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the murder of a prominent businessman in colorado was particularly difficult to solve since the killers left virtually
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no forensic evidence at the scene but information gathered from a small town diner an endocrinologist and the
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forensic botanist took a bite out of the chief suspect's alibi [Music] [Music]
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[Music] at an elevation of seven thousand feet steamboat springs colorado boasts one of
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the largest ski mountains in north america lifetime resident jerry boggs found the
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splendor of the small town ski resort inescapable the family business boggs hardware had
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been on main street for 63 years jerry was the kind of person that everybody thought he was their best
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friend he was a great guy people loved him he was kind generous you could trust him with your life
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on october 22 1993 boggs didn't show up for work as he usually did jerry's brother went to his home
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and found him dead inside the back door he had been shot to death nearby was a plastic bag and a bloody
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shovel so it appeared that he had been ambushed someone was hitting him in the head with
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a shovel far enough to hit the overhead beam boggs often kept his doors unlocked
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but there were no valuables missing investigators could find no foot impressions foreign hairs or fibers
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we didn't have any direct evidence we didn't have any fingerprints any dna anything that
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directly connected anyone to the crime scene a neighbor reported seeing two suspicious looking men near boggs home
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on the day of the murder and police had another suspect jerry bogg's ex-wife jill coyte
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the two got married when jill became pregnant with jerry's baby i don't think he was in love with her i
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think that she tricked him and into getting married the marriage lasted for only seven days
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jerry had the marriage annulled when he learned that jill hadn't gotten a divorce from her previous husband
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i couldn't figure out what in the world he was doing with this woman because in
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one hour i could tell that she was just off the wall absolutely the strangest person and not
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at all suited for jerry after the annulment the two barely spoke and she would come to steamboat and she
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would call up people that jerry knew talk about the child and how jerry had thrown them out and he was a horrible
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person when questioned jill said she had an alibi for the night of jerry's murder
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she said she was camping at the poodra national park 150 miles away her new boyfriend michael backus
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corroborated her alibi investigators were left to wonder who killed jerry boggs and why
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[Music] the autopsy revealed that jerry boggs had been beaten with a shovel and shot
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three times in the chest with a 25 caliber pistol investigators closely analyzed the
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shovel for clues the shovel itself was very old the wood was very porous our lab people
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concluded that whoever was using it was probably wearing gloves so there were bloody hand prints on it and you could
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see where fingers had been but there was no ridge detail with which to make an identification
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in addition to the head injuries and bullet wounds there were some other injuries that
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experts couldn't explain based on body temperature and rigor mortis methods that are crude and
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sometimes inaccurate the medical examiner estimated that boggs died sometime the night before his body was
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found police had two leads a neighbor reported seeing two men near bogg's home earlier in the afternoon on
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the day boggs was killed bogg's ex-wife jill coit was also a suspect she and boggs had been fighting over a
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100 000 loan boggs made to jill's bed and breakfast hotel during their brief
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marriage it was an embarrassment too you know you live in a small town you know all these people you get married you've
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never been married before you get married and all of a sudden you've you've got this
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can of worms to deal with that was just so much it was just horrible for him i'm
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sure at times he probably just wanted to crawl under the rug jill had an alibi for the night of the
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murder investigators wanted to make sure boggs was killed at night and not earlier in
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the day for a better estimate of the time of death dr doberson decided to analyze the
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undigested food in bog's stomach so if we could find out where he ate and at what time he ate we could really
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narrow down the time of death in retracing boggs steps on the day of the murder investigators learned the jury opened
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the hardware store at 10 o'clock as he did every morning he worked for a while then walked two
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doors down to the shack for breakfast there he ordered the same meal he always did eggs toast and hash brown potatoes
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the folks in the cafe said oh yeah he stopped by here and had as usual to see if breakfast was bogg's last meal
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investigators turned to scientists at the university of colorado we've done the same thing with wooly
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mammoths frozen in the ice in siberia and alaska identified what plants they were eating
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david norris an endocrinologist at the university of colorado and his colleague forensic botanist jane bock were asked
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to examine bog stomach contents basically humans consume between 50 and 75 different types of plants in their
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diet plants are easier to distinguish in the stomach than animal products the cell walls themselves remain intact
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and they'll pass entirely through the digestive system this makes identification quite easy
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it doesn't make any difference whether the material was frozen whether it was
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boiled it will remain virtually indestructible dr norris placed a sample of bogg's
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stomach contents on a slide under his microscope dr nara saw a jumble of irregular
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hexagons he recognized them as the intact cells of either potato or apple both have nearly identical cell
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structures to determine which one dr norris used potassium iodide a test for the presence of starch
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a drop of it is added to the material on the slide and if starch is present it will turn
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black under a microscope the cells turned black which confirmed the presence of starch
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the cells were from potatoes since jerry ate hash browns on the day he was murdered the presence of potatoes
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seemed to indicate breakfast was his last meal or was it in addition to the potato cells i also
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saw cells of onions and these are relatively easy to identify because of the brick-like shape
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of the cells and the way they're put together kind of like looking at a brick
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wall the short-order cook at the diner insisted he never put onions in the eggs or the hash brown potatoes
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so we thought well this is um this is a worry maybe uh he did have another later meal
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another meal meant that boggs was killed after dinner the prime suspect his ex-wife jill coyte
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had an air-tight alibi for that night the only other suspects were the two men seen near bogg's home whom police hadn't
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yet identified [Music] the mysterious murder of jerry boggs baffled police in the quiet resort town
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of steamboat springs colorado investigators found evidence that boggs grew suspicious of his ex-wife after the
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annulment when he caught her lying about her date of birth boggs hired his friend judy pryor lewis
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a private investigator to look into jill's background and what she uncovered was shocking
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she learned that jill lied about her pregnancy with jerry's baby she hadn't
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been pregnant at all she had a hysterectomy years earlier she claimed to have a child and we were
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all telling him there is no child it's it's all just a a ruse he he still believed it he just couldn't
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accept it he would come down to our house and i would just try every thing i knew to convince him that there
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really was no baby [Music] jill was a former model and beauty queen who had lied to jerry about her
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background and the number of times she was married jill lunita billiat einen moore coit
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brodie derosa metzger steely boggs carol had been married nearly a dozen times i don't smoke or drink i guess my
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greatest sin is that i get married jill had married and divorced another man after jerry and was about to walk
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down the aisle yet again to her new boyfriend michael backus and what was bogg's reaction
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he started laughing we just sat and laughed he's like oh my god what wasn't so funny
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was jill's third husband william coyte had been murdered 20 years earlier with
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the same caliber weapon that killed jerry boggs william coyte's murder was unsolved
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the circumstances were very similar in that both jerry boggs and william coyte were preparing to take her to court
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they were within a week of a court date there was within a week of a court date where
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her character was going to be exposed and boggs private investigator found evidence that jill falsely claimed to be
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pregnant in other marriages presumably for financial purposes mr boggs i think was at the point of
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disclosing to the world many things about jill coyte that she wanted to remain secret and she had taken i think
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very a very dramatic step to ensure that that did not occur she'd gotten away
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with so many things and she was proud of it that she's been married you know 10 or
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11 times six bigamies out of that all these kids she says she's had she hasn't and she couldn't stand it
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jill said she was camping in a state park on the night of boggs murder but in order to completely eliminate her
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as a suspect investigators needed to be sure boggs was killed at night and not earlier in
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the day bogg's murder presumably happened at night after dinner since onions were
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discovered in his stomach the cooks at the shack insisted they didn't put onions in bog's breakfast on
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the morning of his death one of steamboat's homicide investigators decided to take a closer
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look not to be deterred he took himself down there and stood in the kitchen and watched them
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making breakfast one morning the cook prepared the same breakfast jerry boggs always ate
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true to his word the cook did not add onions to the hash browns he threw on the grill
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but while watching the grill homicide investigators saw a flurry of activity that suddenly explained everything
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every time the cook turned an omelet or scattered an order of hash browns small portions of diced onions from other
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orders would get mixed in i believe he photographed the spatula that was used to flip the eggs
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to grill the hash brown potatoes and the edge of the spatula is covered with bits of onion
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you don't know when you're getting the food at the other end where this what's
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going on on the grill breakfast had in fact been jerry boggs last meal we felt vindicated you know that we felt
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very good about that because we knew they were there boggs was killed just a few hours after
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breakfast jill coyte did not have an alibi for the afternoon of boggs death still
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the stomach contents yielded only circumstantial evidence we didn't have any direct evidence we
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didn't have any fingerprints any dna anything that directly connected anyone to the crime
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scene we didn't have anything in the nature of of a confession in connection with the
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case we didn't have smoking gun type of evidence armed with a search warrant
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police searched jill's car and found wigs maps of mexico and a stun gun it possible
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it was jill coyte in disguise that the neighbor saw walking in the vicinity of jerry's home on the afternoon of his
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murder the weapon used in jerry bogg's murder a 25 caliber pistol was not found in jill
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coyt's car but investigators suspected the stun gun in her trunk may have caused the unusual
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marks on boggs face and neck which were noted during the autopsy stun gun injuries fall into a category
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of injuries called patterned injuries which means the injuries mirror the object that caused them so in the case
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of a stun gun injury you will have electrical burns mimic the distance between the
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electrodes that cause them the injuries lined up identically with the distance between the electrodes
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pigskin most closely resembles human skin so dr doberson applied the stun gun to a
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live anesthetized pig to see if he could reproduce the round reddish marks on jerry bogg's neck and face
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the marks were similar interestingly enough the animal has to be alive in order to show the characteristic
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injuries which also means that jerry boggs was alive at the time that he sustained
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those injuries the forensic evidence was bringing the crime into focus the witness who reported seeing two men
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near jerry's home on the day of the murder said jill coyte and her boyfriend
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michael backus resembled the men in height jill liked to wear disguises and had a
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number of disguises and eventually we even came up with a photograph that had been taken of her
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sometime prior to the homicide where she was wearing a beard and a mustache and jill's alibi disintegrated when
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police could find no evidence that she had signed in and paid the admission fee to pudra national park on the day of the
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murder jill coyde and michael backus were arrested and charged with first-degree
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murder at the preliminary hearing it appeared even jill was impressed with the forensic evidence against her
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i remember presenting all of that in front of the judge and she was there at the end i picked up all my materials
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and slides and walked out next to her and she looked at me and said nice job and then
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i i took that as quite a compliment and there was a surprise witness jill's son seth testified against her
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right after shane bacchus had committed the murder she telephoned seth to let him know
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i believe her words to him were something to the effect of it's over and it was messy
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it did not appear to me that he really had participated in any meaningful way that he had been a conspirator in
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connection with that it appeared to me that he had been very little more than an unwilling
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person being provided information by somebody who was trying to get him to engage in activity
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prosecutors believe that michael backus and jill coit in disguise entered jerry's home in the early
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afternoon with the intent of murdering bogs presumably to end their financial dispute
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after having his usual breakfast of eggs toast and hash browns which had been unknowingly spiked with onions
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boggs left work early that day and arrived home sometime after 1 pm when he did jill and her boyfriend
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were waiting boggs was ambushed at the back door first with the stun gun then with the
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shovel after a suffocation attempt failed prosecutors believe it was jill who shot boggs three times with a 25
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caliber pistol the two were careful not to leave incriminating evidence and their
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disguises were almost foolproof but they never realized forensic science could identify
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the specific items in bog's stomach which destroyed their flimsy alibi when news of the crime became public
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jill's oldest son william came forward with his suspicions that his mother had
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also killed his father william coyte senior some 20 years earlier she's more like a praying mantis
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she just devours them and she gets a hold of them it took the jury only five hours to find
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jill coyte and michael backus guilty of first degree murder i think she was more or less motivated
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on the money i think she thought that would make her happy in life and look where she is so apparently
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money can't buy you everything huh they were both sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole
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i believe that joe coyte was aware that there are methods for determining time of death i don't think she was
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aware that the stomach contents could be that telling it ultimately blew her alibi out of the
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water i think she was pretty clever they were pretty clever in in wearing uh you know bringing along
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clothing and or plastic bags or whatever they used to camouflage themselves from
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from leaving forensic evidence i mean they there were no prints no hairs nothing and so they they were
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very cautious about that but she should have been watching some of your shows [Music]
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[Music] [Music] you