00:00:05
up next three college students are murdered it looks as if one person had killed
00:00:11
them all he picked on young women picked on pretty women police immediately have
00:00:16
a suspect in law enforcement terms it's almost like winning the lottery but not
00:00:21
everyone was convinced he was the one if he's gonna brag about three why not four
00:00:26
he mentioned all the other cases but never mentioned susan chummy for 20 years questions remained until decades
00:00:34
old evidence reveals the terrible truth it's a horrifying thing to think that
00:00:40
there's more than one monster in your community at one time [Music] it was a week before the fall semester
00:00:55
began in 1981 susan schumache moved back to the campus of southern illinois university at
00:01:02
carbondale she was anxious to start her senior year she had just gotten a job at the radio
00:01:08
station and she was going to be doing some of the uh the broadcast work she makes section 3
00:01:18
description narration and dialogue on august 17th susan left the radio station just before 6 pm
00:01:27
she planned to meet her girlfriend for dinner but she never arrived the friend who she was supposed to have
00:01:36
supper with called her roommate mary mary did not know where she was at later into the
00:01:41
night approaching midnight they've started calling all their friends they went to places where they thought she
00:01:47
might have gone the next day with still no word from susan the police were notified
00:01:57
that night officers noticed some trampled vegetation near a dirt footpath students
00:02:03
used to walk from one side of the campus to the other as he walked into the the weeds a little
00:02:10
deeper with the flashlight and the weeds were quite high it was very difficult to
00:02:14
see then once he saw susan's body this was something that really undid us this was it was obviously a horrible
00:02:23
thing and i immediately started crying it was a very uh terrible moment for me it appeared that susan had been beaten
00:02:32
strangled and sexually assaulted police assumed the crime occurred just after susan left
00:02:39
the radio station between 6 and 6 30 p.m which meant she was abducted and attacked
00:02:47
in broad daylight this was in the middle of the day that this happened and i think that really
00:02:53
that was one of the more scary things to people is that it was so random police asked anyone who might have seen
00:02:59
anything suspicious to come forward they also interviewed all of susan's friends including her past romantic
00:03:07
relationships there had been a few people who had attempted to date her that she had
00:03:12
denied so they of course became a part of a growing suspect pool police also had to consider whether the
00:03:21
perpetrator was a stranger because of the location of the murder and its accessibility to a number of
00:03:28
dormitories they were looking at dormitory lists and who lived who lived in the area she was such a blameless
00:03:34
victim the thing that we're all afraid of is some monster coming out of nowhere
00:03:39
and snagging someone we love or snagging ourselves and that's what happened to
00:03:43
susan then police learned of a remarkable coincidence on the day susan was murdered a
00:03:51
subcontractor working on the new campus gymnasium had employed a man who'd been
00:03:57
a suspect in two murders both victims were students at the university he was within three or four hundred
00:04:06
yards you gotta remember he's working on a campus where there are eight or nine
00:04:09
thousand pretty girls walking around every day the investigators of that day figured that if if a woman was raped and
00:04:15
murdered he's the one that did it [Music] within days of susan schumache's murder
00:04:26
john paul phillips topped the list of suspects he was known about town as kind of a
00:04:32
hellion i met him early in his life he was a had a terrible temper i met him when he
00:04:38
was 15 or 16 years old in a fight he tried to beat some kid to death with a baseball bat
00:04:44
phillips had been a suspect in the rape and murder of two other southern illinois university students five years
00:04:50
earlier twenty-one-year-old teresa clarke was found raped and murdered in her apartment off campus
00:04:57
at the time john paul phillips lived in an apartment about a hundred feet away we worked that case to death we didn't
00:05:05
have any fingerprints dna was way in the future we had no witnesses we didn't
00:05:10
have much of anything to go on but we felt pretty comfortable he might be her person
00:05:15
one year later 24 year old kathleen mcsherry was also found raped and stabbed in her apartment again
00:05:22
john paul phillips lived in the neighborhood again no dna no fingerprints well where's john
00:05:28
paul now well it turned out he lived just a few blocks north there had been insufficient evidence to
00:05:36
arrest john paul phillips for either murder but in susan schumache's murder police finally got a break
00:05:43
at susan's autopsy the medical examiner found two foreign hairs on her body presumably from her killer
00:05:53
homes the body here one was a pubic hair that was recovered from susan's body
00:05:58
phillips willingly provided hair samples for comparison based on microscopic examination
00:06:04
philips hair was not similar so he was eliminated as a suspect despite the hair analysis
00:06:12
susan's family was convinced that john paul phillips was susan's killer and
00:06:18
they didn't take phillips into custody at the time they didn't arrest him or charge him which i
00:06:24
didn't understand at the time because i thought that they had enough reason to
00:06:31
later phillips committed several assaults that landed him in jail he went out to the devil's kitchen like
00:06:39
spotted a young lady and her boyfriend at one of the campgrounds approached him with a gun he went over
00:06:46
to carterville and kidnapped a girl too but police finally got a break in susan shoemake's case
00:06:55
first they found susan's yellow backpack in the piles fork creek behind the dormitories
00:07:01
her wallet was missing friends said she usually carried about ten dollars and the campus worker found a small red
00:07:10
bag with some toiletry items not far from where susan shoemake was murdered inside
00:07:16
police found some identification he finds a pharmaceutical bottle that has the name daniel willison
00:07:24
but it was prescribed at the bernard correctional center they did some checking on him and found that he was on
00:07:30
parole and so he became a person of interest twenty-one-year-old daniel willison had
00:07:37
recently been released from prison for a burglary conviction he was a handyman working on campus at
00:07:44
the time of the murder daniel was working at the quad apartments which is probably about a
00:07:50
quarter mile away from the crime scene when questioned by police willison said he had an alibi for the
00:07:57
night of susan shumake's murder that he was with a friend and the officers took him to the various
00:08:04
locations trying to find this person with whom he spent the night were unsuccessful
00:08:11
willison cooperated with police and provided hair samples but the next day when police went to
00:08:17
speak with him again he was gone in his room they found a torn note some of the pieces were in the toilet the rest were
00:08:27
in a trash can it ran almost like a suicide note i don't know why it's always me
00:08:33
i know i can't handle prison again i know everyone is better off this way police continued to search for willison
00:08:41
until they examined his hair sample willison's hair was not consistent with the hair found
00:08:49
on susan's body so he was eliminated as a suspect the case threatened to go cold
00:08:56
until john paul phillips now in prison for rape and kidnapping allegedly bragged about his murders to his prison
00:09:04
cellmate thomas maccabee one day in the cell he relates all these crimes that he
00:09:12
committed to thomas moccaby and provides detailed information about these murders
00:09:17
detail that only the killer would have known phillips provided details about the
00:09:22
murders of college students kathleen mcsherry and teresa clark but also confessed to killing a third woman a
00:09:30
waitress joan weatherall but he never mentioned susan if he's going to brag about three
00:09:38
why not four he never mentioned miss shoemake but the conventional wisdom back then was that he was responsible
00:09:46
police believe that john paul phillips killed susan shumake too but if they were wrong
00:09:54
a murderer was still at large [Music] in november of 1986 john paul phillips went on trial for the
00:10:07
murder of joan wetherall one of the three murders phillips allegedly confessed to during a
00:10:13
conversation with his prison cellmate in fact when we were done the judge said i'm not only satisfied he did this one
00:10:20
but i think he put on a good enough case i could convict him for the other two judge said that open court
00:10:26
on the day he was sentenced phillips addressed the court he said well i didn't kill her but i hope she felt
00:10:34
every bit of it and the judge immediately sentenced him to death and he went off to prison on
00:10:40
death row but before the sentence was carried out he died in prison of a heart attack at
00:10:46
the age of 40. although phillips bragged to his prison cellmate about killing three women
00:10:53
he never mentioned susan shumake but her family still believed he was responsible
00:11:01
we thought that phillips was the murderer and he went to jail and he died in jail so my family consequently
00:11:07
thought well this is done it's over he's dead others weren't so sure
00:11:15
for one thing susan's murder was different from the others most of his murders
00:11:22
were under darkness and that wasn't the situation with susan chummy minor maybe but just enough that it
00:11:33
didn't quite seem right lieutenant paul eckles was susan's classmate in college and had kept the
00:11:40
picture from her case file on his desk you could just look at that picture you could see that this was a happy
00:11:48
moment a father standing with his daughter very proud and knowing the story that i knew by
00:11:54
that time that she had been murdered that it was something that always held my attention
00:12:01
by the year 2000 almost two decades after susan's murder a new dna process called pcr made it possible to test a
00:12:11
small biological sample where in the past much larger samples were needed essentially that process is just
00:12:20
xeroxing dna so we're just copying the specific portions of dna that we're
00:12:25
interested in analyzing so analysts tested the small biological sample taken from susan schumache's
00:12:33
autopsy and were able to identify the dna profile of the killer yeah we're in the game now there's a
00:12:41
good chance now we'll be able to figure out who killed her john paul phillips dna sample was not on
00:12:48
file so investigators took the extraordinary step of requesting that the state exhumed his body
00:12:55
they wanted to eliminate him as a suspect and they needed to get his dna in order
00:13:00
to do that a dna sample was obtained from phillips bone marrow it did not match the dna
00:13:08
from the crime scene i called and spoke with susan's mother it was a very emotional phone call
00:13:16
she cried as we talked it's obvious that you never forget the death of a child like that
00:13:23
and she was very disappointed but you know i tried to assure her that we would continue to go forward and try to
00:13:30
identify the suspect i was angry at the time when this happened because and probably on a
00:13:36
subconscious level because i felt we had closure it was done with and there was more bad news the dna did not match
00:13:44
anyone in the statewide database of known criminal offenders so we knew it had to be somebody who's never
00:13:51
participated or contributed to the codis database if the killer wasn't phillips or anyone
00:13:57
who committed a felony before the dna database was created then who was it where do we go from here
00:14:06
and the obvious answer is let's dig back into the case and let's see who else was
00:14:11
a suspect in those days who else can we get a dna standard from let's just keep going until we run out
00:14:18
of suspects the first person on their list was daniel willison he was originally a suspect he was
00:14:27
working a quarter mile away on the day of the murder then he ran off when police tried to question him
00:14:34
police found him in michigan where he worked at an auto salvage yard by this time he was divorced with one
00:14:42
child and did not want to talk with police wilson told them that he had provided
00:14:49
hair samples and fingerprints back in 1981 he was not interested in cooperating with their investigation
00:14:58
investigators wanted a dna sample woolison refused to provide one and the courts refused to order one
00:15:07
citing the lack of probable cause willison's hair was on file from the original investigation but the samples
00:15:16
didn't contain root material so they couldn't be used to generate a full
00:15:21
genetic profile so investigators decided to try an unconventional method to get woolison's
00:15:29
dna it had taken a long time almost 20 years and lieutenant paul eckles was convinced he was closing in
00:15:42
on susan shumake's killer but only dna could prove it and the suspect daniel willison wasn't
00:15:51
willing to provide it so michigan state police decided they'd take his dna in a perfectly legal manner
00:16:00
they decided to run surveillance on him the whole purpose was to try to get something that might have daniel willis
00:16:06
dna so we could either identify him or eliminate him it wasn't easy since willison worked in an auto parts
00:16:13
salvage yard only other employees could get close to him without a rousing suspicion
00:16:20
then police learned he had recently sold his car and they knew he smoked cigarettes
00:16:28
so they traced the car to its new owner they asked him about the cigarette butts
00:16:34
and the ash tree says i don't smoke and all my friends throw their cigarette
00:16:38
butts out the window so these were like when i bought the car there were more than a dozen cigarette
00:16:44
butts police hoped at least one was from daniel willison they gave the evidence to dna analyst
00:16:51
jennifer andrew when i gathered from speaking with the investigator in charge there was a
00:16:56
homicide about 20 years ago of a college student and you know me being recently out of college it was a little bit
00:17:03
personal for me one by one andrew cut open the cigarette filters often a good source of dna
00:17:13
because that's where all the saliva and skin cells would be deposited samples were treated with a solvent that
00:17:20
separates the dna a profile was generated from an unknown male people think the job is so cool it's
00:17:29
actually very very stressful and it's moments like this that really make it worthwhile
00:17:35
the profile was sent to illinois for comparison with the 20 year old genetic material left at susan schumache's
00:17:42
murder and it matched daniel willison well i'm ecstatic of course i mean this
00:17:50
is uh in in law enforcement terms it's almost like winning the lottery naturally
00:17:56
lieutenant echols would need another dna test to confirm the dna results from the
00:18:02
cigarette until then echoes wanted to prevent williston from fleeing so he tried a ruse
00:18:10
he confronted willison with some made-up evidence it was important for me to extract some type of information from
00:18:19
him that would give me enough to get an arrest warrant i give him the story about the witness which is not true
00:18:26
i tell him that there was a person that he worked with at the quad apartments who had stepped
00:18:33
forward and had seen daniel wilson walking down a path behind the right one carrying a yellow backpack during the
00:18:40
evening that she was murdered and i took it just a little bit further and told him but i had a fingerprint that was
00:18:45
identified to him from that backpack and then immediately without me saying a thing he said you know i only took ten
00:18:52
dollars from that backpack so i knew he was telling me the truth he was pretty much a sunk puppy there
00:18:59
so willison was arrested and he was forced to provide an additional dna sample that test
00:19:07
left no doubt he was the source of the dna found on susan shumake i knew enough about dna evidence to know
00:19:16
that the odds of there being a mismatch is you know it turned out in this case it
00:19:22
was going to be 300 million to one was the most conservative estimate prosecutors cannot fathom a reason for
00:19:34
susan schumache's murder they believe willison saw her walking alone along the dirt path
00:19:43
and he decided to attack her it was late in the day no one heard or saw anything
00:19:57
he left behind his dna then took her yellow backpack stole ten dollars from her purse dumped
00:20:11
it in the creek then dropped his bag with a pharmacy prescription in it not far away
00:20:18
it's that randomness that's so frightening she wasn't stalked she wasn't selected
00:20:25
she would just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time despite the evidence against him
00:20:31
willison pleaded not guilty in march of 2006 25 years after susan's murder daniel willison was convicted of first
00:20:43
degree murder and sentenced to 40 years in prison the university has now built a
00:20:50
well-lighted pedestrian overpass so students no longer have to walk through the overgrown dirt path where susan was
00:20:58
abducted and murdered it was named in susan's honor my wife had made the comment she said
00:21:05
you know i wonder how much it costs to have one of these overpasses built and i said i'll tell
00:21:11
you what it costs cost one human life that's why we do what we do you know to bring justice to these
00:21:18
families so the families deserve a lot of credit as well they're the people who
00:21:21
push us along the way i went back to the site again after the trial and i'd been beaten there by quite a few
00:21:29
people there were flowers and balloons obviously a lot of people had felt that they needed to go to that site
00:21:35
it was it was it was overwhelming you