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Forensic Files (HD) - Season 13, Episode 41 - Palm Saturday - Full Episode

March 05, 2021 / 21:17

This episode covers the execution-style murder of Brian and Beverly Mark, the investigation into their deaths, and the eventual arrest of Daniel Tavares.

The couple was found shot multiple times in their home in rural Washington state. Friends and family described Brian and Beverly as loving and trustworthy individuals. The crime scene showed signs of a cover-up, with evidence indicating that the killer had spent time cleaning up after the murders.

Witnesses reported hearing gunshots and seeing a red pickup truck near the scene. Daniel Tavares, a neighbor with a criminal past, became a suspect after his detailed eyewitness account raised suspicions.

Police collected palm prints and shoe impressions that ultimately linked Tavares to the crime scene. He confessed to the murders, claiming a dispute over money led to the violent act.

Tavares was sentenced to life in prison, while his wife, Jennifer, received a lighter sentence for her involvement in the cover-up.

TLDR

Daniel Tavares murders Brian and Beverly Mark over a dispute, leaving behind crucial evidence that leads to his arrest.

Episode

21:17
00:00:00
[Music] up next an execution-style murder and a sophisticated cover-up it was obvious right from the start that
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this crime scene had been altered and i witnessed these two men leaving the scene but how much did he
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really see we were scratching our heads for a little bit someone held a grudge against
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the family maybe he was angry enough to come back in her bed on brian she was definitely
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scared of this guy but was that enough to lead to murder [Music] eight months after getting married brian
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and beverly mark moved into their dream home in rural washington state she loved him so much he loved her so
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much too yeah i mean it showed in their eyes thirty-year-old brian worked for an air
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conditioning company beverly 28 was a secretary at a car dealership a mutual love of sports brought the two
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together he had been the same sports that she had been in and they love showing their scars off each of them and
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you know and where they got this and where they got that and so they were they were a wonderful match
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at 5 a.m on a november saturday morning a friend arrived at brian mark's home to
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pick him up for a day of hunting he said that the house was dark and so he didn't bother
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knocking on the door to see if brian wanted to go he just went hunting by himself
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the friend called later that morning but no one answered so he drove back over to
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brian's house the front door was locked he could see the television was on and what looked
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like a body lying on the floor [Music] that's when he called police i just remember it was
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just very very bloody blood everywhere they found both beverly and brian mark had been murdered i broke down
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and and was screaming and i was like i have to get out there i have to get out there
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i have to see for myself each of them had been shot three times at close range with a 22
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caliber pistol there was definitely an execution style element to it it looked like they had been shot and
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then shot again to make sure they were dead i just wanted to go in and hold my daughter but i knew i couldn't because i
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knew that it would destroy police evidence or possibly from the location of the shell casings
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it appeared that brian was shot in the living room beverly most likely heard the shots from
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the bedroom and ran out to see what was going on she made a run for the front door and our
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suspect caught her at the front door and that's where he shot her [Applause] the evidence shows that the killer
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dragged beverly's body next to her husbands and covered them both with a sheet from
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the bedroom this was essentially a swath of blood two or three feet across and 10 to 15 feet long that leads
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right to the victims bodies there were unusual striations in the blood trail we just could not figure out what caused
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that particular pattern when we first saw it we were scratching our heads for a little bit trying to figure out
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what caused that particular blood pattern the answer was found in the kitchen someone had swept the broom through the
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blood and spattered it up onto the wall the killer might have used the broom to remove his shoe impressions
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he also used a rag to remove other evidence they're trying to eliminate fingerprints
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like the doorknobs the light switches that sort of thing and what they used to do that with had blood
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on it because there was blood smears on the light switches and there was blood smears on the doorknobs
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the fact that television was on told investigators even more there was no fast i gotta get out of
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here there was very deliberate cleaning up covering up trying to hide what had happened
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the motive didn't appear to be robbery brian had a considerable amount of cash uh on his
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person there were guns in the home that were not taken they were a number of valuable
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items were undisturbed and the evidence suggested brian opened the door then turned his back
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to walk towards the living room when he was shot a clear indication he knew his killer
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brian and beverly mark were murdered in their home in the middle of the night their family
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said the couple had no known enemies it breaks my heart she can never be a mother she wanted
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that so bad and i know brian wanted to be a father so bad and they had so much to offer
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they just were two of the nicest trustworthy people their kids would have been perfect
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[Music] the killer spent several hours cleaning the crime scene it's a risky thing to do of course the
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longer a criminal stays at the scene the greater the risk that they're going to leave evidence behind
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or leave a telltale clue and that's precisely what happened the killer inadvertently left clues
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while cleaning up after he covered the bodies with a sheet he stepped on it the bottoms of his shoes were clean but
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he created a shoe impression in the blood on the floor underneath the sheet it was a zigzag
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pattern or a very distinct shoe mark that you could see um left in the in the blood the fact
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that the killer spent so much time at the scene aided in the discovery it had been dried for a
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while it's probably helped things at least preserve the print in the floor anyway
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a computer search of the shoe patterns indicated this was a madison brand work shoe
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the killer also left evidence in the couple's bedroom looked like a fingerprint could have
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been on a door jamb in the southeast bedroom but the ridge characteristics were in
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a u-shape meaning the finger would have been upside down that would make sense except this print was five feet from the
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floor someone would have to be standing on a ladder to leave a print like this it just was too high for it to be
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placed there by a finger for a natural placement of a hand on that location but there was another possibility
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the rich detail of palm prints runs in the opposite direction of ridge detail on fingerprints the fingerprint
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that we had from the house wasn't actually a fingerprint but it was a palm print
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i'm thinking that he left the bloody palm print on the door jamb when he was using it to balance himself
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when he was cleaning something else up perhaps with a paper towel not realizing that his hands got blood on it and it's
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resting on the uh the door jamb law enforcement has a separate database for palm prints called
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morpho unfortunately this one didn't match any in the database in a search for suspects police questioned everyone in
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the sparsely populated neighborhood a couple across the street daniel and jennifer tavares
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said they heard gunshots around 7am they thought the shots were from hunters daniel got up and looked out the bedroom
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window which faced the mock's house he saw a red pickup truck leaving the mock's
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driveway he said there was a passenger whom he didn't get a good look at he described a
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driver however in great detail a white male roughly six two in height perhaps 230 240 pounds
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with long hair and a ponytail the truck turned around in the cul-de-sac and sped away
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neither family nor neighbors knew anyone matching the driver's description police
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began checking the hundreds of red pickup trucks in pierce county meanwhile beverly's mother pointed to
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another suspect i know she was afraid of somebody that he brought into their home and
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i think she shared that with her brian he was 21 year old jeremy flynn who lived just a few houses
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away he had a juvenile arrest he was a suspect in some other crimes i think he was a suspect in a burglary
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and a suspect in a theft witnesses said jeremy attended a party at the mock's home about six weeks before the murders
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flynn was so drunk and belligerent that brian asked him to leave the two argued and almost came to blows
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whatever took place at that party or afterwards definitely left an impression on beverly
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and she was definitely scared of this guy and she was nervous about this young fellow
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didn't like to be alone at the residence when her husband would be away the morning after the
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party the mocks discovered items missing from their home and they confronted jeremy about it the
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handgun that belonged to brian was stolen and i believe beverly's cell phone or or one of their cell
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phones had been taken and so i figured maybe he was angry enough to come back and
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hurt bev and brian but the handgun wasn't a 22-caliber like the one used in the murders
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jeremy didn't own a red pickup truck and three people provided alibis for jeremy for the time
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of the murders had almost been completely eliminated as having anything to do with this whatsoever
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so police went back to their only eyewitness except this time his story began to change
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in the search for beverly and brian mark's killer police went back to the mark's neighbor
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daniel tavares who describes seeing a red pickup truck outside the crime scene around the time of the murders his
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description of the two men inside was detailed the more detail that a witness can give you an eyewitness to
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someone who might well be associated with a crime scene the better it is but for the detectives
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it was too detailed tavares lived 200 yards away from the mock's house and it was still dark outside
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he gave descriptions of these men and i mean from hairstyle to how many days had been since one of them
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had shaved to color their shirt the types of shoes they were wearing he even went so far as it described this
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person was having a pock marked face when detectives did a background check on daniel tavares
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they were shocked by what they found tavares had served 16 years in prison for manslaughter
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and he just been released four months earlier daniel tavares by all accounts was the
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worst type of prisoner argumentative combative assaulting jail guards and somehow gets out with credit
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for good time before he was released from prison tavares met his wife jennifer freitas
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through a computer dating service where convicts post personal ads hoping to find pen pals
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and that's how jennifer ends up developing this relationship with him i think for most of us it's
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incomprehensible that that's the place you go to find love they communicated through email
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but never met in person until tavares was released as soon as he gets out there he is on a
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plane leaving massachusetts and coming out to washington state that was shocking enough i think when we
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learned that divorce married jennifer in washington state and had violated the terms of his parole by
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leaving massachusetts unfortunately local police in washington had no jurisdiction to arrest him
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the warrant was limited to i believe states that joined massachusetts or new england area
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so while there was a warrant for his arrest it was limited to that small geographical area
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police in washington state could get tavares fingerprints from massachusetts but what they really needed were his
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palm prince so investigators wanted to get him into police headquarters and somehow find a way to get him to
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provide his finger and palm prince voluntarily fortunately tavares didn't know he was a suspect
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he was cooperating he was bending over backwards he was thinking that we were buying his
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stories their idea was to ask tavares for help in preparing a composite sketch of the mock's killers
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i just thought that it would be easier and safer to get him down here thinking he was coming down here voluntarily on
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his own to talk to a sketch artist as daniel tavares walked into police headquarters
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detective jason tate arrived at about the same time and followed him into the building
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it had just rained and tavares was tracking wet shoe prints onto the floor of the entrance way
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detective tate thought they looked familiar i needed to get inside and get somebody
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out there before things started to dry and disappear mary lou hansen o'brien rushed out with her camera because the
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print was in water on a rough surface it was impossible to compare fine detail but the treads on the shoe
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were clear and distinctive and it was a unique pattern there was not a lot of detail to the pattern was this the same
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shoe that left the single bloody shoe impression at the crime scene criminals are not
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real smart i've just seen time and again that criminals do stupid things [Music]
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daniel tavares was the prime suspect in the murders of his neighbors brian and beverly mark but investigators
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had no idea about a possible motive i interviewed a bar manager who had served tavares
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that night of the murders and he described him as cocky and arrogant and somebody who was
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looking for a fight daniel tavares walked into police headquarters not realizing he was a suspect he thought he
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was there to provide a description of the killers he had no clue he he thought that he was down here to
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talk to a sketch artist and he had no clue that we were on to him at that point tavares admitted he'd been inside the
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mock's home several times for social visits so police asked if he'd mind providing
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his fingerprints so they could eliminate his prints from all the other unknown prints they found
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inside the mock's home so that's how i presented it to him i just said we need to be able to
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eliminate the prints that aren't important to us tavares was happy to oblige and police took not only his
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fingerprints but also his palm prints then investigators asked tavares some more
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pointed questions about his past i'm sure you must know what i was in prison for i just heard it was
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manslaughter how'd you kill him step it was a her oh it was yeah it was hmm family member what
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what kind of family member mom you killed your mother yeah i did no kidding i said you killed your mother i i was
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taken i was i was shocked within minutes latent print examiners matched tavares palm print
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to the bloody palm print on the door jamb at the crime scene at this point in time
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we've got uh evidence to arrest you for the murder of brian and beverly what i was in bed that's impossible
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i don't normally do this but i'm going to show you something this is your print in blood
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that we recovered inside that house these are the patterns on your shoes that you have on your feet
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right now when i saw the impression i could not believe that i was seeing that same footwear pattern we were just
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baffled that again tavares was was stupid enough to have those shoes on his feet right now faced with the
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forensic evidence daniel tavares confessed he said he had given brian mark a tattoo
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and that brian owed him fifty dollars so he went over early saturday morning to get it
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[Music] he said it was early brian was asleep and was angry tavares had awakened him
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they argued tavares snapped and shot brian three times in the head beverly heard the shots and tried to
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escape tavares shot her three times then dragged her body next to her husbands when he went to the bedroom to grab a
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sheet to cover the bodies he may have left some blood on the light switch in the bedroom
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when he wiped it off he left a partial palm print on the door he must have been steadying himself as
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he cleaned the plate over the next several hours tavares used a broom to get rid of his shoe prints
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but when he stepped onto the sheet covering the bodies his weight created a shoe impression
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in the drying blood on the floor under the sheet a shoe impression he wouldn't see simply
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by looking at the top side of the sheet jennifer tavares later admitted she was at the crime scene
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after the murders jennifer also admitted she and her husband later threw the murder weapon
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into nearby puget sound what led up to his decision to kill brian mark remains a mystery tavares claims that
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it was because of an insult but i don't know that i buy that in february of 2008
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daniel tavares was sentenced to life in prison without parole jennifer tavares who claimed she only helped her husband
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with the cover-up because she feared for her life got one year i can't even explain why i did it
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because i wasn't able to think straight the time and i'm scared worried about my family
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tavares is so stupid that he wore his same shoe into his interview at the police station
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with a detective you don't want to rely on just one little bit of evidence and and
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discount everything else everything matters this is the first case for me that the rain actually
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helped out a little bit we don't have a clear motive as to why a murder happened
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and i don't think we're ever going to know in this case

Badges

This episode stands out for the following:

  • 85
    Most heartbreaking
  • 80
    Most shocking
  • 80
    Biggest twist
  • 75
    Most intense

Episode Highlights

  • Murder Scene Discovery
    A friend discovers a bloody crime scene at the Marks' home.
    “I just remember it was very, very bloody.”
    @ 02m 00s
    March 05, 2021
  • The Killer's Mistakes
    The killer inadvertently left clues while cleaning the crime scene.
    “Criminals do stupid things.”
    @ 15m 15s
    March 05, 2021
  • Confession of Guilt
    Daniel Tavares confesses to the murders after forensic evidence is presented.
    “We’ve got evidence to arrest you for the murder.”
    @ 17m 26s
    March 05, 2021

Episode Quotes

  • I just wanted to go in and hold my daughter.
    Forensic Files (HD) - Season 13, Episode 41 - Palm Saturday - Full Episode
  • It breaks my heart she can never be a mother.
    Forensic Files (HD) - Season 13, Episode 41 - Palm Saturday - Full Episode
  • Criminals do stupid things.
    Forensic Files (HD) - Season 13, Episode 41 - Palm Saturday - Full Episode
  • I can't even explain why I did it.
    Forensic Files (HD) - Season 13, Episode 41 - Palm Saturday - Full Episode

Key Moments

  • Murder Discovery02:00
  • Grief and Loss05:10
  • Clues Left Behind15:15
  • Confession17:26

Tension Over Time

Words per Minute Over Time

Vibes Breakdown