her daughter ever seen him i would have known i was living in the house we really lived as a pair
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you know when you live with a single mother you know what's going on in her life the bloody shoe impressions
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at the crime scene also disputed hutchinson's story it appeared from my analysis that there was
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only one person there at the crime scene leaving down that outsole design when the blood
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was wet finally analysts compared hutchinson's dna to the perfectly round blood drops on
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crystal's leg dna tests proved this was hutchinson's blood and what that drop told us was that crystal was on the
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floor she was motionless probably lifeless by the time and the person is bleeding on is
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dripping blood onto her body so the blood was dripped onto her after she was deceased
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michael hutchinson was arrested and charged with first degree murder prosecutors believe
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hutchinson may have been high on drugs on the night of the murder they also suspect hutchinson and crystal
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knew one another casually since it was a small town prosecutors believe he knocked on
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crystal's door and used a ruse to get inside saying he had car trouble or asking to use the phone
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[Music] they think his real motive was to make a sexual advance which crystal refused
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there was a fight the evidence suggests hutchinson used a knife sexually assaulted crystal
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then stabbed her to death at some point he cut his hand his blood dripped on the crystal's leg in perfect
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circles proof he was standing over her and was not running away as he claimed [Music]
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the final nail in hutchinson's coffin was the scar police noticed on his right hand
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the day they arrested him we saw the significant scar that ran basically from the palm area across the
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whole front of the hand during his trial hutchinson testified in his own defense
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telling the same story of the intruder the jury didn't believe him either everything he told us was a lie and it
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was it was pretty easy to prove once once we knew who he was it took the jury just
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two hours to find michael hutchinson guilty of first degree murder he was sentenced to life in prison
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with no possibility of parole i know this is a really big day that'll look for me and my family
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but that it will also bring peace to a lot of other people the best i can do is accept that there is pure evil in the
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world and that that there are people who are not redeemable although it took years to solve the
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crime science eventually brought justice to a daughter who never lost hope i would say the
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scientific facts in this case really have ruled out any sort of ambiguity that might have
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been left in anyone's mind it was the investigators that found the blood spot that didn't belong on crystal perry's
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leg but it was the dna that really solved the case because without that we never would have found michael
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hutchinson if not for forensic science in this case we probably would have put the wrong person
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behind bars you