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they thought the fire would cover their crime but one tiny clue no bigger than a
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thumbtack remained and it held all the information needed to put a trio of cold-blooded killers
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behind bars [Music] [Music] [Music] on a cold january night in 1991 the camden tennessee fire department got a
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call about a house fire outside of town but by the time the firefighters arrived
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the home was completely engulfed in flames because it was in a rural area they didn't even put it out they just let it
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burn and they left the scene the homeowner was named danny vine since his truck was gone
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firefighters assumed he wasn't in the house when the fire started the truck was missing and the trailer but della
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thornton his fiancee her car was there key's in ignition and basically everyone
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just thought she pulled up got in trouble with him and they left there was virtually nothing left of the
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two-bedroom frame home the house was fairly small 900 square feet to a thousand square feet max very
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small uh total burnout uh nothing left but just the uh the plate that goes around where you nail the
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joist and part of the front porch the next day family members went through the rubble
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tragically dany's brothers found bones in the debris the sheriff's department responded law
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enforcement responded because you know you find bones in a in a fire that definitely
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ratchets up the investigation basically there was nothing left the bones were basically just powder except
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the skull and the teeth after careful analysis a team of forensic anthropologists from the
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university of tennessee concluded that the bones were from two people using dental records they were
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identified as danny and his girlfriend della thornton it just seemed like i was having a
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nightmare i mean it just seemed like it was a dream that i'd had and that i would wake up you know
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because we live in a small town camden is a small rural area things like that just don't happen
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27 year old danny vine was a professional scuba diver he bought and sold mussel shells used to
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make mother of pearl jewelry and to seed cultured pearls basically the mussel shell buyer at that
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time it was a purely cash business they would have to keep five or ten thousand dollars in cash on
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their person at all times to buy muscle shells danny from what i understand treated everybody right paid a fair
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price if he told you something then that would be that would be the truth his fiancee 29 year old della thornton
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was a factory worker their wedding date was only a few months away della she was a sweet girl she was
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soft-spoken just kind of easy going pretty blonde with brown eyes they weren't a good-looking couple
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their remains were on the sofa in the living room strongly suggesting either murder
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or murder suicide the reason that it's important is because if your house is burning you're
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not going to sit there on the couch and pop some popcorn and watch it burn while
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you're inside of it you're going to make some kind of an attempt to get out if
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you're able to get out if you're not injured if you're not being bound by
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something investigators also found the remains of the couple's dog the only thing in the
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house that was consistent with a living thing was the puppy from the position of
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the puppy was found huddled in the corner [Music] a specially trained arson dog detected
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an accelerant and investigators noticed what's known as a saddle burn near the front door
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a saddleburn is what we refer to as a burn down and it's where a flammable liquid
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has been poured and it runs in a downward direction and that's the way that fire will burn
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gas chromatograph mass spectrometry of the ashes confirmed gasoline was used to start the fire
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investigators estimated that almost 10 gallons had been poured in the home and on the bodies
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the fire took more than just the lives of danny della and their dog it also destroyed potential evidence
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a forensic anthropologist discovered that danny vine and della thornton weren't killed by the house fire
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he found remnants of a bullet in danny's skull as a blood bullet enters the bone
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the edges of the bullet are peeled off and it begins to splatter get it spattering all over the inside of the
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skull and you get these little tiny pin points that are dense and the x-ray won't go through that that's why they're
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white or light on the x-ray film the bullet was from a 38 caliber he also found lead fragments in della's
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skull the theory at that point is its murder because it was not a suicide because there was no 38 caliber pistol
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found in the house there was a 45 danny had but there was no 38. and so whoever shot him left the
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scene so at that point we felt sure we had a murder on a deserted road a few miles from
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danny and duller's home investigators found danny's pickup truck the trailer was attached
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but was empty dany's friends gave police a possible motive for the murders they'd seen 2500
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worth of muscle shells in dany's trailer before his death to a muscle diver that
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trailer full of shells is a trailer full of money we also found tracks where a vehicle had
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backed up to the trailer to unload off of danny's trailer onto another vehicle
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and once the truck is located and the shells are are missing uh then our theory is that it's that
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it's robbery unfortunately there were no fingerprints truck had been wiped down there were
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nobody's fingerprints not even danny vines in that in that truck danny bought muscle shells from
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independent scuba divers then sold them to companies that made jewelry or use them to seed cultured pearls
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so you can really say that most all the pearls of the world originate from right
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here on the scenic tennessee river but mussel shell divers had the reputation of being very tough
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characters you have to be physically tough you've got to be mentally tough to get down in
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that cold water and that dark water in the bottom of the tennessee river and fill around with your hands in the mud
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and hope that you don't find something you don't need to the bottom line is most of these muscle
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shell divers some didn't but a lot of the ones we dealt with in this case almost all had multiple felony
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convictions since the motive for the murders looked like robbery investigators contacted
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every company that bought shells in the two weeks following the crime and they got a break
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one company said they were offered shells that looked suspicious they had lost their water weight after
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several days out of the water the mussels would open up a little bit let all the water drain out and the shells
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are sold by the pound and so they're not worth anywhere near as much once the
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water gets out and the shells were damaged as if they had already been through a shaker a
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machine that separates them according to size if a bunch of shells shows up at another
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shell buyers camp with chips and marks and things on it which indicates it's
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already been through a shaker then that is going to be an indicator that either the shells are stolen
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well pretty much the shells are stolen investigators learned that the person who sold these damaged shells was the
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wife of a local shell diver gary bruce gary and his two brothers jerry lee and robert all had prior arrests for
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numerous crimes they often skirted the law through intimidation i remember during an
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interview with a witness in an undisclosed location they blew up a building located behind
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where the interview was being conducted just to let the witness know i can get to you anytime i want to
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well one brother j.c bruce had been convicted of rape attempted murder where he had raped a young girl and
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strangled her he thought she was dead luckily she survived to testify against him he was out of prison at the time
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this happened he had been pardoned by the governor a number of years earlier when police interviewed the bruce
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brothers they denied any involvement in the murders and claimed they were elsewhere
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they all came in and their mother kathleen bruce came in and provided an alibi so they were all on her property
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at a shed outside shooting pool at a pool table all night for the moment at least the case
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appeared to be a dead end [Music] police were convinced that the three bruce brothers had something to do with
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danny vine and della thornton's murder but they faced a sizable hurdle the bruce brothers claimed to have an
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alibi that they were with their mother that night so police dug a little deeper and
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gradually that alibi started to crack they interviewed this woman who says no i was
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at the bruce trailer that night with kathleen bruce and none of the bruces were there
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according to a local businessman the bruce brothers were at a gas station that night just hours before the fire at
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danny vines home the bruises pulled up and took out two five gallon gas containers and filled
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those up with gasoline one of the brothers told the store owner that there's going to be a hot time in camden
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tonight and again we felt like that that was involving the fire but this information alone
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wasn't enough we had an alibi that wouldn't hold up but we still couldn't put them on the
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scene at the time we've got a lot of rumor a lot of innuendo we've got people
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that are saying that they're in one place but they're really someplace else
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so investigators turned to the only hard evidence they had the burned remains of the victims
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and here the forensic anthropologist provided some useful information burn patterns
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indicated the danny vine fell forward on the sofa after he was shot this was a lucky break in this
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investigation because it just happens that where the bullet was was the least burned part of the
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body the intensity of the fire was not as great on the front of the skull as it was on
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the back the lead inside the bullet had melted but the bullet's copper jacket peeled
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away after hitting the bone and it was not destroyed copper has a melting point of somewhere
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near 2000 degrees fahrenheit whereas the lead core which would have been the center portion of the bullet it had a
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melting point of somewhere near 600 degrees fahrenheit on the copper jacket of the bullet were
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rifling characteristics that could identify the weapon that fired it but the bruce is denied owning a
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38-caliber pistol all we have is a bullet and we don't have a gun to match it back to
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but then a witness came forward who said she was at gary bruce's home one day
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when he was target shooting she says that at some point he stopped took a pistol out that he had i think it
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was a revolver a 38 revolver and took a couple shots at a tree over there the woman took investigators to gary
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bruce's home and found the tree [Music] sure enough investigators found a bullet hole
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[Music] so they cut down the tree to look inside the puzzle was beginning to take form
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now and take shape and we felt like that was a crucial piece of evidence in this case
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investigators used a hammer and chisel to gain access to the bullet without damaging it
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when they finally got to it they saw that it was just as the witness described a 38-caliber round
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both the bullet from the tree and from danny vine's skull were sent to ballistics expert
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tommy heflin in most firearms a series of spirals that are cut or pressed into the barrel
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at a twist either right or left that gives the bullet its rotational spin to give it its accuracy to its target
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even though both bullets had sustained significant damage heflin was able to compare the
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striations on both bullets and discovered that the lands and grooves lined up perfectly
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it was very high i was 100 certainty it was the same gun we never found the gun but we could prove it was gary bruce's
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gun through the circumstantial evidence and it was critical evidence because of it
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we were able to determine what gun it came from and who it belonged to thanks to a stray bullet in a tree
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the bruce brothers were arrested and charged with two counts of first degree murder
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but bringing the brothers to trial wouldn't be easy when carol vine heard the bruce brothers
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had been arrested for the murder of her son danny and future daughter-in-law della
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she turned pale that's because della told her she'd been approached by jerry lee bruce shortly
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before her murder jerry had tried to get her to go out with him during the time that you know
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before that not too long before that and she told him no and she said you'll
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never be half the man that danny is and so i think that's why he wanted to to shoot her
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to kill her prosecutors say the primary motive was robbery this was wintertime too cold for the bruce brothers to dive
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for shells in the icy tennessee waters so they decided to steal shells instead on the night of the murder
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witnesses placed the three bruce brothers at a local gas station filling plastic containers with gasoline
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gary bruce told the owner it was going to be a hot night in camden [Music] [Music]
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prosecutors believe that the bruce brothers robbed danny vine of any cash he had on hand and fully intended to
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kill him during the robbery della drove up to the house and saw the bruce's truck
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she knew there was trouble [Applause] she went inside to help and the bruces shot them both with a
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38-caliber pistol chemical tests prove they poured gasoline throughout the house and set the fire
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the position of danny's head protected the copper jacket of the bullet from melting
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[Music] this tiny fragment tied the bruises to the murder the brothers drove danny's truck to a
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deserted location and took dany's muscle shells worth approximately 2 500 they wiped their fingerprints off the
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truck but they made a huge blunder with the shells they either didn't know or
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perhaps didn't care that danny had already put these shells through a shaker to determine their value
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when gary bruce's wife tried to sell the shells the buyer knew right away that the shelves had been stolen
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the shell business is a multi-million dollar business a lot of people buy shelves
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illegally and sometimes they don't question it where they come from it's just uh
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uh but they have to have a receipt you you have to get receipts down uh and in this case we were able to
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track the receipts down where the bruce and bruce's had sold these shells up in up in perrier tennessee
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as the brothers awaited trial gary bruce peeled back part of a chain-link fence in the prison recreation yard and
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escaped we had a lot of trouble trying to find him we searched on horseback we searched in the water we run helicopters
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we had agents from all kinds of departments everywhere for 14 months gary bruce eluded police
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he even made the fbi's 10 most wanted list but thanks to an anonymous tip he was finally apprehended 200 miles
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away in nashville tennessee working as a landscaper gary jerry lee and robert bruce were all
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tried and convicted of two counts of first-degree murder arson firearms violations and conspiracy to obstruct
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justice each was sentenced to life in prison without parole they were doing that to get money
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but it took my child the thornton's daughter it took any future grandchildren that we
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could have had kathleen bruce the boy's 60-year-old mother was convicted for providing her sons with a
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false alibi and was sentenced to eight years in prison i don't think they anticipated all that
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they got but the fact is that they got all they deserved a lot of people were were very happy
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it lowered the crime rate significantly in benton county in the area in the end the bruce brothers were no
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match for the power of forensic science i think that we're very lucky in this
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case and that mainly people when they set a house on fire think it's going to
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destroy everything well it doesn't there's always evidence there and in this case there was quite a lot
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of evidence the forensics in this case was absolutely critical but for the ballistics
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but for the forensic of cause and origin for the arson case there would not have
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been much of a case [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you