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for years criminals used women's hosiery as a mask to hide their identities but today to a forensic scientist
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hosiery can be as valuable as a fingerprint because of its signature characteristics
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and textile science identified a killer when an eyewitness couldn't [Music] in the small midwestern town of heron
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illinois murder was like a virtual stranger it's so rare that police thought this
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9-1-1 call was a prank 9-1-1 emergency [Applause] police traced the call to a pay phone
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near the center of town just up the street was a dry cleaning store the front door was open
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and no one was there behind the counter was a purse with its content scattered all over the floor
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right at that moments when we thought there's something serious here in the back room
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behind a water heater police found a woman's body she had been beaten apparently
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with the bloody mop ringer nearby i checked her for a pulse she did not have one that i could locate
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the victim was identified as a store employee 40-year-old kathy woodhouse she was a married mother of three
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children she was my mom and you know she disciplined me and all those things but
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she was also my friend sorry i'm sorry guys outside the store police found a piece
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of pantyhose which the killer may have used as a disguise investigators wondered whether the man
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who made the 9-1-1 call was somehow involved we listened to this 9-1-1 call could he be a witness
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or was he the actual assailant of kathy woodhouse at a certain point in the investigation
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we were relatively certain that it was probably the killer a gas station attendant saw the man who
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made the call and described him as a caucasian about six feet tall police took the phone receiver to the
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forensics lab for testing at the dry cleaning store on the counter investigators found a check made out to
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the store in the amount of 14.30 signed by one of the store's customers when police contacted the woman she said
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she was in the store that morning but no one was there she found her clothes wrote a check for
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the amount she owed and was about to leave when a man came out of the back room and asked if she needed help
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she told him at that point that she was there to get her cleaning she assumed that he was an employee there she had no
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reason to believe otherwise the witness described the man as 30 to 35 years old six foot two inches tall
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and weighing over 200 pounds the police realized that she had come face to face with the killer
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[Music] a customer of the dry cleaning store said she got a good look at the man who was
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most likely kathy woodhouse's killer we were very excited in that we thought we did have a
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potential witness as to who the perpetrator may have been i also thought she very well may have been extremely
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lucky that things happened the way they did and she was not killed at that point
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in time police used her description to create a sketch which was distributed to the local media
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an autopsy revealed that kathy woodhouse died from blunt force trauma to the head
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she received three blows to the left side of her head because there was three separate lacerations to the left side of
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the head so that the mop ringer fit the bill as far as its weight its mass of the variety of surfaces and when you
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look at the mop ringer itself there was at least one part of the mop ringer metals which was bent
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she had also been sexually assaulted on unfortunately biological material collected from the
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rape test kit could not identify the killer's blood type because he was what's known as a non-secretor
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a non-secretor does not secrete their blood type into their secretions and approximately 20 percent of the
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population would fall into that class of being a non-secretor [Music] with little else to go on police turned
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their attention to the phone receiver used to make the 911 call the brushes that apply fingerprint
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powder can sometimes remove some of the fingerprint so technicians wanted to stabilize any
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possible prince by using super glue fuming it's a little like putting chocolate
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over ice cream it creates a protective shell over any print the heated super glue adheres to any
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amino acids present then fingerprint powder is applied to better visualize the print
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technicians used a dye called aardrox the prints that have soaked up the ardrock's will appear a yellowish color
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and then we can photograph those using specialized film and the end result is we have a print
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potentially that we would not have without using that dye stain and under an ultraviolet light
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investigators found what they were looking for a clear print once i told them the news
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i could hear other officers in the background and there was definitely a level of
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excitement that he hadn't heard for a while with this case but was this the print of the killer
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after all in any given week hundreds of people use a pay phone unfortunately the print did not match
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any known criminal offenders who had prints on file there were times that we became frustrated yes
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but we still weren't going to give up in the event that this individual was still
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here because we had to get him off the street so he wouldn't strike again then police got a valuable tip
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a friend of the murder victim came forward with a startling piece of information the day before kathy was
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killed she received a telephone call from someone wanting to know what color of toenail polish that she wore
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and when the police got the lead they went and got all the telephone records uh from the calls coming into the cleaners
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on that day according to the phone records there were only a few calls made to the store
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that night one came from a man who lived in the town of ziegler several miles away
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officers thought at that time with it being a sex crime the type of call that they made that
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this is this is probably our guy the man a 25 year old construction worker at first denied making the call
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we confronted him with a statement concerning the color of the toenails and he immediately you could tell on his
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expression that he was the one who made the calls the man eventually admitted that he
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called kathy woodhouse but said he meant no harm he stated that he did those type of
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calls a couple times a month he was very nervous about that which is understandable
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he said he knew kathy because he was a customer of the dry cleaning store but insisted he had nothing to do with her
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murder but investigators weren't so sure police investigating the murder of kathy
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woodhouse were worried it looked like the attack was random something that just it literally scares
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people to death they're not accustomed to this type of crime we truly feared that he would
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possibly strike again and kill another woman and it was basically a race against time
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police thought they had their killer when they found a construction worker who made an obscene telephone call to
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kathy woodhouse on the night before the murder but he said he had an alibi that he was
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teaching a class at a local community college on the morning of the murder we were able to confirm his alibi for
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where he was at that followed the morning of the homicide and was able to rule him out
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then police got another tip the police received an anonymous telephone call that they should check out a paul taylor
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who lived on 16th street in herron as a possible suspect in the kathy woodhouse murder and rape he had recently in
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december just been released from louisiana prison for aggravated sexual assault that's all the callers said and they
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hung up taylor only 20 years old lived with his mother just two blocks from where the murder took place
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and police learned that taylor worked at a fast food restaurant that used the dry
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cleaner to launder the employees uniforms investigators called the manager and asked if taylor was the one who took the
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clothes to the dry cleaners they said no paul taylor would not have brought the clothing over there however
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he just he just quit his job 15 minutes going planning on going to louisiana police rushed to paul taylor's house
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and when they arrived paul taylor told them that he had just gotten home from work
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one of the officers confronted him with the fact that you didn't just get home from work
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manager just told us you went over there and quit your job that you were going back to louisiana
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when questioned taylor denied any involvement in the murder taylor's grandmother provided an alibi
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she said paul was at home that morning and taylor bore no resemblance to the description given by the eyewitness he
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came across very believable when asked questions like what should happen to someone that
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killed kathy woodhouse his response was brian do you think that individual should get
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a second chance his response to that was no there should be no second chance on a hunch police asked taylor if they
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could search his home he agreed while doing the search i lifted up the mattress on his bed
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and immediately saw a pair of women's pantyhose with one leg missing laying on
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top of two pornographic magazines then police remembered the piece of pantyhose they found on the
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ground outside the dry-cleaning store was it possible it was cut from the pier found
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in taylor's home it really raised my curiosity because now i've seen some physical evidence
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that may connect him with the crime scene police sent both pieces to forensic microscopist glenn shubert the first
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exam i did physically then was to try and match up the edges in what we call a physical match
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but the ends were too frayed for any sort of comparison but under a microscope schubert was able to find
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similarities i was able to determine that they were both a similar knit jersey stitch knit pattern
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next using high magnification schubert found another striking similarity both pieces contained some unique
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chemical properties the titanium dioxide is the small little dots that appeared in the microscope
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those are just particles they put in synthetic fibers to keep them from being too shiny and in this particular case
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there was a moderate amount of the titanium dioxide delusion particles in both samples
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to see if the colors were the same schubert turned to micro spectral the spectra that i observed from these
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fibers was very unique it had several peaks which is a little unusual in colored fibers so the fact that it had
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several peaks that was very consistent between two samples made this color comparison very unique
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since they were both dyed the same color had the same amount of titanium dioxide
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and were the same knit pattern schubert made a definitive assessment we knew that night that we had enough
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evidence that would lead to his arrest warrant with our cutting edge technology here we
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were able to come up with the results that prove that he was likely the perpetrator of this crime
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finally investigators compared taylor's fingerprints to the print found on the
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payphone it was a match and the fingerprint evidence revealed something else investigators found paul taylor's left
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palm print on a plastic garbage bag found near kathy woodhouse's body proof he was in the back room of the dry
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cleaning store on the day of the murder forensic science proved what the eyewitnesses couldn't
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that paul taylor had killed kathy woodhouse as it turns out the witness was wrong in
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all instances but one and that was the height she had said the person was 30 to 35 years old ends up that he was 20.
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she indicated he weighed 220 pounds and he only weighed 170. but the truth of the matter is that positive
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identification is oftentimes wrong paul taylor was arrested as he was leaving a rock concert with some friends
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i have a funny feeling he knows it's coming down he's waving to us so he's still in a good frame of mind
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one finger though police found his nonchalance alarming he knew we were following him and he just
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sort of made light of it uh he he was not concerned did not seem very concerned about it uh it was sort of a
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big joke to him uh was the way it came across to us prosecutors are unsure whether paul
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taylor walked into the dry-cleaning store to commit robbery sexual assault murder
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or all of the above it would be speculation on our part as to whether he'd actually planned on
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killing her or not he didn't bring a weapon with him however he did have he did apparently have the stocking with
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him the evidence suggests taylor wore the pantyhose over his head as a disguise he forced kathy woodhouse to the back
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room of the store and sexually assaulted her [Music] then he heard someone enter the store
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it was a customer who found her dry cleaning and wrote a check for the amount she owed
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taylor needed to make sure she didn't look in the back room so he removed the disguise walked out
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and asked her if she needed help afterwards he may have realized kathy woodhouse
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could identify him so he killed her with the mop ringer [Music] he left his left palm print on a plastic
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garbage bag in the back room then he took three dollars from kathy's purse and left the store but
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dropped the pantyhose outside a few blocks away he called 9-1-1 and left his fingerprint on the receiver
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i can't tell you why paul taylor made the 9-1-1 call sometimes they'll do it to taunt the
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police to try to show them they can get by with something for the reaction that they may get
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when faced with the forensic evidence against him paul taylor confessed he did not hesitate much about telling
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us that he did kill her he told her that he was going to rob her he stated that he did take three dollars
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from her purse but he first he denied having sexually assaulted her investigators discovered taylor was a
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non-secretor consistent with the biological samples from the rape test kit and they told taylor
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they didn't believe him at which point he looked down at the floor for several seconds and then he
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looked directly at me again and he said i raped her maybe he thought that murder was okay
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but sexually sexual assault was not i think he just tried to lessen the severity of it when he first told us
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that he'd murdered her paul taylor was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to
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life in prison with no possibility of parole i'm glad to know he's going to be in
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prison never going to get out and walk the streets and do something like this someone else
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however i felt like he should have been put to death for what he did after the trial taylor has spoke to the
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media about the crime as far as murdering her herself i don't have any remorse
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but going along with her children now i i feel sorry about that you know but that's all i can say you know i can't do
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anything more at the time like i said i wasn't thinking about murder so i i didn't think if she had children
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i didn't know if she was married i didn't know anything about that to be honest i don't think about paul
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taylor very much [Music] because i don't focus on my mom's death i focus on her life more
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and so i guess the hardest part is just being without her not being able to go to the phone
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you know tell her what's going on not being able to come home to illinois and
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see her and you know just all the fun things that we did and enjoyed before this was a case
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where an eyewitness's description wasn't nearly as accurate as the forensic evidence
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the forensic evidence in this case was extremely important without that i don't believe we would
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have made it been able to make an arrest on taylor i doubt we would have got a confession
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from him this case is a classic example of all the law enforcement community working together from from from the
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local police departments to the sheriff's department to the state's attorney's office to the crime lab i
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think in my 20 years this is the most obvious case of a situation where without the forensic evidence we would
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not have had the probable cause to arrest paul taylor he very probably would still be walking the streets and
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there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that he would have killed again [Music]
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[Music] [Music] you