00:00:06
NARRATOR: A young woman died
under suspicious circumstances, and there were no witnesses
and very new leads.
00:00:13
But investigators hoped the tiny
red fiber, some paper towels, and the tire could
solve the mystery.
00:00:23
[theme music] NARRATOR: Interstate 97
runs along the eastern side of the Cascade Mountains
in the Pacific Northwest.
00:00:56
-Highway 97 is
very well traveled and truck traffic
is unbelievable, but it's a major state highway.
00:01:05
NARRATOR: Early one June
morning, a man driving along the interstate
in Oregon spotted
00:01:09
something on the
side of the road. When he stopped
to investigate, he discovered it was
a sleeping bag.
00:01:17
-He went back to check it out
to see if it was any good. It was a decent
sleeping bag so he
00:01:23
threw it in the
back of his truck. NARRATOR: But later that day,
he took a closer look at it.
00:01:29
Inside, he found a pair of
women's sneakers and a purse. Both were covered in blood.
00:01:37
-The first thing
I thought was we had a female dead
body somewhere on 97. I mean, women don't leave
their purse and sleeping bags.
00:01:47
NARRATOR: There was no
money inside the purse, but there was a
driver's license.
00:01:51
It belonged to a 20-year-old
woman named Carrie Love, who lived in a small
town near Seattle
00:01:58
about 400 miles from where
the sleeping bag was found. Carrie's mother told police
that her daughter left home
00:02:05
a few days earlier to visit
her father in Los Angeles. -She told me that she was going
to be staying with her father
00:02:12
down there. And she was really
looking forward to that, because it been a while
since she had seen him.
00:02:19
-We walked for miles
up 97, on both sides, just walking
parallel to the road to see if we could find
anything that was discovered.
00:02:28
NARRATOR: But they
found nothing. Then Cooper remembered that
there was an isolated truck
00:02:35
stop about 15 miles
from where the sleeping bag had been discarded. -It's out of the way.
00:02:42
It's dark, black, pitch
black out there at night. And if that's the
case in this scenario,
00:02:52
that's what I would have done. I would have dumped her there. -There was a drag mark in
the gravel where it appeared
00:02:58
that something had been drug
through the gravel parking area. NARRATOR: And that's where
they found Carrie Love's body
00:03:06
buried beneath a
mound of gravel. Nearby, investigators found
sheets of green paper towels
00:03:14
with pieces of duct tape
attached to the ends. -When I held this
up to my face, I
00:03:21
could see the nose and the chin,
because whoever was wearing this had expired all this mucus
and liquid into the paper,
00:03:36
and then it dries. -We wanted to make sure anything
that we had was preserved for the forensic aspect
of this later on.
00:03:44
Blood, obviously,
has to be preserved. Fingerprints have
to be preserved. So when you start realizing
you're dealing with a homicide,
00:03:50
then everything is
ratcheted up 100% in terms of making sure
you take care of things.
00:03:56
NARRATOR: Investigators
were certain that something at
the crime scene would lead them to the killer.
00:04:02
All they had to do was find it. -This young woman's dead. She should be dead. Now it's my life's job to
make sure this person is
00:04:16
punished for it. NARRATOR: Carrie Love's body was
discovered in the hunting area
00:04:23
of one of the most
prolific serial killers in American history. -The first thing that
flipped through my mind
00:04:30
was had the Green River
Killer to a hold of her. NARRATOR: More than 40 women
had been killed in the area.
00:04:39
And the Green River Killer
had never been apprehended. Before police removed
Carrie Love's body
00:04:46
from the gravel pit,
forensic scientist were careful to collect as
much evidence as possible.
00:04:53
-We did recover trace
evidence from the body later that we might have lost
If we'd just drug her out.
00:04:58
There was a fuzz ball of fibers
was adhering to her abdomen. And there was 12 or 14
different kinds of fibers.
00:05:07
NARRATOR: Investigators hope
that Carrie's autopsy wouldn't tell them what happened
during her last moments alive.
00:05:15
-The autopsy lasted, I think,
a little over nine hours. And that was because, in
doing what we had to do,
00:05:24
we set the pattern and the tone,
and the group of guys that work with this, are the
best you can get.
00:05:34
NARRATOR: Under
Carrie's fingernails were several red cotton
fibers, an indication
00:05:40
that she had fought
her attacker. Petechial hemorrhages
in Carrie's eyes indicated she had
been asphyxiated.
00:05:48
There were also two deep
stab wounds to her chest. And on our left arm and
chest, investigators
00:05:56
discovered what was perhaps the
most telling piece of evidence. These were contusions
that brought blood
00:06:05
up to the surface of the skin. The pattern looked to some
like tire impressions.
00:06:13
-This came from the side of
the tire being pressed down on her arm, but it was a
very geometric pattern.
00:06:20
I mean, you could see it. It was square and
then there'd be a rounded part, and
then a square part.
00:06:26
It just spoke to me that
said, that's part of a tire. NARRATOR: The paper towels
found near Carrie's body
00:06:34
were a common brand,
nothing unusual, but forensic
scientist Mike Howard did find something distinctive.
00:06:42
You could just hold the
towel up to the light, and there were the
little holes along,
00:06:45
and they were random,
along one edge. NARRATOR: Each brand has
a unique pattern, which
00:06:51
is produced by large rollers
in the manufacturing process. -This roller will start
to wear, and when it does,
00:06:58
sometimes it will actually punch
clear through the paper towel and leave holes. In this particular
case, the paper towels
00:07:06
did have a blemish in it where
the roller had been punching through and leaving random
holes in the towels.
00:07:13
I went around to various stores. I probably bought about
100 rolls of towels. None of them had the little
holes in like that did.
00:07:21
NARRATOR: Investigators
learned that Carrie Love worked as a dispatcher for a
small trucking company
00:07:26
called Northern Star. The owner of the company was
a man named, Jesse Pratt. -When I first saw his
picture, I thought
00:07:35
he was the reject
from Hell's Angels. It was my first impression. He added this bushy permed
long hair, and scruffy-looking,
00:07:48
just a real scary type person. NARRATOR: Pratt told police
that he offered Carrie
00:07:56
a ride to Los Angeles in his
truck, but Carrie declined. She wanted to take
an airplane instead.
00:08:04
-Carrie decided, according to
Jesse, that she wasn't going to drive to LA,
she now wanted him
00:08:10
to drop her off at Sea-Tac
airport in Seattle. NARRATOR: But none of
the flight manifests
00:08:17
showed Carrie Love on board. -Obviously, being
in this business, you knew that was
a crappy story,
00:08:23
but he had to make up something. NARRATOR: A background check
revealed Pratt had been married
00:08:28
four times and had a history
of violence towards women. All of his ex-wives
claimed he had beaten them.
00:08:36
Even worse, in 1981
Pratt was sentenced to 10 years for kidnapping
one of his girlfriends,
00:08:44
but was released after serving
only 10 months in prison. -He served time in
Walla Walla prison.
00:08:51
Unfortunately, he was
let out way earlier than he should
have been let out. NARRATOR: Some of
his past girlfriends
00:08:57
told investigators Pratt had
been involved in prostitution. -Every girlfriend he had, he
tried to make a hooker out of.
00:09:05
It was just a matter of
time and, frankly, I'm stunned that there aren't
more victims out there.
00:09:12
Jesse Pratt is the most
pathological, destructive criminal that's come through
here, and we've had several.
00:09:20
NARRATOR: When police
looked inside Pratt's truck, at first they found
little of value.
00:09:26
-It was obvious the truck
had been cleaned up. It was too clean. There weren't even hardly
fingerprints in that truck.
00:09:34
NARRATOR: So forensic scientists
would have to look elsewhere, because evidence is often
in the most unlikely spot.
00:09:46
Jesse Pratt acknowledged that
Carrie Love worked for him as an administrative
assistant while Pratt hauled
00:09:53
freight with this
18-wheel truck. Pratt said he offered
Carrie a ride to Los Angeles
00:09:58
to visit her father,
but Carrie refused. And he said he dropped her
off at the Seattle airport
00:10:04
and drove to Los Angeles alone. -When we examined
the truck, there were two rolls of paper towels
in the truck, one of which
00:10:16
was opened. And it just happened
to be Bounty brand. NARRATOR: It was the
same brand and color
00:10:22
of paper towels used in
Carrie's asphyxiation. -I stripped some of the green
die out and did an analysis
00:10:31
of the dye so the
dyes were the same. I ran them on an instrument
called an X-ray fluorescence
00:10:37
spectrometer to look for
the metal elements that were present, even though
there weren't a lot.
00:10:42
NARRATOR: What are
metals doing in paper? When the wood is made into
pulp, the excess fibers
00:10:49
are removed with sulfur, some
of which remains in the paper. And sodium from the wood remains
in the paper end product, too.
00:11:02
In a process known
as ashing, Howard burned each sample to ash. A neutral chemical
compound was added,
00:11:12
then placed in the
fluorescence spectrometer where the metals fluoresce
as the X-rays pass through.
00:11:21
Both samples had identical
amounts of sulfur, sodium, potassium, and
other trace metals.
00:11:27
-They had the same metallic
components in the towels, so we were able to link those
towels from the dump scene
00:11:35
back directly to the
towels in the truck. NARRATOR: The roll of
towels in the truck also
00:11:41
had the same puncture marks
from the manufacturing rollers as the towels at
the crime scene.
00:11:47
Next, forensic scientists
compared the red cotton fibers underneath carries fingernails
to a red cotton t-shirt
00:11:54
Pratt was wearing when
police questioned him. They were
microscopically similar,
00:12:01
made from the same
materials and the same dyes. -That fingernail raked
the article of clothing.
00:12:11
It could've been
done in passion. It could've been in hatred. It could have been in fighting.
00:12:17
NARRATOR: The fibers from
the discarded sleeping bag were also discovered in the
sleeping area of Pratt's truck.
00:12:25
-So we now had a fiber
link with multiple fibers to link Carrie Love both
with the sleeper compartment
00:12:32
and with the trunk, and with the
sleeping bag at the dump scene. NARRATOR: Among Pratt's
business papers,
00:12:39
Cooper found an
interesting lead. A gas receipt for the day before
Carrie's body was discovered.
00:12:47
-For diesel fuel in
Redd's Gasoline Station. NARRATOR: So Cooper
called Redd's Gas Station
00:12:55
to see if they could
remember Jesse Pratt. -And he says, yeah,
that driver had a full beard and
a big pot belly.
00:13:06
And I'm sitting there, I'm
starting to breathe hard, because I can't believe
what he's recalling.
00:13:11
And I says is there
anything else? He says, yeah, that
young good looking little girl that was with him.
00:13:18
NARRATOR: When faced with
this eyewitness testimony and forensic evidence, Pratt
quickly changed his story.
00:13:27
He now admitted that Carrie had
been in the sleeper compartment of his truck, because the
two had consensual sex,
00:13:34
but said Carrie had stolen some
money from him during the trip. -So he was angry at her.
00:13:41
They had some fights over it,
but then after they got up on Highway 58, he just
couldn't take it anymore,
00:13:47
and he boot her out
of the truck at night, and said find your own way. Now to me, that was
the stupidest story
00:13:54
you could've made up, because
if I'd had been on a jury, I'd have convicted of
murder just for that.
00:13:59
-Jesse could look at me,
smile, carry on a conversation, and I knew from his demeanor
and his tone of voice,
00:14:06
he was flat out lying. Or creating whatever he
wanted me to believe. NARRATOR: But investigators
wanted to do one more test.
00:14:18
They wanted an expert to examine
the tires on Pratt's truck. Could they hold the key to
the death of Carrie Love?
00:14:31
Investigators knew that Carrie
Love's killer had driven over her body
after she was dead.
00:14:38
There was a tire pattern
across her chest, and a strange burn pattern
across her left forearm that
00:14:45
appeared to be
caused by friction. The mark resembled
the pattern found on the side of a truck tire.
00:14:54
-It wasn't the flat
portion of the tire that was burned into her. It was the side of the tire.
00:15:02
NARRATOR: To see of one
of Jesse Pratt's tires had caused these
injuries, investigators
00:15:07
called Peter McDonald,
the premier tire evidence expert in the country. -They had heard
about my expertise
00:15:15
and thought this
might be useful. NARRATOR: The first
thing McDonald had to do was to take impressions of every
tire on Jesse Pratt's truck.
00:15:26
He knew just by
looking at the tires that all 18 tires had
recently been retreaded.
00:15:37
And for some unexplained
reason, all the tread patterns were different. The tire mark across
Carrie Love's body
00:15:46
appeared to resemble the right
rear tire on Pratt's truck. The question now was whether
the side pattern on that tire
00:15:56
could be matched
to the burn mark on Carrie Love's left forearm. When a tire is retreaded, a
new sheet of rubber tracking
00:16:05
is glued onto the tires' core,
and is then spliced together. McDonald was most
interested in that splice
00:16:14
where the retread
was glued together on the outside of the tire. He laid paper over
the side of the tire,
00:16:23
and pushed it down to
lift the impression. The side pattern on the
tire was a short bar
00:16:31
followed by a rounded square. But at the point where the
retread was spliced together,
00:16:38
the bar was shorter than
anywhere else on the tire. -The one particular bar that
I focused my attention to
00:16:47
was unique. And that only would
occur where there's a splice of the retread. NARRATOR: Back in his lab,
McDonald cut out the pattern,
00:17:00
mounted it on a rubber
stamp, then applied ink. He pressed it on
his left forearm.
00:17:08
The pattern was identical to
the pattern burned into Carrie Love's arm, and identical to
the side pattern on the tire
00:17:17
from Jesse Pratt's truck. Both patterns had the same
shortened bar at the spot where
00:17:26
the retread was
spliced together. -That same short bar showed
up on Carrie Love's arm.
00:17:35
If it hadn't been for
these unique features, I couldn't have made a
positive identification.
00:17:44
NARRATOR: On that
same tire, McDonald noticed a serial number
XZA9219 on the new retread.
00:17:54
He traced that number
back to the company that treaded the tire. The manager revealed
the tire was retreaded
00:18:02
just two months
before Carrie's death. And he also revealed who
had paid for the work.
00:18:09
-The check that was written
for $278 for a retread, and it was signed by
the victim, Carrie Love.
00:18:20
-It's been shown by
the number of women that he has hurt in
the past before Carrie
00:18:27
that he can't be in society. And he needs to be held
accountable for what he has done.
00:18:38
NARRATOR: Prosecutors
believe Carrie accepted Pratt's offer of a
ride to Los Angeles.
00:18:43
Along the way,
Pratt demanded sex. Carrie refused, and there
was a confrontation.
00:18:50
The forensic evidence suggests
that Pratt covered her nose and mouth with the paper towels
and stabbed her to death.
00:18:57
But in the struggle, Carrie
grabbed Pratt's shirt, and those red cotton fibres
help tie Pratt to the crime.
00:19:07
In a final act of
vengeance, Pratt drove over her with his truck. He later hid the body underneath
the gravel at the truck stop,
00:19:22
and discarded Carrie's
sleeping bag and personal items along the side of the highway.
00:19:29
Every piece of forensic evidence
pointed towards Jesse Pratt. The red cotton fibers
underneath Carrie's fingernails
00:19:37
with the same as those
from Pratt's shirt. The paper towels held
over Carrie's mouth
00:19:44
were from the open
roll in Pratt's truck. And the tire impression on
Carrie's arm that matched
00:19:51
the tire on Pratt's truck
all told the same story. -I thought we had a pretty
strong forensic case.
00:20:02
NARRATOR: Jesse Pratt
was tried and convicted of aggravated murder and
was sentenced to death.
00:20:08
-I never felt it was open
and shut, because juries, you don't know what juries
are talking about back there.
00:20:15
You don't know. One person could
take over the jury and just ruin all the work
that the attorneys have done.
00:20:22
-I don't think Jesse
Pratt would ever have dreamt that
his own tire tracks would help convict
him of murder.
00:20:34
-The weapon that he used to
maim and mutilate her, and do horrible things to her head, to
have that bite him in the back,
00:20:43
so to speak, was
just incredible. -I've been here 18 years,
and this is by far the best,
00:20:50
most well investigated
case that I've ever seen. -The whole process
was just amazing.
00:20:56
In my next lifetime I want
to be a forensic scientist.