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even though hunters wear bright orange vests and hats accidents still happen the problem is trying to figure out
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which shootings are accidents and which are not [Music] in colorado investigators used forensic
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metallurgy a piece of string and geology to see whether one man's death was an
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accident or murder [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] each year thousands of big game hunters
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flocked to the ancampagre national park in western colorado elk deer bear mountain lion
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up in that area so it's it's kind of a pretty area very remote on the second day of hunting season in
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1995 doug kyle was relaxing in his camp when he heard a woman screaming she said she found her husband lying on
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the ground near their camp he had been shot in the chest [Applause] i could tell that you know he was
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deceased and i looked at her and told her i said ma'am i'm sorry i said but he
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he's gone the victim was 48 year old bruce dodson his wife janiece said she went looking
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for him when he didn't return to their camp right after this happened i was being
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told anyway that it was a hunting accident [Music] he's a man walking upright through grass
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four inches tall he's got a hunter orange cap on he's carrying a rifle the only thing that could have happened
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in this world would have been a one in a million chance of somebody a canyon over shooting
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at an animal and a stray bullet hitting him bruce's body was sent to the medical
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examiner dr tom canfield for an autopsy bruce worked for me he was a medical technologist in the delta hospital and i
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knew him very well both on a professional and a personal level the autopsy results were startling
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bruce hadn't been shot once but three times well i was able to determine one that
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they were distant ranged gunshot wounds that is they were fired from a significant distance
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one shot was a superficial wound that went through his hunting vest and grazed his back
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the wound that went through his vest but did not cause significant damage to him
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probably was the first shot i believe he then took the vest off to see what had happened
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he would have turned in that direction and probably yelled out of fear hey i'm
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not a deer you know i'm not an elk hey i'm over here yelling you know don't
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shoot bruce was shot a second time while waving his vest in the air it entered his chest and exited under his right arm
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mr dawson may have tried to crawl away when the last shot was fired the third and fatal shot entered his
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back in an upward trajectory and was found in bruce's lung it was badly deformed but by its size
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identified as a 243 caliber round the only landmark we really had to go on was the base design
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janiece dodson had been hunting on this trip too but this bullet did not come from her
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rifle or bruce's so it couldn't have been bruce's rifle that killed him couldn't have been
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denise's rifle that killed bruce dodson but dr canfield was convinced the shooting was no accident
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i was able to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt and with reasonable medical certainty that bruce died from
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multiple gunshot wounds and it was clearly a homicide the autopsy revealed bruce dodson had been hit with three
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shots we didn't know if maybe we had some maniac in the woods with a rifle just randomly shooting someone
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investigators found a clue in a fence post near bruce's body it was a fresh bullet hole
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so they used a string to perform a trajectory analysis we began where the victim was located
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at the approximate height of the wounds and went back to the fence post [Music] and then continued
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to string that back toward the area that the shot was fired in a clump of bushes 80 yards in front
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of the fence post investigators found a 308 caliber shell casing to find the bullet that went through
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bruce's chest investigators searched the area in the straight line path beyond where bruce
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was standing [Music] with the metal detector miraculously they found a 308 caliber
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round at the end of that string was the bullet i mean it was a stroke of luck stroke a lock
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this raised the possibility that there were two shooters since a 308 caliber round passed through
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bruce's body and the 243 caliber round killed him none of that forensic evidence added up the analysis of the
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bullet in bruce's body didn't match any of the evidence that we had picked up at
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the scene so far neither bruce nor his wife janiece owned a rifle capable of firing either caliber
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round a look into the victim's background revealed that bruce dodson and janiece
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had been married for only three months bruce said that janiece wanted to go on this hunting trip he
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didn't really want to go but to make her happy he he agreed to go family members were appalled at the way
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janice behaved after bruce's death she threw everything that my brother owned away
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had his dog put to sleep sold his horse took his name off the mailbox like the next day
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even more alarming was the fact that janiece's ex-husband j.c lee was camping less than a mile
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away from bruce and janiece at the time of the murder he was camped three quarters of a mile
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from the datsun camp where john bruce dotson was murdered so he was quite suspicious to us and we thought at
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that point hey we need to look into this guy when interviewed lee said he owned a 308
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caliber rifle that was stolen from his camp the night before bruce was killed so that was really suspicious to us is
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uh you know the fact that all of a sudden you know this man says i had a 308 rifle stolen from my camp
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while i was up there but i didn't know it was stolen until i got back to my apartment in utah
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lee reported that some of his nosler brand 308 caliber ammunition was also stolen the same brand as the shell
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casing found at the crime scene so a lot of things started pointing towards this guy j.c lee
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jc lee and janiece had divorced because lee started dating a friend of their daughters
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we thought that j.c lee may have been jealous of janiece recently marrying bruce dodson maybe he wanted to get back
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at janiece we couldn't link jc lee to the datsun murder scene and we couldn't link janiece dotson
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to the ex-husband's camp three quarters of a mile away also suspicious janiece had purchased three life
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insurance policies on bruce shortly before his death she stood to gain almost 500 000 so
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it's a lot of motive and after the funeral junice's behavior was bizarre to say the least
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one of his last requests was to be cremated and to have his ashes scattered in leadville colorado janiece had taken
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bruce's ashes and as they approached leadville she dumped him on the side of the road
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and janiece told investigators she was going to her cousin's home in east texas
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to grieve but investigators discovered she was doing no such thing we did a financial investigation on her
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and we found that several times janice dodson's atm card was used in lake charles louisiana at a casino
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players club so we're thinking well how can she be in east texas grieving and her atm cards being used in
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louisiana at a gambling casino and even more bizarre not long after bruce was killed
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janiece married husband number three bart hall bart hall nice guy he said i felt so strong for janiece and
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for her welfare that after we got married i took out a hundred thousand dollar life insurance
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policy on myself just to make sure if something happened to me she was well taken care of with
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that dave says you don't hunt do you [Music] denise dodson denied any involvement in
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her husband bruce's murder so did her ex-husband j.c lee who had an alibi his girlfriend and a co-worker confirmed
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he was hunting with them at the time of the murder investigators searched the fields and
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forests neared the crime scene for the 308 caliber rifle used in the murder but found nothing we even cut down
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vegetation in the area sagebrush cleared a large area and looked visually as well as with
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metal detectors they were hindered in their search because the area is covered in snow for
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almost half the year for the next three summers bill booth his partner dave martinez and
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others camped in the uncompagre national park and looked for the 308 rifle on one of their trips booth and martinez
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took along a member of necro search international an organization of volunteers who use new technologies to
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find missing people and in this case missing weapons they were searching for the rifle in a
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pond near jc lee's campsite and it was at that time that we were at the pond
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near the ex-husband's camp when an individual from necrosearch international
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identified the lining of this pond stock pond to be bent night clay and he said boy that's very unusual
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to have bent night clay in the middle of the young compadre national forest in a stock pond
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and this jogged their memory they remembered that janiece dodson's clothes had been covered in mud on the
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day of her husband's murder janiece's muddy clothing had been kept in evidence for the past three years
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[Music] jacqueline battle scraped some of the mud from the clothing and ground it to a fine powder
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battle sifted and weighed the samples and then examined them under a polarizing microscope
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the mud from janiece's clothing contained bentonite bentonite is a clay-like material
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comprised of minerals of aluminum silicates magnesium and iron oxides ranchers would
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add bentonite as a sealant so that the water would be retained in the watering hole versus seeping through into the
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ground the bentonite on genesis clothing was identical to the sample from the pond
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behind her ex-husband's camp battles examined mud samples from other ponds in the national park but none
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matched the mud from genesis clothing so out of the samples that were submitted from the three ponds and the
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bog that night might not be common but in this case it was unique in that it was in only one
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of the ponds that matched back up to the soil that was recovered from her boots we were ecstatic
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because we're now able to show that she was lying and we're now now able to show
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her in an area where the murder weapon was stolen to investigators this was proof that janiece had stolen
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her ex-husband's gun possibly in an attempt to frame him we were able to put
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janiece dawson at her ex-husband's camp we couldn't put the ex-husband at her camp
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perhaps janiece killed two birds with one stone jc lee and john bruce dodson we have no way of knowing what she had
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planned for jc lee personally i feel that jc lee was going to be the fall guy a patsy for janiece
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investigators still had one question to answer they knew a 308 caliber round went
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through bruce's body but a 243 caliber round was found in his lung where did this 243 caliber round come
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from this case is more twists and turns than a snake and it was just one thing after another
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three years after bruce dodson's murder investigators still didn't know why a
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243 caliber round was found in his lung when it appeared that a 308 caliber rifle was used in the murder
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while reading a gun and ammunition magazine bill booth discovered the answer he saw an ad for the nostler brand 308
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caliber bullet it showed a picture of the small inner core of the bullet which looks surprisingly similar to the
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bullet found in bruce dodson's lung when i looked at the photograph of the cutaway and remembering the
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core that we had removed from bruce dodson's lawn it was the same very similar the projectile that entered
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the body was the bullet core passing through an intervening object very likely would have stripped off the
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copper jacket and only the core would have proceeded from that area he has an epiphany i
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think he said that's it he got up and went down to a sporting goods store and
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bought some of those bullets went home took one out cut it open in his garage and
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that's got to be it most lead bullets are made from recycled car batteries which have numerous trace
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elements a forensic metallurgist at the fbi analyzed the lead inner core of the bullet from bruce dodson's body using
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plasma atomic emission spectroscopy it was compared to the 308 caliber round found at the scene
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so she tested for a certain number of i think six or eight trace elements and when you compare them
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there was a match which meant both bullets were from the same batch the odds of a bullet from the same batch being in
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the victim and being in the hillside of not being fired at the same sequence of shots the odds against that were just
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astounding prosecutors believe janiece dodson planned her husband's murder almost from
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the day they got married and she chose a campsite just a short distance away from where she knew her
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ex-husband had camped every year for the past 20 years at some point prosecutors say janiece quietly made her
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way over to her ex-husband's campsite wading through the mud in the pond so she wouldn't be seen
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while her ex-husband was away she stole his remington 308 caliber rifle and ammunition
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but she never realized that the mud on her boots and coveralls could tie her to the robbery
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the next day janiece went hunting alone and her husband was the prey she hid in the bushes waiting for bruce
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to walk by and then she fired the first shot only grazed him in a panic bruce took off his vest and
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waved to the shooter the second shot entered his chest and came out under his right arm and he fell
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to the ground the third shot struck the fence post shearing off the outer core before it
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hit and killed him janiece inadvertently left one of the 308 shell casings behind
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she got rid of the rifle somewhere in the colorado wilderness before calling for help
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where she disposed of it remains a mystery if the suspect would have been a better
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shot and mr dodson would have been killed with a single shot it's possible that
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this would never been investigated as a homicide we wouldn't have been looking
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for bullet fragments we wouldn't have been looking for mud analysis prosecutors believe the motive was greed
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i believe she married him with the intent to beef up his finances and kill him that's about as cold-blooded as you can
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get so she would have got revenge she would have got rid of bruce dodson obtained approximately five hundred
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thousand dollars in worth and also uh put pin the wrap on jc lee to get even with him for leaving with
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her daughter's girlfriend i think it was a excellent plan that didn't work
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five years after the death of her husband janiece dodson went on trial for his murder we had forensic firearms evidence
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forensic metallurgists this case was built on forensics the jury deliberated for three and a
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half days then found janiece dodson guilty of first degree murder she was sentenced to life in prison
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without the possibility of parole when the verdict came in in the courtroom my legs turned a rubber
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and all i can do today is and i never got a chance i wanted to thank the jury for all the
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work they did investigators and the forensic experts who worked on the case janice dodson was one step away from
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committing the perfect crime denise probably never thought that where she walked
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and picked up soil on her boots and her clothing might have played a key part in convicting her
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bruce was never far from our thoughts during this whole investigation and i think he got some justice
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it wasn't for forensics i could tell you right now jenny stockson would be walking the street she assassinated
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bruce dodson he didn't have a chance i wouldn't even call her a black widow
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i would call her just a greedy assassin [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you