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up next her death was first ruled an accident he thought he was going to get away with it until the autopsy proves
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otherwise fire in this case was used in an attempt to cover a murder but who wanted this woman dead and why
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greed and money are probably the oldest motives in the world for a murder but would he get away with it he thought
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he was a pretty smart guy that was the mistakes he made [Music] just after dusk in november of 2000
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firefighters in augusta georgia were dispatched to a mobile home fire on the south side of town
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they're tinder boxes and you're just talking about a matter of minutes before
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the entire mobile home is completely engulfed it took 10 minutes for firefighters to
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bring the blaze under control when they did they found the homeowner edith ann haynes dead in the bathroom
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she became overwhelmed by the smoke and the heat and was unable to you know escape the fire and died inside
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edith ann haynes known to friends as ann was divorced and was on disability from
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her job at the kendall company makers of surgical dressings a preliminary investigation indicated
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the fire started in a spare bedroom used as a storage space officially the cause of the blaze was
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ruled undetermined but it was believed to be an electrical fire it was right at the time weather started
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getting a little cool and might have been some heat on and that might have started the fire
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at the autopsy the medical examiner expected to find evidence of smoke inhalation
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instead he found no soot or debris in her trachea and her hyoid bone in her neck was
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broken which usually indicates strangulation i've never seen a situation where a bone
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in a person's throat has been crushed by accident unless there's been some
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traumatic car wreck or some other explanation the medical examiner also found marks on
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the outer part of her neck they were consistent with fingernail marks whatever happened before she died was
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very very violent because there was obvious they were evidence of blindfolds trauma
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the autopsy concluded edith ann haynes was dead before the fire started but who wanted her dead and why
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ironically until three days earlier haynes had lived in a larger house about eight miles away
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she was in a financial situation where she needed to sell her house steve culberson hayne's nephew
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and the administrator of her estate looked through the rubble to find her financial records
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i felt that there had to be more evidence there we took everything out of the cabinets and just searched for stuff
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there was no evidence of where her keys were her wallet and he and the investigators found
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something suspicious one of those was a signed contract between ann haynes and a man by the name of
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michael bryant miss haynes sold her home to mr bryant and already transferred the deed but for
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some reason hadn't received the proceeds from the sale that was a perry mason moment
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he was going to pay her a sum of 25 000 she was selling her house to pay her bills off and eventually retire that was
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the whole purpose behind her selling the house at first investigators assumed the fire
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in edith ann haynes mobile home was accidental most likely caused by an electrical
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problem but when the medical examiner ruled miss haines death a homicide investigators
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called in mike lane an expert in the field of fire investigations all i wanted him to be able to do was
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tell me was this an arson was it not a northern and if it was how did it start where did it start you
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know tell me as much about the fire as you can the first thing he did was to conduct a
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room by room search trying to determine where the fire started and how it spread
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if you have a large area you can determine heat flow and directionality by cutting this wall
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stud in two and when you cut it into looking down on the top you can see that the fire came from this
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direction and flowed around this point we have much more degradation right here than we do on this side
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lane then drew a diagram of the floor plan and charted the burn patterns using an arrow to point toward the heat source
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examining this pattern it indicates the direction of fire flow starting at the bottom of this pattern
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where we first see charring and then at the top of this where we see charring if we drew a line across there
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it gives us a direction from which fire started then he looked for visible signs of an
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accelerant like gasoline which makes the fire burn faster and hotter when i pulled up the threshold there was
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a slight odor and that's why i cut it out and put it in a container when i smell fuels that i've smelled for 40
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years i get excited because i believe they're there but i don't allow myself
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to go to the point where i say it's absolutely lane put debris from the fire
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into air-tight containers and sent them to the lab but the larger questions facing
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investigators were who wanted edith ann haynes dead and why she didn't have a real big social life
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she would occasionally go out with friends maybe have a drink or two after work when it's a murderer so off the
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wall and no real logic behind why it had to happen why you know the most logical suspect was 31 year old
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michael bryant haines co-worker at the kendall company bryant bought anne's old
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home as an investment so she agreed to sell him this house where she had spent like 20 years
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whatever her whole adult life the deal was he would pay the mortgages that was left on it which wasn't much and pay her
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25 000 cash and help her out a little bit with her new plays when questioned by police
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brian said he gave miss haines a 25 000 check and she signed over the deed to the
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house but investigators found no evidence that haines cashed the check and no trace of
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it was found in the rubble shockingly bryant was unwilling to issue another twenty-five thousand dollar check to ms
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hayne's estate we did have to sue him to get the 25 000. he wasn't going to pay
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that until we come up and did that brian denied having anything to do with the arson and murder and he had a solid
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alibi at the time of the fire michael bryant did have an alibi he was 20 miles away
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at a grill with his wife and they'd actually gone to a movie after that bryant and his wife had the movie ticket
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stubs and restaurant receipts to prove it his wife verified that this was true and
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there was no reason that she was not being truthful to us but something bothered investigators
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one of brian's coworkers called him that night after the movie to tell him about
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the fire the call said there was a fire at edith's house oh my god oh my are you serious and michael's
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started crying well the thing was that the call didn't say anything about youth being dead only
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that there was a fire and that told investigators they were on the right track an autopsy revealed that edith ann
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haynes was beaten and strangled to death before the fire started in her mobile home
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to find out whether an accelerant was used to start the fire samples were collected and sent to the
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laboratory there forensic scientist laurel mason took the contents of the airtight containers and prepared them
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for testing what i need to do is get the ignitable liquid that was used to accelerate the fire into a gas form
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and i do that by heating the sample up that gas is then collected or absorbed onto the charcoal strip
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a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer analyzed the samples and compared them to a database of over 750 known
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reference samples it is like a doctor looking at an ekg i have to be able to visually recognize what it is that i'm
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looking at the sample that was removed from the threshold was positive for gasoline
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now investigators wanted to know who was the last person inside anne's home on the day of the fire
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interestingly neighbors saw michael bryant's truck at ann's home around 3 p.m but the truck
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was gone by 5 pm the fire didn't start until two hours later michael bryant and
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his wife were in the restaurant where he went and the movie theater was in evans
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which is a suburb above augusta another good 15-20 minutes to get there so he was you know at least a half hour or
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more away from her when the fire occurred arson investigator mike lane knew from experience that there was a
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way that bryant could have killed miss haynes started the fire and still have been at the movie two hours later
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the light ignition device is something that an arsonist uh would use uh so that they can be someplace else when the fire
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starts and it may be uh for minutes uh it could be for hours in all actual it could be for days the more sophisticated
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it is lane says there are numerous ways to construct the device but he won't say how i really don't want
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to train folks to uh to be arsonist as for brian's alibi investigators had one question
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who keeps a movie receipt it is inconceivable that someone would keep in their records
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one movie stub one restaurant receipt unless they were keeping it for a specific reason and his reason was that
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he wanted to be able to establish an alibi scott peebles checked out michael bryant's background and discovered that
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bryant had been married before so he called brian's ex-wife we learned from her that he was
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fascinated with fire and would frequently dabble with pyrotechnics so to speak she also told peebles that the home they
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owned together mysteriously burned to the ground before the house burned down insisted
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that she go over to her parents and take the dog with her she recalled that she didn't want to go
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spend the night at her parents house on this night brian's ex-wife said the fire resulted in a substantial
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insurance settlement and even she believed her ex-husband started it prior to the fire he had already rented
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an apartment that his ex-wife did not know he had put into his name brian's car was also
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destroyed in that fire it too was insured strangely the car's tires were a special model and
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valuable miraculously they survived he removed the tires from his car and placed them far enough away from the
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house where they wouldn't be destroyed when the house burned down although this was certainly suspicious
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it wasn't proof that bryant had anything to do with anne haines murder and he had a lot of friends and a lot of
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support you know they just insisted that there's no way he could have done this
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crime because he'd never been in trouble before and investigators also discovered bryant
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had fighter training he was on the fire brigade at the manufacturing plant where
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he worked his training from the fire brigade which would have taught him how to do
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you know what what a delayed ignition device was how to set fires how to how arsonists work what to look for in
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an arson throughout the investigation bryant had willingly answered all questions by police but when the
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questioning got more intense he stopped cooperating and at some point he was asked to submit
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to a polygraph examination which he originally agreed to do but prior to the scheduling of that
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examination he backed out so investigators had no evidence linking brian to the crime
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got away with it once he thought he'd get away with it again with very little evidence against
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michael bryant for the murder of ann haynes investigators got a warrant to search
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his home they seized his computer and analyzed his hard drive on it was a wealth of information
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when his computer was seized we were able to see that in the days prior to the scheduled polygraph that he didn't take
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he was looking at websites on how to beat a polygraph and then he didn't take the polygraph
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they also searched the storage spaces when i went into that attic things just kind of got eerie from there and
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basically what i saw was similar to an altar for what i would certainly think was satanic worship
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with a pentagram candles and burned items in the garage investigators found a coil of detonation
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or fuse wire the kind used to construct a delayed ignition device most people probably don't have
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detonation cord laying around their house but michael bryant did a search of brian's financial record
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showed he was deeply in debt he made between 80 and 90 000 a year but he lived like he made twice that much
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this was someone who was kiting checks between different financial institutions to get by he may have had this 200 000
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home but he was living well outside of his means and he was in over his head and with this evidence michael bryant
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was arrested and charged with arson and murder prosecutors say the motive was obvious
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besides love and money greed and money are probably the oldest motives in the world for a murder
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michael bryant worked with miss haines and when she bought the mobile home and put her old house up for sale bryant
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offered to buy it as a rental property bryant paid off the loans on the house and had anne sign over the deed
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then he gave haines a check for 25 000 the balance of the purchase price so he had written a check to ann haynes
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for 25 000 asking her to hold the check not cash it until he could put the funds in the account
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this kept getting delayed continually by him and on the day of the fire she indicated that she was going to cash
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that check whether he wanted to or not she may have realized that bryant had no intention of paying her since she had
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already signed the deed and didn't yet have the 25 thousand dollars he owed her
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prosecutors believe bryant went to haines mobile home on the day of the murder to ask her again to
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delay cashing his check for the 25 000 dollars what am i trying to pull no one knows
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what took place but the evidence shows bryant struck her on the back of the head
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strangled her to death then dragged her body into the bathroom [Music] [Music] he took the incriminating evidence
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his 25 000 check the evidence shows he poured gasoline on hane's body down the hallway
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into the living room and to the front door but he couldn't set the house on fire in
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broad daylight with his truck outside he needed time to establish an alibi he used fuse wire and other household
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items to construct some type of delayed ignition device then he left the scene the evidence shows that brian picked up
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his wife and they drove to a restaurant 20 miles away for dinner [Music] they left at 6 41
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then went to a seven o'clock movie around 7 30 the device bryant set in ann haynes home
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started the fire while he and his wife were in the movie theater surrounded by witnesses
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despite his well-laid plans michael made one huge mistake while walking out of the theater his
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friend called to tell him that the hanes mobile home was destroyed in a fire aren't you kidding me
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oh my oh my art are you serious michael reacted inappropriately given the fact the
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caller said nothing about anne having been involved in the fire let alone killed
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he thought he was a pretty smart guy that was the mistake that he made because he wasn't quite as smart as he
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thought he was the fire didn't eliminate everything as in most arsons it actually created
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more evidence than it destroyed essentially she's killed over 25 thousand dollars
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in october of 2002 michael bryant went on trial for malice murder arson and burglary
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in this case it was premeditated it was planned it was schemed he took the day off work and
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he planned this murder it started out to be just a little small transaction deal of
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a person selling a house not going through a real estate agent you know friends at work and turns out
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to be a murderer just it still blows my mind every time i think about it bryant maintained throughout his trial
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that it was impossible for him to have set the fire michael bryant's defense was he had an
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alibi he wasn't there his mom was away he had no reason to kill her that it's
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it wasn't really a big deal that he owed her this money but the jury didn't believe it michael bryant was
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convicted and sentenced to life in prison plus 40 years this was one of the most interesting
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cases that i ever worked on when i heard the verdict i was speechless reached over and hugged my
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wife and just shed a few tears i wanted nothing to say but thank god thank god they got him
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without forensics we would have not convicted michael bryant this is a man who did believe he was
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smarter than everybody else and he thought he could manipulate ann haynes he thought he could
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manipulate investigators and he believed that he was getting away with it you