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NARRATOR: A child was
abducted from her home in the middle of the night. There were no witnesses.
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But new cutting-edge
photo technology revealed a clue that otherwise
would have been missed.
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[theme music] NARRATOR: Single mothers who
raise children alone often make enormous sacrifices
to make ends meet.
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Karen Ferger was no exception. She worked the night shift
at a food processing plant,
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so she hired an
acquaintance, Jack Hubble, as a live-in baby sitter. -It's just a typical,
working-class family
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with a single
parent that's trying to make ends meet
with the children. NARRATOR: On October 3, 1997,
Jack Hubble and his wife
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woke up and realized
that nine-year-old Sharra Ferger was missing. -The Hubbles had contacted a
few of the neighborhood friends,
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and they began searching
around to see if she was still somewhere in the neighborhood.
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-I felt scared. I was nervous. I just felt like
something happened to her, because there was
part of me that died.
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NARRATOR: At 3:30
that afternoon, the search for Sharra ended. -She was found in a field
300 yards from her residence,
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had been repeatedly stabbed and
left for dead out in the field. -I tried jumping the fence,
but the cops held me back,
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and when the paramedics came
and they didn't get out, I knew that she was gone. -It's kind of a scary thing.
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You know, when you
have kids like this, it's a scary thing to
think that somebody's
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running around out
there like that. -You never really know
who your neighbors are.
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This was a quiet,
community neighborhood, and now, all of a sudden,
it's something everybody's
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going to remember
is something said. NARRATOR: Investigators
immediately questioned Jack
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Hubble, since there was no sign
of forced entry to the house and he was the last known
person to see Sharra alive.
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He said the night before,
Sharra and her brother, Joseph, had fallen asleep on the sofa
while watching television.
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Hubble said he
turned off the TV, covered them up,
and went to bend. Later, Joseph came into
his bedroom, frightened.
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-Joseph heard noises. Pots and pans rattling
in the kitchen. It startled him. Jack didn't really ask
him why he was scared,
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he just said, yeah, go ahead
and you can sleep in the bed. NARRATOR: Joseph said
Sharra was still asleep
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when he went into
the Hubbles' bedroom. Karen was suspicious, but
she wasn't willing to believe
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Jack Hubble had anything to
do which Sharra's murder. -I wasn't sure he was capable
of doing something like that.
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-There was no sign
of forced entry, so it was believed that
whoever came into the house
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had some way to enter that
residence to get to Sharra. NARRATOR: But Jack Hubble's
behavior in the 24 hours
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before Sharra's
death was troubling. -The night before my
daughter's murder, Jack Hubble went into my
oldest daughter's window
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and tried to climb through it. Hubble, a recovering
heroin addict, told investigators
he was searching
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for his methadone prescription. -He didn't have a
real good explanation as to why he was in there.
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NARRATOR: Crystal told
police she was terrified. -He didn't try anything
with her or anything.
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She just got scared
that he was in her room. NARRATOR: The next night,
the night her younger sister
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was murdered, Crystal locked
her door and her bedroom window. Police suspected that
Hubble tried again
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to get to Crystal's
room, couldn't and turned to Sharra instead. All they had to do
now was prove it.
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The senselessness of
Sharra Ferger's murder shocked everyone in
Blanton, Florida.
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And the case made
the national news. -Well, whoever did
it, they're going to pay for it one
way or the other.
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An innocent kid.
She ain't never done nothing. NARRATOR: At the autopsy, the
medical examiner found evidence
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that Sharra had been
sexually assaulted, and that two weapons
were used in her murder.
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-One appeared to be a thin,
sharp-bladed instrument consistent with what we would
normally refer to as a knife,
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and the other was
a round object. It would be consistent with
a Phillips screwdriver.
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NARRATOR: Two different
weapons raised the possibility of
two perpetrators. The medical examiner
also found a bite mark
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on Sharra's shoulder
and four human hairs with the roots attached. It appeared the hairs had been
ripped from someone's head
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during a struggle. -They obtained a DNA
profile from that hair root. That DNA profile
was then compared
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to the DNA swab taken
from Jack Hubble. And there was no match. NARRATOR: And the
bite-mark impressions
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didn't match Hubble either. After five days in custody,
Jack Hubble was released.
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-It was obvious that she had
not left the neighborhood and that more than
likely, the suspect
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had come into the neighborhood
and had to have been either seen by someone or
possibly knew someone
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that lived in the neighborhood. NARRATOR: So investigators asked
all the men in the neighborhood
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to provide teeth impressions. This generated an
important lead. A forensic odontologist
identified Dale Morris,
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who lived down the
street from the Fergers, as the person responsible
for the bite mark
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on Sharra's shoulder. -We told them, that's your man. Arrest him. So, that's how that went.
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NARRATOR: Morris,
a married father of a teenage
stepdaughter, adamantly denied any involvement
in Sharra's murder.
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-I wasn't too crazy
about Dale Morris. I just believe he's guilty. Something in me tells
me that he's guilty.
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NARRATOR: Morris
told investigators he had never even
met Sharra Ferger. NARRATOR: But investigators
knew this wasn't true.
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-In fact, it was learned that
he had seen Sharra before, that Sharra had actually been
in his residence visiting
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his daughter. NARRATOR: During
his interrogation, Dale Morris came about
as close to a confession
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as one could get. -Which was a spontaneous
utterance basically indicating that if he had
done the crime, he
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must have done it in his sleep. NARRATOR: Based on the
bite-mark identification and his statement to
police, Dale Morris
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was charged with
first-degree murder. Tom Hanlon was the
public defender assigned to Dale's case.
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He described the so-called
confession as "preposterous." -He made a statement. Well if it happened, it had
to happen when I was asleep,
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because I never went over there. And so, was that a confession? No, that was a guy trying to
politely tell them to go drink
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ice water with the
devil, is what that was. NARRATOR: Convinced
the bite-mark evidence
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against his client was flawed,
Hanlon wanted a second opinion. So he called Dr. Lowell Levine,
a forensic odontologist who
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had been involved in a
number of high-profile cases. Dr. Levine believed the
photographs of the bite mark
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were too blurry for
a quality analysis. -I told Mr. Hanlon, to make
a very long story short,
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that it would be a good
idea if we could digitally clarify the police photographs.
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NARRATOR: So Hanlon
called NASA, who were experts in the field of
digital photo enhancement.
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NASA recommended using Lucis,
a cutting-edge software that would sharpen the
images considerably.
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-The human eye can discern
about 32 levels of contrast. A typical photograph has
255 levels of contrast.
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This means that there's a
lot of image information that our eye just can't
discern, because the differences
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in contrast just isn't big
enough for us to register it. What Lucis does is it makes
those small differences
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in contrast large enough
for us to be able to see. NARRATOR: When completed, the
digitally enhanced photographs
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revealed some new information. -The clarified photographs
showed that that was just
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part of a second line of teeth
and that there were actually two lines of teeth, there
were two complete bite
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marks, in that photograph. Part of the top
didn't show up real well until it was clarified.
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NARRATOR: This gave Dr.
Levine two bite impressions to compare with
Dale Morris's teeth.
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-It was my opinion
Dale Morris could not have caused the bike mark. -When I was afforded
an opportunity
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to talk with Dr.
Lowell Levine and he was able to sit down and
actually show me why this,
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in fact, was not Dale
Morris's bite mark, I walked away from
that meeting convinced
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that we had had
the wrong person. -You haven't been
able to hug your wife for a very long time, have you?
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-For four and a half months. I haven't been able to touch
her for four and a half months.
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Just talk to her through a
plate-glass window for an hour. Yeah, an hour at
a time, wasn't it?
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Yeah.
An hour at a time. -When the sheriff's office
went out there and apologized,
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as always, Dale accepted their
apology and forgave them. NARRATOR: The investigation
was far from over.
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Homicide investigators
identified two suspects in the murder of
nine-year-old Sharra Ferger.
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The child's babysitter,
Jack Hubble, and a neighbor, Dale Morris. -I believe he was guilty.
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I believe Dale
Morris was guilty. NARRATOR: But both
men had been excluded by the forensic evidence.
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By now, six months had
passed and the case was cold. -We found ourself, yet again,
in a position where we really
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did not know who
committed this offense. And the people in the community
were getting very upset.
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-I'm still scared that-- I mean,
there could be someone else. -Everybody's been on edge.
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I mean, nobody trusts anybody. They walk down here
to burn a castle, but people are still
looking around,
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you know, wondering who
it was, who could it be? -We worked very
hard to try to go
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back and refocus
this investigation. We knew we had to solve it. We knew that we
couldn't just leave it.
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NARRATOR: So investigators
re-interviewed people in Sharra's neighborhood,
looking for anything
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that might have been overlooked. They started with Sharra's
uncle, Gary Cochran,
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who was with Sharra
at a neighborhood carnival on the
afternoon of her murder. -Well, whoever did
it, they're going
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to pay for it one
way or the other. An innocent kid. She ain't never done nothing.
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-We'd never got along. After me and Sharra's dad
split up, for some reason he hated me because I wouldn't
let Sharra visit her dad.
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NARRATOR: And Cochran knew that
the Ferger's side door lock was broken, which is how the
perpetrator entered the home.
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However, Cochran
said he had an alibi for the night Sharra was killed. -An elaborate story that
he had been out drinking
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and wasn't even in the
area, and that he ended up partying with some other people.
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We checked out his
alibi, and we found that he wasn't
telling us the truth. NARRATOR: Cochran willingly
provided a DNA sample, which
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did not match the hair
from the crime scene. But investigators
didn't stop there.
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-Hello? NARRATOR: They learned that Gary
Cochran spent some time in jail for a drug-related
offense and developed
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a reputation for
some odd behavior. -Interviewing
inmates in the jail, it was determined that he
had bitten approximately six
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inmates while in jail with them. NARRATOR: Others
said the same thing. -His ex-wife stated that
during sex with Gary Cochran
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that he often bit her to the
point that he would draw blood. NARRATOR: This was significant
to the investigation,
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since Sharra Ferger had been
bitten by her assailant. So investigators took
molds of Cochran's teeth
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and sent them to forensic
odontologist Dr. Lowell Levine. Almost immediately, Dr. Levine
noticed something distinctive.
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-Mr. Cochran had two very
unusual characteristics there. He's got a space
between two pre-molars.
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One is rotated, and the
other one is either deformed or in some way has been broken.
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And they left very
distinctive bite marks or patterns in the issue. NARRATOR: But were the
molds of Cochran's teeth
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consistent with the bite marks
on Sharra Ferger's shoulder? -I then told the detectives
that it was Cochran.
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NARRATOR: Cochran
was incredulous. He insisted he
was innocent, just like Jack Hubble
and Dale Morris.
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He said he was falsely accused. -Gary Cochran indicated that
he had been with her earlier
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that evening and
playfully may have bitten her on the shoulder. NARRATOR: So investigators
asked Dr. Levine
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if the bite mark
could have happened hours earlier at the
neighborhood carnival.
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-In my opinion, it looks more
like a perimortem injury, an injury which occurred
around the time of death.
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And it just doesn't look like
a six-hour-old injury to me. NARRATOR: But if
Cochran was involved,
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he had an accomplice who
was the source of the DNA. -We knew that to
solve this case,
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to get to the
bottom of this case, we had to find the DNA source
that matched those hairs.
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NARRATOR: If Gary Cochran had
an accomplice in Sharra Ferger's murder, he wasn't
saying who it was.
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-We knew that there was a
missing piece of the puzzle, somebody that we had
to match up to the DNA
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from the hair that
was found on her body. NARRATOR: But a search of
a national DNA database
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didn't reveal a match. Then, investigators got
a tip from an informant who saw Gary Cochran with
his friend, 18-year-old Steve
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Cannon, on the night
of Sharra's murder. Incredibly, Cannon told
investigators an outright lie.
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He said he didn't
know Gary Cochran or anyone in the Ferger family. -I knew Steve Cannon
when he was little.
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His aunt and his
mom, I was friends with his aunt and his mom. And we used to hang out.
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All the kids used to go
to the park together. NARRATOR: And according to Karen
Ferger, Steve Cannon once dated
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her oldest daughter, Crystal,
and had been in their home on more than one occasion.
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Informants also
told investigators that Gary Cochran and Steve
Cannon were doing drugs
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together on the night
of Sharra's murder. -That night, when they drove
into town to go to the bar,
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they stopped at a place over
here on 41 to get drugs. NARRATOR: So investigators
collected a saliva sample
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from Steve Cannon and
sent it for DNA testing. Eight weeks later, they got the
answer they'd been waiting for.
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-With the DNA, we had a very
concise determination, finding, 1 in 2.9 billion, that
those hairs on the body
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belong to Cannon. And that was
conclusive evidence. It was totally unrefuted by
any other evidence whatsoever.
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-It was like finding
the silver bullet. It was a shock. It was a big relief. NARRATOR: Based on the forensic
evidence and eyewitness
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accounts, prosecutors believe
that Gary Cochran and Steve Cannon were drinking in a local
bar on the night of the murder,
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and also bought crack-cocaine. Sometime after
midnight, prosecutors believe that the two
went to the Ferger home
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and entered through
the side door, which Cochran knew was broken. The noise woke Joseph, who
ran to his babysitter's room,
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leaving Sharra alone
in the living room. The two men may have gone to
Crystal Ferger's room first,
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but it was locked. Then they saw Sharra
in the living room. No one knows how they
persuaded her to go outside.
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Cochran and Cannon, high
on drugs and alcohol, put Sharra in the car and drove
to the field 300 yards away.
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But Sharra fought back. She pulled Cannon's head hairs,
which led to the DNA match.
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And Gary Cochran's bite
mark implicated him as well. -I don't think this case would
probably ever have been solved
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without the bite
mark or the hairs. I don't know that we would
have ever been directed,
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particularly not
to Steven Cannon, had we not had the DNA evidence. -Well, I believe the Sheriff's
Department did a real good job.
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I was very satisfied
with their work, even though it took
so long for them to come up with the criminals.
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They were just doing
their jobs and trying to arrest the right person. -Well, both individuals
were ultimately
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indicted by the grand
jury on the charge of first-degree murder. NARRATOR: In September of 2005,
Gary Cochran and Steve Cannon
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were tried and convicted
of first-degree murder. They were sentenced to life
in prison without parole.
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The forensic evidence
exonerated two innocent men, and brought justice to the
two who were responsible.
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-This was a case that,
without forensic evidence, possibly would
have been unsolved.
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It was a case where you
had, the first time for me, of a forensic odontologist
involving a bite mark.
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-We would have never learned of
Steve Cannon had there not been a match to Gary
Cochran's bite mark.
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-I guess there would be one
thing that you could say about this case, looking at
all the circumstances involved,
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Dale Morris to Gary
Cochran, to Steven Cannon, and that is that
the system works.
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[theme music]