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in 1989 near the pocono mountains in pennsylvania nineteen-year-old lori awker left for
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work she was never heard from again [Music] it was nasa technology a fly and the family cat
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that helped solve her disappearance in a most unusual way [Music] [Applause] [Music]
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[Applause] the susquehanna valley in central pennsylvania is a quiet agricultural
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area lori orca grew up here not far from the mighty susquehanna river lori was a very sweet girl she was a
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typical 19 year old she had a lot of goals and aspirations for her future as far as becoming a veterinarian and had a
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great deal of interest in animals just out of high school lori married robert orker he was almost 10 years
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older and worked in a warehouse not long afterwards the couple had a son matthew
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lori took a job at a local pet store to earn extra money she shared her love of animals with her
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son matthew at every opportunity when she wasn't working she'd come in to
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show him he'd particularly like kittens and she'd bring him in to show him the
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kittens and he liked watching the fish playing with the puppies but she was a good mother
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although lori and robert loved their child problems between the two began to surface
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the couple argued and friends say they were unable to resolve their differences just 18 months after they were married
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lori and robert separated laurie and the baby moved in with her parents robert moved in with his and had
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visitation rights she wasn't happy with him because he was had a very controlling type nature about
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him she had to answer all his questions before she could go anywhere he used physical
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discipline whenever he got upset with matt and that's what upset lori while separated laurie dated
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occasionally but only casually on may 24 1989 while matthew was at robert's house lori prepared for her
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usual four to nine shift at the pet store [Music] after packing a snack laurie left for work
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but she never arrived lori's supervisor called looking for her and i asked them if lori had left for
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work and and her father said that she had and and i said well has she called or anything because she she's not here
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at the store yet and she was scheduled to start about a half an hour ago he said no he
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said but this makes me very worried he said she left on time laurie's father drove the route that she
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usually took to work he thought she might have had car trouble along the way he eventually found laurie's car in the
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parking lot near the pet shop where she usually parked nothing seemed to be out of place
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laurie's purse and keys were not in the car the disappearance frightened people the
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thought that some young woman could go to a mall a very busy mall in broad daylight and suddenly disappear
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presumably being abducted really shot a shock wave of fear throughout that rather conservative small
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area police canvassed the area and questioned employees and shoppers in the mall but
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no one saw anything suspicious almost from the start police suspected laurie's estranged
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husband robert may have had something to do with her disappearance but robert said he hadn't seen laurie at
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all that day and he had an alibi he said he was babysitting their son went shopping and then went to two scheduled
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appointments mr elka told me that on the day of lorianne's disappearance that he had been over to wise markets to
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get a disability claim form and he took that form to an office in louisburg an orthopedic surgeon
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and from there he went to the bloomsburg sears mall and priced the dishwasher for his mother
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police are now asking for the public's help for the next three weeks police family members friends and
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volunteers continued the search with no success on june 12th a woman jogging a few miles from the
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mall spotted something in an area known as claudi's dump it was little more than a skeleton
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investigators wondered whether this was the body of laurie orcar and looked to forensic science for some
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way to tell the body was markedly decomposed in that only in the extremities was there any
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flesh left there was no skin and no organs internally that to work with investigators needed to identify
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the skeleton found in the dump a few miles from the pet store and they also wanted to know the cause
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of death to find out they brought in forensic pathologist dr isidor mahalikas from the size of the skull he knew the
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body was female the cut marks on the bones and the holes in the clothing helped him to determine
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the cause of death the presence of cuts which corresponded to perforations in the
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sweater is consistent with stab wounds with movement and with homicide dr mahalikas concluded that this woman
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had been stabbed in the chest and back at least seven times possibly as many as eleven
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but he wasn't able to make an identification from the remains for that dr mahalicas asked forensic odontologist
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dr dennis ayson to make a dental comparison without the benefit of forensic dentistry when you have a victim such as
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lariaka's in the loriaki case there are no fingerprints that you can use the
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body is unrecognizable because of the disintegration of tissues very often the only thing that does
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remain is the dental evidence that we can compare to before death records and and establish a positive identification
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after comparing the teeth of the victim to lori's dental records and x-rays dr aysan made a positive identification
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the victim had nine teeth restored with dental materials those teeth as it turned out were the same teeth
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that loriaka had restored the same nine teeth the same type of material in each tooth the same location of materials or
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restorations in each tooth that matched up with lariaka no murder weapon was found at the scene
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investigators now wanted to know when laurie died time of death is usually determined in
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one of three ways first by the body temperature useless in this case given the length of time the body was outside
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another way is to examine stomach contents but the body was too badly decomposed
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the third way is to analyze any insect activity forensic entomologist dr k chung kim
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studied the larvae found on the body an entomologist is an expert in the study of insects
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what this body had was a large number of different kind of beetles and then a very late stage of maggots
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within minutes of death blow flies can detect the smell of decomposition even from miles away
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dr kim calculated that the larvae deposited by the flies had been on the body for 19 days which meant
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they were on the body the day laurie disappeared in an incredible stroke of luck
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police learned that an automated teller machine near the entrance to the mall was equipped with a surveillance camera
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which took pictures every 10 seconds the camera was aimed in the direction of laurie's car
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at first glance the images looked unimportant they showed a man making a bank transaction
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but in the background out of focus there appeared to be an automobile near laurie's car with an unidentified person
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standing nearby deeper into the parking lot was a scene that was captured on this video the
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scene was a little blurry i would liken it to like a an alfred hitchcock kind of
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movie the images looked promising but were not clear enough for any kind of analysis
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so prosecutors asked both the pennsylvania state police laboratory and the fbi for help
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but neither one could improve the photographs with nowhere else to turn the fbi suggested they asked nasa for
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help nasa had been using sophisticated digital photo enhancement technology to improve images from space
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nasa referred the case to research scientist alan teigen of the ballistic missile defense organization
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teigen used a technique similar to the one used to determine the cause of the challenger explosion in 1986
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digitization is the process of taking the normal video signal that you would get out of your vcr at
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home and turning it into a computer image file when the images are put into the computer
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they are broken down into thousands of pixels each of these pixels are converted into a number representing
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how bright that dot is in this particular case the data is black and white video
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so that the pixel represents simply different shades between total black and full white
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digital enhancement can also remove blurring in an image and special filters can eliminate some of the grain
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once complete you can see how this process significantly improved the images prosecutors hoped that these enhanced
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photographs would tell the story of lori orker's disappearance the digitally enhanced surveillance
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photos of the parking lot where laurie awkward disappeared showed laurie's car
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in its parking spot standing behind it was a person in the same clothing laurie wore that day
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the film was in black and white on that particular scene we knew that lori had been wearing a windbreaker that
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day had been wearing jeans and had carried a white purse she was a medium build she had short
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brown hair that person that we see in the picture there fits that description precisely
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the next picture taken 10 seconds later shows another automobile diagonally in front of lorry with the passenger side
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door open you can see that laurie is bent over looking into the car the final picture shows lori's car still
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in its parking spot but lori is gone the car lori was standing next to is leaving the parking lot
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the person we've described as lori ocker cannot be seen and we know circumstantially that she never made it
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into the door so that we believe was the depiction of her abduction an automobile expert identified the
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getaway car as a chevrolet celebrity although laurie's estranged husband robert didn't own a chevrolet celebrity
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his parents did robert's parents told police that robert had borrowed their car on the day laurie
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disappeared they said they sold the car a week after robert returned it [Music] police tracked it through three
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different car dealerships it transferred hands within the used car industry a few times and was ultimately
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purchased the first consumer the purchase that was a retired state police officer
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the police officer bought the vehicle for his stepdaughter who hadn't yet reached driving age
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so it had been sitting in a garage a lucky break for investigators it still maintained its integrity
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by the time we got to it we were able to access the vehicle test it scientifically for prints for
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trace evidence investigators searched the car but could find no traces of blood anywhere inside
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we did have some neighbors observe robert ocker scrupulously cleaning that car the day after lori
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disappeared but in the trunk of the car they found a clue a tiny strand of hair under a microscope
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the hair did not appear to be human on the left is a human hair on the right the hair from robert's trunk
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under an electron microscope magnified thousands of times the outer pattern of the hair was more
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box-like than human hair similar to the steps on a ladder the blue specks are dust particles
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after looking through numerous species of hair scientists discovered it was a cat hair
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investigators compared that hair to a cat hair from laurie's parents cat and
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found they were microscopically similar this was significant since the cat belonged to laurie's parents
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robert didn't have access to this cat and the cat never resided with robert and laurie when they lived together
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what was also significant robert's parents didn't own a cat and laurie had never been in robert's
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parents car before her disappearance investigators believed that this cat hair was proof that laurie had been
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in the trunk of robert's car robert docker knew his parents were going to be trading that vehicle in
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within a matter of days and in my opinion that's why he used that vehicle and not his own
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to abduct laurie with this evidence in hand police arrested robert awker for the murder of
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his estranged wife when i arrested robert locker he said to me you've got to be kidding
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what the worst part of it to me other than the fact that she died was when we were told that he had thrown
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her body in a dump there's no reason for someone like lori to wind up at a dope
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prosecutors believe the surveillance photograph supported their theory that robert abducted laurie in the mall
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parking lot to convince a jury prosecutors needed to prove that the automobile in the pictures was the
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chevrolet owned by robert walker's parents so they reconstructed the crime they
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placed the chevrolet robert was driving in the mall parking lot and took photographs from the same
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position height and at the same millimeter as the surveillance camera but this time
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the background was in focus at the top is the original surveillance picture of lori's alleged abduction
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at the bottom is the recreation photograph the vehicles in both pictures look identical
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[Music] and prosecutors discovered a possible motive for the murder money ocker had taken out an insurance policy
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on laurie and on his son listing himself as the beneficiary he had taken that policy out after they separated
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and robert and laurie had been engaged in a custody dispute over their son another possible motive
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a background check of robert awker revealed that he had a troubled past robert ocker had been in trouble most of
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his life as a juvenile up to his adulthood shortly after he married laurie robert
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was convicted for driving under the influence of alcohol and served a brief stint in prison
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while there robert ordered a book that described in detail how to commit a murder and get away with it
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the title of the book will not be revealed in this program for obvious reasons police officials blocked the delivery of
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this order [Music] prosecutors believe that on may 24 1989 as laurie drove into the mall parking
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lot robert was there waiting what are you doing here i need you to come with me right away
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when robert drove up and opened the door he may have used some type of excuse to
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get laurie inside possibly that their son was sick and he needed her help prosecutors admit they don't know where
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the murder took place the forensic evidence doesn't say all they know is that laurie was in
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robert's trunk sometime that day and was stabbed numerous times in the chest and
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back before her body was left at the dump when robert later cleaned the trunk he couldn't see
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the almost microscopic evidence that laurie left behind the cat hair which had stuck to laurie's
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clothing was transferred again onto the carpet of robert's trunk it was an ironic twist given laurie's
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lifelong love of animals i remember lori as being a very nice person just all around nice she was nice to
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animals she was nice to people and she loved her son absolutely loved her son robert awker was found guilty of first
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degree murder and kidnapping and was sentenced to death on appeal the sentence was reduced to
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life in prison without parole [Music] nasa's help was an important forensic breakthrough since it was one of the
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first times a crime scene photo had undergone digital video enhancement the enhancement of the video from the
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atm machine was something brand new something that had never been done before this is a case that set a trend
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for prosecutors certainly throughout pennsylvania i think there was an awakening
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a scientific awakening on the part of police on the part of prosecutors they realized suddenly that there were
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other tools at their disposal that perhaps they hadn't considered before and ironically those tools have now
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become somewhat routine [Music] [Music] so [Music] you