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[Music] a well-known doctor was brutally attacked in his home investigators discovered the telephone
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traffic neared the victim's home increased substantially within seconds of the crime
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those calls tracked with the sophisticated forensic computer program uncovered an international conspiracy
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[Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] dr louis davidson was one of the most
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respected pediatricians in st petersburg florida at 38 years old he was head of pediatric
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emergency medicine at the bayfront medical center it was all about the patient the baby
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the toddler the child he treated him each with utmost respect never a snide comment
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and he gave a hundred percent of himself to each child and his he was so smart he was almost
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scary on january 25 1994 dr davidson finished his work at the hospital and headed home
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to get some sleep dr davidson's girlfriend stopped by his apartment later that day
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and this is what she saw she had her own key to the apartment and she used her key to enter the apartment
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and as she walked in she saw this crime scene where stuff was just spewed all over the place she walked back and found
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him in the tub dr davidson was dead in the bathtub he had been beaten and apparently
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drowned i knew right away that this wasn't an ordinary suicide or anything like that
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this was definitely a brutal crime scene detective mike sellona was assigned to the case his identity is concealed
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because he's now working undercover the master bedroom closet had obviously been gone through clothing pulled off
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hangers thrown on the floor however one of the items that was still in the closet was a garment bag and the bottom
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of the garment bag was 20 000 in cash meaning the motive wasn't robbery the crime scene had been staged to make
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it appear to be robbery [Music] davidson's girlfriend told police that the doctor had been receiving strange
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telephone calls at home over the past several weeks sometimes they'll come at three in the
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morning sometimes four in the morning she says that someone calls and then hangs up looking just to see if there is
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somebody home in that apartment investigators found their first piece of forensic evidence on a tile floor in the
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doctor's apartment tile fours are very conducive to leaving evidence especially
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shoe prints tile is flat and non-porous a perfect template for prints so technicians dusted the area
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and just as they expected a shoe impression appeared next they used a gel pad and pushed the
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adhesive onto the print which fixes the dust in position for later analysis it was amazing to me that
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that shoe print was preserved normally that shoe print could have been destroyed in many different ways by
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detectives and officers and paramedics going in and out of that resonance but some somehow that shoe print survived
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the impression was sent to the fbi in washington dc to their footwear impression department
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there the print was compared to the thousands of shoe impressions on file fbi experts noticed it was a size 9
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sneaker and was new their comparisons revealed it was a voigt brand shoe a relatively obscure
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brand but homicide investigators needed more than one shoe impression to find the killer
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investigators were still processing the crime scene when news of dr davidson's
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death was released to the media it was on the news and just the way he died was so horrific
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that it was like too hard to grasp it was like being in some bad movie but it was real
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everything that people look for in a sort of a juicy almost a soap opera style story was was there in this
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particular murder case the doctor's co-workers could think of no one who would want to harm him
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but investigators discovered that dr davidson was going through a divorce his wife denise a former finalist in the
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miss jamaica beauty pageant was asking for custody of their eight-year-old daughter something the doctor was
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resisting when police told denise that her husband had been murdered she appeared to have
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information that hadn't yet been released to the media here is denise davidson asking the
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detectives that are telling her her husband was found murdered at his apartment well was it a robbery
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now suspicious police placed denise davidson under 24-hour surveillance we're thinking that it was a pager she
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has called three days later denise made an unusual trip she walks in and goes to a western union
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now obviously when she leaves we walk in right behind her and determine that she's using western union and she sends
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a money transfer a 1200 money transfer denise had used an alias for the transfer
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pauline white the money was sent to a robert gordon in miami it's being sent by a pauline white
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which is not denise davidson's name it's obvious that's a different name
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fictitious address fictitious phone number but we watched her send it robert gordon was an acquaintance of
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miami nightclub owner leo cisneros who also happened to be denise davidson's
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current boyfriend and the father of her unborn child cisneros allegedly had ties to jamaican
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drug trafficking flight records indicated that leo cisneros flew to jamaica on the day of
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dr davidson's murder and telephone records indicated that denise davidson made numerous calls to
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robert gordon on the morning her husband was murdered between 9 30 in the morning and 11 30 in
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the morning a two-hour period there are 52 telephone calls made from denise davidson's house
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to robert gordon's pager investigators now believed that denise davidson knew more about her husband's
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murder than she admitted and they asked the court for permission to wiretap her telephone
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that order was granted but it didn't reveal what investigators hoped for [Music]
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hello hey baby i call the western union please unless the money is available to be
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picked up you got to remember denise davidson from the beginning knew that her phones may be tapped
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so she was careful with what she said and what she didn't say on the phone then
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police noticed an irregularity while leo cisneros was in jamaica someone was using his cell phone in
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florida and those calls could be easily traced [Music] when someone makes a cell phone call the
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signal goes through a series of what are known as cell site towers before it gets
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to an individual's phone police can trace a cell phone call by the identity of the towers the call
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uses all of this cell tower and wiretap information is then put into the asus computer program
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asus stands for augmented criminal investigation support system aces has not ever been utilized by
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our police department for homicide investigations it's been utilized for numerous years by
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the intelligence division by the narcotics division because they deal a lot with telephone
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records wire taps large amounts of volumes of people connected to one another this computer analysis revealed an
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important piece of information cisneros's cell phone was used on the morning of dr davidson's murder from
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outside the doctor's apartment a few hours later calls were made from this motel near dr
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davidson's apartment and the calls continued while the individual headed south along highway 60 route 95 all the
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way to miami the last call that day used a cell tower a few blocks away from robert gordon's
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home gordon was the man denise davidson had wired twelve hundred dollars to a few days after the murder
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when police visited the motel near dr davidson's apartment they discovered robert gordon had stayed
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there around the time of dr davidson's murder the maid recalls that there was
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something left behind in that room one of their policies at the time was that there were items left behind by
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a customer they would put them in a bag with a car that had the date and the room number they were following
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they put them in a storage closet the bag contained a sweatshirt and something investigators had been
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looking for since the day of the murder and guess what else we've got we've got
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some shoes sneakers to be exact the same size as the impression found in the doctor's apartment
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[Music] investigators hoped this chance discovery would solve the murder denise davidson had wired money to
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robert gordon in miami just days after her husband's murder informants in miami told police that
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gordon had an associate meryl mcdonald who was with gordon in saint petersburg around the time of dr davidson's murder
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during questioning both denied any involvement in the crime they also denied owning the sweatshirt
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and sneakers left in their motel room technicians compared the shoe impression found on dr davidson's tile floor with
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the sneakers from the motel both were size nine both were the obscure voigt brand and
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both were identical in wear patterns the shoes matched gordon's shoe size next technicians analyzed the sweatshirt
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and discovered a number of head hairs facial hairs and some foreign fibers the facial and head hairs were found
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inside the sweatshirt not uncommon when someone is taking the garment off over his head
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the hairs were unusual since they contained a chemical dye a chemical analysis of that dye matched
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the dye found on the head and facial hair of the second suspect meryl mcdonald mr mcdonald made the mistake of coloring
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his hair the fbi lab was able to determine that the type of color used on this strand of hair
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was consistent with the type of coloring mr mcdonald uses on his hair scientists also found
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blue cashmere fibers on the sweatshirt those fibers matched the victim's cashmere bathrobe
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finally and most damning a dna analysis of blood found on the sweatshirt and sneakers
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was that of dr davidson one more nail has been put into the coffin of these two defendants these two
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men that were hired to kill that decided that money was more important than life
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but investigators had no solid proof that denise davidson was involved in the murder plot
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she stood to inherit more than a half million dollars from her estranged husband's life insurance policy as well
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as gain full custody of their daughter during hours of police interrogation denise insisted she didn't know robert
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gordon and meryl mcdonald and had nothing to do with her husband's murder denise was under police surveillance
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when she went to the western union office to transfer money to robert gordon but she signed the receipt using an
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alias pauline white a forensic handwriting examiner compared the pauline white signature to known
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handwriting samples of denise davidson he concluded the same individual signed them both
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[Music] forensic technicians tested the receipts for latent or hidden fingerprints
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they stain the receipt with nanhydran a chemical solution that turns the amino acids in finger oils purple
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we have a process for fingerprints and it's denise davidson's fingerprints
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on that piece of paper [Music] and police found evidence that denise davidson purchased a man's gray
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sweatshirt and a pair of size nine voight sneakers just before her husband's murder
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identical to the items found in the motel with her husband's blood stains denise davidson not only denied any
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involvement in her husband's murder she now said she had evidence to prove it
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how much stranger can this case get how many more twists can this case take [Music]
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the forensic evidence clearly placed robert gordon and meryl mcdonald inside dr davidson's apartment during his
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murder the two people that were hired to do the killing mr gordon and mr mcdonald
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didn't know the doctor at all the reason they took his life was strictly for monetary reasons
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but just as police were about to arrest the victim's estranged wife denise the
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case took an unexpected turn denise told police that the real killer had called her home while she was away
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and left a threatening message on her telephone answering machine we're not available right now so could
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you please just leave your name and your telephone number [Applause] but police arrested denise anyway
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just as she was about to board a flight to jamaica i approached her she sat there waiting
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for her flight to arrive she was very surprised when she saw me and her first words were detective
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salerno what are you doing here in october of 1995 denise went on trial for soliciting her
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husband's murder denise took the stand in her own defense and told the jury about the threatening
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telephone call she received from the person she says was the real killer but prosecutors were ready for her
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[Applause] investigators had traced that call and discovered it had originated from the
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store where denise worked and denise had been under police surveillance that day
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i could see in her eyes she knew what was happening and it almost looked at that time like the air had just been
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taken out of her prosecutors presented the jury with this surveillance video showing denise
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entering the store shortly before the threatening call was placed and leaving just after the call was completed
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when the state attorney directed the question to her as to whether that was her voice on that
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tape she could only answer i don't think so she just listened to it and looked at it and really gave no
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explanation for who that phone call came from and why it was made she was holding up pretty good with her
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lies through the first portion of her testifying but from that point on everything was falling apart
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and i think the jury saw what i saw and that was fear in the eyes of a lady who hired two men to kill her
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husband prosecutors believe that denise asked her boyfriend leo cisneros to kill her
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husband instead cisneros hired robert gordon and meryl mcdonald leo cesniro is the boyfriend who had no
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courage he couldn't commit the crime himself so he hired the two scarecrows robert gordon and meryl mcdonald who he
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said they didn't have a brain amongst them the two tracked dr davidson for days by
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calling his apartment and the witness said they were at the hospital dressed like
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doctors trying to get dr davidson's schedule on the day of the murder dr davidson was running two hours late
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and didn't arrive home until 10 o'clock this explains why denise called robert
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gordon's pager 52 times between 8 and ten o'clock that morning apparently
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concerned about why the murder was delayed [Music] when gordon and mcdonald knocked on the
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doctor's door he answered in his bathrobe in the scuffle dr davidson's robe fibers and blood got
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on mcdonald's sweatshirt the one denise had purchased for him [Music] after drowning davidson in the bathtub
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gordon left his shoe imprint on the tile floor [Music] and when mcdonald removed the sweatshirt
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he left evidence of his die colored head hairs for some unknown reason gordon made the
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mistake of leaving the sneakers and sweatshirt behind at his motel a motel identified through denise's
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telephone calls prosecutors produced receipts showing denise had sent gordon and mcdonald a
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total of thousand dollars after a two-week trial denise davidson was found guilty of
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solicitation for murder she was sentenced to life in prison if i had one one-line description of
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denise davidson would be she's a cold-hearted [ __ ] robert gordon and meryl mcdonald were
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tried and convicted of first-degree murder they were both sentenced to death one of the more glaring ironies of the
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case is that dr davidson through his alimony payments enabled his wife to hire the hitmen who
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ultimately killed him denise's boyfriend leo cisneros who allegedly hired the hit man has not been
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captured he is believed to be in jamaica or venezuela investigators say the mountain of
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forensic evidence against denise paints an unmistakable portrait of greed and premeditation
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the forensic technicians in this case did an excellent job they worked on this case tediously
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they were able to develop evidence that was not visible to the naked eye and because of their
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dedication they were able to use this evidence in court to gain a conviction one thing i learned from this case is if
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you're going to commit a crime be careful about today's technology [Music]
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[Music] you