00:00:04
Honey, do mom a favor. Take this down to
the mailbox, OK? OK. I love you mom. I love you too.
00:00:12
NARRATOR: Vicki
Lynne Hoskinson never returned home after running
the errand for her mother.
00:00:23
Her abandoned bicycle was the
only clue to her disappearance. [music playing] Eight-year-old Vicki
Lynne Hoskinson
00:00:56
grew up in Flowing Wells, a
suburb of Tucson, Arizona. She was the youngest
in a family brought
00:01:02
together by the second marriage
of her mother, Debbie Carlson. There was something about
her that grabbed her heart
00:01:10
the minute you were around her. She had this intensity of a
royal blueness in her eyes.
00:01:19
When you looked into her eyes,
you saw this depth of wisdom that was beyond her years.
00:01:28
NARRATOR: Vicki's
prized possession was the pink Stingray bicycle
she had received as a Christmas
00:01:33
present, which is what
she rode to the mailbox on the day she disappeared. To get to the mailbox, Vicki
headed down a dirt path
00:01:43
behind some neighbors' homes,
went down a dead end street, and over an uncleared
area of desert brush.
00:01:54
Her mother expected
Vicki back in 10 minutes. When she didn't return, she
sent her older daughter,
00:01:59
Stephanie, to look for her. Stephanie came right
back and she's hysterical and she's crying.
00:02:04
She says, mom, I found Vicki's
bike in the middle of the road. And I go, what do you
mean you found Vicki's
00:02:10
bike in the middle of the road? She goes, it was laying
in the middle of the road,
00:02:14
and she goes, something's wrong. Something's wrong. My mom got in the car and
drove around and picked up
00:02:20
the bicycle and, you know,
rode through the neighborhood looking for Vicki, and
when she returned home,
00:02:26
she called the police. At the time, we
thought we were possibly looking for just a
missing child who
00:02:33
had failed to come
home after going out to do an errand for her mother. And as the search went on, it
became obvious that something--
00:02:42
something other than a normal
disappearing-- disappearing child had occurred. NARRATOR: Hundreds of volunteers
searched the nearby desert,
00:02:52
and police helicopters
scoured the area. Vicki's family pleaded
for her safe return
00:02:59
on local television. My faith in God that-- that he's watching over
her and he's protecting her
00:03:08
and that he is gonna
bring her home to us. I really believe that
she's still alive.
00:03:16
NARRATOR: Police received
a number of calls from people who
claimed to have seen
00:03:20
a child who look like Vicki. There were a lot
of Vicki sightings. It's not an unusual phenomena
when you ask people to go look
00:03:29
for-- for such a person,
and our community was actively looking for Vicki. NARRATOR: But all of the
sightings were dead ends.
00:03:41
Within days of Vicki Lynne
Hoskinson's disappearance, yellow ribbons appeared
all over Tucson
00:03:48
as a sign of the community's
concern for the missing eight-year-old girl. MARK KIMBLE: The
picture of Vicki
00:03:55
that is locked in
everyone's mind of this little gap-toothed
eight-year-old girl,
00:04:00
the way Vicki was forever
frozen in most people's memory, was everywhere. It was on the front page of
the newspapers many times.
00:04:07
It was on billboards
around town. It was on TV so often. It was one incident
and one person who
00:04:14
really brought Tucson together. NARRATOR: But police
had no solid leads on Vicki's whereabouts.
00:04:22
The local police
called in the FBI, who wanted to question the
last teacher at school who
00:04:26
had seen the little girl alive. It was Vicki's athletic
coach, Sam Hall, and the story he told
them was chilling.
00:04:36
He said he was in
the school playground picking up some sports
equipment with a student.
00:04:40
Come on, Rachel, you ready? Come on, Rachel, let's go. We've got to get out of here.
00:04:46
NARRATOR: A strange
looking character in a sports car caught his eye. The man appeared to be
staring at the children.
00:04:52
He had long hair and
an unkempt appearance, and drove away shortly
after he was spotted.
00:05:00
Something was telling me
that this gentleman just wasn't right. And as a Christian man,
and as a man of prayer
00:05:06
and a man who does pray
and I have a relationship with the Lord, I sensed the
Lord telling me this man
00:05:11
was gonna do something evil and
wicked, and I-- that I needed to write down everything I saw.
00:05:18
NARRATOR: Hall immediately
went to his car, wrote the man's license plate
number on a piece of paper,
00:05:24
and put it in his
glove compartment. The FBI told Hall that Vicki
disappeared near the mailbox
00:05:31
one block away not
long after Hall saw the man in the sports car. And as soon as they told me
what happened, that Vicki Lynne
00:05:41
was abducted, immediately, I
went right back to that car and what was just sitting in
my glove box in my pickup.
00:05:49
NARRATOR: The car had
a California license plate with the number 1KEZ608. The car was registered
to Frank Jarvis Atwood.
00:06:00
He had two prior arrests,
one for lewd and lascivious behavior, the other for
kidnapping, in each case,
00:06:08
the victims were young boys. Atwood was out on parole
at the time of Vicki Hoskinson's disappearance.
00:06:15
But there was no proof of
any connection between Atwood and Vicki Lynne Hoskinson.
00:06:21
Investigators went back to
where they found the bicycle. This time, they saw something
they hadn't seen before.
00:06:29
LARRY BAGLEY: And
I noticed a post had been bent over about 25 feet
away at the side of the road.
00:06:36
So when I went over and examined
it, it had been a fresh bend and the bend was about 12
inches from the ground.
00:06:44
NARRATOR:
Investigators suspected that the dent may have been
caused by the perpetrator.
00:06:50
Since it was low
to the ground, it looked like it was caused
by a small vehicle, possibly
00:06:55
a sports car. The car registered
to Frank Atwood was a sports car, a Datsun 260Z.
00:07:04
Police issued an all points
bulletin for Frank Atwood. Three days after
Vicki's disappearance,
00:07:11
Atwood was traced from
California to Arizona to Oklahoma and, finally, to the
small town of Kerrville, Texas.
00:07:19
Under questioning, Atwood said
nothing that could link him or his automobile to
Vicki's disappearance.
00:07:26
But afterwards, one
of the detectives noticed a small speck of
paint on the front bumper
00:07:31
of that Atwood's car that
looked to be the same color as Vicki's abandoned bicycle.
00:07:38
Frank Atwood was arrested on
a suspicion of kidnapping. DEBBIE CARLSON: We all
gathered in the living room,
00:07:44
and they showed
the arrest on TV. And my first feeling was,
is, oh, my God, this man
00:07:50
looks like Charles Manson. And all I could think
about was this man could have touched my daughter.
00:07:59
NARRATOR: Atwood
maintained his innocence, but the police were convinced
that Atwood's car had
00:08:05
been at the scene of the crime. For the proof they needed,
they turned to science.
00:08:15
Frank Atwood was in custody
on the suspicion of kidnapping Vicki Lynne Hoskinson,
but he denied
00:08:21
he was involved in any way. The family gradually came to
terms with the possibility
00:08:28
that Vicki would
never be found alive. Christmas. That was Christmas. Thought for sure she was
coming home for Christmas.
00:08:45
That's when I realized that
she was never coming home. Excuse me. NARRATOR: The only
evidence against Atwood
00:08:58
was circumstantial, a tiny
speck of paint on his bumper that may have come
from Vicki's bicycle,
00:09:04
but could have
come from anywhere. Police sent Atwood's
car and Vicki's bicycle to accident reconstructionist
Paul Larmour.
00:09:15
When Larmour placed the
bicycle on the ground sideways, he noticed that the pedal
was at the exact same height
00:09:22
as the scratch marks and the
indentation on the gravel pan under Atwood's front bumper.
00:09:30
There was no impact, in the
classic sense of the word. There was contact
between the two
00:09:36
and the car continued to
push against the bike, pushed it down on the ground
and overrode it to the point
00:09:43
that the pedal deformed the
gravel pan under the car. NARRATOR: Lamour believes
that Atwood's car
00:09:50
was going less than
5 miles an hour when it struck Vicki's bicycle. This would account for the
lack of blood at the scene.
00:09:57
The car was going too
slow for Vicki to have sustained serious injuries. Next, the bumper of Attwood's
car and Vicki's bicycle
00:10:05
were both sent to the
FBI lab in Washington DC. The prosecution requested
that we look at the bicycle
00:10:15
and compare that to the
paint that was scraped off the bumper of the vehicle,
as well as a paint that was
00:10:22
remaining on the
vehicle, and try to make a comparison to see
if those paints originated
00:10:27
from the same source. Namely, did the pink paint
on the suspect's bumper match the pink paint from
the victim's bicycle?
00:10:41
NARRATOR: Paint analysis
involves microscopic and microchemical examination. Under the microscope,
the samples
00:10:48
of paint from Atwood's
bumper and the bicycle appeared to be similar. Next, microchemicals were
added to both paint samples.
00:10:56
Both reacted to the
chemicals in the same way. Finally, the paint samples were
placed in a gas chromatograph
00:11:04
mass spectrometer and heated
to a temperature of 760 degrees centigrade, which
vaporizes and separates
00:11:11
the organic components
of the paint samples. The compounds in both paint
samples were identical.
00:11:21
This did not necessarily
prove that the paint on Atwood's bumper came from
Vicki Hoskinson's bicycle.
00:11:28
When Jim Corby studied
the paint samples under the scanning
electron microscope,
00:11:33
he noticed one
element in the paint from Vicki's bicycle
which was not common in the chemical
formulation of paint.
00:11:41
He found traces of nickle. But where had it come from? When he look closer
at Atwood's bumper,
00:11:49
he noticed that the
chrome on the bumper next to the pink paint had
been scratched, exposing
00:11:55
the nickel underplating. The chemical composition of the
nickel underplating on Atwood's
00:12:01
bumper was identical
to the nickel sample found on Vicki's bicycle. It leads one to believe,
as a forensic scientist,
00:12:09
that these two items, namely,
the bicycle and the bumper, were in forcible contact
with each other at one time,
00:12:18
meaning that they made physical
contact with each other. NARRATOR: This two-way
transfer, paint
00:12:25
from the bicycle
onto the bumper, and the nickel from the bumper
onto the bicycle, placed
00:12:31
Frank Atwood's automobile
at the scene of Vicki Hoskinson's disappearance. Seven months after Vicki
Hoskinson's disappearance,
00:12:45
a man hiking through the
desert outside of Tucson found a human skull which
looked like that of a child.
00:12:54
It was an area
that we had initially speculated if you were
going to get rid of a body,
00:13:01
where would you do it? And it was an area that
was close to the area where she disappeared.
00:13:07
It's on that side of town. It was remote. NARRATOR: After several
days of searching,
00:13:13
more bones were discovered. Some had been gnawed by animals. Among those found was a
lower jawbone with teeth.
00:13:23
The news was devastating
to the family, although, not a surprise. I'll never forget the look
on Sheriff Dupnik's face.
00:13:33
Him and I are really close. But I just knew
looking at him what the answer was without
them telling me verbally.
00:13:45
And I just remember
losing it and watching all these grown
men turn their back to me because they
didn't want me
00:13:56
to see that they were crying. NARRATOR: Forensic
anthropologist Dr. Walter Birkby was asked to analyze the
skeletal remains to see if they
00:14:06
belonged to Vicki Hoskinson. He used a technique called
comparative dental radiography
00:14:13
to compare the teeth and
jaw bone found in the desert to the dental x-rays
of Vicki Hoskinson.
00:14:19
They were a match. But he could not determine
the cause of death from the rest of the remains.
00:14:25
There weren't any
sharp implement marks and really nothing that
would indicate blunt force
00:14:30
trauma or anything like that. But so cause of death could
have been practically anything.
00:14:37
NARRATOR: Hundreds
of people attended Vicki Hoskinson's funeral. Many knew of her only
through news reports,
00:14:45
but wanted to share
in the family's grief. They'd grabbed the emotion,
not only of people here,
00:14:52
but of all people in Tucson. It was something that everyone
at the time was talking about.
00:14:58
And I can't think of
anything that's been-- that this even approached
that magnitude since then.
00:15:05
NARRATOR: Frank Atwood
was charged with murder. His lawyers pointed
out that Atwood
00:15:10
had been in police
custody since three days after Vicki's disappearance. They said it was impossible
to know when the body
00:15:17
had been dumped in the desert. It was possible it
could have happened while Atwood was in custody.
00:15:24
Medical examiner
Dr. Richard Froede was asked if there was any
way to tell when Vicki Lynne
00:15:30
Hoskinson had been killed. Now, we must
take it to anything we can find on the bones.
00:15:37
And one of the things
that we found on the bones was there was some
adipocere there.
00:15:41
NARRATOR: Adipocere, also
known as mortuary fat, is the gray, waxy
substance which
00:15:47
forms when a body is exposed
to high temperatures, bacteria, and water. Dr. Froede knew that the desert
had high temperatures, as
00:15:57
well as sources of
bacteria, but deserts have little or no water. Was it possible that the body
was first in an area with water
00:16:06
before it was moved
to the desert? If so, Frank Atwood
would be exonerated since he had been in
custody since three days
00:16:16
after the girl's disappearance. Dr. Froede researched
the weather conditions for the
period that Vicki
00:16:22
Hoskinson had been missing. We found that within a day or
two after she had disappeared
00:16:29
that there were heavy
rains in that area, and then there were no
more rains for months.
00:16:35
NARRATOR: The adipocere
told Dr. Froede that the body was in the
desert during these rainstorms,
00:16:42
most likely in a shallow grave. The rain water had
mixed with the bacteria and the high temperatures over
the next two to three months,
00:16:52
forming the adipocere
found on her bones. We now know that
the body had to been there during these heavy rains.
00:17:02
Had it been a month later,
two months, three months, it would have been dry and the
body would have been mummified
00:17:06
and you would not have
seen the adipocere. NARRATOR: This put the
time of Vicki's death
00:17:11
within a day or two
of her disappearance. Prosecutors believe that
Atwood was cruising the Tucson
00:17:19
area for a child
the day Sam Hall saw him near the schoolyard. Fortunately, Hall
had the presence
00:17:26
of mind to write his
license number down on a piece of paper. A half hour later, Atwood
saw Vicki on her pink bicycle
00:17:37
a block away from the school. He accelerated into
Vicki's bicycle, knocking her to the ground.
00:17:47
The bumper hit the bicycle just
under the seat, which produced the double transfer of paint
onto his bumper and nickel
00:17:55
from the bumper
onto the bicycle. The bike wedged beneath
the cars gravel pan, leaving an indentation
and scratch marks.
00:18:08
- Where are you taking me?
- Shut up, kid. Just get in the car. I'm gonna take you home.
00:18:12
NARRATOR: Atwood forced
Vicki into his car, possibly with the promise
that he would drive her home.
00:18:22
While making his getaway,
Atwood backed into the mail post leaving the den later
found by police.
00:18:30
No one knows what
happened to Vicki Lynne Hoskinson during that
fateful drive to the desert.
00:18:37
But prosecutors
believe he buried her body later that same
day in a shallow grave.
00:18:45
Within a day or two, heavy
rain seeped into her grave, causing the adipocere to form
on her decomposing bones.
00:18:55
Vicki was in the wrong
spot at the wrong time. I believe that Frank kidnapped
her, I believe he hit her,
00:19:02
knocked her off the bicycle
to make contact with her. I think he had even
done that in the past,
00:19:09
made contact with people by
contacting them on bicycles. I believe he sexually
assaulted her,
00:19:16
and I believe he killed her. NARRATOR: Frank Jarvis Atwood
was tried and convicted
00:19:22
of first degree murder in the
death of Vicki Lynne Hoskinson and was sentenced to death.
00:19:29
From an investigative
standpoint, the real hero in
this investigation was Sam Hall, who's a
gym teacher here at Homer
00:19:36
Davis Elementary School. People say that I'm
the hero of the case, but I just want to
be a hero that would
00:19:44
have saved a child's life. That's all. I'm not a victim that will
ever forgive the perpetrator,
00:19:53
the murderer. I will never forgive him. And I don't visit the cemetery
because I don't believe
00:20:02
that that's where she is. When Atwood left
her in the desert, that's where she
was laid to rest.
00:20:09
I feel that that
really is where-- other than in my heart,
where my sister is. There was one time when I was
going through a really tough
00:20:19
time trying to come to
a peace about her death that she came to my bedroom. And I woke-- and was
like, I'm sleeping,
00:20:35
and I hear these little
pitter patter of feet, and this little tapping of mama,
mama, mama, and I look up--
00:20:40
you have to understand, this
is after Vicki's been deceased, and here's Vicki standing
at the foot of my bed
00:20:48
and there's this white
light surrounding her and she's saying, mommy, I'm OK. I need you to be OK.
00:20:58
And then she disappeared. That was a turning point for me. [music playing]