00:00:06
a young woman vanished from her home on an island in rural canada thousands of police army and local
00:00:13
residents spent months searching for her this is the story of how one tiny white
00:00:25
hair solved the mystery of her disappearance while adding a new chapter to the history of forensic science
00:00:34
[Music] [Music] bye [Music] prince edward island canada's smallest province a 2100 square
00:01:09
mile vacation destination in the summer cold and desolate in the winter [Music] father elwa arsenau has ministered to
00:01:26
the islanders for almost 30 years we're not used to big violent things going on because people are very much
00:01:34
down toward and everybody knows everyone because we're a small community there's
00:01:38
not a very large population on the island you know on october 7 1994 a woman called police to report
00:01:48
an abandoned car in a field near her house the license plates were missing and when police looked inside
00:01:57
they saw what looked to be a crime scene there were blood stains small specks of
00:02:04
blood on the windshield on the inside of the windshield on the side windows of the vehicle inside
00:02:09
these dots indicate the location of blood inside the car forensic scientists identified the blood
00:02:17
as medium impact blood spatter the type caused when someone is hit with an object like a fist
00:02:24
the serial number of the vehicle identified the owner as a local woman 32 year old shirley duguay
00:02:32
shirley was a stay-at-home mother of five children the oldest fifteen the youngest eight-year-old twins
00:02:41
shirley and her children were living in this home now abandoned in the small town of richmond
00:02:50
her father melvin had been watching the children since shirley disappeared four days earlier
00:02:56
well we found it very odd that no one had reported her missing initially and of course it
00:03:01
raised some suspicion with us shirley duggay had been known in the past to take off for a couple of days and not
00:03:06
tell anyone where she had gone and then returned police suspected it was shirley's blood
00:03:12
in the car [Music] the pillow she sat on while driving was found nearby soaked in blood
00:03:22
she was a very small diminutive person 4 feet 9 inches tall less than 100 pounds
00:03:28
so very very frail looking individual [Music] other than that we didn't know too much
00:03:36
about her to identify the blood scientists needed a blood sample from shirley's father melvin for dna testing
00:03:46
since shirley would get half of her dna from each parent scientists found that the blood in the
00:03:52
car contained 50 percent of melvin dugay's genetic markers meaning the blood was shirley's
00:04:01
while examining the blood forensic scientists found something else blood that did not come from shirley du
00:04:10
gaye was this the blood of another victim or possibly the blood of a killer [Music]
00:04:24
after shirley duguay's car was found abandoned and spattered with blood the royal canadian mounted police began one
00:04:30
of the largest searches in the history of prince edward island they checked hundreds of square miles
00:04:37
and every waterway in the area we used psychics we use hypnosis anything that we could put our hands on
00:04:46
or could think of we used some of the revelations were very unusual psychics have even told us that she was
00:04:56
buried near water or pine trees shallow grave but where you know you just you just don't know
00:05:02
where to start [Music] about a half mile away from shirley's car police found a shovel with two long
00:05:09
black hairs attached when scientists compared that hair to hair taken from shirley duguay's
00:05:16
hairbrush they were microscopically similar the search for shirley's body lasted for
00:05:23
weeks then investigators came upon a possible clue 15 miles from shirley's car police found
00:05:34
a plastic bag with a pair of sneakers and the blood-stained leather jacket inside
00:05:41
the blood on the leather jacket matched shirley duguay's dna profile but the jacket was a man's size much too
00:05:51
big to belong to shirley when police asked melvin duguay who might have wanted to harm his daughter
00:06:00
his response was startling i would have killed him i would have killed that guy he was
00:06:07
talking about shirley's estranged husband doug beamish a demolition worker who had been separated from shirley for
00:06:14
the past 18 months i think i would have did a good deed if i had shot him killed him
00:06:22
because she'd be alive today i'd be in jail but she'd be alive during the couple's on-again off-again
00:06:32
15-year relationship police learned that bemish had physically abused shirley every woman that lives with an abusive
00:06:41
husband or boyfriend or whatever and end up murdered react in the same way people advise them to
00:06:55
not go with them or live with them but for some reason they do having any issues or problems
00:07:04
during police questioning beemish denied any involvement in shirley's disappearance where were you on october
00:07:10
the 3rd then investigators asked him what size shoes he wore the same size as the sneakers found with
00:07:23
the bloody leather jacket [Music] now police wanted to know if doug beamish had worn these shoes
00:07:32
so they turned to a forensic podiatrist dr keith bettles everyone wears shoes differently
00:07:40
mostly because of the variations in size shape and mechanics of their feet each individual has a unique way of
00:07:48
walking this ultimately is transmitted to the sole of the feet which again is transmitted to the inner
00:07:55
sole of the shoe and again onto the outside of the shoe as to where the walking to the wear on
00:08:02
that individual's shoe with a warrant police cast beamish's feet by placing
00:08:09
them in styrofoam molds then poured plaster of paris inside [Music] once hardened the molds can be compared
00:08:21
to the wear patterns in a pair of shoes this computer-generated image shows how these wear patterns are created
00:08:31
the different colors indicate the amount of pressure made by each part of the foot as it touches the inside of the
00:08:37
shoe the feet create marks called pressure points and are unique to each person mr beamish's toe was hyper flexed that
00:08:48
means it just turned up a little bit at the end the nails would be chaffing away
00:08:53
and rubbing at the inner lining of the shoe and beamish's feet were pronated meaning
00:08:58
they turned inward when dr bettles cut open the sneakers he found wear patterns caused by pronated
00:09:08
feet and chafing marks in the top of the shoe like those caused by hyperflex toes
00:09:14
after i'd done the examination of the sneakers i was quite satisfied that these shoes
00:09:21
had been worn at the time by mr beamish but doug beamish denied the sneakers were his
00:09:29
he also denied owning the leather jacket found with the shoes inside the jacket investigators discovered even more
00:09:38
evidence 20 brittle white hairs under a microscope the hairs did not appear to be human
00:09:54
human hairs have thin medullas the cord that runs through the center of the hair
00:10:00
these hairs had thick medullas meaning they were animal hairs but what animal constable roger savoy thought he had an
00:10:11
answer he remembered something from his interview with doug beamish it was the type of observation we make
00:10:20
hundreds of times each day but usually forget almost there savoy recalled that he saw a cat in doug
00:10:30
beamish's home but it wasn't just any cat it was a pure white one a cat beamish called
00:10:40
snowball savoy also recalled that the cat rubbed up against his leg during his visit
00:10:47
leaving a number of white hairs on his trousers hairs that looked identical to the ones
00:10:53
found in the bloody leather jacket investigators now wondered whether there was any way to prove scientifically
00:11:04
whether the cat hairs on the leather jacket belong to snowball 33 year old shirley duguay was still
00:11:18
missing but a leather jacket stained with her blood was found 15 miles from her abandoned car police believe the leather
00:11:25
jacket was the key to her disappearance the person involved in shirley's death
00:11:33
was likely wearing that jacket because it was not shirley's jacket so we had to put the jacket on somebody we
00:11:39
had to prove that jacket belonged to someone [Music] inside the jacket were several brittle
00:11:46
white hairs which were suspected to be from doug beamish's cat if we could prove that it was this
00:11:53
particular cat's hair then we would be able to say well this belonged to mr beamish the the jacket
00:11:59
and the job was to find someone that would do this this type of testing savoy made hundreds of telephone calls
00:12:08
and found to his surprise that forensic testing on cat hair had never been done before anywhere in the
00:12:15
world for us but he was fortunate enough to come across dr stephen o'brien a geneticist at the national cancer
00:12:25
institute in the united states who had spent decades studying hereditary illness in cats
00:12:33
the constable said to me on the phone dr o'brien i've looked all over the country
00:12:38
in fact all over the world for an expert in cat dna technology because i would like very much
00:12:46
to know whether or not the hairs that were in the lining of the jacket which are tied to the scene of the crime
00:12:53
because the jacket was covered with the victim's blood are those hairs from snowball
00:13:00
dr o'brien asked canadian police for a blood sample from mr beamish's cat but
00:13:06
this was more difficult than expected snowball wasn't at all cooperative it took approximately half an hour from
00:13:15
chasing the cat from under the beds to every room in the house until it was almost like the cat knew that we were
00:13:21
taking him in roger savoy told me he went down to the house and read out the rights
00:13:28
the cat's rights to the parents and i said to roger what did the cat say and he said meow
00:13:36
there's an old saying with the rcmp we always get our man but this case we had
00:13:40
to go to say we always get our cat after finally capturing the cat snowball was taken to a local veterinarian's
00:13:53
office for the necessary blood sample [Music] dr jane bond drew the blood as two
00:14:01
canadian officers stood by to take custody of the sample in order to preserve the chain of evidence
00:14:09
snowballs blood and cat hairs taken from the leather jacket were delivered in person to dr o'brien
00:14:16
and his team [Music] one of the hairs contained a root which was cut into pieces and put into a
00:14:24
buffer solution which dissolved everything except the dna it was then amplified or photocopied so
00:14:34
scientists had enough for their tests [Music] the dna profile of the hair found in the
00:14:41
leather jacket was then compared to the dna from snowball's blood we got a very clear match between the
00:14:50
genotype of each of the markers in the hair to each of the same markers in snowball in the only way that that could
00:14:58
have happened is that they came from the same cat but prince edward island is isolated and
00:15:06
there are thousands of cats there was it possible because of inbreeding isolation or just plain feline
00:15:15
promiscuity that another cat on the island had the same genetic profile as snowball
00:15:23
if so the dna match would be useless you need to know that some other cat on prince edward island couldn't have
00:15:32
contributed that that hair what if 25 percent of the cats on prince edward island had the same dna
00:15:38
profile or 10 percent or even 100 cats so that's the next question you have to
00:15:43
ask what is the frequency of that profile blood samples were taken from 20 cats on
00:15:51
prince edward island and sent to dr o'brien and his team the dna profiles of these 20 cats showed
00:16:00
a rich genetic diversity the chance that the cat hair found on the leather jacket belonged to a cat
00:16:07
other than snowball was estimated to be one in 70 million this was the break canadian
00:16:17
investigators had been hoping for [Music] and then after seven months of searching
00:16:25
a fisherman found the last piece of evidence [Music] 28 weeks into shirley duguay's
00:16:36
disappearance a fisherman along canada's armoire river saw a pile of brush on the
00:16:42
riverbank that looked out of place as he moved the brush away he saw what appeared to be
00:16:51
a human body it was a very shallow grave dug just deep enough to cover the body the person
00:16:58
was a very tiny person we knew shirley dugay was less than five feet tall less than 100 pounds
00:17:05
obviously we were we expected it was surely due gain i was alone by myself and it started to
00:17:10
snow it was a freak snow storm because and i recall all i had on was a rain jacket and i felt bad because the body
00:17:19
was partly uncovered so i took my rain jacket which was all i had to keep warm and put it on top of the grave to keep
00:17:25
the snow off her ironically shirley's body was buried in a spot nearly identical to what the police
00:17:34
psychic predicted near the water under pine trees it was just lucky that they found her
00:17:44
when they did because the police told me that within two or three weeks more and
00:17:50
they would have had a hard time to identify her because the ground was thawing out and
00:18:00
[Music] they knew that there was very little hope of finding her alive and when they
00:18:06
found her they were very um they were very relieved in the sense that they knew at least that they could
00:18:13
uh have a service for her and pray and get together and it they could sort of bring
00:18:19
a closure to it at the autopsy the cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma
00:18:28
just as the blood spatter in her car suggested shirley's nose was broken and
00:18:33
her jaw broken in three places one of her front teeth was found embedded in her lung
00:18:40
doug beamish was arrested and charged with murder scientists discovered that it was his blood mixed with
00:18:49
shirley's inside her abandoned car but what was his motive police discovered beamish had written
00:18:59
shirley a letter threatening to kill her before he'd allow her to get custody of
00:19:03
their children the whole letter was written in blood it was just one page mind you
00:19:14
but it was written in blood although beamish denied owning the leather jacket stain with shirley's
00:19:22
blood police found this photograph taken the day before shirley's disappearance
00:19:31
in it he is wearing a jacket identical to the one found at the crime scene well actually he has no defense at all
00:19:40
except to say i didn't do it but i think if you interviewed all the prisoners in the prisons in canada
00:19:46
they'd all say i didn't do it that's pretty well they've always got someone else to blame
00:19:52
on you know criminals do that they always blame someone else for their problems you they will certainly you never see a
00:19:59
criminal going card and say i did it judge after going to great lengths to cover up
00:20:07
the crime beamish never realized that petting his cat before the murder would be his downfall
00:20:16
one in three criminals have cats and maybe one in four have a dog so when you go to the scene of the crime
00:20:24
and if there's a trace of dna there it's like leaving your your name your rank and social security
00:20:29
number which can be can be used and failing to have the individuals if they leave their pets uh parts there that can
00:20:37
implicate them too this is what happened with mr beamish his pet cat implicated him
00:20:44
doug beamish was tried and convicted of shirley duguay's murder and sentenced to
00:20:49
18 years in prison the case is among the most celebrated in forensic history because it is the first
00:20:59
time that animal dna was used to convict the murderer since then we've received calls from
00:21:07
after the investigation from all over the world literally i received calls from japan asking us how
00:21:13
this worked how did the animal dna work i mean i was actually surprised once the
00:21:17
snowball case became well known among the forensic community i would say about once every two weeks i
00:21:23
would receive a phone call from a police department that was investigating a crime where a
00:21:29
animal hair had been left behind and they were asking us to help them t.s eliot penned these lines in his old
00:21:38
possum's book of practical cats you now have learned enough to see that cats
00:21:46
are much like you and me we've learned that applies to their dna too and doug beamish now wishes
00:21:57
that this wasn't true [Music] [Music] you