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[Music] a suspicious fire swept through an apartment killing two young women the
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cause of the fire and the identity of the victims were unclear but a closer look at the fire scene
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revealed something hidden in the ashes could gas chromatography a burned pair of eyeglasses and a half-smoked
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cigarette solved the case [Music] [Music] on a spring night in march of 1999 firefighters in iowa city rushed to an
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apartment building engulfed in flames near the university of iowa campus when they arrived they had fire blowing
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out windows and doors of the apartment building immediately had the opportunity and the necessity to
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initiate an aggressive fire attack [Music] just inside the entrance firefighters
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found what appeared to be a body then in the back bedroom another gruesome discovery
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they were unable to see and so i had to use the just feeling their way around the apartment and
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checking on the bed they found the second victim a driver's license found next to one of
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the bodies belonged to 29 year old laura watson dalton a paramedic who had come to iowa city to
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visit her cousin she had really loved the town and it was st patrick's day and that was one of her
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favorite holidays and i think because it's a college town sort of a great party atmosphere for st patrick's day
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she decided to go there and visit friends the second victim matched the description of a woman who had been
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reported missing she was 27 year old maria lainer an environmental scientist who was in town
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on a business trip and was staying at a nearby hotel we was hoping and praying it wasn't her
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but back of our minds we kind of knew it was they had found her blazer in a parking ramp and it hadn't
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been it had been driven for a while the apartment was rented to three college students who claimed they were
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out of town on the night of the fire the men said they gave no one permission to stay there
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and they also denied knowing either laura watson or maria laner at the morgue the medical examiner found
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evidence that the women were dead before the fire started there was no soot in the lungs of either
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victim therefore we were able to conclude scientifically that they expired prior
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to the fire it was evident they had both been killed by blunt force trauma to the head
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inside the apartment investigators found a barbell that contained blood and human hair leading
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to speculation that this was the murder weapon they also found a gasoline container
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you might find gasoline cans stored of course in garage or utility closets but to find a gasoline can in a hallway of
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an apartment i think that's that would be rather odd investigators believed that the fire may
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have been intentionally set and that clues to the killer's identity could be waiting at the crime scene
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hidden in the smoldering ashes and they also wondered why these two women were in an apartment
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rented by men they'd never even met the lack of soot and smoke in the victim's lungs revealed that the two
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women were killed before the fire started and when the medical examiner compared
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the amount of tissue damage between the two victims he discovered something astonishing
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the two victims were killed on different days it is clear that aura died in the late
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hours on wednesday or the early morning hours on thursday and remained in that apartment where she died
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and then maria died late thursday night or early friday morning in the same apartment
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laura watson's friends told police that they last saw her in a local bar on wednesday night two nights before the
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fire laura was talking to a man sitting beside her and someone that you've had a
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conversation with that's been kind of interesting asks you if you'd like to
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you know go to another party or or go to another bar lots of people have done that and and
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it's a situation where most of us don't think that we're going to place
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ourselves in peril witnesses said laura left with the man around midnight he was described as tall in his twenties
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with unkept brown hair and glasses investigators discovered the same thing happened to maria laner on the following
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night the owner of a different bar said he saw maria leaving his establishment with a
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man matching the same description she didn't have as good as judgment as she would have if she wasn't drinking
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maybe he said hey there's a party over at this place you want to come with me i
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don't think she ever did it before i think this is one time and it wasn't
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and it was the wrong time since the victims had been murdered on two different nights
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the killer apparently had free access to the apartment and could come and go as he pleased
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but the college students who rented it said they had no idea who the killer was after the last embers were out
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the iowa department of criminal investigations examined the scene for clues investigators noticed a hole in the
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outside wall of the apartment and there was a gas container found just inside the front door
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to see if an accelerant had been used investigators placed some of the debris in an air-tight container and sent it to
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the lab for analysis criminalists placed an activated charcoal strip into the can overnight
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then washed it with the carbon disulfide the vials were placed in a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer for
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analysis it will separate it out based on the physical properties and chemical properties of the components of what
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ignitable liquid may be in that sample and everything flows through the instrument at a different rate and it'll
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actually separate out those and you'll see the individual components of each
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component of the ignitable liquid the results were clear gasoline had been used to start the fire
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apparently the gasoline vapors ignited causing the explosion that blew through the outside wall
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investigators also discovered a matchbook in the debris the gasoline had to be ignited by
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something and so when the fire marshal collected a matchbook in or around that fire scene
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that was really a fresh matchbook with only one match missing the fire had destroyed any prints that
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might have been on the matchbook steve duffy looked through all of the photos taken at the fire scene searching
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for items that may have been overlooked in one of the photographs he noticed something that looked like a
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pair of eyeglasses when he returned to the apartment they were still there they were very obviously prescription
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eyeglasses and i hoped that i could [Music] go back through those prescriptions to
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find the owners none of the tenants or victims owned the glasses [Music] duffy also found a cigarette butt still
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very much intact this cigarette had been smoked had not been put out had not been
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stomped out on the floor in other words it was still burning when it hit the carpet
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investigators suspected that the perpetrator lit a cigarette then started to pour the gasoline throughout the
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apartment at some point his cigarette probably ignited the gases he received a burn on his nose
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he either swatted at his face and knocked his glasses off or he the glasses fell off his face
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and the cigarette flew out of his mouth now investigators were looking for a tall unkept man who smoked cigarettes
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and possibly had a burned face he may also have been missing his eyeglasses one week after a fire gutted their
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apartment the three college students who rented it were allowed to return there were items stolen from the
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apartment that included a vcr or two and some other electronic equipment investigators checked local pawn shops
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to see if someone had sold the stolen goods and they got their first break a pawn shop owner recalled buying these
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items from a young man just a few days earlier in iowa anyone selling to a pawn shop must show
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some form of identification with an address the man who sold the items was john memmer
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a 23 year old drifter known around town as a partier john memmer was very adept at
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inviting himself to those after hours parties because of that he was a person who could con his way into
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staying over at any number of apartments and sleeping on their couch or what have
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you one of the apartment tenants said he knew memr and had let him sleep overnight a few weeks earlier
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he didn't have a lot of friends he didn't have a job he wasn't enrolled as
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a student he was sleeping where he could he was very transient and yes that made
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it more difficult to find him mr memmer basically made his living by being a thief
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police finally caught up with memr who was on probation at the time for a forgery conviction
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when he was questioned investigators noticed he had a burn injury on his nose memr admitted he had been in the
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apartment while the tenants were away and also confessed to stealing their stereo and television set but
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he denied killing the women or setting the fire he said there was another drifter
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sleeping in the apartment that week too [Music] police wanted to see if they could tie
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memor to the evidence immediately after the fire explosion he did not have eyeglasses
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and during the following week he acquired another pair of glasses using a machine called a lensometer
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an optometrist determined the degree of curvature or diopters of the lenses the strength of the lenses matched the
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prescription memory had been given by his eye doctor in john mimer's situation
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he needed his eyeglasses to see he would not leave his eyeglasses laying around so to find his eyeglasses
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at the scene of a double homicide and arson was significant police needed more proof
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they looked once again at the cigarette butt the one investigator suspected had inadvertently ignited the fire
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was it possible this cigarette butt contained the killer's dna scientists removed the wrapper from the
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lip end of the cigarette then separated any cells present in the paper the biological sample was then
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reproduced to create a larger sample for analysis then compared to a dna sample taken from
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memor while in custody it was a match statistically the the chances of the dna and the cigarette butt coming from
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anyone but mr memor are too small to consider but memr admitted being in the apartment
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which could account for him leaving his glasses and the cigarette butt police needed
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more proof investigators then examined laura dalton's leather jacket found in the
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apartment somebody came up and said you know while we have this jacket why don't you go
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ahead and look at the jacket maybe there's a print on a button a snap or something
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criminalist bessman checked the jacket under a high intensity light no prints were found
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then he placed the jacket in a special cabinet with a small container of cyanoacrylate a compound found in super
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glue the compound was heated and the fumes circulated around the jacket for about
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10 minutes the cyanoacrylate has made kind of a little fibrous network over those fumes
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and we can look at it it makes the ridges stand out white instead of the black like you'd see on a fingerprint
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card to his surprise bessman found a partial image of a foot impression the print was dyed to fluoresce under
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forensic lighting bessman compared that print to the souls on the shoes confiscated from john
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memmer when he was taken into custody both prints were the same size and make there had to have been a contaminant on
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the shoe or something on the coat that the shoe removed when it made contact with it so it was
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rather unusual to develop a footwear impression this way and there was something else on the shoe
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a tiny piece of evidence that would tell investigators exactly what happened to laura dalton
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and maria laner [Music] investigators found one last piece of evidence linking john
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memmer to the murders of laura watson dalton and maria laner it was a tiny piece of material on
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memr's shoes on the side of the sole about the size of a pinhead kind of a reddish brown
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stain that i believe might have been blood the stain was lifted using sterile water
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then tested using dna analysis the dna from the blood on the shoe matched the dna sample from maria laner
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it just made it just more sad because you kind of knew what he had to do to get blood out of his shoes
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that was critical it showed that john memmer had been in contact with maria laner
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even though he denied it and that at some point he was with maria laner when she was bleeding
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john memmer was charged with first degree murder we had other forensic evidence the jacket the
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footwear analysis the eyeglasses but it was the dna analysis that found maria's blood on
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memory shoe that was the final straw that let us go forward prosecutors believe john memmer broke
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into the apartment when he knew the tenants were out of town how he lured laura dalton to the
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apartment on wednesday evening isn't clear but prosecutors believe member may have
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made a sexual advance which was rejected [Music] in a rage memor killed laura with a blow to the
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head on thursday night memor probably lured maria laner to the apartment the same way
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and when she too rejected him he killed her as well on friday after stealing the television
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and stereo memr decided to destroy all possible evidence that he had been there he lit a single match for a cigarette
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then set about the process of pouring gasoline throughout the apartment but he made a mistake
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the gasoline caused fumes to build in the small apartment and his cigarette caused the explosion
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it knocked his glasses off burned his nose and the cigarette butt and matches went flying
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that was probably john memmer's downfall was just smoking the cigarette because he left behind
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valuable evidence and nearly killed himself a waste he's a waste of human being
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soulless um i don't think probably ever contributed anything and as a probably has spent all of his
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life using people in and taking at the trial it wasn't just the forensic evidence
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that made an impression on the jury member was sporting a new tattoo as he sat at the defense table
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in the gang world a tattoo of a teardrop signifies you've murdered someone in this case that was significant
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because john member did not want one teardrop at the corner of his eye but he wanted
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to [Music] talk about not very smart going to the trial with those on his eyes and
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the jury can see it easily when i questioned him about that at trial he claimed they were for two
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friends of his that had died in an automobile accident but i think that was pretty powerful
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damning evidence in truth in the aggregate it was a small piece of circumstantial evidence but
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it was an interesting addition to the totality of the case john memmer was convicted of two counts
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of first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison maria laner's family says
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it's ironic that science helped find her killer she was a biology major she loved
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science so knowing that the blood on the shoe and all the other forensic evidence was what put him away
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i'm sure she would would have thought that was pretty cool there is no such thing as a perfect
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crime there's always evidence left it's there for the people who look this was
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where the evidence led and it pointed to mr mimmer he received two life sentences
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john memmer will obviously serve one of his life sentences here on this earth if i was john memor i would be worrying
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about where i'm going to spend that second life sentence it may be a lot hotter there than
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the fire that he started [Music] [Music] you