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when a small child disappeared in alaska investigators were initially unsure whether the cause was a grizzly bear or
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an abduction the discovery of a fiber a piece of molten steel and a chip of yellow glossy
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paint pointed police in the direction of a human but others weren't so sure [Music]
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[Music] [Music] as the alaskan summer drew to a close in 1991 children in the small town of taslina
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spent as much time outside as possible they knew that in just a few short weeks school would start and along with it the
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cold alaskan winter the lemaire family enjoyed life in the alaska wilderness with hunting fishing
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and riding four-wheel vehicles eleven-year-old mandy lemaire was the oldest child
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she was a real interesting mix between a tomboy and a pretty little girl she could be
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just as comfortable and i freely dress at a at a social event as she could and hit
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boots standing on the river fishing [Music] the town of taslina has only 241 residents so the homes are situated some
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distance apart mandy and her best friend april often walked a mile or more to meet their
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friends to play that was the plan on august 22 1991. mandy and i took off we got about down
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to the wheel barrel down there i had a big fanny pack on and i had tripped and skinned up my leg i came back up
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here to the store they helped me out i got all cleaned up mandy was supposed to wait for me
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but mandy may have grown impatient i ran back down didn't find mandy mandy always played pranks and so we
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thought she was hiding in the bushes going to come out and scare us or something
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she never did two hours later mandy's father called police within hours 75 friends and neighbors
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passed out flyers and searched the heavily wooded area from the ground and from the air
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[Music] i knew that there was something wrong and that there was no way that she could
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have got lost alaskan state trooper jim mccann drove five hours from fairbanks to join the
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search i came down here with the opinion that there's more to this than uh than certainly a grizzly attack or a
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child lost in the woods just from what i read in the paper and from what i've
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been told over the telephone this is the poster they hung out when they found out mandy was missing
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that says missing mandy lemaire long blonde hair straight five foot weighs 105 110 pounds age 11.
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i wrote she was my best friend the search lasted for days search dogs were used but they weren't
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able to track mandy's scent i've never seen such community action i've i've been in on and headed up a lot
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of searches this community was just marvelous everybody from the valley got together
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tragically ten days after she disappeared searchers found her body she had been shot to death
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she was found about a mile from her home off of taslina terrace road back a side
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road in a new subdivision there her body was found off that road that went down to the river from that area
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without you have living something like this you probably will never have a clue and i don't know that i can describe it
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my wife at the time she ultimately couldn't handle it i don't think no matter what you do
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you always feel some kind of guilt and that was the big thing if i hadn't tripped what would have
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happened and i remember asking my mom that what would it what would have happened
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if i hadn't dripped complicating matters there had been heavy rains a few days before the body
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was discovered washing away possible trace evidence as well as foot and tire impressions
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it was clear to us that she'd been alive when she was down in that wash and had been struggling to climb back up
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out of that wash her little fingernails were broken and and filled with dirt police knew they'd have to work harder
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than usual to find necessary clues mandy lemire's autopsy revealed she had been shot twice at close range
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with the 22-caliber rifle there were signs of sexual assault in a search for suspects an informant
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told police that construction worker david deforest showed an unusual interest in the case and spoke of it
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constantly at work twenty years earlier deforest was convicted of a car theft in new york
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state and had some recent brushes with the law he had been in some trouble recently
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when he went out of state and he was a suspect in a death out of state too deforest denied any involvement in
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mandy's murder his employer confirmed he was at work on the day mandy disappeared
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so he wasn't considered a suspect but deforest had some information of his own
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he saw another local man charlie smithhart driving his pickup truck on the road where mandy was last seen
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[Music] he was described as a good guy to the kids that all the copper center kids would
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come to his shop and he would fix their bicycles give them candy certainly interesting to us
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61 year old smithhart was a retired steel worker had been divorced twice and lived in a makeshift workshop behind his
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mother's home coincidentally smithhart had assisted in the search for mandy he never put his name down on the search
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roster at the fire station to say that i am a member of this search team i will search but he would show up
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there and stand around and then he would go off on his own [Music] we found that strange
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smithhart denied deforest's claim that he was near the crime scene on the day
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mandy disappeared and said he had an alibi he said he was watching television with
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his mother and alibaia's mother confirmed god knows he didn't do it and the person who committed this crime
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knows that charles didn't do it in a town the size of taslina checking an alibi is easier than in most larger
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towns and it helped investigators get their first break they learned that smithhart's mother
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lucille had gone shopping at the copper river cash grocery store on the day of mandy's disappearance and paid for the
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items with the check the time and date on the register tape was the same and the time was 3 17
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when lucy said that she was home with her son she wasn't home she was at the
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grocery store buying groceries at that time suddenly that blew a hole in charlie's
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alibi because it meant that his mother was at the grocery store at 3 17 that she was not at home when smith art said
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she was at home to bolster his alibi and that frankly he had no alibi for the two
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hours when mandy disappeared 200 miles away in anchorage criminalists used a gel adhesive tape to gather any
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trace evidence left behind by the killer the tape lifts the evidence but the adhesive isn't so strong that the trace
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elements can't be removed for later analysis investigators noticed what was perhaps
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their first clue and i looked at him and he looked at me and i said did you see that there's something shiny
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something and we kept moving around at different angles until we could see something
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the spheres were no larger than the head of a pin under a fiber optic microscope the
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spheres looked like metal they also found several red and blue fibers and a yellow paint chip
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could these few microscopic items help investigators find a killer this is an 11 year old girl who had her
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life savagely taken from her brutally killed and her body was left in the woods for animals to find
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i think that made it hard on everybody that dealt with this case and myself included
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in the weeks following mandela mayor's murder investigators had a very promising lead
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a witness placed charlie smithart near mandy's home on the day of the abduction
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[Music] and some young girls in town had even more damaging information to report
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[Music] in the weeks before mandy's disappearance charlie smith a 60 year old man had been
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seen offering rides to other young girls who bore a striking resemblance to mandy lemare such that one of the young
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girls when her mother saw the sketch in the newspaper of mandy mandy was missing the
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chief shot she thought she was looking at a at a sketch of her own daughter armed with a search warrant
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investigators confiscated smith hart's pickup truck for forensic analysis with the gel adhesive criminalists
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lifted microscopic particles from the truck's interior during questioning investigators noticed
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something else about smith heart i couldn't take my eyes off his shirt because
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he had little sparkly things on his shirt and i finally asked him what are those little sparkly things on your
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shirt charlie he says i don't know brass aluminum i'm i'm grinding stuff all the time
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that clue led investigators to the workshop behind smith hart's mother's home
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there criminalists collected paint samples hair fibers and all of the metal fragments they could find
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they also confiscated a pair of smith hearts overalls all of the evidence was shipped to
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chicago illinois to skip palanik a research microscopist palanek began by looking at the small
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yellow paint chip found on mandy's clothing using x-ray spectroscopy palanik noticed
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something unique glossy layers with no other layers behind it in a variety of colors that's quite unusual
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and children's bicycles of course are painted with single layers of glossy paint
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in the samples collected from smithhart's workshop palanik found a paint chip identical in
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elemental and polymer composition to the paint chip on mandy's clothing we found one paint ship where the paint
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chip was in every aspect we could measure was the same as as one of the yellow paint ships from his uh workshop
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next were the red and blue fibers again palanek found they too were unusual it turns out these fibers had a very
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unusual cross section the fibers were also very brittle they were brittle because of degradation
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due to age and exposure the fibers were triangular in shape or trilobal using an infrared spectrometer palinic
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discovered the fibers were polypropylene a synthetic manufactured by the philips
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fiber company for carpeting palanek then analyzed the fibers gathered from smithhart's truck and
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clothing we find in smithart's environment exactly the same kinds of fibers not
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only do they have the same cross-sectional shape the same size they have the same pigments that are used to
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color them everything is there the fibers in smithhart's truck were manufactured by the same company and had
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the same degree of environmental damage as those found on mandy's clothing finally
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palanek examined the most unusual evidence the metallic spheres found all over mandy's skin and clothing
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the scanning electron microscope identified the spheres as carbon steel [Music] from his experience palanek knew
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precisely what had shaped the metal in this way [Music] using a high speed cutting tool to cut
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through steel you'll produce these little spheres metal particle is raised to a high
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enough temperature that actually melts and assumes a spherical form the metal spheres from mandy's clothing
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were compared to metal fragments found on the seat of smithart's truck these particles on mandy's body were
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consistent in all respects with having originated from mr smithart's environment based on my knowledge of the
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particles is that it would be extremely unlikely to have all those particles come together just by chance somewhere
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else now armed with forensic evidence investigators wanted to learn as much as they could about smithart's background
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so they flew to california to interview one of his daughters there they found evidence that mandy
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lemayer wasn't his first victim we walked around out in her front yard and down her road for a couple of hours
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until she trusted me and with tears in her eyes said that her her father had started
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molesting her interestingly at the age of 11 the same age as mandy lemare was when she was
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murdered and that all her sisters had also been molested after a three-month investigation
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charlie smithheart was arrested for the kidnapping sexual assault and murder of mandy lemayer
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it wasn't soon enough for mandy's family i can tell you the temptation was strong
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to take matters in my own hands i will lie to you [Music] but i had told myself [Music]
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that i could never explain it to two boys [Music] many residents of teslina found it
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difficult to believe that a neighbor could commit such a heinous crime the community was very split up there
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it's a very half-native half-white community and mandy was white and charlie was
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native and he had the split down the center essentially that the white community felt that he
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was involved and the native community felt that he was not involved charlie smithhart's trial began in 1993
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two years after the crime mandy's parents and her two little brothers sat in the first row
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every day of the trial smithheart insisted he was innocent mr smith you're going to have to be quiet at this
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point you're going to throw me in jail i've been in jail 20 months falsely
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arrested for a crime i did not commit mr smith i'm going to have to have you
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removed from the courtroom that's fine i want to do that throw me in jail i've been in here for 20 months supposed
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to be a business for a crime i did not commit prosecutors believe that molten steel
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from smithhart's metalwork formed the tiny spheres that were attached to his
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shirt smithhart was wearing that same shirt when he saw mandy walking to meet her
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friends it's unclear whether mandy accepted smithart's offer of a ride or whether he
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forced her into his vehicle the forensic evidence suggests the tiny metal spheres attached to smith hart's
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shirt were transferred onto the seat of his truck and later onto mandy's clothing during
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the abduction the same red and blue synthetic trilobal carpet fibers were in the truck and on
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mandy's clothing a single yellow speck of glossy paint from smithhart's workshop was also found
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on mandi lemare even after two weeks in the woods and after heavy rains trace elements were
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still there the murder weapon was never recovered prosecutors believe smith hart may have
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dumped it in the taslina river this type of killer will do this again and hopefully i'll still be locked up
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and then what are you people going to say if it happens my to my way of thinking
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you're an accessory to him you're an accessory to him and the troopers that
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investigated this case because i know i'm innocent skip palanik's testimony was
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particularly persuasive my role is to come in and report factually on what i found and then be an
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advocate not for one side or the other for my opinion and i stated my opinion in court and then hopefully gave the
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jury something useful to base their deliberations on and finally their verdict i felt like they did a really
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good job of explaining it i'd ask our oldest son what he heard and he could explain it
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adults should be able to understand it charles smithhart was found guilty of murder kidnapping and sexual assault
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and he was sentenced to 114 years in prison mr the mayor introduced me to his son
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who he said was someone interested in forensic science and what he handed me is a courtroom sketch he had made
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hand-drawn picture with the words written on it thank you for helping catch my sister's killer that
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kind of thing does tug at your heartstrings this crime affected everyone in taslina
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in different ways now that i live in her old house it it haunts me my memories come back
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certain smells bring back memories um my son sleeps in her old bedroom and there's a sticker on the window that
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she and i had stuck there we were little girls some people think it ought to be over
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it's never over i went through awful days leading up to when mandy's graduation
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would have been for years prior i couldn't go to graduations i then several years after that
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when girls that would have been men whose age were being married were getting married i couldn't go to
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those it's a whole life long she's not here she i'm missing this time of her life
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six years later alaska's supreme court overturned smithhart's conviction
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because some evidence the defense team had planned to introduce had been denied smithhart died of lung cancer in an
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alaska prison while awaiting a retrial [Music] [Music] [Music] you