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two women from the same town killed in the same way suggested a serial killer was on the loose
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there were unusual metal fragments on both victims and investigators needed to find out what they were
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in order to stop a killer [Music] uh the spirit of washington was traveling from seattle along the shores of lake
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washington when it stopped unexpectedly because of some work being done on the tracks ahead
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ladies and gentlemen we are slowing down when the passengers looked outside they saw more than just pretty scenery
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witnesses who were on the dinner train saw what appeared to them to be a human body laying in the bottom of
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this creek local authorities secured the site and found the remains of a middle-aged woman
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wearing a nightgown and slippers a blue jacket was thrown nearby along with an empty pack of cigarettes
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unfortunately there were no fingerprints dna or any other forensic evidence on the cigarette pack
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the medical pathologist who performed this autopsy was not able to determine a cause of death the
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medical examiner's ultimate autopsy didn't show any obvious signs of homicidal violence yet it was
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clear from the circumstances that she was the victim of a homicide after a review of missing persons
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reports police identified the victim as 53-year-old arlene jensen who lived alone and worked as a seamstress
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her son reported her missing five weeks earlier when she failed to show up for work
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he found the door a jar her purse and her keys were on the end table and her car was in its stall
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there was no sign of forced entry or any disturbance but there were signs that someone other
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than arlene had been there she was a very neat housekeeper and there were ashes spilled all around the
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ash tray on the coffee table that's something she just never did there was various blankets comforters on
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top of the bed i looked at those and then i pulled them back and i noticed that in the area of the upper left hand
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side of it on the pillow and on the sheet underneath that there was some blood stains which i tested and they
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were indeed positive for blood the comforter didn't have any blood but the sheets underneath dead
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this meant someone pulled the comforter over the sheet after the blood was dry which would have been about 30 minutes
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later on the bathroom floor were some used towels and two cigarette butts were in
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the toilet with the seat and lid left up all these clues told a story some man had been in her home some man
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had used the toilet and flipped his cigarette butts into the toilet and failed to flush before he left someone
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has been there for a while long enough to smoke at least one cigarette possibly even two they've had time to have blood
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dry they've been there for at least 30 minutes and then they've washed their
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hands or attempted to wash their hands and clean something up and the cigarette butts were the same brand
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as the empty package found near the victim's body if arlene had been abducted from her
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apartment the motive certainly wasn't robbery her purse which she always kept on a
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chair where she sat and watched television was there her wallet was there the keys
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to her car were there forensic scientists found another important clue in arlene's bed
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tiny bits of metal most no bigger than a fraction of an inch these are metal fragments which weren't
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just one type even visually some were silver colors some were brass colored some were copper colored so it's quite a
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large mixture of materials something you normally don't see investigators found those same metal
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shavings on arlene's body it gives you a significant tie between the body recovery scene and what you would
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believe to be the actual location of occurrence on arlene's jacket were several beige nylon fibers
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they were triangular in shape the kind used in cars [Music] this suggested that arlene's body had
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been inside a car with beige upholstery apparently the killer had left plenty of clues
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the metal fragments found on arlene jensen's body and in her apartment were sent to the forensics lab for testing
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under a microscope scientists could see that the fragments were different shapes and sizes
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the surfaces were corrugated and the composition of the metal varied from piece to piece they were made of
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various types of steel for his grades of steel with his crates of brass the unique shapes and the fact some were
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hollow were a clear indication of their origin what that means to me is that's a piece
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of metal which is projected through the air and when it's projected through the
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air metal molten metal projected through is cooling very very rapidly and with the air currents as it goes through the
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air it dries to a soccer ball round shape so investigators knew the killer was probably a machinist
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someone who worked with metal at high heat on a lathe arlene jensen was a seamstress and there
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were no metal fragments like these in her workplace the next clue came from an unlikely
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source almost 40 miles away campers in a national park outside of seattle found a decomposed body of a young woman
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partially buried in a shallow grave a leopard-skinned jacket was on the ground nearby
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through dental records the victim was identified as 29 year old stephanie dietrich
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an administrative assistant who was reported missing several weeks earlier she was last seen
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at a fourth of july party stephanie was at her residence on july 4th and there were people firing fireworks around the
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area it sounds like she was having a good time with the neighbors stephanie told friend she planned to go
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camping but no one knew if she went alone or with others we were still thinking she was going to
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come back i even when i was printing the flyers i remember still thinking she was
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going to come back from some camping trip that she was having so much fun that she just didn't want to
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come home for investigators were stunned to discover tiny metal fragments on stephanie's body
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like the ones found in the arlene jensen case well the first natural thing you know come up in your
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brain is oh these two people are connected at 100 times magnification the fragments
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looked identical but were they to find out analysts turned to a process known as energy dispersive x-ray
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spectrometry the samples were bombarded with electrons this created x-ray frequencies
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which were then charted and compared each element has a set of characteristic x-rays iron is different from chromium
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and chromium is different from aluminum the fragment samples contained steel and
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brass the steel had the exact same combinations of iron manganese and chromium in the brass
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copper and zinc were found in identical amounts and all the samples had equal amounts of cerium
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part of a compound used to ignite an oxyacetylene torch a common item in machine shops
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we examined all of them and could can see the pattern that regardless of where they came from they were basically the
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same kind of metal fragments machining fragments this proved that both arlene jensen and
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stephanie dietrich were killed by the same man the science is starting to really catch
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up to the bad guys now a serial killer was on the loose in the seattle area he had to be stopped
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before he could kill again while investigating stephanie dietrich's murder police interviewed the guests at her
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fourth of july party the last time she was seen alive they said stephanie spent most of her time talking to a man
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they did not know while they didn't know his last name they knew his name was gary they knew
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that he bragged about being a drummer in a rock band stephanie's family identified the man as
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her oldest and dearest friend gary ackley when interviewed by police actly recalled he was at the party but wasn't
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there specifically to be with stephanie one of the things he told us was he had gone there to locate somebody else had
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seen stephanie so stop to talk the witnesses said that it seemed a little bit more than that
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then police did a background check on 29 year old gary ackley and discovered some alarming information
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gary ackley was related to the first murder victim arlene jensen actly lived with arlene's daughter and
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they had two children together when questioned by police ackley said he loved his common-law
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mother-in-law and was devastated by her murder but family members said that was a lie
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well he didn't like her and it was no secret she didn't like him but no one in the family did like him
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their relationship can best be described as being acrimonious arlene jensen was concerned about the welfare of her
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daughter whom she believed was at least verbally and psychologically being abused by gary ackley
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arlene also didn't like the way actley treated her grandchildren when she would express those concerns
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particularly in the presence of of gary ackley it became quite apparent that he didn't
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want her anywhere around and ackley's fights with arlene were well known to neighbors and family
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members they got into a a disagreement during which gary ackley called her at a minimum of [ __ ] and depending on whose
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version you believe if she interfered any longer he would kill her she left the house that they rented
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making statements something like i'm not going to put up with this and i don't
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know why you're putting up this either to her daughter ackley's brand of cigarettes was another
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interesting coincidence when he bought cigarettes he bought the cheapest cigarettes he could get his
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hands on those were basic basic brand cigarettes that was the kind of cigarette butts
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that were located in the toilet in arlington's house there was also a box from basic brand cigarettes located near
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the dump site where arlene jensen's body was ultimately recovered some six weeks
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later but what was most telling to investigators was gary ackley's profession
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gary ackley worked as a fabricator he worked in a metal shop and much of his time he spent on a lathe
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this was suspicious since metal fragments were found on both stephanie dietrich's body as well as arlene
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jensen's with a search warrant investigators found metal shavings on ackley's jeans in his
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car and in his workplace when tested with energy dispersive x-ray spectronomy scientists discovered that the shavings
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from gary actley were the same as those found on both murder victims these metal shavings that came from the
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body of arlene jensen the body of stephanie dietrich gary ackley's car and the jeans he was wearing all came from
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the same place but ackley's lawyer said this proved nothing they claimed it shouldn't be surprising
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the metal shavings were the same because ackley knew both victims and could have
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transferred those particles weeks earlier so investigators turned to the beige fibers found on the jacket near his
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mother-in-law's body there's an infrared spectrophotometer which identifies this this polymer fiber
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as a nylon fiber then we also use a micro spectrophotometer which is an instrument for basically identifying and
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comparing color of a specific fiber and what he found was that those beige fibers on arlene's
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jacket came from the back seat of ackley's car interestingly there were several blue
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nylon fibers found inside acne's car that were microscopically similar to the
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fibers from arlene's jacket this is called a cross transfer that jacket had been in contact with
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some area of a car that had carpet fibers that were shedding onto her jacket so her jacket was in some
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location with a brown carpet and his car was in some contact with a blue jacket in fact
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the blue jacket fibers were found on only one area of the car's back seat this was a clear indication that arlene
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was either unconscious or immobile while she was in her son-in-law's car she didn't move a lot yeah there wasn't
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a whole lot of movement with the jacket so if you're sitting in the rear seat of
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a car and you never move then that's where the transfer would be finally in the national park near where
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stephanie dietrich's body was found investigators discovered remnants of a campfire
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some of stephanie's personal items were strewn in the grass along with a plastic shopping bag
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there was a shopping bag from a local grocery store and once it was submitted to the washington state patrol crime
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laboratory what we found was a very clear latent fingerprint left by none other than gary ackley
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the fingerprint along with the metal fragments and fibers clearly tied gary ackley to both crime scenes
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prosecutors knew why ackley killed his mother-in-law arlene what they couldn't figure out
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is why he killed his childhood friend stephanie he knows he killed arlene jensen
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prosecutors believe that gary actley killed arlene jensen out of anger he wanted revenge
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for what he believed was her meddling in the way he raised her grandchildren and the way he treated her daughter
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the offensive thing about stereotypes i think most people would agree is that they're oftentimes true but i will say
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that one stereotype that i think gary ackley is a perfect example of is a domestically
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violent woman abusing killer prosecutors believe ackley had access to arlene's apartment
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key and used it to enter her home late one night after she was in bed the autopsy results aren't clear about
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how he killed arlene but the evidence suggests she was killed while in bed metal fragments dropped from actley's
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clothes onto the sheets fragments he couldn't see [Music] he stayed in arlene's apartment long
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enough to smoke two cigarettes and wash his hands then he hid the bloodstained sheets with
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the comforter the trace evidence shows he put arlene's body into the back seat of his car
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creating the fiber cross transfer her jacket fibers were left on the seat and the upholstery fibers clung to her
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jacket ackley dumped her body a mile away in a field near the railroad tracks unaware
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he left more metal shavings there he also left another calling card an empty pack of his favorite brand of
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cigarettes the same brand he left in his mother-in-law's bathroom but what was the motive
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for stephanie dietrich's murder by all accounts gary ackley had a big mouth prosecutors think in a moment of
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weakness actly told stephanie that he killed arlene prosecutors found a witness who saw
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actley and stephanie camping together on the fourth of july weekend prosecutors believe
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ackley killed his childhood friend in order to silence her burying her body in a shallow grave
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again leaving the tell-tale metal fragments behind when he disposed of stephanie's personal
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items he left his fingerprint on the shopping bag i don't think there's anything i could
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say that would bother him because someone that can kill their girlfriend's mom and their kid's grandma
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is untouchable emotionally so i wouldn't even try a year after the crimes gary ackley was convicted of two counts
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of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole despite the mountains of forensic
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evidence against him arlene jensen's daughter julie refused to believe that ackley killed her mother
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so after his conviction she cemented their common-law relationship by formally marrying him
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in a prison ceremony i don't know why julie jensen would marry the man who was convicted of
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killing her mother and you'd have to ask her first of all it's nauseating and i i
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can't understand her train of thought at all and i don't know i've tried to understand
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that before and all i can make of it is domestic violence in its severest form like the brainwashing the abuse
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that just makes that person just not even think for themselves because it's so plain to see you know
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two murders seemingly unrelated but unmistakably connected by a series of microscopic clues detectives all over
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this country are solving murder cases that are 20 or 30 or 40 years old based on science that didn't exist seven or
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eight years ago so my expectation is that gary ackley one was not a very intelligent fellow
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and two there was just not this blitz of information from the media about murder
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investigations that would have ever given him any pause to consider the fact that he was bringing to each of these
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two crime scenes the most compelling evidence that would be used to convict him [Music]
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[Music] so [Music] you