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the victim's body was removed from the apartment and taken to the Philadelphia
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police were searching for a sexual predator who had climbed to the upper floors of buildings to attack his
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victims Geographic profilers predicted that the perpetrator lived or worked near his
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victims but when identical crimes occurred 1700 M away in Colorado investigators either had a perpetrator
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with a very long commute or they had to rethink their assumptions [Music] [Music]
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writtenhouse Square in Philadelphia Pennsylvania on sunny days the park is filled with sunbathers and joggers many
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are students at the nearby University of Pennsylvania in 1998 Shannon sheber lived just a few blocks from the square
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she was 23 and a graduate student at the UN University's prestigious Wharton
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School of Business she was pursuing a PhD program in insurance but always uh interested in a challenge she was also
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simultaneously pursuing a a degree in in finance to her parents Vicky and Sil sheeper Shannon was all they could have
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hoped for in a daughter Shannon was a very happy person she was inquisitive she wanted to learn about everything
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always a bundle of energy thousand and questions every time you went somewhere she had to know how did this happen or
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what made that do it that way she was extremely bright uh she was competitive in her writing she wrode because she
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wanted to win ribbons uh but she had an extremely caring side about her also she had a
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more diverse group of friends I think than almost anybody I've ever known Shannon excelled at everything she
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did her senior year in high school she was was president of the student body when another president came by to
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announce he was running for reelection when attending undergraduate school at Duke University she was
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president of the freshman class and co- captain of The Equestrian Team she graduated in three years with a triple
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Major in math in economics and in Philosophy from there Shannon moved to Philadelphia to attend graduate school
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she rented a second floor apartment near writtenhouse Square because the area was
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considered safe on the night of May 7th 1998 Shannon spent the evening at home the next day Shannon didn't meet
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her friends as planned so they went to Shannon's apartment and forced open her
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door Shannon's friend broke the news to the sheepers and she just told me I we
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needed to get there right away and um that something bad had happen happened I said Sam you have to tell me I have to
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know she told us that she were there she had run a bath there was a paper so we knew that she was
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studying the killer had somehow managed to climb up to a second floor balcony and enter through a sliding glass
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door there was evidence of a struggle books had been knocked off the shelves on one side of her bed she was strangled
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and sexually assaulted her camera necklace and Pen were stolen blood presumably that of the
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killer was found on the bed the wall and on the outside balcony we assumed that he was either bitten or somehow he got
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cut the blood on the balcony railing was proof he had left this way police knew the perpetrator was
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experienced in gaining entrance to Upper Floor Apartments but they would need more information than that to find
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[Music] him Shannon sheber was a brilliant student with a bright future that ended
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tragically on May 7th 1998 when she was robbed and murdered in her Philadelphia apartment there had been no Witnesses
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and none of the police leads revealed anything of value after investigating for 8 months police were at a
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standstill the first break in the case came from an unlikely source and then that's looking from her an anonymous
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informant called the Philadelphia inquiring newspaper to leak some confidential and highly embarrassing
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information about the Shannon sheber murder investigation to the press this person said it's a shame
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about Shannon sheber um because the department has blown off two earlier cases that were part of this pattern and
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we picked it up earlier maybe we could have headed this off I'm virtually certain it was a senior police
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officer investigative reporters from the newspaper dug a little deeper uncovering
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evidence that the police covered up several earlier rape cases in order for the city's crime statistics to look
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better than they really were Philadelphia police had a long-standing practice of deep sixing sexual assault
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complaints of at least 20 years it wouldn't be coded as a true crime it was just taken off the books
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entirely two of those crimes were rape cases never reported that happened a year before Shannon Shea's murder with
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the same Mo all of the victims were young females who lived alone and had no boyfriends or
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animals our reporting showed that typically it was the most powerless victims who were subjected to this
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treatment homeless women africanamerican women you know women who had no clout to
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protest one of these earlier victims got a brief look at her as salant a police sketch artist put
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together this composite he was described as a tall slender light complected male well groomed in his mid
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20s there was a task force created there were undercover police plane closed policemen brought in the composite was
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circulated we knew we were dealing with someone very agile very thin probably very very athletic we had checked the
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basically all the athletic clubs in the City and surrounding area in July of 1999 Bo and perie turned to FBI
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profilers for help based on knowledge gained from prior offenders the profilers believed that
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the rapist was familiar with the neighborhood comfortable being out late at night and had probably been involved
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in other peeping Tom or vois activities in the past 15 months after Shannon sher's
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murder the center city rapist claimed his sixth victim this time he removed 14 SC cruise from a set of burglar bars to
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gain access to a ground floor apartment we were horribly saddened and we talked to the parents of the of the young woman
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who was attacked and they called us they reached out to us and and we chatted at
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some length with both the father and the mother but it gave us hope at the same time we were devastated that now there
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was a chance that someday the guy who caught Shannon would be in prison and that was always very important to
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us after the sixth attack Detective Bole and perie took another step Bole had seen an episode of Forensic Files on
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court TV about a series of sexual assaults in Louisiana solved with Geographic profiling so Bo contacted Kim rosmo the
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investigator who appeared in that episode we know as a basic principle that offenders commit the crimes close
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to home we also know they do it in areas that they're comfortable with their
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comfort zone osmo surveyed Philadelphia's Center City by helicopter and on foot then he
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entered Shannon's address and those of the five other victims into his Geographic profiling program and then
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the computer system generates for us after a number of calculations up to a million what's called a Jeopardy surface
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a Jeopardy surface is a three-dimensional probability surface showing us the most likely location of
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offender residence orange represents the areas where the center city rapist is most
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likely to live or work the police flooded those areas with sketches of the rapist but ultimately it
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didn't matter the center city rapist and now murderer never struck again at least
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not in Philadelphia [Music] shortly after the center city rapist claimed his sixth victim in Philadelphia
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the crimes mysteriously stopped police had a number of theories the perpetrator struck only
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during the spring and summer when the summer of 2000 came and went without an incident police feared he had fled
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Philadelphia and might never be caught investigators suspected the perpetrator was a college student who
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lived in Philadelphia during the summer but went to school out of town what they didn't know was 1700 M
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away in Fort Collins Colorado there was a similar rapist committing crimes in the exact same way the suspect was
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entering by removing screens and climbing in through the windows and then once inside the suspect was taking
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control of the victim while the victim was sleeping the attacker struck five times during
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the Spring and Summer of 2001 he pulled pillowcases over his victim's heads and assaulted
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them during the fifth attack he made a mistake he had entered the victim's apartment by way of a second floor
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balcony crime lab supervisor Jeff saboda took a portion of the balcony railing back to his lab and sprayed it with
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ninhydrin a chemical used to uncover fingerprints on porous surfaces the ninhydrin reacts with skin oil causing
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fingerprint ridges to turn purple an hour later he got the results three perfect Prince put his palms here placed
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his left hand leaving his left thumb print in left ring and left little finger and then jumped over Fort Collins
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mailed photographs of the prince along with the description of the attacks to police departments all across the
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country asking for assistance the letter caught the attention of a police clerk in
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Philadelphia she thought of the center city rapist which was he was called at the time and she contacted the Special
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Victims Unit uh detective lur detective lur then contacted the Fort Collins Police Department
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when DNA from the rape test kits in Colorado were compared to blood found in Shannon Shea's apartment the DNA
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matched when they called back to say that they had in fact done a comparison and that the samples match um it was
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overwhelming I think there was this this amazing sense of hope that that now this
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guy was going to be caught but why did the rapist leave Philadelphia for Colorado and how would
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police catch him to find out investigators needed to identify everyone who lived in Philadelphia
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during that crime spree who were later in Colorado during the crimes there every person that would have this the
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two cities in common we would want to talk to them computer crime expert Lieutenant Ed Monahan asked a college
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friend Bill news to help with the search we can do that we can finish 's happened
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to work for Lexus Nexus an information retrieval service containing more than 30,000 public
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databases not all of the search parameters will be revealed in this program a lot of it was Geographic and
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and I really don't want to go into any further than that they called through credit bureau
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records and found 319 males who had been making Financial transactions in Philadelphia and then did the same in
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Fort Collins Colorado they further narrowed the search by looking for males between the
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ages of 20 and 30 years old who had been living in or around the areas of the Philadelphia attacks zip Cod is a short
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and easy way of identifying a geographic area Monahan got the list down to 83 names which he immediately sent to
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police in Colorado those names were added to a list of more than 800 suspects the
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Colorado Police gathered before they all could be checked there was a seventh assault police needed to work quickly
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before there was an [Music] e by now police knew that the center city rapist in Philadelphia was now in
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Colorado committing similar crimes there there had been a total of one murder and
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12 sexual assaults five in Philadelphia seven more in Fort Collins Colorado in September
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2001 Colorado police were methodically investigating potential suspects and running DNA tests when they received
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this letter I'm sorry but I can't let you catch me yet not in Colorado I don't
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even like it here I'm not a fan of cold weather I don't even like going up to Fort
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Collins anymore you guys are everywhere I admit I want to get caught I don't
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like what I do it keeps me at a distance from people and I can't talk to anyone
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it gets lonely the letter contained details of the crimes only the perpetrator could have
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known but it didn't contain any DNA or fingerprints ultimately detective Cochran concluded that the rapist was
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trying to Sidetrack the investigation we allowed the suspect to lead us in a different direction because
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of this letter um that ultimately we might miss somebody Colorado Police had received
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more than a thousand tips one call was from a woman who said she had dated a man who resembled the
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police sketch the man's name was Troy Graves a name that appeared on the list
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of suspects generated by Philadelphia police computer experts Graves had worked for a bank in
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Philadelphia not far from the victim's homes after the last attack in Philadelphia Graves joined the Air Force
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and was sent to Fort Warren in Colorado Graves lived in Fort Collins just a short distance from the Colorado
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crime scenes the investigator was told by the girlfriend that Troy like to take walks
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late at night that he trouble sleeping that uh there might have been a prior sexual sexual abuse
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history Graves had once been reprimanded for peeping into a woman's room on the
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Air Force Base and he was thin and athletic physically capable of climbing up to Second Story
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Windows detective Neil heisen contacted Troy Graves and asked him to come in for
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an interview he was very well spoken very polite um so I was a little taken aback by that
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but he did look and match the physical features heum asked the usual questions that had been asked of hundreds of other
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suspects I asked him if he would be willing to take a polygraph exam again this was something I could use to
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exclude him and he was definite on his answer to that he told me not right now he then asked Graves if he would
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agree to be fingerprinted and his response was that felt weird to him nevertheless Graves was taken to the
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police fingerprint expert who ran a complete set of prints paying close attention to the little finger ring
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finger and thumb on the left hand once Miss fton had rolled his fingerprints um I could tell by her
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reaction when she rolled him that she knew Troy Graves fingerprints matched the prince from the fifth victim in
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Colorado and when Grave's blood was analyzed his DNA matched the blood left the Channon sher's
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apartment Troy Graves multi City Rampage was over police and prosecutors believed
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that Grave's motive was sexual assault but Shannon sheber fought back somehow
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cutting or biting Graves which produced the blood on her bed and walls Shannon was the only victim
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murdered when confronted with the forensic evidence Graves confessed he later plad guilty and was
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convicted at his sentencing hearing in Colorado several of his victims got a chance to confront their
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attacker I hate you Troy graes with every ounce of my being I hate you how dare you ever think you could violate
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someone the way you did me and now you are going to pay your future holds not only a complete absence of freedom but
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nights of getting raped and toyed with in ways that even someone as sick as you can't imagine yet Troy Graves was
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sentenced to life in prison I had given up hope a long time ago they'd ever find him I really did I
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really did but um it was good not to have any more victims and that's a personal very personal
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feeling as a mother of a victim definitely Shannon's parents keep her room as it was when she was alive filled
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with her Championship ribbons her books her photos of family and friends we were extremely close and to
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think of somebody who was so alive and so part of you uh who's now gone so suddenly it's it's just
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horrendous the hunt for Shannon's killer was a classic needle in the hyack investigation its solution solid
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detective work behavioral and geographical profiling and computer forensics here's the locations of the
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offenses the bank the graves worked at the location of his girlfriend's home
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his first residence the assaults all took place along routes that Graves would have
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traveled from his two rented Apartments to his girlfriend's home and to work these crimes are usually of the
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more serious nature and any Edge that you can give to help the investigators great we like to think of geographic
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profiling as just one more tool in their toolkit I think it's important to realize that no profile can solve a
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crime you need physical evidence and witness or a confession to do that and it's going to be the detective in charge
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that solves it we just play a a small support role but to the degree that we can assist in helping them Focus or
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understand the crime or prioritizing suspects then you feel very good computers don't commit crimes and
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computers don't solve crimes detectives solve crimes and even in this instance I
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think it's a really great example of effective work and Technology powers of of the DNA evidence
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today and the specialist that you can go to from the geographical profiler to the
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FBI profiler to the use of the computers it's changed how we do our job how we do
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an investigation forensic science is is where it's at today [Music] [Music] w
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[Music] [Music]