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for 12 long years the murder of a young Hospital worker went unsolved police had their suspicions but
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little proof but an old used tissue told a story far better than any eyewitness [Music]
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[Applause] [Music] [Music] from the moment she was born Laura win was fighting the
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odds she weighed 1B and 14 o es 3 months premature but she was so determined to live that she made it and and they took
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her home and she was blind in one eye from the incubator at that time and she also had a Paralysis on her right side
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as Laura grew up in Popper Bluff Missouri she slowly overcame these physical challenges and emerged as a
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gifted student she worked that paralysis nearly completely out and she never let that
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disability blindness ever hold her back from her desires of what she wanted to be and what she wanted to do Laura's
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dream was to work in health care to help others as she had been helped and she achieved that by becoming a Hospital
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pharmacy technician oh she's a sweetheart the people that she associated with there were pretty much
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her friends and as well as the her co-workers uh nice girl nice girl Laura's friends
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looked out for her professionally and personally and when she didn't show up
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for work one morning they called her mother so her mother said well I'll go down and check and see you know so the
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land lady opened the door and let her in and when she went in she found Laura Laura had been murdered on her bed
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strangled with her stocking Laura's eyeglasses were on the living room couch
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without them she was literally blind it appeared she'd been attacked in her living room and murdered in her
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bedroom this was a crime of power and control and she was hit in the head on her Blind Side at first the motive
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appeared to be robbery we discovered that there were several items missing from the apartment her purse her some of
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her underwear some shoes some clothing but there was no sign of forced entry did that mean Laura knew her killer and
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let him in the apartment in retracing Laura's steps on the night of her murder
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investigators discovered that she left her job at the hospital around 6:30 then went to her usual hangout a local bar
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where she had a few drinks and talked with friends Laura's neighbor recalled seeing
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her get out of her car and walk into her apartment around 11:15 and Laura's neighbor remembered
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something else he said that a man walked up to Laura as she unlocked her apartment door and walked in with her
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well he told me that reason why he didn't call the police because he thought that maybe she was just sneaking
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a boyfriend in her apartment but according to laur's friends she had no current
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boyfriend the neighbor described the man as white medium height around 160 lb but
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he didn't see the man's face unfortunately the description matched about half the population of
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Popper Bluff Missouri [Music] Laura wi's autopsy yielded several surprises a 2 and 1/2 in contusion over
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Laura's right ear indicated she'd been hit hard enough to incapacitate her what
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would have caused it it was blunt trauma something that didn't lacerate the skin
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so it was probably a smooth surfaced hard object but the cause of death was strangulation and the amount of force
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was excessive the ligature itself would have done the job over a period of a few
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minutes uh if that was the intent but that wasn't good enough uh the emotions got high enough that he had
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to lay his hands on her neck back and and squeeze and Crush two cartilages she had also been sexually
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assaulted investigators found no foreign fingerprints in Laura's apartment but underneath Laura's body
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was a clue a used paper tissue there looked to be biological evidence on the tissue unfortunately at
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the time the sample was too small for DNA testing investigators also found two foreign
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hairs in Laura's living room these were sent to the lab and found to be pubic
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haes of an African-American but this didn't match the description given by the eyewitness
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who said a Caucasian followed Laura into her apartment if you know anything about
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hairs hairs fall off of people all over their body every day she also had a friend who was an African-American who'd
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been in her apartment and it helped her ready her apartment when she moved in police interviewed Laura's
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African-American friend and he had an airtight Alibi he was with friends on the night of the
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murder with no solid leads police turned their attention to the bar Laura visited
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before she returned home when investigators questioned patrons of the bar they learned that
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Laura got into an argument with Sam Freeman a 26-year-old veteran of the US Army Laura had accused him of of
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hustling these two young men playing pool whatever happened wasn't something
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that came to blows but there was a disagreement over a pool game and Laura had confronted him Candice Shipman was
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working the bar that night she said the altercation was minor just got a little loud then they quit and it seemed okay
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you know normal stuff that would happen in a bar several bar patrons said Freeman left the bar about 20 minutes
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before Laura did and his parents said he came home a short time later and stayed there the
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rest of the night investigators also discovered there was another man in the bar that night Laura's ex-boyfriend
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Robert mcwain she loved him she was head over heels in love with him she was just
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spitten he could do no wrong you know and it was an on again off again relationship friend said Laura hoped to
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marry Robert but he wasn't interested main said he went directly home from the
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bar on the night of the murder and family members backed up his Alibi he stayed there at the house the rest of
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the night never left and his mother and sister were there also at that time police now were at a dead end
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no one else at the bar that night matched the general description of the man presumed to be the killer it was a
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hurt that there was just no closure to it because we just kept thinking someone's
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out there and we just don't know who it is a and not only that but it was the
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hurt of losing her and giving her up when she was such a worthwhile person and and she was so good good to
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everybody and we just couldn't see any sense in it months passed then years and Laura's
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family lost hope that her killer would ever be brought to [Music] Justice when Clifford Maris turned in
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his badge after a 35-year career one case haunted him him the brutal murder of Laura win that had gone unsolved for
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12 years on his last day on the job he handed the case File to one of his most trusted colleagues detective Tim
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Davis I asked him to look into it again I know he's a good forensic man and told
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him to go ahead and reinvestigate that and see if he couldn't come up with something and Davis did just that
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looking for anything that could be reinvestigated it was never a closed case up to that point all the proper
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things that needed to be done were done detective Davis decided to go back and rein everyone who was in the bar with
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Laura win on the night she was murdered and his interview with Candace Shipman who was bartending that night
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provided an important lead she informed me some things then that she thought was
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pertinent to the case that she wanted to share Chipman said there was more going
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on between Laura and Sam Freeman that night than just an argument about the pool game Sam flirted with Laura he
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tried for her affections she just didn't didn't seem interested at all in Sam so
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I think there was little jealousy she just put him in his place and Shipman recalled something
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else that night that she never forgot she remembered that Sam Freeman was drinking an Italian Lor
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gallano he collected bottles odd-shaped bottles when she poured the last shot of
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gallano he asked her for the bottle because it's a very unusually odd-shaped
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bottle and she gave it to him thought nothing of it and handed him the empty bottle of gallano witnesses recalled
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seeing Freeman leave the bar that night night with the gallano bottle this was significant because of
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the wounds on Laura's head just a pattern that was consistent with the size and shape of that bottle and that
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wasn't all 8 years after Laura's murder there was another incident at the same
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bar involving Sam Freeman and a gallano bottle Candace Shipman was again the bartender and Sam Freeman came in
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ordered some gallano and chose a song from the Juke Box he was sitting at the bar and staring me right in the eyes
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singing oh only you know and I know hair stood up on my you know all over my [Music]
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body she was sure Freeman was trying to tell her something with singing the song
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Only You know and I know and staring me down I was convinced I was convinced that he had
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gotten away with murder and and was flaunting it in front of me now 12 years later Freeman was
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married with two children and worked as a supply sergeant for the National Guard
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he was even attempting to run for city council I thought well that all was a bit braz
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with the way I felt and the things I knew with a warrant investigators found a gallano bottle in Freeman's home
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Freeman said this bottle was a recent addition to his collection not the one given to him by the bartender on the
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night Laura was murdered but police confiscated It Anyway apparently Freeman filled the
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bottle with colored water for display purposes but he didn't fill it to the very
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top A lab technician swabbed the entire bottle and on the inside near the top was a microscopic
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stain a phenol phine test indicated this was human blood but after 12 years it had degraded there was not enough to do
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a DNA profile on but why was human blood inside the bottle investigators were determined to
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find [Music] out when human blood was discovered inside the gallano bottle in Sam
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Freeman's apartment investigators suspected he was responsible for Laura win's murder
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according to Witnesses Sam Freeman and Laura win argued on the night of her murder Laura accused Sam of hustling
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some young boys in a game of pool afterwards Freeman had a few more drinks and asked the bartender if he
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could have the empty gallano bottle for his collection at 10:45 the bartender announced that it
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was was the last call for drinks because the bar was closing at 11:00 p.m. according to Witnesses that's when Sam
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Freeman left the bar with the gallano bottle since he knew Laura would have to leave at closing
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time Laura lived only a short distance from the bar and when she got home around
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11:15 prosecutors believe that it was Freeman who forced her inside and struck her in the head with the gallano
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bottle he then took her into the bedroom assaulted her then strangled her to death with her own
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[Music] stocking the evidence suggests he used a tissue to blow his nose but left it near
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Laura's body he then stole some items and fled that was the prose ution Theory
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anyway the problem was they had little in the way of forensic evidence I'm a
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worrier everybody that knows me I'll tell you I worry about every single case
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I never am a prosecutor who walks in and says this is a sure thing slam dog so investigators wanted to know whether any
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of the evidence contained DNA that was too small to be tested when the crime occurred 12 years earlier there has to
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be some type of skin cells embedded in these nylons unless the suspect wore gloves the knot was chosen as part of
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the DNA analysis because I thought that there could be a chance that he could have touched the knot while he was tying
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the knot DNA specialist Jason woff swabbed the stocking looking for any of those
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skin cells the swabs were treated with a solvent to free possible DNA and then replicated so the sample was large
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enough for DNA testing just as they suspected they found a DNA sample I noticed that the
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profile was characteristic of a mixture of at least two individuals and the mixture had male and female gender
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characteristics the female DNA was that of Laura win the source of the M's DNA
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was not yet known woff analyzed the paper tissue found underneath Laura's body with an
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alternative light source which revealed a bodily fluid possibly mucus he then cut a tiny piece of tissue
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and put it into a detergent that dissolved everything but the complex molecules a PCR DNA analysis once again
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provided useful information the majority of the DNA appeared to have male gender
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characteristics the last step was to collect a DNA sample from Sam Freeman when we first informed Mr Freeman of why
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we were there and who we were it was like at that instance he had just went into shock I had a shocked look on his
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face his demeanor totally changed uh that I couldn't describe only the other is U
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maybe the face of fear before taking his DNA sample investigators asked Freeman if he had ever been inside Laura wi's
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apartment did you ever date her had you ever had sex with her had you ever kissed her did you know where she lived
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he stated no no no to all these questions but the DNA from Sam Freeman's saliva sample matched the skin cells on
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on the ligature and the mucus on the tissue I would expect the profile from the tissue that had male gender
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characteristics to show up once in every 6.131 quadrillion people tested in the Caucasian population the only way
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possible that Sam Freeman's DNA could have been at the scene in the home was
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the fact that Sam freman was there and was the killer after 12 long years in September
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of 2005 Sam Freeman was arrested and charged with Laura win's murder prosecutors believed the motive
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was clear here she is this woman small woman dressing him down in front of all these guys and here he is Mr military Mr
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Macho Man he wasn't going to put up with it I think he was embarrassed uh humiliated rejected
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spurned and that this was a crime of power and control and he got the ultimate last say with war win with this
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crime during the trial Freeman's defense attorney pointed to the two foreign
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hairs in Laura's apartment as proof that someone else killed Laura and also reminded the jury that the eyewitness's
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description didn't match Freeman either I mean they argued Reasonable Doubt which is was a smart argument to make
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but prose computers maintained that the DNA evidence was concrete proof I think what happened here was that Sam Freeman
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didn't realize in 1992 he could leave a piece of himself at the scene other than
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Sean blood or fingerprints but he did in September of 2006 the jury found Sam Freeman guilty of first deegree
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murder he was sentenced to life in prison without per I want people to have hope and never
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give up never give up on justice that someday it'll come about if it had not
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been for the proper collection and preservation it doesn't matter how much someone does 13 14 years later an
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investigation if you don't have the evidence you don't have a case [Music]
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more [Music] [Music]