00:00:06
NARRATOR: She won $5,000
at the blackjack table, then left the casino. Three hours later,
she was kidnapped.
00:00:14
A single fiber and a
tiny piece of cellophane were the only clues
to her disappearance.
00:00:23
[theme music] NARRATOR: Tunica, Mississippi,
is the third largest gambling center in
the United States.
00:00:54
And that's where
Shannon Sanderson and her second husband,
Robert, loved to go. On April 19, 1996, Robert and
Shannon planned a gambling trip
00:01:05
to Tunica to celebrate
Robert's 58th birthday. But at the last minute,
Robert canceled.
00:01:13
AMY WEIRICH: He told
her that his daughters from another marriage had come
by and brought him a birthday
00:01:17
cake, and he wanted to spend
a little time with them, and wanted to delay
their departure
00:01:23
for Tunica, Mississippi. NARRATOR: The couple argued,
but Robert decided to stay home.
00:01:29
Shannon took her children
from a previous marriage to the babysitter and went
to the casino without him.
00:01:37
And played blackjack,
all night long. By the end of the evening,
she had won $5,000.
00:01:48
SGT. RICHARD DAVID ROLESON:
She took $5,000 in cash. They tried to get her to take
a check, but she wouldn't.
00:01:54
NARRATOR: Shannon left
the casino around 3:00 AM. Then drove to her
babysitter's house
00:01:59
to pick up her three children. When she got there,
she was attacked. Her babysitters
heard the commotion.
00:02:12
SGT. RICHARD DAVID ROLESON: They
saw somebody wearing a red ball cap forcing her into a
maroon Chevrolet Beretta.
00:02:18
NARRATOR: And the car took off
before anyone could intervene. JERRY KITCHEN: They found a fake
fingernail that had been left
00:02:26
during the struggle, and
a button from the dress that Shannon had been wearing. And they, of course,
tagged that as evidence.
00:02:35
NARRATOR: One of
the neighbors was able to identify the assailant. -A neighbor said
it was Shannon's
00:02:40
husband driving the car. NARRATOR: When questioned by
police several hours later,
00:02:45
Shannon's husband, Robert,
denied any involvement. He said his children stopped
by for small birthday party.
00:02:53
After they left, he went to
bed and was alone all night. Since there was no one
to corroborate his alibi,
00:03:01
police asked Robert to
take a polygraph test. SGT. RICHARD DAVID
ROLESON: His attorney
00:03:05
wouldn't let him take
the polygraph test and wouldn't let him
give a statement to us,
00:03:10
other than what he had already
told the uniform officers that made the scene the
night of the kidnapping.
00:03:17
So, that kind of
sent a red flag up. So, we couldn't eliminate him. NARRATOR: A look into
the couple's marriage
00:03:25
revealed they were having
their fair share of problems. It was the second
marriage for both,
00:03:31
and there was a 33
year age difference. AMY WEIRICH: We had heard
some reports from some family
00:03:36
members, that perhaps
there was more trouble than usual with their marriage. That this argument they
had on his birthday
00:03:45
was not an isolated incident. That they had been
fighting quite regularly. NARRATOR: If Robert Sanderson
knew anything about his wife's
00:03:54
disappearance, he
wasn't talking. And police had no
idea where she was. There were several
witnesses to Shannon
00:04:08
Sanderson's early
morning abduction. One of them claimed
that the assailant looked like Shannon's
husband, Robert.
00:04:15
JERRY KITCHEN: We had a witness
that observed a maroon Beretta, and she identified the
individual as Robert Sanderson.
00:04:23
And that was the strongest
piece of evidence that we had at that time. NARRATOR: Robert
denied any involvement,
00:04:30
and said he didn't
own a red Beretta. But Robert was one
of the few people who knew where Shannon
would be that evening.
00:04:39
AMY WEIRICH: And he
was also an individual who had made a lot of money
in the security business,
00:04:44
and would know things
that, you know, the average citizen on
the street wouldn't know.
00:04:50
NARRATOR: Amid rumors that there
was trouble in the marriage, investigators also uncovered
a possible financial motive.
00:04:59
AMY WEIRICH:
Prenuptial agreement had been signed-- it was
actually signed post-marriage--
00:05:04
and provided for-- I believe,
he would had to have gotten her an apartment and
paid her $10,000
00:05:13
if they were to
divorce, of something was to happen to their marriage. NARRATOR: Robert had Shannon
sign this disagreement just two
00:05:20
weeks before her disappearance. -It was a factor to consider,
and not something that
00:05:27
hits the radar every time the
Memphis Police Department is investigating a homicide,
or an abduction.
00:05:32
It was something unusual. NARRATOR: Weeks
passed, and there was no word from Shannon
or her kidnapper.
00:05:40
Family and friends
distributed missing posters throughout town. And police asked
the public to call
00:05:47
if they have any
information to offer. And police also questioned
Shannon's ex-husband, Michael.
00:05:55
The two had only been divorced
for a year and a half. MICHAEL HOLLAND: I had no
idea what could have happened.
00:06:01
One of the police told
me I was a suspect. They questioned me for about
a week straight down there,
00:06:08
at downtown Memphis. NARRATOR: Michael
said he had an alibi. That he was at work at a
chemical company on the night
00:06:15
of the abduction, and
police confirmed his story. Investigators also discovered
there was another man
00:06:24
in Shannon's life, Brett
Musekamp, who dated Shannon briefly in between her divorce
and subsequent marriage
00:06:32
to Robert. Apparently, Musekamp was
angry when Shannon dumped him. AMY WEIRICH: There
were some problems
00:06:38
between he and
Shannon Sanderson. He was calling and harassing. He was also following
her around in her car.
00:06:44
There was one incident
where he blocked her car in and frightened her. NARRATOR: Shannon
pressed criminal charges
00:06:52
and obtained a restraining
order against him. Like everyone else in the case,
Musekamp denied any involvement
00:06:59
in Shannon's disappearance. AMY WEIRICH: The former
boyfriend's alibi was his mother-- that
he was at home asleep.
00:07:05
And his mother vouched for him,
and it all seemed credible. NARRATOR: Hoping
for a lead, police
00:07:11
decided to track Shannon's
movements on the night of her abduction,
beginning with the Sam's
00:07:17
Town Casino in
Tunica, Mississippi. And once again, Robert
Sanderson became the focus of the investigation.
00:07:26
An assistant Casino
manager was sure he'd seen them together that night. AMY WEIRICH: He remembered
Shannon Sanderson and Robert
00:07:35
Sanderson fighting,
and he even went so far as to recall Shannon
Sanderson crouched over
00:07:43
in the corner of the
Casino, and indicating that she was afraid
of Robert Sanderson.
00:07:48
NARRATOR: The
Casino manager also claimed that Robert
Sanderson asked him to help provide an alibi.
00:07:55
-He remembers Robert Sanderson
coming back down the casino after Shannon
Sanderson's abduction,
00:08:02
and talking to Mr.
Burchfield, and saying, you know, I wasn't
down here that night.
00:08:09
NARRATOR: A month after
Shannon's disappearance, a man found the
remains of a body
00:08:15
in a deserted farmhouse
40 miles away. Dental records confirmed that
it was Shannon Sanderson.
00:08:27
JERRY KITCHEN: Shannon was shot
behind her ear, basically-- one shot, which killed
her, of course.
00:08:32
She-- prior to
that, she had been struck numerous
times in the face. Her jaw was broken.
00:08:38
I believe a tooth
was knocked loose and another tooth cracked. NARRATOR: Shannon's
$5,000 was missing,
00:08:45
and so was her jewelry. Leading some to suspect
the motive was robbery. 25-year old Shannon
Sanderson was
00:08:58
found murdered in a
deserted farmhouse 40 miles away from her home. Shannon left behind
three young children
00:09:08
from her first marriage. At the time, they were just
three, five, and seven years
00:09:14
old. MICHAEL HOLLAND: I tell them
that she's a good person. She's a loving mom. She cared about them very,
very much, and to this day,
00:09:24
you know, she still
cares about them. She'll care about them until
the rest of their lives.
00:09:30
NARRATOR: The prime
suspect in the murder was the second
husband, Robert, who was unable to
provide a solid alibi
00:09:36
for the night of her murder. A casino employee recalled
seeing Robert at the Casino
00:09:42
that night with Shannon. A review of the casino's
security cameras revealed Shannon
Sanderson was there,
00:09:52
but no sign of her
husband, Robert. JERRY KITCHEN: We
were able to determine that this particular night
there was no altercation,
00:10:00
and that Robert
wasn't at Sam's Town, because we were able to go back
and look at who she was with
00:10:06
and where she-- when she
left, if anyone was with her. And of course,
Robert wasn't there.
00:10:11
NARRATOR: The investigation
into Shannon's murder had been dragging on for weeks.
00:10:17
During that time,
police received numerous calls about the case. One of them came from a
woman named Sharon Powers.
00:10:28
-She called the Memphis
Police Department, and she said, my husband,
Gerald Lee Powers,
00:10:32
was at Sam's Town
Casino the night that this woman was abducted,
he was driving a maroon Beretta,
00:10:40
and he was wearing
a red baseball cap. That's all she told the police. NARRATOR: A background check
revealed 41-year-old Gerald
00:10:49
Powers was an
unemployed construction worker with a criminal past. AMY WEIRICH: Gerald
Lee Powers had
00:10:55
a horrible criminal history
of terrorizing women. One in which he jumped in a car
of a woman that he didn't know,
00:11:01
held her at knife
point, threatened her. Somehow, miraculously, she
was able to drive and escape.
00:11:08
And there was another case where
he broke into a woman's home, beat her with a skillet,
stole money from her,
00:11:15
and stole jewelry from her. NARRATOR: Powers had served
seven years in prison for the last assault.
00:11:21
And police couldn't speak to
him about Shannon's murder, because he had disappeared.
00:11:28
Police finally caught
him a month later at the Mexican border attempting
to re-enter the United States.
00:11:35
SGT. RICHARD DAVID ROLESON:
They pulled him over, Powers come out with a knife,
the border agent drew his gun,
00:11:42
Powers decided he wasn't gonna
take a knife to a gun fight, and gave up. NARRATOR: Powers was
driving a red Beretta,
00:11:51
the same kind of car witnesses
saw at Shannon's kidnapping. But Powers claimed
he had an alibi
00:11:59
for the night of
Shannon's murder. -We weren't still sure that
he had an involvement in it.
00:12:04
He had told the officers that
he went to visit a sick friend. NARRATOR: That friend, who lived
50 miles away from the Casino
00:12:12
in Clarksdale,
corroborated his alibi. But in Power's
trunk investigators found pieces of
a fake fingernail
00:12:23
with pink nail polish,
similar to the fingernail found at the crime scene. So investigators
took the unusual step
00:12:33
of exhuming Shannon's body. -We needed to make
sure that these were her fingernails that
had been recovered.
00:12:42
NARRATOR: Just as
they suspected, Shannon did have fake nails
glued onto real fingernails,
00:12:49
and they were sent to the
forensic lab for comparison. -We were sent a number of
artificial fingernails.
00:12:58
One from the abduction site. One from the victim at autopsy. One from the suspect's
trunk of his vehicle.
00:13:09
NARRATOR: Under a microscope,
the nail found at the abduction site matched the fake
nails from Shannon's body.
00:13:19
Unfortunately, the nail
found in Gerald Power's trunk was a different shape and
painted a different color
00:13:26
than Shannon Sanderson's nails. -The fingernail from
the subject's trunk differed from the fingernails
associated with the victim.
00:13:37
-When we found out the nails
didn't match, we were shocked. -You know, everybody just,
well, it's gonna match,
00:13:42
it's gonna match. It's gotta match, but it didn't. NARRATOR: To find out if Gerald
Powers was in Sam's Town Casino
00:13:52
on the night of Shannon
Sanderson's abduction, investigators asked
casino management
00:13:58
to screen their security
videotapes once again. -We happened to get lucky,
because cameras that we were
00:14:05
looking at are normally
pointed at table games. In this incident, we were--
had some table games that
00:14:11
were getting ready for
table drops-- that's the collection of the
money from the table games
00:14:15
early in the
morning-- and a camera was left out of place,
out of position. NARRATOR: That camera caught a
partial image of a man wearing
00:14:24
white sneakers standing
on a balcony overlooking the blackjack table where
Shannon Sanderson was playing.
00:14:34
The man went down the escalator,
past Shannon's blackjack table. At the cashier's window,
Shannon collected her $5,000.
00:14:44
Then, a Casino security
guard escorted her to the parking lot. The man followed Shannon out
the door 30 seconds later.
00:14:58
Most of the video
was black and white, but he did walk past a
color security camera.
00:15:04
The baseball cap was red, and
he looked like Gerald Powers. TOM SCOTT: I was pretty elated.
00:15:11
It was a lot of work
that we got this guy. It was, like I said,
hundreds and hundreds
00:15:17
of hours of reviewing time. Very tedious, and when we
did finally get our guy, it was a-- a celebratory moment.
00:15:28
NARRATOR: But prosecutor needed
more evidence against Powers before walking into court and
trying to get a conviction.
00:15:35
And they didn't have any. Then, in a surprising twist,
Gerald Powers wife, Sharon,
00:15:43
led police to the
jewelry that had been stolen from
Shannon Sanderson. Sharon claimed her
husband, Gerald,
00:15:51
told her where he hid it. -He told her that he had buried
the jewelry behind the B and W
00:16:00
lounge, in an old
abandoned couch, and if she needed it for
any purpose, there it was.
00:16:06
NARRATOR: Just as Sharon said,
the jewelry was there-- wrapped in tin foil, and
pink Saran wrap.
00:16:15
In Powers' home, investigators
found pink Saran wrap, similar to the type used
to wrap Shannon's jewelry.
00:16:25
In the forensic lab,
scientist cut tiny slivers from each sample,
and subjected them
00:16:31
to a process known
as Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Infrared light is passed
through each sample.
00:16:41
How much each one absorbs
is then plotted on a graph. Both samples have
the same composition,
00:16:50
and the color of the
cellophane looked the same. But the human eye can
only differentiate
00:16:57
110 different colors. A microspectrophotometer
can detect thousands, and that test was definitive.
00:17:09
-It's my conclusion that the
plastic wrap used to contain Shannon's jewelry, was
consistent with coming
00:17:15
from the plastic roll recovered
from the suspect's residence. AMY WEIRICH: We were ecstatic.
00:17:20
That was very compelling, in our
eyes, and we knew to the jury that that would be
something very compelling.
00:17:27
NARRATOR: Next,
investigators did a thorough search
of Powers' car. SGT. RICHARD DAVID ROLESON: Not
having all the equipment like
00:17:34
they do on "CSI"-- vacuum
cleaners and stuff-- he went and purchased
a lint brush,
00:17:42
and he went over the whole car. NARRATOR: On the
tape lift, one fiber stood out-- an unusual
black, wool fiber.
00:17:54
CHRIS HOPKINS: I noticed
that the dye was unevenly distributed across
the wool fiber--
00:17:58
kind of a mocha brown color in
between, inside the wool fiber itself. So it had a-- kind of a
unique dye distribution
00:18:08
across the wool fiber. NARRATOR: Fibers from the black
skirt Shannon was wearing when
00:18:13
murdered were compared to this
black fiber from Powers' car. Under a microscope,
the fibers appeared
00:18:22
to have the same uneven
distribution of dye. Using a microspectrophotometer,
scientists
00:18:31
found no differences
between the two. The wool fiber in Powers' car
came from Shannon's skirt.
00:18:41
CHRIS HOPKINS: That
was-- that's exciting. It's the reason most of
us in the FBI are here.
00:18:45
We want to find out the truth,
and in these violent crime cases, there are no witnesses.
00:18:51
We can settle this legal
argument, whether these two people came in contact,
and so we find the truth
00:18:57
and present that truth. And it feels good that we
believe that justice was done.
00:19:04
NARRATOR: Prosecutors knew
that Gerald Powers watched Shannon Sanderson play
blackjack and followed her
00:19:12
to the cashier's window,
where she cashed in her chips for $5,000 in cash. Prosecutors believe Powers
followed Shannon for 45 minutes
00:19:26
as she drove to the babysitter's
house to pick up her children. When she got out of her car
Powers knocked her unconscious.
00:19:40
Then, threw her into the car. No one knows where he
went, but at some point he killed Shannon with
a .25 caliber pistol,
00:19:57
stole her casino
winnings and jewelry, then disposed of her body
in an abandoned farmhouse.
00:20:07
-He knew, at that
time, he was not gonna let Shannon live, because
of his previous encounters
00:20:12
that he had attempted
to abduct women. And they had lived
to identify him. In December of
1998, Gerald Powers
00:20:21
was convicted of Shannon
Sanderson's murder and was sentenced to death. AMY WEIRICH: And the
forensic proof in this case
00:20:29
was overwhelming and compelling. And there was a juror
after this was all over, who told us that
they couldn't help
00:20:36
but get caught up in
the wave of evidence that we created from
the very first witness
00:20:41
until the very last, and that we
left them no choice but to find Gerald Lee Powers
guilty as charged.
00:20:48
SGT. RICHARD DAVID ROLESON:
That fiber and that dress put her in that car, and that
was the icing on the cake.
00:20:54
It would probably have been
hard to convince 12 people that he actually committed
the murder without that fiber.
00:21:03
[theme music]