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[Music] 911 police emergency a hit-and-run driver left the scene of the crime but he took something with him something
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very important and he left behind a piece of forensic evidence that microscopically told a
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story more graphic than any eyewitness could ever have told [Music] on a cold february night in 1995
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todd christensen a kalamazoo michigan policeman was on duty in his patrol car things had been quiet
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and christensen thought it was going to remain so i was actually eating dinner in my car
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relaxing with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich when a frantic citizen came up and
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pulled up next to me he told christensen that a man was badly hurt a couple of blocks away
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[Music] when christensen got there the man was alive but just barely he was what i call circling the drain
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his breathing was was not good he was doing all he could to just suck in air at that time
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major head trauma [Music] the victim 33 year old kirk hudson was rushed to the local hospital
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[Music] when i went into the room and i saw him laying there and his injuries he just didn't hardly look like
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the same person so it was real hard and my mom was of course real upset that was her only son
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so it was very upsetting hudson never regained consciousness he was pronounced dead before police
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could find out what had happened when my brother passed away it affected our whole family
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my mom suffered two nervous breakdowns it affected all of us kirk's death was the final act in a
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series of tragedies he was an unemployed navy veteran whose 28 year old wife died of cancer just a
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few years earlier [Music] at the time of his death he had been caring for his mother she was sick and
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elderly at the accident scene police found a damaged bicycle near kirk's body what we saw is definitely
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evidence of a crime the vehicle parts the mangled up bicycle the person lying in a pool of blood
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would lead any reasonable officer to believe that this guy got hit by a vehicle and then that vehicle then left
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kirk's family told police he often rode his bicycle at night i think maybe that was how maybe he did
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relieve his stress it didn't phase him really what time it was he was a night
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person so that was his thing you know he'd ride his bike at night or wherever he wanted
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to do near kirk's bicycle police found a trail of plastic and glass fragments a small convex mirror
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some paint chips and an antenna the first thing that ran through my mind was the driver of this vehicle was obviously
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drunk someone left the bar ran this guy over either knew it or didn't know it
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regardless and laughed because they were drunk didn't want to get caught by the police
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this trail of vehicle parts led north along the street indicating the direction of the driver
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from kirk's head injuries police determined that he was riding the bike with the traffic on the right side of
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the road when he was hit from behind this meant that the hit-and-run vehicle would have had right front end damage
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there was no evidence the driver used his brakes before or after he struck kirk [Applause]
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and kirk's family couldn't understand why someone would leave him to die in
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the street this was just an accident he didn't mean to do it or she didn't mean to do it we just wanted
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them you know to say to us that they were sorry for what they had did [Music] and that they didn't mean to do it
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so that's all we wanted [Music] there were no eyewitnesses to kirk hudson's hit and run death
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but the force of impact left little doubt that the driver who hit him knew what happened
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how could they just hit him and then just leave him there to me that was just i couldn't even believe it i was like
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you know why couldn't they have just stopped the only clues to the driver's identity
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were some pieces of truck or car parts left at the scene we knew that the evidence on top of the
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ice was fresh because if it wasn't fresh it had been frozen in the ice so all the pieces of light lens the
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antenna reflector lens any parts of the bicycle the fresh paint all sitting on top we
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knew was fresh crime scene technicians identified the location of each piece with a numbered
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marker and then drew a detailed diagram of the scene every piece there were 28 in all was
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then photographed but it was doubtful whether these tiny clues would be enough to identify the
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vehicle after i collected things from the scene i thought that we'd done the best job we
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could but i gave it about a 30 chance of ever finding the vehicle that was involved i
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didn't think that we stood a real good chance [Music] among the pieces of the vehicle
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were also paint chips one of the chips was a little bigger than a quarter and contained a wealth of information
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there were two distinct colors on the chip with a line running through them it was a tri-colored piece of paint chip
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it's a maroon color a black pinstripe and moth that was very unique that's a two-tone
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vehicle with a pinstripe a background check revealed there were very few vehicles sold with that color
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combination which raised the possibility that it was a custom paint job that helped narrow the scope of what we
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were looking for even more next investigators turned to the shards of orange plastic recovered from the
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scene under the microscope they found a combination of small cubes and rectangles designed to reflect and
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shine light this meant it was most likely from a turn signal or parking light investigators then took each shard and
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attempted to piece together what they had you literally may have one piece that's
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broke here and another piece that fits into it or you get jagged pieces and they all
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come together microscopically and that's what you look for on one shard investigators found a pentagon with a
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star inside it looked like a chrysler dodge logo on this shard there appeared to be
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a serial number the one part had some markings on it some numbers on it and i was in hopes
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that it would be part numbers that we could identify what type of vehicle this lens is coming from
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had came from so investigators gathered all the pieces from the crime scene and went to a local
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chrysler dodge dealership and there parts manager david johnson found himself doing something well outside his
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job description i'd read about it in the paper about the person getting hit in downtown kalamazoo
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and they thought it might be a van of some kind that had done it and when the officer came in and questioned us it's
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like wow i wonder if it was a dodge johnson confirmed these pieces were from the plastic casing of a turn signal
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he then took the serial number and went through old parts manuals and discovered
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another piece of the puzzle there was no doubt in my mind what this came off of it had to be off of a dodge van once we
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saw the paint chip and the antenna on it i knew it had to be a conversion van because those were not standard items
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a conversion van is customized to the owner's specifications johnson said the parts from the turn
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signal indicated the vehicle was a dodge ram a van made between 1986 and 1993. [Music]
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a closer look at the small mirror found at the scene narrowed this down even further
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this was a customized part and was only available from 1986 to 1987 police now knew the make and model of
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the vehicle that killed kirk hudson within a two-year range we were in a real big hurry to try to
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find the vehicle time is is pretty critical you know you don't want that vehicle
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sitting out there for a long period of time incredibly in kalamazoo alone there were hundreds of vehicles fitting
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that description nationwide tens of thousands and the driver and his van could be anywhere
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[Music] after examining pieces of the vehicle that killed kirk hudson police knew they were looking for a 1986
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or 87 move and maroon dodge ram a conversion van with a black pinstripe police had a list of the hundreds of
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people whose vans fit the description it's like looking for a needle in a haystack
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it's not an easy thing to do kirk hudson's family was informed but warned not to get their hopes up
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my brother did have a family and they didn't care you know he was a person and
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it was important for us to follow through on this and make sure that justice was served
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a description of the van was released to the media some calls came in but they were all
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dead ends then about a month after kirk hudson's death a customer in a local bar started to ask
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some questions i was had my normalcy and the bartender said something about an accident where a
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guy on a bicycle had been killed i said really when the woman who asked that she remain
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anonymous wanted to know more about the accident when she heard the accident took place
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just a few blocks from the bar and read the description of the hit and run vehicle
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she suspected she knew the identity of the driver he had the only dodge van in that
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neighborhood that color i don't even remember what year his dodge van was how
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old it was and who it was whatever i just know that that vanna had to be his van
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she called police to voice her suspicion that the driver of the van was jim northy
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and she said she was with northey on the night of the accident the two had been drinking together
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i couldn't even possibly come close to saying how many he had i wasn't keeping track
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she said northie left the bar alone in his van shortly before the accident occurred
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northey was 46 years old and had seven previous convictions for drunk driving vehicle records confirmed he owned a
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1987 dodge ram conversion van the same color as the one in the accident but when police discovered
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where north he worked they started to doubt whether they'd ever solved the case
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worked at this local recycling place where they shred vehicles we were afraid that the vehicle got
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shredded and it's in a thousand pieces out there in the junkyard someplace [Music]
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police rushed to northey's home and found the windows of his garage tape closed with towels and plastic bags
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nobody could see inside which is unusual for a garage which just got up my interest even more
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when questioned jim northey denied he was involved in a hit-and-run accident but he acknowledged that his wife had
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driven the van and gotten into a minor traffic accident a few weeks earlier i could see that the van had been involved
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in an accident the front light right light assembly had been replaced it was just hanging there from
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the wire but police weren't sure how they could tell whether the damage was caused by
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the hit-and-run accident or the other traffic accident northey referred to then almost by chance
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police discovered an important clue when i got to a workbench it was covered with several things tools work stuff
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that type of thing and i proceeded to take everything off from this workbench just
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piece by piece and as i got to the bottom i found one piece of orange lens light lens just like the ones we'd found
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out at the scene but it wasn't enough just to find a similar piece of plastic the most
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important thing was did it match [Music] although jim northey denied hitting kirk
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hudson with his van police confiscated the vehicle and ran it through a series of tests
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the first thing we did is we we processed the van with luminol we looked for trace blood
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we next process the the van to see if there was any hairs or fibers that came from the victim
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but more than a month had passed since kirk hudson's death and there was no biological link between northeast van
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and the crime scene so police turned to more durable evidence the plastic and paint from the suspect vehicle
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a comparison analysis was done on a paint sample from northeast van and paint chips from the crime scene
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the colors and chemical composition of both samples were identical the state police crime lab did match up
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paint from the the vehicle and paint from the scene next investigators turned to the tiny chip of
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plastic they'd found on northie's workbench as if they were putting together a
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jigsaw puzzle they tried to fit this chip into the turn signal partially reassembled from
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the crime scene incredibly the piece fit when an amber lens breaks the pieces don't ever break the same way
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again so basically we had a fingerprint found at the scene there was no doubt this tiny shard of plastic told an
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important story it was proof that jim northie had removed the broken turn signal lens
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placed it temporarily on his workbench and when he went to throw the broken item away inadvertently left behind this
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one tiny piece that matched the broken pieces at the crime scene investigators now turned to kirk
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hudson's bike they placed it next to the suspect van in an attempt to gauge the point of
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contact there was a dent in the bicycle that would have been similar from where the
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van hit it same height the same location passenger side just all kinds of jigsaw
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puzzle pieces fitting together like a glove i saw the damage to the bicycle matching
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up to the van the parking light blends at the same height as the seat the color scheme of the van as to what
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we picked up out there the antenna i got that warm fuzzy feeling that we've done our job we got the vehicle
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involved based on the forensic evidence jim northie was charged with leaving the
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scene of a fatal accident it was good to have the person's name that was important not that we knew him
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but just who it was that maybe you know we could get some closure northie was offered a chance to plead to
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a lesser charge in exchange for a reduced sentence but he refused the defense team was convinced the tiny
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bits of plastic and paint assembled by forensic technicians weren't enough to
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convince a jury but they faced a major hurdle since no one had seen northie driving
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all they had was the physical evidence to put his van at the crime scene there were no eyewitnesses and when
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there are no eyewitnesses it's that remains a difficult part to sort out in your mind until you hear all the
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evidence the pieces of amber parking light lens that you took from the scene during the trial
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prosecutors spent hours telling the jury how each and every piece of plastic and
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paint fit together when completed it told the story of how kirk hudson had been hit
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and left to die scientific evidence is always compelling juries love scientific evidence they
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watch csi they watch your show this is the rare type of case where we actually have a lot of scientific
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evidence it had to be more than coincidence that a piece of plastic or a paint chip or a
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piece of glass doesn't just happen to be there and when they showed them blew them up magnified them it was easy
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to see how they exactly matched and that was very convincing as a juror all of these little markers here that i
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refer to are pieces of evidence after a three-day trial and only four hours of deliberation the
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jury found jim northey guilty the jury put him behind that wheel beyond a reasonable doubt that pretty
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much is the end of the story he was sentenced to four years in prison kirk hudson's family still grieves
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but they're grateful the killer unknowingly left behind the information that led to his capture
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i know that all those little pieces came to be one piece that really you know helped solve the case
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maybe if this had happened 20 years ago it might not have gotten solved but it took all those little pieces to
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come together to get it solved so we're very grateful for that evidence is great for any criminal proceeding
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it's you know i can sit here and say you ran a stop sign and you say no i didn't but
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if i say i got your fingerprint or i got your parking light you can't argue it it's evidence another
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moral of this story is dogged police work and investigation patience determination
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can bring people to justice that otherwise might have avoided it [Music] [Music]
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[Applause] [Music] you