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california police had several suspects in the robbery and murder of a retired couple
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unfortunately the forensic evidence was inconclusive ten years later a determined forensic scientist with
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materials used by dentists found evidence that had previously been overlooked and in so doing
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made scientific history [Music] bakersfield california known for its oil fields wide open
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spaces and an aggressive crime investigation unit officials post pictures of their most
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wanted criminals on the town's website but they needed every trick they could
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think of to solve the case of clifford and alma merk a retired couple who lived on the city's south side
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they love to sit out on the front porch and they had big trees out in front and it was shady
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in the summertime and they would just sit out there and just it was so peaceful one saturday morning the murk's son
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robert stopped by his parents home for a visit he immediately noticed something was
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wrong he found a door open at the back of the house and entered and immediately detected a foul
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odor and i backed out of the house and told my wife i said something's wrong
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here go across the street and call the sheriff's department jim christopherson was one of the first
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to arrive at the scene the entire residence was ransacked everything turned upside down chairs
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turned upside down anything that was in a drawer was tipped out and spilled out onto the floor
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when they got to the couple's bedroom police discovered this was more than a robbery
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clifford merc used to be lying across a bed with his hands and feet bound with some
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sort of a cord and he was obviously deceased it was later determined he had been shot
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in the head twice nearby police found a pillow with two bullet holes the pillow had been used to muffle the
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sound of the gunshots but there were no spent shell casings in the home so whoever committed the crime
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probably collected those casings to uh to hide the evidence or to throw the investigation off track
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the search team found alma merck's body in the second bedroom there was a sliding panel in this
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location and as we slid back one could see that there was a body placed in this closet he told me that my
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mother they found her in a wardrobe with a telephone cord tied around her neck and strangled
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i just i i thought this can't be happening it's [Music] it's like a dream i'm gonna wake up and
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and she's gonna be fine but it wasn't a dream it was it was real alma's jewelry and cliff's handguns were
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apparently stolen during the attack investigators found two foreign fingerprints inside the home one at the
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back door the other on a sewing tray in the living room in a search for suspects a neighbor told
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police that he saw two men lurking around the murk's home just a few days earlier
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he kept an eye on them until he finally lost visual contact with them because of
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some trees obstructing his view that was the last you saw of them the mercs had no known enemies and no
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one else in the neighborhood saw or heard anything unusual around the time of the murders
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investigators hoped that either the fingerprints or some other forensic evidence at the scene
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would lead them to the killer at cliff merck's autopsy the medical examiner recovered two
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25-caliber bullets from his skull coincidentally one of cliff's 25-caliber pistols was stolen during the robbery
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investigators wondered whether cliff had been murdered with his own gun we had been evaluating every 25 caliber
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automatic seized in the area as it came in to see if the ballistics would match the 25 caliber bullets that
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were removed from the skull of clifford merc two months later investigators found cliff merk's gun
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it was in the possession of a man whom we'll call dan jones at the time he was
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arrested on a drug charge it was easily identifiable since cliff's initials had been carved into the handle
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that was cliff he had his name on practically everything that he owned he'd take a
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some kind of an etcher and etch these initials on it you know it's just for identification
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jones denied any involvement in the murder and said he bought the gun from an acquaintance robert cowan
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a man well known to law enforcement he had no occupation and he supported himself by
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stealing robbing houses stealing from people outside of restaurants and that type
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thing he had a long record of robberies and use of of narcotics robert cowan also had a partner in crime
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his brother gerald the brothers were involved in criminal activity a lot of small time stuff
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public drunk a lot of narcotics usage some assaults forensic scientists tested cliff's gun
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to see if it was the one used in his murder [Music] the gun was test-fired into a tub of
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water as bullets go through the barrel the lens and grooves which make the bullets
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spin leave marks on the outside of the bullet they will design the barrel to have a
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certain direction of twist a certain number of land in grooves a certain measurement for those landing grooves so
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those are intentionally put in by the manufacturer surprisingly when the bullets from
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cliff's gun were compared to the bullets from cliff's autopsy they did not match
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at that point we basically eliminated that weapon and says we don't believe that's it
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investigators checked all of the local pawn shops and discovered that the cowan brothers had pawned some of alma merck's
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jewelry with a search warrant police found several other items belonging to the mercs in the cowan's possession
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he had a wallet he had two social security checks which he was trying to sell he had all
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types of jewelry but investigators did not find a 25 caliber pistol like the one used in the
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murder investigators then compared the cowan's fingerprints and those of the drug
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dealer with the fingerprints found inside the merc's home they were astonished to learn
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that none of them matched [Music] the cowan brothers looked similar to the men seen walking near the murk's home
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before the murder but the neighbor couldn't make a positive identification all investigators had against the cowan
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brothers and dan jones was possession of stolen property it just got to a certain point where
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there was no fresh information coming in and there was still a lack of physical evidence tying the cows to the crime
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scene we would talk and he would say the same thing we still think it's the same
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people but we don't have the proof i never lost hope i just knew in my heart
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that the police would do their job and and find the people that did this to mother and cliff i just never gave up
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hope i just knew that that that they would do it investigators confiscated every 25
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caliber pistol they could find hoping that one of them would match the murder weapon
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i'm going to just see every 25 caliber semi-automatic pistol seized by law enforcement in current county coming
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across my desk i maintained those bullets in my secured work area i never returned them to the sheriff's property
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room knowing that i would one day get that firearm but eventually there were other crimes to solve other
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evidence to process and the murder of cliff and dalma merk move quietly into the unsolved file
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ten years later jim christopherson was promoted to homicide detective but he never forgot the murder of cliff
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and alma mirk the case had always bothered me mainly because of the circumstances the way
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they were murdered and just knowing that that there was that element out there still walking the
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streets that hopefully hadn't done more killings but after a decade the trail of the killer had turned cold
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christopherson knew he needed forensic evidence to have any chance of solving the case
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ten years after clifford and alma merck's murder investigators in bakersfield california
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were no closer to making an arrest we don't know who it was or if they're
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somewhere in the neighborhood still it's really scary very scary to think that they're still out there
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they're not caught and i tell you the truth i really didn't think they were
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ever going to get caught shortly after jim christopherson was promoted to homicide detective
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he reopened the case looking for any possible evidence that might have been overlooked when i opened up the case it
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was very enlightening first off i had no idea that the initial investigators had
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done so much work on it they had talked to literally hundreds of people and interviewed hundreds of
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people and had obtained a lot of good information cliff merck's 25 caliber handgun stolen
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during the robbery was recovered a few months later but ballistic tests revealed it was not the murder weapon
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in searching through the files christopherson discovered that there were several other men present on the
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night the cowan brothers sold cliff merc's gun to the drug dealer when christopherson re-interviewed them
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now ten years later one of the men present recalled an interesting detail he recalled hearing the cowan brothers
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tell the drug dealer that the gun they were selling had been used in a crime once this drug person took possession of
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the gun that he put a screwdriver down the end of the barrel and reamed it out in effect changing the
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rifling of the gun with this information greg laskowski took a second look down the barrel of
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cliff merc's gun and saw evidence of what the informant was talking about the
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land impressions at the very muzzle or the crown of the barrel had appeared to been altered
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it wasn't obvious at first and because it's an old gun but there was just
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something about the crown and the land impressions at that muzzle that were just different from the
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remainder of the impressions farther down the barrel since only the end of the barrel had
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been altered leskowski needed to find some way to examine just the portion of the barrel
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that was unaltered no one in the forensic establishment could help him i contacted a number of
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known experts about what i was planning to do and how to do it and they all wished me good luck
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and so you know i helped i had to you know i was working on my own at that time but leskowski remembered using a dental
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casting material called microsill in a case where he needed to see tool marks in a piece of metal
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so he decided to try some of that by putting it down the barrel of the gun it consists of two parts a
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silicone rubber base and then a catalyst or hardener and one basically it comes in two tubes so one
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then squeezes a certain amount of the rubber material out and then a corresponding amount of hardener out you
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mix the two together and in this particular case we injected the cast into the barrel
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and let it harden it took 15 minutes for the micro sill to solidify inside the gun
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when it hardened laskowski slowly removed the cast from the barrel it literally does not adhere to the
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substance that it's casting it just records its surface detail it's like
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an egg on a teflon frying pan one can see that one achieves a very true representation of the interior of
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the barrel plus the fine detail he cut away the portion of the barrel imprint destroyed by the screwdriver
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and then compared the remainder of the cast to the bullets that killed cliff merk
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in an incredible turn of events they were an exact match this proved that clifford murk's own gun
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was used in his murder and that the cowan brothers had been in possession of the gun
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before it had been altered even with this discovery it still wasn't enough to prove murder
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that was good circumstantial evidence however it still did not place them inside the crime scene
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but there was one more piece of evidence about to be uncovered that would point the finger at who
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killed clifford and alma merk for the first time in the history of forensic science a cast made of the
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inside of a gun was used to identify a murder weapon the pistol used to kill cliff merc had
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been sold to a drug dealer by robert and gerald cowan but for some reason the cowan's fingerprints did not match those
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found at the crime scene the person who attempted the comparison was unable to make a match
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and he he failed to have another examiner verify his conclusions this was a breach of protocol
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the standard operating procedure in all crime labs requires a fingerprint examiner to have someone verify his or
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her conclusions so the fingerprints were resubmitted for analysis and this time the results were
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verified by a supervisor the fingerprints found in the merck's home matched robert cowan
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[Music] it goes without saying that i was highly irritated and embarrassed for the
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department initially on the latent evidence being misread i i tend to believe that was
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probably a training issue this was simply a situation where the original examiner was in over his
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head and and couldn't handle it armed with the fingerprint evidence and the ballistic test results robert cowan
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was arrested and charged with two counts of first degree murder took him back to the office and i showed
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him where his fingerprints were definitely found inside of that house and asked him to explain that
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and he just shook his head and he just kept his mouth shut and he stayed silent and
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said he couldn't explain it gerald cowan was also arrested for the murders but he was later released
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because there was no forensic evidence linking him to the crime scene gerald cowan was later convicted of
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manslaughter for killing his father-in-law he served only two years in prison for
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that crime before he was released on parole prosecutors believe robert cowan was one of the men seen
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near the murk's home by the neighbor based on the forensic evidence prosecutors say robert cowan and an
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accomplice broke into the murk's home through the back door cliff merc probably went for his gun to
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defend himself and robert cowan grabbed the pistol and turned it on cliff [Music]
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the men bound his wife alma locked her in the closet and left her to die [Music]
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robert cowan left his fingerprints on a tray found in the living room and by the
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back door as he left the cowans pawned some of alma merck's jewelry then sold the gun to a drug
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dealer who altered the rifling marks of the gun barrel but it wasn't enough to
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fool a forensic scientist with his newfound ability to see inside the barrel something inside me says hold onto these
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bullets you're going to find the firearm and lo and behold it happened way down the line almost 10 years later
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but time was on our side i guess in that matter robert cowan was convicted of two counts
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of first-degree murder and was sentenced to death when you look at what he did to this
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elderly couple who he had no reason to kill he could have taken everything they had and tied them up and left them he
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didn't have to shoot them he didn't have to shove mrs merck in a closet and close
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the door on her and let her suffer and die i couldn't find anything good about this
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man i couldn't find anything nice about him i couldn't find any reason in the
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world why i felt he should even be walking on the earth and breathing air i'm glad they convicted him
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i'm glad he's where he is and i think that he deserves everything that he's getting
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for what he did to my mother if they would let me i would throw the switch or whatever it takes to
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do the merck case took 10 years to solve and required both perseverance and ingenuity
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the result was not only a conviction but a new forensic test now used around the world when investigators suspect
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there has been tampering inside a gun barrel this is where forensic science works is
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it always borrows or steals from its neighboring sciences or methodologies and it
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takes those and uses it in a practical manner i could not have won the case i could not have gotten the
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death penalty without forensic science i've had a long career and it was one of
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the highlights of my career [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you