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[Music] in 2002 a letter arrived at the St Louis Post Dispatch newspaper from a man
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claiming to be a serial killer the letter included a map with an X marking the spot where he left one of his
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victims but the map told forensic scientists a lot more than just the location of a body it was their key to
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finding the [Music] killer just across the river from St Louis Missouri is a town called East St
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Louis in Illinois where prostitutes sell their Wares often to finance their drug
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addictions 34-year-old Alisa greenwade was one of those caught in a hopeless cycle it's rough when you see somebody
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that you care about and you feel helpless in April of 2001 Alisa green Wade's body was discovered in Washington
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Park Illinois where she had been strangled and there were ligature marks on her wrists and
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ankles a tire impression was found near her body which was photographed for analysis it was identified as a
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Bridgestone Potenza Tire just Days Later police find three more bodies all known
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prostitutes the victims were just displayed they were laid out right in the open right off the side of roadways
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but on one of the victims police found some evidence there was no drag marks on the body but there was a large Tire
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impression on Betty James Le this tire impression was from a Goodrich Advantage Tire different than
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the tire impression found at the earlier crime scene over the next 5 months three more
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bodies were found dumped along the streets of East St Louis rape kits from two of the victims
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yielded biological samples which were sent for testing the St Louis Police dep Department was convinced that the same
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individual committed all the murders since the crimes were committed in the same manner the victims were positioned
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there was obvious u a disregard for any type of um secrecy any type of cover up anything like that it was an obvious
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these were secondary locations 6 months after the first murder the crime stopped time went on and no more bodies
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appeared we figured either three things uh the subject was in custody he died or moved out of the
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area St Louis police called the FBI for further assistance special agent Melanie
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gimnez was assigned to the case was trying to compile the information so that I could get a package together to
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send to our Behavioral Sciences unit at quanico I wanted the profilers there to take a look at it and try to give us a
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profile of who they thought this person was Bob Morton was the behavioral profiler working on this case he knew
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immediately that these mergers would be difficult to solve there's no connection
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other than a business if you will transaction between the customer and The Prostitute and that anonymity gives him
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that blanket to just go in and come out most crime is between the races so if I'm if you have a black victim most of
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the time you have a black offender for 3 months the killer wasn't heard from but
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inexplicably the murgers started again over the next 5 months three more bodies were found dumped along the
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streets of East St Louis Verona Thompson Ivon Cruz and Brenda Beasley the death toll was now at 10
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n Bill Smith covered this story for the St Louis Post Dispatch Newspaper one of his stories profiled
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Teresa Wilson one of the victims of the serial killer what I think I ended up doing was humanizing um this woman who
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um in a way had had kind of dehumanized her own life by getting involved in prostitution and Drug
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activities and it wasn't long before Smith got a piece of fan mail it was a letter from the
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[Music] killer 5 days after Bill Smith's article on slain prostitute Teresa Wilson
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appeared in the newspaper he received an anonymous letter it had a very unusual return address I noticed also that the
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postage stamp in the upper right hand corner was upside down I started to read it and I thought it was a joke I thought
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it was somebody basically just yanking my chain dear Bill nice sa story about Teresa Wilson write one about green Wade
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write a good one and I'll tell you where many others are to prove I'm real here's
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directions to number 17 search in a 50- yard radius from the X put this story in
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the Sunday paper like the last I think he got aggravated and I think he wanted to somehow show us that
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these in fact were not human beings that we were dealing with and that he had some kind of a right to do what he was
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doing the letter referenced 17 murders although police only knew of 10 the return address included the words
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ithal them a bondage website along with the letter was a map of a remote area along Highway 67 which
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was marked with an X I almost didn't believe it it almost didn't seem real I
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mean I've been a newspaper reporter for 20 probably almost 25 years and uh I'd never had anything quite like that
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happen before and I kind of forgot how to be a newspaper reporter and uh for a few minutes didn't really know how to
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ask questions turned the letter over to the authorities there's a lot of taunting in
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a letter like that he's very proud of himself he feels that he's smarter than
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everybody else cuz he can send this letter and he can get credit for what he did uh that was the first thing that
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came in my mind is that you know he's looking for attention when police searched the area
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described in the map they discovered the remains of another victim now there was
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no doubt the letter came from the killer but who wrote the letter and where did it come from the return address said New
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York but the postmark revealed the letter was mailed in St Louis both the letter and the map were
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printed from a computer the map had been cropped to remove any copyright notices
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from the map company it had to take a lot of time he does not want to expose himself by going to a public library a
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Kinkos or wherever or else you can get access to a computer this is something you're going to do at home that you can
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print out not only that he printed it on the same kind of paper that the letter was on WE identified that the map was
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probably made by an internet or cdrom based mapping system they're very similar in appearance it wasn't like he
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photographed or photocopied a foldout map if you will this man is an intelligence agent with the Illinois
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State Police due to the sensitive nature of his job we cannot reveal his identity it was his job to perform the
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tedious process of finding the owner or copyright holder of that map he compared the map to every CD ROM
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and internet site that provides maps and directions after hours of searching he found the map used by the killer it was
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on an internet service called expedia.com they're more of a travel agency than
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they are a map service if you will and they keep where you travel in order to offer you goods and services at uh
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rental cars or them amusement park discounts and things like that Expedia said that Microsoft provided the maps
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for use on their site the map was proprietary meaning that Expedia was the only site which
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offered that map and no one else the FBI wanted to know the identity of everyone who had ACC assess this St
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Louis map between the day the newspaper article appeared May 19th and the postmark of the letter which was May
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21st it gave us a 4 to 5 day window of opportunity to see when that map had been accessed over the
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Internet when served with the subpoena Microsoft analyzed their computer download records and discovered that
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only one computer had downloaded that map during that 4-day period period and the size of the downloaded map was
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identical to the map sent to the newspaper but investigators needed to know the location of the
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computer Microsoft couldn't identify the individual by name only by what is called an IP number when you log into a
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web server you're assigned what's called an IP number Internet Protocol number
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that number follows you wherever you go so investigators performed what they call an IP reversal process the same
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technique used to find child pornographers the IP address which is four sets of numbers separated by
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periods identifies a particular computer's location on the internet computers linked to a network
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through a fixed connection typically have a permanent IP address while computers that access the internet with
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a dialup service are assigned an IP address for each session to find the location of this
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particular IP user the FBI turned to Worldcom which provides the dialup connection from computer to server
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worldcom's investigation revealed that the map was downloaded at 7:36 p.m. central Time on May 20th from the
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Expedia site through the MSN online service we then took that information and subpoenaed MSN who told us of course
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go to Microsoft that's their parent very similar to Expedia Microsoft then says
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but here's the person here's their how they pay their bill here's their address
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here's where they dial up from the map was downloaded by someone using the screen name Mori Travis when I first
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received the user name it did appear to be an individual's actual name however I
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knew that that didn't NE necessarily mean it was his true identity the home was in Ferguson a quiet middle class
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suburb just outside of St Lewis it was owned by a 55-year-old woman who had no prior criminal record
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investigators suspected the homeowner wasn't a killer but who had access to her computer
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[Music] a forensic computer search discovered that the map sent to the local newspaper
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revealing the location of a murder victim had been downloaded by a computer in this
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home investigators decided to have a look inside I knocked I said FBI we have a search warrant I announced at least
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three times eventually a man and a woman answered the door he was mad he was in a
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pair of boxer shorts the first thing out of his mouth was it's 7:00 in the morning you're right it's 7:00 in the
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morning and we're serving a federal search warant okay why are you here and our
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response was you know why we're here he dropped his head he said yeah I know why
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you're here inside police found a computer women's wigs and shoes a stun gun and a
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collection of homemade videotapes the basement was spattered with blood the ceiling walls doors and
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carpet even the furniture the man identified himself as 36-year-old Mor Travis a restaurant
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worker who had served time for a string of armed robberies his mother owned the home but
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didn't live there the woman was Travis's longtime girl girlfriend who told police
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she had never been in the basement of the house she didn't have any idea what
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was going on in that house and he didn't want her to know next to the desk was a
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file cabinet we broke into that cabinet and found a napsack in there and the napsack was we referred to it as a
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working bag in there was duct tape ligatures straps that to tie victims up a hose type stocking that he used as
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gloves forensic scientists gathered samples of the blood in the basement for analysis it was a mixture from six
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different individuals no one ever seen any activity or anything around that house
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and so it's just pretty scary you think your neighborhood is really safe and you
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don't know who you're next door a neighbor is investigators found several
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drafts of the letter sent to the newspaper on his computer's hard drive they also found two cars at the
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house on one of the cars was a Goodrich Advantage Tire that matched the tire impression left on Betty James leg a
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tire on the other car was a Bridgestone Potenza which matched the tire impression near Alisa green Wade's
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body Travis was taken to St Louis Police Department headquarters he did not talk about the
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crimes and actually we didn't ask him about any of the crimes our concern was
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attempting to get him to cooperate with us to take us to more victims he claimed
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in his letter that there were 17 victims Our concern of course was to find the rest of the victims you've heard it
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before but he he is just pure evil I have never interviewed anybody like that his entire
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world circled around him he was in control he wanted to be the focus of everything and had no remorse no nothing
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he he was the only way he can say it he he is a monster he is just pure evil during questioning he asked for a
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soda later on when we went to another interview room I had the soda can taken to the
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lab Mary Beth Carr swabbed the area near the opening for epithelial cells in Travis's saliva which could be used for
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DNA testing when Travis's DNA profile was compared to the biological material
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found on two of the murder victims yvon Cruz and Brenda Beasley Travis's DNA
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matched eventually Travis asked police how they found him we told him well there was a computer inquiry made over
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the internet and he cussed a couple times and had some nice words to say about the internet and then he cussed
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again about his computer and he was very very upset I don't think he realized
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what he had done once he did that and it dawned on him it hit him like a ton of bricks during questioning Travis refused
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to reveal the locations of any of his other victims before police could question him
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again there was another murder which would end the investigation [Music] Forever on June 7th 2002 Mori Troy
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Travis was charged with kidnapping and murder the homemade videotapes discovered in Travis's home showed
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Travis socializing with various women but one videotape contained horrendous images the likes of which
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police had never seen before there's even an actual murder I mean he you witness him actually killing one of
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these people what was going on inside his head why he did what he did that's
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how I look at it trying to figure out what what makes a person do this and I thought about her pleading and begging
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for her life and him stringing her to death like they left left her with nothing but a t-shirt on and bowing her
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hand and stuff so I you know it's it's it's been difficult investigators also found plans
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in Travis's home to expand his basement dungeon he was planning on building a
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two cell holding tank in his basement he had ordered more handcuffs and leg shackles through the
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internet he was even getting bids on expanding his basement to put the secret dungeon in only God knows how far this
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would have gone based on the computer's forensic evidence investigators believe that
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Travis enjoyed reading the articles about his crimes in the newspaper police will say that these men live vicariously
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through the media sometimes after uh their crimes are committed um so they can take the newspaper article or they
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can take the TV show or whatever it might be and um and they can relive their crime and get a kind of a high
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from from that also and on the night of May 20th Travis typed his letter to journalist Bill
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Smith at 7:36 p.m. he visited the expedia.com site looking for a map he could use to show authorities where they
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could find one of his victims after downloading the map he carefully cropped the copyright
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notices from around the map thinking this would eliminate the possibility of tracing
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it but he was wrong the map was as good as a fingerprint in this case a computer
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fingerprint there's a lot of crime that's solved that way and a lot of it
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is online crime um online investigators use this methodology all the time Mor Travis was taken into prison to await
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trial he was placed under a 24-hour suicide watch where guards check on him every 15 minutes he didn't want to go
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back to the penitentiary he made that very clear to us I'm not going back to
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the penitentiary and you're not going to give me the needle for whatever reason guards
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skipped two backto back checks it was all the time Travis needed to hang himself in his cell without ever
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admitting guilt or were leading police to the bodies of his other victims but this is where he was found hanging his
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hands were bound behind him he had a uh washcloth in his mouth and a pillowcase over his head they had let him literally
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slip right through their fingers to say that I was angry and to say the people in The Newsroom were
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angry about it and that the community was angry about it is really an understatement I think people I think
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people were Furious and the families of those women should have been Furious um that
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absolutely no way should have ever been allowed to happen when Mr Travis hung himself he took all the answers with him
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we have a million questions I think it's amazing that it's such an incredible
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tool that through analyzing the computer we were able to catch someone was committing crimes like this had anybody
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said hey the guy's going to send you a map and for the investigators to be able
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to back track to him never thought that in my wildest dreams it it's almost like
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him saying okay here's a map and this is how you find me x marks a spot how many
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times does that really happen it doesn't [Music] w [Music]