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a serial killer was loose and investigators had no leads until an alert investigator saw something
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no one else had seen a possible fingerprint on the victim's skin the problem
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was how to collect it [Music] [Music] texas city texas is one of the largest oil refinery sites in america
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the oil business is labor-intensive which poses its own unique set of problems we have a large population of
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contract workers that come in from out of state all over the country come in to work at the
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refinery and it greatly impacts the community the police department from all facets traffic and crime and things like
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that that became all too clear on may 16 2001 just after dawn in the marshland south of the city
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municipal workers made a gruesome discovery they found the bodies of two young women
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on the edge of a dirt road about 120 feet apart the first girl that we came upon
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was nude except for her shoes was bound and bloody the second one was bloody nude
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the victim's clothing was scattered near their bodies the contents of their purses had been
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strewn above the scene forensic investigators estimated they had been dead for less than six hours
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making the time of death sometime around midnight i've run across a lot of deceased scenes
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and been involved in a lot of homicide since i haven't seen anything like it you
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could just when you saw the first the first body the first victim lying there you could feel
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the anger that was was carried out that day at least at least i could i could feel it it was uh
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it was horrific we were dealing with somebody who's had absolutely zero regard for another human
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being he was just mean and sorry it was my first thought the two women were identified as 31 year
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old dana faisal and 32 year old kami kellemann background checks revealed both worked
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as prostitutes i do believe that my sister was a manic depressant and she just couldn't get any help that
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she needed so she took towards drugs she self-medicated herself and she got on the wrong drug and it just took her
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dana faisal's story was similar she had a lifelong drug problem and she had been arrested many times by local
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police they were both beautiful young ladies came from very good families had a lot going for him
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it was a tragedy it was a tragedy that they went down that path why i don't think
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anybody ever knows when we got there we realized the remoteness of that area in the sagebrush and the snakes and the
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coyotes and the insects we couldn't get back in there to check to see if there
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was another girl that had been killed so the coast guard conducted an aerial search
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fortunately there were no other victims investigators looked at how the crimes were committed hoping to find clues to
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the killer's identity in their view it was a disorganized crime scene indicating it might be
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his first murder maybe at the time he got caught up in his actions in my opinion it was it was kind of a sloppy
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scene for somebody to leave so much behind because there was so much that was gathered during the
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course investigation near the bodies investigators found two white washcloths we thought of was there dna on it that
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he put in her mouth did he put some other sort of substance on it that would help him achieve his goal of controlling
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the girl investigators also found shattered glass on the ground and embedded in one of the victims legs
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she apparently kicked out the glass to his vehicle and and shattered the window and there were some beer cans in
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the area that looked new we picked up all those beer cans and certainly you'd
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always pick up those hoping you get whatever you get off of them investigators collected all of this
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evidence not quite sure what if anything would help them find the killer [Applause]
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[Music] two young women were murdered in the marshlands of southeast texas and their families wanted answers
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i gotta say that no matter what they were doing at the time of their death nobody deserves the way they died
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not at all a criminal profiler gave police a chilling warning the person who committed these murders
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would strike again he would in no uncertain terms told me that this this individual is going to
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produce numerous bodies in this area if you don't stop them and stop them immediately
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just before they were about to take the bodies to the city morgue an investigator thought he saw something
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there was a blood smear on cami kelleman's left thigh which looked like it contained
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a fingerprint every minute that you wait is it just goes down because we know they're out there in the
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elements between that and the bodies are starting to sweat you have animals you have ants anything that will
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start anything deteriorating if this was a fingerprint lifting it would be difficult
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skin is porous and stretches easily two things that usually make it impossible to get a usable print
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the odds of getting a bloody print on an actual body is very slim the area around the fingerprint was
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treated with amido black a chemical that reacts with the proteins in blood the stain
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makes a print visible as in this simulation of a print forming on skin the amido black enhanced the ridge
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detail of the fingerprint created in blood anytime you have a lot of blood it will
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just actually cover up your ridges so the the less blood there is the better print
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would be when you do process it with a metal black so the very small places that had just a tiny
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bit of blood that's where i got the print but there was a problem investigators couldn't see the print
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clearly so they sent it to the fbi in washington dc fbi image analyst richard vorder brugie
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scanned the image and examined it digitally on a computer he immediately saw the problem
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the texture of the skin on the victim's leg obscured the fingerprint there are two different patterns we're
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dealing with here you're dealing with the pattern of the fingerprint which is
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a very specific type of pattern and then we've got this this texture of the skin
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that is distinct from the fingerprint with the aid of the computer vorder brugi had to first identify the victim's
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skin pattern then have the computer remove as much of that as possible it's a trial and error
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technique it's not unlike an archaeologist using a dental tool to to scrape away fine pieces
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and leave the artifact intact as opposed to taking a bit a pick ax and just swinging for the fences
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the computer helped identify the repeating patterns of the victim's skin and
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i can show you how you can get rid of those wavelengths by just sending all of those bright spots to
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zero and what was left was the print presumably of the killer all investigators needed now was a
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suspect's print to compare it to meanwhile another print found at the scene a tire
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impression had significant potential it was clearly from the side wall of a tire for those conditions to exist such
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as the pressure of the tire hitting the side of the mud and the moisture and the
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type of soil it was one in a million shot that that actually came out as perfect as it did
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it was so perfect that technicians could actually read the brand of the tire we saw the entire commander logo on
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there which is very very rare it was in perfect condition when we we saw it casts were made of the print
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and when they were examined marks along the treads showed something unusual we concluded with the assistance of the
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tire manufacturer that these were snow tires well if you've ever lived in this part of texas you know we don't
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need snow tires investigators worked with the manufacturer to identify where these tires were sold
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we were able to conclude that these tires were actually sold in a particular area of colorado my initial thoughts
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that day were how in the world are we going to find this person it was an england haystack
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the murders of two prostitutes had texas police believing they were dealing with
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a potential serial killer well i think he's a monster i think we all realized
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the magnitude of what we had and that this was going to happen again if we couldn't solve it
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we would have another one to solve investigators spoke to other prostitutes in the area hoping one of them might
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help them they have a wealth of information of what goes on out there i mean if you can get a good rapport with
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with one of the girls you'd be surprised at the amount of information they know everything that
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goes on in the streets and that's how they uncovered an important piece of information
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another local prostitute said she was attacked three days before the murders she had been taken out to the same area
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and she had been treated in much the same way as we suppose these other girls were treated other than the fact
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she was not killed she said the man tried to tie her hands behind her back with medical tape and
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gag her with a white rag fortunately she escaped by the grace of god she was able to to
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get loose or free herself enough and she had the will to survive that night she had the will to survive she
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was able to walk that long lonely dark desolate scary walk to the highway she described her assailant as hispanic
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in his early 30s with the tattoo of a dagger on his right forearm and he was driving
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a white car she gave us a partial license plate of of c41 and three out of six is pretty good to
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uh to to keep an eye out for and look for incredibly she said she kept the washcloth he used
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to gag her it was made by the same manufacturer and had the same thread count as the
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washcloth found at the murder scene she did everything right she's pretty street savvy she has uh
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she's been around she's been in some situations i would expect she'd been in situations
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where she depended on her wits and nothing else to save her authorities combed the area for a man
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and a car that fit the woman's description a check of motor vehicle records indicated there were many white cars
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with a c41 on the license plate we picked up several hispanic males driving a small
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white car and they were brought in we took dna samples we took tire pictures of tires and
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and we were investigating everything we could three days later detective paul edinburg was driving into
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work and he passed a suspicious looking car headed out of town i just happened to look to my right
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and there was a a small white four-door car this one caught my attention and saw the
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first three on the license plate is c41 and i'm telling you my heart i think
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stopped beating edinburgh pulled the car over the driver was 30 year old jose castillon an orderly at a local nursing
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home i saw the forum with a tattoo of a dagger on there and i i was two or three seconds i was i was
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speechless because what's going through my mind now is this is the guy that everybody's been talking about
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interestingly castion's stepfather was a texas police officer castion's only previous brush with the
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law was a misdemeanor conviction for which he served no time in jail when questioned castillon denied any
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involvement in the murders employment and motor vehicle records showed castillon had recently moved to
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texas from colorado and bought a set of commander brand snow tires when he was there
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these were similar to the impressions found at the crime scene we saw a lot of uniformity between the
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tire impressions of the defendant's vehicle to the actual cast that we had taken from the crime scene
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as far as tread design tread size the logo itself investigators noticed the back window of castillon's car was
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broken pieces of that window were compared to the glass found on the leg of one of the
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murder victims the refractive index a measure of the speed of light as it passes through the glass was identical
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in both samples finally investigators compared castion's fingerprints to the bloody print found
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on one victim's leg it matched the middle finger on his right hand it was a huge moment it was the
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definitive moment in we've got a very very good case and let's get it to trial we've got the
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right man without a doubt two days after the murder of dana faisal and kami kelemann jose castillon was
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arrested and charged with two counts of murder but prosecutors wanted to know why
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police assumed alcohol was involved so they analyzed the beer cans found at the crime scene
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through the code on the on the beer cans contact the manufacturer to find out where those beer cans would have been
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what lot would they have been sold in where was that lot sold they tracked it down to the store and that store's
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computerized sales system indicated a man bought the beer on the same night as the murders they examined their receipts
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and found that this particular batch of beer was sold at this particular time and sure enough he'd written a check
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for beer the check was written for 19.68 cents by jose castellon and what about the white washcloths
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casteon worked at a nursing home that used hundreds of white washcloths every day
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they took us back into their laundry area and we dug through and found washcloths from the same manufacturer
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same description same thread count same so we knew we had a link prosecutors believe castillon probably
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picked up both victims at the same time he was drinking and carelessly discarded the beer cans
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the bar code proved that castillon bought them apparently castillon bound the women with tape and
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gagged them with washcloths he stole from work one of the girls kicked the rear windshield and broke it
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a shard of glass stuck to her leg after the murders when he dragged the women into the grass
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he left the bloody fingerprint on kami kelemann's thigh when he drove away he left his tire impressions in the soft
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mud i can't even begin to imagine and i really don't want to imagine they probably went out and decided that
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they were going to go get high and party a little bit and she just got in the wrong car
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i think they were friends and at one point they were picked up together and one saw the horror of the other one
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dying evidence technicians working fast and in difficult conditions performed a minor
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miracle by retrieving a print from the victim's skin later computer technology enhanced the
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print and proved jose castillon was the killer the tire impression 2 was an almost perfect specimen
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i think that if you tried a thousand times to duplicate that tire impression you could never do it the circumstances
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had to be exact that he had been pretty sloppy considering he did leave so much evidence behind
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maybe he just wanted to be caught because a lot of these cases they don't have that much evidence
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and there was just gobs of evidence facing a certain death sentence castion agreed to plead guilty to
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capital murder and kidnapping and was sentenced to life in prison without parole
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it was overwhelming how many people do you think walk in and want to play the two consecutive
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live sentences if they thought they had a chance no one perhaps not even jose castillon
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himself knows what caused his rage toward women [Music] i can only rely upon what the
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psychiatrist told us when we met with him it began as control dominance hatred towards women
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and he said it manifested itself initially as just minor acts of violence but gradually would become more brutal and
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now that he'd taken the step that he had that it was it was just going to be a
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downhill spiral from there the nature of the crime indicates he was a serial killer in the making
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but the decision to process the crime scene quickly and the technology that helped identify the print
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provided all the evidence needed to keep him from claiming even more victims i think the fingerprint with the new
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science and with people willing to experiment to get the science where it's accepted in court was
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was phenomenal that's one of the great things about this technology is that it
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in this case it made a piece of evidence that was effectively useless a critical component in the prosecution
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of this case if you got a you know a fingerprint is accepted in every court in the land as
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being conclusive and if you've got a the body of a female out here and has an individual's fingerprint
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on her body in blood and what else can that tell you except he was there he has handled that body sometime
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after there was blood on you