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On June 21st, 1978, 22-year-old Carla Brown was found brutally murdered in the basement of her
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home. >> It looked as if the killer had committed the perfect crime, and police could find very little
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evidence. But years later, investigators noticed something on a crime scene photograph
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that had previously been overlooked. The killer had left behind a clue. [Music] 22-year-old Carla Brown and her fianceé,
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a man we'll call Mark Hart, had recently purchased a home together in Wood River,
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Illinois. Although the couple had a rocky past, friends and family saw this as the
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beginning of a new phase in their relationship. Carla Brown was a beautiful little girl,
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grew up into a beautiful young woman, was very popular in in her hometown in the Wood River area, had taken some
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college classes, had been a high school cheerleader, was one of those girls that
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everybody knew. Girls liked her, guys liked her. Uh she was just one of those people that was special and everybody
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recognized that. On June 21st, Carla Brown took the day off from work to unpack.
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Yes, the house is great. >> And spoke to one of her friends on the telephone.
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>> Maybe we can have you over for dinner. >> They had talked for a few minutes. In
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fact, we even talked about getting together later on that afternoon. >> Wait a second. I just heard something at
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the door. >> And Carla interrupted the conversation and said, "Listen, I'll have to call you
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back. I'll see you later. There's somebody at the door." And that was the
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last uh that her friend ever talked to her. Around 5:30 that afternoon, Carla's
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fiance and his friend stopped by the house after work when they walked into the basement, they saw a horrible sight.
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Carla >> Carla was lying face down in a bucket of water. >> She had her hands tied behind her. There
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was evidence of struggle, a death struggle in the basement uh and a very strong suggestion of a sexual rape. But
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investigators were confused about some of the things they saw. There were two men's socks tied around Carla's neck.
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They were tied neatly, inconsistent with what you would expect to see in a life and death struggle. The white electrical
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cord used to tie the victim's hands was not tight enough to effectively restrain
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an individual during an assault. There was too much length of cord behind her to where her hands could come up in
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front of her. It would seem like to me that she would have access to the attacker given that much freedom with
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the length of rope that was tied between the two wrists. >> She was found wearing a sweater her
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fiance said she would never wear in the summer. The top button was fastened. Another inconsistency with a life and
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death struggle. The socks around Carla's neck were from inside the home. The make
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to one was found in her fiance's dresser. The other was under the sofa in the adjacent room. Under the sofa was a
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puddle of water tinted with blood. The sofa cushions were also wet and there were blood drops on the floor near the
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sofa. In the rafters was a coffee corff from the kitchen. To homicide investigators, it looked as if the
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coffee corff had been used to rinse blood from the sofa cushions. The attack occurred near the sofa and the body was
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later moved into an adjacent room and placed into the barrel of water. The crime scene staging told investigators
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that the perpetrator spent a great deal of time inside the house after the murder. But who knew that Carla Brown
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was home and alone on the day of the murder? And who would have felt free to spend so much time in the home cleaning
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up and staging the scene? Police began their investigation with a close look at Carla Brown's fiance.
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The autopsy report on Carla Brown indicated death by strangulation. Although she was found nude from the
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waist down, there were no signs of sexual assault. Investigators were convinced that the killer spent a great
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deal of time in the house after the murder staging the crime scene. I didn't know Mark very well, although
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they had dated for a number of years, uh, off and on, and there were times in their relationship that it wasn't great,
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but, uh, she seemed to always be crazy about him. Anyway, >> police also questioned two neighbors who
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had been sitting in the yard next door on the day Carla and her fiance were moving in.
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Hey, Carla. Carla Brown. I'm John Pranty. We went to school together. Remember me?
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>> Hi. How are you? [Music] >> Both men had alibis as to where they were on the day of the murder, and they
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both willingly took lie detector tests and passed. With no other leads, police asked the
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FBI for a psychological profile of the killer and turned to FBI behavioral analyst John Douglas.
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>> In my research, we began to break down crimes by disorganized and organized.
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Disorganized means extremely uh sloppy carelessness on the part of the offender. Uh the crime could be very
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very uh impulsive. Organized means that there's a high degree and high level of
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criminal sophistication on the part of the subject. >> To Douglas, this crime scene was
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disorganized, an indication that the killer was inexperienced and probably had never killed before. He came to the
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home with no intention of committing murder, but did so after some sort of confrontation or rejection.
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Since he spent so much time inside the home, Douglas believed that he was familiar with the victim and her routine
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and might be living in the neighborhood or very close by. Douglas said the killer was an unmarried
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white male in his mid to late 20s, high school educated with a sloppy appearance. The use of electrical cord
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to tide the victim's hands indicated the killer had taken shop classes or had
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vocational training. Douglas also told investigators that they may have already interviewed the
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murderer and that he was capable of passing a polygraph test. >> And then it got kind of spooky. I mean,
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I was sitting there and I wasn't sure I was believing what he was saying after a
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certain point. He started talking about how this individual would react and what kind of vehicle he'd be driving
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and he started talking about a Volkswagen. There was a high probability this guy'
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be a Volt driving a Volkswagen and that it would be red or orange in color. This led investigators to focus once
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again on the two men sitting next door on the day Carla Brown and her fiance were moving in school together.
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>> But investigators needed more than just a psychological profile. They needed
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hard evidence. Crime scene technician Alva Bush remained deeply troubled by the Carla
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Brown murder. For one thing, he and his colleagues could not determine what caused the wounds on Carla Brown's face
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and chin. The first real break in the case occurred when Bush attended a seminar on image enhancement at the
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University of New Mexico. Dr. Homer Campbell taught that seminar. He worked for the state of New Mexico as a medical
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investigator. Dr. Campbell was demonstrating a photographic technique that uses cameras, monitors, and computers to show
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details of crime scene photographs that cannot otherwise be seen. >> This was a technique that had been used
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for several years both by engineers in non-destructive testing of materials and also by archaeologists
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uh looking at aerial photographs to find uh ancient ruins. After the seminar, Bush told Dr.
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Campbell about the Carla Brown case. >> And I said, "Doc, do I have a case for
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you?" And I told him about the Carla Brown case and that we were never able
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to identify what type instrument had damaged her face. I asked him to please send me the photographs uh that they had
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uh of the uh deceased person and also to send me an autopsy report. Dr. Campbell used his image enhancement
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equipment to look more closely at the crime scene photos of Carla Brown. The system not only improves the contrast of
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the photographs, but can also create what appear to be threedimensional views, adding depth to the image. When
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Dr. Campbell was through, he knew what caused the injuries to Carla Brown's face.
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>> He tells me that maybe the TV tray may have been the instrument that she was
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hit in the head with. This TV tray was lying on the floor within three foot of the
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victim where she had probably been on the couch, but I had missed it. >> The tray tables were still in storage
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untouched in the two years since the murder. In an extraordinary piece of luck, Dr. Campbell found microscopic
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traces of blood and hair still present on the tray table. And what Dr. Campbell said next was even more revealing.
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>> He says, "What about the bite mark?" And I I said, "Bite mark? What bite
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mark? What are you talking about?" >> When we looked at the photograph and
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went ahead and enhanced it and magnified it. Present on the shoulder was a bite injury on the shoulder. And by looking
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at that bite injury, you could actually pick out individual teeth all the way across.
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>> I trade that for five eyewitnesses anytime. So eyewitnesses can make mistakes. Things like fingerprints
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don't. And it was my understanding that bite marks properly preserved uh with an identified defendant could
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give you the defendant as good as a fingerprint. >> The killer had left behind a clue. All
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investigators needed now was a suspect. Two years after the brutal murder of 22-year-old Carla Brown, investigators
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got the break they needed when a photographic enhancement revealed a bite mark on Carla's shoulder. Police now
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turned to the two men sitting in the yard next door when Carla Brown moved into her new home. Both matched the
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FBI's behavioral profile of the killer. Police checked their alibis again. Although both had passed the polygraph
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tests, police discovered that John Pranty had spoken about the murder to others.
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>> John Pranty had mentioned to his friends that he had seen her body that day, that
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he had looked over the shoulder of some policemen while they were investigating in the basement, and he described uh the
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condition of her body. and he even mentioned that she had bite marks on her neck and collar bone.
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>> The police were the only ones inside the house after Carla Brown's body was
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found. >> That was a shock to us as police officers because there's no way that he
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could have known that unless he put the bite mark there. Also, the information about the location
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of the body, the way the body was found, the only way that that would have been known is either to have been there on
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the investigation uh or to have put the body there yourself because we never released that
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information to the public or to the media. >> Since the bite marks were overlooked
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during the original autopsy, investigators wanted to make sure nothing else was missed. So Carla
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Brown's body was exumed for a second autopsy. This time it was performed by Dr. Mary
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Casease, the chief medical examiner for St. Louis County. >> In the original autopsy, um there was
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the liature strangulation and the body was examined and for some reason the head was not examined and so I opened
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the cranial cavity and there was bruising in the scalp. Somebody struck her on the head. and question is whether
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or not for example this blow would cause loss of consciousness. >> Dr. Casease thought that Carla Brown may
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have been alive when she was placed in the barrel of water because when she was found there was foam around her mouth
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>> because she was in water and she was producing that foam. I feel like there may be some component
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of drowning that she was still um even though she'd been strangled that she was
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still maybe to a minimal degree uh breathing because I I believe that she may have breathed in some water.
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>> During the autopsy, more photographs were taken of the suspected bite wounds
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which were sent to the New York State Police Forensic Unit for an independent evaluation.
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Prosecutors wanted to make sure that the mark on Carla Brown's neck was in fact a
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bite wound. >> In my opinion, the pattern injury uh on Carla Brown's neck had all the
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characteristics that a bite mark would have. >> Dr. Lavine was asked to compare the bite
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wound to three different dental casts prosecutors sent along for analysis. Dr. Lavine had no idea to whom the casts
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belonged. After making wax impressions of the models, Dr. Lavine concluded that two of
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the models were not consistent with the bite wound. >> I took the third model and examined all
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the uh individual characteristics that those teeth would have caused. compared those characteristics with the
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characteristics on the clarified photograph of Carla Brown's neck uh that I had and came to the opinion that only
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that model was consistent with having caused uh that pattern injury or that bite mark.
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>> He measured the teeth. He went back to the photograph. He turned them different
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ways. He held them up in the air. Finally, he laid the dental impressions on the table and he pointed to him and
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he said, "That's your man." >> Model number three belonged to John
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Pranty. Interestingly, Pranty also matched John Douglas's psychological profile. He was
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in his late 20s, had a history of troubled relationships with women. He attended industrial art school and had a
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sloppy, unckempt appearance. Pranty spent a great deal of time in the neighborhood, often visiting his friend
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who lived next door to Carla Brown. And just as John Douglas had predicted, Pranty had passed an earlier polygraph
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test, the most unusual aspect of Douglas's profile was the prediction that Pranty would be driving a red
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folkswagen. Uh, where that came from, only John could say, but in fact did turn out that
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the individual did have a Volkswagen. >> Prosecutors believe that when Carla
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Brown's fiance left for work, John Pratty walked over and knocked on the door.
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>> Maybe we can have you over for dinner. >> Carla was talking on the telephone.
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>> I understand. >> Hello. >> Wait a second. I just heard something at
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the door. Let me call you back. [Music] What do you want? >> Need some help moving in?
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>> I want you to leave. Come on. >> Why don't we talk a little? >> I want you to leave now.
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>> There was some kind of argument or struggle, possibly after she had rejected Tranty's sexual advances. He
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forced her into the basement and hit her with a tray table. At some point, he bit her on the
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shoulder and strangled her. Afterwards, he staged the scene to make it appear to be a sexual assault.
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But when he changed her clothes, he made the mistake of fastening the top button,
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the first clue that the scene had been staged. He tied her hands with electrical cord,
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wrapped the socks around her neck, [Applause] and placed her into the water while she
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was unconscious but still alive. Pranty tried to remove the blood stains on the sofa with water he carried from
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the kitchen in the coffee carff which he left in the rafters above the sofa. The clothes Carla was wearing that day
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were never found. Pranty may have taken them as a trophy. In July of 1983, John Pranty was tried and convicted of
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firstdegree murder and was sentenced to 75 years in the state penitentiary. After five long years, Carla Brown's
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family finally had some closure. I would like to tell him that he he took away a
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very wonderful person um who had a lot to offer and a and a family who cared very much about Carla and that it was
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very very selfish of him to to not consider uh another person's life uh as as
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something as something that can just be thrown thrown away uh on a on a particular day.
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>> He got caught because the techniques of investigation and law enforcement
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completely overpowered him. He got away with the crime because he was lucky. He got caught because law enforcement
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changed his luck. Don Weber along with journalist Charles Bosworth chronicled the many ups and
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downs of this case in a best-selling book, Silent Witness. >> Carla's family was so intrigued by the
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pipe mark evidence that uh she embroidered a little tapestry that she presented to Don Weber as a token of her
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appreciation. And it offers the slogan that Don had used that you can lie through your teeth, but your teeth don't
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lie. And around the border is the uh pattern of rectangle space rectangle space triangle which is the bitemark
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pattern that Don had proved had been made by John Pranty. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music]
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[Applause] [Music]