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when a 42 year old married man ran off to montana with a married woman friends and family called it a midlife
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crisis when he disappeared just a year later friends and family called that a homicide
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the case went unsolved for 15 years until a civil war buff found more than military memorabilia in the grounds near
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gettysburg [Music] franklin county sits on the outskirts of gettysburg pennsylvania a must see for
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tourists and military historians alike but the locals found the lives of melvin and joanne snyder far more interesting
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than those civil war battlefields on saturday may 25th 1985 joanne snyder left for work around 5 30
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a.m she baked pies for a local diner when she returned home around noon her 43 year old husband melvin
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was gone and so was his truck she looked around for him and and observed some things that she felt were
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out of the ordinary first of all he left his tools out melvin snyder was very meticulous about his things he was very
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careful about his things he wouldn't have just left his tools laying about joanna had called some of her family to
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come over and help look for melvin while searching the property a family member found a 25 caliber shell
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casing on the barn floor but there was no blood evidence anywhere nearby a bullet like that
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will usually not travel through a human body if it does not travel through you're
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usually not going to get blood running anywhere it's not like the typical tv shows where
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you see blood flying everywhere there were no eye witnesses um unless maybe there were some barnyard
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animals and of course they weren't talking joanne waited for two days before she
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filed a missing persons report [Music] police found melvin's pickup truck about
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60 miles away in reisterstown maryland it was in a grocery store parking lot melvin's checkbook and 22-caliber rifle
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were still inside the truck so the motive wasn't robbery the truck was left windows partially
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down keys in the ignition i believe some of melvin's belongings were still located in the truck
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other than that the truck was in fine condition except for some marks in the back of the bed of
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the pickup truck and the truck radio was tuned to a rock music station melvin snyder never listened
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to rock music melvin snyder was well known in his small town just a year earlier
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melvin had an affair with the married woman teresa harshman whom he knew from square dancing
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melvin and teresa left their jobs and families behind and fled to montana [Music]
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melvin's wife joanne and teresa's husband ron took the opportunity to get better acquainted too
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mr harshman and mrs snyder struck up a relationship and were intimate with one another
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but after only three weeks melvin and teresa decided they had made a mistake and moved back home
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gentlemen changed partners across from where you are change partners and swing her
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however in this recent disappearance neither teresa harshman nor her husband ron knew of melvin's whereabouts
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and the bank reported no activity on any of melvin's credit cards he had a young son he was early 20s and
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this wasn't the kind of man that would just run off and leave family obligations
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which is why investigators began to suspect foul play [Music] 43 year old melvin snyder a gentleman
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farmer and factory worker went missing his family knew of no reason why he would have left home
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he would virtually have to live in a cave and have no contact with the outside world not to have some sort of record
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with something we had divers check the ponds in the area talk to neighbors if they had seen
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anything unusual if they saw him leave no one did melvin's dental records were compared to
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every unidentified body discovered anywhere in the united states with no success
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there was even an occasion where in a local landfill they believed they had found a hand
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and that was studied forensically of course it was determined that it wasn't a human hand they believed that
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it was perhaps animal maybe bear but it wasn't melvin snyder's hand the only lead in the case was from a
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neighbor who said he saw a brown pickup truck near melvin's home on the day he
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disappeared it was similar to the truck ron harshman owned ron's wife and melvin snyder once had an
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affair whether it was harshman's truck or not i don't know we don't know
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police discovered that harshman had purchased a 25 caliber handgun just a few weeks before melvin's disappearance
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coincidentally a 25 caliber shell casing was discovered in melvin's barn on the day he
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disappeared police searched harshman's home and found ammunition for a 25-caliber weapon
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but no gun i asked him where the gun was and he said you'll have to ask theresa
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she's the one who took the gun she liked it and she took it so when we asked her she said no that's
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a lie i don't even like guns i i don't know anything about the gun during their investigation police also
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learned that ron harshman and melvin snyder once had an unpleasant confrontation over the affair melvin was
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having with ron's wife he learned that mr snyder was coming to his home to pick up
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his wife and he crashed his car into him he had a gun with him at that point shot
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at him did not hit him nothing happened no one was hurt melvin didn't want to pursue the matter
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and no charges were filed melvin had expressed a great deal of embarrassment about the
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whole incident and i think he sort of felt that well i you know certainly don't condone that kind of
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reaction from harshman but i think melvin felt that it was in part his his own fault that
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this had happened and there was one more interesting twist in the case melvin and joanne snyder had
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come to terms with the affair but the harshmans had not alvin was trying very hard to make the
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marriage work mr mrs harshman on the other hand had a rockier road although they did
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attempt to patch things up eventually in the following spring they separated and
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theresa filed for divorce joanne snyder denied any involvement in her husband's disappearance
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but she admitted having several telephone conversations with ron harshman the week before melvin
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disappeared both joanne and ron insisted the calls were innocent i'm sure there was still a little bit of
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resentment there what happened a year prior when melvin left i know she was having conversations
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with ron harshman whether or not there was anything more to their relationship and that's where things stood
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one year later ron and joanne harshman divorced sold the farm and ron moved out of the area
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he continued to say he had nothing to do with melvin's disappearance and he even demanded a meeting with
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police to stop what he called their harassment we did have the meeting we had lunch
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together it was he was sociable but he bordered on on being angry and the whole purpose was
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for me to stop interfering in his life both his social life and with his co-workers
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i explained to him that i was an investigator and that all he had to do was to take a polygraph test and i would
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personally apologize to everyone including his co-workers but that was an offer he didn't care to
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accept we had no body we had no actual gun we knew what the past history was between ron harshman and melvin snyder
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and common sense will tell you that yeah he has a good reason to want to kill melvin snyder he's the only person
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that we know of that ever wanted to harm melvin but that doesn't prove it in a court law
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before his disappearance melvin snyder told friends that he was afraid of ron harshman because
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ron was still angry about the affair he had with his wife i always have a strange feeling about
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the fact that in essence had predicted something like this was going to happen for the next 15 years the case haunted
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prosecutor jack nelson he knew melvin snyder personally and something just didn't add up
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a 25 caliber shell casing was discovered in melvin's barn and ron harshman purchased a 25 caliber
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handgun just a few weeks before melvin disappeared but ron was never able to produce the
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weapon saying it had been misplaced there was a lot of information there but nothing new was coming in to give
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you the opportunity to do anything more with it nelson poured over the case file and
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discovered an interesting notation ron harshman admitted test firing his new 25-caliber pistol in his backyard
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just after buying it that gave nelson an idea what about going out there and seeing if we can find a shell casing and
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then compare that to the one in the barn mr nelson originally told me that i just kind of gave him a look like this
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is 15 years to try to find a shell casing in grass and we're not sure the exact
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area but in this case being the fact that it's a murder i'm willing to try any idea and
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it was worth a shot to do police found help in nearby gettysburg pennsylvania don hinks was known in these parts as a
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retailer who sells metal detector equipment [Music] these metal detectors were often used to
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unearth military artifacts now when i went out and found three french and indian war cannonballs
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in one hole on the brother campaign that probably gave me a bigger high this 25 caliber automatic shell casing
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but hinks and several of his colleagues were happy to do what they could despite
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the fact harshman's farm was several hundred acres but there was so much trash out there so much farm equipment
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is the place where they would throw the garbage along with the tinfoil and toothpaste tubes and
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all the junk went out there so the challenge was working through 130 years of trash and picking up the little
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single 25 caliber automatic shell casing that we were looking for modern metal detectors use computer
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processors to measure levels of conductivity which enables them to identify the type
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of metal and the depth of an object underground they're basically computers that can pretty well tell you what's
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down there how deep it is does everything but dig for you today hinks and his team found many shell
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casings but none that were 25 caliber then hinks cut a signal near a clothesline
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post in about 20 minutes i got a signal that was in the proper reading range as far as the detector was
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concerned for a shell casing and it went down so we cut a little plug turned it over
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and there sitting right in the plug was 25 caliber shell casing stuck to the bottom when you look at it and you see
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the patina on it you know it's not a freshly buried object my first thought was this is
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going to be too good to be true this can't be the one that he actually fired investigators hoped that after 15
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years in the ground the shell could still be tested [Music] fifteen years after melvin snyder's
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disappearance investigators found a 25 caliber shell casing several inches beneath the soil on ron harshman's farm
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it was the same caliber and made by the same manufacturer as the shell casing found in melvin's barn
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when someone pulls the trigger of a gun there is a mini explosion inside the bullet goes through the barrel
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the shell casing is forced backwards coming into contact with the breach phase before it is ejected
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the breach face and any gun has unique and distinctive marks from the manufacturing process
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it's subjected to several milling and finishing processes which cause small microscopic imperfections to be
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imparted to the surface and those same marks are imprinted on each and every shell casing that exits
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that gun ballistics experts at the pennsylvania state police crime lab were asked to
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analyze both shell casings when he first got the case and he said you know this is
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somewhat corroded and it's been exposed for a long period of time he said don't get your hopes up
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i'm not a soil expert it could have the effect of minimizing any distortion or
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variation that could occur had it been on the surface of the ground and maybe been exposed to rain
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and and corrosion other things like that being underground may have in fact in this particular case helped to maintain
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the quality of the markings that were present on the primer but again it can vary from case to case
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under a microscope firearms examiners discovered this was precisely what happened
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the impressions on the shell casing were still clear and those impressions caused by the
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breech face were identical to the breech face impressions on the shell casing found in melvin snyder's barn
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there was no doubt in my mind whatsoever that these two discharge cartridge cases
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had originated from the same source same firearm why would he have shot his gun on mr snyder's property
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there was no reason for that except for the fact to kill him based on the ballistic evidence
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prosecutors charge ronald harshman with first degree murder melvin snyder disappeared on may 25th
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exactly one year to the day from when melvin started the affair with teresa harshman
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mr harshman is the kind of man that no one was going to tell him what to do no one was going to take his
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property he became very vengeful very very angry he he was not the kind of person that was going to
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allow his wife to return home and try to rebuild their relationship there was no forgive and forget
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it was um i will get my revenge and that's what he did prosecutors say the crime was
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premeditated the evidence suggests that harshman drove to melvin's home found him inside
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the barn then shot and killed him with his new 25 caliber pistol [Music] the 25 caliber round probably didn't
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exit melvin's body prosecutors believe harshman drove home and returned later
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on his motorcycle after he disposed of melvin's body he put his motorcycle in the back of melvin's truck which
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created the damage found in the bed of the truck harshman then abandoned melvin's truck
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60 miles away in maryland and drove his motorcycle home what did he do with the body
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the body after 19 years has not been found carefully carefully he must have planned
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where he was going to take the body how he was going to dispose of the body during police questioning
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joanne snyder admitted that she told ron harshman that melvin would be home alone
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that day but prosecutors had no proof she had any prior knowledge of the murder i think joanne
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had some involvement in this case now i'm not sure whether or not that was done
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intentionally or if she was being used by ron harshman and didn't realize she
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was setting melvin up ron harshman pled not guilty prosecutors knew that trying a case with
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only one piece of forensic evidence would be difficult there aren't a whole lot of cases out
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there that get prosecuted without a body there aren't a whole lot of cases that
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get prosecuted without a weapon and for a case to be prosecuted with no body and no weapon was almost
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unthinkable in july 2001 a jury convicted ron harshman of first degree murder and sentenced him to life
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in prison he came 16 years close to getting away with this 16 years is an awfully long time
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to get away with murder he came very close it was 15 years later after the murder that we went out and
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found a shell casing before everything caught up with him and now he's in his orange
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prison jacket paying for his crime he'll catch up with you sooner or later [Music]
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[Music] so [Music] you