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from the evidence found at the scene of a double homicide police suspected there
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might have been two perpetrators until they noticed a clue a small shard of glass on the bottom of
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one of the victim's shoes which brought the whole crime into focus [Music] my
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in december 1996 a mail carrier in toledo ohio noticed mail piling up outside the home of gertrude thompson
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and edward kowalczyk neighbors said they hadn't seen the elderly couple for the last few days
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69 year old gertrude trudy tour friends and 72 year old edward had been living together for the past several years
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no one could see inside the house since the windows were covered with plastic cardboard and aluminum foil in an effort
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to preserve heat not knowing what else to do neighbors called police when i first went in i observed a lot of
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what appeared to be personal effects of the residents there like boxes packed up it appeared to me someone
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might have been preparing to move out of the house but in the disarray detectives found
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trudy thompson and ed kowalski dead on the living room floor they had been dead for several days
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and it was no ordinary murder just so violent you could see the bludgeon cut marks
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stabs one of the worst crime scenes i've ever seen as a police officer an autopsy revealed that trudy and ed
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had died of blunt force injuries to the head other evidence suggested that the assailant had wanted information from
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the victims just slight wounds puncture wounds where this person probably was saying where's the money
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where's the money or something like that and just torture to make a person talk
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there was a great deal of chaos there in fact it appeared as though this was a almost a frenzy type of murder
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they the perpetrator or perpetrators grabbed anything that was available to them in the house
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and used it as instruments we always assumed there was at least two people that were involved and that's
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just because it was a double homicide with two bodies right next to each other and they weren't killed with firearms
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they were killed slowly with hand weapons detectives noticed that there had been
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no forced entry into the house tells me that possibly the person that committed this crime
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probably knew the victims and probably was let in ed and trudy not only lived together
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they were business partners they owned several properties that they rented to lower income residents and
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college students when a tenant moved out the couple usually kept items left behind never
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throwing them away this made it hard to know what if anything was missing we were finding money
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hidden in books and in wallets that were still in their package and in places where
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they would hide things that no one would think to look family members told police that a
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necklace trudy thompson wore around her neck every day was missing it was a gold elephant pendant
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a gift her father had given her years earlier as a child in austria the pendant was supposed to bring good
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luck the police knew pretty quickly how important that was if you could track a piece of stolen
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property back through a chain of owners you can learn eventually hopefully who had taken it from gertrude thompson
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so police put a photograph of the pendant on the front page of the local newspaper the toledo blade
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no one responded and none of the second-hand jewelry dealers in town had seen it either
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in gathering information about the couple ed's daughter denise kowalczyk said that trudy was a tough
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businesswoman i felt that trudy could be bossy and domineering i think she was probably
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argumentative with her tenants and my father family members suspected that the motive
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wasn't robbery but it was some sort of business disagreement a tenant that was really really mad at
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them mostly her it's not totally unreal that this would happen because of the people they rented to
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that information along with a message on the couple's telephone answering machine
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would identify just that one of the couple's tenants someone police called the perfect suspect
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when landlords trudy thompson and ed kowalski were found murdered in their home police and forensic scientists sorted
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through the physical evidence at the crime scene for possible clues [Music] forensic pathologist dr diane barnett
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first wanted to identify the murder weapon she had long linear impressions tool marks on the skull
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she had a very characteristic beating pattern that had been left on the outer table of the calvarium
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and she also had suggestions of a corner of something like a divot type of impression
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dr barnett was able to match those wounds to a rectangular base lamp at the murder scene
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forensic anthropologist julie saul matched another head wound to a brass lamp found near the bodies looking at
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the lamp base with the beading near the edge and the tool marks on the bone i could tell them that this was
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consistent with having made that mark and it was very likely that it could have made that mark
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none of these items however contained fingerprints the coroner determined trudy and ed had
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fought off their attacker or attackers since they had defensive cut wounds on their hands that could have been made by
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a knife and a tiny clue on the bottom of ed kowalski's shoes answered an important
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question it was a tiny piece of glass embedded in the bottom of his galoshes [Music]
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that glass came from a broken light bulb leading investigators to believe that ed
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entered the room sometime after the attack started most likely he walked in from outside
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since his coat was found at the front door in a search for suspects the first clue
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came from the couple's telephone answering machine a lot of the tape was complaints from
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various tenants because gertrude thompson and edward walchek were landlords were people calling in leaving
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the messages but only one tenant had called numerous times his name was ethan walls
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when questioned walls told police that he stopped by ed and trudy's home to make his rent payment
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notice the overflowing mailbox knocked on the door and when there was no answer he said he left his rent check there and
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went home i put it in their mailbox there was a lot of mail in the box i didn't think anything of it
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two three more days went by i left a note for them to contact me no one ever got in touch with me
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waltz then admitted he went back to ed and trudy's house retrieved his rent money and spent it
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these two admissions placed walls at the scene twice around the time the murders
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took place and all of a sudden ethan's telling him this very bizarre story about dropping
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off a check and then coming back and picking it up in addition an informant called police
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to say she had seen ethan walls at the home of a well-known drug dealer around the time of the murders she also said
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wall's shirt was spattered with blood based on the blood spatter on the ceilings on the walls
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the condition of the victim's bodies you knew the guy that did this had to have gotten covered in blood he
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knew that walls vehemently denied the informant story this is a lie from where did it come from
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who put you up to saying what you said which is it's not true totally fabricated
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in examining the blood spatter at the crime scene detectives noticed a significant clue
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the blood spatter was in two different shapes and told two different stories in one area
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the spots were elongated and radiated from where the beatings took place blood that comes from an angle is longer
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and more oval usually with a little tail at the end of it the longer and more oval the spatter is the greater the
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angle that it came from in another area away from the bodies there were several blood spots that were
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perfect circles including two on the inside of a broken ceramic vase and one on a piece of paper in the desk drawer
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the blood that was on these items was dripped straight down as if from right above
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so from that we were able to determine that this blood most likely did not come from these two victims and was therefore
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most likely the suspect's blood the blood was consistent with someone standing still but bleeding
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and the blood dripping down on the items below police confiscated every knife they
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could find in ethan wall's home testing them for human blood to see if any were
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used in the murders none of them tested positive for human blood they also compared all of wall's shoes
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to a bloody foot impression found at the crime scene non-matched but since the perpetrator left blood at
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the crime scene investigators had a definitive way to tell if the blood belonged to walls
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you know dna i mean one drop of blood looks the same your blood looks just identical to mine
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it's those little scientists who can differentiate between one drop and another
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the results surprised everyone especially ethan walls they arrested me like five months after
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the dna that's the part that i steal right now today don't understand [Music]
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toledo police had a suspect in the murder of two elderly landlords one of their tenants ethan walls who
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swore he was innocent walls had been to the couple's house around the time of the murders
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and an informant claimed she saw walls at a drug party with blood on his shirt around the same time
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walls gave police a blood sample so they could compare it to blood found at the murder scene
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investigators believe the killer cut himself while swinging a crystal lamp to beat the victims
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we surmised that that was probably how he held the lamp as he hit them with the heavy metal base of the lamp
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and when that crystal broke in his hand that's probably how he cut himself forensic scientists analyzed the dna of
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all the blood at the murder scene on the crystal lamp there was a mixture of blood from three people the two
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victims and the killers dna analyst angela lanine compared ethan wall's blood to the mixture
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if it matched two numbered markers or bands would match those found in the mixture ethan wall's pattern was an 18
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and a 28. the mixture also had an 18 but it did not have a 28 so he can automatically be excluded as
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contributing to the mixture of that specimen but prosecutors always suspected that
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there may have been more than one perpetrator and based on the informant's testimony that walls was one of the two
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walls was arrested and charged with the murder of trudy thompson and ed kowalczyk
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the day i was arrested last thing i said to them please don't stop looking for the killer
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cause while y'all focusing on me somebody's getting away with it that was the very last thing i said as
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they put them cuffs on me don't stop looking ethan walls knew he could face the death
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penalty if convicted he was consumed with anger and frustration it's like if you down in a whale and a
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and you hollering at the top of your voice [Music] okay nobody here you though you know what i mean
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i'm innocent man you sh can't nobody hear you though as prosecutors were preparing to try
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ethan walls their star witness the informant made a startling confession to prosecutor tim braun
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she now said she had lied about ethan walls we never were given a good explanation
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as to what her reasons were other than she's saying i lied about the man and this isn't right and i'm not
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going to testify against him we can't necessarily control all the pressures that come onto a witness and
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she flipped and that's the only way to describe it she flipped completely 180
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degrees the other way braun had no choice but to dismiss the charges against ethan walls
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you know the day you dismissed a death penalty case when you're a prosecutor
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it's a bad bad day because everything you've been working on for a long period of time has just
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blown up in your face i was confident that i would go home that never ever wavered and mama i knew i was going home
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for the victims families it reopened the fear that there was maybe someone out there
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that might be really sick and evil that they could do something to someone else and for police
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it was back to square one it was very frustrating because we had two elderly people murdered brutally in
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our community we felt we had some good evidence blood and the misimpended if we could
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nail that down we definitely would have a person that we could totally concentrate on
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for the next two years police made no further progress all the detectives talk about the
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72-hour rule if a case is installed within three days the chances of it getting solved go way
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way down and that's true and this was not solved within three days but they kept going
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[Music] for two years after the murders of trudy thompson and ed kowalczyk investigators
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pursued various leads in the case with no success but in july of 1998 their luck changed
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the daughter of pawn shop owner annette chevrini decided to help her mother clean up some of the old newspapers and
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magazines that had collected over the years my mother's more than eccentric she she believes in
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not not throwing anything away type of an attitude she's a collector but annette wanted something to read
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that afternoon to pass the time she reaches in the middle of the stack of newspapers and pulls the newspaper
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out sure enough she opens it up and she starts to read this article that was there for the
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toledo police department about a double homicide it was the two-year-old newspaper
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article about the murder of trudy thompson and ed kowalczyk when she looked at the victim's
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photographs she noticed something familiar the gold elephant pendant around trudy
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thompson's neck she calls me on the phone and starts screaming about where's this elephant pendant
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where's it i said mom it's in the safe mrs chevrini had been unable to sell the
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pendant it looked identical to the one trudy thompson was wearing in the newspaper
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photograph that's one in a million i would say for her to keep a newspaper like that
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fortunately mrs chevrini kept all her old pawn tickets the one for the pendant was dated
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december 3rd 1996 around the time of the couple's murder and it identified gordy candy as
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the seller candy said he was only a messenger that it was james jordan who had asked him to
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pawn the necklace for him jordan had been working as a handyman for trudy thompson at the time of her
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murder a background check indicated that jordan was arrested just a few weeks after the
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murders for another robbery and was currently serving a 45-year prison sentence in texas
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when questioned jordan denied he killed the elderly couple scientist swabbed the inside of his
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cheek for a sample of his dna which was then compared to the blood drops of the crime scene
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we concluded that james jordan was the person that left blood at the crime scene
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james jordan was charged with killing gertrude thompson and edward kowalczyk prosecutors believe the motive was
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robbery to steal money from the rent payments to use for drugs they think jordan first tortured and
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killed trudy cutting his hand with a broken lamp and leaving blood drops in the living room
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when ed walked in later from outside jordan killed him too as he was looking for money
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blood from his hand dripped into the desk drawer before leaving jordan took trudy's elephant pendant
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then asked a friend to pawn it for him the pendant fetched all of twenty dollars
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that twenty dollar transaction led to jordan's capture he had to cash in that pendant
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and but for that reckless act we never would have linked them back in court jordan represented himself and
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tried to explain why his blood was found in trudy's desk he explained the drops of blood inside
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her desk as being that's where she used to keep her band-aids and so sometime
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when he was moving furniture or doing something he must have shed a drop of blood while he was
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looking for a band-aid but jordan couldn't explain his blood drops inside the broken vase and he said
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he had trudy's elephant pendant because she gave it to him as payment for his
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handyman services but the jury did not believe his story we find the defendant james jordan was convicted of two counts
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of aggravated murder and was sentenced to death the case was solved thanks to the pawn
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shop owner who never threw anything away and the forensic scientists ability to recreate the crime based on the physical
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evidence the police work combined with luck and scientific evidence a little bit above a
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little bit of everything it all goes together [Music] [Music] you