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a popular high school gym teacher mysteriously left town without saying goodbye to anyone
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he later sent letters to explain why but a closer forensic look at those letters and the microscopic piece of
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tissue gave investigators an entirely different explanation for where he went and why
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[Music] [Applause] [Music] west yellowstone montana is primarily a resort town only 1 000 residents live
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here year round but in season the beauty of the national forest lands and yellowstone national
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park are the main draw west yellowstone is basically the gateway to yellowstone national park
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there's a million plus visitors that come through here every year so it's a
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service oriented town rini and brad brisbane owned a restaurant in town brad also worked as a gym teacher at the
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local high school brad was fun loving enjoyed life he loved to play practical jokes on people
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brad was a very loyal honest trustworthy friend who would do anything including giving
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you the shirt off his back to help you friday november 9 1990 started like most days
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until brad got a telephone call at work and left class unexpectedly i actually met him in the hall he had
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his jacket on he was getting ready to leave i asked him where he was going he just
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said to help out a friend and they had brought in a substitute from pe class he said he'd see me at
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dinner later on that night brad said he was going to belgrade about 90 miles away to pick up his friend
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larry moore who needed a ride it was odd i mean he doesn't leave the you know his teacher's job for very
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much so yeah it was odd what made it even more bizarre brad never returned home that's when
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we knew something i mean we knew something was already wrong because brad hadn't come home and that wasn't his
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nature that wasn't the way brad brisbane was when police interviewed larry moore
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he said he met brad at the diner as planned but he said brad was depressed and inebriated
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brad told larry that he was tired of life tired of his wife tired of the restaurant was going to leave borrowed
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some money from him left the restaurant [Music] moore said brad left the diner got into a red car with washington
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plates and drove off moore said the driver was a woman and that he didn't recognize her
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fred's car was still in the diners parking lot and there were no signs of foul play
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he loved his family there was no problem and there was never any any indication that there was anything in his mind
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remotely related to leaving his family i knew that they didn't know our family
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the dynamics of the family and and just to hear people saying well you know maybe he did just run off they didn't
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know him the brisbane and more families had been friends for years larry's wife shelley worked with brad
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shelley coached the girls high school basketball team and brad coached the boys investigators heard rumors that brad and
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shelly were having an affair i don't believe so we talked to rini she didn't think there was an affair we
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talked to shelley and she denied one the only other person that could really say was missing
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coincidentally shelley and larry moore separated just two days before brad disappeared
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shelley said her alleged affair with brad was a figment of larry's imagination
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i truly believe he thought we were having an affair she actually pointed to larry as as possibly having
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done something to brad because of some of the domestic violence against her and the fact that he had accused her
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of having an affair with brett a few weeks after brad's disappearance a letter from brad arrived at police
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headquarters he said he was alive and well and living in washington state but after seeing the letter
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police weren't too sure the last known person to see brad brisman alive was his friend larry moore
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police started their investigation by carefully examining larry moore's truck
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he allowed me to search the pickup and it was immaculate when i went around to the camper i noticed that he was
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patching holes in it with a putty knife inside the camper investigators found bullet holes in the
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floor and in the liner underneath [Music] they also found a bullet fragment from a
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357 magnum pistol larry told police he once tried shooting a mouse in the camper while on a hunting
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trip [Music] but something caught the eye of investigators a small piece of what appeared to be
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tissue on a window curtain about the size of a quarter there's no way to describe it other than it looked like a
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piece of of chicken skin or something like that being unsure what it might be he took that
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the entire curtain with the the tissue on it and we got it sent up to the missoula
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state crime lab an octalony test identified the tissue as human and the striations meant
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it was muscle but that doesn't show you that the person's dead we can all deposit muscle tissue and
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still be very much alive but before police could question larry moore about this forensic discovery a
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letter arrived postmarked from spokane washington it was from brad brisbane in it he apologized for creating what he
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called a real strain on everyone involved i've decided to start a new life for
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myself i had to make a clean break from everyone and everything to make this work
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it just seemed to be the only way out for me fortunately i have a wonderful woman to
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help me a few days later larry moore received a similar letter in this one brad wanted to make sure his
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wife rini was taken care of all personal property we own i want her to have everything
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i'm starting a new life with a new person but investigators noticed a slight
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problem the name of brad's wife rini was misspelled the letter to the sheriff had
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congratulated him to his appointment and the sheriff is an elected position so they were huge mistakes they were they
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were just huge red flags investigators tested the letters with ninhydrin a chemical solution that
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reacts with the amino acids in fingerprints after it was applied the documents were dried thoroughly
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scientists found numerous fingerprints on the two documents but none match brad brisbane
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they weren't larry moore's fingerprints either [Music] next the letters were analyzed by a
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forensic document examiner both letters were typed with the same typewriter the paper was inexpensive the
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kind often used in high schools the type showed no defects making it difficult to identify the typewriter
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used to create them and only the signature was handwritten the signature itself is a full cursive
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signature it is full of tremor it looks labored and it looks slow and it does not look like it is the the
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product of habitual movement could be disease could be drugs could even be stress
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and you get that tremor when somebody sits down and tries to duplicate the handwriting of another
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person experts compared this question signature to several documents brad signed shortly
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before his disappearance the handwriting sample i saw for brad brisbane was a greeting card
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and he wrote a short note at the bottom and signed bread his handwriting was done all in uppercase
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capitals it was printed in essence all the printed capitals were connected it was sort of
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printed capitals and cursive mixed together it's a very high level spirited handwriting very bold handwriting
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fast fluid very very much from the hip but the question signature was quite different
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the uppercase b in the name brad was actually constructed in three pieces there is a a
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break it has the up and down spine on the left side of the letter but between the top
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and the bottom of the letter there's a break interesting at the break is in a place
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where you would naturally stop if you wanted to look to see how you were doing and continue writing
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[Music] police suspected larry moore may have written the letters but it was difficult
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to tell since the question signature wasn't actually handwriting this is a drawing of somebody's
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signature it's not handwriting at all and it's very difficult sometimes to actually
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determine who it was that made the drawing although document examiners were unable
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to tell conclusively who signed the letter they were certain it wasn't brad brisbane
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i knew that the letter was completely false there's absolutely no way that my father would
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just up and leave investigators still had no idea where brad brisbane was or what may have
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happened to him [Music] police now knew that the letters mailed from spokane washington
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weren't written by brad brisbane they strongly suspected larry moore may have been involved in
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brad's disappearance on the step of moore's camper police noticed what looked like blood
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spatter under a microscope scientists found it was more than just blood it was tissue
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[Music] this was identified as human and the sample had both small granular cells and larger purkinja cells
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this meant only one thing this was muscle but they wanted a second opinion so they sent this tissue to a fella
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named mark colin who's a neuropathologist in ohio he looked at it and said yeah it's mammal and it's it's
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cerebellum it's the brain stem the cerebellum sits at the base of the brain and is primarily responsible for memory
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and motor movement since the cerebellum controls the heart muscle no human can survive without it
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a ballistics expert compared the location of the brain tissue in the camper with the bullet holes
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using a two-point laser he marked the center of the bullet hole and then followed the bullet's path
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it showed that the shooter was firing from a standing position clearly a few people shoot holding the
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gun up over their head and if you realize that a body was interposed in between that
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we've only got a few feet to deal with so it can't be a standing man for
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example it could be a collapsed man or a person nearly down on the floor next ballistic experts examined the
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bullet fragment found in the floor of the camper and discovered what is called soft damage
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it deforms in a very different way than it would if it hit wood concrete drywall
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metal and it slows down the longer the path through a victim or tissue or a tissue similar
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the more velocity is lost to find out whose brain tissue was in the camper investigators sent the sample for dna
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testing but they didn't have the body to compare it to we can help you to determine whether
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this tissue is from the missing person by comparing the dna from the tissue to the family members and the children
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and the mother of the person who's missing children get half of their dna from the
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mother and half from the father by taking a dna sample from brad's wife his four children and his mother
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scientists could isolate brad's dna profile through a process of elimination
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for this scientists used an rflp test at the time the most sophisticated dna test
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available whose ever tissue sample that was was completely consistent with being the
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father of both sets of children and consistent with being the son of the mother of the missing person
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next scientists tested the tiny fragment of brain tissue it was too small for rflp testing since
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it was about the size of a pinhead so scientists amplified it using pcr a process that duplicates a
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small sample to make it large enough to test the pcr dna tests revealed that the
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brain tissue in larry moore's camper was brad brisbane's i knew it was going to be a match
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the official confirmation that the blood matched was huge it made never felt anything like that before
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with this discovery the medical examiner ruled brad brisbane's death a homicide
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larry moore was arrested and charged with murder but prosecutors knew their case would be
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difficult to prove without a body [Music] prosecutors believe that the motive for
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brad brisbane's murder was jealousy larry moore suspected brad was having an
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affair with his wife [Music] moore admitted he called brad at work to ask for a ride
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the forensic evidence suggests the two met at the diner and moore somehow lured brad into the back of his camper
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[Music] once inside brad was ambushed i'll show you in a second can you give me those pliers down
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there brad was on the floor when moore shot from a standing position numerous times
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one shot hit brad's shoulder leaving a piece of muscle another struck brad in
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the head no one heard the shots because it was a busy truck stop with lots of traffic
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authorities had no way to tell where moore took the body he knows it he's got equipment in west
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yellowstone he owned an excavating company so he had backhoes that kind of thing so he could get rid of a body
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pretty easy prosecutors believe more steam cleaned the camper and removed the carpet to
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hide the forensic evidence but the bullet holes and the tiny specks of muscle and brain tissue convinced
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medical experts that brad was dead all prosecutors had to do was convince a jury of that
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as a prosecutor clearly you want to make damn sure that this is the right guy and there has
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been a murder i can't think of anything worse than being in a position of finding out
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you've convicted the wrong person larry moore denied killing brad brisbane and pleaded not guilty
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prosecutors argued that larry moore killed brad brisbane in a jealous rage convinced brad was sleeping with his
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wife shelley to throw investigators off the trail moore forged brad's name on several
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letters the forensic evidence convinced the jurors of two things one that brad brisbane was dead
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and two that larry moore was his killer we the jury find the defendant guilty of
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the offense [Applause] moore was sentenced to 60 years in prison it was the first murder case in montana
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to be tried without a body and it was also the first time in the state that dna was used in a criminal
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case just two years after his conviction larry moore made headlines again he was charged with conspiring to build
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a bomb in prison to avoid federal charges moore agreed to lead authorities to brad brisbane's body
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moore directed officials to a campground where he hid the 357 magnum pistol he used in the murder
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it was found at the base of a tree in one of the campgrounds in galen canyon moore also led police to a gravel pit a
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few miles outside of west yellowstone where they unearthed brad's body he didn't tell us anything about the
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homicide when we did find brad's body larry did turn a little pale and go and
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sit in a vehicle but he never did tell us the real reason or the story behind how
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it actually happened a forensic examination of brad's body confirmed what forensic scientists had
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told the jury in court two years earlier the determined cause of death was multiple gunshot wounds to the head
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and upper thoractic region in other words the chest area or the back even though more led police to the body
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and the murder weapon he never confessed until now [Music] in an exclusive letter to the producers
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of this program he admitted his guilt i am guilty as charged and am thankful that the truth finally came out with the
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help from modern technology i have learned that tell me the truth is the only answer
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his words bring little comfort to the brisbane family i think the hardest part has been the
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kids it's not right to have to grow up without a father i would love to be in the same room with
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her anymore and ask him why and get a straight honest answer about why he killed my dad
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because i think he owes it i think that's the least he could do to this family
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as a teenager i was completely correct your world even if not someone doing that
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each forensic test was a piece of the mosaic and when put together showed clearly what occurred
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during brad brisbane's last moments alive without it we couldn't we couldn't
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approve that brad was even dead he would still be a missing person [Music] [Music]
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you