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up next he promises to avenge his sister's murder i pray to god that i would be led to be in the right place
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the right time for years he tracks her killer without success every day with another blow to the stomach somewhere
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deep in the houston crime files are the secrets to solve the case he just had to find them houston had 500
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000 prints everybody has 10 fingers that's 5 million prints 34 years later investigators find the answer i want to
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know who killed diane [Applause] in december of 1969 diane maxwell pulled into the company parking lot in houston
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texas it was sunday and downtown was virtually empty diane worked for the southwestern bell
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company and her shift started at 1pm but she never made it inside the building a half hour later a homeless man saw
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someone walking away from an old shack next to the parking lot he walked back to the shack and walked
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very close to him got a good look at him and went on to the shack and he found this young girl lying on her back with
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her hands tied behind her back and he asked her if she'd been assaulted she'd
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said yes she asked him to untie her and he said no but he agreed he would go call the police
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tragically by the time police arrived 25 year old diane maxwell was dead she was lying on her back bra pushed up
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a small wound just above her navel probably an inch and width diane was just 25 years old a single
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mother of a four-year-old son well i would tell you that it was the most devastating thing i'd ever
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experienced my first reaction was denial that there's no way that you know diane
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could be dead when my father called he could barely speak and my stepmother took over who was much
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more composed under those circumstances and was really able to give me more of the details
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in a search for evidence police scoured the wooden shack among the debris they found a rumpled
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pink blanket and a man's gray suit coat it had been used as a storeroom for a service station
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and everything imaginable was in there from service manuals to old oil cans the only witness
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was the homeless man willie bell and that the only physical description was that it was a black male with an
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afro haircut there was no money in diane's purse her car keys were missing and her car a new
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red mustang was gone police found it nine hours later a mile away the car was locked the keys were in the
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ignition so it was obvious that whoever killed diane you know took her keys and then took her car
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at the autopsy the medical examiner found evidence that diane had been sexually assaulted
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and she had been stabbed just once with surgical precision severing an artery one possibility was that the killer was
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a medical professional and since one of the state's largest prisons was just 70 miles away in
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huntsville an ex-convict could have been responsible houston was the first stop and usually they had
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just the clothes on their back and probably 25 and wouldn't have been enough to live on
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a day or two until they would start into other endeavors diane's brother vowed to help catch her
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killer [Music] the senselessness of diane maxwell's murder shocked everyone friends
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co-workers and family i knew that she had been attacked and murdered and i really never asked for
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any other details just because i didn't think i could really deal with it the last thanksgiving we
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spent together diane had gotten me off to the side and said you know david if something
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happens to me i want you to raise my son and i said okay well i will and uh and that was less than a month
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before she was killed more than 20 of diane's co-workers at the phone company
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quit their jobs many of those who remained armed themselves with ice picks and knives
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it's very very hard and it was very public because the news carried quite a bit of
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information about it and you're seeing it on tv and you're reading about in the paper
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and i'm getting phone calls and even phone calls from people i don't know
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but the killer had stolen diane's red mustang and abandoned it leaving it a mile from the crime scene
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i printed to the steering wheel inside the driver's door and the t-shift the next day went back
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over it and was successful in getting i would say 12 or 15 identifiable latent prints very good prints
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and many of them look fresh the prince three partial fingerprints and the partial palm print
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did not match those of the witness willie bell and he was eliminated as a suspect
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in 1969 before computers someone had to literally compare a print visually to all the ones in the houston
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crime files and there were millions of prints let's just say houston had 500 000 prints well if you
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think everybody has 10 fingers that's 5 million prints now if i were to try to
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take that late and go look at 5 million prints well i don't know how many lifetimes it would have taken it would
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have never happened instead police compared the prince from diane's car to everyone arrested for a crime
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committed after her murder police also questioned the people who loitered in the downtown area
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they were looking for a black male they knew that from from willie bell told him it was a black male that he'd
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seen raping diane they did get a few leads but they didn't pan out nothing pointed
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to the person that actually committed the offense since the fatal wound was made with
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surgical precision police also focused on health care workers as possible suspects
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they just started dragging everyone all the black males downtown and had them fingerprinted they were doing some
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things that would not be accepted today i thought that honestly that the person just slipped
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through the crack diane maxwell's murder started to look like a random homicide the hardest kind
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to solve everyone assigned to the homicide division at the time there were like 30
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detectives they all worked the case but as time goes on as you know and the leads diminish there just comes a point
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in time where there's just there's no more trails left each week as more and more fingerprints
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were added to the houston files examiners would compare those to the prince from diane maxwell's mustang
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with no success we were confused we thought we expected that it would be resolved you know you
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had the funeral and everything then you did begin to think about the resolution and so it was very
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you know upsetting and hurtful that there was no resolution eventually the trail of diane maxwell's killer
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turned cold and for 17 years there was virtually no progress nevertheless diane's father never lost hope
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every time i would see him he'd say son i want you to solve this case before i
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die i want to know who killed diane our parents are were quite elderly at the time and um
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so i know that was an impetus but i think it was just an ongoing impetus so at the age of 37 david maxwell was
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accepted into the oldest and most exclusive law enforcement agency in north america the texas rangers an elite
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group with only 134 members i thought about a great deal that if i became in law enforcement if i was able to
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eventually get in the texas rangers that in the and it remained unsolved that i would be able to reopen the case
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and eventually solve it what happened to diane influenced him and was certainly part of the reason
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that he decided to go into law enforcement and by this time the houston police department had
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recently purchased an aphis system the automated fingerprint identification system which can instantaneously compare
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unknown prints to those in the houston database david asked the department to run the
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unidentified prince found in his sister's car at the time they actually had to be traced
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we don't do that anymore but years ago the traced image we just had better luck
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with the tracing than the direct the image just wasn't as clear as it is now
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unfortunately there was no match i began to think that maybe he was dead because i couldn't imagine that you
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would commit that type of crime which was probably random and never committed again
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and the case turned cold again for another 17 years it was becoming clear that david maxwell
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would need help [Music] for more than 30 years david maxwell was haunted by his sister's murder and still hoped to find
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some way to solve it he had been successful in solving a lot of very complicated crimes and
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i i know that it was really important to him to try to solve this crime because of
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course this was very personal and you know he felt very deeply about it and he had promised his father he would
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solve the murder before he died by this time his father was close to 90 years old and time was running short
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and he would tell me that he would dream of seeing diane and that's all he thought about he said that's all i can
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think about is diane and this case being solved i want to know who killed her before i die
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with nowhere else to go david turned to his friend jim ramsey a veteran homicide
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investigator with the houston police department the two had known each other for years
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but david never told jim about his sister's murder i was shocked i was amazed that anyone could could
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hold that in and not talk about it but if anyone could do it it would be david i saw no need to tell people about
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what had happened in my life i wasn't looking for sympathy david could have had just about anybody in the state of
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texas work that case i really considered it a i guess a privilege when he asked me to look into it
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ramsey's first priority was to examine diane maxwell's clothing if we could do the dna for the sexual
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assault and and get that and put it in the database because now all the offenders as they go to prison they're
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taking dna samples and we're getting a lot of cold hits on the on the dna database
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but diane's clothing was gone to their shock and dismay it had been thrown away
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over a period of years i guess folks in the property room just had to make room for new property coming
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in next ramsay tried to interview the only witness to the crime willie bell we tracked him out to an address in
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california and we eventually learned he had died back in i think in the mid 80s then things went from bad to worse
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the crime scene photos and the negatives were also gone apparently in violation of police policy someone
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had sold them to the british crime magazine master detective in 1971. when contacted the publisher no longer
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had the pictures or negatives all they had left was a single copy of the magazine
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i asked him to send it to me because i didn't have any pictures of the crime
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scene and they were hesitant to do that because that was their only copy so ask them to please you know make copies of
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the photograph the photocopies of the magazine pages were virtually useless and then
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jim ramsey and david maxwell got even more bad news the killer's fingerprints found in diane
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maxwell's car that was supposed to be in her police case file were also missing
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it was just like every day was another blow to the stomach i knew they existed and now they're gone
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so yeah i was pretty upset about it with all the evidence gone david now had to tell his father
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that the case might never be solved and i prayed about it you know because i knew that physically and as a
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as a ranger or whatever i'm doing what i can do but i prayed to god that i would be led
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to be in the right place the right time if the prince couldn't be found there was nothing more anyone could do
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investigators literally had no evidence from diane maxwell's murder the crime scene photos were gone
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the victim's clothing had been discarded the only eyewitness had died and the killer's fingerprints were
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missing presumably misfiled in one of the thousands of open case files in the houston police department
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everybody at some point in time was looking for that case so it wasn't like okay we'll just do it in our spare time
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somebody every day was looking for that case i guarantee they went through many many
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files a tremendous undertaking debbie and i have worked together for 11 years rumor has it that she went to the
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director of the leighton lab and told the director that sergeant ramsey was threatening an
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ied investigation if they didn't find that print well i never once said that i
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respect authority but i don't mind challenging authority but whatever happened that got him off of dead center
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and there were several people that were assigned to go through every hpd case looking for prints
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after months of looking through all of the case files someone finally found them they just put it in the wrong file
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you know it was just a clerical error of all the evidence lost at least the fingerprints had been recovered
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my goodness what a task to have to go through all those folders of all those i mean you're talking about you know every
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car burglary every home burglary murder robbery assault just thousands and thousands of just print cards
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but they did it by this time the year was 2003 and sophisticated computerized fingerprint systems were everywhere
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jim ramsey had the prints from diane maxwell's car compared to those in the texas statewide database
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unfortunately there were no hits undeterred ramsay ran the prince through the fbi's
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national database this time there were 20 potential hits all 20 were then examined visually
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and one stood out this print came up it was like oh my gosh this looks awfully good this looks like
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we're going to have a hit the print belonged to 58 year old james davis a career criminal
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i identified him four different times i identified him i think fingers right index right middle and right ring and
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then the right palm it's hard to really describe how i felt but i was i was absolutely elated about
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it james ray davis spent the majority of his adult life incarcerated auto theft forgery assaults
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davis was living in a housing project on the texas arkansas border he had been out of prison for about 10 years
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following a conviction for abducting a young girl detective ramsey knocked on his door
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i said mr davis i'm from the houston police department and you could tell his demeanor changed
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drastically he just stared at me ramsay pulled out a photo of diane's car davis
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didn't want to look at it he said i've never ever seen that car well that's strange it's a red mustang
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you've never seen a red mustang then i pulled out a picture of diane that david had given me and i handed it
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to him but he wouldn't take the picture i tried to hand it to me wouldn't tell
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you davis initially denied any involvement but when told of the fingerprint evidence
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he confessed it was that it happened and i cried and i prayed but i did wrong he'd been out of prison five days when
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he killed diane and his life was was a lifetime of crime i'm sick now and uh
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i'm not able to do no kind of time nothing kind of changes if i have to go i just have to go but i would hope the
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judge or whatever happens on me after more than 30 years the mystery was finally solved
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well my father was ecstatic it just was a huge boost for him you know that they knew who this who it was i've
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worked scores or hundreds of murders and they're all important to me but it's not
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very often that that you're personally touched by them davis said his primary motive was
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robbery [Music] when he saw diane get out of her car he abducted her at night point and took
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her to the wooden shack he admitted robbing her but denied sexually assaulting her although the
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evidence clearly showed that he did then he stabbed her to death and stole her car
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he abandoned the mustang across town and left his fingerprints and a palm print although it took almost 35 years to find
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him his fingerprints on file had not degraded if it had not been for the aphis system
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he would have never been identified on january 15 2004 james davis pled guilty to murder with
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malice and was sentenced to life in prison i never saw remorse not one time the only time i saw remorse is when he came
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to court and he pled guilty and the judge sentenced him to life he didn't care about diane
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diane maxwell's father lived long enough to see her killer brought to justice
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david was really responsible for keeping people looking into this case but it was
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always at the top of his agenda it was always first in line in terms of what he wanted
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to accomplish this database has been such a boost to law enforcement to be able to help solve these crimes
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that otherwise would go unsolved and now with the dna database and that's doing
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the same thing i mean it's just been a tremendous boost to to those of us in law enforcement who
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work these kind of cases investigators believe the conviction was the result of hard
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work cooperation and perhaps something else i really think it's defined intervention
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because i mean look at it yourself look at the odds that we had going into this thing we didn't have a million to one
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chance we'd clear this thing and i don't know maybe because of the unselfish life that david it's their
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career that david's committed to the people of texas maybe the lord said well i'm going to
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give him a break you