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it was a christmas gift delivered to a jacksonville florida home there was no card or label identifying the center but
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inside were some clues a thin piece of wire and some cryptic numbers on a sales receipt held the key
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to a brutal and senseless murder [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] january 6 2001
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was packing day for lillian jarvis and her two children she was moving her family to a new
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apartment in the same town just a few miles away son lillian was a very wonderful girl we
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didn't have any secrets we talked about everything and i don't even want to tell
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you what everything means either lillian spent most of her professional life working with special needs children
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she was very sweet girl she would do anything for anyone on moving day it was lillian's mother who first saw
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the gift on the front porch there was no card just a note saying sorry it's late
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she carried the package inside the house lillian was actually inside the bathroom
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packing some toiletries and things marjorie came back into the house with the package kind of excited you know oh
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look look there's a christmas package here and everybody gathered around to see
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what it was inside was a green fisherman's tackle box [Music] the explosion was immense
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it blew a hole straight through the roof shards of galvanized steel proved it was
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a pipe bomb the fire component was extremely uncommon the impact of the bomb threw my daughter across the room i knew
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my daughter was dead i knew she was dead when she landed there's no way she could have got out of
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there forty-four-year-old lillian jarvis was killed lillian's mother suffered burns on her
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face and torso but fortunately she survived lillian's boyfriend dan show walter also
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had burns on his face and upper body he lost the sight in one eye and sustained permanent hearing loss
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lillian's daughter was unharmed it was very difficult to tell who the package was intended for the package did
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not have a label on it that we were aware of uh denoting who this present or package was intended for
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a little child could have come by and picked it up and opened it thinking it was a christmas gift and not even
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thinking that it wasn't on their house or anything i mean children will do those things
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firefighters could smell the remnants of gasoline making this an extremely unusual bomb
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i think most bomb builders are revenge motivated to get even with the victim or or to kill the victim for
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some reason some motive other than just a random killing most of the individuals that do
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bombings or criminals basically think they're smarter than everybody else but there's always one
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mistake they make that's gonna get them caught since the package didn't have a shipping
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label it was most likely delivered by hand but was lillian the intended target bomb experts conducted a grid search
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inside and outside the home in which lillian jarvis was killed and little by little
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searchers found quite a few pieces of the bomb bomb builders think that the bombs are
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destructive and that they destroy evidence but in fact bombs don't destroy evidence they create
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evidence and they create very unique imprints of evidence there were i believe over 160 items and all of that
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had to be sifted and separated and looked at under the microscope or or magnifying ring
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i spent upwards of several months to a year looking through and going through all of that evidence
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by testing the debris with gas chromatography scientists confirmed that gasoline was
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used in the bomb so not only was she blown up then she was also burned up and this again shows that there was a
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personal hatred of this target experts believe that the gasoline was in a balloon inside the tackle box
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the bomb was identified as a type of pipe bomb wrapped with ball bearings to make it
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more deadly investigators also found bits and pieces of the tackle box enough to identify the
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macon model fortunately there were stickers and labels on some of the pieces that i was
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able to reconstruct and able to identify this tackle box as a plano tackle box thousands of these tackle boxes had been
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sold in the area making it virtually impossible to trace they're sold in jacksonville as well as
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other parts of the country so we we have ran into a problem in trying to identify
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who may have bought that taco box as well it's a pretty generic item but investigators did find an extremely
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important piece of evidence in the rubble a tiny piece of metal wire no wider than a thread
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a single wire that it was a little heavier gauge than some of the other wires the house wires
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that i had been seeing in the evidence i recognized it as a model rocket igniter
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just from my past experience and seeing these in other devices the first suspect in the bombing was
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lillian's ex-husband william jarvis because he had been clearly unhappy about the divorce
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he was a 39 year old air traffic controller with no criminal record he would be calling her hours of the day
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and night harassing her to come home and i love you i'm sorry and yada yada and it just kept getting worse and worse
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but his daughter katie was in the home at the time of the blast no one believed william jarvis would ever put her in
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harm's way there was some real confusion as to whether or not a father would actually
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send a device to where his daughter was staying therefore we kind of ruled him out
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then investigators learned that lillian's mother marjorie worked for an organization that had received a bomb
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threat just 24 hours earlier the night before there was a bomb threat called to where i work which is
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community hospice and they were thinking that someone didn't like me or they didn't like the
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company when we were investigating to see if marjorie was a target through hospice and the bomb threat they
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received we looked very hard at the fact that the caller was a female and had a very
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strong southern accent this was a tantalizing clue lillian's new boyfriend dan showalter
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almost died in the blast his ex-wife connie had a southern accent dan had a protection order against
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county he received because connie had attempted to take their daughter take custody and flee the state with the
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daughter when questioned connie showalter said she was out of state when the bombing
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occurred and her alibi checked out plus if you just look at the nature of this particular killing which is highly
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personal with a very very vicious device it's just not women don't do that to women
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one piece of evidence found in the rubble suggested that lillian jarvis may have been the intended target after all
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it was wrapped in some angel christmas wrapping paper and lillian was known to have a fondness for angels
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a background check revealed lillian had developed extensive and sometimes intimate relationships over the internet
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[Music] we were concerned that perhaps this bomb had been left by somebody that she had
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met online that had developed a relationship with and that that relationship maybe have gone bad
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and we conducted almost 100 interviews on various people that knew lille through the internet
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five days after the bombing friends and relatives held a candlelight vigil for lillian jarvis in a park
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nearby detectives posed as tv news crews to conduct surveillance and they actually filmed the vigil
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interviewed some of the people there and we used that footage to see who showed up and maybe who didn't show up that
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might help in the investigation [Music] you'd be surprised how often killers
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show up at these things [Music] bombing victim lillian jarvis developed many friendships online following her
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divorce investigators spoke to everyone on lillian's buddy list and email address
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book but all were virtual dead ends then they learned something suspicious just two days after the bombing
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lillian's ex-husband william jarvis was due in court he owed lillian a considerable sum of
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money as part of their divorce settlement and he had been refusing to pay he was to be in court with a check for
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close to forty four thousand dollars cashier's check to present to the judge
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for this money that he owed her that was the date the judge had told him he said he was
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not letting him go one more day the money was for back child support and lillian's 50 share of the house they
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owned together was the timing of the explosion just a coincidence investigators didn't think so
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so they asked the judge for a search warrant to look inside william jarvis's
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home at his desk was a hint that some items from the house had recently been removed
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the tower computer was gone in fact there was still an input and there was carpet of a tower computer yet there was
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none and where did it go investigators then searched the home of jarvis's new girlfriend
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we found two cd roms which are in her underwear drawer in her bedroom we were positive these were the cds belonging to
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william jarvis because there were various emails personal pictures documents relating to his divorce and
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his children and some of those documents were incriminating some documents and brochures on how to
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build a bomb he had demonstrated that he had an interest in the oklahoma city bombing he had approximately 50 pages of
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that one of the interesting items that we found in that bomb was a sound bite and the sound bite stated i'll blow this
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place up and be home in time for cornflakes which actually came out of the movie total recall
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in william jarvis's home investigators found two walmart sales receipts for items purchased just three
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weeks before the bombing the receipts had fallen by a nightstand next to a bed and evidently been missed
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on the receipts were what's known as sku or sku numbers it stands for stock keeping unit a way for stores to keep
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track of inventory we went to walmart with that sku number walmart was able to tell us that that
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sku number is unique to a certain item that no other item they sell would have that same skew number
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the sku numbers revealed jarvis bought a package of sd's brand model rocket igniters
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[Music] atf forensic chemist rob reed used x-ray fluorescent spectroscopy to compare the
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sd's wires from their rocket igniter to the wire recovered from the bomb site
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x-ray beams identified the chemical elements of the wires the estes model rocket igniters have a
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particular alloy that's used for the bridge wire and the leg wires it's also
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very unique this is proprietary information that estes doesn't share with anyone they shared it with us for
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our own reasons and trying to help solve crimes the wire in the bomb debris had the same metal alloys as the estes
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brand igniters the companies that make these products have no control over how we use them as
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consumers they have an intended purpose but sometimes people in their sick minds will twist
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them and use them for something that's going to hurt someone we had been working long and hard on
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this and you almost start to take a personal interest in in the case and to get the first we had other suspects
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but to get the first piece of evidence that directly linked our best suspect to the device
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it's like winning the lottery investigators swept william jarvis's kitchen floor for any microscopic
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particles that might be present under the microscope scientists found irregularly shaped
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spheres of nitrocellulose an ingredient of smokeless gunpowder the same type used in the bond
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also on the sales receipt was proof the jarvis purchased christmas wrapping paper
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the sku number proved it was the same wrapping paper used with the bond [Music] it was a very rare form of wrapping
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paper which had been distributed through some stores in the southeast of which one of these stores was this walmart
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store where these particular items were purchased the receipt also showed jarvis bought
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condoms investigators suspected jarvis used the condoms to hold the gasoline in the bomb
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we did some tests to see how long a condom could contain gasoline and we found that
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the couple of hours it would have taken for him to transport the device from his home
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to the victim's house was more than enough time that there was no leakage or seepage of the gasoline
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from the condoms we were sure at that point that we had our man and that we were going to be able to prove it in
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card as well but jarvis denied any involvement in the bombing and said he had an alibi
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he claimed he was at home on his computer at the time of the bombing which was an hour's drive away
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his online computer service confirmed he was on his computer so how did he do it
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[Music] prosecutors believe william jarvis had two motives for killing his ex-wife
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lillian the first was money bill jarvis ended up owing lillian alimony and child support payments in
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the neighborhood of around 1800 a month he was also as part of the settlement property settlement had a balloon
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payment due to her of almost thirty thousand dollars that was due to be paid to her in october
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and he did not pay it the other thing was william jarvis viewed his wife as less of a person than him and he was
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quite upset that she would run around and do things that he did not approve of and therefore she had to be punished
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in other words jarvis didn't approve of lillian dating other men after they were divorced
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three months before the murder store receipts show that william jarvis purchased the same brand of rocket
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igniter and wrapping paper used in the bombing [Music] he also bought condoms which
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investigators believe held the gasoline in the bond the evidence shows that jarvis made the
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bomb on his kitchen table microscopic particles of smokeless gunpowder fell onto his floor
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on the morning of the bombing prosecutors believe jarvis woke around 5 a.m and logged onto his aol account
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possibly to establish his alibi then he drove to lillian's house 40 miles away
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to deliver the bond prosecutors don't believe jarvis was home when his computer logged off aol
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they believe aol ended his online session at 5 15 due to inactivity [Music] jarvis left the package on lillian's
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doorstep around 6 a.m he knew lillian liked this kind of wrapping paper so the children would
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know it was for her lillian's mother first saw the package around 6 30. she didn't think it was for her because
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she didn't celebrate christmas when she handed lillian the package no one except william jarvis
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could have anticipated what would happen next i believe william jarvis waited around
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in the neighborhood until he heard the explosion then instead of going home he went to work 45 minutes before his
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shift started we don't think he wanted to go back to his house fearing that people might be
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there waiting for him therefore he had to be at work and he just went to his normal
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routine of going to work except he was early that day which is unusual william jarvis's hatred for lillian
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could easily have resulted in the death of his daughter katie had she been the one who opened the
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package the last image of my daughter is seeing her standing by the sink opening the gift that was wrapped for
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christmas and it exploded and she was thrown in mid-air across the room and everything went up in flames
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including her william jarvis was tried and convicted of first degree murder and arson
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he was sentenced to three consecutive life terms in prison with no possibility of parole
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the forensic evidence proves that jarvis planned the bombing for months but was convinced
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the explosion would destroy all the evidence i'd say the most critical piece of
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evidence in this entire case was one tiny piece of wire that our lab technician found
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and this tied him to the bomb without one piece of wire this case probably wouldn't have been solved that was the
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smoking gun in this entire case that one piece of wire and that just goes to show that
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you may think you're smarter than the police but you're not eventually we'll
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get you [Music] [Music] [Music] you