00:00:03
[MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: A grieving mother's conviction. They said they didn't have evidence that he
00:00:22
had murdered my daughter. But I just had a cold feeling he did. NARRATOR: And a skeleton that's not giving up its secrets.
00:00:31
There was no evidence of blunt force trauma, sharp force trauma, or a bullet. Can't prove the cause of death.
00:00:36
There's nothing to go on. NARRATOR: Can Dr. Murad tell if this young woman was murdered?
00:00:43
Then, Dr. Murray goes head-to-head with a ruthless band of killers bent on hiding their victim's identity.
00:00:50
The torso was burned. There was no head, no arms, and lower limbs. NARRATOR: Are the murderer's tracks covered too
00:00:57
well for justice to be served? [MUSIC PLAYING] [BABY CRYING] It's a hot summer morning in rural Northern California.
00:01:46
A team of volunteer firemen is preparing to dig a trench along a remote stretch of highway.
00:01:53
It's a routine measure to help limit the spread of forest fires. But this routine task is about to be cut short by a disturbing
00:02:02
find. [MUSIC PLAYING] What is that? It's not normal. You see that? There. Looks like a hand.
00:02:18
NARRATOR: Shocked, the fire crew immediately radios the local police department.
00:02:23
MARC ADAMS: I walk over to the side of the road and can see a blue comforter. [CAMERA SHUTTERS CLICKING]
00:02:30
There is a large amount of insect activity. NARRATOR: A close look confirms the worst.
00:02:36
It's a human body, ravaged by California's summer sun and scavenging insects.
00:02:43
TOM HOAGLAND: At that point, we couldn't determine if it was male or female.
00:02:46
Subject was wrapped in a comforter. Subject was obviously in the later stages of decomposition.
00:02:54
NARRATOR: A lonely road, an unidentified corpse, with virtually no clothes, investigators
00:03:04
rushed the body to the medical examiner's office for an autopsy. TOM HOAGLAND: The medical examiner could not give us
00:03:10
a cause of death, and they couldn't help us identify the decedent. NARRATOR: Without that information,
00:03:18
this case will go unsolved. But Sgt. Hoagland knows one man who might be able to help.
00:03:25
[MUSIC PLAYING] Dr. Turhon Murad, Senior Forensic Anthropologist at Chico State University.
00:03:33
TURHON MURAD: I deal with bones. Bones talk to me. It's a challenge to try to learn as much as I can
00:03:39
about the person from bones. [MUSIC PLAYING] Molina, let's see how much work we're in for,
00:03:51
what we're going to have to do. The case arrived here from El Dorado County.
00:03:55
Before we did anything, we wanted to show what we were getting ourselves into. She's very badly decomposed.
00:04:01
NARRATOR: Decomposition is nature's way of disposing of the body. Typically, 60% of a human's body weight
00:04:07
is lost in the first six days of decomposition, depending on temperature and location.
00:04:13
[MUSIC PLAYING] Dr. Murad can tell from what flesh remains that this is the body of a woman.
00:04:21
But her identity and cause of death are a complete mystery. And by the circumstances of her discovery,
00:04:28
it is a mystery with disturbing implications. TURHON MURAD: This lady was found beside the road,
00:04:34
in the nude. How could she have died in the nude beside the road? That's not natural.
00:04:40
[SCREAMING] NARRATOR: He surveys the body for clues to her identity, but his initial inspection is disappointing.
00:04:49
TURHON MURAD: I don't see any tattoos or anything that is obvious for us to get her identified.
00:04:55
NARRATOR: Then, Dr. Murad finds something surprising. TURHON MURAD: It was a huge blister on her--
00:05:01
on her right thumb. NARRATOR: It's an incredibly lucky break. While skin covering the remaining fingers
00:05:07
has completely broken down, the pus and fluid that formed the blister has slowed the rate of decay
00:05:13
on the outer layer of the thumb. And the blister holds what could be a vital clue
00:05:19
to the woman's identity. TOM HOAGLAND: Dr. Murad noticed that there was a thumbprint on the right thumb that was usable.
00:05:26
NARRATOR: Though there is enough skin for a print, the finger itself is too decomposed to be useful.
00:05:30
In order to generate a print, Dr. Murad offers up his own finger. TURHON MURAD: I cut off the loose skin
00:05:36
from around the thumb, slipped it over my rubber gloved hand. NARRATOR: The ingenious method produces
00:05:43
a near-perfect thumbprint. TURHON MURAD: I got two cards out. And I ran about 20 fingerprints.
00:05:51
Now, it's a very important fingerprint to have in California because the thumb
00:05:55
print is the one that is collected by DMV when you get your license. This is a good print.
00:06:02
[BLOWS] OK, would you mark that right thumb and the case number on it, please? I said, well, here.
00:06:09
Go find out who she is. NARRATOR: With a fresh print in hand, investigators rushed to the California Department
00:06:15
of Justice Forensic Crime Lab, where they could search a statewide driver's license database.
00:06:21
[MUSIC PLAYING] Four hours later, they find a match. [MUSIC PLAYING] The identity of the victim came back to a Janata Jackson.
00:06:34
NARRATOR: Janai Jackson, a 21-year-old woman who lived in Sacramento, with her husband, Jason Scharf, and
00:06:41
their four-month-old daughter. Her mother, Sylvia, had not talked to Janai in a few weeks.
00:06:48
SYLVIA JACKSON: I figured her and Jason must've went to visit the parents, or went out of town or something.
00:06:54
And I figured she'd call me later. NARRATOR: But the call from her daughter would never come.
00:07:00
Instead, the call Sylvia gets is a mother's worst nightmare. News that her daughter has been found dead,
00:07:08
wrapped in a blanket on the roadside. SYLVIA JACKSON: Janai was a very loving, kind-hearted person,
00:07:16
sharing, very smart. As a little girl, she was sweet, very quiet. Playful, very playful.
00:07:27
She would do anything she could to help you, if she could. NARRATOR: And investigators are perplexed when they learned
00:07:34
that Janai's husband, Jason, had not reported her missing, even though she hadn't
00:07:39
been home for over two weeks. TOM HOAGLAND: So our next step was to contact him, see if he could shed
00:07:45
some light on the disappearance of his wife. Then we found out that he had relocated
00:07:50
to Southern California. NARRATOR: The fact that Jason moved away days after his wife disappeared further fuels
00:07:56
investigators' suspicions. So do Sylvia Jackson's statements to police about her son-in-law.
00:08:04
SYLVIA JACKSON: He seemed to be a very jealous and controlling person. I felt that he could not be trusted.
00:08:10
I just felt that he was going to do something to her. It's just this like you feel a cold chill.
00:08:17
NARRATOR: When investigators eventually track Jason down, he tells them that his wife had run away, abandoning
00:08:24
him and their infant daughter. His claims that the couple was on the outs is confirmed by interviews with family and friends.
00:08:32
TOM HOAGLAND: During the last several months of their marriage, things had become violent.
00:08:37
She had threatened to leave him several times. NARRATOR: The more they learn, the more
00:08:41
Jason's story doesn't add up. SYLVIA JACKSON: One of her friends had told me that every time she packed her stuff
00:08:47
to leave, he would unpack her stuff, and try to hold her and keep her with him. NARRATOR: After a week and a half of investigation,
00:08:56
all police have is circumstantial evidence. But they are so convinced that Jason
00:09:02
had something to do with his wife's death that they arrest him. However, their suspicions alone are simply
00:09:09
not enough for the DA's office. TOM HOAGLAND: About five days after his arrest,
00:09:13
the district attorney felt there wasn't enough evidence to prosecute. He was released.
00:09:17
NARRATOR: A suspicious picture has emerged. But without more physical evidence, investigators can go no further with the case.
00:09:25
SYLVIA JACKSON: They said they had to get evidence, hard evidence, before they can prove that he
00:09:30
actually murdered my daughter. NARRATOR: Now, it's up to Dr. Murad to prove or disprove the investigators' theory.
00:09:37
TURHON MURAD: Homicide is just standing out there, glaring at you. It had to be a homicide.
00:09:41
NARRATOR: The only way he can do that is by scrutinizing Janai's bones. But there's a problem.
00:09:48
Her bones are hidden beneath layers of decomposing tissue, skin, muscle, and organs.
00:09:54
TURHON MURAD: I'm not a pathologist. I'm an anthropologist, and I do bones.
00:09:59
I do not do soft tissue. NARRATOR: Simply cutting away the flesh could chip, mark, and damage her bones.
00:10:06
Dr. Murad needs to de-flesh Janai very gently. And he comes up with a solution that is morbidly efficient.
00:10:13
He buries her. TURHON MURAD: We wrapped her in a clean, white sheet. Then wrapped her in wire netting that
00:10:22
was zip-locked with electrical zip ties so that animals couldn't dig into her remains.
00:10:28
We buried her in a very shallow grave at a cemetery, and just let nature take its course.
00:10:34
NARRATOR: After death, bacteria that live in the intestines are no longer held in check by the immune system
00:10:41
and begin eating away at the body's organs and tissue. Underground, the process is accelerated
00:10:48
by larvae from beetles and other subterranean insects. It is gentle, but slow. Dr. Murad estimates it will take six weeks for Janai's
00:10:57
body to be ready for his exam. Only then will Dr. Murad be able to seek the evidence that
00:11:04
can bring justice to Janai. [MUSIC PLAYING] Coming up, Janai is exhumed. But her bones aren't telling Dr. Murad what he wants to know.
00:11:14
TURHON MURAD: It had to be a homicide. But how in the hell did she die? NARRATOR: And later, can Dr. Murad
00:11:20
determine whether this good man met a bad end? He would give you his last dollar if you needed it.
00:11:26
That's the type of person he was. That's next, on "Skeleton Stories."
00:11:31
[MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: Dr. Turhon Murad of Chico State University has buried the body of murder victim, Janai Jackson.
00:11:52
For six weeks, bacteria and insects have been digesting her muscles and organs, while leaving
00:11:57
her bones untouched. They are bones that could hold the evidence needed to charge
00:12:04
Janai's killer with murder. Police believe that killer is Janai's own husband, Jason Scharf.
00:12:12
SYLVIA JACKSON: They said they didn't have evidence that he had murdered my daughter.
00:12:16
But I just had that cold feeling he did. [MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: It's the moment of truth.
00:12:28
After patiently waiting six weeks, Dr. Murad prepares to exhume Janai's body.
00:12:34
The method is successful. The natural process was extremely gentle on Janai's bones.
00:12:41
TURHON MURAD: When we recovered them, they were in great shape. We didn't lose a single bone.
00:12:46
NARRATOR: Now, with the bones completely de-fleshed, Dr. Murad sets his sight on the case's all important question.
00:12:55
How was Janai murdered? He starts by examining the major bones of her head and torso.
00:13:03
These are the bones that most frequently carry signs of fatal injuries because they
00:13:07
protect vital organs-- the brain, heart, and lungs. [MUSIC PLAYING] But after great scrutiny, he finds no indications
00:13:16
of physical trauma. TURHON MURAD: There is no evidence of blunt force trauma, sharp force trauma, or a bullet.
00:13:22
We can't prove the cause of death. There's nothing to go on. NARRATOR: After six weeks of waiting, an earlier autopsy,
00:13:29
and an examination of her major bones, Dr. Murad is still empty handed, and his options
00:13:36
are running out. TURHON MURAD: It had to be a homicide. But how does someone die with no evidence of blunt force trauma,
00:13:43
sharp force trauma, bullets? She'd been on autopsied. Toxicology comes back clean.
00:13:48
No poison involved. No drugs involved. How in the hell did she die? [BABY CRYING]
00:13:55
NARRATOR: But Dr. Murad knows that there is one method of murder that would leave only the slightest
00:14:00
of signs in the skeleton. That method is manual strangulation. If Janai was choked to death, it may have damaged
00:14:10
a small bone of the neck-- the hyoid. TURHON MURAD: The hyoid is a very important bone to look for in cases of manual strangulation.
00:14:20
NARRATOR: The hyoid bone is a small U-shaped bone suspended between the muscles that
00:14:25
produce the swallowing motion. Its major function is to support the vocal cords.
00:14:32
Thin and fragile, the hyoid is often broken or damaged in cases of strangulation, when extreme pressure
00:14:39
is applied to the neck. TURHON MURAD: Here I have a complete hyoid. And this is the hyoid as it might
00:14:45
appear in an adult individual. It has two cornu-- a right and a left-- and a body.
00:14:52
The hyoid would fit like this, up high, at the top of the larynx. So if someone were strangled, we might
00:14:59
expect the hyoid to be broken. And that's what I was looking for. NARRATOR: But when Murad finds and examines Janai's hyoid,
00:15:06
another problem arises. TURHON MURAD: The hyoid usually fuses at around age 21 to 23.
00:15:12
Well, here she was. The hyoid hadn't fused yet, OK? Here's the body, and here's one of the cornu.
00:15:20
NARRATOR: At birth, the human body contains about 300 soft bones, many of which fuse together during development.
00:15:29
By age 25, most of this fusing is complete, leaving the typical body with 206 separate, calcified bones.
00:15:39
Because Janai was only 21, the three separate sections of her hyoid had not yet joined together.
00:15:46
This means that her un-fused hyoid would simply flex under the pressure of strangulation.
00:15:52
[MUSIC PLAYING] This finding renders it impossible for Dr. Murad to make a conclusion about Janai being strangled.
00:16:00
TURHON MURAD: Because the hyoid hadn't fused yet, I could not suggest that she had died from manual strangulation
00:16:06
because it wasn't broken. NARRATOR: With Dr. Murad unable to prove strangulation,
00:16:11
the investigation remains at square one. There is still no evidence to charge Janai's husband with murder.
00:16:18
[MUSIC PLAYING] Coming up-- Dr. Murad finds a final clue. But is it enough to see justice done?
00:16:28
TURHON MURAD: We know she died, and we know that it was something unusual. And we had to look for anything at all that might point out
00:16:35
what that cause may have been. [MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: And later, a gunshot and a fire
00:16:42
may add up to murder. But can Dr. Murray make them add up to justice? To me, it doesn't matter who you are or what you did.
00:16:51
You don't deserve to go down like that. [MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: 21-year-old Janai Jackson is dead,
00:17:11
and police are convinced she was killed by her husband, Jason Scharf. But so far, Dr. Murad's exam hasn't turned up anything
00:17:19
to indicate a cause of death, much less, a means of homicide. Without proof of murder, investigators hands are tied.
00:17:27
And Janai's mother, who also believes her son-in-law is guilty, is losing hope
00:17:32
that justice will ever be done. SYLVIA JACKSON: She had just turned 21 when she got killed.
00:17:39
I had never thought I would ever lose Janai. That was my baby. And then they gonna let this man walk free,
00:17:48
and my daughter will never see the light, ever again. [MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: Dr. Murad himself is losing hope, until he discovers
00:17:58
a small bone that should be connected to the base of Janai's skull. It's her left styloid process, one
00:18:06
of a pair of long, thin bones that protrude downward from the skull. TURHON MURAD: Here we have a skull with both styloid
00:18:13
processes, the left and the right, attached, just as they are in most normal individuals.
00:18:20
NARRATOR: On Janai's skull, her left styloid process is broken. Like the hyoid, the styloid process is delicate.
00:18:27
But it's deeply shrouded in muscle and ligament, making it a hard bone to break.
00:18:32
It would take a very powerful blow to fracture it. A hard blow to a sensitive part of the neck.
00:18:38
TURHON MURAD: I'm right-handed. I come up and swing, and hit you in the left side of the neck.
00:18:42
Probably broke the styloid process in doing that. Styloid process would have caused some bleeding, probably
00:18:48
some swelling in her neck. NARRATOR: Dr. Murad knows that the swelling from such a blow
00:18:52
could easily lead to asphyxiation. This finding strongly suggests that Janai was struck violently on the side of the neck,
00:19:00
and died because of it. TOM HOAGLAND: He sparked an interest in us, in telling us that it would take a severe blow
00:19:07
to damage the styloid process. NARRATOR: But police still have no hard evidence linking
00:19:12
Jason to his wife's murder. They need a confession. And they hope that Dr. Murad's new discovery
00:19:19
will be the key to getting one. [MUSIC PLAYING] Investigators tracked Jason down again,
00:19:28
this time in Southern California. TOM HOAGLAND: He basically had set up a whole new life.
00:19:34
He was living down there with his young child. Had a fiance. NARRATOR: The investigators' plan is simple--
00:19:41
confront him with Dr. Murad's findings and try to provoke a full confession.
00:19:47
But it's a gamble. If Dr. Murad's theory is wrong, the plan could backfire.
00:19:53
Jason would go free, and there would be no justice for Janai. [MUSIC PLAYING] TURHON MURAD: They now confront him with the fact
00:20:03
that they have evidence of a broken styloid process in the her left side of her neck.
00:20:11
Perpetrators don't know what can be found. And the fact that something-- in this case, so very minor--
00:20:17
might be found, he got a little concerned, I'm certain. He began to think, my gosh.
00:20:22
There's evidence here. NARRATOR: Hearing the forensic evidence laid out step-by-step,
00:20:29
Jason finally breaks his silence. TOM HOAGLAND: He knew that he couldn't go on living like this.
00:20:36
He had told all of his family and friends that she had just left him, and left the baby and everything.
00:20:42
And I don't think too many people were buying that. It was like getting the weight of the world off his shoulders.
00:20:51
NARRATOR: Confronted with Dr. Murad's evidence, no longer able to lie to investigators, Jason confesses
00:20:58
to the murder of his wife. Investigators are now able to piece together what happened to Janai Jackson
00:21:06
during her final moments. [MUSIC PLAYING] It's 10:00 PM on the evening of June 11th, 1997.
00:21:18
Jason Scharf and Janai Jackson are arguing again. Janai tells her husband she's going to leave him.
00:21:25
[ARGUING] Enraged, Jason lashes out. [BABY CRYING] TOM HOAGLAND: At 6' 4", 290 pounds,
00:21:35
he could really throw a blow. He just said, one blow with a clenched fist and she immediately went to the ground.
00:21:40
TURHON MURAD: It only takes an immediate five pound blow, a real chop to the neck, and it could
00:21:46
cause enough swelling for a person to die from asphyxia. [MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: This is the blow that breaks the styloid process
00:21:55
and causes her throat to swell. [MUSIC PLAYING] TURHON MURAD: If there is enough swelling in the throat,
00:22:02
it could cut off the windpipe, the trachea. And it only takes a few minutes from a lack of oxygen
00:22:08
to the brain for someone to die. I think that that's what happened. She died from asphyxia, as a result of these organs
00:22:15
in her throat being swollen to the degree that she couldn't breathe. [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:22:23
NARRATOR: Then the grim realization of what he's done sinks in. TOM HOAGLAND: He notices she had stopped breathing,
00:22:30
and basically said that he had freaked out and he didn't know what to do. And then he realized he had to get rid of his wife's body.
00:22:38
[MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: But Jason maintains that what happened was a terrible accident.
00:22:45
On April 5th, 2000, he's convicted of voluntary manslaughter and receives an 11 year sentence.
00:22:51
TURHON MURAD: It wasn't intended, he says. But it was a result of this argument that they had.
00:22:56
Well, it's hard to prove intent. He's now convicted himself, essentially.
00:23:00
But it's a manslaughter and not murder. SYLVIA JACKSON: I think it's unfair that Jason is going
00:23:05
to be out of prison in 11 years, walking this earth, and my daughter will never see the world again.
00:23:12
I think he should have life imprisonment for taking a life. TURHON MURAD: Families have every right to think
00:23:18
that their son or daughter is going to grow up and make them grandparents. They have a whole life to look forward to.
00:23:23
And then they're killed for stupid reasons, reasons that nobody can understand.
00:23:30
Someone's life cut short. And not only what the perpetrator did, and the sadness to the family,
00:23:36
but I felt sad because of what I had to do to her in order to examine her bones.
00:23:42
That is, I buried her and I dug her up. OK? But it had to be done. NARRATOR: Despite the voluntary manslaughter charge,
00:23:52
Janai Jackson's mother is grateful. SYLVIA JACKSON: Once the anthropologist did all
00:23:58
his thorough investigation, and tested her and gave out all the evidence, then they went and picked
00:24:07
up Jason and arrested him. [THUNDER] It brought me satisfaction that he tested her and found out exactly Jason
00:24:19
was the one who murdered her. He eventually got it. TURHON MURAD: That's the only satisfaction
00:24:24
sometimes you ever get. If no one's-- if nobody had been prosecuted, and no perpetrator had been discovered,
00:24:33
I could still take satisfaction in knowing that we helped identify her. She was cared for.
00:24:41
She still thought of. [MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: Coming up-- could Dr. Beth Murray outwit a killer?
00:24:55
We had many other law enforcement officers and agencies that said this couldn't be solved.
00:25:00
The media made comments that this couldn't be solved. We felt like the deck was stacked against us.
00:25:05
NARRATOR: That's next, on "Skeleton Stories." [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUFFLED VOICES]
00:25:47
It's Halloween. And for the late fall, it's unseasonably warm in this Southern West Virginia town.
00:25:53
[MUSIC PLAYING] Early in the afternoon, a couple is taking advantage of the weather, to indulge
00:26:00
in a favorite hobby-- bird watching. [MUSIC PLAYING] But their outing is about to be cut
00:26:08
short by a grisly discovery. Winding through a stretch of brush, they stumbled upon what at first looks like a burnt log.
00:26:18
Oh, my gosh. NARRATOR: But on closer inspection, the couple realized that this is no piece of wood.
00:26:25
It's the charred remains of a human being-- or what's left of one. [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:26:35
Horrified, the birdwatchers quickly cut through the woods to a nearby highway and flag down a passing police patrol.
00:26:41
MIKE CRAFT: It was one of the most gruesome sights I've ever seen. Instantly, we knew it was human.
00:26:47
MELINA SMITH: This body had no head, no arms from below the elbow down. And it was burnt, badly burnt.
00:26:52
JEFF RIEGERT: You're talking about someone who had been set on fire. So you're just looking at a charred lump.
00:27:00
MIKE CRAFT: So we knew that we had a very, very gruesome scene on our hands. And no doubt, a homicide to deal with.
00:27:06
NARRATOR: As with any suspected homicide, Lieutenant Mike Craft and his team of detectives
00:27:10
will be charged with bringing the killers to justice. [MUSIC PLAYING] But the investigation can go no further, until they uncover one
00:27:19
critical piece of information-- the victim's identity. Who is this? [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:27:30
MIKE CRAFT: When you run into a gruesome crime scene like that, you immediately realize that you're
00:27:35
never going to solve the crime if you don't know who the victim is. And identifying a victim that's body
00:27:43
was in that kind of condition was going to be nearly impossible. So it became obvious to us that we
00:27:49
needed a forensic specialist to come on board with us, and help us. NARRATOR: That forensic anthropologist
00:27:55
is Dr. Beth Murray. BETH MURRAY: It's my job to find out who this person was,
00:28:02
or the kinds of things that happened to them that might have caused their death.
00:28:07
My job is to figure out who and how. [MUSIC PLAYING] JEFF RIEGERT: We had nothing.
00:28:17
We had a torso. That's all we had. And we knew she would just be invaluable in this case.
00:28:23
NARRATOR: Dr. Murray's first task is to observe the autopsy. BETH MURRAY: I arrive at the morgue,
00:28:29
and the room is filled with people. There were fire marshals. There were investigators, police officers.
00:28:35
The coroner was there, along with the pathologist. And they were waiting for me to arrive there
00:28:41
because they were going to do an autopsy on the torso, once I arrived. NARRATOR: Before the autopsy even begins,
00:28:48
the team makes a key determination from x-rays of the charred remains. [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:28:54
BETH MURRAY: There was clearly a bullet, a projectile, in the chest. The projectile was seen to pierce the aorta.
00:29:02
And that would have probably resulted in the cause of death in this case. NARRATOR: But it's obvious that this body has suffered
00:29:08
far more than a simple gunshot. BETH MURRAY: The torso was burned. There was no head, no arms from mid-forearm down,
00:29:16
and no lower limbs. NARRATOR: These perpetrators have gone to extreme lengths to hide the victim's identity.
00:29:22
[MUSIC PLAYING] They dragged the body to a remote, isolated location. They removed the hands, feet, and head.
00:29:34
And they set the body on fire, to burn away the last traces of humanity. [FIRE SOUNDS]
00:29:43
And Dr. Murray has a good idea why the body is in such a horrific state. BETH MURRAY: When you see these repeated attempts to disfigure
00:29:50
or disguise the identity of a victim, It usually means that once that victim's identity is known,
00:29:57
that's going to link you right back to these perpetrators. NARRATOR: Now she's determined to outwit the killers who so
00:30:03
cruelly mutilated this victim. BETH MURRAY: When you have a situation where someone was
00:30:07
shot, they were burned, they were dismembered, to me, it doesn't matter who you are or what you did.
00:30:17
You don't deserve to go down like that. NARRATOR: To shine a light into the shadows
00:30:22
where the killers are hiding, Dr. Murray is going to have to quickly provide police with the answers
00:30:27
they need. And they need plenty. MIKE CRAFT: I want Beth to give me the very basics.
00:30:33
Do we have a male or female? What race is this individual? How tall are they, an approximate weight.
00:30:38
Because all of these elements are critical to our investigation. NARRATOR: Only after the police have these basics,
00:30:44
known as a biological profile, can they compare the victim to reports of missing persons.
00:30:50
MELINA SMITH: You can't just go out and randomly talk to people, and say, hey, I believe you killed a person.
00:30:54
Having that person IDed is the most important thing. [MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: Despite the grotesque charring of the body's surface,
00:31:06
the killers did not succeed in destroying all traces of their victim. BETH MURRAY: An adult human body is about 70% water.
00:31:13
And most people don't realize that that's like trying to set fire to a swimming pool.
00:31:18
You're going to have to use a lot of accelerant, a lot of chemicals, to try to get that burning process going.
00:31:25
What they didn't realize was it flash-chars the outside, but the inside is not burned.
00:31:34
NARRATOR: A few incisions during the autopsy solved the mystery of the body's gender.
00:31:38
BETH MURRAY: The internal organs were all in place-- heart, lungs, stomach. And that examination revealed a prostate gland
00:31:45
and other internal male organs that made it unquestionable that this torso was that of a male.
00:31:52
NARRATOR: On a piece of remaining skin, Dr. Murray discovers another distinguishing characteristic
00:31:57
the killer has failed to erase. BETH MURRAY: Some very dark, very curly hairs. The kind of hairs that might be expected on the body
00:32:07
of an African-American male. NARRATOR: Next, Dr. Murray focuses on what she knowsw best--
00:32:13
bones-- to try to determine the victim's age, height, and weight. BETH MURRAY: I have to extract the bones from the soft tissue
00:32:21
so I can use them in my measurements. And that involves simply dissecting them out of whatever
00:32:26
soft tissue remains. NARRATOR: She then takes the bones back to her laboratory at the College of Mount St. Joseph.
00:32:34
But before she can examine them closely, she must macerate-- or clean-- the bones.
00:32:39
BETH MURRAY: Processing them with heat and different chemical solutions in order
00:32:43
to remove all the flesh. [MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: The next day, Dr. Murray is ready to begin her biological profile from the few bones
00:32:51
available. BETH MURRAY: OK. Wow, that really processed up well. OK, I will measure the humerus.
00:32:59
Do you want to record the numbers for me? NARRATOR: The humerus, the upper arm bone,
00:33:04
offers clues about a person's height. BETH MURRAY: Its proportion tells me something about how tall the rest of that person's body was.
00:33:12
NARRATOR: The length of this humerus indicates an overall height of less than six feet.
00:33:18
Next, Dr. Murray tackles the victim's age. Here, an essential benchmark is found in the pelvis, which
00:33:24
is worn down in a predictable way, by year after year of constant walking. BETH MURRAY: And so, I can look at the face
00:33:31
of his pubic symphysis and compare it to models of individuals of known age. And it should give me some ballpark as to how old he
00:33:40
might have been when he died. [MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: Despite the killer's drastic efforts
00:33:46
to disfigure the corpse, they couldn't conceal their victim's profile from Dr. Murray.
00:33:52
Just three days after taking on the case, she gives detectives a general description.
00:33:58
BETH MURRAY: I can tell from the bones that I removed from the torso that this man
00:34:04
was probably African-American. He was probably somewhere in the range of 30 to 50 when he died.
00:34:12
And he stood about 5'6" to 5'10". [MUSIC PLAYING] MIKE CRAFT: We do search for missing persons
00:34:20
that match the characteristics that Beth provided us with. Then we released that information in case somebody
00:34:26
has a loved one or a friend that's missing, that meets those characteristics.
00:34:30
NARRATOR: Dr. Murray's description of the dead man quickly strikes a nerve in one of the local, inner city
00:34:35
neighborhoods. JEFF RIEGERT: Once the word got out, then the street started talking to us.
00:34:40
[MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: Coming up, police discover who the victim is. And Dr. Murray digs deeper in the evidence to pinpoint
00:34:51
exactly what happened to him. BETH MURRAY: You could see the unburned bones. That helped establish the sequence.
00:34:57
The burning came before the dismemberment. NARRATOR: When "Skeleton Stories" returns.
00:35:03
[MUSIC PLAYING] When a charred and headless human body is discovered in a field in southern West Virginia,
00:35:23
it seems at first like an unsolvable crime. MIKE CRAFT: We had many other law enforcement officers and agencies that
00:35:29
said this couldn't be solved. The media made comments that this couldn't be solved.
00:35:33
We felt like the deck was stacked against us. NARRATOR: Within days of taking on the case,
00:35:38
forensic anthropologist Dr. Beth Murray has provided investigators with a profile of the victim.
00:35:44
BETH MURRAY: Hopefully, knowing the man's age, his sex, his ethnicity, his stature, will let them narrow
00:35:52
the missing persons out there. [MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: When police make the victim's profile public,
00:36:00
they begin to hear the same name again and again. MIKE CRAFT: The old saying is, that area
00:36:05
of town, the streets talk. And they really do talk, if you'll take the time and listen to what they have to say.
00:36:11
NARRATOR: The name is Brandon Richards, a 35-year-old African-American man and alleged local drug dealer.
00:36:19
Detectives quickly contact his sister, Cassandra Taylor. CASSANDRA TAYLOR: They discovered
00:36:24
a torso in the field, that they had a suspicion that was my brother. NARRATOR: But the only way to prove for certain
00:36:31
that the torso belongs to Brandon is to compare the DNA from the charred remains
00:36:37
with a sample from his sister. Despite the condition of the corpse, technicians can easily extract DNA from the remaining bone.
00:36:46
MELINA SMITH: Once we believed that the victim was a certain person and we contacted his family members,
00:36:52
they willingly agreed to give us samples of DNA. NARRATOR: When the final results come back from the lab,
00:36:58
Cassandra's worst fear is realized. The charred body is her brother. CASSANDRA TAYLOR: I still really can't believe it
00:37:06
because I didn't see his body or anything after the fact, because of what they did to him.
00:37:13
NARRATOR: As Cassandra and her family grieve, police swing into action. MIKE CRAFT: Now we're ready to move.
00:37:19
And now it's time to find out who's responsible. NARRATOR: Once again, the detectives go to the streets.
00:37:25
This time, to uncover the story of Brandon Richards. JEFF RIEGERT: By getting to know that person,
00:37:29
you're going to find out what happened to that person. We learned all about him.
00:37:34
It's almost like we knew him. CASSANDRA TAYLOR: Everybody knew him in the neighborhood cuz he
00:37:38
just got along with everybody. He was a people person. NARRATOR: As a youngster, Brandon
00:37:43
was good natured and popular. CASSANDRA TAYLOR: And anybody who know him, he was a sweet person.
00:37:50
He would give you his last dollar, if you needed it. That's the type of person he was.
00:37:55
NARRATOR: But in his 20s, Brandon's life took a dark turn. CASSANDRA TAYLOR: He got mixed up in drugs and stuff.
00:38:02
That's when his life turned around. He got with the wrong crowd and couldn't get out of it.
00:38:06
NARRATOR: According to friends, Brandon had recently begun working for three childhood friends
00:38:11
who were local drug dealers. And based on information they're gathering, investigators are beginning to suspect
00:38:17
that these supposed friends are the ones who murdered Brandon. MELINA SMITH: We did countless interviews,
00:38:22
but they all pointed in the same direction. NARRATOR: Police obtain a warrant to search
00:38:26
the suspect's apartment. There, they find a vital piece of evidence-- a fragment of a bullet, buried beneath the floor, that matches
00:38:34
the slug pulled out of Brandon's scorched chest during his autopsy. Police immediately take the three suspects
00:38:42
into custody for questioning. JEFF RIEGERT: You've got three suspects. They're separated.
00:38:47
You've got three different stories. [MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: But getting them to confess
00:38:53
will be close to impossible [MUSIC PLAYING] MELINA SMITH: They don't want you to know
00:38:58
their deepest, darkest secrets. Like, yeah, I smashed that skull in with that axe.
00:39:02
Or yeah, I'm the one that set that body on fire. Or, hey, I'm the one that come back later
00:39:06
and cut those arms off. They don't want to tell you that. NARRATOR: So the police plan to interview them separately,
00:39:12
and convince each one of them that the other two had betrayed him. To do that, they'll need information--
00:39:19
facts about the crime only the perpetrators would know. And that's where forensic anthropologist,
00:39:24
Dr. Beth Murray, comes back into the picture. [MUSIC PLAYING] BETH MURRAY: OK. All right, here.
00:39:34
Let's see. NARRATOR: To determine the order of events surrounding Brandon's
00:39:37
murder and mutilation, Dr. Murray first examine the skull fragments found near the body.
00:39:43
BETH MURRAY: Within those burned pieces, I also saw some unburned pieces of skull fragment.
00:39:49
And I began to look at those and question why you would have burned and unburned pieces together
00:39:56
from the same individual. NARRATOR: The unscorched fragments strongly suggest that the skull was at least
00:40:03
partly damaged before the killer set fire to Brandon's body. BETH MURRAY: I assume that the perpetrators attempted
00:40:10
to disfigure or dismantle the skull with a sharp object before they decided to burn it.
00:40:17
NARRATOR: Dr. Murray also confirms that the fire did not char the stumps of tissue where the legs
00:40:23
and arms were chopped off. BETH MURRAY: The entire surface of the torso was completely charred.
00:40:29
But you could see the pink meat on the inside of the cut ends. You could see the unburned bones.
00:40:36
NARRATOR: To Dr. Murray's trained eye, this is another vital clue to what the killers
00:40:40
did to Brandon's body. And in what order. BETH MURRAY: That helped establish the sequence,
00:40:47
that the burning came before the dismemberment. NARRATOR: Dr. Murray believes the killers
00:40:52
made one final effort to hide Brandon's identity-- chopping off his head after the burning.
00:41:00
That's what left behind the burned skull fragments. Now Dr. Murray can offer the police
00:41:05
a solid sequence of events. After being shot and killed, Brandon was brought to the dump site.
00:41:12
First, the killers mutilated his head. Then they set fire to his body. Sometime after that, they returned
00:41:20
and cut off his hands, feet, and what remained of his head. MELINA SMITH: We needed that information when we were
00:41:26
questioning these suspects. And that helped out a great deal in determining who was telling
00:41:31
the truth and who was not. Because we knew what had transpired. NARRATOR: But knowing is not enough.
00:41:37
Police need confessions from these men. And all they have to squeeze them with is Dr. Murray's report.
00:41:44
[MUSIC PLAYING] Coming up, investigators gamble that Dr. Murray's findings will help them close the book on the murder of Brandon Richards.
00:41:56
When "Skeleton Stories" returns. [MUSIC PLAYING] November, 2001. After finding the charred and dismembered body of Brandon
00:42:20
Richards in a local field, detectives are planning to trick the three suspects into turning
00:42:25
on each other by confronting them separately with Dr. Murray's findings. [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:42:35
By closely studying Brandon's corpse, Dr. Murray has figured out exactly what his killers
00:42:41
did to him, and in what order. BETH MURRAY: This is what happened first. This is what happened second.
00:42:49
This is what happened next. And that's what I did in this case. And my ability to sequence those traumatic events
00:42:56
was leverage that law enforcement could use to get these guys to confess. JEFF RIEGERT: We pretty much put our plate out and said,
00:43:02
here's what we've got. Your story is not matching. NARRATOR: Over the next five hours,
00:43:07
the detectives move from suspect to suspect, drawing on details provided by Dr. Murray.
00:43:13
JEFF RIEGERT: That information that she gave us, of the bone fragments, you put that in front of them
00:43:19
and that knocks their story out of the water. MELINA SMITH: So then we know when interviewing the suspects,
00:43:23
who's telling the truth and who isn't. JEFF RIEGERT: But eventually, putting the evidence in front
00:43:27
of their face and saying, what you're telling me is not true, then they break down.
00:43:32
And when they see the evidence, when they see you've got it, when they see that, OK, you've got me,
00:43:38
then honesty starts coming out. BETH MURRAY: I eventually got a phone call from one of the investigators that says they're starting
00:43:44
to turn on one another. NARRATOR: After eight weeks of investigation, police finally obtain what they need--
00:43:50
firsthand confessions. Now Dr. Murray and the investigative team can replay the chain of events that
00:43:58
led directly to Brandon Richards' murder and mutilation. [MUSIC PLAYING] It's October of 2001.
00:44:12
Brandon is a frequent visitor to a shabby duplex where three of his childhood friends run a drug business.
00:44:19
MELINA SMITH: It was quite frequent for him to go there and obtain his supply of drugs,
00:44:23
to go back out on the street and sell. NARRATOR: On October 16th, when Brandon turns his earnings
00:44:29
over to his supplier friends-- [MUSIC PLAYING] --they accuse him of skimming off some
00:44:36
of the profits for himself. The argument quickly turns violent. The three roommates over-power Brandon, tying his hands
00:44:46
and feet with duct tape. As he lies on the kitchen floor, they beat him to show him
00:44:55
they mean business. Then, one of them starts waving a handgun. JEFF RIEGERT: It just escalated to the point
00:45:04
where he was trying scare him with a gun. [MUSIC PLAYING] And then he shot the victim in the chest.
00:45:14
[MUSIC PLAYING] [GUNSHOT] NARRATOR: Brandon dies within seconds, his aorta punctured by the bullet.
00:45:24
The killers leave his body on the floor. JEFF RIEGERT: My suspects tell me that they would actually
00:45:28
walk over him to go make breakfast, for two days, until they finally came to the conclusion,
00:45:34
we need to get rid of it. What are we going to do? MELINA SMITH: How do we get rid of this body?
00:45:38
It wasn't a person anymore. It was a body. NARRATOR: The killers wrap Brandon in a tarp,
00:45:46
load him into a car, and drive to a remote field. [MUFFLED CHATTER] There, they bludgeoned his jaw in hopes
00:46:02
of destroying any dental evidence that could be used in identifying him. They then drench his body in gasoline--
00:46:10
[MUSIC PLAYING] --set it on fire, and leave. JEFF RIEGERT: They come back the next day.
00:46:21
One of them gets out and goes up to the body, and comes running back and says, you can still tell who it is.
00:46:25
They knew. They knew that if they found out who this was, everybody was going to be pointing at them.
00:46:32
They go back and they get additional equipment they need-- trash bags, what they thought they
00:46:37
were going to need to remove the arms, the head, and the legs. MIKE CRAFT: It's barbaric.
00:46:42
I mean, it's not human. What happened in this crime, normal people do not do.
00:46:48
[MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: Each step took place as Dr. Murray speculated. BETH MURRAY: It's very gratifying
00:46:56
to see that your observations not only made sense to you, but they were accurate.
00:47:02
[MUSIC PLAYING] CASSANDRA TAYLOR: Any time they went to court, I was there, every single time.
00:47:10
It was difficult to hear the things that they did to him. His body laid there for two or three days.
00:47:15
And people walked over his body to buy crack. That was hard for me to hear. MIKE CRAFT: She was at every trial, every hearing.
00:47:26
Even the ones that there was no reason for her to be at. She took off work and she was sitting in the audience.
00:47:31
That was a sister that loved her brother. She didn't always agree with what her brother did,
00:47:36
but she never stopped loving him. [MUSIC PLAYING] CASSANDRA TAYLOR: I would say he had a rough life,
00:47:45
and he got mixed up with the wrong crowd and got mixed up in the drugs. But he was still my mother's son.
00:47:51
He was still my brother. NARRATOR: Two of the suspects plead guilty. The first to tampering with evidence
00:47:59
and gross abuse of a corpse. The second pleads guilty to murder and receives a total sentence of 20 years to life.
00:48:07
The third man is found guilty at trial of tampering with evidence and gross abuse of a corpse.
00:48:15
For detectives and prosecutors, it's a triumph, a victory which they credit in large measure
00:48:21
to Dr. Murray's forensic work. MIKE CRAFT: Beth gives us tools to do our job.
00:48:26
And they're critical tools. And I just can't say enough good things about her passion,
00:48:31
her heart, or her ability to do this job. BETH MURRAY: It came to my understanding
00:48:37
that Brandon Richards was a drug dealer. You know, there might be a tendency on some people's parts
00:48:43
to say, oh, well. You know, who cares? Or even worse, he deserved it. But he was somebody's lost son.
00:48:51
[MUSIC PLAYING]