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[Music] on june 21st 1978 22 year old carla brown was found brutally murdered in the basement of her
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home [Music] it looked as if the killer had committed the perfect crime [Music] 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] twenty-two-year-old carla brown and her
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fiance a man we'll call mark hart had recently purchased a home together in wood river illinois
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although the couple had a rocky past friends and family saw this as the beginning of a new phase in their
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relationship carla brown was a beautiful little girl grew up into a beautiful young woman was
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very popular in her hometown in the wood river area i had taken some college classes had been a high school
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cheerleader was one of those girls that everybody knew girls liked her guys liked her
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she was just one of those people that was special and everybody recognized that on june 21st carla brown took the day
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off from work to unpack yes the house was great and spoke to one of her friends on the telephone maybe we
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can have you over for dinner they had talked for a few minutes in fact we even talked about getting together later on
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that afternoon wait a second i just heard something in the door and carla interrupted the conversation and said
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listen i'll have to call you back i'll see you later there's somebody at the
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door and that was the last that our friend ever talked to around 5 30 that afternoon
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carla's fiance and his friends stopped by the house after work when they walked into the basement
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they saw a horrible sight 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 and a very strong suggestion of a sexual rape
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but investigators were confused about some of the things they saw there were two men's socks tied around
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carla's neck they were tied neatly inconsistent with what you would expect to see in a life and death struggle
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the white electrical cord used to tie the victim's hands was not tight enough
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to effectively restrain an individual during an assault there was too much length of cord
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behind her to where her hands could come up in front of her it would seem like to me that she would
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have access to the attacker given that much freedom with the length of rope that was tied
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between the two wrists she was found wearing a sweater her fiance said she would never wear in the
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summer the top button was fastened another inconsistency with a life-and-death struggle
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the socks around carla's neck were from inside the home the mate to one was found in her
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fiance's dresser the other was under the sofa in the adjacent room under the sofa was a puddle of water
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tinted with blood the sofa cushions were also wet and there were blood drops on the floor near the sofa
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in the rafters was a coffee carafe from the kitchen to homicide investigators it looked as
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if the coffee carafe had been used to rinse blood from the sofa cushions the attack occurred near the sofa and
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the body was later moved into an adjacent room and placed into the barrel of water
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the crime scene staging told investigators that the perpetrator spent a great deal of time inside the house
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after the murder but who knew that carla brown was home and alone on the day of the murder
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and who would have felt free to spend so much time in the home cleaning up and staging the scene
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police began their investigation with a close look at carla brown's fiancee the autopsy report on carla brown
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indicated death by strangulation although she was found nude from the waist down there were no signs of sexual
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assault investigators were convinced that the killer spent a great deal of time in the house after the murder
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staging the crime scene i didn't know mark very well although they had dated for a
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number of years off and on and there were times in their relationship that it wasn't great
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but 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 prante 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 fbi
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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 disorganize and organize disorganized means extremely
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sloppy carelessness on the part of the offender the crime could be very very impulsive organized means that there's a
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high degree high level of 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
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he came to the home with no intention of committing murder but did so after some
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sort of confrontation or rejection since he spent so much time inside the home douglas believed that he was familiar
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with the victim and her routine and might be living in the neighborhood or very close by
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douglas said the killer was an unmarried white male in his mid to late twenties high school educated with a sloppy
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appearance the use of electrical cord to tie the victim's hands indicated the killer had
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taken shop classes or had vocational training douglas also told investigators that
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they may have already interviewed the murderer and that he was capable of passing a polygraph test
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and then it got kind of spooky i mean i was sitting there and i wasn't sure i
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was believing what he was saying after a certain point he started talking about how this individual would react
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and what kind of vehicle he'd be driving and he started talking about a volkswagen there was a high
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probability this guy would be a volt driving a volkswagen and that would be red or orange in color
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this led investigators to focus once again on the two men sitting next door on the day carla brown and her fiance
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were moving in 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
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image enhancement at the university of new mexico dr homer campbell taught that seminar he
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worked for the state of new mexico as a medical investigator dr campbell was demonstrating a
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photographic technique that uses cameras monitors and computers to show details of crime scene photographs that cannot
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otherwise be seen this was a technique that had been used for several years both by engineers in
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non-destructive testing of materials and also by archaeologists looking at aerial photographs to find
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ancient ruins after the seminar bush told dr campbell about the carla brown case and i said
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doc do i have a case for you and i told them about the carla brown case and that
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we were never able to identify what type instrument hadn't damaged her face i
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asked him to please send me the photographs that they had of the deceased person
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and also to send me an autopsy report dr campbell used his image enhancement equipment to look more closely at the
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crime scene photos of carla brown the system not only improves the contrast of the photographs that can
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also create what appear to be three-dimensional views adding depth to the image when dr campbell was through
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he knew what caused the injuries to carla brown's face he tells me that maybe the
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tv tray may have been the instrument that she was hitting ahead with this tv tray was lying on the floor within three
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foot of the 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 traces of
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blood and hair still present on the tray table and what dr campbell said next was even
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more revealing he says what about the bite mark and i i said buy it mark why by mark what are
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you talking about when we looked at the photograph and went ahead and enhanced it and magnified
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it present on the shoulder was a bite injury on the shoulder and by looking at that bite injury you could actually pick
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out individual teeth all the way across i trade that for five eyewitnesses anytime so eyewitnesses can make
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mistakes things like fingerprints don't and it was my understanding that bite
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marks properly preserved with an identified defendant could give you the defendant as good as a
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fingerprint the killer had left behind a clue all investigators needed now was a suspect
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[Music] two years after the brutal murder of 22 year old carla brown investigators got the break they needed
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when a photographic enhancement revealed a bite mark on carla's shoulder police now turned
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to the two men sitting in the yard next door when carla brown moved into her new
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home both matched the fbi's behavioral profile of the killer police checked their alibis again
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although both had passed the polygraph tests police discovered that john prante had spoken about the murder to others
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john prandty had mentioned to his friends that he had seen her body that day that he looked over the
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shoulder of some policemen while they were investigating in the basement and he described the condition of her body
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and he even mentioned that she had bite marks on her neck and collarbone the police were the only ones inside the
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house after carla brown's body was found and that was a shock to us as police officers because there's no
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way that he 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 or to put the body there yourself because we never release that
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information to the public or to the media since the bite marks were overlooked during the original autopsy
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investigators wanted to make sure nothing else was missed so carla brown's body was exhumed for a
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second autopsy this time it was performed by dr mary case the chief medical examiner for st
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louis county in the original autopsy there was the ligature strangulation and the body was examined and for some
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reason the head was not examined and so i opened the cranial cavity and there was bruising
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in the scalp somebody struck her on the head and question is whether or not for example this blow would cause loss of
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consciousness dr case thought that carla brown may have been alive when she was placed in
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the barrel of water because when she was found there was foam around her mouth because she was in water and she was
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producing that foam i feel like there may be some component of drowning that she was still
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even though she'd been strangled that she was still maybe to a minimal degree
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breathing because i believe that she may have breathed in some water during the autopsy more photographs were
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taken of the suspected bite wounds which were sent to the new york state police forensic unit for an independent
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evaluation 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 on carla brown's neck had all the
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characteristics that a bite mark would have dr levine was asked to compare the bite
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wound to three different dental casts prosecutors sent along for analysis dr levine had no idea to whom the casts
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belonged after making wax impressions of the models dr levine concluded that two of the
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models were not consistent with the bite wound i took the third model and examined all the
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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 that i had
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and came to the opinion that only that model was consistent with having caused that pattern injury
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or that bite mark he measured the teeth he went back to the photograph he turned them different ways he held
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him up in the air finally he laid the dental impressions on the table and he pointed to him and he said
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that's your man model number three belonged to john prante interestingly prandi also matched john
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douglas's psychological profile he was in his late twenties had a history of troubled relationships with
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women he attended industrial art school and had a sloppy unkempt appearance franti spent a great deal of time in the
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neighborhood often visiting his friend who lived next door to carla brown and just as john douglas had predicted
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tranti had passed an earlier polygraph test the most unusual aspect of douglas's
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profile was the prediction that pranty would be driving a red volkswagen where that came from
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only john could say but in fact did turn out that the individual did have a volkswagen
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prosecutors believe that when carla brown's fiancee left for work john prante walked over and knocked on
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the door maybe we can have you over for dinner carla was talking on the telephone
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hello wait a second i just heard something in the door let me call you back [Music]
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what do you want need some help moving in i want you to leave come on why don't we
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talk a little i want you to leave now there was some kind of argument or struggle possibly after she had rejected
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tranti's sexual advances he forced her into the basement and hit her with a tray table
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at some point he bitter on the shoulder and strangled her afterwards he staged the scene to make
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it appear to be a sexual assault 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 bloodstains on the sofa with water he carried from
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the kitchen in the coffee carafe 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 prandty was tried and convicted of
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first degree murder and was sentenced to 75 years in the state penitentiary after five long years
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carla brown's family finally had some closure i would like to tell him that he he took away a very wonderful
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person um who had a lot to offer and a and a family who cared very much about carla
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and that it was very very selfish of him to to not consider another person's life
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as as something as something that can just be thrown away on a particular day he got caught
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because the techniques of investigation in law enforcement completely overpowered him
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he got away with the crime because he was lucky he got caught because law enforcement changed his luck
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don weber along with journalist charles bosworth chronicled the many ups and downs of this case in a best-selling
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book silent witness carla's family was so intrigued by the bite mark evidence
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that 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
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but your teeth don't lie and around the border is the pattern of rectangle space rectangle space triangle
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which is the bite mark pattern that don had proved had been made by john prante [Music]
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[Applause] [Music] you