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up next a college co-ed is left for dead in a lover's lane the blood is consistent
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with her being struck up to ten times there were plenty of suspects but very few answers
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the samples could have originated from 20 percent of the population was it a random murder or jealousy if he couldn't
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have her nobody else could for decades the case went unsolved until now he is a cold-blooded killer they wanted
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to solve this at the end of a long day in may of 1984 a farmer in tennessee made a startling
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discovery he noticed some clothing lying in the field there was actually a body lying
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there the victim was a young girl wearing only a bra her body was covered with two pairs of
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jeans and a dark jacket one pair of jeans was hers the other was a pair of men's jeans
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also there was a black jacket across her body with the sleeve tied around her neck
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and a pair of panties that she was clutching in her right hand she was identified
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as eighteen-year-old laura salman a local college student her life was stolen her life was stolen
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and in such a horrible way the autopsy revealed laura salman died of blunt force trauma to the head
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the murder weapon appeared to be the rocks found near her body the blood on those rocks and other material was
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consistent with her being struck up to 10 times in the head with those rocks the medical examiner found evidence that
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laura had consensual sex sometime before the murder most likely unrelated to the
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crime we knew that miss salmon had been involved in an intimate relationship with someone
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within uh the 24 or 48 hours prior to her death there were no injuries that would be
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consistent with the forcible rape on the men's genes found with laura's body scientists found semen from a
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different individual presumably the killer earlier that day laura worked at her cashiers job at the
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kroger grocery store records show she left the store around 1pm she was supposed to be at an appointment
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at middle tennessee state university but she never arrived she was supposed to go to mtsu campus to
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check on her grades and meet some of the office personnel over there after that she was supposed
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to go to her grandmother's house to go swimming investigators found laura's car near the
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store miles away from the murder site investigators found no fingerprints in the car but they did find
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a foreign hair they also found dirt in the wheel wells the fbi lab determined that they were
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consistent and that the high probability that that vehicle had been on that road by the crime scene
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dan goodwin was laura's friend and had been out with her a few nights before
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the murder i just asked her if she'd like to see a movie and we wound up going to the
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movies on sunday may 27th of 1984 when saw matinee show of the natural with robert redford
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at the funeral dan goodwin promised laura's mother that he'd helped find the killer
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and she just grabbed me and hugged me and said please help me find who killed my baby
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what they really needed was to find the owner of the men's genes [Music] laura salman's body was found in an area
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which often served as a lover's lane for high school and college students people went back there to party have
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bonfires make out that sort of thing back there witnesses placed laura at a local
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nightclub on the night before her murder where she was dancing with an unidentified young man but investigators
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couldn't locate him the first suspect police interviewed was laura's high school boyfriend kyle gilly
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he had a reputation as the jealous type but claimed he had an alibi kyle gilley's alibi had been that his
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stepfather was a witness to the fact that he was home the day of the murder next a woman in nashville tennessee 40
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miles away called police with a possible lead she claimed she'd been date raped by a man named
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john taylor and during the ordeal taylor mentioned laura's murder the alleged victim said that her
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attacker had threatened her by saying he would do the same thing to her as he had to laura or
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words to that effect when questioned by police taylor denied the sexual assault and denied mentioning laura salman's
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name however a background check revealed taylor attended the same university laura did
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he was a member of the same health club he attended the same fraternity gathering functions as laura
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and taylor was near the university on the day of laura's murder taylor had somewhat of a history with being
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violent towards his girlfriends or female companions that too added to his possibility as a
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suspect fbi analysts compared taylor's hair to a foreign hair they found inside laura's
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car we received a report back from the fbi that the hair recovered from her vehicle was
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consistent with john taylor at the time mitochondrial dna testing of human hair was still years away
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so it was impossible to know for certain if this was taylor's hair we could never get that one key piece of
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evidence that could place him with laura salmon on the day of the murder and the men's jeans found at the murder
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scene had a waist size of 30 inches and a 36 inch inseam too big for taylor while it was possible taylor could have
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worn them as far as the waist size goes at the time he was a much too short of a person to
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have worn those on a daily basis ultimately investigators concluded a single hair
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was not enough to charge him with murder through all of that evidence it pointed to him there was still no
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smoking gun and nothing to actually tie them together and there were other suspects too in all
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police investigated over 100 other suspects with no success sure it's very frustrating because
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you hate to see a horrendous crime like this go unpunished unsolved i made a promise
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to her at her grave that i would see that justice was done i didn't really know how i would carry
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out that promise but that's the last thing i could do for her but laureen mackey's promise went
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unfulfilled and 16 long years passed in the meantime dan goodwin began a career that would
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eventually lead to law enforcement after graduation i became a newspaper reporter first at the
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shelbyville paper and then i moved quickly to the daily news journal in murfreesboro where i became the police
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reporter in short order i wrote a series on unsolved murders in 1987 that included laura's case but all along i
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knew that i was more interested in police work several years later dan left journalism and became a police
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officer the first cold case he was assigned was laura salmon's murder i didn't become a law enforcement
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officer to work on this case but it was always on my mind so i was quite happy that i got to assist bill sharp in this
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case one of the first things dan goodwin and bill sharp did was to send all of the evidence to the
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forensic lab for testing obviously through the advancement in science through dna
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and testing that maybe we could find the donor of the biological material and match that
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with our killer while dna testing was underway sharpened goodwin pursued a new lead
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which supposedly came from a local high school student now almost 16 years after laura's murder
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in 2000 a student at oakland high school was overheard talking about the laura simon case saying that his father
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had killed a girl and thrown her body in the quarry the student's father david patterson had
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a police record for aggravated assault but by the time the rumor circulated patterson was dead when he himself was
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shot to death we decided of course that we had to investigate that lead they asked
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patterson's children to voluntarily submit dna samples for testing testing on david patterson's dna or that of his
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family which produced a presumptive profile showed no possibility of him being any
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of the male dna profiles that was present at the scene of her murder investigators also contacted john taylor
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who'd been an earlier suspect in laura's murder his dna also did not match
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and dan goodwin himself provided a dna sample he'd gone out with laura just a few days
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before the murder goodwin maintained it was a casual date and said the two weren't intimate
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since i took her out to the movies just four days before and knew her they decided it would be advisable to
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test my dna and it was tested and i was not present at the crime scene but at least
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investigators had the killer's dna and were closer to finding him a lot closer than they knew
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bill sharp and dan goodwin poured over the original case file of laura salmon's
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murder and found one name that caught their eye kyle gilly gilly was laura's high school boyfriend
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a year younger than her gilly was originally a suspect but was eliminated since he had an alibi one corroborated
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by a family member but they found a curious note in the case file there had been a witness
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who contradicted gilly's alibi she identified kyle gilly driving laura simon's car
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approximately a half mile from the road that led to the quarry which led to where laura's body was recovered she was
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able to identify kyle through a photo lineup as well as laura's car through a
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photo lineup this lady saw him looked at him closely she drove by him and said he
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was just staring straight ahead is just a blank expression on his face and they also discovered
00:12:04
that gilly had a propensity for physical violence with girlfriends particularly laura salmon
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he would get mad at her grab her by the head and start banging her head into cars school lockers whatever was at hand
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he would punch her on one occasion he broke out both of her front teeth we knew through the investigation that he
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and laura had a rocky relationship a stormy relationship as you will another incriminating piece of
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circumstantial evidence was the pair of men's genes found at the crime scene
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kyle was approximately six feet two inches tall and the jeans would have fit him
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the tbi lab did examine the rustler blue jeans in 1984 and they were able to determine there
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was some blood on there however as to the type of stains that were present and to the possible cause they did not make
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any determination at that time under a magnifying glass crime scene reconstructionist jerry
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findlay found tiny drops of blood embedded in the fabric about one thirty second of an inch in
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diameter it was medium velocity impact spatter the kind usually produced when someone
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is hit with a blunt object medium velocity is an instrument being wielded by a human
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for example a baseball bat or a rock or something like that it's not going to
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generate that much force the blood stains were clustered above the knee indicating the assailant was kneeling
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as he attacked he didn't get any impact stains below the knee but he had plenty
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above the knee between the knee and the waist so basically what we found was that
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the whoever was wearing those jeans was in close proximity to the point of impact at the time of impact
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and dna testing confirmed the blood on the jeans was loras police tracked gilly down in florida
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where he was twice divorced and working for the manatee county public works department he also had a police record
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with arrests for aggravated sexual battery attempted burglary and resisting arrest
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when questioned by police in florida gilly once again denied any involvement in laura's murder during that interview
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kyle admitted that the genes were probably his when we asked him about blood spatter
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and the fact that we had an expert that could testify that the killer wore these genes
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kyle gilly requested an attorney and the interview interrogation stopped with the court order investigators
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obtained gilly's saliva sample and sent it to the lab did gilley's dna match the semen sample
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on the genes we got the results of that testing back on may 31st 2000 the 16th anniversary of
00:15:09
laurel salmon's murder that testing showed that kyle gilly was the donor of the dna
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that was on the men's rustler genes that were draped across her body that was
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what we were looking for we could put kyle gilly in those genes we could put kyle gilly at the scene of
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the murder that was the final piece of the puzzle but what was the motive sixteen years after laura salmon's
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murder her high school boyfriend kyle gilly was arrested and charged with her murder
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laura's mother says she told the original investigators that gilly killed her daughter she says his jealousy was
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out of control i'm telling you today that i am a mother who keeps her promises
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i told them why i thought it was him or why i knew it was him and i was very frustrated
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that they didn't take that seriously kyle gilly is a classic sociopath he is the center of the universe as far
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as he's concerned he is what his parents made him and he is a killer for the record
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no one is willing to speculate why the original investigators didn't look deeper into gilly's alibi
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it was clear to the cold case unit that gilly should have been the prime suspect
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all along he's callous cold-hearted and had no more thought of killing laura than
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stepping on a bug from the time he killed laura he had thought nothing else of it he is a
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cold-blooded killer gilly and laura dated in high school but gilly was a year younger and when laura
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went off to college she made a new set of friends he didn't want her to have any friends
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and when she got to college he would go over there and stalk her family and friends implored laura to end
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the relationship but she was terrified i tried to get her go and get a restraining order and she was
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afraid to go because she was afraid of what he would do to her and when she dated other men
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kelly felt threatened howard was very jealous and very possessive we feel like that was the
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motive for the murder that if he couldn't have her nobody else could the night before her murder
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laura told friend she had a date with a friend and the two went to a local nightclub
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investigators believe gilly knew laura was dating others and may have followed her to the nightclub
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that unknown dna was the motive and kyle was jealous and possessive and found out that
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she possibly was seeing somebody else prosecutors believe that gilly and laura had planned to go swimming on the
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afternoon of her murder kyle coaxed her out to the deserted lover's lane where they talked
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then argued according to the forensic evidence gilly struck her in the head repeatedly
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with a rock and blood spattered on his jeans prosecutors think gilly saw laura's
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blood on his jeans which is why he left them there but those genes contained other
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biological evidence with his dna on that day gilley wouldn't have known anything about that of course since dna
00:19:04
testing was still years away a witness saw gilly driving laura's car away from the crime scene
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why the original investigators gave this information less weight than gilly's
00:19:18
alibi is yet another mystery in september of 2006 kyle gilley went on trial for murder
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his defense claimed the presence of another man's dna was proof that someone
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else was at the crime scene and that individual killed laura kyle gillie was a jealous piece and he knew no never
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mind the jury never fell into the trap of thinking the unknown dna was a plausible other
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suspect the jury found kyle gilly guilty of murder and he was sentenced to life in prison
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dan goodwin finally kept the promise he'd made to laura's mother at the funeral
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i don't think miss mackey will be around when kyle gilly is eligible for his
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first parole hearing in september of 2042. i'll be 83 years old but if i'm alive
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and if my partner bill sharp's alive will be there to testify against releasing him
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my opinion is that it was a just verdict and he got what he deserved they knew what they were doing they were trained
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and they would leave no stone unturned that they wanted to solve this 20 years is a long time to wait for justice
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the evidence in the case never changed it just took that long for forensic technology to catch up with the killer
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cold cases are difficult the positive side is that forensic science is constantly advancing
00:21:05
so that what we couldn't do 20 years ago now we can do i cannot recall during my
00:21:10
time in the district attorney's office a case that's ever been worked this hard
00:21:16
that so many hours have been put into in 1984 we were at a stalemate we didn't have the
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dna the forensic evidence to convict in 2000 we were able to through the forensic evidence
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put kyle gilly at the scene we showed that kyle gilly was the killer without the
00:21:37
forensic evidence there's no conviction you