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up next a married man falls victim to temptation he had made a mistake which i'm sure a lot of people can identify
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with she offered him a wild side that he hadn't experienced then he vanishes
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without a trace he was there one minute and then gone to next for almost 20 years the disappearance goes unsolved i
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kept that hope that maybe he would show up on my doorstep until a tiny chip of paint tells of a terrifying ordeal it
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would drive me crazy to know what a murder victim goes through every time they're killed
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[Music] the kennecott copper mine outside salt lake city utah is known as the richest
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hole on earth and copper isn't the only valuable mineral they mine gold and silver and they have very
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expensive equipment that sort of thing that theft is a big problem out there as a result
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security is very tight you just don't go onto kennecott copper property without
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usually encountering security so when the security guard wasn't on duty in the guard shack on a winter
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night in 1991 it was unusual they went up and figured that he might be in the restroom checked it out for a
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while they went up and found his lunch was partly eaten his hard hat was still there
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the guard brian roof was not supposed to leave the shack for any reason until the
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shift changed at 11 o'clock it was just a strange incident where he was there
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one minute and then gone the next and and there was no real explanation of why he was gone
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snow had fallen just a few hours earlier but there were no footprints around the
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shack brian's car was parked in a nearby lot and there were no footprints anywhere
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near his car it looked like he might have just stepped outside the door and and vanished but it was in a very
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isolated area inside the shack everything was in order no sign of any foul play at all no blood
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nothing turned over or destroyed 21 year old brian roof and his wife jennifer had been married for two and a
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half years and had a 15 month old baby work record showed this wasn't the first
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time brian went missing just a few weeks earlier brian walked off his job and ran away to las vegas
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he felt a big burden to provide for us especially with a second baby coming he felt that burden and he was trying to
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get through school and i know that finances worried him a lot he felt bad that we had to move in with my parents
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at the time brian spent six days in las vegas when he returned he was a changed man
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and not for the better he was very cold and distant a sight of him i'd never
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seen before he was very cold bitter about certain things finances things like that
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and just just angry as investigators searched the guard shack for clues the phone rang
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the caller said she was brian's wife jennifer she was surprised when somebody
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else answered the phone when brian didn't answer they told her at that time that they were the police
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and they were looking for brian she did tell them that she'd been talking to him around 6 30.
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he had told her that there's a another employee coming that's how he turned it and he just had to go
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as soon as police got off the phone with jennifer the phone rang again the deputy
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again answered the phone call knew it was a different female voice and the caller told the deputy that her name
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was jennifer roof somebody was claiming that they were brian's wife that really
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wasn't a missing man with two wives police knew right away it was going to be an unusual
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investigation [Music] shortly after brian roof's disappearance from his security job two women called
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his work phone asking to speak to him each of them identified herself as his wife
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the company's caller id system revealed one of the callers was indeed brian's
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wife jennifer the other was 20 year old christy bradley she was married to dale bradley
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was also a security guard at the kennecott mine and one of brian roof's co-workers
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so that's when they sent detectives over to dale and christy's house to find out
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what was going on christy told police that she and brian had become good friends and talked regularly on the
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phone dale would have christy bring dinner out to him and that's how brian and christy
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met is actually out at the job site when she would bring meals out to him when questioned about brian's
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disappearance christy said she was home all day and hadn't seen him dale said he had been off from work and
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was running errands all day dale bradley said he was up at the university of utah when his car broke
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down he called his friend bill easton who was down at a local bar here five days after brian disappeared
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his wife jennifer discovered a potential clue there were credit card bills that i had
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never seen before we had not applied for them together and also a phone bill jennifer discovered that brian was
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having an affair with christy bradley it was a double whammy to have him missing and then to be hit with such
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horrifying news that everything had been shattered my whole life had been shattered everything that i had dreamed
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and hoped for was gone jennifer also discovered that christy was with brian in las vegas a few weeks
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earlier when confronted with this information christie admitted the affair to both the
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police and her husband she told me that she thought brian was really nice she thought he was cute dale
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was very controlling to her and christy didn't like to be tied down christy and
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and brian were able to talk to each other and that's i think the reason for the phone calls to the guard check
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between christy and brian but dale insisted he knew nothing about his wife's affair when brian disappeared
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dale had no criminal history but the affair gave him a motive to harm brian so investigators got a search warrant
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for his car it was checked for blood and gunshot residue none of which we found we didn't find
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anything in addition dale and christy bradley agreed to take polygraph tests and they both passed
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when they found out about the affair i had heard they interviewed dale and christy and
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dale passed a polygraph and at that point they kind of dropped his name from from the list of suspects
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meanwhile investigators pursued another potential lead two of ryan's fellow security guards had been arrested for
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stealing from the mine they were arrested for stealing medals off of kennecott property and
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pawning them in junk metal shops or you know for junk metal in fact one of those guards was at the
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guard shack just minutes after brian was reported missing brian was one of those at the guard
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shack who reported some of these thefts going on but without brian roof's body police had
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no proof he was dead officially he was still a missing person [Music] shortly after brian roof disappeared
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police uncovered a theft ring run by security guards at the kennecott mine they were stealing anything that wasn't
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nailed down they were stealing gloves shovels you know just any kind of equipment that you would find around a
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mine police wondered if brian might have stumbled on a robbery in progress so a theory came up that maybe these
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guys were stealing medals off of the property that night brian had stopped them and they'd killed him to cover up
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the theft but none of the other security guards could be linked to brian's disappearance
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he basically was completely alone up there in the mountain and it really concerned him that it was an unsafe area
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that there were no cameras no electric gates no security systems like they had in the other gates
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weeks and then months passed with absolutely no sign of brian roof it was an overwhelming fear
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when i would be driving to work or driving to the store it was just a constant cloud over me of fear that somebody
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could just disappear and never come back [Music] brian's wife jennifer was forced to
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raise their little girl alone six months after brian went missing she gave birth to another daughter i just
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couldn't move on i was stuck in that realm of of grief until i knew what had
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happened to him one year later hikers discovered human remains in a camping area about 50 miles from
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the kennecott mine well first i just thought it was rock and then i thought it was a dead guy
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he still had his security outfit on as you say his wallet everything intact that's him
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brian patrick i got a phone call from the detectives and i asked him i said is it brian and
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he said yeah it's brian and that's when my world fell apart dental records confirmed the victim was
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brian roof an autopsy showed he'd been shot five times in the back i thought that somehow he had gotten in
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the middle of something illegal and they killed him for that search teams found five spent shells
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from a 22-caliber pistol near the body investigators believe brian was shot just a few feet from where he was buried
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in a shallow grave the next day they're out there working again and one of the dogs from the canine unit
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recovers a boot a black cowboy boot that was identified as brian's work boot
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that was recovered about 200 feet east of the gravesite i never did find a second boot
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but so much time had passed and so much rain and snow had fallen that no other clues were found at the scene
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it's really frustrating there's no other way to put it with no evidence to tie anyone to the
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crime the case went cold and the years passed until 14 years later when todd park a cold case detective
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with the salt lake county sheriff's office received a telephone call from authorities in neighboring carbon county
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when that call came in it gave me a i guess a fresh breath of air to look at another case
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and to to really dig into it police in carbon county were investigating dale bradley on the
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suspicion of murdering his second wife crystal dale had been a suspect in brian roof's
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murder 14 years earlier on a hunch todd park contacted dale's first wife christy who is now living in
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texas so when detective park contacted her 14 years after the fact she was surprised that the case hadn't been
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solved because dale told her somebody else had already been arrested for it and she just assumed this case was done
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but that obviously was a lie and christy told police something she hadn't mentioned during the original
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investigation she said the day after brian went missing dale cleaned the inside of his car
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he had never cleaned out that trunk as long as she had known him as long as he owned that
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camaro why would dale do this police wondered if brian roof had been inside that trunk
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was there blood was he shot in the car and wrapped in a blanket and looking for uh you know trace evidence looking for
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blood in the car but after 14 years could police find dale bradley's camaro [Music]
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14 years after brian roof's murder and investigators never lost hope they would solve the case the thing about
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brian he was a very good kid and he was a very good father and regardless of the affair i think he
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was a very good husband he just had a lot going on and i think he would have been able to really make
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something of his life and his family if he was able to continue on in life and that was cut short
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when investigators heard that their original suspect dale bradley was now a suspect in yet
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another murder investigation they decided to look once again at the evidence and this time
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on brian roof's boot the one they found in the mountains near his burial site they spotted something
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some kind of scuff mark on the bottom of the boot that looked like reddish orange
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paint when i saw that swatch of paint it just flashed back to me that that was the
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same color of paint that was on dale bradley's car and i got excited and i kind of got a little bit
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of butterflies and i thought i got him forensic analyst bill schneck examined this paint with the stereo microscope
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and i noticed it was a smear wasn't like paint chips that were adhering to the
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boot it's actually smeared into the leather of the bottom of the boot there was tremendous force to get that paint
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smear onto his boot was it the kind of force caused by trying to kick your way out of the trunk
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of a car for example bill schneck needed to know if the makers of dale bradley's camaro had
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painted the inside of the trunk luckily schneck had a friend who restored old cars
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he just happened to have a 75 camaro and i was there so we popped the trunk and indeed they have original paint in the
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trunk so that was good that was useful dale bradley drove a red 1974 camaro at the time of brian's murder
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the mission now was to find it i spent a lot of hours searching for that car they went up in an airplane and
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searched high and low for that car through a lot of investigation found that the car had been sold
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unfortunately two years after brian's murder the new owner sold the car for scrap metal
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that car was scrapped i mean it's just in little cubes it's been melted down
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but an examination of the case file revealed a surprise 14 years earlier an alert detective had
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taken paint samples from dale's car we just took them it's hard to say why you know just we
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just took them and because there wasn't really much else to to take those paint samples just sat in
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our evidence room for years bill schneck took paint samples from the boot and the car and placed them on
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slides with an immersion liquid this eliminated any air trapped between the sample and the slide
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using a polarizing light microscope magnified up to a thousand times schneck saw the paint was a lead
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chromate paint i wanted to go back and find out how unusual is a lead chromate paint
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and i contacted the national institute of science and technology and received a paint chip known standard from the 74
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camaro using a scanning electron microscope schneck now did a three-way comparison
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he examined paint from the boot from the car and from the file sample of a 1974 camaro
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all were identical paint on the boot came from that particular car or another car having
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those exact same properties composition and with this evidence dale bradley was arrested and charged with brian roof's
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murder it was shocking that anybody could do something so horrific let alone somebody that claimed to be a
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good friend prosecutors believe dale either knew or strongly suspected brian roof was having an affair with his
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wife christy and was afraid she was going to leave him i think that he was so angry that
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christy and brian betrayed him that he was going to make them pay the forensic evidence suggests dale's
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plan was to eliminate the person he perceived to be his competition since he knew brian's hours and when
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there would be the least amount of traffic he knew exactly when to strike dale probably forced brian into the
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trunk at gunpoint brian tried to kick his way out of the trunk during the 30 minute drive when a
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piece of the paint became embedded in his boot [Music] when dale got to the burial spot
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prosecutors think he ordered brian to remove his boots so he couldn't run away
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he then forced him over to a shallow grave which prosecutors think he dug earlier that day
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then shot him with a 22 caliber pistol the murder weapon was never recovered it was so typical of dale's personality
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to be a coward enough to shoot somebody in the back and not face him when he was going to take his life
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the paint and circumstantial evidence were difficult for dale bradley to refute he agreed to plead guilty to
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second-degree manslaughter and kidnapping and was sentenced to 40 years in prison
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what bradley didn't realize was that brian's boot held an important piece of
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evidence that told a story this cold case was solved because of that paint chip it makes me want to go out and look at
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every single case and examine every piece of evidence to see if there's something that i can do with it it
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motivates me to solve other cases dale bradley remains a suspect in the murder of his second wife
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it's ironic in a way that brian roof's desperate efforts in the trunk of dale's car resulted in the
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capture of his own killer just one little thing that's all it takes in this case it turned out to be
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the paint samples coupled with all the the the uh circumstantial evidence in this case and
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the physical evidence that you have that's was just the clincher in this case
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even today though there's a lot of detectives that are just focusing so much on dna they're forgetting all the
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other avenues that could be approached with trace evidence such as pain examination
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i hope it sends a loud message that there is forensics out there that people who are willing to
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continue to look at these cases that you're not going to get away with murder
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and that that the more they try to cover up some of their tracks the more cracks they leave
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you