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[Applause] shortly after Thanksgiving in 1987 an intruder broke into the Tucker residence in Arlington
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Virginia it might have been just another statistic but the crime committed that night launched a new era in police
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investigations [Music] this is how DNA evidence and psychological profiling helped catch a
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serial killer and set an innocent man free [Music] [Music] [Applause] everything about her was very gentle she
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was very softspoken um just had this amazing softness about her um this human quality
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44-year-old Susan Tucker was a Publications editor who worked for the United States forestry service she was
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spending the Thanksgiving holiday alone since her husband Reggie was out of the country in Wales on a business trip
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neither of us could put the phone down we kept saying I love you and we said this over and over again I don't
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know how many times but without explanation telephone calls went unanswered and neighbors noticed her
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bedroom window wide open in the cold November weather so they called police as they approached the front door they
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noticed it was a jar inside a woman's purse was lying on the foyer floor I arranged call on the Monday couldn't get
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an answer just just ran sucker I rang again I rang again I don't know how many times I
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around Susan Tucker's badly decomposed body was lying face down on the bed dead
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she had been dead for four or 5 days her hands were tied behind her back her feet
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were tied the head hanging over the side of the bed almost she had been strangled
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and possibly raped it appeared that the killer more than likely was was inside the home for for quite some time I mean
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it wasn't a just very you know quick in andout type of a situation uh you know
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many of the the drawers had been you know ransacked had been gone through when Reggie Tucker first first heard the
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news he was devastated she said sir I've got bad news and I knew it I just knew it at
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that point I just you know my my whole world just fell away Detective Joe horgus of the
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Arlington Police homicide unit was quickly assigned to the case his task wouldn't be easy for for one thing the
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killer had been careful he had worn gloves and left no fingerprints this has been White Plain it had been raining on
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the night of the murder and he meticulously cleaned the area around his point of entry he's smart enough uh to
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know that Footprints which is what we were we would have gotten from that would maybe come back to Hanam which
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kind of tells you maybe some past experience on burglaries police collected the sheets night gown and the
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large sleeping bag which covered Susan Tucker's body to look for possible blood
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and seon stains they found hairs on the bedding around Susan Tucker's body in
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the bathroom sink and on a washcloth discovered outside on the clothes line and they gathered shards of broken glass
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from the basement window everything was taken to the forensics lab for analysis but perhaps the most important clue was
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all also the most obvious the rope and Knots used to strangle Susan Tucker the police were convinced they had seen this
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Killer's work before 3 years earlier a 34-year-old lawyer named Carolyn ham had been raped
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and strangled in her home only four blocks away from Susan Tucker the killer entered the ham residence the same way
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through a basement window and tied his victim using the same knots and it's not
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a common occurrence not not common at all to see victims killed by using ligatures to strangle them uh ropes
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tying up victims um that's it's really quite rare but the H case was closed
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when this man David Vasquez confessed to her murder and was sentenced to 35 years
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in prison could he have had an accomplice Horus spoke to him for several hours and from the way he was
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talking and everything and answering my questions I didn't think he knew a damn
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thing about Carolin H's murder while detective horgus began his search for Susan Tucker's killer 100 miles away in
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the capital city of Richmond police there were investigating a series of murders shockingly similar the body of
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35-year-old Debbie Davis was found inside her South Richmond apartment she'd been raped and stranged in less
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than a month two young women had been raped and strangled in their homes just a few blocks from each other in each
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case there was a forced entry with the murderer entering by cutting the screens and entering through an open window each
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victim was strangled both victims were quite between the ages of 30 and 35 years 2 weeks later he struck again this
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time a 15-year-old girl raped and strangled in her bedroom while her family was sleeping
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all three had been bound raped and strangled with rope the knots were identical to the ones used in the
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Arlington cases detective Horus suspected that the killer of Susan Tucker was the same man who murdered
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Carol and ham and the three women in Richmond if horgus was correct a Serial murderer was loose on a 100m killing
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spree detective horgus believed the man who raped and strangled Susan Tucker had
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also murdered Carolyn ham 3 years earlier horgus also believed the same man was responsible for the three rapes
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and murders in Richmond 100 miles away the Richmond police weren't so sure I
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mean they have three murders that were within a couple Miles Square radius I I'm guessing or maybe even
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less uh that you know and and now we're trying to say that a 100 miles away we're trying to link something to theirs
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it's like he get out of here I mean this thought a local guy horgus was a man of
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he was the perfect man for this case because he was obsessed he he was he knew something was wrong
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author Paul monz wrote a bestselling book entitled stalking Justice it profiles the rapes and murders of these
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five women and the history-making investigation which followed Joe horgus is motivated by by uh the uh the hunt
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he's not a guy who's obsessed by issues of right and wrong except for his own
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internal moral compass which tells him if there's an innocent man in prison I
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don't care if we got the guilty guy we got to get the innocent man out and he
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was determined to get this guy but if horgus was right that all of these murders were connected he needed proof
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for that he turned to to the forensics lab where scientists were examining the stains found on Susan Tucker's night
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gown and bedding I found four semen stains and when I analyzed the sleeping bag I found one very large semen stain I
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typed all of those stains the Sean came from an individual with type O blood and
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a pgm1 enzyme profile although this matched 133% of the population it also matched the seen found at the carollyn
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ham murder scene next they turned their attention to the hair found at the Tucker crime
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scene and there are characteristics microscopically that can classify hair into one of three racial categories
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which are Caucasian negroid or the hairs found at the Tucker crime scene appeared to be pubic and did
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not appear to be from the victim or her husband they were positively identified as negroid in origin this was another
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possible link to the Carolyn ham murder case 3 years earlier at the time of Ham's murder a black male wearing a mask
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had raped a number of women in the same neighborhood the masked rapist was never
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apprehended and horgus always suspected that there was a connection to the H murder actually the same day that
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Carolyn H's body was found another girl lady uh was in her house uh and this
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black male with a mask and a knife uh Bur regiz her PL house got her and actually uh he did some sexual activity
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with her the Richmond police and later the Arlington Police both sought help from the FBI's Behavioral Science unit
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in Quantico Virginia this unit has interviewed hundreds of serial killers to learn what similarities exist in
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their psychological makeup they were able to predict a number of important things about the killer we get in look
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at the uh the behavior that's that's uh uh left by the offender in the commission of his crime uh it's we
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believe that by looking at uh that behavior we can interpret the type of offender uh that may have
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committed the crime the fact that the Strangler attacked his victims in their homes suggested that he had stalked them
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first and knew precisely when to strike the FBI concluded that the perpetrator was between the age of 18 and 30 the
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quiet type a loner who held a menial job he probably had a troubled relationship
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with his mother and began his crimes free with arson historically many serial rapists and murderers begin with arson
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serial killers are usually white but could be any race he lived or worked close to where he committed his first
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crimes that's because criminals begin their crimes freeze in an area where they feel most
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comfortable he took sadistic pleasure in strangling his victims he would periodically release the bindings so he
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could hear his victim plead for her life it appeared that the perpetrator had intended the victim to suffer
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considerably in one case a shoe impression was found on the victim's back these w women were obviously first
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just terrified to the very bone and then were systematically sexually assaulted and um uh you know at the end and it's
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not clear whether they were dead when he did this or alive but he also masturbated on his victims and it was
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these Seaman samples which would prove to be extremely important pieces of evidence I can remember a prosecutor
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Helen fahe a couple days after the murder asking me if this was going to be a a DNA case and I'm kind of I don't
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know I we don't even know what we had got yet in 1987 when Susan Tucker was murdered DNA evidence was still in its
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infancy the first time DNA evidence was used in a criminal case was only a year earlier in England when DNA from a
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seaman sample was used to convict a bakery worker with the rape and murder of two 15-year-old girls horgus decided
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to to try this new DNA testing sending the seamen stains from Susan Tucker's
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night gown to the life codes laboratory in New York forensic scientists were concerned that the samples may have
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degraded or been contaminated you basically isolate the DNA you cut it up you generate profiles
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or patterns and you then generate these patterns on a piece of X-ray film so it's like a picture of the DNA and when
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you then compare these pictures and the components are the same and the the two dnas that would indicate that they're
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from the same Source the final results from the DNA tests would take up to 10 weeks but Detective horgus still didn't
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have a suspect detective horgus suspected that the same individual who raped and
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murdered Susan Tucker and Carolyn Han 3 years earlier was the Mas rapist who was
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committing crimes in the same area but was never caught so Horan drove out to an area of Arlington known as Green
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Valley the area where the masked rapist committed his first assaults the FBI told horgus that rapists usually commit
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their first crime close to home if the first rape was the first rape for this guy then he would have lived around
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there and that was very crucial to me because I didn't I didn't know that and
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as he drove through Green Valley Horus tried to recall the names or es of likely suspects young men he'd run
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across over the years who came from that area and it just so happens that detective horgus uh started to focus on
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this one juvenile he he had dealt with I remembered him he just couldn't place
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the name and all I could remember was Timmy I could see his face I remembered the
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approximate time period and everything that he that I remembered him from but I couldn't remember his last name so we
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running all these names to the computer scene when they had been locked up and released and suddenly he just came in
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and he said Spencer Timothy Spencer that's the name and I saw where he was arrested in on January the 29th
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1984 which was four days after Carolyn H her body was found Spencer's history
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unfolded in trouble as a teenager he had a string of burglary convictions and even more surprising just as the FBI
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predicted Spencer had first drawn police attention for arson for setting fire to
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his mother's car he was presently in a halfway house in Richmond well that wow
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that's exciting now Spencer was on probation living in this halfway house just a short distance from where the
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Richmond murders took place and according to House Records Spencer had been signed out during the Thanksgiving
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holiday visiting his mother in Arlington the week Susan Tucker was murdered the fact that he got out of prison two weeks
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before the first murders down in Richmond the fact that he was available for every murder the fact that he came
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to Arlington when he did for our murder and the FBI was correct about another important detail Spencer lived in the
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area where the first rape was committed and that happened over there and at the time Timothy Spencer was living down
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here over this hill Hill in his mother's house barely a mile from the homes of
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Carolyn ham and Susan Tucker on January 20th 1988 police arrested Timothy Spencer within hours they had collected
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a blood sample some of his hair and confiscated his clothing for forensic analysis the clothing was scraped down
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for removing any debris in once that debris was uh collected it was taken to a microscope several dozen particles of
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glass were removed from the debris that was uh removed from his clothing the glass fragments were of particular
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interest to the police after police recovered glass particles from Spencer's clothing they
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were examined forensically to see if they matched glass from any of the victim's homes one technique is called
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glass GL refraction analysis by Shining Light from different points on the Spectrum through the particles the
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characteristics of the glass can be plotted on a graph in effect measuring how the particles bend light if you
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stick the pin into the water which is more dense than the air it bends the light what we're doing with the glass
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particle basically is measuring how much the light is bent in a refract and we call it refractive index they compared
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the glass fragments found on Spencer's clothing to the glass particles taken
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from the broken window at Susan Tucker's home we were able to say that that glass
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that was removed from Spencer's clothing either came from that particular pain or
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that particular source of glass or another source of glass that had the same Optical characteristics when
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scientists completed the DNA analysis of the Seaman stain found at the Susan Tucker crime scene they made a chilling
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Discovery and I remember pointing out an x-ray film from the from the developer and holding it up from these two
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separate cases and being you know bombarded immediately that the patterns I'm seeing are the same I'm seeing the
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same profile on this case from one County versus this case from a second County which says to me that same the
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same person's involved in both of those incidents really gave you chills up and
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down your spine to see something like that horgus was right all along the Seaman sample from the individual who
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raped and presumably murdered Susan Tucker matched the Seaman stains from the murders in Richmond there were seven
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hairs there were consistent with his there was a glass fragment that was consistent with his his family couldn't
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provide him with a complete Alibi for the entire weekend and finally Timothy Spencer's blood DNA was compared to the
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Seaman samples from The Crime Victims once we got a sample from uh Mr Spencer to test uh we generated a profile that
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was the same as the profile we got from the evident samples we had a frequency of occurrence of greater than one in a
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million so that means that only one person in a million in the population would have that particular genetic
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profile and starting with the first result the blood type it was a match it was a match it
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was a match it was a match on July 11th 1988 Timothy Spencer went on trial for his life it was the first time in the
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United States where DNA evidence would be used in a Serial murder case it took the jury less than 7 hours to find
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Timothy Spencer guilty of rape and capital murder he was sentenced to death I feel some kind of
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relief uh but I'll never have my wife back know that's that's really the
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bottom line is I'll never really feel happy I can't feel happy about somebody being guilty of raping and
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murdering my wife I can't feel happy about that so whatever anger I feel I will feel till I
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[Music] die death was pronounced by the attending position at 1113 p.m. there were no complications Mr Spencer did not
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make a last statement thank you up until his death I don't think the Timothy Spencer made the
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connection between Sean and blood I don't think he knew that the same DNA that's in your semon is in your
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blood without DNA it would have been impossible to convict Timothy Spencer he if he had committed those murders a year
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or two years earlier he could not have been convicted in fact if this had been 1984 or
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1985 we probably would not even have arrested him some people ask the question will DNA fingerprinting replace
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detective work I don't think so Susan Tucker left detective horgus the crime
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scene and Timothy Spencer um left part of himself at the crime scene but his name would never have come
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up if it wasn't for Detective horgus [Music]