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NARRATOR: The murder of a
well known radio personality left police wondering
who wanted her dead.
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A tiny piece of plastic, a
sniffer dog, and a sponge were all investigators
needed to find the answer.
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[theme music] NARRATOR: Radio
personalities have many fans, but aren't usually
the target of stalkers
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since there's a
certain anonymity that comes with the medium. (RADIO ANNOUNCEMENT)
Debbie Dicus, 2WD.
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NARRATOR: But 31-year-old
Debbie Dicus was different. Her late night radio show
on an FM station in Virginia
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captured listeners' attention
with the unique blend of intimate conversation,
self-disclosure,
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and a little music
thrown in too. -Why don't you and I make
sure Maryland and lots of kids
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like her are not
disappointed again this year? -She would tell
the audience, I'm
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kind of feeling this way today,
be it happy or sad or upset or maybe she was
elated that, you know,
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something good had
happened in her life. So she'd say, you know, why
don't you call in and tell me
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what's going on with your life,
or how do you feel about this or whatever. -She sounded like
the girl next door.
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I think that was one of the
things that made her so popular was that she seemed
to be very accessible.
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NARRATOR: But the
story of Debbie Dicus took a tragic turn
when police received this telephone
call from a hunter.
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-I found a dead body. -Where? -You know where that city field
is that they have for a garden?
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-Was it male or female? -It was a female. -Black or white? -She was white. NARRATOR: When police arrived
they found Debbie's body
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in a ditch near the
community garden where she grew vegetables. -My initial viewing of the
body seemed to indicate to me
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a possible sexually
motivated crime. Her clothing was in disarray
and the position of her body
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just seemed to lend itself
to that possible motive. NARRATOR: Robbery didn't
appear to be the motive
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since her purse was in her
car about 30 feet away. -Clearly there was an attack
at the back of the car.
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Her hair barrettes
had fallen out, her cigarettes had
fallen out on the ground. There was obviously
signs of a struggle.
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There was blood on the car. NARRATOR: Near
Debbie's car police found their first
piece of evidence.
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-We noticed a very
black piece of plastic. At the time, we wasn't
sure what it was sitting
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on top the track,
which meant it had to be there after
the car drove in. NARRATOR: As police
investigated the scene,
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Debbie's live in
boyfriend Bill Campbell showed up before
police even called him.
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-As I pulled in, the police
officer sitting in his car immediately got out to stop me.
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And he says, you
can't go back there. I said, my girlfriend's got a
city garden plot back there.
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She's gardening. He goes, yeah, but you
can't go back there, there's been a crime.
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Of course, then I knew
something was wrong. NARRATOR: Campbell
was a disc jockey
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at the same radio station. He said he was
worried when Debbie didn't arrive home
at her usual time.
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-At some point, he told
me that she was dead and didn't give me any
other further details.
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NARRATOR: One of
Debbie's co-workers thought professional jealousy
might have been a motive.
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-I will admit I did have
the list of usual suspects, you know, of people that
used to work at the station
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and no longer worked
there that, you know, maybe didn't get along with her,
because they thought she was
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too mild, and they didn't
like or style of broadcasting. NARRATOR: Apparently,
Debbie told friends
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that she feared this exact
scenario, that someone, possibly a member of her radio
audience, might get too close.
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-Debbie had a paralyzing fear
that she actually sat down and discussed with me
that someone was going
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to break into the studio attack
her, rape her, and kill her. Maybe she had a premonition
that something like this
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would happen, or maybe she
was just overly cautious. -Because she was a
celebrity could it
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be somebody who
followed her there and waited a fan, a
deranged fan, a Play Misty for Me kind of situation?
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NARRATOR: This meant a huge
pool of potential suspects in the Norfolk, Williamsburg,
and Virginia Beach communities.
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Police knew it would be a
difficult investigation. -The community just was very
afraid and it was palpable.
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It was all people
were talking about. You'd go to the grocery
store, you'd go to get gas,
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you'd go to the dry
cleaners and that's what people were talking about. NARRATOR: Debbie Dicus a popular
late night radio personality,
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was found murdered in
a public park where she had planted a
vegetable garden. (RADIO ANNOUNCEMENT)
Debbie Dicus, 2WD.
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-Here's a woman who's doing
her gardening in the afternoon, where there are people in
and out of all the time,
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and she's found
brutally murdered. So it's not the middle
of the night in a place
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where she perhaps
shouldn't have been. NARRATOR: At Debbie's
autopsy, the medical examiner
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found multiple lacerations on
the front and back of her head. And there was an unusual
patterned bruise on her back.
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Her body temperature
and rigor mortis indicated she had been
dead for only a short time
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before police arrived. -And the police
told us that she had been dead no less
than two hours.
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NARRATOR: The cause of
death was asphyxiation. She had been strangled
and then drowned
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in a small puddle of water. The medical examiner found
no signs of sexual assault.
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-Evidence shows
there was a struggle. I just wish she'd
had kicked his ass. NARRATOR: At the
crime scene, police
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continued to search
for possible clues. They interviewed
everyone who had visited the vegetable
garden bad day.
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-They mentioned a young blond
haired boy who was often seen walking around in the area.
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They couldn't recall
when they last saw him, but it hadn't been long
before the offense date.
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So we set about to
try to locate him. NARRATOR: The boy
spent a lot of time in the cemetery
adjacent to the garden,
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and police were
able to locate him. -This young man was identified
as a Michael LaPrade.
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He was an area resident,
lived further up on Armistead, about two miles from the scene.
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NARRATOR: But LaPrade
was not in the city on the day of the murder
and was ruled out.
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Debbie's boyfriend was
eliminated as a suspect. He was at home on the
afternoon of the murder.
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Next, police checked phone
logs at the radio station to see how many
people called Debbie's
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radio show multiple times. -I'm sure over the years that
we spent together and being
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in radio that
long, you know, I'm sure we'd get the
occasional wacky caller, but none sticks in
my mind that she
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felt threatened by or
anything like that. NARRATOR: Investigators
got their first real break
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in the area surrounding
the vegetable garden. Just a few yards
from Debbie's body
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they found what appeared to be
the wooden shaft of a garden hoe. It had been broken in half.
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-It was obvious that the
hoe was used to hit her in the head on
several occasions.
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It was long cuts in
the top of her head, her scalp was wide open. It was consistent with
hard blows of the hoe.
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NARRATOR: A police dog came in
to track the killer's scent. Glennell Fullman
advised the officers
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not to touch the hoe until
the dog could get a sniff. -I didn't want anybody
else to touch the hoe.
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So I had them bring the
hoe out of the water with using a stick, just the
handle, the rest of the hoe
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stayed in the water. I didn't want to disturb
it anymore than I had to. NARRATOR: The dog
picked up the scent.
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Some believe it's the
adrenaline they detect. -Dogs do smell fear. Yes, they do.
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When a person is getting
ready to commit a crime, they know it's wrong,
their adrenalin goes crazy,
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the fear factor comes out. They don't want to be caught. And that puts out more
scent from the body
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which makes a better tracking. NARRATOR: As the
dog sniffed around, a small crowd of bystanders
had gathered nearby.
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Strangely, the dog headed
straight towards them. -He went past her car and
then headed for the crowd.
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I advised the crowd to
stand perfectly still, that he would not bite anybody. Just don't move.
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He went up to a
gentleman's back legs, sniffed up and down his
legs, stopped right there,
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and turned and looked at me. NARRATOR: Why had
the dog identified a man standing in the crowd?
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Investigators would
soon learn why. -When I think about
her it's always in a good way, a positive way.
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I don't, I don't dwell
on how she left us, but what she was before. NARRATOR: When radio personality
Debbie Dicus was found murdered
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in a field, analysts
searched for evidence on the broken hoe
found near her body.
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-Hairs were recovered
from the blade end that was caked in mud. Those hairs were
consistent with the victim.
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NARRATOR: A police dog
tracked the scent on the hoe to a man standing
in the parking lot
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watching police
process the scene. His name was Ronald
Blanchard, the same man who found Debbie's
body and called police.
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-While there could be an
innocent explanation for that, but that was certainly
one thing that we
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were all very interested in. NARRATOR: 21-year-old
Ronald Blanchard was a newlywed who
worked on a fishing boat.
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He had no apparent
motive and claimed he didn't know the victim
was a radio personality
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until someone in
the crowd told him. -I did a background
investigation. I went to the trailer
court where he used to live
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and found out that
he had a record. He was a high school drop out. I found that he,
you know, a very,
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very unstable human being. NARRATOR: When
questioned, Blanchard denied he had touched the hoe
when he found Debbie's body.
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He said all he did was
check Debbie's pulse. On Blanchard's shirt,
analysts found blood spatter.
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When tested, the blood
was clearly not his. -The proteins and enzymes
that were identified
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was consistent with
the victim, which means those genetic
material that was detected
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could originate from her but did
not originate from the suspect. NARRATOR: Blanchard's claim
that Debbie's blood got
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on to his shirt when he leaned
over her body was substantiated to some extent by the evidence.
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-A contact transfer would
be where some bloody object such as a bloody hand makes
contact with a surface that
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is clean, and the blood is
transferred from one surface to the other. NARRATOR: But other
blood stains could
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not be so easily explained. -I recognized at least two areas
of stain, one on the shirt,
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one on the pants,
that would fall into the category
of impact spatter. NARRATOR: Then police remembered
Blanchard said he was hunting
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when he discovered
Debbie's body. So police asked for
the rifle he was using. -Not only that it had
a lot of mud on it,
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but the barrel of
the gun had been bent and the bolt action
had been disabled. In other words, it had been
crushed and broken off,
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a piece had been
missing from it. NARRATOR: This was indicative of
swinging the rifle like a bat.
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Interestingly, the
plastic fragment found near Debbie's
car was the missing piece from Blanchard's rifle.
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-He was asked specifically if
he had been near the victim's vehicle, and he
indicated no he had not.
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NARRATOR: The stock of his
rifle was the same shape and left the same pattern as
the injury on Debbie's back.
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And investigators
found even more. -We noticed that
there were hairs up at that bolt area
which was damaged.
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And two hairs were recovered
from that bolt area. And they were
microscopically examined
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and saw that they
were forcibly removed. NARRATOR: Hairs from
Blanchard's rifle were compared to head hairs
taken from Debbie Dicus
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during her autopsy. Under high
magnification, scientists discovered they were
microscopically similar.
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Coincidentally, before her
death Debbie told her boyfriend that she had gotten
into an argument
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with a man who had
been hunting close to the community
vegetable garden. -Well, she did mention that
she'd seen a guy with a BB gun.
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And she didn't
describe him or she didn't necessarily get
a bad vibe from him. She was just a little angry
that a guy would be out there,
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you know, shooting birds. NARRATOR: And there was another
question that haunted police.
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Why would Blanchard report the
crime if he was the killer? Ronald Blanchard claimed
he found Debbie Dicus' body
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in the ravine while he
was walking to his car after an afternoon of hunting. He insisted that the blood
on his shirt and pants
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was the result of trying to
help Debbie Dicus not hurt her. To find out, forensic
analyst Norm Tiller
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put on white coveralls and
conducted an experiment. He used a sponge soaked
in blood and placed
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it on a motorcycle helmet. Then used a hoe like the one
found at the crime scene.
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-I delivered some pretty
substantial blows with that hoe and immediately we began
to produce the same types
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of stains that were on
the suspect's t-shirt. -And the harder he hits it the
further it goes and the tinier
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it is. So it's, sort of, something
that people, I think, inherently will
understand the physics of,
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but you haven't
ever really thought about it in that context before. NARRATOR: Experts say the
only way Blanchard would have
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this kind of blood
spatter on his shirt was if he was present
during her attack.
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-They were on the upper portion
of the shirt, across the chest, on both sleeves, and actually
some stains were actually
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on the back of the shirt
on the upper portion of the back of the shirt. NARRATOR: The blood on the
back of someone's shirt
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means the person was swinging
an object covered in blood. -There's no other
way to explain this.
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He can talk about
transfer all day long. He can talk about
trying to feel her pulse
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and falling down into the ditch. But that will never
explain how the spatter got onto his clothes.
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-There's no way he
could have gotten blood on his shirt in that way. And they, to me as
an observer, they
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proved it beyond a
shadow of a doubt to me. NARRATOR: The evidence
on Blanchard's jeans
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was also consistent
with a struggle. -The knee areas of the
jeans had grassy stains
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like somebody would have
knelt down into an area with their knees and had
grass stains on those as well.
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NARRATOR: Ronald Blanchard
was arrested and charged with attempted rape,
abduction, and murder.
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Prosecutors believed Blanchard
saw Debbie at the community garden, they may have
spoken or met before.
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The evidence shows
that Blanchard hit Debbie with the
butt of his rifle. When she tried to
get away, he hit her
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again breaking a
piece of the plastic on the rifle, which
was found near her car.
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The motive may have
been sexual assault, and the evidence shows she
fought back aggressively.
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So Blanchard struck her
repeatedly with the garden hoe, which created the fine mist of
blood splatter on his clothing.
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He then strangled her to death. When he got home,
his wife probably saw the blood on his hands.
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This forced him to
create the cover story that he found a dead
body in the field.
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This, in turn, required
him to call police. -I've found a dead body. -Once he made that call, he
had to continue the charade
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and go along with his
story through the end. NARRATOR: He went back to the
scene to speak with police,
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and the dog made
the identification. -This was the first case that
I had a really used a dog track
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to come up with a critical
incriminating piece of evidence. So learning about the science
of dog handling and tracking
00:18:40
was really fascinating. NARRATOR: Police say their
sniffer dog Roadie was used in hundreds of
other cases and had
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an incredible record of success. -And I figured it up. It was over 700 cases. And of those over 700
cases, he was 99% accurate.
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He found what he was looking
for, whatever I scented him on the track trail,
he finished the track
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and found an object, a
person, a car, whatever was at the other
end, he found it.
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NARRATOR: At his
trial, Ronald Blanchard maintained his
innocence and even testified in his own defense.
00:19:16
But the evidence was too great. Blanchard was convicted
of Debbie Dicus' murder and sentenced to two
consecutive life terms.
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-He showed no remorse at all. And he insisted that he was
not guilty that they had,
00:19:33
that the police had the
wrong, the wrong person. -Well, he never
could or never would
00:19:38
acknowledge his true
involvement in this crime. NARRATOR: Only now years
after the crime in a letter
00:19:47
to the producers
of this program has Blanchard finally
admitted his guilt. ROBERT BLANCHARD (VOICEOVER)
I deeply regret the pain
00:19:55
and suffering that I've
caused so many people. Never doubt that I don't
realize what I have done
00:20:00
and accept the
consequences of my actions. -I'm sorry It took so
long for him to do that,
00:20:05
but I guess that's a step in
the right direction for him to continue living
with what happened.
00:20:13
NARRATOR: Debbie's
friends and family didn't need Blanchard's
confession to know the truth.
00:20:18
The truth, they say, was clearly
evident from the forensics. -You go, what went
through this guy's head?
00:20:27
I didn't feel hatred toward him. I felt no empathy toward him. He's just a stupid,
mean guy apparently.
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-I appreciate what science
has been able to do, because if they weren't
able to track down Blanchard
00:20:49
I have to wonder where
it would have stopped. -Without the forensics,
I don't think
00:20:54
it could have all come
together in the way it did. There would've been a lot of
pieces pointing toward him,
00:21:01
but I think there would
have been a lot of holes in the jigsaw puzzle
without the forensics.
00:21:05
[theme music]