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[music playing] NARRATOR: Police in
Phoenix, Arizona, were asked to solve the mystery
of a limb found in a dumpster.
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From just a small body part,
archaeologists, toxicologists, and DNA scientists pieced
together enough information
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about the victim to lead
police to the killer. [theme music playing] On June 8, 1992, a man looking
through a garbage dumpster
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made a frightening discovery. RICO FRAGOSO: A dumpster diver
found a large plastic bag which
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he unwrapped, not
knowing what was in it, and discovered this severed leg. NARRATOR: There was also a saw.
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Phoenix homicide detectives
Rico Fragoso and Joseph Petrosino were
first on the scene.
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JOESPH J. PETROSINO: I think
the longer I stay here, the more bizarre
the cases become.
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-They say, it gets very scary. Since I moved here, there's been
a lot of-- of incidents where
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cops had to be-- you
know, had to be called. NARRATOR: The Waste
Management driver, Jesse Pena,
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told police he emptied the
dumpster just one hour earlier. -Where the dumpster is right
now is not where I left it.
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So somebody pushed it back. I don't know who it was. -I immediately thought, this
guy, meaning the victim,
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has been scattered
probably through all of dumpsters in the area. And now we're going to need
to go out and try to locate
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the rest of the body
in the other dumpsters. NARRATOR: Detectives
searched every dumpster
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within a five-mile radius. They were hoping to
find more of the body to compare to dental
records, fingerprints,
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or missing persons reports. They found nothing. Although there wasn't
much to autopsy,
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the medical examiner
could tell it was a leg of a male Caucasian
between 30 and 40 years old.
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-The presence of
scars on the knee are helpful in that this is a
person who's had either trauma
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or surgery, in this case
surgical-type scars. He's had surgical
intervention on the knee.
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NARRATOR: Initially
investigators thought the scars would help
identify the victim, until they
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learned how common knee
surgery had become. -The muscle from the thigh
of the leg was analyzed.
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And in the screening for
the common drugs of abuse, we found significant
levels of methamphetamine,
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or speed, and trace quantities
of its primary metabolite, amphetamine. NARRATOR: A possible indication
the incident was drug-related.
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And Dr. Keen could tell
that the victim was dead before the leg was removed. -The relative absence
of blood in the leg
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was indicative that the leg had
been severed after death, when there was no ongoing active
circulation in the body.
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This clearly was not
a natural disease and did not have the
features of an accident
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such as an industrial accident. The precise mechanism of
death was not apparent with the examination
of just the leg,
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so we classified the death
as a homicidal violence. Manner of death, homicide. NARRATOR: An anthropologist
measured the femur, the largest
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bone in the body, and estimated
the victim was six feet tall. There were no missing
persons reports
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of a 30 to 40-year-old
white male, six feet tall, possibly
involved with methamphetamine.
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Methamphetamine is an illegal
street drug, a stimulant commonly known as
speed or crank.
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By the mid 1990s, authorities
say that the Mexican drug lords were funneling huge amounts of
methamphetamine into Arizona.
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Methamphetamine overtook
cocaine as the number one drug of addiction reported by
Arizona drug treatment centers.
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With the rise in the
use of methamphetamine, there was also a rise in the
number of people involved
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in manufacturing
and distribution. Several days after the
discovery of the limb,
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investigators got
a telephone call about a missing
methamphetamine dealer. Police hoped it was the
break they were looking for.
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Police in Phoenix, Arizona, had
a seemingly impossible task-- to find a killer
loose in their city
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when their only evidence
was a severed leg. Forensic tests
revealed the individual
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was a male Caucasian,
six feet tall, between 30 and 40 years old. Not long after these forensic
tests were completed,
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a woman called
police headquarters asking how to fill out a
missing person's report.
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She said her boyfriend
hadn't returned home. -My boyfriend is missing. And he's been missing
for a few days now.
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How do I go about filling out
a missing person's report? He had a pair of sneakers
on and a pair of shorts.
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-She said it wasn't uncommon
for him to leave town, go to Las Vegas, be there for
a couple of days.
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But he'd always returned. He'd always answered
pages and phone messages. And that wasn't
happening in this case.
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NARRATOR: The woman said her
boyfriend was Norman Klas and at first glance,
matched the profile.
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K Klas was 32 years old,
stood six feet tall, had undergone knee surgery, and
was a methamphetamine dealer.
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-He was a friendly, outgoing,
social type of person. He had plenty of
friends in the valley.
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No one ever said anything
derogatory about Norman that I know of or that I recall.
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NARRATOR: Although Norman
Klas was well liked, he undoubtedly had
his share of enemies.
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-So I want you to
take your time. Look at them thoroughly. And tell us what you think.
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We'll be asking
you come questions. NARRATOR: Klas's
girlfriend Patricia identified the surgical scar
and the tennis shoe and sock
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as the type Norman usually wore. But investigators wanted to be
certain of the identification,
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so they suggested DNA testing. -If the leg was thought to
have come from Norman Klas,
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you know, let's get
his parents, and let's do a reverse paternity. NARRATOR: Since half of our DNA
comes from our mother and half
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from our father, it would
have been simple to determine if the limb was
Norman's by comparing
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his DNA to his parents' DNA. But when detectives
learned Klas was adopted, they knew that
would be impossible.
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Scientists hoped to
find some other way to make an identification. In researching
Klas's background,
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police discovered that he had
donated one of his kidneys to his younger sister. On a long shot, police contacted
the hospital in Houston, Texas,
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where the transplant
had taken place. Cell samples are routinely
taken from prospective donors
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to make sure the recipient
won't reject their organ. Fortunately for investigators,
the hospital in Houston
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had a policy of keeping its
cell samples for 100 years. DNA testing would be
possible after all.
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This autoradiograph shows
the DNA from the leg muscle compared to the cells
taken from Norman Klas.
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DAVID DUPLISSA: The
interpretation of autorads are very simple. You're doing simple
pattern comparison.
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You're looking at DNA banding
patterns, asking the question, are the DNA banding
patterns the same?
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Are they in the
same orientation, in the same location
on the autorads? Very simple, very
easy to interpret.
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The leg, or the muscle
tissue from the leg, originated from Norman Klas. -I'd never had a DNA
case before, prior
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to this, where we had
matched up anyone like that. I was very ecstatic
when I found this out.
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And I notified his
family back in Texas. NARRATOR: Now that police
had positively identified
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the victim, their focus turned
to identifying the killer -I was concerned
there was someone out
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there that had either lost
it, and was going to cause a lot more grievance to the
Phoenix Police Department.
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NARRATOR: Police began
questioning Norman's friends to determine his whereabouts
on his last day alive.
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Norman's girlfriend, Patricia,
was the most helpful. -We learned from her that Norman
had kind of a colorful past
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as a methamphetamine cooker. One of the people that
he probably had seen last was his business
partner, who was also
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a methamphetamine cooker,
by the name of Graham King. And the two of had been
friends for a long time
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but had recently had
a falling out had and become arrivals
in the drug business.
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NARRATOR: Detectives
found Norman Klas's car just a block away
from King's home.
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With a search
warrant, detectives wanted to find a
safe way to search King's home, which
was a fortress.
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Two vicious Rottweilers
guarded the back yard. Cameras were mounted outside,
giving King a 360-degree look
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around the entire circumference. Gun ports provided a clear shot
to every inch of the property.
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The doors and windows
were reinforced. -Anything less than
a bulldozer wasn't going to get you in
in a timely fashion.
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And certainly, as a
drug manufacturer, that would give
him time to dispose of a lot of the evidence.
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NARRATOR: Police waited until
King walked outside to his car before serving the
search warrant.
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Once inside the
house, investigators uncovered an arsenal. RICO FRAGOSO: He was into
weapons, all sorts of weapons--
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firearms and crossbows and
throwing knives and knives. And everything is hidden
inside of the residence,
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in nooks and crannies
that he specially made for these weapons,
in his bed, in the walls,
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behind doors. He had every known
weapon you can think of, from weapons made 400 years
ago to the present time.
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NARRATOR: Detectives also found
marijuana and methamphetamine. -He probably tasted
his product way
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more often than he should have. It might have affected
his-- his reasoning. NARRATOR: And in
the laundry room,
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investigators noticed that
someone, presumably King, had recently painted
the walls and floor.
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-You could tell it
was fresh paint. The smell was still
there of the paint. You could also detect an odor
of either Pine-Sol or Clorox,
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very strong presence,
in the laundry room. NARRATOR: But could
investigators find out
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if the laundry room had
been the scene of violence? Or did they get there too late?
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The new paint had covered
potential evidence. Or did it? In the laundry room
of Graham King's home,
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the walls and floor had
recently been painted and the room disinfected. Either King was a
meticulous housekeeper,
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or he had gone to a great deal
of trouble to hide something. Determined to find
which one it was,
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investigators
removed the laundry table that was
built into the wall. -Eureka. Take a look at this.
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NARRATOR: Behind the table
were some tiny spots. -We found some spots which
we believed to be blood.
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We took samples of that. And then we cut out
the entire wall. NARRATOR: The spots
were evaluated
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with the Kastle-Meyer
test which reacts with the iron
component in blood. That test was positive.
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-But despite the flushing
and washing attempts, they were still able to find
the traces of human blood
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and identify the
scene as being a scene of considerable bloodletting. NARRATOR: The next step was
to determine whose blood.
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The DNA from the tiny
specks on the wall was compared to the DNA from the
muscles in the amputated leg.
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They matched. -Wow. I re-- reinforced my belief in
the power of RFLP technology and DNA technology at the time.
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NARRATOR: Graham King
refused to answer questions. But police soon got
an unexpected break--
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a telephone call from
one of King's friends who had suspected King
was involved in foul play.
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The caller was Troy Killip,
who said he was working and Graham King's
backyard when Norman Klas
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went inside but never came out. Although he wasn't
an eyewitness, he was the next best
thing-- an ear witness.
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This is his audiotaped
statement to police. -I heard a bunch of
screaming, scuffling.
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I heard somebody yell, well
kill me, kill me, just [bleep] kill me.
Then a man screamed my name.
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I heard the gunshot,
the full deal. I heard him cutting
the man up with an axe. I don't know for a fact,
because I can't visualize it.
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But I can reconcile with
the sounds, the things that I heard, you know,
and him never leaving.
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NARRATOR: Troy Killip told
police he waited for an hour, then knocked on the door
to collect his tools.
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TROY KILLIP: I'm banging
on the front of the house. And he unbars all
the doors in there,
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all steel doors and stuff. And he comes out the front. And he's just
shaking and quaking.
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And he was wearing different
clothes at the time. He says, come in, come in. And I step in, and
I smell nothing
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but heavy-duty Pine-Sol
cleaner everywhere. I turn around. I walk out. NARRATOR: Killip
also said that King
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and Klas were
involved in a dispute. But it wasn't about drugs. It was about a woman.
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-Graham King's girlfriend have
been involved with Norman Klas. And she might have
become pregnant
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because of Norman Klas. Graham King found out. And that's what caused, we
think, or motivated the murder.
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TROY KILLIP: This is
a big drug operation, is what it all stems from. MALE SPEAKER: What
kind of drugs?
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TROY KILLIP: And this
guy that got killed was [bleep] this
other guy's old lady.
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And that's why he got killed. OK? It was methamphetamine. And they manufactured everything
right here in Phoenix.
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NARRATOR: Graham
King was arrested and charged with
first-degree murder. Despite the results of DNA
tests and the medical examiner's
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opinion that Norman Klas
was dead before his leg was removed, Norman's
girlfriend Patricia
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refuses to believe Norman
is dead, which was evident when we asked her
for an interview.
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PATRICIA: Norman's not dead. His death was staged. And I just feel like the
show is not based on truth.
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And therefore I can't in good
conscience contribute to it. NARRATOR: Patricia believes
Norman faked his own death
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to avoid a drug-related
confrontation. As prosecutors
prepared for the trial, they had another
challenge-- persuading
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their primary
witness to testify. Prosecutors believe that Norman
Klas went to Graham King's home
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unaware that King
was angry with him for his involvement
with his girlfriend. -What's going on with you?
00:17:23
Anything?
-What are you talking about? NARRATOR: The two argued.
GRAHAM KING: What do you think?
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I'm going to kill you? [interposing voices] [gunshot] NARRATOR: He placed the
body into garbage bags.
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Sometime later that
night, he dumped the bags in various dumpsters
throughout the city.
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Although King painted and
disinfected the laundry room, the tiny specks of blood on the
wall behind the laundry table
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proved to be his undoing. -He missed about four
square feet of a wall that was able to deliver up enough
evidence to positively say this
00:18:14
is where this happened at. We were-- we were
incredibly lucky. We did a lot of
good police work.
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But we had some
real lucky things happen that you can't
count on in this job. NARRATOR: And King
placed one of the limbs
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in a dumpster that
was completely empty. -Unfortunately for him, the
dumpster had been emptied out,
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I believe an hour prior to him
dumping that one leg in there. Otherwise we'd have
never found Norman Klas.
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He would still be
a missing person. NARRATOR: None of Norman
Klas's other body parts
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were ever found. This case required a wide
variety of forensic techniques. Anthropology determined
the victim's height.
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Toxicology found
the methamphetamine. DNA tests matched tissue
cells from the victim which
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had been in storage
for 10 years. Finally, the Kastle-Meyer test
identified what the killer
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never saw-- a tiny speck of
blood behind a laundry table, which DNA testing
confirmed was Klas's.
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-It goes from, how are you ever
going to prove this case just with a leg, to it's proved
with medical and testimonial
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certainty. NARRATOR: In the
not-to-distant future, DNA tests on a
single drop of blood
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will be able to identify such
things as the victim's gender, their hair and eye color,
height, weight, and ethnicity.
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Before the trial, prosecutors
suffered a setback when their witness, Troy
Killip, refused to testify,
00:20:07
saying he feared for his life. TROY KILLIP: I'm not gonna go
in no courtroom, no nothing.
00:20:13
No way, no how. These guys made $3.5
million last year. I don't know if
this man is gonna
00:20:20
pick up and freak out
and come looking for me. He's got the money to do
whatever he needs to do.
00:20:24
NARRATOR: So prosecutors
reached a plea agreement with Graham King. -I made an accommodation
because these people, you know,
00:20:34
had fears of this Graham King. NARRATOR: King agreed to plead
guilty to second-degree murder,
00:20:41
which carries a sentence of
20 years in a maximum security prison, instead
of going to trial
00:20:47
and risking the death penalty. -He got a bargain. He got the deal of a
lifetime, 20 years.
00:20:54
He's not going to be that
old when he gets out. Certainly not for--
not for somebody that
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cooks methamphetamine
and kills people. -I'm very concerned with Mr.
Graham King being released.
00:21:09
And I think he will be
a menace to society. I think it will happen again. -So this is one of the cases
that I-- that I do remember.
00:21:16
And-- and whenever I give
tours or give DNA talks to-- to college
classes and such,
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this is the one story that
I will always bring up. -The DNA was very critical
for this investigation.
00:21:29
Without it, we would
never have solved it. NARRATOR: But even now, 10 years
later, Norman Klas's girlfriend
00:21:39
still does not accept
the forensic results. She continues to believe that
Norman faked his own death
00:21:47
and that one day,
he will return. [phone ringing] PATRICIA: Hello. Please leave a
message at the tone,
00:21:56
and Norman and I will
return your call. Thank you for calling. Bye-bye. [beep] [theme music]