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[Music] up next a wealthy businessman is killed by an intruder investigators find a wide conspiracy
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the murder had been planned out other people not only knew about it but had been asked to participate
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friends turn on friends i didn't do anything it didn't seem to be sinking in with him
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how deep he was involved but to get the killer one piece of evidence had to be identified all these high school
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kids had been involved and perhaps one of them did just after midnight in saint cloud
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minnesota seventeen-year-old jason mclennan returned home from a night out with a
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friend he took a shower downstairs but before he went to bed he went up to the kitchen to get something to eat
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in the foyer near the front door he saw his father lying on the floor bleeding i need help my dad's just been shot i
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just came home and he's on the ground i don't know is he inside the house oh yeah he's on
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the ground do you know who did this to him no i just came home when paramedics arrived they found
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jason's father 53 year old ken mclennan dead at the base of the stairs he had been shot to death it looked like
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ken mclennan came down the stairs and encountered an intruder when you come down dressed in only a
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bathrobe you don't expect that someone's going to be waiting for you with a loaded rifle
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there was wounds to the temple to the forehead to the throat the chest area to the right hand and
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one in the back as well the attack was so fast and so unexpected mclennan had little time to react
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he grabbed the end of the gun he actually reached up and the gun actually had contact with
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his hand the shot goes through the hand there were at least six shots perhaps seven
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that were fired every single one hit ken mclennan the killer took the time to pick up the
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shell casings all except one there was one spent 22 shell casing left on the hardwood floor
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near the body the motive appeared to be robbery we discovered that ken's wallet along with
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some cash and identification cards and also some foreign currency and ken's watch we're missing from the residence
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ken mclennan was a widower as a vice president in charge of international sales of a crafts company
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he often traveled and had just returned from an overseas trip he made a good living his value was over
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a million dollars in terms of life insurance and actual assets the mclennan family was of some wealth
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and so we explored that as a motive for his murder who might gain from his death as the sun rose the
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next morning police found some important evidence outside in the fresh snow some shoe impressions
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from the backyard leading straight to the front door police were convinced that these prints
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belonged to the killer at ken mclennan's autopsy the medical examiner recovered seven
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22-caliber slugs from his body those slugs were telling they were four different kinds of ammunition raising
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the possibility that there was more than one shooter or the killer wanted to make it
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look like there was more than one shooter typically burglars don't want to confront the homeowner or any other
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persons inside they want to get in and get out to be very uncharacteristic in my opinion
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for someone to shoot someone that many times since the victim's 17-year-old son jason
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found his father's body investigators had no choice but to consider him a suspect we seized the clothing
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that jason was wearing when we first made contact with him that clothing had no apparent
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blood on it we also conducted a gunshot residue test on jason early that morning
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and those results came back negative that he did not have gunshot residue on his hands
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[Music] another potential suspect was ken's fiance a swiss businesswoman of lisandra
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lautens she had been living with jason and ken during the time that they were in
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florida and the fact that she existed in the fact that she lived in their household
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was a subject of stress between the father and son but their wedding plans were on hold we
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did obtain emails from his fiancee which indicated there was some trouble in their relationship
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at the time that ken was killed yet she was still listed as beneficiary of one of ken's life insurance policies
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and that policy was valued at a hundred thousand dollars but alessandra was in switzerland at the
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time of the murder and was written off as a suspect police turned their attention to the
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shoe impressions found outside of the crime scene in the snow the victim's son jason said two sets of
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prints belonged to him and a friend since he wasn't allowed to smoke in the house
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jason and his friend went outside their shoes were sent to sue gross for comparison
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with photos from the scene i will ink the bottom of the shoe and press the clear acetate transparency
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against it and then i will compare this transparency to the photograph that was submitted
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these transparencies confirmed the two sets of impressions on the left side of the
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house belonged to the teenagers the third set of prints on the opposite side of the house were
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different that set of footprints that led around the home up to the front door and there was no
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set leaving the front door that third set of footprints around the other side of the house became
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the focus of the investigation the impressions were run through a computer program
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called soulmate which can identify the make and model of any shoe or boot impression they were able to
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indicate that with certainty it was a new york lugs brand shoe that had made that
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impression further checking revealed there were a number of stores in saint cloud
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minnesota that carried the lugs boots a brand popular in the world of hip-hop then police got a tip from an unlikely
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source i received a call from the father of a female student from tech high school he stated that his
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daughter was very upset over details that she had learned while she was at school that day about
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this murder it was the story of a wide-ranging conspiracy she was crying hysterically
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and stated she was very fearful for what she was about to tell us as police investigated the murder of ken
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mclennan they heard rumors that his relationship with his 17 year old son jason wasn't a good one according to friends
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ken all but abandoned jason's mother as she lay dying of cancer and jason deeply resented it regardless of the
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relationship between ken and his wife if the woman's dying it just looks bad if you take off and go
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to another continent and don't come back for weeks leaving jason who might have been 12
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years old to take care of his dying mother it appeared that things changed for him
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that he became more troubled started to have more trouble in school after his wife's death
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ken continued to travel extensively for work there were stories about jason being
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left alone for weeks with virtually nothing in the refrigerator and having no money i don't know how
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exaggerated these stories are obviously jason didn't starve after ken mclennan's murder police
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received a tip from one of jason's fellow high school students at least one other high school student
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had been asked to provide a gun a number of high school students knew about this
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the informant said that jason asked several people to help him kill his father but all of them declined
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they didn't think this was really going to happen others seemed in this stoned world where
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nothing was real anyway and oh far out it happened the informant said one friend matt
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muller agreed to help by providing the gun in return for money matt was an average
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kid who got dazzled by the money dazzled by the possibilities when a rich kid tells you you can be
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part of my life you can have a big fancy house a fancy car your life is going to be different if you'll help
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me with this he got caught up in it police found a 22-caliber rifle in matt's bedroom
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which they confiscated and sent to ballistics there curt moline test-fired mulder's
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rifle into a 600-gallon water tank and i shoot in one end and the bullets hit the water and they slow down and
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they drop drop to the bottom and then i vacuum those up with hose he took the test-fired bullet and
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compared it to slugs recovered from ken mclennan's body the lands and grooves did not match up
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a closer examination showed why a boroscope a fiber optic magnifier revealed a series of abnormal scratches
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on the inside of the gun barrel the scratches appeared to be fresh and by fresh i mean they were
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silvery colored they'd scratched through the bluing which would have been applied at the
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factory someone had scratched the inside of the barrel for the purpose of preventing
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a ballistic examination so the next step was to compare the spent shell casings from the scene
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to the casings from the test firing looking at unique marks made by the firing pin
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as it struck the bullet they were identical also inside the barrel was a small drop of blood dna testing proved
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the blood was ken mclennan's it made sense based on the suta on the hand that mr mclennan had actually
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grabbed the gun before the shot was fired because of that contact with the hand some of his blood then did blow back
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into the barrel of the rifle when confronted with this evidence matt muller admitted he was involved
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but insisted jason mclennan was the killer he tried to attack me into going and killing him because they
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knew he'd be the kind of suspect but i couldn't do it so i told him i was
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the kind of thing to do with it and then he's just like okay fine he took the gun for me and he said just go
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wait out the car matt said he heard the shots jason came back to the car returned the
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gun and then he went home well he told me that pretty much i want to save my house
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do something and matt knew something that hadn't been made public four different types of 22 caliber
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bullets had been used one of the things they actually discussed was using different kinds of
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ammunition so that if gunshot residue was found as part of the investigation it would be tough to track it back to
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his particular gun matt claimed jason gave him a thousand dollars for use of the gun
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yet when confronted with matt's confession jason denied any involvement in his
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father's murder i didn't do anything even that's an even bigger reason for me to not do something
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like this even though the fact that i loved my dad even if i didn't love my dad even if i
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hated his guts i still see tv i still see all that stuff you won't really get away with
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anything i'm not an idiot i might not be great at school i might not pass but i'm not immortal
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jason stuck to his story but after he got out of the shower he found his father dead in the foyer
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he insisted he had no idea who killed him police had two versions of events surrounding the murder of ken mclennan
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and they weren't sure which one was true we knew that both of them had reason to
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lie to us so we had to do the best we could to prove for certain what really happened versus what they
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claimed happened once ken mclennan's murder hit the news some local high school students in saint
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cloud minnesota called police saying the victim's son jason had offered them
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money to help him kill his father one of the students that we interviewed was present at the mclennan home several
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weeks prior to the homicide matt actually stood in the hallway of the residence while jason and this other
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student watched and made gun sounds pow pow pow when it was apparent that ken mclendon
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would be coming in the house this raised the possibility that there might have been a third person involved in the
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murder we were very concerned based on the fact that all these high school kids had been
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involved in this involved in planning asked to help that perhaps one of them did
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the key break happened when a student offered to lead police to some incriminating evidence the day after
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this murder occurred the student had confided that he knew where the bloody clothes were that jason
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had been wearing at the time that this murder had occurred police found the clothes exactly where
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the students said they'd be buried on property owned by matt mohler's parents
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they found a red plaid shirt a pair of blue jeans with one glove in the back pocket a pair
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of white socks they also found some information from ken mclennan to include his wallet
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some business cards from his employer and some foreign currency the clothes were jason mclennan's
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students had seen him wearing them the day of the murder dna testing proved the blood on the
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clothes had come from jason's father the fact that we could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that those
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jeans were jason mclennan's with his dad's blood on the bottom of the pant
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leg was an extremely important moment in this investigation the bloody glove was even more telling
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dna testing on skin cells showed jason had worn the glove and scientists found gunshot residue on
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the glove from four different types of 22 caliber bullets very important when that test came back
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that not only was their gunshot residue on the glove but also corroborating what matt muller
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had told us about using different kinds of ammunition this seemed to prove jason fired the fatal shots
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but prosecutors had one major problem they still hadn't identified who made the foot impressions in the
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snow the ones that led to the front door of the crime scene we knew that a number of the other high
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school students had discussed this that they had talked about the money they were going to get
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that they were going to live the high life and that was why we spent so much time trying to identify that third set
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of footprints if another student was involved a defense attorney could raise the
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possibility of reasonable doubt we had to be able to explain to the jury where those footprints came from
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so prosecutors pressured matt mohler reminding him that a first-degree murder conviction
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meant a life sentence he agreed to plead guilty to second-degree murder in exchange for a reduced sentence
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matt then admitted the shoes were his and turned them over to police after hiding them in his basement
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he said he made the shoe prints in an effort to throw off investigators i compared them side by
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side looking at their class characteristics and the general tread pattern and the size of the shoe and this shoe
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corresponded to the shoe prints at the scene prosecutors believe the motive for the
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crime was jason's hatred of his father jason blamed him for abandoning his mother
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as she laid dying of cancer jason also wanted his father's money kansas state was worth about 1.5 million
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and 1.4 million dollars and jason wanted to reap the benefits on the night of the murder ken mclennan
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returned home from his business trip and immediately went to bed jason and matt waited outside until he
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was asleep and matt used the third pair of boots to walk to the front of the house leaving a trail they hoped
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would trick investigators jason went inside with the 22-caliber rifle matt rang the front doorbell
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[Music] when ken mclennan walked downstairs to see who it was jason ambushed him
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ken grabbed the rifle barrel but it was too late and jason fired seven shots killing his
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father instantly jason and matt ransacked the house to make it look like a robbery
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they collected the spent shell casings but unknowingly left one behind matt disposed of jason's blood-spattered
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clothes and tried to damage the inside of the rifle barrel to render it useless as evidence
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but ken mclennan's blood inside the barrel and the shell casing from the scene
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were more than enough evidence for the trial jason mclennan pleaded not guilty and claimed he killed his father in
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self-defense the jury didn't buy it jason was convicted of first degree murder
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and sentenced to life in prison matt mohler pleaded guilty to second-degree murder
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and was sentenced to 30 years sometimes i still wake up in the morning and look out the bars and just go wow
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you know i still can't believe that i'm here in prison i still can't believe
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that the decision i made to put myself here the boy's plan to murder ken mclennan
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went off without a hitch but the cover-up couldn't withstand scientific scrutiny
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we had a cover-up going on here this was not a matter-of-fact spread-the-moment thing
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that this had been planned that it was strategic that they had done the best they could to throw off the
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investigation if nothing else when a jury saw this they realized this was not an accident
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the forensics in this case was very important we had dna we had ballistics we had blood spatter it's all of those
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forensic answers that led us to believe without question that jason had been the
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one to pull the trigger and that matt had in fact been involved you