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a small canadian farm town made national news when a woman claimed she was raped
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by her own doctor dna tests proved the doctor was innocent the victim insisted the dna test was wrong
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what does a high school graduate know that the world's top scientists do not
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[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] nestled along canada's beautiful southwestern prairie is the tiny town of
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kipling saskatchewan the population is so sparse the farm animals outnumbered the residents
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in a town this size everyone knows one another it's a fairly quiet farming community
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with a little crime we may have up to five or six sexual assaults a year and breaking enters but fairly small in the
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scope of criminal code work [Music] this is the story of one of those alleged sexual assault cases
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it took place on halloween night in 1992. depending on whose story you believe it was either a night of lies and
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trickery or an unfortunate misunderstanding a woman we'll call candy was working at
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this gas station her boyfriend stopped by they got into an argument i am not dealing with you anymore i can't even
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stand to look at you [Music] candy drove to see her girlfriend who worked at the kipling memorial union
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hospital she wasn't there candy appeared upset a nurse suggested she see a doctor
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dr john schneeberger was on call that night he was also candy's doctor and had
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even delivered her baby candy says dr schneeberger recommended a sedative i wasn't really hysterical anymore but
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what i told him was that i was so mad at danny that that i felt like killing him
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but i didn't actually mean that i was going to go out and kill him i was just
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describing the how angry i was i had just expected that he would give me a couple pills or something
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just to relax my muscles calm me down instead dr schneeberger gave candy a shot she says she went numb almost
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immediately i had no control over my muscles it's like all my muscles left and i was just
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this piece of jelly falling over i tried to scream as i was falling over nothing would come
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out except for like a croaking noise that a frog would make it was just it was so scary
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candy isn't exactly sure what happened next but believes she was raped when a dentist freezes
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your gums you can't and he's pulling pulling your tooth out you can't feel
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the the pain from the tooth but what you can feel is pressure of the tooth moving
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back and forth and and that's that's the only way i can describe it when she regained consciousness alone in
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the exam room candy had the presence of mind to place her underwear in an air-tight bag
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candy was too dizzy to leave the hospital the nurses insisted she spend the night
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she said nothing of the alleged rape the next day she confronted dr schneeberger
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i said the hell was that drug you gave me last night and he asked me why did it give you wild
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dreams and then and then i knew that oh my god i was gonna have a hell of a fight on my hands
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because here now he's already already covering up eh when candy was released from the
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hospital she spoke briefly with her parents and told them of her suspicions you could tell by the look on her face
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that that something terrible had happened to her i was really hoping that wasn't true eh
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but when we saw her we knew it was she then drove to regina a town two hours drive away
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and went to a rape clinic for testing there they found evidence of semen on her panties jeans and on a vaginal swab
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that was part of my reasoning for going for the rape kit to find out if this really did happen or
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is am i going nuts did my mind play some tricks on me or what the hell is going on here blood tests also revealed an
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unusual drug in candy's system a drug called versed they use it as a pre-anaesthetic agent
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to induce anesthesia you start to go numb and not feel the power of your muscles you're able to
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use your muscles and then you become very tired and then asleep when candy formally accused dr
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schneeberger of rape many residents of kipling believed candy was lying dr schneeberger was a respected member
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of the community he had never been accused of anything like this before some believed candy as a single mother
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was either romantically interested in the married doctor or her motive was to get some sort of financial settlement to
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end the controversy the town looked up to the doctor he was a good doctor and he would never do anything like that it
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was impossible also suspicious was the fact that candy had said nothing to hospital nurses on
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the night of the alleged rape there were two nurses on shift that night in fact both of them were in that room
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the room that the the rape allegedly occurred in very shortly after they saw nothing amiss
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to end the controversy dr schneeberger willingly agreed to give blood for a dna test
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the dna in the blood drawn from dr schneeberger did not match the biological material from candy's rape
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test kit and i was in shock again and i said no that's impossible that's impossible how can this be
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seven more years would go by before that question was finally answered when dna tests showed that dr
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schneeberger was innocent of the sexual assault on his 20 year old patient most people in kipling tried to put the whole
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thing behind them but candy the alleged victim would not let the issue die all during the next year she insisted
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that someone somehow had tampered with the first dna test at the hospital [Music]
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so dr schneeberger agreed to a second dna test in august of 1993. his blood was drawn by a registered
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nurse the test was monitored by the police and the vials were taken directly to the
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forensic laboratory at police headquarters they watched the needle actually penetrate the doctor's arm
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once again dr schneeberger's dna did not match the dna on candy's clothing or the rape test
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kit of course i didn't believe them a lot of other people did believe them and i guess it's hard you know how
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you've got dna is the new thing and it's supposed to be so right and so perfect
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we knew there was something something wrong that like we totally believed her right
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and we knew he was up to something dr schneeberger defended himself by saying the drug he injected into candy
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that night in the hospital versed can cause erotic hallucinations versa can account for all sorts of
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hallucinations possibly but it can't produce semen and according to the complainant
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the last time she had had intercourse was uh weeks before this this incident with no other evidence in 1994 the
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police closed their investigation into this matter the doctor has already given two samples
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and those two samples were tested and they came up as being having a dna profile and the profile
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didn't match the semen that was left at the scene so now we're stuck we really can't do anything
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the town of kipling was not kind at all to candy she hired a private investigator who
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broke into dr schneeberger's car [Music] on the headrest he found strands of hair
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but there were no roots attached so they couldn't be used for dna testing also in the car was a tube of lip balm
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presumably used by dr schneeberger at her own expense candy asked a private lab to test the epithelial cells on the
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end of the lip balm those epithelial cells would contain enough dna for testing and when they did
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candy finally got her first piece of positive news the dna from the lip balm matched the
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dna from candy's rape test kit i knew it all along it wasn't a shock that something was going to match but
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it was a it was a bit of relief because at least we had that to prove to the police
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but there were two problems first there was no proof that the cells were dr schneeberger's second
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the evidence couldn't be used in court since the investigator broke into the
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car without a warrant but if the cells on the lip balm were those of dr schneeberger
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why did the dna from his lips differ from his blood sample to find out candy filed a civil suit against dr
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schneeberger and brought charges against him with the local medical society at the hearing
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candy sat directly across from dr schneeberger's wife if looks could kill i would have been
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dead lisa was sitting across the table from me and she just sat there with her arms
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crossed just glaring at me like you little [ __ ] you are ruining our lives and i just sat in my chair thinking oh
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my god you're so stupid you know you are so stupid and if you don't watch
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it it's gonna happen to your kids too all of this pressure prompted dr schneeberger to agree to yet another dna
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test this time the procedure was videotaped by police and performed at their forensics lab
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the doctor appears friendly and helpful the technician wants to take blood from his finger
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but the doctor politely refuses saying he has a disease that would cause his hands to bruise
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that's how we usually take the sample we don't need much blood since this is a voluntary test
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the doctor can't be forced to do anything against his will so the technician inserts a needle into
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his left arm instead nothing comes out the vein was larger or appeared much larger than i would
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have expected and i thought that was a little unusual she tries another tube but still has
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trouble sometimes the vacuum is poor in them and would not pull the blood out of the
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individual's arm eventually she was able to extract a sample afterwards the nurse was puzzled
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[Applause] and the lab determined that the sample was too degraded for dna testing
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police broke the news to candy and i'm like oh my god whatever like that's [ __ ] this is our last chance
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to get blood from him and you guys screwed up again even the police were suspicious when dna
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from dr schneeberger's lip balm matched the dna from candy's rape test kit
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but since dr schneeberger had passed two prior blood dna tests officials were hesitant to charge him
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because of his submitting voluntarily to a dna sample it gave him the out that it wasn't me there's a dna
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sample showing it is not the only person who had an opportunity limited as it was
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was her doctor but we believed in the dna testing i mean we we believed in the science of dna they had to follow the
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rules of the canadian justice system i call it the canadian criminal system because that's basically what it is
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it's the criminals that have all the rights on april 25th 1997 five years after the alleged rape police
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got a break startling new information was discovered inside the doctor's own
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home schneeberger's step-daughter his wife's biological child claimed that the doctor
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assaulted her too for several years the youngster says her stepfather had been coming into her room at night
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and giving her injections [Music] his wife discovered a box full of condoms needles and drugs including
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verse ed in the doctor's home office i blame myself i still blame myself i screamed i bawled i
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i was pretty disgusted because all of these years i mean i'm fighting to get
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the truth out but also to make sure that it didn't happen anybody else dr john schneeberger was arrested and
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ordered to undergo yet another dna test again the procedure was videotaped i also advise you that we have a warrant
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to obtain bodily substances the doctor was withdrawn and silent police took several samples hair saliva
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then blood taken from his finger not his arm and this time a surprise dna from all three samples matched dna
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found on candy's vaginal swab oh that was wonderful that was what i had wanted all along i mean i had even
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offered to go chop an arm off i would have stalked him one in the nose to get that blood no problem
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it was uh quite a happy day because we knew we had him that candy was right and everybody else
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that didn't believe was wrong but a big question remained unanswered how did dr schneeberger fool the
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previous blood dna tests it was a puzzle how those samples had come to be different
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than the last finger even if we knew there was something different there was no way that we could
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prove anything especially since the nurses and police all witnessed the needle being inserted
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into dr schneeberger's arm while the blood was drawn on the stand dr schneeberger would reveal
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his secret in november of 1999 dr john schneeberger went on trial in saskatchewan for the rape of his patient
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candy and his own stepdaughter on the witness stand he said he surgically inserted a plastic
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tube under the skin into his left arm filled with blood from one of his patients
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this is why he insisted that the blood be drawn from his left arm rather than anywhere else
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[Music] if you look closely at the videotape of that blood test you'll see that the doctor is careful to
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pull his sleeve only so high so as not to reveal the incision where he inserted the tube
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and for a brief moment you can see the tube protruding from his arm but by the time the third test was done
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five years after the rape accusation the blood in the tube was old and dark which explains why the technician was
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suspicious dr schneeberger however denied raping candy he claims candy broke into his
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home stole a used condom and used that biological sample to frame him he said he used his patients blood for
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the dna test because he had no other way to defend himself when that came up at trial that he thought candy
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broke into his house and stole samples or whatever it was laughable it was absolutely laughable
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that he was had to grasp it straws like that it was just laughable i was a bulldog on the stand
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i kicked his lawyer's ass and he's supposed to be the best lawyer in southern saskatchewan best defense
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lawyer wow i showed him who his boss you run across strong-willed individuals sometimes the strong-willed individuals
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are right and sometimes they're wrong and this particular strong-willed person
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was right and she was right all along and she was determined to see that what happened to her didn't happen to
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anyone else this would be right up around the top as far as being the most bizarre
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the most involved and involving all the forensic evidence here of any case that i had
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dr schneeberger was found guilty of sexually assaulting candy as well as drugging her and obstructing justice
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he was also convicted of sexually assaulting his stepdaughter and was sentenced to six years in prison
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i'm so proud of candy if it was me i don't know if i could handle the whole
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everything that she went through it was just when the test came back negative and she
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had to fight and it was just a constant battle while taping this interview candy received a telephone call in which
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she learned dr schneeberger had been denied parole i won again that's so exciting
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ah he lost he lost both both of his chances to get out for day parole and vulper all oh my god is that great
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anyway i was so worried that he was gonna get out and everybody was gonna fall for his
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lies and [ __ ] again but they didn't they didn't they're smarter than the
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rest oh my god do you guys know how exciting this is for me it's like celebration
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you have to remember that the dna also led us off the path so my when i lecture on this particular
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case to younger police officers i say to them remember the dna does give you something but it has to be
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supported with cooperative evidence it was very frustrating not being able to have all the answers but
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it finally did come together after 7 years and 24 days [Music] [Music] you