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people on television and in movies attract attention everywhere they go but not all of the attention is welcome
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tragically a television reporter in michigan was killed outside her home after she received numerous threatening
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letters a document examiner a criminal profiler and the police dog all found evidence
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pointing to the same suspect but the most persuasive evidence came from the dog [Music]
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[Music] diane newton king found everything she was looking for in battle creek michigan
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we must do all in our power to support our men and women now fighting in the middle east knowing that she was a news
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reporter for the local television station at a nice home was married and had two beautiful children
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diane newton king was the kind of woman when she walked into a room eyes turned to look at her not only because the way
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she looked with her attractive native american looks but she was a type of woman who always had a smile on her face
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was very animated and people's eyes were just naturally drawn toward her three and a half years in a japanese
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prisoner of war camp diane had a reputation as a tough aggressive reporter she would push
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i mean to get a story she would push and sometimes maybe she'd push hard although diane caught the viewer's
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attention it wasn't always in the way she wanted she started receiving harassing phone
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calls and letters from an obsessed fan it was a man who identified himself as a person who wanted to get an industry and
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wanted to go to lunch with her and wanted to meet her and he began pestering her sometimes calling as much
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as once a day station executives hired an additional security guard and screened
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all of diane's calls diane's husband brad a former policeman took precautions of his own
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they put in security lights automatic lights that would come on when someone would come into the yard the sister gave
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them a doberman pinscher that was used as a watchdog but the harassment continued
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including this letter sent to her home the words created by letters cut from magazine said
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you should have gone to lunch with me that's when things begin to get very scary
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is when they found the first letter in her mailbox because before no one knew where she lived
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diane gave the letter to local police i have never found one case where a stranger
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cut letters out and put it on a sheet of paper you see it on tv you see it in the movies but you don't
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see that in real life a few weeks later someone broke into the king's home while
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the family was away but nothing was stolen these bizarre incidents culminated in
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tragedy one saturday afternoon in 1991. diane's husband brad came home and found diane lying in the driveway
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dead of an apparent gunshot wound to the chest their two children were still inside the
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car alive but frightened the police were concerned that they may have been partially responsible
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one of the detectives called that night to the murder scene his first reaction was oh my god we've screwed up
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he was worried that the letter had languished on his desk for a couple of months and he hadn't really done any
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serious investigation on it there were several clues in that letter but not the kind police expected
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[Music] diane king's murder was front-page news in the small town of battle creek
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[Music] investigators hoped to find some clues during the autopsy and it revealed
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something telling diane king had been shot not once but twice with a 22 caliber rifle the angle
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of the shot to the chest was slightly downward that is as it passed from front to back it passed slightly
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downward indicating that the weapon was slightly above her when fired the second shot followed a completely
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different trajectory the second one was most unusual this wound entered just above the pubic bone and passed
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very sharply upward that is it passed through some of the intestines through the left lung and i recovered that
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bullet next to the left collarbone apparently the killer fired once from above and
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then he moved closer and lower before he fired again he or she would have to be either kneeling or perhaps prone on the
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ground holding the weapon essentially parallel or almost parallel to the ground at the crime scene
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investigators identified the possible location of the shooter in the hay loft of the barn next to the
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driveway was a single 22-caliber shell casing i kind of said goosebumps up my back to
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know that we were that close perhaps to whoever had committed this crime and we were standing right in the same place
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that he had stood probably within the hour with police personnel helping to recreate the crime
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investigators used a laser to confirm this was the sniper's nest we knew what the angle of the trajectory
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in the body was from the autopsy and we tried to determine if that was consistent with having been shot from
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the loft of the barn and by directing the laser beam from the loft to where the victim stood
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we were able to see that that angle was consistent next michigan state trooper gary lyle
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and his tracking dog travis tried to pick up the killer scent the shell casing of any weapon
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ejects to the right was fired so i moved to the left side of the shell casing and travis indicated that he had a track
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at that point and we started from that point [Music] dogs can track someone by his scent
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which is unique a combination of dead skin cells that fall plus perspiration the adrenaline flows their heart pumps
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faster they sweat they get excited it's a whole different odor than a person
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that's uh say confused or a person that's lost travis followed the scent from the
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sniper's nest in the barn across a small foot bridge over a creek and then took a
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sharp left turn travis brought the track up to here this is where travis got really excited
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here they found the exposed end of a 22-caliber remington scoremaster 511 rifle that had been jammed into the mud
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in the water nearby were seven spent shell cartridges everybody was pretty excited because
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they knew that probably wasn't the murder weapon because there'd be no other reason for anyone else to stick
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something like that into a creek bed at that particular time at the crime lab ballistic experts
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test-fired the rifle giving them its fingerprint a unique mark on the bottom of each
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shell created by the rifle's firing pin the fire cartridge case that was recovered from the loft of the barn
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and the seven cartridge cases from the creek were identified as all having been extracted
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by the firearm in question but it was impossible to match the bullets to the rifle
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and the reason for that was the condition of the bullets they were damaged from impacting with a with a target the body
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in this case and it made it difficult to make any positive determination back at the crime scene
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travis wasn't yet finished with his investigation after finding the rifle and the shell
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casings he jumped the stream and picked up the killer scent once again it's just
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amazing what the dog's sense ability is and you just wonder how in the world
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they can do this and find things that they find travis followed the scent into the woods
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out into the street then surprisingly back to the crime scene [Music] if travis was correct
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the killer was one of the bystanders watching as police conducted their investigation
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shortly after diane king's funeral her mother gave police an important piece of
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information about the murder something brad king failed to mention the original plan was that diane was going to leave
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her two children with her mother and then come back to be with brad that weekend so the two of them had some time
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together alone but on february 9th and apparently because one of the children wasn't feeling too well diane decided to
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take the kids with her and make the two-hour trip back to marshall michigan we have a victim who gets out of her car
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we don't have any evidence that would suggest that she was afraid of anything
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she did not take any kind of defensive action and we have an offender who not only is
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comfortable in the crime scene he's also comfortable walking up to the victim and
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shooting her again brad king was a part-time college professor teaching criminology and he
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didn't have a solid alibi brad told investigators he was out walking in the woods behind his home and
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showed investigators where he'd been but travis the police dog identified this same area as the
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killer's getaway route it showed that he would hadn't seen anybody come his way and run down to the
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track where the dog took and he would have seen anybody commit that crime coming from the barn
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and of course that was never brought up brad denied owning a 22-caliber rifle however in his home were 22-caliber
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bullets similar but not identical to the brand used in the murder there was also a cleaning rod for a
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22-caliber rifle we had the two cleaning ladies come forward who claimed to have seen
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a similar rifle on the bar in the basement of a townhouse that the kings rented here in
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the city of battle creek i can recall seeing it every time we was there it was a
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22 rifle police found another inconsistency in the case of the attempted burglary of
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the king's home a few weeks before the murder as everybody knows who watches
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any kind of television show that if you're breaking in to a house the glass should be on the inside
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in this case the glass was on the outside so whoever broke it had to be inside at the time that the window was
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broken next investigators turned their attention to the threatening letter mailed to diane's home
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statistically only one percent of all threatening letters have cut out pieces one of the most telling aspects of this
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crime and that was one where the letters were cut out of a magazine and pasted onto a blank sheet of paper
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i have in my career never seen a letter like that where it wasn't somebody emotionally close to the victim
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a perpetrator uses cut out letters when the victim would be able to identify his
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handwriting unfortunately by the time the letter was sent to the fbi for analysis there was
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no hope of finding any fingerprints the anonymous note had been processed by the originating
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agency with a powder and in my opinion that's not the correct process to use and it's very difficult
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once it's been processed with a powder to do any other chemical process on the
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document i had the office of brad king at western michigan university searched with a search warrant an item
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seized i wanted scissors razor blades tape paste anything paper anything that we might be able to link through
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forensic science to bradford king we were unable to do that in terms of motive police found evidence
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of spousal abuse sexual affairs and dianne's overall dissatisfaction with her husband's lifestyle
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she came in one morning and she she was crying and she had bruises she showed me the bruises and this was right
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around christmas time and she said that her and brad had been in a fight brad's a very different individual i
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think he can have people like him real quick and also have him turned off real quick
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just by his mood and friends say diane wanted brad to get a full-time job well brad had the perfect setup he was
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working part-time as an instructor at western michigan university i think she was pushing that issue so much that he
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feared that he was not going to be able to continue his lifestyle he had at the university
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his wife was responsible for taking care of the kids and getting the money and i
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think she was angry at him because he wasn't carrying his load he was known to order him around
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and to yell at him and i think it just reached a a a crisis point with him and he lashed out at her in this very
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passive aggressive manner by murdering her brad's alleged sexual affairs were with
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students from the college where he taught he was not faithful to his wife he had
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an affair with a student in one of his classes in an affair with another woman that he had met in battle creek he was
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known to be trying to procure women girlfriends sometimes at the fraternity house
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that he used to hang out at uh with younger fraternity members it was not a picture of fidelity by any
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stretch of the magical nation one year after his wife's death bradford king was arrested and charged with
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murder the prosecutor and investigators in this case were worried that because the
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suspect was a former police officer and a criminal injustice instructor at a major university was going to spring
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something on them that was playing some kind of mind game with them kind of a forensic cat and mouse game
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and sure enough a new piece of evidence surfaced threatening the prosecutor's case
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[Applause] [Music] just as bradford king was about to go on trial for the murder of his wife diane
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prosecutors were dealt a serious setback a man moving into the king's neighborhood said he found a remington
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511 scoremaster rifle in his attic it was virtually identical to the alleged murder weapon
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the second rifle was sent to the forensic lab for testing the ballistic tests on the second gun
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showed that the shell casing found in the loft could have not possibly come from the gun
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the second gun that was accumulated by police prosecutors believe brad planted this rifle in a vacant home
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nearby to create reasonable doubt in the jury's mind and that it was brad who made the
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threatening calls sent the threatening letter and staged the burglary making the mistake of breaking the window from
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the inside rather than the outside on the day of the murder diane planned to take the children to
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their grandparents house to spend the night while she was gone brad test-fired his rifle to align the
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site and carefully collected the empty shell casings [Music] later when diane came home
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brad was waiting in the loft [Music] his second shot was at close range after he left the barn
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a clear sign of hatred and anger [Music] then brad realized the children were in
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the car not knowing one of them was sick since he couldn't leave his small children in the cold for very long he
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needed to change plans so he quickly disposed of the rifle near the creek through the empty shells in
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the water then went back to the house to call police but brad left one shell casing behind in
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the loft and this shell casing tied his rifle to the murder and he was unaware that a police dog would track his scent
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from the sniper's nest to the creek into the woods then full circle back to his
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house i think he had that foreknowledge that this was sort of a small town police
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operation and being the criminal injustice criminal justice instructor and the type of individual he was that i
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felt that he thought that he could outwit them many believe the children foiled his plan to
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establish a solid alibi i don't believe he anticipated the children would be there
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i think it's likely that he would have gone someplace else and had somebody else find his wife
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that would give him an alibi diane told friend shortly before her death that she suspected brad was behind
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the threatening calls and letters and she said i just think it's brett and she said i i don't know what i'm going
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to do yet the defense presented only seven witnesses arguing that the case against
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brad was circumstantial no one will get understand and say brad king had a gun that day brad king held
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the gun that day he pulled a trigger that day nobody i was confident in my own mind that brad
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king was guilty i just didn't know if i could convince 12 people of that the jury felt the forensic evidence was
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just as revealing if not more brad king was sentenced to life in prison without parole
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when i'm looking at evidence firearms evidence or other types of evidence and i can make an identification a
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positive identification that is helpful to the investigation it's a good feeling when that can be
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done all of the forensic science fit together and pointed in the direction of brad king being the
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murderer of his wife you may assume or may suspect that that a particular person was involved but without those
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sciences to tie them together for you you have no case i don't think we touch what a dog's nose
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can do every day i see them do things that would just you just stand back and say how could
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[Music] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] you