00:00:05
an employee from a large brokerage firm disappeared her computer revealed she was leading a
00:00:12
double life and among the bits and bytes were the clues to her final destination
00:00:22
[Music] [Music] to friends and family 36 year old sherry durrell had an enviable life
00:00:54
married with three young children sherry had a high job with the stock brokerage
00:00:59
firm and the respect and admiration of her colleagues she was selfless she was warm she always did
00:01:07
things for other people she cared about others a lot sherry was also a punctual employee
00:01:16
so when she didn't come to work one day and didn't call her co-workers were concerned
00:01:24
they called her husband bob who said sherry left for work at the usual time that morning and he didn't know where
00:01:31
she was so sherry's friends called police a couple of officers look around knock
00:01:37
on the door nobody answers but they find an unlocked door so they go into the house and they walk
00:01:43
through the house everything looks orderly everything looks tidy cherries clothes jewelry and toiletries
00:01:50
were still in the house it seemed very unusual that a woman with three children would just suddenly
00:01:58
disappear for the next two days there were no signs of her [Music] then police got a call about a red van
00:02:07
driving erratically the license plate number identified the van as sherry durell's
00:02:15
the witness said it was weaving in and out of traffic slowing down speeding up to a point where he wouldn't let the
00:02:22
witness pass him unfortunately the witness didn't get a good look at who was driving the van
00:02:29
friends distributed missing person flyers throughout the community and a convenience store clerk
00:02:37
responded saying sherry was in his store the day after she disappeared the clerk there was sure that she'd seen
00:02:45
her on saturday evening came in purchased gas with cash and then left there was an initial thought that yeah
00:02:52
she's in the area and the van's been seen traveling along the freeway sherry's husband looked around their
00:03:01
home for clues and found some information on sherry's computer that he turned over to the police
00:03:09
we investigated that and discovered that mrs darrell had in fact pursued a relationship outside her
00:03:17
marriage there were emails and internet chat room conversations with a man named
00:03:23
kevin johnson and it was clear the relationship was serious i have tried to be indifferent to you
00:03:32
and keep my feelings in check i have been thinking about this a lot and feeling bad about my self-respect sort
00:03:38
of feeling like a call girl more than a friend the correspondence included talk of the
00:03:44
two running away together they talked about oh wouldn't it be great to go to costa rica the cost of
00:03:50
living there is so much cheaper when police interviewed kevin johnson he admitted the two had a brief affair
00:03:59
but insisted he hadn't seen her for the last six months police weren't so sure
00:04:08
[Music] one week had passed since sherry durrell's disappearance she hadn't contacted her children her
00:04:19
husband or kevin johnson the man with whom she had the affair i knew that she wouldn't leave without
00:04:26
telling her mom or calling me we were the two closest people to her she was too responsible of a mother
00:04:34
and a person to do that then investigators got their first solid lead they found sherry's van in a hotel
00:04:47
parking lot near the seattle airport that could have been a thought that she parked there
00:04:53
or she met somebody who came into town or she hopped on a plane and took off but there was no record she stayed in
00:05:02
the hotel or took a flight out of town it was very emotional finding that van and not her she wasn't anywhere near the
00:05:12
vehicle and so we found a van but we didn't find our our friend and that was that was really difficult a
00:05:20
forensic examination of the van revealed no evidence of foul play and there were no foreign fingerprints
00:05:29
even more troubling sherry's personal bank account hadn't been touched since her disappearance
00:05:36
she just got a bonus at work and she had just put that into the bank i think that
00:05:41
week so the theory from all the co-workers was well why would she be putting all this
00:05:46
money away and then not leave with it and not touch it police conducted extensive interviews
00:05:52
with sherry's friend kevin johnson he insisted he had nothing to do with her
00:05:58
disappearance and he was later able to provide some information what he was doing on the day that she was reported
00:06:06
missing sherry's co-workers told police about a comment she made the day before she disappeared
00:06:15
she said if anything happens to me my life is in my desk and in her desk among other things was a
00:06:22
long letter a draft of a letter that she'd written to her husband in an effort to try to explain
00:06:29
why she felt it necessary to leave it my spirit is crushed i feel that you are too controlling and obsessive and
00:06:36
jealous and i just can't live with those personality traits anymore i can't go on
00:06:41
pretending that there is nothing wrong i am unbearably unhappy the bottom line is
00:06:46
i don't love you enough to stay married also in her desk were books about divorce
00:06:54
she was planning the separation and she'd saved up some money and she had spoke to a couple of lawyers to get some
00:07:02
advice and she was making her plans to move on to her new life with her children
00:07:09
and sherry told friends that bob had been abusive and no sign of physical violence at all
00:07:15
it was more that she wasn't comfortable around him he was obsessive controlling he emotionally
00:07:22
controlled her and she just did not feel good around him he would apparently be sort of
00:07:29
monitoring her whereabouts occasionally she would go out to lunch with some of her friends mr doral would show up so he
00:07:36
in effect uh she describes a situation where you almost have a husband stalking his own
00:07:43
wife during police questioning bob dorell admitted there were problems in his marriage
00:07:51
as for him being involved in sherry's disappearance he said that was ridiculous
00:07:59
police asked bob what happened on the night before she disappeared bob said they went to dinner at a local
00:08:07
restaurant when they got home sherry spoke with her sister-in-law mrs durrall appeared perhaps slightly tipsy
00:08:18
and told her that she was going to bed and that her husband robert durrall had made her a drink
00:08:26
sherry's sister-in-law told police that she was very suspicious because bob seldom served his wife usually
00:08:35
it was the other way around they said that it was extraordinarily atypical for mr drawl to ever make his
00:08:44
wife a drink of any kind or to serve her any kind of food or drink and cherie's best friend had one final
00:08:53
insight it was a dream she had about sherry the night before she disappeared i woke my husband up
00:09:01
like at 12 30 1 o'clock in the morning and i said oh i had the worst dream about blood
00:09:08
everywhere and couldn't get back to sleep and and i feel like that was a message being passed to me like do
00:09:17
something with this you know the information found in sherry doral's desk at work
00:09:27
painted a revealing picture of her marriage at the time of her disappearance [Music]
00:09:33
so investigators decided to search bob dorell's work computer too bob was in charge of the computer system
00:09:41
at the king county housing authority as a government agency bob's computer was government property so investigators
00:09:49
seized it and turned it over to gordon mitchell an expert in the growing field of computer forensics
00:09:58
mitchell copied bob doral's hard drive to examine the information on it without
00:10:04
altering the original data this is an important process where they can actually discover is there something
00:10:10
going on here or is bob just a nice guy mitchell found evidence that bob deleted
00:10:19
certain files but they were still on the hard drive that's because computers don't erase
00:10:26
files they just mark the space occupied by those files for reuse that's part of why computers take so
00:10:34
long to start up and shut down files are being created and files are being deleted
00:10:39
a lot of the deleted files are simply information left in place the deleted information revealed
00:10:46
that bob was dating women he met on the online dating service match.com and was doing so at the same time his
00:10:55
wife sherry was dating kevin johnson bob's profile on the dating website was also revealing
00:11:05
mr drawl portrayed himself as a man who was living separately from his wife and who was completely unburdened by any
00:11:13
other romantic or personal attachments and was open to a relationship with the appropriate
00:11:19
woman in emails to prospective dates bob explained why a divorce was impossible to one young woman mr durall said that
00:11:30
he really did not want to pursue a divorce with his wife because it would be expensive and messy he actually went
00:11:38
so far as to say that he would be better off if his wife were dead in another email bob said he had a plan
00:11:47
to resolve his unsatisfactory marriage and what was that plan bob's internet search engine revealed he
00:11:59
looked for information on all sorts of diabolical schemes we were shocked to see
00:12:06
these searches on things like poison herbs death something about sedation of people
00:12:14
also about smothering but the most graphic one was actually a search that drawl did on the words kill
00:12:22
spouse i was stunned i was stunned the contrast between the the sort of apparently very high
00:12:30
level functioning man and the sort of almost jaw-dropping stupidity of the evidence they left behind was
00:12:42
really staggering investigators now had probable cause to search the doral's home
00:12:50
and they went straight to the master bedroom they found a spot on the carpet that looked like it had been cleaned
00:12:59
they swabbed it with phenolphthalein and it turned purple an indication it was blood
00:13:07
under the bed were two squares of carpet that had been cut out and replaced underneath
00:13:15
were large pools of blood that had been cleaned with water and detergents if a cleaning solvent was used
00:13:24
it didn't work very effectively around the bed almost invisible to the naked eye
00:13:31
investigators found the most incriminating evidence it was just hundreds and hundreds of very very small
00:13:41
red dots on the headboard on the wall above the headboard in the corners and on the bureau and on
00:13:51
the door jamb to the bathroom the blood near the floor didn't happen during the beating
00:14:00
that's blood was just coughing out of the lungs through the mouth and that was down very low to the ground
00:14:06
so someone was coughing up blood very close to the ground in the area of where this
00:14:11
large pool of blood underneath the bed had been investigators concluded the blood on the
00:14:17
walls and ceiling was medium velocity blood spatter [Music] consistent with someone
00:14:26
swinging a bloody object scientists compared the dna from the blood in the bedroom to the dna profiles
00:14:34
of sherry's parents and discovered that this was sherry's blood investigators also found
00:14:44
a blood stain on the doorway leading to the garage and in bob's car was a receipt for a specialty cleaning
00:14:55
product and police also solved another mystery where were the doral's children
00:15:04
on the night of the murder perfect opportunity for him his youngest child was going to be
00:15:11
gone that evening his other two were at camp and they were going to be alone in the house that night
00:15:17
giving bob all night to carry out his plan but where was her body 41 year old bob dorell sat in prison
00:15:33
awaiting trial for his wife's murder to police he denied it but to his god he said something else in a jail cell he
00:15:43
was observed and overheard apparently asking god to forgive him for what he had done
00:15:50
prosecutors didn't need to find sherry's body in order to go to trial no one could have survived the amount of
00:15:58
blood loss found in sherry's bedroom but for the sake of her family prosecutors approached bob dorell's
00:16:06
attorneys with an offer we said we would encourage mr drawl to lead us to the location of the body
00:16:13
of his wife and that we would not use evidence that he had revealed the whereabouts in trial
00:16:22
surprisingly bob agreed and led investigators to the cascade mountains about an hour's drive away
00:16:31
there at the base of a steep ravine they found cherry's body in a plastic bag
00:16:40
under a pile of rocks the autopsy revealed sherry died of blunt force trauma just as the forensic evidence suggested
00:16:52
prosecutors believe bob was as unhappy in the marriage as sherry was but concluded a divorce would be too
00:17:00
expensive he did not want to incur the costs of child support or of a divorce a division
00:17:08
of the property mrs gerald's parents were fairly wealthy mr drawl didn't want to lose his
00:17:16
inheritance on the night of the crime prosecutors think bob drugged sherry to make her drowsy
00:17:24
although toxicology tests that the autopsy were inconclusive [Music] the evidence proves bob hit sherry on
00:17:40
the head repeatedly with a blunt object creating the blood spatter on the floor walls and ceiling
00:17:54
bob wrapped her body in plastic then carried her body to the garage leaving the blood smear on the door
00:18:07
he dumped her body in the ravine near the cascade mountains and returned home to clean up the crime scene
00:18:18
the evidence shows that bob tried to clean up the blood in the bedroom but couldn't come close to removing it
00:18:26
all so you've got a guy who fancies himself an extraordinarily clever and crafty fellow who's done all months of
00:18:34
research on how to commit a murder and then he commits a mistake that a sixth grader would laugh at so he's a very a
00:18:42
very peculiar man a very dangerous man in some ways was his own worst enemy police think it was bob driving sherry's
00:18:52
van to the hotel parking lot when the witness reported seeing it and they think the store clerk was simply
00:18:59
mistaken when he claimed sherry was in his store the day after her disappearance we pulled the videotape
00:19:05
from the store that from that evening and sherry was nowhere on the table at bob dorell's trial
00:19:11
despite leading police to sherry's body he pled not guilty and took the stand in
00:19:18
his own defense he told an incredible tale of two men who killed sherry and forced him to
00:19:25
dispose of her body they said they'd kill him and the children if he went to the police
00:19:33
actually i was having a hard time trying not to laugh because i thought it was so ridiculous of a story that
00:19:41
after two years in jail you think he would come up with a better a better story but in reality i think
00:19:48
that he was putting half the story together during the trial in the end there was simply too much forensic
00:19:56
evidence the computer forensics and blood spatter told the story after only two hours of
00:20:04
deliberation bob dorell was found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to
00:20:10
46 years in prison i will impose a total of 560 months despite spending months researching and
00:20:21
planning his wife's murder he still wasn't able to get away with it i think the forensic evidence was
00:20:28
everything the direction of the blood the patterns how they went out around the room
00:20:33
like in many cases the evidence was really overwhelming not just a single thing but many many
00:20:40
items that helped us feel confident about what we were doing mr doral who was professionally involved
00:20:48
in the use of computers the extent to which he left evidence of premeditated murder
00:20:55
on his work computer in such a sort of blatant way really continues to boggle my mind
00:21:05
[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you