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an affluent young woman was found dead in her home while her husband was off on a sailing trip
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[Music] police uncovered allegations of sex parties and white swapping but it was an old movie an overheard
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telephone call and an air conditioner that cracked the case [Music] [Music] [Music]
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ed and ellen sherman lived in niantic connecticut for the entire 16 years of their marriage
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ed taught business at a local community college and was a member of mensah an organization for people with
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exceptionally high iqs ellen was five and a half months pregnant and worked in the family
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publishing business ellen sherman was a sweetheart everybody that met ellen just adored her she had a
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smile and a friendly uh hello for everyone on a friday night in august of 1985 ed left for a week-long sailing trip
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with four friends they are always fun and we always have a great time and that's great sailing from maine down we
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stop at the vineyard nantucket and what have you boys night out type thing on sunday afternoon two days into the
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trip ed called his pregnant wife to make sure she was okay [Music] after numerous calls went unanswered ed
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contacted len frederickson a good friend of the couple and asked him to check on
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ellen i got over there when it was just starting to get dark and i could hear the air conditioner running
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in the house the lights were on and the inside and the outside i checked all the
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doors they were locked it was locked up which was very strange because they always left the house open i used to kid
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ellen about you're going to come home some night there'll be nothing left in
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your house no one answered the door so fredrickson entered the home through an unlocked window
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inside was the family dog he called for ellen but there was no answer upstairs he opened the bedroom door
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and found ellen's lifeless body on the bed i had no idea what had happened i
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i didn't think that she'd been murdered and why would i think that anybody would
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murder this wonderful person it appeared at first glance as if she were the subject of a sexual assault and her
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night clothing was on the floor and her underwear and the bedding red ligature marks around ellen's neck
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indicated strangulation the medical examiner determined that the murder occurred sometime saturday night
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or early sunday morning based on rigor mortis the temporary stiffening of the body after death
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the lines on her fingernails were evidence they had been bent backwards could be because during the
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strangulation victim try to keep themselves free meanwhile trying to struggle with the
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perpetrator may scratch the farm police found no signs of forced entry and no valuables were missing which
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ruled out robbery using a ship to shore radio a policeman gave ed sherman the bad news
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he talked to him for a while which i wasn't listening to but he eventually did hand me the microphone and
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said wayne take this it's the police they said ellen's been killed detective mike malczyk soon learned that
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the sherman's lives were far from ordinary it was a lifestyle of deception sex and intrigue
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[Music] the medical examiner estimated that ellen sherman was murdered sometime over
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the weekend while her husband was sailing in the atlantic ocean with friends ed sherman told investigators that he
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last spoke with his wife on friday night from his friend's house they said that mr sherman did get on the
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phone and he's telling his wife go to the bank to make this deposit all these different things
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and ed sherman was unusually candid about their sex life [Applause] of it up until
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relatively recently and the girlfriend had a child and it was his child the woman was ed's co-worker
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nancy prescott she was very different than ellen in fact ellen used to refer to her as
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ed's valley girl she was blonde and very different looking ed wanted an open marriage he encouraged
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ellen to have affairs and ed sherman's lifestyle was unusual in other ways i remember being at a
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new year's eve party at their house i believe it was 1984. they had several couples there and i
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guess they were going to swap partners i was with a young lady and ed asked me if
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i was interested in what i asked the young lady that i was with if she was interested and i just said
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we'll leave and we did so ed was really the one that was pushing that type of situation
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allen did not want that in her life i was totally unaware of and would not have guessed it
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since there were no signs of forced entry police suspected ellen may have known her killer
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fran uh downstairs to upstairs everything in proper order no sign of a ransack or violent struggles
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if a boring intruder usually we see some sign of struggle dr henry lee at the time the director of
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connecticut's crime lab was called in to assist investigators dr lee examined photos of the ligature
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marks on ellen sherman's neck and found a faint pattern and this pattern is a zigzag
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pattern which so unique initially we don't know where they come from lee compared this to the clothing found
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at the scene including the torn panties subsequently when we start scratching the panty you can see
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this this pattern the space star opening up and shows identical pattern as what left on the neck
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but other evidence showed that ellen was strangled with bare hands not the panties
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the autopsy revealed the cricoid cartilage in the neck had been fractured something which cannot be accomplished
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during ligature strangulation [Music] dr lee believes the killer wrapped the panties around her neck afterwards in
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order to stage the crime scene to make it look like a sex crime on the bed sheet under ultraviolet light
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was biological evidence investigators hoped would identify the killer extremely unusual is the bashi we found
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close to 150 to 200 individual siemens stand that's a lot of siemens there this biological evidence was too badly
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degraded for dna testing which meant the material had been there for quite some time and had survived laundering
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while searching for suspects police discovered that ed's mistress nancy prescott may have been angry with
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ed and ellen ed had recently agreed to end the affair to save his marriage when ellen got pregnant she said i want
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you to stay home and be a father to this baby and be there when it's born and
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give up the girlfriend so they they talked it out and ed said that he was willing to give up his
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girlfriend and he would be a father and a husband to ellen was angry because i had to make a decision
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and so i told nancy can't handle anyone did she get this why why why why why
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detectives asked ed to take a polygraph test he agreed the results were inconclusive
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and nancy prescott had an alibi for the day of the murder the trail of the killer was starting to
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turn cold mike malcheck had promised ellen's mother rose that he would stay on the
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case and that they would find out who did this to her daughter then malchik got lucky
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he learned there was a movie that featured a murder identical to ellen sherman's
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would this film lead police to the killer [Music] initially police didn't consider ed
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sherman a suspect in his wife's murder since he was on a sailboat in the atlantic ocean the day she died
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this case is in the middle of the ocean have perfect galloping a forward weakness
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time of the days become very important in many homicide investigations because that
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result time of the days you can impeach a witness statement or suspect statement
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or collaborate with the suspect statement however time of the death is a difficult area
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rigor mortis is one way to estimate the time of death this is what a body looks like when
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rigor mortis occurs a stiffening of the entire body that lasts between 12 and 24 hours after
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death when ellen's body was discovered it was in the final stages of rigor mortis and
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becoming more pliable [Music] in looking through the investigator's report dr lee discovered an important clue
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it was something len frederickson said when he found ellen's body it was like a
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it was like open freezer almost the air conditioner was going full blast the person later described it as being
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extremely cold in the room colder than a normal person would have their air conditioner
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on a freezing cold room will slow decomposition and the progress of rigor mortis
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this meant that ellen sherman's murder could have occurred earlier than originally estimated
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here it's clear the time of the days is definite not sunday although we don't know exactly ours
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every indicator pointed out is friday sometime if ellen was murdered on friday night
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then ed sherman would have had plenty of time to commit the crime police also learned the sherman was
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wearing long pants and a long sleeve shirt on the sailing trip in august and looking back on it
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we were all in shorts and t-shirts and he had long pants on and a turtleneck i never saw him on the boat with short
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sleeves on since ellen's fingernails had been damaged police suspected that ed might
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have been hiding scratch marks ed vigorously denied this and insisted his wife was alive when he left he said
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he even spoke to her from his friend's home by telephone in front of witnesses
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if true ed couldn't have been the killer but ed wasn't the only one listening in to that
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conversation his friend's daughter was too she picked up and was getting ready to make a call i
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guess he said well i heard mr sherman talking on the phone and she said well i was on
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the other end it was just ringing and ringing and i heard him saying i love you too and there was nobody there
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and they said why didn't you hang up and she said well i thought it was very
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unusual because he was talking to a ring phone it's five minutes after he leaves
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his house he fakes a phone call his wife i mean that's hard to explain little did he know that uh
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you know some nine-year-old girl was gonna bring him down he wasn't as smart as he thought he was
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and there was another interesting development a witness told police that she had run
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into it on the morning of his sailing trip during the conversation ed recommended she watch a movie he
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particularly enjoyed called blackout in the film a man kills his wife and children puts
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the bodies inside the house then manipulates the crime scene in order to fool forensic scientists and mask the
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true time of death richard woodmark who plays a detective comes out to the press and says
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the time of death is going to be very difficult to determine because the bodies were put in a cold room with the
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air conditioner turned all the way up the medical examiner estimates they were dead for at least three days
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[Music] the air conditioning system in the house was turned on apparently to slow the decomposition of the body
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was it possible that ed did the same thing friends say he displayed a morbid fascination about details of his wife's
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murder he asked me once he asked me 10 times do you know if they've determined the time
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of death he was very interested in that he also asked me one time if i knew how a body
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decomposed i thought that was a very strange question i said no truth is absolutely stranger than
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fiction i mean there are so many things that happen in real life that there's no need to make
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anything up i mean it's awful police and prosecutors alike wondered what motivated ed sherman to kill his
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wife despite the apparent reconciliation friends say ellen decided she wanted a divorce
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since ellen was the majority owner of the family business she allegedly told ed that she would leave him with almost
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nothing and ellen said he can have his girlfriend and his and his sailboat and that's it
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so i said to her i said are you sure this is what you want to do she says i can't live like this anymore she says
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he's never going to be a husband and a father to our children he's always going
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to have this double life prosecutors believe that ed sherman carefully planned his wife's murder
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the couple had a light dinner and then while ellen was changing her clothes in the bedroom prosecutors say ed
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strangled her to death [Applause] [Music] the forensic evidence shows that ellen
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was dead before ed wrapped the panties around her neck to make the murder appear
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to be a sex crime inspired by the movie blackout he set the air conditioner to its
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coldest setting closed the door and left for the sailing trip around 7pm later that night to cement his alibi
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he staged the call to his wife in front of his friends not knowing his friend's
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daughter was listening in german called len fredrickson from the sailboat on sunday evening asking him to
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check on his wife hoping the cold temperature of the bedroom would mask the true time of death just like the
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movie it fooled forensic scientists but only for a while [Music] of course witness play an important
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factor the first person discovered the body filled the temperature call the young lady listen on the phone
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of course no he's lying by signs we feel the gap shows something it's impossible
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the time of the day sunday is impossible then we show what's more probable by friday
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then we show the weapon and the motive he almost got away very close detective malachi
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arrested ed sherman for murder he knew that i knew that he was the one that had murdered his wife
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and when he saw me he looked at me and i just walked in i was the first one in and he looked over
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and i said ed it's time and he turned white he started to sweat and he knew it was time
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and the forensic evidence mattered most to jurors during deliberations they asked to hear
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again the testimony of dr lee and the medical examiner particularly on the time of death
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one of the jurors said that it boiled down to the to the fact that they figured he had the time and the and the
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the opportunity and the motive six years after his wife's death the jury found ed sherman guilty
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of first degree murder and he was sentenced to 50 years in prison while ed sherman never admitted guilt
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he did show some remorse he said she deserved a better lifestyle and he apologized for leading such an
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indulgent lifestyle and then he said i do not know who killed ellen after spending only three
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years in prison ed sherman died of a heart attack at the age of 52. he was a very bright individual high iq
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and like to make people know that he was smarter than you that's the way he made
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me feel and i've heard the same from other people ed thought he could have whatever ed
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wanted he's got to be an awful cold person to be able to do that that's a hands-on
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crime and she's pregnant with his own child and it is a son so he's a cold calculating person
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doesn't deserve any sympathy from anybody but sherman was not smarter than the
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detectives and scientists who investigated the case in all my years of doing this i've never
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seen a case where a body was placed in an air-conditioned room and it was turned up to the maximum degree
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to apparently throw off the time of death this case demonstrates how important the teamwork
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to taxes witness scientists work together did not give up [Music] [Music] [Music]
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you