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in 1988 the body of a young woman was discovered in an ohio river under ice most of the evidence found at the crime
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scene hairs fibers and fingerprints had been washed away but the victim's six-year-old son
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unwittingly told investigators all they needed to know about the killer and he did it without saying a word
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the clue was in his genes [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] a troop of boy scouts headed to possum
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run creek one saturday morning in january of 1988 their mission was to pick up aluminum cans for a recycling
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project look in the icy creek in rural ohio they spotted what appeared to be a mannequin
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they saw something just under the ice submerged it was the body of a young woman
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local police took every possible precaution to preserve trace evidence by wrapping the victim's body in a sheet
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before taking it to the morgue a check of missing persons reports identified the woman as 32 year old
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margie coffey the single mother of two young children she had been reported missing 10 days
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earlier the police had found her vehicle down off of park avenue east by a bar and she
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was a missing person by the time this body was located in the over by the mohican
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park the autopsy revealed that margie coffey had been strangled with her own scarf
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the coroner estimated she had been dumped in the creek 10 days earlier the same day she disappeared
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margie raymie was her maiden name she was one of six children who grew up in the heartlands of ohio on the
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outskirts of a town named butler and she was an outgoing girl personal well she was a robust girl
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and she loved life [Music] she worked on the farm and then she would help her mother on
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the farm they had a lot of cattle to take care of and she helped in that margie grew up in a loving religious
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home but in her teenage years as most kids do she yearned for independence began spending most of her time in
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mansfield a larger city about 15 miles northwest of butler she made friends with an unsavory crowd
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she got into some activities that were subject to prosecution by the law and they were mainly street crimes that type
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of thing that probably were very low level but that's how we got to be acquainted with
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her during our work on the street those street crimes allegedly included prostitution and illegal drug use
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eventually margie rejected that life she met a man named steve coffey the two married and had a daughter angie
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but the marriage soured and margie and steve divorced to support herself and her daughter
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margie worked as a waitress she also enrolled in college to study law enforcement
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and during this time margie had another child out of wedlock this time a son brandon
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police investigating her murder wondered if margie had returned to the streets to
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support her children well i know her family helped her some but she didn't make a lot of money and
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going to school no she didn't make a lot of money working in a restaurant as police knew from experience
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life on the streets meant special dangers and a large pool of potential suspects
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get away maybe there's somebody in her past that has a reason to want her dead
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maybe she's uh done something or not paid something uh maybe some street person
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has come to this conclusion they ought to kill her with no suspects or leads police hoped that the rushing water of
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possum run creek had not washed away evidence which could lead them to margie's killer
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[Music] when 32 year old margie coffey was found strangled in a frozen creek police
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wondered if her past had finally caught up with her in her particular case since she had a
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background of some activity that was certainly against the law we looked into into that possibility that she may have
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slipped back into that drug environment but friends said that wasn't the case
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margie had been focusing her attention on her family and her education they were just adamant that they had not
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seen her she hadn't been around and to their knowledge she had completely cleaned up
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all of her past activities margie was raising taking care of the children on her own and she loved her
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children she loved them she really loved them and i feel that margie was a good mother i really do
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she had also rediscovered religion i believe she wanted to be a christian lady from all that i could gather from
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her that's what she was striving for to do to be better to live better to act
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better and forget all about anything in the past police learned that margie had been
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actively dating since her divorce among the men she was seeing were two mansfield police officers
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both of whom were married one was robert lemon a veteran of the force he indicated us that it had ended
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sometime before that probably a year and a half minimum and that he had not had any contact with
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her and even spoken to her for any reason the other was lieutenant charles oswalt
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he too said his relationship with margie was over lieutenant oswald was very much in love with his wife
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oftentimes spoke about what they did on weekends and things like that he was a type of police officer that
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other police officers i would say would try to emulate lieutenant oswald furnished a police
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report indicating he had been on duty that night on a drug investigation the trail of margie's killer was growing
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cold we had no fingerprints we had no weapon we had to explore the other possibilities and those possibilities
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really were going to come from her margie coffey was last seen alive at this diner
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sitting in a booth with her school books open studying for a class detective david messmore interviewed the
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owner of the diner who said that lieutenant oswalt was in the diner the same time as margie
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[Music] the two weren't sitting together but they did acknowledge one another
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how are you it was a very distressing situation not only did i work with him i knew he was a very good policeman but
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i've been friends with him and it was just it was very upsetting to me to think that he might have been
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involved in a crime like that when confronted with this information lieutenant oswalt refused to comment
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[Music] margie's parents laid their daughter to rest an excruciating task few parents are
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prepared for marge's parents mr miserami suffered from that day on there was times that
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they would just break down and cry when they would see a picture of margie or when
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when mrs ramey would talk to me little did police realize that margie's own son would provide a
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tantalizing clue one that would lead them to the killer as the search for margie coffee's killer
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continued a mansfield police officer told homicide investigators about a suspicious incident that occurred the
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night margie was killed the officer said he saw lieutenant charles oswalt who had been linked
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romantically to margie on foot out of uniform and behaving strangely near the police station
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and he had a leather jacket on which would be unusual at that time of the night due to
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the fact that he was working this officer said what's going on how are you doing and he kind of ignored him
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and he continued on walking into the police department through the back way oswalt's behavior cast doubt on his
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claim that he was investigating a drug operation that night for him to be nervous and excited in that period of
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time was kind of unusual that kind of took the luster or the punch out of his alibi
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in the forensics lab margie coffey's clothing would soon tell a story of its own
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we had a scarf you had leg warmers you had a heavy coat once the clothing is dry basically it'll
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be hung on a hanger just like your clothing would be at home there'll be a piece of paper placed underneath in case
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anything naturally falls off and then the article is simply held and scraped with a spatula all the way down to help
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lift these articles off and let them fall onto the paper to be collected while most of the trace evidence had
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been washed away by the water a very small amount remained recovered a number of hairs and fibers
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in particular two fibers red in color the presence of these two fibers about a quarter of an inch in length and no more
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than twice the size of a human hair across were all we had to really work with while different fibers may look similar
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to the naked eye under a microscope they are very distinctive the foreign fibers on margie's coat and
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leg warmers were triangular in shape or trilobal from the side this trilobal shape gives
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the appearance of having a stripe running along the side tri-lobal carpet is usually found in
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high traffic areas like hotels and automobile interiors since it hides dirt tony tambasco took carpet samples from
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every location where margie had been in the days before her murder tabasco thought he found what he was
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looking for in the home of margie's parents at margie's parents house we
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found a floor mat that actually had red carpet the red carpet fibers in the floor mat look very similar to those
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that we had recovered from the victim but under a microscope that carpet was not similar to the fibers on margie's
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clothes since lieutenant oswalt was seen in the diner with margie on the night she
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disappeared tambasco wanted to examine the police cruiser oswalt had been driving that
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night most police vehicles are not carpeted because of heavy use and have rubber
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flooring instead but police records revealed that on the night in question lieutenant oswalt was
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the watch commander and the watch commander's vehicle was different from the others
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the unique thing about that particular cruiser cruiser number 306 was it was a supervisor's car it wasn't your standard
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police car that you buy every year with the fleet it was bought at a public auction
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the mansfield police had gone to an auction had purchased a chevy caprice classic
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a full-size car for their commanders and of course the upper echelon of the police department
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have a little nicer vehicle than the guys in the street the carpet in the watch commander's car
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was red tabasco took a small sample from the vehicle at first it looks similar to the
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carpet in margie's parents house but under a microscope the fibers told a different story and
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were similar in all respects to the fibers found on margie's clothing we looked at color you can see the
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colors the same we looked at diameter you can see the diameter is consistent we looked at the trilobal design and the
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pattern does show that chemical tests revealed that both sets of fibers had been dyed with the same
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chemicals but fiber evidence unlike dna or a fingerprint is not definitive the presence of the fibers being
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consistent with the fibers in the vehicle is not an identification to the exclusion of all others it's not an
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absolute there's no way anyone should to come to court and there's no way anyone
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can come to court and testify that that fiber came from that carpet it's just
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not going to happen but even more damning evidence against officer oswalt would come from margie's
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six-year-old son brandon [Music] the circumstantial evidence in margie coffee's murder all pointed to
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lieutenant charles oswalt so did the forensic evidence the two red carpet fibers on margie's clothing were
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microscopically similar to the carpet in oswald's automobile [Music] but the question haunting police was
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motive if oswald murdered margie coffey why did he do it after margie had given birth to her
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second child brandon she told social services that she couldn't identify the
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baby's father since the pregnancy was the result of a rape but later when she applied for financial
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aid at college she was required to identify brandon's father and explain why she wasn't receiving child support
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when she became a jehovah's witness and they began to uh counsel with her they
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found these details out they said look you can't lie you tell the truth and she named
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chuck oswalt as the father with this news prosecutors asked oswald to undergo a paternity test
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it revealed that the likelihood of oswalt being brandon's father was greater than 99
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investigators also discovered that oswald had refused to pay for child support when margie asked possibly
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because he didn't want his wife to find out about his infidelity lieutenant oswald was married i had
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children in fact up until all of this broke his wife didn't know anything about margie
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coffee did not know that he had a child by another woman and so i'm sure that
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her finding that out certainly was motive for what happened oswalt allegedly offered margie a few
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thousand dollars from an insurance settlement which margie refused as insufficient
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during charles oswalt's murder trial prosecutors presented one more piece of
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evidence against him a woman who would once work for police as a decoy in prostitution
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investigations charlene dry sawyer testified that she too had been having an affair with oswalt
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sawyer claimed that oswalt had not only told her he murdered margie coffey he also provided details of the crime
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[Music] sawyer said that after oswalt and margie saw one another in the diner they went
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to oswald's police car to talk they discussed the child's support matter and oswalt's offer of three
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thousand dollars to end the dispute no it's not enough with margie's refusal
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the conversation grew heated and margie threatened to disclose that oswald was brandon's father i will file a lawsuit
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and your wife and kids will find out about this margie slapped him [Music] oswalt responded by strangling her with
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her own scarf the forensic evidence reveals that oswald put margie's lifeless body in the
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back seat of his police car where her coat and leg warmers picked up the tiny red triangular shaped carpet fibers
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later prosecutors say oswalt drove to the bridge over possum run creek and dumped
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the body into the water in the mistaken belief that any incriminating evidence would be washed downstream
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[Music] you know when it's uh when it waddles and it quacks it's probably a duck and that's the case that
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we had here at his trial lieutenant oswalt took the stand in his own defense and denied killing margie
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coffey he repeated his claim that he had been working alone that night on a drug
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investigation and offered the type police report to prove it but prosecutors contended that the
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report was bogus implying that oswalt himself had typed the phony report after the murder to give himself an alibi
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[Music] the jury found lieutenant charles oswalt guilty of voluntary manslaughter and
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abusing a corpse he was sentenced to 10 to 25 years in prison to this day oswalt insists he did not kill margie
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coffee [Music] he may deny and he may go to the grave denied it i think i think he is guilty now
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if i'm wrong god forgive me for residents of mansfield the ultimate betrayal
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is a policeman who commits murder i mean it's bad enough to murder someone but then when you supposed to be
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uh protecting people and then using the office of authority to kill someone then that's the lowest
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murder that i can uh thank god he will never ever ever admit that crime i don't care if they keep him in jail
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till he dies he will go to he will go to his grave with that in his in his mind he will never ever
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and i really believe that prosecutors say that it was solid police work and some luck that helped seal the
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case the presence of these red fibers and that carpet was simply a shot in the dark
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a police car in our own backyard a police car in our fleet the uniqueness of that police car being
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bought at auction the chance of that one in a million and without the forensic evidence
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lieutenant oswald might not have been brought to justice i'd say this was one of the key pieces
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of evidence and it would have been more difficult for a jury to have convicted him if not
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impossible [Music] [Music] [Music] you