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[Music] the murder of an eccentric millionaire was not entirely a surprise he flaunted his wealth and cared little
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about personal security the evidence clearly indicated robbery but investigators wondered
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if there was more [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] battle creek michigan is home to one of
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the largest breakfast food makers in the world some call it cereal city eighty-year-old robert rogers lived his
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entire life in battle creek through some real estate investments and his ownership of a small trucking
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business he was a millionaire many times over he was a tough old bird he never pulled any punches he was always a son
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of a to me rogers was stubborn too he always carried large sums of money and didn't care who knew it he would
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joke that he would have several thousand in this pocket several thousand in a pants pocket and a couple
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more thousand in his back pocket and he generally did not surprisingly rogers became a target for local drug
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gangs and petty thieves he was a victim several times of robberies they would take his money from him beat
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him up his house had been broken into a few times also so yeah it was a problem for him but he
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didn't change his pattern it seemed like he'd still carry the large sums of money
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sharon zachary lived next door to rogers and acted as his caretaker sharon zachary had become almost like a
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daughter to him she would take care of him she would look in on him she would come and visit him it worked out nicely
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until the day sharon zachary stopped by roger's home and found that it had been broken into
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what's the problem when police arrived they found robert rogers on the living
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room floor he had been beaten to death the person that committed his crime did not want any possibility of mr
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rogers to be alive to identify the perpetrator it looked like a piece of firewood was
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used to break the rear sliding glass door drawers and closets had been ransacked
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but if the motive was robbery the perpetrator had not been entirely successful after the homicide they found 133
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thousand dollars in cash hidden in the house which that by itself uh was such an attention grabber in this
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community i mean that was the mo that was one of the most unusual things about the whole incident
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the blood evidence revealed rogers was beaten at two different times the victim sustained some injuries
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and then had enough time to lay there his wounds even started to heal and then he was hit again that's bloodthirsty
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that's cold but to come back and he's not dead and just beat him again to make sure he's
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dead that's cold and the forensic evidence indicated the killer approached the body yet a third
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time mr rogers when he was found his his arms and actually his forearms and hands were
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up in the air this phenomenon is called rigor mortis a stiffening of the body that occurs
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several hours after death what this would tell investigators about the time period is that someone moved him
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three or four hours after he was dead this meant the killer was inside the house for hours
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[Music] when millionaire robert rogers was found beaten to death in his home police began their investigation by
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questioning family members and relatives and they learned that rogers had an ongoing squabble with his only son
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donald they were barely on speaking terms donald told his father he was concerned
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about his memory problems and wanted to take control of his father's finances
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rogers retaliated by cutting his son out of his will like i said he was a tough old bird yet
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it was i could never do anything quite good enough for him [Music] donald insisted
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he didn't murder his father although he admitted the two had serious problems
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we were putting a roof on the building out here and i guess i just wasn't doing it fast
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enough he he picked up a thing of shingles and threw him at me and i went right over the end of the
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roof flat on my back knocking him off the roof when a police officer hears that there's that much animosity
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and and especially when they find out donald had been cut out of the will out of a
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fairly substantial estate that's got to raise a lot of red flags for an investigator
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at robert rogers autopsy the medical examiner determined the cause of death was repeated blows to the
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head with a blunt object this clearly was a homicide with the number of blows it appeared he had been struck 25 to 30
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times i really can't speak to the state of mind of the killer although it certainly appears that they're enraged
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but no murder weapon was found at the scene when we leave a crime scene without that
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murder weapon we have our work cut out for us in order to put that suspect in the scene
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the forensic evidence proved that someone turned rogers over several hours after death presumably to search his
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pockets for money for investigators this offered a possible clue how would someone grab hold of him to turn him
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over and we did notice that the belt had been disturbed slightly meaning that had been twisted a little
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bit and so we kind of thought that perhaps maybe the suspect grabbed hold of the
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belt the belt was removed for forensic testing the initial examination found no fingerprints
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so they tried super glue fuming it's just simply heating up the super glue inside of an
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enclosed chamber allowing that super glue to vaporize and it has the physical properties to want to adhere to the
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fingerprint residuals left behind when an item is touched and it revealed a partial thumb print
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about five inches from the buckle the quality of that latent fingerprint was very poor
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again on a scale of one to ten this laden fingerprint was about a two to a three
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this is the only belt that i've ever obtained a fingerprint off of investigators found their next clue
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in the shards of broken glass there was a beautiful footwear impression it was maybe half of a half of a shoe or the
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whole ball area of the shoe was present this may have happened when the killer stepped into the house
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after breaking the glass so it gave me a lot to work with with regards to looking for accidental
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characteristics or markings using various databases analysts quickly discovered the print was from the left
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shoe of white pure10 brand tennis shoes also at the crime scene investigators found
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a set of keys in the grass next to one of the ponds on the 10-acre property the keys opened the doors to roger's
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home divers searched the ponds and a week later found a three-foot length of pipe
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with a water sprinkler attachment at the end while there were no fingerprints or hair
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on the pipe there was a tiny speck of blood which was sent for dna testing how it got left there
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has always been amazing to us because it obviously had to have dried first when it was found put in the pond
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otherwise it would have washed off as soon as we're thrown in the pond to determine if this was the murder
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weapon investigators devised a test to see the marks this pipe would make on a human
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skull at the time there weren't a lot of different surfaces or forensically available
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sources for for reproducing human skin and um so in this particular case i used just a
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honeydew melon it had a smooth surface and it was rounded it was approximately the same size as a human head
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she struck the melons from different angles and with varying amounts of force when i hit the test surface to try to
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create as many different patterns as i could using that particular pipe and then i compared them to the wound
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pattern seen on the victim scientists concluded rogers was killed with this instrument
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why was this significant the person that had the keys may have dropped them when they threw the murder weapon into
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the pond investigators wondered whether the house keys belonged to the victim's
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son or someone else [Applause] police now suspected that the robert rogers crime scene was staged and that
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the killer actually entered the home with a set of house keys now we call into question the whole idea
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of the breaking entering we call in the question whether this was a crime of some outsider coming in and trying to
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rob mr rogers or was it someone that had access to his house access to mr rogers
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investigators asked the victim's estranged son donald where he was at the time of his father's
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murder he said he had an alibi and offered to take a polygraph test the guy who gives it to me he says well
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you passed the polygraph test i says he's passed it he says yeah he says you're a lousy liar
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which is that's cool you know so investigators turned their attention to sharon zachary who not only
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lived next door to rogers but worked as his caretaker sharon said she was with a friend
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shopping all day across town but investigators discovered something suspicious she made several large expenditures in
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the months leading up to roger's murder she started spending money from about january to around april it's
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estimated about 65 thousand dollars was spent on her own personal items she bought a new car
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a boat and took her family on a caribbean vacation the expenses exceeded her family's
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discretionary income sharon was a part-time car salesperson her husband was a sales representative
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and investigators also learned that rogers named sharon the sole beneficiary of his multi-million dollar
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estate armed with the search warrant investigators confiscated sharon's shoes
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for analysis i believe we got over 20 or 30 pairs of shoes into the laboratory one pair caught michaud's attention a
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pair of size six and a half tennis shoes michoad dusted the shoes with powder and applied a sticky sheet of acetate to
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lift the print all shoe impressions are distinctive when a shoe is made and it comes out of
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the factory it's exactly like every other shoe made in that particular mold and
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as soon as you start walking on that shoe you get microscopic scratches and cuts and nicks in the bottom of the shoe
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that makes that shoe different from all others in the world the shoe impression found on the glass
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at the crime scene had various nicks and scrape marks interestingly sharon zachary's left
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tennis shoe was the same size make and model as the impression found at the crime scene
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and it also had the same nicks and scrape marks the surface was so clean it made just a beautiful very
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detailed impression there was enough accidental markings on the glass that she was able to compare to the
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shoes and find a positive match to one shoe and only one shoe that made that print
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fingerprint analysts had a more difficult time comparing sharon's prints to the one found on the victim's belt
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they had to study the ridge details and figure out the direction of the print and what part of which finger to compare
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after three days they discovered the print on the victim's belt was the side of sharon's left thumb
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took a lot of hours looking at that latent fingerprint this latent print enough detail in it to make an
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identification was not a very high quality latent fingerprint when confronted with the forensic
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evidence sharon denied she was the killer she insisted she had no motive but the victim's financial record
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suggested otherwise in this case we found a large sum of cash disappearing out of his account
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routinely over the time from january to april that money went right into sharon zachary's account
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sharon convinced him to give her a power of attorney and sharon convinced him to
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give her a checkbook and then when she got onto some of his checking accounts and she just started using them as her
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own and you know she got greedy and decided she wanted it all records indicated that sharon zachary
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stole up to a hundred twenty thousand dollars and there was clear evidence that rogers
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discovered the embezzlement sharon zachary was helping herself to mr rogers funds
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and mr rogers apparently was not happy about that and had his power of attorney withdrawn to put a
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stop to sharon zachary helping herself to his money sharon also found out that rogers
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planned to remove her from his will i believe sharon zachary was in a hurry at that time to kill mr rogers before he
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could make that change in his will i believe greed is definitely what drove sharon zachary
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the dna test results of the blood found on the metal pipe revealed the blood was
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robert rogers more proof that it was the murder weapon when dna was found on the pipe it was
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fairly spectacular and it's because we really didn't think that the dna would
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still be on the pipe two weeks later 31 year old sharon zachary was charged with
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the murder of robert rogers mr rogers at one point in time he even told an attorney
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that she was the daughter he never had it is ironic that robert rogers attempting to seek sanctuary for himself
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to seek protection from persons who wanted to rob and hurt him trusted sharon zachary and it's ironic that this
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person in turn turned on him and became the very thing that he was trying to guard against
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i would never believe that something like this could ever happen this is only the kind of stuff that you read about
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but looking back i can see that this can happen to anybody sharon zachary and her family lived next
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door to robert rogers and the two became friends roger's eyesight was failing
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and sharon not only befriended him she also helped by writing checks so he could pay his bills
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but prosecutors found evidence that sharon was doing more than that and was actually helping herself to some
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of roger's money tens of thousands of it well she got a sizable chunk in just the
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little time that she was her and him were associated the trip to the caribbean for
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her and all her family the speedboats the vehicle on the day of the murder prosecutors believe sharon went to
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roger's house intending to kill him before he could change his will and remove her as beneficiary
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prosecutors think sharon grabbed a piece of pipe from roger's yard used her keys
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to gain entrance and struck him over the head repeatedly as he lay unconscious she spent hours searching the house for
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the money he had stashed away if she did find money she didn't find it all at some point
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she must have realized he wasn't dead and she struck him again once again she searched the house for money
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before leaving the house sharon turned roger's body over to search his pockets leaving her partial
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thumb print on his leather belt [Music] to make it look like a robbery she threw a piece of firewood through
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the sliding glass door but she stepped on a shard of glass leaving a clear image of her shoe
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impression on her way back home sharon tried to dispose of the pipe but dropped her keys nearby
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a mistake which led to the discovery of the murder weapon sharon zachary after committing this
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crime established an alibi to be seen in different locations at a point far away from her home
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to try to establish that she couldn't have committed a crime by and having not
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been there we always wondered if it was sharon zachary by herself or sharon zachary
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with others we don't know there may have been there may not have been we have no clue we have no evidence
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at the trial sharon zachary insisted she was innocent but the forensic evidence told a
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different story she was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison
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i'm glad they got her but i don't want to sound like i'm out for vengeance
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although if they wanted to kill her i'd volunteer it was the shoe impression on a shard of
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glass and the partial thumb print on the leather belt that solved the case in my 12 years of
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doing late print work this case ranks right up near the top if not the most difficult latent
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fingerprint that i've had to identify so it was very very satisfying case for me to be
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involved with criminals always seem to make mistakes i believe the mistakes in this case by sharon
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zachary were because she was fighting the clock this trial would have never happened without the forensics
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we had a clear motive money but to show that she was there to show that the print the shoe print
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the finger the thumbprint where from her would have not had we wouldn't had a
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case [Music] [Applause] [Music] you