00:00:08
[Music] she was home alone making the dress she planned to wear on her friday night date
00:00:22
but she had an uninvited visitor it took 24 years before forensic science could identify the individual who was
00:00:34
there that fateful night [Music] [Music] it was 1962 president john f kennedy was leading the
00:01:09
country at the height of the cold war the world anxiously watched as the united states confronted the soviet
00:01:16
union over suspected missile sites in cuba all ships of any kind bound to cuba where they found the contained cargos of
00:01:26
offensive weapons be turned back racial tensions in the united states weren't as easily deflected
00:01:33
desegregation of southern schools pit blacks against whites leaders like martin luther king jr
00:01:40
articulated a message of hope and reason i have a dream that someday this nation will rise up
00:01:54
hundreds of miles away in the small town of hanford california racial tension and the arms race were
00:02:02
less important than tending to business and making ends meet it was a small community everybody knew
00:02:09
everybody else it was all first name basis even all the races were all friendly the miller family provided an important
00:02:18
service to the community they managed the water that was supplied to area farms very neat family hard worker
00:02:27
christian people so the millers were quite well known the canal was located behind their home
00:02:36
and someone from the miller family was always there to make sure the water system worked properly
00:02:43
[Music] on march 21 1962 fifteen-year-old marlene was the one to stay home while her parents left for a night out
00:02:56
marlene planned to finish sewing a new dress for an upcoming date her parents returned home around 10 p.m
00:03:09
the television set was blaring [Music] a screen was missing from the bedroom window and there was no sign of their
00:03:18
daughter deputy sheriff o.r mcfarlane was one of the first to arrive on the scene
00:03:26
it was obvious that we had a problem she was in fact missing and there was some foul play somewhere
00:03:31
[Music] police found tire tracks on the dirt road near the home and there was other
00:03:38
evidence there was a set of boot tracks leading out onto elder avenue from the dirt lane
00:03:47
there was a set of barefoot tracks leading back into the lane and which got in and out of the car that was
00:03:56
parked there nearby police discovered a pair of mismatched workman's gloves and a belt
00:04:05
robert goode was the first journalist on the scene covering the story for the fresno b newspaper
00:04:12
once there he found more than a story started walking down the bank of ways i walked 150 feet down the bank and there
00:04:23
she was marlene was floating face down in the reservoir behind the family home marlene's brother walt was searching the
00:04:33
area in a police helicopter and as we flew over the home [Music] [Applause] [Music]
00:04:48
the autopsy revealed marlene had been stabbed in the chest although the wound was not fatal there was water in her
00:04:57
lungs so the cause of death was drowning marlene's wrists were tied behind her
00:05:05
back with a knot used by most area dairy farmers it had this little knot in it it was
00:05:11
something you could do very quickly and keep the cow from kicking him there were no signs of sexual assault
00:05:21
but bruises on the body suggested marlene bravely fought her attacker in a search for witnesses
00:05:29
one of marlene's high school classmates told police he saw a strange car near
00:05:35
marlene's house around the time of her murder he said it was awkward type blue fenders
00:05:40
he liked the paint on the car black on the hood and black on the top and black clear down the trunk
00:05:46
high school kid that kind of you know 53 plymouth looked pretty good to him police had tire impressions at the crime
00:05:55
scene and a description of the car now all they had to do was find it a witness saw a 1953 black and turquoise
00:06:11
plymouth parked near marlene miller's home on the night of her murder within hours
00:06:17
police found it i remember hanford police department came up with a car of that description
00:06:24
parked in front of the royal hotel in downtown hanford on 7th street when deputy sheriff mcfarlane peered
00:06:31
inside the rear window he saw what would later become a crucial piece of evidence
00:06:38
i could see a pair of boots back there one was sitting flat and the other was on its side
00:06:43
and with a flashlight i could see the the tread looked to me like the same tread that was out there
00:06:49
in tome lane the car was registered to booker t hillary jr a local dairy worker who had
00:06:57
recently been released from prison for a previous rape conviction one of his co-workers told police that
00:07:04
he saw hillary driving towards marlene miller's home after work on the night of
00:07:08
her murder and hillary's employer identified the gloves found at the crime scene as the
00:07:15
ones hillary wore the tires on hillary's car and the boots found in the back seat
00:07:22
were similar to the tire and boot impressions in the soft mud near the crime scene
00:07:28
but that doesn't mean that he killed her even though the gloves were pitched out
00:07:33
down the road where the car track said that looked like his went so everything was circumstantial there
00:07:40
was no real evidence to put him in the home booker hillary denied any involvement in
00:07:47
marlene's murder [Music] hillary said he drove by the miller's home every day since he worked at the
00:07:59
dairy farm just down the road he said his tire and shoe impressions in the area meant nothing
00:08:07
booker hillary was arrested tried and convicted of marlene miller's murder he was sentenced to death
00:08:15
[Music] once in prison hillary took full advantage of the appellate process and petitioned to have his conviction
00:08:24
overturned it was discouraging especially for the family that had to constantly relive
00:08:31
this nightmare every time this case would come up each time we go through this process
00:08:38
i keep thinking that maybe this is the last process that they will have to endure
00:08:46
and they just keep coming and coming frustrating sometimes a criminal justice system to a police officer is
00:08:57
frustrating all right every appeal hillary filed was unsuccessful but in the united states supreme court ruled
00:09:10
the death penalty was cruel and unusual punishment as a result the sentences of everyone on death row
00:09:18
including booker hillary were commuted to life in prison the supreme court reversed their
00:09:25
decision two years later but the commuted death sentences couldn't be reinstated
00:09:32
booker hillary's legal maneuvering continued he appealed his conviction once again
00:09:38
this time claiming that blacks had been excluded from the grand jury that indicted him
00:09:44
in 1983 a judge granted that appeal and ordered hillary either to be retried or released
00:09:53
what is disturbing about it is that this was in 1983 the conviction occurred in 1962
00:10:00
and anyone can review the transcripts of the grand jury hearing and determine that you know no matter what race you
00:10:09
are you will find probable cause robert moline was the prosecutor in booker hillary's retrial
00:10:19
i knew that i had to find out exactly what proof i needed because i obviously had to retry this case and i had to
00:10:26
retry it 24 years after the first conviction the physical evidence still existed
00:10:33
but 21 of the original witnesses were now dead larry orth was the chief investigator
00:10:41
for the kings county da's office all the people were dead and to sit and have to read
00:10:47
hundreds of pages of testimony from 1962 65 1970 into into a record of a present-day trial
00:10:59
can almost put you to sleep so investigators took the physical evidence and looked at it again this
00:11:07
time with some new forensic techniques not previously available and found a surprise
00:11:17
[Music] it had been 24 years since booker t hillary was first convicted of marlene
00:11:24
miller's murder a conviction later overturned on appeal criminalist gary courtner examined the
00:11:31
physical evidence from the first trial he started with the boots found in booker hillary's car on the night of the
00:11:38
murder the boots had been modified the soles were the originals from the wellington boot company
00:11:47
but the original white heel had been replaced with the black one he did this to keep his shoes from
00:11:53
wearing out as fast and in doing that he made an almost an individual shoe out of it
00:11:58
because of the two different components courtner compared hillary's boots to the
00:12:03
shoe impression found near marlene miller's home they had the same soul the same custom
00:12:10
heel and the same five individual cut marks in the heel next courtney compared the tires from
00:12:18
hillary's car to the tire impressions found on the dirt road near the miller's
00:12:23
home we were looking for cuts or rocks or anything that had been in the tires and in this case we were very
00:12:31
lucky because there was a manufacturer's defect that was picked up and there were
00:12:35
three cuts in the tires very close to that this placed booker hillary in the vicinity of the crime scene
00:12:44
but not inside the home larry orth found something important while reading through the transcripts
00:12:53
from the first trial on the night of the murder 24 years earlier an alert detective asked marlene's
00:13:02
mother to vacuum the carpet in the living room where her daughter was abducted [Music]
00:13:08
at that time investigators found some unusual microscopic particles in that trace
00:13:14
evidence but they didn't know what they were he said they didn't have the technology
00:13:20
to do other than just to compare him as far as shape size and that was it the football shaped particles found in
00:13:28
the vacuum cleaner bag still existed in the evidence file and were sent for analysis to an independent forensic lab
00:13:36
in chicago skip palanek was the forensic microscopist assigned to the case having done microscopy since i was eight
00:13:46
years old i had seen particles like this before and i knew what kinds of physical
00:13:51
phenomena produced this under magnification of 300 times palink recognized the particles
00:14:01
as paint the kind sprayed from an aerosol can throughout the particles were cotton
00:14:08
fibers this explained why the paint particles were round when paint is sprayed from an aerosol
00:14:16
can the round particles flatten when they hit a surface like wood when the paint dries it creates a
00:14:24
film-like covering but if the spray paint hits a fiber it reacts differently if these spheres dry around nothing they
00:14:35
just retain that shape as their spheres however if they come in contact with a fiber
00:14:41
then what happens is capillary forces cause the the ends of the sphere which starts out like this to
00:14:49
draw where they come in contact with the fiber scientists performed an electron probe
00:14:55
microanalysis to identify the elements in the paint every element that's in there has its
00:15:02
own x-rays that come off there are different wavelengths and we collect these different x-rays at the different
00:15:07
wavelengths or different energies and from their energy or their wavelength we can tell what elements are present in
00:15:12
the sample the components were titanium lead and iron an infrared micro spectrophotometer
00:15:22
which looks more like a computer than a microscope determined the paint's molecular composition
00:15:29
the results are charted on a graph and scientists learned that the paint was an oil-based alkyd with a prussian
00:15:38
blue pigment investigators now wanted to know where these mysterious microscopic blue paint
00:15:46
particles came from and they also needed to know how they got onto marlene miller's
00:15:54
living room carpet 24 years earlier as prosecutors prepared to retry booker t hillary for the murder of marlene
00:16:08
miller they discovered new forensic evidence microscopic paint particles in the victim's home encased in cotton
00:16:17
but in 1962 at the time of the original trial the technology to identify these particles didn't exist
00:16:27
but where did these paintballs come from for answers investigators looked once more inside booker hillary's 1953
00:16:38
plymouth automobile surprisingly it was still in police custody after all those years
00:16:47
in the forensic lab scientists noticed that the ceiling of the passenger compartment was lined with
00:16:54
a cotton material and the material had been painted with the blue spray paint and pulling some of the headliner off
00:17:03
and examining it under the microscope i realized that there were millions of these things that had been
00:17:09
manufactured by him and spraying the headliner and um and they were still there it was kind of like they were
00:17:14
there for someone to find and i was lucky enough to be the one that found them scientists vacuumed the inside of
00:17:21
hillary's car and analyzed the trace evidence they found thousands of paint particles
00:17:28
identical in color shape and chemical makeup to those found in marlene miller's home
00:17:34
at the end of all this analysis what we have are first of all green paint spheres the paint is alkyd enamel
00:17:42
it's the same in both questioned and known it has the same color when you crush up little bits under the
00:17:47
microscope they show the same kinds of crystal filler crystalline fillers that are inside
00:17:52
the elemental composition is identical the infrared spectrum from the molecular composition is identical they both use
00:17:59
prussian blue we couldn't say that you know it came from the same spray can we're just
00:18:02
saying how did they get there they're so unusual in shape why are they in both
00:18:07
places investigators suspected that booker hillary spray painted the interior roof
00:18:13
of his car as he did the round paint particles attached to the cotton fibers and
00:18:19
remained cylindrical as they dried driving around town when hillary hit a bump in the road the microscopic
00:18:28
particle shed landing on his clothing and in his hair these paintballs just followed him
00:18:34
around like a virus and he didn't know they were there prosecutors believe that when hillary
00:18:41
entered marlene's home on the night of her murder those microscopic paint particles dropped onto the miller's
00:18:48
living room floor he uh became literally a walking trace evidence factory this evidence placed booker hillary
00:18:59
inside marlene's home we had everything else outside and a tenth of a mile away but
00:19:06
the paintballs put him in the house that's how important they are in 1986 based on this new forensic
00:19:15
evidence booker t hillary was tried and convicted once again for the murder of fifteen-year-old marlene miller
00:19:25
he was sentenced to the maximum penalty allowed 25 years to life although the judge made it clear
00:19:33
that he would have imposed the death penalty if he had been permitted by law to do so
00:19:40
ironically it was booker hillary himself who handed investigators the forensic evidence used
00:19:48
to convict him [Music] local authorities had tried to sell his car shortly after his first conviction
00:19:55
in the 1960s but hillary wouldn't allow it he in turn filed a motion in federal
00:20:02
court suing the county to stop him from getting rid of the car he dismissed the case and we decided not
00:20:08
to sell it and thank you mr hillary when i looked up that day in the garage and having seen that spray headliner was
00:20:18
just indescribable i said this is it had he have not saved the car for us i would have never known where these
00:20:25
particles came from today booker hillary is 71 years old he was denied parole at his most recent
00:20:34
hearing in january 2003. booker hillary is where he belongs he should have been in the gas chamber before this but
00:20:44
for whatever reason he the system didn't take his life but he is where he belongs he does not belong
00:20:51
back out of society investigators credit the foresight of the late art thomas the king's county
00:20:59
chief criminal deputy who in 1962 insisted that marlene's mother vacuumed the living room floor where the
00:21:07
abduction took place he kept that trace evidence in police custody that was the key to it and i know art
00:21:15
knew that was the key to putting him in the house back then he was an investigator and he was a damn good cop
00:21:22
[Music] we can do what some people think can only be done in works of fiction we are i
00:21:30
believe that sort of the living embodiment of sherlock holmes and dr thorndyk and some of these kinds of
00:21:36
people and that we can take this little speck of evidence and literally make it speak
00:21:44
[Music] [Music] you