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[Music] an unknown assailant walked into a retail store and fired three shots killing the owner
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police had suspects but all had alibis forensic scientists found more than a crime perpetrated in broad daylight
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hidden in the shadows was a killer [Music] [Applause] [Music] autumn is a particularly pretty time in
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spring grove pennsylvania [Music] landscape photographers and local artists usually found their way here to
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the gray fox gallery the owner jennifer myers was a well-known picture framer just a wonderful woman a wonderful
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mother a wonderful wife and a good friend to a lot of people managing a retail shop isn't easy
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one year earlier jennifer was robbed in the store at gunpoint since then her husband steve stopped in
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every afternoon on his way home from work at the local factory most afternoon visits were uneventful
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but october 20th 1997 was different my wife's been shot shot gray fox gallery in spring grove hurry
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okay sir listen to me okay do you know who shot her no i don't okay we're out
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on her body is she shot in her face okay is she breathing sir is she breathing when police arrived
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jennifer was dead on the floor behind the counter she had been shot three times several workers nearby said they heard
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popping noises a few hours earlier around 1pm no one thought they were gunfire several witnesses saw a man with long
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black hair running from the shopping center sometime around 1pm this was someone that went in there
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with the sole intent to kill the victim there was no struggle a fight didn't
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precipitate this homicide a robbery didn't precipitate this no money was missing from the cash
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register or jennifer's purse when something like this happens people feel as though their world has somewhat
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been changed and their sense of security is gone because if something like this can happen in spring grove pennsylvania
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it can happen anywhere this brazen attack in a busy retail area at midday told police that the killer
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was willing to risk everything to kill jennifer myers it's somebody who definitely wanted her
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dead that had a problem with her and excluding robbery as being a motive that's what you have to start looking at
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who wanted jennifer myers dead a ballistic examination identified the murder weapon as either a 357 or a 38
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caliber revolver in pennsylvania there's a database as far as registered handguns so we began
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to look at that and we found that stephen myers did have a 357 that he owned steve myers willingly turned over the
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pistol for forensic analysis but he didn't resemble the man seen running near the shop earlier in the day
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[Music] witnesses said they heard popping sounds which police suspected were gunfire near
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the gray fox picture frame shop around one o'clock in the afternoon approximately two hours later steve
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myers discovered his wife jennifer shot to death on the floor of the store another witness saw a man running from
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the area wearing light blue jeans and a blue plaid flannel shirt we believe that the shooter
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came in the store used a blitz style tackle on her walking right towards her firing the first shot
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and striking her in the shoulder area and then firing a second shot striking her in the abdomen the last shot was to
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the face ballistic experts examined the bullet fragments recovered from the victim and
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concluded the killer used a 38 or 357 caliber revolver the victim's husband steve owned a 357
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revolver when the bullets from the crime scene were compared to those test-fired from
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steve myers revolver analysts concluded they were not a match police also confirmed
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that steve myers was at work when the murder took place he didn't need an alibi but as far as
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him uh being at work uh that just was one more piece that fit in that he was not involved in his
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killing whatsoever police had another promising lead jennifer's murder took place just one
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day before she was scheduled to testify against 40-year-old kevin dowling the man jennifer claimed had robbed her
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at gunpoint a year earlier okay well now we have perhaps a motive for someone to want
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to have this woman dead so that she was incapable of testifying kevin dowling had the opportunity to
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commit the murder since he was free on bail that day however when questioned by police dowling said he had an alibi
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he was fishing on a boat in muddy run lake a story confirmed by his wife mrs dowling was very cooperative she
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truly believed that her husband was not involved in this homicide whatsoever and
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therefore was very helpful in improving her husband's innocence dowling also had evidence to support his
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alibi he said he made a home video of his fishing trip that day his wife willingly turned the video over
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to police as i said here we are lake because i wanted to help prove him innocent that he did not do this
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so i was more than happy to help them and it was sort of like a slap in the face for them ha ha he did not do it if
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this is truly tape of him fishing it's an airtight alibi i want to secure it
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as evidence so that there's no further questions the first thing police noticed
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was that the videotape was recorded with the date and time of day the footage was
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shot pretty quiet nice and peaceful out here the tape showed dowling fishing in the
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middle of the lake from 10 46 in the morning until 4 pm on the day of jennifer meyer's murder
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muddy run lake was a 45 minute drive away from jennifer's store dowling also had store receipts for fish
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bait food and the boat rental but something about the videotape looked odd he's trying to get something
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on tape of him fishing but this is clearly not someone who's interested in catching any of the fish
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kevin dowling's family confirmed the tape was made on october 20th the day of
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the murder in fact that evening when he came home and my girls were home and after dinner
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we all sat around and watched the tape with them together on the tape kevin spoke to his children about his
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impending robbery trial he also expressed his hope that if convicted the children would not misbehave while he
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was imprisoned i gotta face what's ahead i mean i'm not responsible for what happened but
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no one seems to want to help me and i don't know what to do my main concern is what's going to
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happen to mommy and all you kids he's accounting for almost everything he did that day
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which in itself began to struck me he's striking me it's kind of odd that
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he has these receipts and the day seemed too perfect as far as using the word alibi
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police wondered if dowling had somehow doctored the videotape and if he had could forensic science prove it
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kevin dowling insisted he did not kill jennifer myers despite the fact that she was scheduled to testify against him in
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an upcoming robbery trial dowling also had an alibi claiming he was fishing at the time of
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the murder and he offered this time and date stand videotape as evidence there's some big fish on this fish
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finder just wish i knew how to get them to hit the tape contains scenes shot from 10 in
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the morning until after 4 pm jennifer's murder took place around 1pm and her store was only 45 minutes away
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from the lake dowling's videotape gave him an airtight alibi but police were still suspicious
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although dowling shot scenes throughout the day the entire running time of the tape was
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only 12 minutes he talked several times in the tape about catching fish yet you never saw any fish on a tape
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which again struck me odd that if you're catching fish you'd want to show them on
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your videotape something else about the tape bothered maori kevin dowling repeatedly glanced at his
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wrist watch which struck me kind of odd if he was on a casual day of fishing why he was so
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concerned about the time of day in some parts of the tape dowling's watch faced the camera
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investigators isolated and enlarged clips of the watch the timepiece was too blurry to read
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mowry asked scientists at the federal bureau of investigation to try digital enhancement
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but the tape quality was too poor for the process to work determining the time when dowling shot
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the video was critical since police were well aware that the time and date stamp
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can be manipulated the sun was out periodically throughout the tape and was casting very good shadowing by
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determining shadowing positioning can we work backwards and calculate the time of day
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using the sun it's positioned in the sky detectives posed the question to nasa
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scientists at the goddard space flight center in greenbelt maryland surprisingly
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nasa identified a local astrophysicist to help them the guy that could probably do this was
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right in her own backyard and that would be dr robert boyle at dickinson college
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dr robert boyle is an associate professor of physics and astronomy when he first saw the tape he wasn't
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optimistic my heart just dropped because this was clearly not going to be a cut and dried
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case of oh there's shadows you use them like sundials you can tell the time because here was a picture where the
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camera was on a moving boat as the earth rotates the position of the sun changes creating
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different shadows when using the sun to tell time two characteristics are observed the
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sun's height overhead or altitude and its direction along the horizon or azimuth
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the north point being zero degrees azimuth the east point being 90 degrees uh south point being 180 degrees the
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west point 270 degrees boyle said he needed more than just the videotape to conduct a study he needed specific
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scientific information he would need some measurements of the boat he would need the measurements of kevin dowling
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he would need the measurements of the hat that kevin had wore in the video but the most crucial piece of
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information dr boyle needed was the magnetic north compass heading of the boat when the video tape was shot
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to find out police took the same boat onto muddy run lake and identified its exact location by
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matching the landscape shown on the tape then they identified the heading of the
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boat with a compass out of the eight frames that professor boyle had given us we believed that we
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had matched seven of the frames and we used a degree of plus or minus five degrees as far as
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our degree of inaccuracy next using an artist's model a light bulb and the protractor dr boyle
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calculated the sun's azimuth or direction based on the shadows the model represented kevin dowling
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the light bulb the sun dr boyle adjusted the light to produce the same shadows that were in the video
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the protractor identified the sun's position based on the angle between the model and the light
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i essentially measure the angle between the direction of the the camera and the direction of the sun which is being
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mimicked by a light bulb dr boyle used the voyager 2 computer program which identified the sun's exact
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position in 15-minute increments on the day of the murder when he compared the exact position of
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the sun to the shadows on the video dr boyle discovered that the times stamped on some of the scenes
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were bogus late afternoon time stamps could very well have been correct there was a whole
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bunch of times in the middle that just were inconsistent with the astronomical data
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for example in this scene the background analysis shows the dowling is facing north
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it stamped 11 24 in the morning but you can see that the sun is clearly positioned to dowling's left
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which is west at 11 24 the sun would be in the east dr boyle estimates this scene was shot
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closer to 3pm kevin dowling now had the opportunity to commit this crime because he was not on
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muddy run lake at one o'clock in the afternoon and he also had a motive but prosecutors needed more than shadows
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on videotape to get a murder conviction [Music] when police confronted kevin dowling
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with the scientific evidence that his time and date stamp videotape was a forgery
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dowling confessed not to jennifer meyer's murder but to deception he now said that after a few hours of
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fishing he went to a nearby strip club and altered the times on the videotape so that his wife wouldn't find out
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i don't need to point out the the strangeness of that theory first of all why did you videotape yourself at all
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why didn't you just say i decided i didn't want to videotape myself and of
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course his wife would have never been the wiser and the videotape revealed something
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else dowling was wearing clothes similar to the man witnesses saw running from jennifer meyer's store
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i did not want to believe that my husband the father of my children could do something like this to
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another human being police found the clothes dowling was wearing on the fishing trip in his home
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they sent them to aj skip schwabel an internationally recognized expert in forensic gunshot residue
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when a pistol is fired the firing pin ignites the elements in the projectile which then turns into gas
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the gases solidify into tiny particles which are then deposited on the hands clothing and the immediate proximity of
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the discharge [Music] to test clothing for gunshot residue schwabel first used an adhesive to
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extract any microscopic particles the particles were placed in a scanning electron microscope
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which subjected them to extreme magnification and provided an elemental analysis
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[Music] an electron beam bombarded the sample causing the elements within to emit
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characteristic x-rays the characteristic x-rays show up on the video screen as peaks or pulses at different energy
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levels each energy level is assigned an element tests revealed gunshot residue on the
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left side of each of kevin dowling's garments this was significant since dowling was
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left-handed we found that every item had to some extent some gunshot residue present
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prosecutors say kevin dowling carefully planned to eliminate jennifer myers to prevent her from testifying against him
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in his robbery trial on the day of the murder dowling went fishing on muddy run lake
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and used his video camera till 11 45. we'll be back in a little while he then went ashore hid the boat in some
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bushes and made the 45-minute trip into town wearing a wig as a disguise dowling entered jennifer's store around
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1pm and fired three shots the gunpowder residue embedded deep into his shirt fibers invisible to the naked
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eye but perfectly clear to forensic scientists [Music] dowling was back in his boat on the lake
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sometime around 2 p.m when he reset the time on his video camera to 11 24 he never realized that he was a human
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sundial his videotape told the story of deceit not innocence i would like to kick his ass
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he has no remorse at all then you wonder how sick this man really is when he has no remorse over what he's
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done and that is very scary despite the forensic evidence kevin dowling insisted he was innocent but he
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was convicted of first degree murder and was sentenced to death by lethal injection
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his wife joanne says she knew nothing of her husband's secret life and considers the death sentence
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too lenient i truly hate kevin dowling for everything he stands for the person he
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is what he did to people i hate him more than i can even explain well you can't ever forget the
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the infamous fishing tape because how ridiculous is it to think that he would get away with something like that
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i mean there's technology today that's going to determine that this tape has
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been doctored it's one thing to have a motive to kill it's another thing to actually prove
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that someone did it and the forensics were able to give us the proof necessary considering they never found the murder
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weapon it's amazing what they can do nowadays and without it a lot of people would go free
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it's ironic of course we often talk about criminals hiding in the shadows don't we
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and in this case the shadows were actually revealing [Music] [Music] [Music] you