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amid the rustic beauty of rural idaho a retired school teacher vanished but even though he was missing his bills
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were paid on time and he continued to correspond with his family but they couldn't contact him
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making this one of the most bizarre missing persons cases in u.s history [Music]
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[Music] [Applause] [Music] for 22 years the most popular teacher at incline high
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school near lake tahoe nevada was paul grouper it was his passion for travel that
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fueled his love of foreign languages he loved that he could go to these places and speak their language
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and he emphasized that very much that that was really one of the main benefit of learning a foreign language is that
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traveling the world you could take care of yourself i went to mexico with him um my junior
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year of high school [Music] that was fun we went dancing that was kind of embarrassing
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but anyway we had a good time when he was in his early 50s paul gruber inherited some money and retired from
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teaching he moved to sandpoint idaho and bought a home on the shores of muskrat lake
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he just liked that slow pace when i actually saw sandpoint i could see why he liked it it was you know has
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the same lake tahoe feel shortly after christmas in 1993 paul sent his three-year-old grandson a
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birthday card as was his custom [Music] but his daughter noticed immediately that this card was different from all
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the others it was a really brief note and wasn't very affectionate but it wasn't sitting
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right with me there was just red flag inside you know something wasn't right i pulled out old birthday
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cards and started comparing writing and it didn't look like his signature to me
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you know shelley left phone messages for her father at his home in idaho uncharacteristically
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he didn't return them so shelley called the local police department asking them to check on her
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father's welfare the detectives found no one home and no evidence of a break-in but
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virtually everything inside was gone there was a total absence of personal items clothing toothbrush airbrush
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nothing just totally vacant like no one had lived there or someone had rented the house
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stereos you know valuable stuff like that tvs were all gone shelley decided to set a trap
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she left a bogus message on her father's answering machine reminding him not to
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forget her husband's birthday can you please send the money that we had discussed i think it was just uh
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something that she made up to see what would happen five days later her father sent
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shelley's husband a birthday card and a 25 check she knew that her dad had never promised
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to send a check for her husband and i don't think it was even his birthday and so that certainly let her
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believe that something had happened to her dad [Music] an idaho state police forensic document
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examiner compared the handwriting on the check and envelope to paul gruber's
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known handwriting samples when the handwriting analysis came back the examiner felt that it was
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gruber's handwriting paul's family however didn't believe it it didn't look like
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his signature to me my husband agreed that it didn't look like his writing so i think that's when i started making
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some more calls police checked paul's financial transactions and discovered that he had
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been paying his monthly bills on time and was using his atm card around town for cash
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strangely none of the atms got a picture of the person using the card none of the atms used had a camera not
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one so we found that to be a little bit odd was this merely a coincidence and if paul was all right where was he
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living and why didn't he return his family's telephone calls [Music] shelley kepley was convinced that
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something sinister had happened to her father paul gruber on a hunch shelly called the post office
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in sandpoint idaho and asked them who is picking up her father's mail from his
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post office box a security camera provided a partial answer unfortunately somebody probably knocked
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it a skew so that all we got was a silhouette of the person who entered in and went into his post office box
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the silhouette wasn't paul gruber to some people in town it looked like 43 year old daryl kewl
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a local handyman who had been doing work for paul a comparison between the silhouette and
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kul's picture confirmed it keel from where we could tell had lived in california and possibly washington
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had a large family wife and six seven kids jewel admitted he had been picking up
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paul's mail he said paul asked him to before leaving for a trip to canada investigators showed cuell
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a photograph of paul gruber and incredibly kewl didn't recognize him he said this
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wasn't the paul grouper he knew somebody pretended to be paul gruber to daryl kill hired
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daryl kill to be a caretaker so we asked him if he would provide us with a you know an artist's
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sketch police sketch of the person what side of the person's face did you see the best
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investigators took keel's description and keyed that information into a computer program called compusketch
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i'm entering the answers that they provide to the question and so the computer with those answers generates
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that sketch then kule provided feedback on the first image to improve the likeness
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i want to change one item at a time that way if it's the nose that's the problem
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we can pinpoint the nose or if the eyes don't match the nose we can pinpoint
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that it could be average hour to two hours to go through it when finished police released this
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composite sketch to the media hoping to find the man who had assumed paul gruber's identity
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but no one called [Music] months went by and there was still no sign of the real paul gruber either
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we still didn't know where gruber was at we hadn't located him we weren't even
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sure that anything had happened to this man police continued to keep a close eye on
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paul's house and searched the property repeatedly even using cadaver dogs but something
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inside the house bothered detective sergeant valdez a small rug in the foyer had been glued
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to the floor that just drove me crazy i couldn't figure out why anybody would glue a rug
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to the hardwood floor that's great my wife would kill me if i did something like that
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so we tore it up under the rug investigators found a small gouge in the wooden floor
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it looked like a bullet had ricocheted and hit the floor tests of the wood were positive for the
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presence of lead police used luminol and discovered there had been blood on the floor near
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the bullet mark and elsewhere we started spraying up the door and you could see white marks about
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halfway up the door i mean they stand out if you use bleach or anything else they stick out
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real well dna testing proved that the blood was paul gruber's but where was the body
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we don't have a groover we don't have a body we don't we can't prove the
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man's dead [Music] daryl kewell a 43 year old handyman said this man identified himself as paul
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grouper and hired him to take care of the group her property while he went away on vacation
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this man was obviously an imposter and no one had heard from the real paul gruber for months they continue on with
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the investigation the number one thing that they're looking for is a body trying to figure
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out where the body of paul gruber is as for daryl kill he was well respected in the community and had no criminal
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record however a search of his finances showed he recently deposited over twenty thousand
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dollars into his checking account at the same time there were similar withdrawals from paul
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gruber's account hewlett admitted transferring paul's money into his checking account so that
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he could pay paul's bills none of that to me rang true i have a lot of friends i don't have any friends
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that are you know i'm going to go out and pay their bills for them at five six hundred dollars of whack
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that i just met the only evidence detectives had were the birthday cards and checks paul
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gruber sent to his family while missing a forensic document examiner concluded that the handwriting on those birthday
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cards was consistent with the real paul grouper's known handwriting samples paul's family disagreed i was absolutely
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persuaded that it wasn't so it's hard when you got experts saying yes it is
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and you're like no it's not so the materials were sent to another forensic examiner for a second opinion
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once i knew what his signature looked like what his subconscious characteristics were then i took some of
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the question material looked at it and it didn't take long to see if it was counterfeit or if it was valid
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the most striking part of the examination was the writing of the letter p paul gruber consistently had a large
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loop in this letter yet in the question documents the p's were different the loops weren't as well formed they
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were completely missing or they were elongated flowberg also noticed that paul gruber wrote his ms and ends
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much differently than those in the question document he concluded that paul gruber did not
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write these documents the signatures did look pretty close to the victims i believe a lot of practice
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had gone into duplicating the victim's signatures his downfall however was that there's a
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lot more writing that goes into a birthday card and an address next floburg analyzed daryl kuhl's
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handwriting to see if he had written the checks and birthday cards he noticed that kewl used the same
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closed loop on the capital p and other capital letters and kule wrote his f's in virtually the
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same way as the question document no matter how much time you have to practice writing it's so hard to
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duplicate the writing of another that mr kuehl was conclusively the writer of the
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forged checks and birthday cards and addressed the envelopes investigators searched daryl kuhl's
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property and found some incriminating evidence we found a hidden door upstairs and found
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military type dark camouflage type clothing throwing stars a katana which is a big sword it just
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didn't fit with daryl kewley family man father mormon good mormon type person
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they also found power tools furniture even a boat which were all identified as belonging
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to paul gruber we found a small suitcase or briefcase that had his sunday go to meeting clothes in it and a
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large butcher knife and that really seemed strange and in the middle of it all was called
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one of paul gruber's power bills but most alarming was a 22 caliber handgun with a homemade
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silencer silencers are illegal because they can alter the ballistic evidence the
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microscopic characteristics which are imparted to the bullet by the barrel itself
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are usually obliterated by a misaligned silencer very very difficult and rare to identify
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a bullet with the barrel of a weapon who has had a which has had a silencer device attached
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and detectives still didn't have paul gruber's body [Music] 18 months after paul gruber disappeared
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investigators searched his house yet again this time in a basement crawl space they
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found a shallow depression that wasn't there before the ground had apparently settled
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we worked for two days we sifted every five gallon bucket full of dirt we went square by square
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a couple of feet at each square in a pattern we finally exposed what appeared to be
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an air mattress and eventually confirmed that there was a body inside the body was identified
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as paul gruber he had been shot four times the medical examiner removed several 22-caliber bullets from gruber's body
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but they didn't match test fires from daryl kewl's 22 caliber handgun or his
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silencer which can impart its own characteristics on the bullet any slight change in the positioning of
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that silencer relative to the weapon will cause the bullet to strike different parts of the silencer from
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shot to shot and once that occurs you're not going to make an identification
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nevertheless investigators had more than enough evidence to charge daryl kewell with murder
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kewl's first order of business was to plan his escape an inmate testified that darrell kill
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had offered him money and a car to kill the prison transport officers who were taking daryl back this person was
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getting out of jail before daryl was going to be transported five thousand dollars for me and five
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thousand for harvey and five thousand per howard we thought we were going pretty cheap
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there cule thought he'd soon be a free man but the investigators knew better
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the two officers were actually doing the transport they said daryl we know about
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your plot that you're going to have us killed those guys turn states evident and
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they said that he was just crushed at that point prosecutors believe daryl kewell
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orchestrated an elaborate plan to kill paul gruber and steal his money this was a crime motivated by greed paul
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gruber had things that darrell killed wanted needed more money and six kids seven
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kids however many he had that's a lot of groceries apparently paul gruber hired daryl
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kewell for handyman work around the house and soon gained his confidence sometime after christmas
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prosecutors believe kewl went to paul's home armed with his 22-caliber handgun
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[Music] and shot him four times one bullet missed ricocheted off the floor leaving a gouge in the wood
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[Music] luminol tests show that he dragged paul's body into the crawl space wrapped
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him in plastic and buried him underneath his own house [Music] kewl cleaned the blood from the floor
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and glued the rug over the gouge created when the bullet ricocheted with paul dead
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kewl now had unfettered access to paul's records his atm card his pin number his checks his social
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security number he had everything he needed to assume paul's identity he started writing checks in paul's name
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and withdrawing money from his accounts his handwriting may have fooled one document examiner
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but it didn't fool paul's daughter who knew right away it wasn't her father's handwriting
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she set a trap by leaving some inaccurate information about her husband's birthday on her
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father's answering machine kewl fell right into the trap sending the birthday card on the wrong
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date it was a takeover homicide where it wasn't just a homicide but afterwards
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the suspect took over the life of the victim financial matters paid bills paid the mortgage
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rode out checks and birthday cards to the grandkids tried to keep the persona of the victim alive so that
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he could extract more funds from the victim at his trial daryl kuhl insisted he was innocent he
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denied signing paul's name on his checks and sending the birthday cards to paul's
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family he pointed to the opinion of the first forensic document examiner as proof
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so what did prosecutors do they asked scientists to swab the back of the stamp on the birthday cards
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and they found saliva its dna matched daryl kewl there was roughly a million people in
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idaho so when you have a one in a million on a dna that tells you that if everybody in
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idaho is in the same room this is still the only person it could be i felt a lot happier to know that i wasn't
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going to be the only one testifying to the identity of the writer but also the dna was going to corroborate my findings
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after a three-week trial kewl was convicted of first-degree murder grand theft and forgery
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he was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison at first we're skeptical the handwriting
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tells us don't be skeptical keep digging later on we find evidence of blood have
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confirmed for us that yes you have blood here yes you probably have a crime scene
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putting us on the right track and lastly the dna i think that's the nail in the coffin
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right there [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] you