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NARRATOR: On the last
day of hunting season, a young woman was killed while
walking her dogs in the woods.
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Police assumed it
was an accident. But a handwriting
analysis, a ballistic test,
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and an unusual
physics experiment led investigators to
ask the question-- just what was the
hunter's target?
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[theme music] The upper peninsula of
Michigan is 16,000 square miles of sparsely populated woodland.
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It's quiet, and usually safe. DAVE DISTEL: I would think if
someone had a bicycle stolen,
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it would make the front
page of the newspaper. NARRATOR: Here, residents
have more trouble
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with hunters than
with criminals. [gunshot] HULDAH MOILANEN: My
daughter-in-law was hanging
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clothes one day, and
bullets were just whizzing by her as she
was hanging clothes.
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And it wasn't even deer season. NARRATOR: On the last day
of deer hunting in 1992,
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Judy Blake Moilanen went
for a walk in the woods with her five dogs. [dog barking]
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Eventually, the dogs returned
home, but Judy did not. Judy's mother and a neighbor
went looking for her
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and found her on one of
the trails in the woods. MALE VOICE (ON POLICE
RADIO): 7-0-7-0-5.
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We have a [inaudible] at the
end of Cherry Lane off of M-38. [sirens] NARRATOR: Judy was dead from
a gunshot wound to the chest.
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It appeared to be an accident. HULDAH MOILANEN:
Somebody called me. They told me about it,
and well, my-- my stomach
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just sunk to the floor. Felt like it. I said, oh my god, no. NARRATOR: Bullets from
high-powered rifles
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can often travel
three miles or more. -And every now and then, one
comes down in the wrong place.
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NARRATOR: Neighbors
said they heard a rifle shot just after 2:00 PM. The investigation was hindered
because the bullet that killed
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Judy could not be
found in the brush. DAN CASTLE: There
wasn't any bullet. I did find an older bullet,
and that was underground
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and it was slightly corroded,
and that was turned over. But it was determined
that it was probably
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not the projectile
they were looking for. NARRATOR: But they
did find evidence of where it hit
after killing Judy.
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DAVE DISTEL: I think they
noted, that particular night, there was a blaze mark
or a scar that a bullet
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might have made
on a nearby tree. NARRATOR: Judy had been married
to her husband Bruce for 14
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years, and they had a
three-year-old daughter. Bruce worked as an
insurance adjuster,
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and he said he had an alibi
for the day of the accident. DET. BOB BALL: Well, he came up
with somewhere around 28
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different individuals
that he thought might be able to produce
alibi for him on that day,
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starting at about 8
o'clock in the morning and going all the way
till 6:00, 6:30 at night.
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NARRATOR: Bruce was angry that
his wife wasn't more careful. DET. BOB BALL: And he was more
or less critical of his wife
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for not wearing orange that
day when she went in the woods. To me, I thought this was--
this was way out of character
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for this type of a situation. NARRATOR: Bruce made several
more unusual statements
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about his wife, and
investigators were starting to wonder whether Judy's
death was really an accident.
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Within days of Judy
Moilanen's funeral, several friends noticed that her
husband was behaving strangely.
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One said he made sexual
advances towards her. LEE ANNE WYSOCKI
JESSUP: Asking me
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if I wanted to live with him. And asking me if we
could be more than just friends, and those
types of things.
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It was like, my god, your
wife hasn't even been dead for a couple weeks, and he's
saying these things, you know?
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NARRATOR: And there was
another bizarre incident. After the funeral, Bruce
gave some of Judy's clothing
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to another friend,
Gayle Lampinen. And among the
clothes was a letter. BETH PACZESNY: It's
addressed to her,
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and its allegedly from
the victim, Judy Moilanen, signed "Judes," which was
Judy's very personal nickname.
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And Judy did not
know Gayle very well. She only had met her in
passing like once or twice.
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-When I read the letter,
I stood in the kitchen and I think the my first
thoughts were, what the heck
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is this? BETH PACZESNY: And
it basically said, I'm having problems
in my marriage.
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Bruce and I are growing apart. He's got his things,
I've got mine. Please help him find somebody
else, one of those things.
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And for me, the kicker was
the PS line, which was, but he's great in the sack. GAYLE LAMPINEN: And just
thought it was bizarre
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that she would be writing
something like this. NARRATOR: Gayle told police
Bruce behaved inappropriately
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towards her in the months
leading up to Judy's death. DET. BOB BALL: Bruce really
turned up the heat,
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and he was becoming a stalker,
is what it boils down to. GAYLE LAMPINEN: Well, he started
coming over here and calling
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the telephone a lot, and
invite us to go skiing and do different things. And we wouldn't go with him.
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-We were finding out that
there may be a little bit more to Bruce Moilanen than
what his family knew about.
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NARRATOR: To see if the
letter was authentic, police took it to a
forensic document examiner.
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JAMES STEGGALL: And I
was asked to compare that to known handwriting
samples of Judy Moilanen.
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NARRATOR: Steggall noted
that the handwriting was slow and deliberate. JAMES STEGGALL: Well,
that's an indication
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that the document
could be a forgery. Someone's attempting to
either disguise their writing,
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or simulate the writing
of another individual. NARRATOR: There were
several characteristics
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inconsistent with Judy's
known handwriting samples. JAMES STEGGALL: In the known
handwriting sample of Judy,
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the end part of the
T is a round bowl. Of course, it almost
looks like a B. And over in the
questioned sample,
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there is a complete
separation between the T and the H. There isn't
that bowl formation,
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and it has a very
short T crossing. -It lacked all of her
individual habits-- the way she formed her
letters, the way she connected
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her letters, the ending
strokes, the crossing of the T's, the
directions of strokes.
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NARRATOR: The letter
was a forgery. When someone writes
on a piece of paper, it leaves indentations on
the page underneath, which
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will hold more of
an electrical charge than the other paper fibers. So Steggall placed a thin
piece of plastic Mylar
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over the letter, then
used an electric wand to create an
electrostatic charge. JAMES STEGGALL: So
then we take a toner
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and sprinkle over the
top of the Mylar surface. And those areas that
have the greatest charge
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will draw that black powder,
or toner, to that area, and develops an image. NARRATOR: This
revealed and someone
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practiced writing an earlier
version of this letter on the page above this one,
which is common in forgeries.
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Steggall compared the letter
to Bruce's known handwriting samples and concluded he
had written the letter.
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DAVE DISTEL: To think
that some guy would be so bold as to write this
and attribute it to his wife
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after she'd been killed
in a hunting accident. GAYLE LAMPINEN: I didn't think
about it, because the person
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that I knew, I
didn't think he was capable of doing
something like that. NARRATOR: And investigators
discovered something else.
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Just one year earlier,
Judy was hit on the head by a large chimney block that
accidentally slid off the roof
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while Bruce was on
the roof repairing it. DET. BOB BALL: And that accident
darn near took Judy's life.
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She was lucky that
she survived it. NARRATOR: Another time, a fire
broke out at the Moilanens'
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home while Judy was
home alone sleeping. Fortunately, she woke up in time
to call the fire department.
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[sirens blaring] JAMES STEGGALL: But
she kept that quiet. She only told, I think, one--
one or two people about that.
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-It was just weird. And again, weird
doesn't equal guilty, but it certainly
lays the foundation
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for murder and motive. NARRATOR: And Judy
had over $300,000 worth of life insurance
when she died.
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-In 1992, here in the UP,
that's a lot of money. NARRATOR: Bruce also told
Gayle about the insurance money
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in what she described as his
clumsy attempts to seduce her. GAYLE LAMPINEN: A lot of times,
he would try to tell me that he
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was going to be
financially wealthy, to the point that he
could quit his job and just work with his animals.
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-It didn't take us long to know
something just wasn't right. This wasn't just an accident.
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NARRATOR: That may have been
the understatement of the year. LEE ANNE WYSOCKI JESSUP: She
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about other people and would do
anything for you, if she could. NARRATOR: When 35-year-old Judy
Moilanen was killed in a freak
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hunting accident,
her husband Bruce had an alibi for the entire day. But police found a witness
who reported seeing Bruce
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out hunting that day alone,
which contradicted his alibi. DET. BOB BALL: He had
people that he claimed
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saw him around 2:30,
2:15 in the afternoon. But when you get right down
to interviewing these people,
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some of them couldn't even
substantiate that they saw him. BETH PACZESNY: He could
not cover a time when
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he was in the woods, and
there was no witnesses that could say where he
was at that time.
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NARRATOR: To determine whether
this was an accident or murder, police needed to find
the fatal bullet.
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It was still somewhere
in the woods, but police couldn't find it. Investigators found what looked
like a scrape mark on a tree,
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about 40 feet away from
where they found Judy's body. Scientists applied sodium
rhodizonate, a chemical which
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turns purple in the
presence of lead. The mark tested
positive, indicating it was struck by a bullet.
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For weeks, Dan Castle tried to
find the bullet with his metal detector, but each
time came up empty.
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DAN CASTLE: Well, I knew
the bullet was out there. It just-- I was searching
in the wrong area.
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And it was kind
of getting to me. I knew that the weather
was going to change, that we were supposed to get a
lot of cold weather and snow.
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NARRATOR: Finally, he decided
to try a novel experiment, using a slingshot to recreate
the trajectory of the bullet.
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He knew where Judy
was standing when hit and where the bullet
had hit the tree, so he fired marbles at the
tree from the same trajectory
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angle of the fatal bullet. DAN CASTLE: So I tried to
hit it near the same location
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as the bullet did, and I
heard them ricocheting off the branches and leaves
and so forth in the woods.
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RAY KENNY: One of the marbles
that struck the tree ricocheted almost at a right angle,
somewhere, as I recall,
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80, 85 feet away from the tree. NARRATOR: And when Castle
looked around that area,
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he found the bullet. DAN CASTLE: It was just a fluke. I didn't know if I was
kind of at wits' end.
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RAY KENNY: To me,
this was remarkable, to have him think of this,
to what test could you do out
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in the woods to try
to determine where a bullet might go
after it struck a tree?
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NARRATOR: Ray Kenny, a firearms
examiner with the Michigan State Police, analyzed
it to see if this was
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the bullet that
killed Judy Moilanen. The copper jacket was
damaged, which wasn't unusual.
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But he found some important
evidence trapped inside. RAY KENNY: I pried back the
mushroom area of the bullet
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and collected all this material. There was woody
fibrous material. NARRATOR: Forensic scientists
finally had something.
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It was the same
wood and moss found on the tree with
the scrape mark. And there was more
evidence in the bullet.
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-There was some other
little, like, fibers, and there was a very tiny
pink fiber that I could see.
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NARRATOR: The pink cotton
fiber was microscopically similar to the shirt
Judy was wearing.
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They also found a black
fiber and a feather fragment in the bullet. CONNIE SWANDER: The black fiber
was similar to the black fibers
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of the jacket, and
the feather fragment was similar to the
down feathers that were found in the lining
of the victim's jacket.
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NARRATOR: There was
no doubt that this was the bullet that
killed Judy Moilanen.
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It was a .30 caliber round. -That was an incredible
break in the case. And that's one thing
they didn't tell
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Moilanen they had for
a long, long time. He had no clue that they--
they had the bullet.
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NARRATOR: Investigators
researched all of the rifles that could have fired
this round and identified
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four possible manufacturers. Bruce Moilanen denied
owning any of these rifles. But in the couple's
financial records
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were loan papers of
a recent bank loan. And Bruce's gun collection
was listed as collateral.
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BETH PACZESNY: We
found an asset list in which listed a gun he failed
to disclose to us, a 30-06
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Savage 110, a
rifle with a scope. And that was consistent
with one of the weapons
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that could have
shot that bullet. So that right there
was key to us. DET. BOB BALL: Bruce was hunting,
but he wasn't hunting deer.
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BETH PACZESNY: He was
hunting for his wife. NARRATOR: Prosecutors
believe Bruce Moilanen
00:15:14
tried once before
to kill his wife. A year earlier, while Bruce
was on his roof making chimney
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repairs, a cement
block mysteriously fell, hitting Judy on the head. Judy survived the incident.
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And they also believe Bruce
started the suspicious house fire as another
attempt on Judy's life.
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DET. BOB BALL: It's
really mind-boggling that this guy could do something
like that, with his wife
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and his infant daughter
sleeping in the house. [gunshot] NARRATOR: Prosecutors say Bruce
waited until hunting season
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for his next attempt,
and he hid in the woods, waiting for Judy
to walk the dogs.
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[gunshot] The bullet went through Judy's
down vest, her red cotton shirt, then hit a tree and
ricocheted into the woods.
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Even as an experienced
hunter, Bruce probably never imagined that
someone with a slingshot
00:16:19
would find the bullet in
the dirt, snow, and leaves. Since investigators couldn't
find the murder weapon
00:16:26
in Bruce's home, they
believe he disposed of it somewhere
before heading home. With Judy dead, and $300,000
coming from her life insurance
00:16:37
policies, Bruce continued to
pursue Gayle Lampinen, even though she was married
and had shown no interest.
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Bruce decided to
write her a letter, and to make it look like Judy
had written it before she died.
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He added the unusual
postscript telling Gayle about his sexual prowess. The electrostatic analysis shows
that Bruce wrote an earlier
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version of the letter,
possibly as practice to mimic Judy's handwriting. But it didn't fool the
forensic document examiner.
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JAMES STEGGALL: It's
not possible to simulate someone else's handwriting 100%. You can interject some
other handwriting habits,
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but some of your own
are going to appear. DET. BOB BALL: I feel his real
motive was-- was Gayle Lampinen.
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Bruce felt that if he could get
rid of Judy, that he was going to be able to sweep Gayle
off her feet and go off,
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and they were going to be
happily together forever. NARRATOR: During a
police interview,
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they confronted Bruce with
the forensic evidence. DET. BOB BALL: A letter
purportedly written--
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NARRATOR: They made
it clear that Gayle Lampinen wanted
nothing to do with him. And that she knew from the start
that the letter was a forgery.
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-I killed her. NARRATOR: At that
point, Bruce confessed. -Cops introduced the fact that
Gayle Lampinen had been working
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with them, and I
think that-- it was an emotional crusher for him. And I think that--
that broke him down.
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GAYLE LAMPINEN: We
had no interest. We had no interest in
doing things with him.
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We had our own life,
and we just thought the more we would ignore
him, he'd go away.
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But he didn't go away. NARRATOR: Bruce said he threw
the rifle in a nearby river,
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although police
couldn't find it. Bruce was able to
correct a mistake in the medical
examiner's report.
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DET. BOB BALL: Bruce informed
me that we were wrong in part of our evidence, that
we thought Judy had been shot
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in the left side, when
in fact she had been shot in the right side of her chest,
exiting out of the left side.
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-I felt that that was a key to
his confession, because he was telling us something that
only the person who was there,
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doing the shooting, could know. NARRATOR: He also
revealed his motive. BETH PACZESNY: What's
everybody's motive for murder?
00:19:03
I think it comes down to
money, you know, greed. He had $320,000 worth of
life insurance on his wife.
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DET. BOB BALL: He said that
Judy was a tyrant at work and she was a tyrant at home.
00:19:18
He said she was
a bad cook and he ended up doing most
of the cooking. He told us that he didn't
want to go through a divorce,
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because Judy would get
half of everything, he didn't want to
give up his assets.
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And that was-- that
was Bruce's downfall. He was cheap. NARRATOR: Bruce
Moilanen was arrested
00:19:35
and charged with
premeditated murder. Despite his confession,
he pleaded not guilty at the trial.
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BETH PACZESNY: He made an
excuse for the confession. And basically it was--
it was, you know,
00:19:48
psychologically
coerced, he was tired. PROSECUTOR: And you will
hear how he took that gun
00:19:54
and he scoped her in and he
pulled the trigger that caused a bullet to kill Judy
Moilanen instantly.
00:20:00
NARRATOR: Prosecutors
showed the jury this police recreation of
the cinder block incident.
00:20:06
Bruce claimed he accidentally
knocked the cinder block off the roof
with his foot.
00:20:12
The recreation showed
this was impossible, that it required
a deliberate push. But the forensic evidence
was more than enough.
00:20:23
Bruce Moilanen was
found guilty and was sentenced to life in prison. BETH PACZESNY: Everything
just fit together, and again,
00:20:31
in a very sad
situation for a family. But at least we were able to
give them closure and a sense
00:20:38
of justice, and I hope
that they have that today. -I feel the forensic evidence
was extremely important.
00:20:45
I don't think we would have
had enough information to break Bruce down without
that type of evidence.
00:20:50
-I think that he just
thought he was so much smarter than these-- these,
quote, "back woods," unquote,
00:20:56
cops could possibly be. These guys couldn't
be that smart. Turned out they were just a
whole lot smarter than he was.
00:21:04
[theme music]