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criminals usually leave some kind of trace evidence at the crime scene the trick is to find it
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scientists used some aurora pink powder cyanoacrylate fumes and a computer database to identify a suspect in the
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midst of a senseless crime spree [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause]
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[Music] it was 4 am on an october morning and kim miller was manning the police switchboard
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i was working night shift i think i'd only worked there like around six months
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so i hadn't been trained at that particular position very long there isn't much crime in lansing
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michigan it's usually quiet but this night was different all of a sudden i took this call and
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this lady said that someone was breaking into my house someone broke into my house i learned
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four two one frightened [Music] the line went dead so i knew something was very wrong
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police were dispatched immediately it took less than four minutes to get there at first glance everything looked fine
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but behind the house was clear evidence of a break-in the door had been kicked in and kicked
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in violently the door was actually off of the frame and there's glass from the door outside
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on the front porch as well as on the inside entrance way from the door inside down the hallway police found the
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bathroom door had also been knocked off its hinges on the floor was the body of 67 year old audrey
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nichols she had been shot in the head at close range with a 32 caliber bullet the phone that they believe that she was
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using was found right in that area i believe in the hallway just outside the bathroom
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the police officers knew mrs nichols she had worked for the michigan state police
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for 17 years analyzing traffic accidents she had retired just four months earlier
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and lived alone her three children were grown and living elsewhere we all felt violated by it just because
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so many of us were alone it was very shocking to us it was numbing and there was a lot of anger an awful
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lot of anger since police arrived within five minutes of the call the killer wasn't inside the house long
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none of the drawers or closets had been ransacked but audrey's purse was missing
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looked like the house had been selected for a break in so that somebody could go in and find
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something of value probably to purchase for drugs a preliminary look at the evidence left no doubt about what had
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happened audrey heard the intruder kick in the back door she grabbed the portable phone
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ran to the bathroom and locked herself in [Music] but apparently he heard her on the phone
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then grabbed her purse and left here was a woman that was huddled on the floor of her bathroom on 9-1-1 who
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at least in the opinion of the forensic pathologist turned her head to avoid what she saw was coming the
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fatal gunshot it doesn't get worse than that unfortunately police could find
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no witnesses we didn't have any neighbors or anything that saw or heard anybody in the
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neighborhood that could give us any type of physical description he has no regard
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for human life and our concern was at that point we needed to find this guy and put him away
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police and forensic experts searched audrey nicholls home hoping to find evidence left by the person who killed
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her the victim was in the bathroom dead so we determine a pathway from the entrance way
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to the bathroom and so everything in between has to be processed and then there was no other way out of
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the house but out of the door that the suspect came in in the kitchen police found one foreign fingerprint
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although it was badly smudged there were shards of glass spread over the linoleum floor of the kitchen
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was it possible that the killer stepped on a shard of glass leaving his shoe impression
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the theory of any crime scene investigation is that the suspect is always going to leave something of
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themselves at the scene or take something away that's going to link them to the crime
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the shards were collected and sent to the forensics lab glass is such a smooth perfect surface
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that it's really really the best surface we can possibly hope for to get a footwear impression on
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the linoleum floor was dusted with a powder called aurora pink that sticks to any moisture present
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then using what is called an alternate light source any powder that clings to the
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moisture will fluoresce if you have a patterned linoleum or something where the background is interfering with the
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the impression you can usually use your alternative light source to eliminate the background and then the
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fluorescent powder that you use to dust up the impression is very bright and so it makes a very good contrast
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it was successful they saw one clear print the heel portion of the killer's left
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shoe it appeared to be an athletic shoe most of the prints you see are partial prints you may sometimes get some full
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footwear impressions but with people walking over on top of them it can destroy the prints and many times you
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only get partial prints back in the forensics lab scientists saw what looked to be
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another shoe impression on a shard of broken glass so they placed it in a tank filled with
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heated super glue the fumes create a permanent image of the print and it looked like the toe area of the
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killer's right shoe because we had a toe area on the glass and a heel area on the linoleum we
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basically almost had an entire entire shoe impression so we did have a very good idea what the entire tread pattern
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looked like i remember looking at the glass and saying we have some really good footwear impressions here
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today forensic analysts have access to sophisticated databases of all kinds of shoe impressions
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it includes men's women's even children's shoes both dress and leisure
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from all over the world this database is called soul mate elements of the shoot patterns will be
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entered in by the operator so if it has squares in the ball area of the shoe or the toe
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area of the shoe you would enter that in and then the computer comes back with a
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list of possible shoe treads and you can pull those up and look at them to determine you know if any of those are
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the shoe you're actually looking for checking and cross-checking finally gave
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investigators their first solid piece of information the footwear impressions were consistent
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with having been made by a spalding tennis shoe unfortunately the print wasn't complete
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so some details were unclear the fact that he's wearing tennis shoes was about the only given that we had
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a month after audrey's death a pedestrian found her purse in a field about a mile from her home
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her identification was inside but all the money was gone this proved robbery was a motive but
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why murder it was an unanswered question for all of us it was like who would do this why
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would they do it and how how did they choose her how did they choose her it wasn't like she was a
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rich woman it wasn't like she was flashy at all research shows criminals often commit
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their crimes close to where they live so police focused their search in the surrounding areas
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but got no leads you always fear that this might be one of those cold cases that might end up on the
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shelf and this was a very very serious case so we had this concern that we hope this
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one doesn't go cold then six weeks after audrey's murder police got a break
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police apprehended a man breaking into a home just down the street from audrey's
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irony of ironies they end up with a home nearby audrey's that was broken into
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and the guy's wearing sneakers not only is he wearing sneakers but he's wearing spalding sneakers
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there were glass fragments embedded right in the shoes of the of the first suspect's shoes it's like whoa is this
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the guy and glimmers of hope that maybe there have been a solution to the audrey slain
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but it didn't turn out to be that simple [Music] two partial impressions from a pair of
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spalding tennis shoes were the best clues found in audrey nichols home following her murder
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police also found a partial fingerprint but weren't sure if it was left by the
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killer the suspect was in and out of the house so quickly that there really wasn't a
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lot of other forensic evidence if if any so this particular case really hinged on
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those footwear impressions six weeks after the murder police arrested a man attempting to rob a home
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not far from where audrey nichols lived he was 25 year old kent embry who had prior arrests for petty theft and
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burglary the suspect happened to be wearing spalding tennis shoes just like we had
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told the investigators they were looking for since these are spaldings and we already know that we need spaldings we
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needed to have these analyzed right away because this could be the big break in audrey's shooting
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police sent the shoes to the forensics lab where they were inked and printed using transparent overlays
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amy nishod compared them to the two partial prints found in audrey nichols home that was compared directly to the
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photograph of the footwear impression and the linoleum and then directly to the glass michaud was looking for two
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things class characteristics which result from how the shoe is made and accidental characteristics which result
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from how it's worn just the random wear that occurs to the bottom of the shoes
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through ordinary activities every day it produces cuts and scratches and nicks on the bottoms of your shoes which make
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it unique to all other shoes and so it's those scratches that we really look for
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after extensive comparisons michoad called investigators with some bad news the sizes were slightly off
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things just didn't line up correctly and then we were absolutely positive that
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those weren't the shoes that made the impressions left at the crime scene what we had hoped would be good evidence
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turns out to be absolutely useless and unrelated it wasn't that break that we
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were looking for now we had to basically start from zero again and move forward investigators went back to canvassing
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the neighborhood but feared audrey's murder would go unsolved then almost four months after audrey's
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murder the local district attorney received a letter from a man in prison do you remember the retired state police
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lady that was killed in lansing i can give up the killer for a deal with the prosecutor he said he found her in the
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bathroom she was calling for help so he knocked the phone from her hand and stomped on it when he looked up she was
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looking at his face so he shot her in the head with a 32 caliber see what you can do
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the letter was from a prisoner named carl headley headley said he heard about the murder
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from a cellmate who was awaiting trial for shooting and robbing a truck driver it had to be checked out because
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obviously sometimes in these jailhouse settings things get exaggerated or they pick up information that they think they
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can sell or trade off and and so that always has to be taken with a degree of skepticism but the details
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of the letter were all accurate he had details that we had not released to the public there's only one way he
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could have come into that type of information he was either there or he got it from somebody who was
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the man's name was john skinner 22 years old homicide investigators questioned
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skinner about the murder but he denied it and like everybody else that we interview
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is accused of a murder they never had anything to do with them weren't there
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you know i don't remember where i was that night but i wasn't there skinner's fingerprints did not match the
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unidentified print found in audrey nichols kitchen and there were no spalding tennis shoes
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in the prison storage unit or at the local county jail where skinner was first processed it was a tough situation
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because of the fact that the homicide occurred approximately a month earlier and we were no closer to
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finding this horrific person out running around possibly killing people again the investigation faced a crisis
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without a fingerprint match and with no spalding tennis shoes investigators had reached a dead end
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22 year old john skinner was the prime suspect in audrey nicholls murder he was in prison awaiting trial for an
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unrelated crime when he allegedly bragged to a cellmate that he had killed audrey nichols and gotten away with it
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but police couldn't find any evidence that skinner even owned a pair of spalding brand tennis shoes similar to
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the prints found at the crime scene we had the information from the jailhouse informant
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we knew that we had to have something else it was imperative to get the shoes to do the comparison work and the longer
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you wait the chances of getting the shoes lessons and the chances of more damage occurring to the shoes
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if somebody's wearing them that lessens the chance of an identification as a last resort
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police spoke with everyone working in the prisoner processing area of the county jail
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and they got a break skinner's prison file indicated that his mother picked up her son's personal
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belongings after he was incarcerated investigators rushed to her home which was less than a mile from the murder
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scene so those sneakers were absolutely essential the mother could have taken him and thrown him in a trash can
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or he could have called her and said get rid of them and that could have been very damaging
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but police found a worn pair of spalding tennis shoes in john skinner's bedroom
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we got pretty excited that this might be the person who committed the breaking and entering the murder of the victim
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again amy michaud compared skinner's pair to the transparent overlays of the partial
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prince found at the murder scene the partials were a toe from the right shoe and the heel
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from the left on both of the impressions the one from the linoleum and the one from the glass
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there were enough accidental markings and and characteristics that were visible in the impression that lined up
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with the the known shoes that we were able to say without a doubt that these are the shoes that made those
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impressions how's he going to dispute that his tennis shoes were found at that
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crime scene what possible explanation can he give there's no way he could ever
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explain his presence in that house other than he went there to rob and ended up killing based on the forensic evidence
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prosecutors say skinner kicked in the back door and broke the glass as he stepped into the room his sneaker
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left a partial print on a broken shard his other shoe left the partial print on the linoleum floor
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audrey heard the commotion grabbed her telephone ran into the bathroom locked the door and called police
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when skinner heard this he kicked open the bathroom door and killed her [Music] police arrived within five minutes but
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skinner had already fled with audrey's purse inside was all of a hundred dollars in
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cash his drive to get money was more important than a human life his downfall was the fact that he was wearing those
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spaldings there's no reason for his footwear impressions to be there because
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he did not know the victim the victim did not know him police questioned skinner one last time
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he asked about the evidence against him after denying the fact that he was there
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his main question to me was is do you have my prince in the house and my response to that is yes i do john
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i have your prince so i need to know whether or not you plan this killing or whether or not it was a random act
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skinner then realized the investigation was over he confessed to the crime and said he
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chose the house at random that all he planned to do was to steal some money for drugs
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he said he didn't go there with the intent to kill her or anything like that
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that he heard her talking on the phone and only wanted to make her stop talking on the phone and
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somehow the gun went off accidentally which we thought was a bunch of bull crap we never did it identify him with
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layton prince and i don't know if he was wearing gloves or not wearing gloves at
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the time after he expressed we talked to him about where the gun was because our
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main goal was to get the gun back so it couldn't be used in any other crimes
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he had indicated that we would never find a gun that it was throwing down a sewer
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and then later on he recanted that story indicating that someone else had the gun
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and we would never find it john skinner pled guilty to second-degree murder he was sentenced to life in prison
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i'm glad for the forensic sciences that they were able to close this case that
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they were able to get the person who did it for her family and her friends so that
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there would be some kind of closure and personally i think that audrey rests better
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you know knowing that her kids don't have to wonder what happened and her friends don't have to wonder what
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happened while investigating homicides the first line of defense is forensic sciences a
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person coming in and fuming the floors obtaining fingerprints without them would half of the crimes be
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solved probably not as technology progresses i hope forensic science does in this case forensic science was at the
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very heart of this case being solved and being successfully prosecuted without it who knows we might
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have a cold case on the shelf plain and simple but with the forensics everything
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came together [Music] [Music] [Music] you