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[Music] While Earl Mars was vacationing in California, he learned his wife had been
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reported missing from their home in Arizona. >> What? Mom's missing? What happened? The search for Ruby Mars
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involved dozens of police investigators, forensic scientists, DNA testing, and even the Coast Guard.
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>> I'm heading home. >> The results of that investigation surprised everyone, especially Earl
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Mars. [Music] [Music] [Applause] Ruby and Earl Mars were partners in both business and in marriage. They had been
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married for over 20 years and were the parents of three grown children. The Morrises were both accountants and
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operated their own accounting and tax preparation firm. >> They had had it for years and years and
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uh they built it up, you know, together from scratch and it was doing very well.
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>> Their business made them millionaires and they raised their three children in
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this luxurious mountain home just outside of Phoenix. On June 4th, 1989, Earl Morris headed to California to see
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his oldest daughter, Donna Kay, perform in a concert. She was a country singer with a promising career.
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>> Ruby decided not to join her husband on that trip, planning instead to go
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shopping with her other daughter, Cindy, for some furniture for her new home. But Ruby didn't show up on Sunday
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morning at Cindy's home for the planned shopping trip. So Cindy drove out to her
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parents' home. >> That's totally unlike her mom. I mean, her mother kept every, you know, uh,
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date that she ever had with her. And unless she called her and canceled and she didn't do this. Ruby Mars wasn't
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home. The burglar alarm was turned off. Ruby's pocketbook was missing, but her
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car was still there. Although it wasn't parked in its usual spot, Ruby Mars was
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a neat, meticulous person, and her daughter noticed right away that things were out of place. A faucet was dripping
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in the bathtub. Dirty clothes were piled high inside the washing machine and hadn't been washed. A carpet shampoo
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cleaner was left out. But the most troubling discovery was that a 22 caliber pistol usually kept in a closet
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was missing. Cindy Mars immediately called the police. >> And that's really all I expected it to
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be was another missing person's case that this person would be found in a couple of hours.
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>> When Earl Morris heard the news of his wife's disappearance, he told family
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members that he would head straight home from California. If Cindy Morris was right and something
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happened to her mother, investigators hope to find some clues to her whereabouts inside the Mars home.
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It took Earl Mars longer than anticipated to drive home from California, but when he arrived, the
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police were anxious to speak with him. >> "So, have you ever had any fights?" Earl
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Morris told police that their relationship was basically a good one with occasional arguments, but nothing
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out of the ordinary. >> She ever done anything at all like this before? I mean, left and
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>> Yeah, she's done it before, but she usually calls, you know, or gets mad or
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something. >> Mars also confirmed that the 22 caliber pistol the couple owned was not in the
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closet where he last saw it. We were going in several different directions with this that the possibility of that
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she was missing, possibility of a suicide, possibility of a homicide. >> The car broke down.
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>> Earl Morris told police that his car broke down on the drive home from California and that he rented a car to
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complete the trip. But Detective Lugan Bule noticed something suspicious when he looked inside the trunk of the rental
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car. Attached to Earl's suitcase was an airline luggage tag for a recent flight
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from San Diego to Phoenix. A search of the passenger list from that flight did not include the name of Earl Mars,
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although there was a G. Norris listed. Police put together a group of photographs, including one of Earl Mars,
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and showed it to the airline crew members to see if anyone recalled seeing Earl on that flight. One of the flight
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attendants remembered him distinctly because of the poor quality of his toupé. Faced with this inconsistency,
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detectives decided to search the Mars home further to see if there was any evidence of foul play which might have
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been overlooked during their first visit. >> So what we did is we called in uh our ID
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text to give us a hand and uh we asked them to do luminol. When luminol is sprayed onto an area, a black light is
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used. The luminol will actually glow when it comes into contact with the blood enzymes. Forensic detectives began
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their search in the master bedroom, spraying luminol on the headboard of the bed. An area instantly turned blue. It
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was a very fine mist pattern, one they immediately recognized. To me, upon looking at it, you could determine
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because of the distribution, the shape, and the size of the droplets that it was
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high velocity from gunshot. >> Only a bullet produces a fine mist of blood similar to that found on the
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headboard. A beating or stabbing produces a much different blood spatter pattern. On the surface of the mattress,
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they found tiny blood stains, and they also found blood inside the mattress itself. Next, investigators sprayed
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Luminol in the bathroom. >> The entire shower stall lit up basically with the luminol. Luminol tests also
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revealed blood on the cement patio outside the master bedroom as well as on the master bedroom carpet.
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>> We noticed that the whole bedroom floor, which was carpeted, uh started to glow.
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>> And we knew that uh from what we were seeing that we did have a violent crime
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scene. Maybe not a death, but somebody had suffered some pretty good injuries at that point.
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>> But detectives had no idea to whom the blood belonged. To find out, scientists
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conducted a DNA test on the blood stain. The results of that test shocked everyone. A deep, dark family secret
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would soon be revealed. Police suspected that the blood stain found in the Morris's bedroom belonged
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to Ruby Mars, but there was no blood from the body to match the blood in the bedroom. But science can often identify
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a blood stain by using DNA testing. By analyzing the DNA from children, for example, scientists can tell whether the
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blood stain would have come from a parent. In the case of children, 50% of the DNA from each child will come from
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one parent and the other 50% will come from the other parent. So this obligated u inheritance of DNA from the mother to
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children is one of the important factors that we are looking for in conducting this analysis. Since children get half
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of their DNA from their mother and the other half from their father, a DNA profile of the children and from one of
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the parents can give scientists enough genetic information to identify the DNA profile of the other parent, even
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without a blood sample. If the DNA profile of the missing parent matches the DNA profile of the blood
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stain, scientists will then analyze the DNA from a missing person's siblings to
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confirm their findings. When scientists compared Cindy Morris's DNA to the DNA from the blood stain,
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they found one matching band. They also found one matching band when comparing the DNA profile of Ruby's brother to the
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blood stain. >> It's highly probable that those blood stains came from Ruby Morris.
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>> But scientists noticed something peculiar. When they compared Earl Morris's DNA to
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the DNA profile of his daughter Cindy, there were no matching bands. Earl Morris was not Cindy's biological
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father. When they compared Earl Morris's DNA to his oldest child, Randy, they
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discovered the same thing. Earl was not Ry's biological father either. Ry's DNA
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matched that of his grandfather, his mother's father. When law enforcement authorities in Tennessee learned of
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these DNA results, Ruby's father was charged with incest. According to the DNA tests, Ruby's
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father had sex with her when she was just 15 years old. >> Well, we had a surprise. We felt that
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perhaps the family would be surprised by it and that Earl Morris himself was surprised by it.
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>> The Morris children had another family secret to reveal. They admitted that
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their mother had been depressed recently since she learned her husband Earl was having an affair with her sister Peggy.
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In fact, Ruby and her daughter Cindy once caught the two together at the Phoenix airport when Peggy secretly flew
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to Phoenix to meet with Earl. Ruby confronted Earl about the affair, but he reportedly refused to end it. Also
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looking at uh Peggy, the sister, uh she had motive and opportunity uh to be involved in this too. U she lived in
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Louisiana at the time, but we discovered uh that she had a planned vacation going
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to San Diego that weekend. We discovered phone calls that Earl had made to her. Peggy admitted to police that she had
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planned to meet Earl in San Diego shortly after Ruby disappeared, but missed her flight. But police knew Earl
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had been in San Diego, not only because of the baggage claim tag on his suitcase, but they also found his car in
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the airport parking lot. The car appeared to be clean, but when Luminol was applied to the inside of the
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vehicle, the floor of the passenger side revealed a huge blood stain. So much blood that the individual it came from
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would almost certainly be dead. A DNA analysis of the blood in the car revealed that it matched the blood stain
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found in the Morris's bedroom, which scientists concluded belonged to Ruby. We didn't know where the body was. Uh we
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didn't know if he would transport the body to San Diego, why would he transport it down there? We had no real
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clue. >> The clue was here in a San Diego marina. The Marses owned a boat which was stored
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there. Marina employees told police that Earl Mars was at the marina on June 5th
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and had taken the boat for a ride. When police went to search the boat, they discovered it was missing. The Coast
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Guard was asked to help locate the missing boat, and they told police about a mysterious fire on a boat about the
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same size, which burned and sank 13 mi offshore from the San Diego marina. This is actual footage of the fire taken by a
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television news crew. >> There were no survivors, no people anywhere inside. The first thing that
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was unusual was the way it burned. It burned pretty much from the center out. And normally the fires starting either
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in the engine room or in the fuel compartment. And uh it just looked very suspect right from the beginning. So the
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things that stood out with the fact that there was like a lantern right in the middle of the boat, right on top of the
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melted fiberglass, which looked like somebody had thrown it there and possibly started a fire. Records
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indicated that Earl Mars rented a small boat on the morning of June 5th and returned it around 12 noon, about the
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same time the Coast Guard discovered the burning boat. It was beginning to appear
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that the body of Ruby Mars was on that burning boat which sank to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. But prosecutors
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believed that they still had enough evidence to prove Ruby Morris had been murdered.
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>> You start building all of those together, then what you have is Ruby Morris's blood, Ruby Morris's bed, Ruby
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Morris with a high velocity gunshot wound um that killed her in her bed at her home. Who was there? Earl Morris.
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Earl Mars was charged with the murder of his wife, Ruby. But the case was far from over. Investigators were in for
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another big surprise. Earl Morris's defense would be a challenge for forensic science.
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[Music] >> In 1991, Earl Morris went on trial for the murder of his wife. The prosecution
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first had to convince the jury that a murder had taken place since there was no body.
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>> We had to build the case from scratch. We had to prove a corpus delecti that in
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fact a murder had occurred without the physical evidence for someone to look at.
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>> According to the prosecution, Earl Mars entered the master bedroom early on
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Saturday morning, June 4th. He dragged her body into an adjacent bathroom, removed her clothing, and put
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her into the bathtub to remove the blood. He then dressed her body in a jogging suit, covered her head wound with a
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baseball cap, and carried the body to the garage. Since his car didn't have a trunk, he
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had no choice but to place the body into the passenger side of the front seat. Earl then cleaned all of the blood from
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inside the house from the headboard, the bathtub, the carpets, all later revealed by the
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luminol. Earl began his journey to San Diego, driving nearly 400 m with his wife's
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body in the seat next to him. Blood continued to drip from the head wound, falling to the floor beneath the seat,
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later discovered by the Luminol test. Earl stopped once for gas, and no one noticed that his passenger was dead.
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When Mars arrived in San Diego, he towed his boat to the launch and in broad daylight placed Ruby's body
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on the boat along with some of the bloody sheets and the murder weapon. He also took along a lantern and some
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gasoline. After renting a smaller boat, he set off to sea, towing the rented boat behind.
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13 mi offshore in the Pacific Ocean, Earl Mars prepared the boat for destruction, hoping to bury not only his
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wife's body, but all of the remaining evidence of his involvement. After dousing the boat with gasoline, he
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stepped into the rental boat, lit the lantern, and threw it onto the deck. He left before being spotted by the
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Coast Guard. Sometime after Mars left the scene, a news crew captured these pictures while
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the boat was still on fire minutes before it sank. Neither Ruby Morris nor the boat was ever recovered.
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During the trial, Earl Mars delivered a surprising defense. He admitted that his
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wife was dead and that her body was indeed on the boat that burned and sank. Morris also admitted to setting the fire
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and sinking the boat. But Earl Mars insisted he did not kill his wife. He said she committed suicide because of
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guilt and depression. Guilt over the fact that her husband wasn't the father
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of two of their children and depression about Earl's affair with her sister Peggy. My first thoughts were that I
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would be blamed for for Ruby committing suicide. >> After you had those thoughts,
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did you make any decisions? >> Yes, I did. >> What decisions did you make?
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>> Hired back with what she'd done. >> Up until that point in time,
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we had circumstantial evidence that she was dead. No one to say, "I saw Ruby
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Morris's body." No one to say, "I saw Ruby Morris injured." No one to say,
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"Yeah, I saw the shooting. I heard the shooting." >> Earl Morris testified that he discovered
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his wife with a gunshot wound in her left temple and that she used the couple's 22 caliber pistol. He said he
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found her body after the suicide and feared he would be blamed. So he disposed of the body by sinking the
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boat, but the forensic evidence proved otherwise. The blood spatter evidence told forensic detectives that Ruby could
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not have committed suicide. Earl said the gunshot wound was in the left side of her head, but Ruby was right-handed.
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It would have been impossible for a right-handed individual to shoot herself in the left temple using her right hand,
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especially with the long barrel 22 caliber pistol the Marses owned. But the strongest argument came from the blood
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spatter evidence on the headboard. The blood patterns revealed two layers of spatter, one on top of the other. This
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told forensic experts that there were two shots. >> One shot could not have caused the
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distribution of two separate patterns. There were actually two separate patterns going at two different angles
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that are not uh you cannot create that in one shot. >> And a person committing suicide does not
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shoot twice to the head. The jury saw Earl Morris's lastminute claim of suicide as just one more lie.
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He was convicted of murder and sentenced to 25 years to life. He dropped traces of Ruby Morris and that was Ruby Morris
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on the floor. That was Ruby Morris in the El Camino. That was Ruby Morris in the bed. That was saying this is what
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happened. That was our read on it. So Ruby Morris was actually telling us what happened to her.
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No body, no gun, no confession. The science gave us Ruby Morris and gave us the corpus delecta. If it had not
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been for the blood in the car and the DNA testing, I wouldn't be sitting here talking to
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you today, Earl Morris would be a free man. [Music] I want [Music] you. [Music] [Music]