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[music playing] NARRATOR: A massive hurricane
forced the evacuation of North Carolina's Outer Banks.
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Some of the evacuees
were suspects in a murder investigation, and police had to
find some way to get them back.
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[theme music] The Outer Banks
of North Carolina is one of America's favorite
getaway destinations.
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Nearly seven million people
visit these beaches every year. ROBERT TRIVETTE: The
beaches are very nice,
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lots of good restaurants--
real family-oriented place. NARRATOR: In 1993, Janet
Siclari came to Nags Head, North
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Carolina, for a week's
vacation, along with her brother Robert and several friends.
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Janet was 35 years
old and had recently broken up with her boyfriend. CELESTE BETHMANN: Janet had a
previous 10-year relationship
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with someone. It just never was
totally right for her. It had to be perfect. And she never found
the Mr. Perfect
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that she was looking for. NARRATOR: On their
last evening in town, Janet went to dinner
with her two girlfriends.
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Later, they went to
a nearby nightclub. [rock music playing] CELESTE BETHMANN:
The girls decided
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that they wanted to get home. They were tired, and
they wanted to pack up. Janet was still having
fun and was partying,
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so they left her with the
car, because she was going to be basically by
herself and they
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knew that she would
be easier to drive back while they walked together. NARRATOR: At dawn
the next morning,
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a sanitation worker found
Janet's body on the beach, just 10 yards from the
front of her hotel.
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ROBERT TRIVETTE: She was
only wearing a blue denim top with no clothing
below the waist,
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and she was clutching a
pair of white denim shorts to her neck area. NARRATOR: A rape
test kit proved Janet
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had been sexually assaulted. Next to Janet's body was a pair
of men's size-nine tennis shoes
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with gray socks inside. ROBERT TRIVETTE: It was very
odd that there was this rape
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and murder on the
beach, and this pair of shoes within 30
feet of the body. This was just sort of
a bizarre fact to me.
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And we had always
been suspicious that they were connected. It's just too coincidental.
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NARRATOR: Police decided not
to release the cause of death to the media so if a suspect
knew how she was killed,
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there would be only
one way he'd know that. Janet had been sharing a hotel
room with her brother, Robert.
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He told police Janet got back
around 2:30 in the morning. ROBERT TRIVETTE:
Robert was asleep
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when he heard her
come in the room. She came in, he said,
lit a cigarette, put her purse down,
and said something
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like, I'm just going to go
out and smoke this cigarette. And walked right out the door.
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NARRATOR: Robert said he was
barely awake, but thought Janet might have
been with friends.
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ROBERT TRIVETTE: He thought
that he heard some voices outside the door,
some whispering,
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and thought that perhaps
Janet was with someone else. He wasn't real clear on
this ever in his statements.
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NARRATOR: Unfortunately,
none of the hotel employees saw Janet enter or
leave the hotel.
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ROBERT TRIVETTE: That
room was at the end of a hall that faced the ocean. And right outside their door was
a doorway and a set of stairs
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that led out and down to the
deck and right to the ocean. So she didn't have to go
back through the lobby
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to get out of the hotel
to go to the ocean. NARRATOR: Police now had to
search for witnesses, anyone
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who might have been in the
general area around 3 o'clock in the morning. And in a vacation community,
that wouldn't be easy.
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No one, neither family
nor investigators, could make sense of
Janet Siclari's murder.
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ROBERT TRIVETTE: This
was a horrific crime. This was a stranger
sexual assault and murder.
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And if there is any other crime
that's more horrific than that, I don't know what it is.
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-Things like this
don't happen to people who live their life
honestly and decently.
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They just don't. ROBERT TRIVETTE: Carolinian was
a relatively large hotel that went north and south
for some 100 feet.
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It would have been a sound
barrier that would have prevented anything, probably,
that had occurred on the beach,
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except some wild
firework-type sound or a gunshot to have been heard. NARRATOR: Police
attempted to retrace
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Janet's steps on the
day of her murder. According to her
two girlfriends, Janet spent time
in the afternoon
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with the hotel's
bartender, Read Powell, and they immediately hit it off. CELESTE BETHMANN: They
were talking to each other.
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Janet was flirting a little
bit, I think, with Read. He was quiet and
he was shy, which
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was probably very
attractive to Janet. NARRATOR: Later that evening,
Janet and her friends
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ran into Read at
the Port O'Call Bar. Read was there with
his girlfriend, but he had gotten into a fight.
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TOM GILLIAM: While Read
was at the Port O'Call, he saw his girlfriend dancing
with another gentleman
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and got a little bit
upset about that, and there was a slight
altercation as a result.
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NARRATOR: When Janet's friends
went back to the hotel, Janet stayed behind
to talk to Read.
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They left the bar at closing
time, around 2:00 AM. TOM GILLIAM: So he stated that
he was going to take a cab.
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And at that point, Janet told
him there was no sense in that, that she would give them a
ride since she was going right
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by his house to go
back to the hotel. NARRATOR: When
questioned, Read Powell told police that after Janet
dropped him off at home,
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he got the keys to his car and
went looking for his girlfriend to patch things up.
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ROBERT TRIVETTE: His
girlfriend was an employee of the Carolinian, and they had
apartments there for employees.
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NARRATOR: The
Carolinian was also where Janet Siclari was staying. TOM GILLIAM: Read drove
to the Carolinian Hotel,
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and while waiting there for his
girlfriend in the parking lot, he observed Janet arrive at the
hotel and go inside by herself.
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NARRATOR: Read said he didn't
speak with Janet at the time. He eventually saw his girlfriend
when she returned to the hotel.
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ROBERT TRIVETTE: They got
into a verbal argument, and he ended up slapping
her across the face.
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That pretty much ended
the conversation. His girlfriend went
on to her apartment,
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and he went back
to his apartment. NARRATOR: When police asked Read
what he was doing while waiting
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for his girlfriend, he
made a shocking revelation. ROBERT TRIVETTE: He had gotten
hungry and carried with him
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a steak knife and stick of
pepperoni, and sat in the car as he was waiting for
his girlfriend to return.
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NARRATOR: This was a valuable
piece of information, and possibly incriminating. Janet had been stabbed to
death on the beach that night,
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but police didn't release this
information to the public. Read Powell admitted he was
sitting just 100 yards away
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from where Janet was murdered
with a knife in his hand. ROBERT TRIVETTE: Read
Powell was a very
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prime suspect in
the investigation. They had had
interactions that day indicating something more
than just a friendship or just
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an acquaintance-type
relationship, so all of this was very much a
concern of ours and led
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us to look at him very closely. NARRATOR: The investigation
of Janet Siclari's murder
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was just one day old
when Mother Nature provided an unexpected setback. Hurricane Emily, a
Category 3 storm,
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was bearing down on the Outer
Banks of North Carolina. ROBERT TRIVETTE: The whole
island was completely
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turned upside down by a
mandatory evacuation caused by a hurricane that
did significant damage
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to the island. So we lost the
crime scene and we lost-- we thought--
we were worried
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that we were losing witnesses. NARRATOR: Approximately 80,000
people evacuated the area.
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But the prime suspect, Read
Powell, stayed in town. CELESTE BETHMANN: There
was only one person
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that we thought could be a
suspect, and that was Read. He was the only person that
we had talked to extensively
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that week and allowed
into our little circle. NARRATOR: Police
searched Read's home
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and confiscated
several steak knives. MARK BOODEE: The steak
knives were submitted
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to the laboratory to look for
the presence of blood on them. However, none of them
demonstrated any indications
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for the presence of blood. NARRATOR: Investigators also
took a sample of Read's DNA.
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At the time, in
1993, DNA testing wasn't as advanced
as it is today. The method at the time was to
compare the length and patterns
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of autorads, which looked
very much like barcode. MARK BOODEE: We compared
the DNA profile from it
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to the DNA profile
from the vaginal swabs, and it was very
easy to determine that it was not a match.
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-I think we were all
somewhat surprised that he was-- this
was not a match. NARRATOR: Police discovered
there were 10 other men who
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were either in the
vicinity of the murder or had some contact with Janet
the week of her vacation.
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All were asked to
provide a DNA sample. MARK BOODEE: I examined
them and their DNA standards
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and compared them to DNA profile
obtained from the sperm cells. Every single one of them
was eliminated in this case.
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NARRATOR: It began to look like
the perpetrator had already left the area, either
because his vacation was
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over or because of the
mandatory evacuation. ROBERT TRIVETTE: At
that point in my career,
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I'd never had a case
of this significance that we were not able to solve. So it was extremely frustrating
and extremely heartbreaking.
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NARRATOR: Months
stretched into years, and the case turned cold. CELESTE BETHMANN: Of course
there's a lot of frustration
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when you're trying to deal
with something like this. You're thinking that
the more time goes on,
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the more that they'll
never find the person. And you just sort of try to live
with it and say that, you know,
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you pray someday it'll
happen, but youi're thinking, after five years,
it's not going to happen.
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NARRATOR: But during
that period of time, the FBI developed a
way for every state
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to access the DNA profiles
collected in other states. At the time, not
every state collected
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DNA samples from
convicted felons. But for the majority that did,
this new system was a godsend,
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and they called
the database CODIS, or Combined DNA Indexing System. So in 1997, almost five years
after Janet Siclari's murder,
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North Carolina officials
entered the killer's DNA profile into the CODIS system--
and they got a match.
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Amazingly, it matched someone
living just an hour away in the same state
of North Carolina.
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DONNY VARNELL: This
was our first-- what we call first cold hit of
an unsolved murder/homicide,
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no suspect. And this was the first cold
hit the state had ever had. NARRATOR: The DNA matched
32-year-old Thomas Jabin Berry,
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a commercial fisherman and
convicted sex offender. One of those convictions
was for an assault
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on a 12-year-old girl. Berry claims he was
innocent of that charge. THOMAS BERRY: She wouldn't
[inaudible] if she was 14.
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I got the paperwork in there. Or she was 13 going on 14,
or something like that.
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But, um, no, it
was all consensual. ROBERT TRIVETTE: She
was 12 years old. She was a kid.
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NARRATOR: When police
caught up with Berry, he was in prison for
a parole violation.
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Investigators showed him
photographs of Janet Siclari and asked if he'd ever seen her.
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At first he claimed he hadn't,
but in a subsequent interview, he said he vaguely recalled her.
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-I had to have had
sex with Janet. I mean, that's
obvious from the DNA. But it would have
been consensual,
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and there was no-- I wouldn't
have never killed nobody. I'd never killed anybody.
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DONNY VARNELL: For him to say
he had consensual sex with Janet is untruthful. It's a lie.
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I think the evidence
shows that what happened was a rape and a homicide. ROBERT TRIVETTE: We were dealing
with two crimes here-- one
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was a rape and one was a murder. And while the evidence
of DNA, we felt like, went very strongly towards
prosecuting a person
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for the rape of
Janet Siclari, that wasn't conclusive
evidence of a murder. NARRATOR: For more
evidence, investigators
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had to look at the shoes
found next to Janet's body. And inside, they
found a huge surprise.
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The prime suspect in
Janet Siclari's murder was Thomas Jabin Berry. He admitted he was in
Nags Head at the time,
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but he claimed any contact he
had with Janet was consensual. THOMAS BERRY: I had sex with
a lot of people on the beach.
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I wouldn't have had any idea,
you know, if we met that way, and then just started
walking and talking
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and one thing led to another. I've had that happen
several times in my life. As a matter of fact, my first
wife and I met that way.
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[chuckles] NARRATOR: But a look
at Berry's background revealed his sexual history
was far from innocent.
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DONNY VARNELL: There were
approximately a dozen other victims of sexual
assault by Mr. Berry.
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We found one instant
where he actually raped a young lady on the beach. NARRATOR: As for the
night of the murder,
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Berry admitted he was on drugs. ROBERT TRIVETTE: I think
Berry had been on the beach
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that night somewhere, partying,
drinking, and doing crack. He admitted in his statements
that he-- that period of time,
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he was high on crack a lot. NARRATOR: To Janet Siclari's
friends and family, the possibility of her having
sex with a complete stranger
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was totally out of character. CELESTE BETHMANN: She
wasn't one to have a casual fling or an
affair with someone.
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She was looking for something
really sturdy in her life, at 35 years old, a
nice, good relationship.
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NARRATOR: But
prosecutors didn't have to convince Janet's friends. They had to convince a jury.
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In an attempt to find something
besides the DNA that tied Berry to the murder, detectives turned
to the only other evidence
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at the crime scene--
the tennis shoes. Berry denied the shoes were his. ROBERT TRIVETTE: The
only way we could think
00:16:18
to do that was to find someone
who could do shoe impressions, to see if there was a way
to say-- like a fingerprint,
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except with a foot and a shoe. NARRATOR: Investigators
contacted Robert Kennedy,
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a forensic expert with the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He had an international
reputation
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for using barefoot
impressions, particularly on the inside of
shoes, as evidence.
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ROBERT KENNEDY:
I became involved with the barefoot
research back in 1989. And as a result of a serial
killer back in New Brunswick,
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we needed to see if the
suspect's barefoot impression would match the impressions
found inside of the shoe.
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Kennedy soon established a
database of these impressions and did a detailed study
of how they're made.
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ROBERT KENNEDY: When somebody
wears a pair of shoes, the foot generates a
large amount of heat
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inside the shoes, so
the foot will sweat. The weight-bearing
area of the foot will cause indentation on
the insole of the shoe.
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So you have a combination
of slight indentations, sweat-- dirty, darkened
marks inside of the shoe.
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NARRATOR: These marks are
unique to an individual's feet and therefore provide a
potential basis for comparison.
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Kennedy got inked
impressions on the bottoms of Thomas Berry's bare feet. Then he cut out the insoles of
the shoes from the crime scene
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and photographed the surfaces. The images were
overlaid for comparison. ROBERT KENNEDY: There
was no dissimilarities
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between the impression that
Thomas Berry would make and the Spalding
running shoe, so I
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was able to form a conclusion
that Thomas Berry was the likely wearer of the
Spalding running shoes.
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NARRATOR: To law enforcement,
this placed Berry at the crime scene
with the body.
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ROBERT TRIVETTE: We always were
convinced they were connected and that the shoes
went with this crime,
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and that they all pointed to
Thomas Berry as our suspect. NARRATOR: Prosecutors believed
Janet gave Read Powell a ride
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home from the bar,
then went to her hotel. They believe her brother was
mistaken when he said he heard
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voices coming from
outside the room. Janet went back outside
to smoke a cigarette.
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By tragic coincidence, Janet ran
into Thomas Jabin Berry, a man with a history of
sexual violence.
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He was also high on drugs. Prosecutors believe
he used a knife to force Janet to have sex.
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Then he stabbed her to death
so she couldn't identify him. Some in law enforcement
think Berry left his shoes
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on the beach so his shoe
impressions wouldn't lead investigators back to his aunt's
house near the hotel, where
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they think Berry
spent the night. MARK BOODEE: In the
end, Thomas Jabin Berry was the one who did himself in.
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If he had not violated the
conditions of his parole, his sample would never have been
available for us to analyze.
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NARRATOR: During
Berry's murder trial, prosecutors learned
an unfortunate piece of information.
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TOM GILLIAM: He was back in the
holding cell during the trial and he made a
comment to a jailer,
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they'll never
sentence me to death. And the jailer said, what
are you talking about?
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He said, well, there's
somebody on the jury. She's good friends with my mama. She watched me grow up.
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NARRATOR: The jury
convicted Thomas Jabin Berry of rape and first-degree murder.
00:20:10
But this particular
juror was the only one to vote against
the death penalty, so Berry was sentenced
to life in prison
00:20:20
with no possibility of parole. Despite the forensic evidence,
Berry still says he's innocent.
00:20:29
-I've been trying
unsuccessfully, filing appeals and trying to get back in court,
and I figured it couldn't hurt,
00:20:38
you know? It may generate some publicity
and help me in some way. -I say, you're a liar.
00:20:44
There's no question about it. Because of all the types of
scientific evidence out there,
00:20:53
this evidence is irrefutable,
that Thomas Berry encountered Janet Siclari on the
night of August 28.
00:20:59
There's no question about it. That, we proved
beyond all doubt, instead of beyond
a reasonable doubt.
00:21:06
And if Mr. Berry says
that, he's a liar. [theme music]