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[Music] a christian missionary was murdered in her apartment the perpetrator left little evidence
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behind but a new computer program found clues on a bloody sheet and the case made forensic history
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[Music] [Music] kirkland washington an upscale suburb of seattle which has some of the best educated citizens in
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the united states over 95 percent have either a high school or college diploma 27 year old dawn fairing fit right in
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don was very much interested in foreign languages and she was an exchange student paris first and learning french
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and then went to vienna austria and learned german dawn was an accomplished violinist and
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dancer who had recently returned from japan where she was doing christian missionary work
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she was living in this apartment building in kirkland for just two weeks when her neighbor a local fireman
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noticed her front door was left open and decided to investigate so he grabbed his portable phone knocked
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on the door called out to see if anyone was there and when he didn't receive a response he
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entered into the unit in the kitchen there were freshly baked cookies in the bedroom
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he found his neighbor dawn fairing on the floor yes you covered it no i i just checked the body to see um so she
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was okay dawn was pronounced dead at the scene it was totally denial for me i couldn't
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believe that it was happening i mean there's no motive she has no no enemies
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whatsoever i don't think she knew anybody i don't think she even knew the
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people across the hall she had not as yet said anything to any of us about these other people the other people in
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the condo the autopsy revealed a fist-sized bruise on the back of dawn's head
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she had also been sexually assaulted and strangled to death with the bed sheet it appeared to us that the attack was
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quick it didn't look like the suspect spent much time in the crime scene and again that night no one heard her
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saw anything and there's units above and below and across from her and people were home at
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the time the one thing that the investigators knew immediately when they entered the scene
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was that whomever it was that did this was a smoke they knew this from the ashes on the
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mattress and the burn mark on the table where he put the cigarette out he didn't leave the cigarette butt
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behind it means one of two things either he had a cigarette in his mouth when he went in
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or after he realized what he's done he said to himself oh god what am i gonna
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do now and it was then that he left the cigarette and thought about what he might do to try and cover it up or clean
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it up or abandon it there was also a blood stain on the fitted sheet tests showed the blood was dawn fairings
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investigators didn't find any foreign fingerprints or shoe impressions at the
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scene none of the neighbors saw or heard anything suspicious and nothing had been
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stolen from the apartment from a prosecutorial perspective most of the time you get killed for a reason
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somebody knows you whether it's legitimate reason or not and most of the time it's not but
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there's always a reason almost always a reason in this case there was none don ferring led a very low risk
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lifestyle she was involved in a romantic relationship and again her her main priorities in her
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life at that time was her christian faith her family and her studies to be a missionary so there were a number of
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times when i think we all individually and collectively looked at one another and said what the hell are we going to
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do now the freshly baked chocolate chip cookies in dawn fairing's kitchen provided an insight into her last
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moments alive grocery receipts identified the store where dawn purchased the ingredients
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and they showed that dawn was in the store at 9 45 pm investigators couldn't find anyone who
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had seen her between the time she left the store and when her body was discovered the following morning
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don fairing was an innocent victim doing the most all-american of events which was making cookies for her mother for
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mother's day in the privacy of our own home it could have happened to your daughter or son could have happened to
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anyone just happened to be our daughter [Music] a background check revealed dawn was a
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very private person who did not date drink or use drugs she had been in town for only two weeks
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one of the interesting things that you learn when you do this kind of work the medical examiner and their observations
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that they make of a person and the remarkable observation that he made about dawn fairing was that she was so
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modest that she didn't even have pierced ears investigators checked the whereabouts of
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all registered sex offenders in the area and each of them had an alibi the registered sex offender who lived in
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this neighborhood actually had a history of abusing children and not grown women and
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not to suggest that never the two shall meet but most often you have one target group or another if you're a sex
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offender we had a number of potential leads we had at that time a serial killer investigation
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and that part of the county was underway the green river serial killer attacked dozens of women in the pacific northwest
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but those murders differed from this one since the green river victims weren't
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killed in their homes investigators were fairly certain that dawn's killer lived somewhere nearby
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we initially looked at everyone in the building there was nothing that really stood out people had alibis
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they were pretty much accounted for and when we ran the criminal history checks on those
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persons we didn't come back with anything of concern and it also appeared that the killer
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knew dawn lived alone if it had been someone who just followed her home from the grocery store or off
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the street they're taking a huge chance by entering into someone's residence and
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and gambling that they're there alone although dawn had been sexually assaulted
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the medical examiner could find no biological evidence left by the perpetrator the only possible piece of evidence
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was the blood stain on dawn's bed the blood was dawn's but was it possible
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that the blood held other clues the evidence texts looked at it and reviewed it and the officer asked what are our
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chances of identifying somebody with this and in unison they both said slim to none
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if the killer had touched the blood it might show his fingerprint but the blood was on a porous bed sheet
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another roadblock getting prints on fabric is extremely difficult pretty rare there's only
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you know not very many cases documented for that a quick call to the fbi's crime lab
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suggested they could try to see if there was a print in the blood stain with a substance called
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amido black amito black has long been used on laboratory slides to enhance the contrast
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it also reacts positively to the protein and blood with nothing to lose forensic scientist
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pat warwick took the fbi suggestion and soaked the bed sheet in the amido black solution
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none of us believed in a million years that we were going to get anything out of this because the moment this sheet
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went into the amino black solution the first time it it turned completely blue but to the trained eye
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something did start to appear we just couldn't believe it you know here we have this section of fabric this
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sheet and then we can see easily readily see hand prints fingerprints in blood on the sheet a lot of it is stuff that
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was not visible at all even right before we started and it was just covered with
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it the partial palm print that emerged didn't look like it could be used for
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any kind of identification the fabric was the real problem you have to get in close and look for detail
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ridge detail friction ridge skin detail so we look at it with magnification as soon as you get in close
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all you can see is the weave of the fabric you can't really see any detail because
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the weave is interfering with that that's all you can see the palm print now looked like a dead
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end and detectives had to face the possibility that dawn's murder would never be solved
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but investigators kept digging and being at the right place at the right time produced results
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while they were standing outside dawn's apartment a passerby started asking questions
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i stood outside of that scene for hours and i vividly recall standing in the parking lot and watching this
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big fat slob for lack of a better turn meandered down the stairs and as he walked by all of the investigators he
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sort of shouted out hey man do i have to be concerned about my personal safety around here quote unquote
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his name was eric hayden and he lived with his girlfriend in the apartment above dawn fairings
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the first time the detective spoke with eric hayden he claimed he'd never seen
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the person who lived there before the second time they spoke with him he claimed that he'd seen her but they
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never had any contact with her at all when questioned about his whereabouts on the night of the murder hayden claimed
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he was out drinking with friends until very late that night and he had no prior arrests for
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sex-related crimes we felt it was significant because this is a very unusual thing just to wake up
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one day in your early 30s and go out and commit a crime like this that's unusual
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but something about hayden bothered the investigators eric's hand was shaking he pointed it
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out himself and he says wow look at me my hands are shaking this is really making me uh nervous
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was a simple conversation with police that nerve-wracking or was there something else
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eric hayden a 32 year old mill worker was starting to emerge as the prime suspect in dawn fairing's murder
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he lived in the same apartment building and according to other residents hayden behaved suspiciously
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there was a female neighbor that described eric hayden as weird and when i asked her what do you mean by
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weird she said well on one occasion i saw him down in the parking lot it was raining
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he didn't have any shoes on he was smoking a cigarette and he he was watching people come and go
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and as i watched him i realized he was paying particular attention to the women and during questioning
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hayden initially claimed he was out drinking with friends at the time of the murder later he said
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he was drinking alone when his story started changing they consider the fact he admittedly drinks
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to the point where he doesn't know what's going on hayden was also a smoker
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which was significant since the killer left cigarette ashes behind but the only forensic evidence in this
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crime was the palm print on dawn's bed sheet and the print was so poor there was no
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way to make a comparison desperate for answers detectives called in forensic investigator eric berg
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they wanted another opinion on whether or not something could be done with those sheets since they had reached
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the limit of what they were able to do with chemistry berg took a digital photograph of the
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print on the bed sheet and scanned it into his computer the problem was immediately apparent
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the ridge details on the print were obscured by the thread patterns on the sheet as if a screen had been placed
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over the print well i want to find out who left this because i think it's my
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bad guy i see the outline of a hand but i can't see the details how do i get rid of that screen that's
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really the question i'm asking myself when i'm looking at the screen how do i
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get rid of that then berg had an idea he needed some way to remove the thread pattern from the image but he needed to
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find some kind of filter the filter is a nice word for algorithm it's a mathematical process that can go through
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an image and do something to it we have one that i designed that basically seeks out repetitive
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patterns something that repeats itself in a predictable way and allows you to remove that without affecting the rest
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of the image berg took a sample of the bed sheet's thread pattern and had the computer
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subtract that pattern from the image leaving only the palm print and it worked it was beautiful i didn't expect this or
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i didn't expect to be that that clear but details are suddenly just the hdtv analogy that were popping off
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the screen that you did not see before i mean you could see formations but you weren't seeing the details and all of a
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sudden you were seeing those details and there was a remarkable amount of detail
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here we have pretty much half of a hand from the fingers all the way down to the base
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of the hand that's in view that is readily visible so we had just a tremendous amount of
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information as far as doing a latent print examination or a comparison the digitally enhanced palm print from
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dawn fairing's bed sheet was then compared to eric hayden's palm prince pat warwick focused on the ridge
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patterns and breaks in the patterns these are unique to each person there was no doubt
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the print on dawn fairing's bed sheet was made by eric hayden so we call him and just said you're not
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going to believe it it's the guy who lives upstairs you know it's him and and they just were like what you
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know where and it was just amazing we're like yeah it matches the card that we have it
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matches him eric hayden was arrested and charged with first degree murder prosecutors were convinced
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they had an ironclad case but would the judge allow this evidence to be used in court
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as eric hayden awaited trial for the murder of dawn fairing prosecutors had to deal with a number of
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problems the technology used to reveal the print had never been admitted as evidence in a
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criminal trial the standard argument in this particular type of case is that the evil empire the
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cops are out there and they're just trying to convict innocent people out here of murder and all kinds of terrible
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crimes and they'll stop at nothing to do that including taking computer evidence
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manipulating adding information putting stuff in there that would unfairly bias the case against their
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client when prosecutors walked into court they had to convince the judge that the only
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thing they did to the palm print on the sheet was to enhance it we don't add anything to the evidence
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the evidence is what it is we will take away that that is interfering with our ability to identify
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subtracting but we're not going to put in a fingerprint ridge or a palm detail or anything that's missing
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the judge left it to the jury to decide eric berg brought his computer into the courtroom
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and demonstrated the process everybody looked at it and they were just amazed it was readily apparent that it was a
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palm print and i remember i was standing back behind the jury looking at them look at eric berg and in the background
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was the defense counsel who looked took one look at me and threw his tie over his shoulder and spun around in
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the chair and just essentially saying it i'm done and for all practical purposes
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eric hayden was done the palm print told the story of what happened to dawn fairing
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prosecutors believe eric hayden was drunk when he returned to his apartment on the night of the murder
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as he walked up the stairs to his apartment he noticed dawn's door was slightly ajar
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she may have left it open because of the heat from baking the cookies the evidence shows
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hayden struck dawn on the back of her head knocking her down [Applause] then sexually assaulted her and strangled her
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with the bed sheet [Music] as he got up he steadied himself on the mattress placing a partial bloody palm print on
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the sheet he smoked a cigarette while trying to compose himself not knowing that the palm print
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later enhanced by computer technology clearly placed him at the scene this is the classic example
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of of investigators trained investigators walking into a scene and having the good
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sense to preserve something whether it's going to turn into a piece of evidence
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or not doing nothing to contaminate or screw it up before they get it to the people who do know what can be done with
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it eric hayden was convicted and sentenced to 26 years in prison after the trial dawn fairing's friends
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and family set up a scholarship in her name for students who wish to do missionary work there's been over 20
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thousand dollars that's been working in the world that would not have been there
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if it hadn't been for her death the technology used in dawn's case set a legal precedent
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and is now used in cases all over the world it was the first time anywhere in the
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world that prime laboratory folks were able to identify handprint impressions finger or palm
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hand print impressions left in blood on a woven piece of fabric i'm blown away looking back and some 11
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years later that people are still referring to this case and using the technology that was used in it we had no
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idea at the time how significant this was going to be i don't think god causes things to happen
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but he makes use of them and the timing to me is just amazing that this technology had just been found
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at the time when it was needed for solving don's case [Music] [Music] [Music]
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[Music] you