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[Music] up next a young woman has car trouble and disappears a gentleman in a van pulled up and
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offered his assistance eyewitnesses give differing accounts of what happened it is frustrating when
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witnesses tell us variations that don't add up a microscopic clue underneath the girl's fingernails and a
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bite mark provide needed clues but were they enough this could have been prevented my
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sister could be here with me right now the faith tabernacle church is an institution in fort lauderdale florida
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[Music] there are about a thousand members among them the decosta family church for us was not only a place to go
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to worship and serve god but it was actually a place to go and socialize see your friends the
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decosta daughters rochelle and donya attended church three or four times a week and they usually
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went together but one december night donya decided to go alone since her sister had homework to do
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that was the last time the family saw dorna alive my mom knocked on the door asked me if my sister is home she's not
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home i started thinking oh my god something is wrong dona's family drove all over the area
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looking for her i didn't find her like i went to the church i didn't find her then on my way back i found her car and
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she was not in her car they found donya's car two miles from home on the shoulder of a major highway
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i had a dream and they knew something was wrong the car was out of gas there was a prior
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incident with the car where she actually ran out of gas before so that that could have been the same
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problem we discovered that dania always carried a gas can in the back of her trunk that gas can
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was missing witnesses at a nearby gas station a half mile away said they saw someone who matched darna's
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description she did come to the texaco gas station and used her credit card to purchase gas
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she purchased over a dollars worth of gas to fill the gas can to go put gas back in her vehicle
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and witnesses said that donya wasn't alone a gentleman in a van pulled up and offered his assistance to
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donia according to the witnesses this gentleman told donia that he would be able to take her
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back to her car and help her out witnesses were able to describe the driver to police who created
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a composite drawing both witnesses said that the male driver was a black man in his
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40s late 30s early 40s very well dressed very articulate very well spoken unfortunately the witnesses disagreed
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about the color of the vehicle one said it was teal blue the other indicated it was burgundy both witnesses
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confident in their answers both steadfast as to the color it could be either one
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it could be burgundy it could be teal the gas station surveillance cameras were no help the van was apparently
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outside of camera range [Music] one of the witnesses remembered seeing the word hope
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painted on the side of the van you just don't come up with a word even though the colors were different
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from each description that was recalled by the witnesses the word hope in my mind was going to be
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on that van somewhere police decided not to release this detail to the media but the van was the only clue
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investigators had [Music] normally having two witnesses to a possible kidnapping would be a good
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thing for investigators but not in dona de costa's case both witnesses saw the same thing but
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each gave a different description of the van in which donya was last seen alive they described the van in various ways
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regarding the colors and regarding the signage that was on the sign on the side of the van
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i can't pick my witnesses i have to work with what i have since one of the witnesses said the word
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hope was on the side of the van detectives kaminsky and bukata contacted every organization in the area with the
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word hope in its name there were more than a hundred of them i called everybody the rest of my family
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we started printing flyers with a picture and started handing them out to people all over
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then three days after donya disappeared a worker at an industrial park 20 miles away
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found dorna's body near a dumpster female was wrapped in sheets as well as a shower curtain and her head was covered
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with a bag the news was on tv and i remember them coming on and said there was a body discovered in oakland
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park and then my sister face popped up on the screen and i was like oh no i said i hope
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that's not her body i hope that's not her body i was in the room and i looked among the people and i saw all these
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police coming and chaplin another chaplain and i saw him coming i said oh my god
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oh my god that started and he kicked me and told me dornia was nude and had brown carpet
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fibers on her body the medical examiner estimated dania was murdered just hours after she disappeared the state of
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the composition was around 36 hours this was our best estimate investigators noticed a tire impression
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on the sheet covering dornia's body to have her just wrapped up in sheets and tossed out like a piece of garbage
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was really troubling there was some debris-laden tire tracks across the pavement
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and it also went across the leg portion of the sedan where she had been wrapped in this sheet
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and it was actually on the surface of the sheet the sheet was a dark brown rusty color
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which made it difficult to obtain a clear image of the tire impression the impression was faint black
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rubber on top of that material and in order to get the best contrast out of that we use various light sources
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to try and reduce the actual color of the sheet while bringing up the contrast of the actual impression which
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was black the images were photographed in both black and white and in color analyst mark zuckermel
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was able to get an image of the tread unfortunately it wasn't large enough to figure out the make and
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model of the tire investigators also used super glue fuming to look for prints on the plastic bags
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and shower curtain that encased donya's body they found six partial prints and two
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full prints these were submitted to our latent fingerprint people there was a search done in our automated
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fingerprint system and came up with no matches the medical examiner discovered that
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dornia had been sexually assaulted and tortured there were more than three dozen
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star-shaped wounds on her chest those injuries in the area of the chest were superficial
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in other words they didn't penetrate the chest wall didn't enter the body cavities
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and did not contribute to them it's as if the killer was on top of the young lady and just
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stabbing her to cause her pain the cause of death was a blow to her skull with the same star-shaped instrument the
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stab wound to the skull actually went through her skull as if it was the final coup de gras
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which took her life near the fatal wound was an odd horseshoe-shaped bruise no one could tell what caused it what
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did she do to deserve such a harm with it the killer left a bite mark on donya's right arm
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dr steven rifkin photographed it and discovered some unusual characteristics he had
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spaces between his upper front teeth and several spaces between several of his lower front teeth
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investigators also found foreign skin cells underneath donya's fingernails day by day investigators were getting
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[Music] closer eight days after donna decosta's murder detectives got a tip someone just two blocks from donya's
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home drove a burgundy van that belonged to the church of god i received a phone call that there was a
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few men up in deerfield beach that utilized a burgundy church van they lived just to the north of the gas
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station i went up to their house we ended up surveilling them detectives kaminsky and bukatak watched
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as four men got into the van and took off the detectives pulled them over for a look around
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inside the van they found the floral print dress which matched the description of the
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dress dania was wearing when she was last seen alive naturally investigators confiscated the
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van and mark zuckermel compared the van's tires to the tire impressions found near
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darna's body they did not match daphne both said that the dress i had wasn't her daughter's so
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the van in question that we had stopped was not the van none of the men had criminal records and
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all willingly provided a dna sample and we were able to exclude all four of the individuals that were originally
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submitted as being a possible contributor to the that foreign dna that we had detected
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the men were released and the case went cold at that point i think we all thought that
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picada and kaminsky were going to be looking for a needle in the haystack then four months after dorna's murder
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detectives on duty saw yet another van that caught their eye and as i'm looking at the van i'm
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starting to realize that the color was a teal color and then i even looked a little further
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and i saw the word hope on the side of the van we both looked at each other and said no i couldn't be
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because we're looking for what we believe to be a burgundy van the van was parked in front of the
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generation hope daycare in fort lauderdale the daycare was affiliated with a local church but not
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donya's church the van was obviously teal it wasn't burgundy however the word hope h-o-p-e
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the letters themselves were burgundy in color detectives were greeted by the pastor he
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said he wasn't driving the van on the night of darndest murder but he was pretty sure he knew
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who was the pastor was a meticulous man and he kept detailed logs with dates and
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times he began to look through his logs in a date in question when dania was missing and subsequently
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murdered during that time period we learned that lucious boyd was the one who had the van lucius boyd
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was the maintenance man at the daycare center and had been using the van to run errands the day before
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dorna disappeared but according to the pastor's records boyd didn't return the van until several
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days later since the van wasn't needed it didn't raise any alarms [Music] when officers looked inside the van they
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saw a purple laundry bag like the one found with dania's body church officials also
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noted that a box of tools usually kept in the van was missing a reciprocating saw was
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missing a torx screwdriver was missing there was also a garment bag that was used to
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turn in dirty laundry to the cleaners those items were missing 39 year old lucius boyd lived just two
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blocks away from the gas station where dania was last seen boyd denied any involvement
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but had no alibi for the time dornia went missing and he was no stranger to police over
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the last decade he'd been charged seven times for violent offenses ranging from rape to
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murder but was acquitted in every case i did not do this what they talked about i did not do this here
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boyd had also been a suspect in no less than 10 unsolved murders he just wasn't ever convicted of any crime he
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did and police worried that unless they found solid evidence he might go free again
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[Music] lucius boyd was the prime suspect in dorna decosta's murder apparently his employer at the daycare
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center knew of his arrest for violent crimes but assumed his innocence since he had always been acquitted in
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court when police questioned boyd's living girlfriend geneva lewis she was more than
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cooperative she said she was out of town visiting her family when the crime occurred so police asked
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her if any of their bed sheets were missing she looked through her closet and told
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me when she came back out that she was missing a yellow sheet and a brown sheet these were the same colors as the sheets
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that wrapped dona de costa's body and there was other potential evidence in the apartment
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while i was talking with her i looked into the bedroom and i noticed that the carpet was brown in color dania's
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body had been covered in brown fibers crime scene technicians now scoured the apartment in the bedroom
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underneath the bed they found blood stains the carpet was saturated with blood a fiber analysis showed the brown fibers
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on dornia's body had come from the carpet in boyd's apartment the fingerprints on the plastic bags
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that in case dornea's body didn't match lucious boyd but they did match boyd's girlfriend and their son it links
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him in some way to association with the body that he claimed he had never had any
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contact with the tire impressions on the sheet found with dornia's body matched one of the tires on the daycare
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van but without a murder weapon prosecutors needed to determine how donya had been killed
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the church pastor told investigators the make and model of the reciprocating saw
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missing from the van criminalist alan greenspan placed an identical saw over a scale
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photograph of the strange horseshoe-shaped wound on donya's forehead he was attempting to
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determine if the base of the saw known as the foot could have made the mark class
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characteristics or the general appearance of the foot was consistent with the mark the wounds
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on donya's chest were star-shaped one of the tools missing from the van was a torx driver essentially a
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screwdriver with a star-shaped head an identical torx driver was overlaid on scale photos of the chest wounds
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and the patterns lined up perfectly and you think of that crime as a big puzzle here's two pieces of the puzzle
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that kind of fit in casts were made of boyd's teeth and his bite pattern was consistent with the
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mark on donya's arm within reasonable dental certainty we were able to conclude that we would expect teeth like
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lucious boy to have made the marks on the victim and dna testing proved it was donya's
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blood in boyd's apartment and boyd's dna was found under donya's fingernails his profile that i was able to develop
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matched to the foreign dna that i had already detected on the thigh swabs and on the mixtures under the
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fingernails prosecutors believe donya trusted the man offering to give her a ride because he was well dressed
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and apparently affiliated with the church once she accepted his offer for a ride
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the evidence shows he grabbed the reciprocating saw and struck her in the head creating the odd horseshoe-shaped bruise
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he then took darnya back to his apartment because his live-in girlfriend was away that
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night once there he sexually assaulted donya tortured her and killed her with a blow
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to the head he wrapped her body in sheets from his apartment and placed it in a plastic bag that had
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his girlfriend's fingerprints on it he dumped the body in an industrial park and then
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drove over it leaving behind the tire impression later matched to the van the evidence conclusively proved that
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lucious boyd was the only person in the world that was responsible for the death
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of donnie decosta the only consolation i can get from this is that my sister was a gift to us god gave her
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as a gift after a while after so many years he took her back [Music] in january of 2002 lucious boyd was
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convicted of dornia decosta's murder he was sentenced to death investigators believe
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boyd killed at least two other women who mysteriously disappeared after he'd been in contact with them
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[Music] i just hope that before lucious boyd gets executed he's man enough to tell
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law enforcement to tell me to tell anybody where the bodies of these missing girls are
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family members want to know and now police and the community are grateful that boyd
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is finally behind bars physical evidence doesn't lie people do people like lucious boyd can come up
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with any story they want any lie but lucious boyd will never be a match for physical evidence forensics in this
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case is critical this is what set everything else from his criminal history to pass
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where he was not getting convicted to a conviction we were able to pick up all these individual
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little pieces of evidence that on their own may not be that important but when you combine
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them all together it leads us back to this individual and it locks them in you