00:00:04
[MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: A young girl's sudden death raises suspicion. There were statements made by the stepmother that said,
00:00:25
we think her bones were deformed, and that's why she fell. NARRATOR: Can doctor Madeleine Hinkes
00:00:31
figure out if this child's death was an accident, or something far worse? It's hard to be detached when the cases involve little kids.
00:00:46
NARRATOR: Then, a young woman reveals a gruesome secret. A dead body is somewhere in her yard.
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JOHN TOBIN: We didn't have any hopes of finding the body at that point. We didn't know where to look.
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NARRATOR: Can doctor Dirkmaat uncover a family's disturbing secret? A shovel had been taken to destroy some of the remains
00:01:06
and the evidence. [MUSIC PLAYING] [CRYING BABY] NARRATOR: In his 15 years working the homicide beat,
00:01:53
Detective Richard Rouleau has closed his fair share of tough cases. In the summer of 2003 while going through his office's
00:02:01
unsolved case files, he comes across one of the toughest cases he's faced so far.
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RICHARD ROULEAU: There's probably 40 to 50 pages. I gave a copy to my Sergeant Jim Ferguson.
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We both took it home, read it word for word. And we realized we had documentation
00:02:19
of a suspicious death. NARRATOR: The death in question is that of a 3 and 1/2 year old girl named Dawn
00:02:25
Cooper, who had died in 1972. MAN: Beautiful little girl. Blond hair. NARRATOR: The 30-year-old police report tells a sad story.
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Shortly after Dawn is born, her parents file for divorce, and she goes on to live with her father Ted Cooper.
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By all accounts Dawn's a happy and healthy little girl. Until she turns two and her father remarries.
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The stepmother had two children. One years old and four years old. Dawn was sort of the stepchild that never
00:02:58
was invited into the family. NARRATOR: Soon after Don lives in with her stepmother,
00:03:07
relatives take note of a disturbing development. Black and blue marks that seem to appear
00:03:12
with increasing regularity on different parts of her body. Then one night Dawn's father brings her
00:03:22
to the emergency room. She was in comatose state. NARRATOR: Her father claims that she
00:03:26
simply fell and hit her head. He goes on to explain that Dawn suffers from a foot deformity,
00:03:33
which can make it awkward for her to walk and maintain her balance. Six hours later, Dawn dies.
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A pathologist performs an autopsy but is unable to determine a cause of death. So there was a lot of questions
00:03:49
not only from the investigators that handled this case, but there were questions in the medical community,
00:03:53
too, that went unanswered. NARRATOR: Authorities at the time are particularly suspicious about one very disturbing
00:04:00
finding. RICHARD ROULEAU: The autopsy report documented 35 bruises from the bottom of Dawn's feet
00:04:06
to the top of her head. NARRATOR: But without a definitive cause of death, the investigation stalls.
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Rereading the report 31 years later, Rouleau and Ferguson begin to seriously doubt the parents' claim that Dawn's death was accidental.
00:04:20
These injuries were unusual places, bottom of the feet. Extremely difficult to bruise.
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NARRATOR: Then they see the photo from the autopsy. JIM FERGUSON: That photograph will never leave my memory.
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There's no doubt in my mind, this child was beaten. And virtually no place on her body hasn't been injured.
00:04:38
The number, the sizes, the locations of the injuries that were apparent in the photograph
00:04:44
left me with no other conclusion, that this was a homicide, not an accidental death.
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NARRATOR: Now convinced that Dawn was murdered, Detectives Rouleau and Ferguson are determined to make sure
00:04:55
that justice is finally served. You have a child that deserves to be my age right now.
00:05:04
And she wasn't given that opportunity. It doesn't matter in my mind if it was last week's murder or 30 years.
00:05:10
It's still a murder that can't go unanswered. JIM FERGUSON: I don't think there's anything that
00:05:15
can even come close to explaining how I feel about what happened. But I can do one thing, I can try to seek justice.
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NARRATOR: They convinced the county DA's office to reactivate the file. Jill DiCarlo a local prosecutor famous for having
00:05:30
tried several other child homicides, takes on Dawn's case. And both my boss and I looked at these photos and said,
00:05:39
this isn't right here. This is not an unknown. Something happened. And you close your office door, you look at the photos,
00:05:45
you cry a little bit, and then you roll up your sleeve and say, I'm going to do what I have
00:05:49
to do to make sure that this baby's name is vindicated. NARRATOR: DiCarlo and the investigators immediately set
00:05:57
about building a case against their prime suspect, Dawn's stepmother. First they confirmed that she and Dawn's natural father
00:06:05
were both still alive, still married, and living in New Mexico. Next DiCarlo must get ready to disprove the stepmother's
00:06:14
likely defense. There were statements made by the stepmother at the time that said, well, Dawn fell a lot.
00:06:23
And she had to wear corrective shoes, and she, we think her bones were deformed,
00:06:28
and that's why she fell. So I felt there was going to be an issue from the defense in the future that this child's
00:06:35
gait was abnormal. NARRATOR: Though DiCarlo and the investigators are confident that Dawn's death wasn't
00:06:41
due to orthopedic problems that caused her to fall, they need evidence. Part of the roadblock that we had
00:06:47
to get past before we could truly put this in front of a jury. NARRATOR: And there was only one way
00:06:53
to obtain that hard evidence. JILL DICARLO: I wanted Dawn's body to be examined so I could have her feet
00:07:01
looked at, her skeletal-- everything looked at, basically. NARRATOR: A medical examiner was brought
00:07:06
in to perform a second autopsy. But to examine Dawn's feet, DiCarlo calls on specialist.
00:07:14
Forensic anthropologist Madeline Hinkes. Everybody deserves justice, if not the first time around
00:07:20
then the second time around. But it's important for the anthropologist, any of the scientists to do the job well
00:07:28
because that makes or breaks the case. NARRATOR: In July of 2003, the investigators and forensic team
00:07:35
removed Dawn's coffin from the above ground mausoleum where it was placed 31 years earlier.
00:07:42
It was very-- very emotional. I was looking at pictures of this child and all of a sudden
00:07:48
the name is on that marble stone, and on the brass plaque that really brought it home
00:07:54
why we were doing this case. We were doing it for Dawn. NARRATOR: Coming up, the coffin is open,
00:08:02
and Dr. Hinkes has to make a painful choice in the name of justice. MADELINE HINKES: It didn't seem right to cut off her feet
00:08:09
after all she'd been through, but it had to be done for scientific purposes. NARRATOR: And later, painstakingly searching
00:08:17
for any trace of burnt human remains, Dr. Dirkmaat comes up empty handed. We weren't finding anything but just little animal bones
00:08:25
and stuff like that of field mice, chipmunks, whatever. NARRATOR: But he isn't ready to give up yet.
00:08:31
When "Skeleton Stories" returns. In 2003, a tiny coffin has been pulled from its crypt
00:08:52
after 31 years. Police believe that a 3 and 1/2 year old child inside the coffin, Dawn Cooper, was beaten to death in 1972
00:09:03
by her stepmother. They are now counting on forensic anthropologist Madeline Hinkes to provide the evidence that will disprove
00:09:11
the stepmother's claim that Dawn's death was accidental, due to malformation of her feet.
00:09:19
My job was to focus on the ankles and the feet to see if there were some difference between the feet,
00:09:26
if there was some sort of pathology or anomaly that might have contributed to being more clumsy than
00:09:31
the average three-year-old. NARRATOR: Once the coffin is pulled from the crypt, it is taken to the county medical examiner's
00:09:39
office to be opened. We didn't know what we were going to find. So to a certain extent there's an anticipation.
00:09:47
Are we going to have evidence that we can obtain? Because you don't know until you actually open the casket.
00:09:55
RICHARD ROULEAU: And once the coffin was open, we were all very taken back and very
00:10:00
startled about the pristine condition that Dawn was in. MADELINE HINKES: There was them the mummified body
00:10:07
of a small child, naturally mummified. Dress, shoes, and socks. NARRATOR: It turns out that Dawn's body has been preserved
00:10:16
by a combination of factors. Her coffin was not airtight, and was placed in an above ground crypt.
00:10:23
As a result, the dry southwestern air worked to preserve her body, not unlike a mummy in the desert.
00:10:31
When I looked at her I can still see that beautiful little child, like I was looking
00:10:35
at the black and white photos. In her hands in the casket sort of tucked in under
00:10:41
her arms was a plaque that had a little prayer on it by Mary Baker Eddie. The prayer was about protecting little children,
00:10:52
guiding their path to heaven. NARRATOR: But most shocking of all is what they see on Dawn's mummified body.
00:11:01
JIM FERGUSON: You could take the original black and white photograph of Dawn on the coroner's table prior
00:11:07
to autopsy and match them to the existing bruises on Dawn now disinterred 30 years later.
00:11:15
NARRATOR: Because dawn died before her dozens of bruises could heal, the tissue where she was bruised
00:11:21
remained flooded with blood. As her tissue dried out in the crypt, this blood stained the skin and bone leaving a permanent record
00:11:29
of her short, sad life. I mean, you can still see impact sites on her skull. It was remarkable.
00:11:36
MADELINE HINKES: It was chilling to see the solid evidence of the bruises that were there.
00:11:40
I hadn't expected that staining would last so long. I think about it a lot. These injuries could never have happened from a fall.
00:11:49
As one of those physicians stated, if she fell from a 40 foot tree and hit every single branch
00:11:54
on the way down, she still wouldn't have enough injuries as to what she sustained.
00:11:59
NARRATOR: But while it's clear to the team that Dawn had been beaten, it is impossible to pinpoint
00:12:05
which injuries caused her death and who was responsible. Hinkes's investigation is the linchpin.
00:12:12
If she can prove that the parents lied to police about the fall, it will be just what Jill DiCarlo needs
00:12:18
to file a homicide charge. The medical examiner's staff takes dozens of x-rays of the mummified child,
00:12:26
documenting as much of the remaining injuries as possible. Then it's time for Madeline Hinkes
00:12:32
to begin her critical analysis of Dawn's feet. But first she needs to prepare herself emotionally.
00:12:39
MADELINE HINKES: It's hard to be detached when the cases involve little kids, because there's no good reason
00:12:45
that they should be at the medical examiner's office. So and being a mother I think probably
00:12:51
makes it more difficult. But part of being a good forensic scientist is not letting those emotions out at that point in time.
00:13:01
NARRATOR: Dr. Hinkes begins her examination by carefully comparing the right foot to the left.
00:13:06
MADELINE HINKES: I was looking for any anything out of the ordinary, or any disparity between the two feet.
00:13:13
And on x-ray I couldn't see any difference. Externally they look OK. They're symmetric, everything seems to be where it should be.
00:13:23
But I needed to look at the actual bones in order to tell for certain if there was anything wrong with them.
00:13:29
NARRATOR: To get a good look at the bones themselves, Dr. Hinkes must remove Dawn's feet
00:13:34
and clean off all the remaining tissue. But it-- it just didn't seem right to cut off her feet after
00:13:43
all she'd been through, but it had to be done for scientific purposes. NARRATOR: But what will Dr. Hinkes learn, and will it
00:13:52
be the hard evidence detectives and prosecutor DiCarlo are counting on to finally
00:13:57
bring this case to trial? Coming up, Madeline Hinkes hones in on the truth. MADELINE HINKES: It was chilling to see the solid evidence.
00:14:08
NARRATOR: And later, Dr. Dirkmaat pieces together clues, but will he be able to provide the answer his investigators
00:14:15
desperately need? DENNIS DIRKMAAT: It's sort of like a jigsaw puzzle when you start out.
00:14:18
NARRATOR: When "Skeleton Stories" returns. [MUSIC PLAYING] Forensic anthropologist Madeline Hinkes
00:14:37
is about to make a very intimate study of a pair of tiny feet. The feet belong to Dawn Cooper, a 3
00:14:44
and 1/2 year old girl who died from head injuries in 1972. JIM FERGUSON: The explanation for all these injuries
00:14:50
and the defense for all these injuries all these years had been Dawn was clumsy because she
00:14:55
had orthopedic problems. NARRATOR: But the more investigators probe into Dawn's last months, the more convinced
00:15:03
they are that Dawn was murdered, beaten to death by her stepmother. JIM FERGUSON: One of the relatives
00:15:09
spoke with stepmom at one time about disciplining children. Stepmom told the relative when Dawn wets her bed, or urinates
00:15:19
on herself, that her method of punishing her is to rub her face it. Which certainly explains a rather
00:15:28
large hematoma on the forehead of Dawn at the time of her death. NARRATOR: Now, three decades later, they
00:15:38
hope Dr. Hinkes will find the evidence in Dawn's bones to lead to a courtroom and a charge of murder.
00:15:48
Before Dr. Hinkes can closely examine Dawn's bones, she must clean the remaining tissue without disturbing
00:15:54
any skeletal evidence. This process is called maceration. The way it's done is to put the body part in water
00:16:04
with a little bit of mild detergent, not bleach or any of those things, because that damages the bone.
00:16:10
And to heat it, which is how I usually do it. In the case of Dawn's feet I knew that the bones would be very fragile,
00:16:18
and the heat would probably do damage. So I just had to soak them. Bones macerated here.
00:16:24
NARRATOR: A week later, the bones emerge fully cleaned, but no longer intact. MADELINE HINKES: The hard part is laying
00:16:30
out in their proper order. NARRATOR: It takes a specialist with Hinkes's experience
00:16:35
in examining young bones to be able to lay them out in their proper order. That's because many of the bones in a child's feet
00:16:43
look the same. Children's feet consist of bone and cartilage, which gradually harden and become more distinct
00:16:50
as children grow. MADELINE HINKES: I maybe had an advantage in that because my dissertation research
00:16:56
involved skeletal remains of 300 children from a prehistoric site. So I was pretty good at figuring out which these little bone
00:17:04
preforms was which. NARRATOR: Another challenge Dr. Hinkes faces is trying to detect any deformities
00:17:10
in these tiny bones. Looking for maybe evidence of fractures, evidence that the joints didn't function properly,
00:17:18
or that there was maybe missing bones or just something that was different or not normal.
00:17:24
NARRATOR: A successful prosecution of Dawn's case now hinges on what Dr. Hinkes can deduce
00:17:29
from slivers of cartilage as tiny as a bird's. MADELINE HINKES: I don't see any obvious pathologies here.
00:17:35
NARRATOR: After a painstaking reconstruction and scrutinizing every facet of the bones and cartilage,
00:17:41
Dr. Hinkes finally comes to an indisputable conclusion. MADELINE HINKES: So I don't see evidence
00:17:48
to support the stepmother's claim that there was something wrong with her feet and that's why she fell a lot
00:17:54
and got bruised all the time. NARRATOR: Dr. Hinkes makes a report to the county district attorney's office.
00:18:01
Based on the examination of the bones there's no reason why she would not have been able to walk properly.
00:18:09
JIM FERGUSON: We were elated, because we knew we could finish this case. That made the case.
00:18:13
We knew that we were there. JILL DICARLO: Without her being able to examine her bones,
00:18:18
that would have always been an unknown. And I don't think that would have been a good unknown for us to have and still
00:18:24
go forward with the case. Crucial evidence for us. NARRATOR: Coming up, a strange twist
00:18:31
in the case of Dawn Cooper. I just hung up the phone with them and started shaking.
00:18:37
We were both in complete shock. You're in disbelief. You're in disbelief. And later, can Dr. Dirkmaat find traces of a body,
00:18:48
or did the murderers cover their tracks too well for justice to be served? JOHN TOBIN: We didn't have any hopes of finding the body if we
00:18:57
didn't know where to look. NARRATOR: When "Skeleton Stories" returns. In 1972, 3 and 1/2 year old Dawn Cooper
00:19:20
was rushed to the hospital. Though her stepmother claimed Dawn had accidentally fallen
00:19:26
due to her feet being malformed, finally 31 years later Dr. Madeline Hinkes has determined there is
00:19:33
nothing wrong with Dawn's feet. [CAMERA CLICKS] To build their case against the stepmother,
00:19:45
police began talking to Dawn's extended family. They soon realized that Dawn's family
00:19:50
members are just as eager to see that justice is finally served. JILL DICARLO: And the family, when
00:19:55
we contacted them and said, we are reopening this case. A murder did happen. So many of them, 99% of them were extremely happy
00:20:05
and jumping for joy that we were going to do something, that finally Dawn's killer was going to be brought to justice.
00:20:11
NARRATOR: Drawing on statements from relatives, Dawn's original case file, and now Dr. Hinkes's discovery
00:20:17
that her feet were normal, police can finally assemble their version of Dawn's heartbreaking death.
00:20:31
In June 1970, Dawn's stepmother moves in and immediately begins subjecting her to ferocious discipline.
00:20:39
I told you you have ruined my life. Including repeated blows and beatings. Especially to the face and head.
00:20:48
The injuries are evident on the original autopsy photograph, and verified by the new autopsy conducted
00:20:54
on Dawn's exhumed body. She wanted to get the evil stepchild out of the way. Unfortunately our story didn't have the Cinderella ending.
00:21:03
NARRATOR: By January 1972, the daily battering is taking its toll. Dawn's nervous system is rushing fluids
00:21:11
to the sections of her brain bruised by the repeated blows to her skull. Her brain begins to swell.
00:21:19
This swelling, called a cerebral edema, is especially dangerous because the brain
00:21:24
trapped in the hard casing of the skull has almost no room to expand. As her swollen brain begins pressing against the inside
00:21:32
of her own head, Dawn slips into unconsciousness and collapses. And yet even then, the abuse isn't over.
00:21:40
Our belief is during that time the stepmother would go on and check on her, and most likely based on some
00:21:47
of the bruises we saw on the pre-autopsy photographs our belief is that she was probably kicking her with
00:21:54
her foot to see if she'd move. NARRATOR: But little Dawn can't move. [SIREN] Her father takes her to the hospital,
00:22:03
but it is far too late. She dies at 8:00 AM the next morning, just 42 months and four days after she'd been born.
00:22:13
It's horrific. As a mother it makes you-- just your stomach turn inside out that anybody,
00:22:20
regardless of whether it's your own child or not, that anybody could hurt a child who
00:22:25
is so helpless and defenseless. And it's just, it makes you-- it really makes you sick.
00:22:32
NARRATOR: With the tragic picture finally clear, detectives fly to New Mexico to gather additional information.
00:22:39
Their first order of business was to interview Dawn's stepmother. Then they tracked down Dawn's father at work
00:22:46
and go over his story of Dawn's last day. RICHARD ROULEAU: We met at a gas station
00:22:51
around the corner from his work. We piled into my car and had an interview with him.
00:22:57
MAN: The poor little girl. JIM FERGUSON: He never referred to his daughter as anything other than that little girl.
00:23:04
Stares at his hands, will not look at you whatever. It's too bad what happened, but it wasn't anybody's fault.
00:23:10
My wife's a good woman and she wouldn't do anything. JIM FERGUSON: He didn't answer questions directly,
00:23:14
but there was a very scripted feel to it. You'd ask a question, what happened to your daughter?
00:23:22
Oh, my wife's a good housekeeper. MAN: She's a wonderful woman. RICHARD ROULEAU: He was very--
00:23:28
Great homemaker. RICHARD ROULEAU: Adamant explaining to us that his wife was a great mother,
00:23:36
and that would never do anything to any child. JIM FERGUSON: What happened to your daughter?
00:23:40
She had a convulsion or something, I don't know. NARRATOR: Though Dawn's parents stick to their claim
00:23:46
that Dawn's death was accidental, with the evidence Dr. Hinkes has provided and additional information they've gathered,
00:23:54
detectives can finally obtain an arrest warrant. Arrived at the house relatively early
00:23:59
in the morning. [KNOCKING] When he knocked on the door, we received no response.
00:24:06
Had him knock again. No response. [DOORBELL RINGING] Open up, police. [KNOCKING]
00:24:15
RICHARD ROULEAU: Within about 45 seconds or so a hysterical female about 40 years of age
00:24:21
came to the front door. She instantly was hysterically screaming, what have we done to her mother.
00:24:29
And we were all confused not knowing what had happened. And as we entered into the residence,
00:24:37
walked down the hallway we found the stepmother on the ground with a self-inflicted gunshot wound
00:24:49
to the temple. It appears that she picked up a 25 caliber Beretta and stood at the foot of the bed and shot herself.
00:25:10
NARRATOR: Stunned, the detectives step outside to call Jill DiCarlo. JILL DICARLO: And they told me what had happened.
00:25:17
Ambulance hadn't even arrived yet. I just hung up the phone with them and started shaking.
00:25:24
And I started crying. I was crying for Dawn. NARRATOR: Once the initial shock wears off,
00:25:31
Jill DiCarlo knows she has one more phone call to make to Dr. Madeline Hinkes. [PHONE RINGING]
00:25:36
JILL DICARLO: And I explained to her what had happened, and I think she had some shock on the phone
00:25:41
as well, because it's not an ending you expect. I've never had anything like that happen to me before.
00:25:46
To me it suggested that someone with a guilty conscience. NARRATOR: With the death of Dawn's stepmother,
00:25:55
the Cooper case is finally closed. Dawn's father is not charged with any crime. He still lives in New Mexico.
00:26:06
After a 12 week emotional investigation, Dawn's remains are restored at last to their final resting place.
00:26:14
MADELINE HINKES: Remains were reburied, her foot bones were reburied in little Ziploc bags
00:26:21
labeled left and right. And she got a new casket. NARRATOR: For the law enforcement team
00:26:27
who spent a year calling up this case from the forgotten files and pursuing justice for a long lost child,
00:26:34
their vindication is bittersweet. To a certain extent there is no closure in that case,
00:26:40
because we never had the opportunity to confront stepmom with the information. MADELINE HINKES: I do think about done quite a bit
00:26:48
in watching my daughter grow. I think about her every time I hear about another case
00:26:55
that involves child abuse. There's too many cases like that. NARRATOR: Coming up, from cremated human
00:27:12
remains can Dr. Dirkmaat figure out who this person is? DENNIS DIRKMAAT: We couldn't get any estimates of the stature
00:27:18
of the individual. NARRATOR: That's next on "Skeleton Stories." [MUSIC PLAYING] WOMAN: Finish your medicine.
00:27:41
[INAUDIBLE] mean to me. The decision to do what had to be done. [SCREAMING] NARRATOR: It's 9 AM on a Saturday morning,
00:27:54
and two police detectives of a small Ohio town are performing a strange and chilling task.
00:28:00
Looking for human remains in a suburban backyard. They're here because last night a young woman, Jennifer Gray,
00:28:09
came forward with a terrifying story. That seven years ago her 20-year-old sister
00:28:15
Lucy was murdered, and that her body is somewhere in this yard. JOHN TOBIN: Lucy was mentally retarded,
00:28:23
had the IQ of a six-year-old. Her parents died, Lucy was adopted by this couple when she was like 9 years old.
00:28:31
NARRATOR: According to Jennifer, only a few months after Lucy was adopted her new father
00:28:35
took an interest in her sexually. For over two years he molested and sexually assaulted Lucy,
00:28:43
but while he attempted to keep his behavior a secret, he didn't succeed. The mother had found out that the father was
00:28:49
sexually abusing the victim. And the mother became of course quite upset. JOHN TOBIN: What had happened was
00:28:57
they were getting into a fight on that particular day, and the mother was getting more and more agitated.
00:29:03
NARRATOR: The father continued his abuse, even against his wife's protests. It was then that Lucy's new mother
00:29:09
decided to stop the abuse herself by attempting to kill Lucy. Her weapon was Lucy's own innocent trust.
00:29:19
DANIEL VENICK: Her mother gave Lucy some concoction the mother mixed up which contained some laundry
00:29:25
whitening agent and some heart medication and had her drink it. WOMAN: There you go, drink it up like a good girl.
00:29:32
That's a good girl. NARRATOR: Doing as she is told, Lucy drinks. But the effort only makes the young girl very sick.
00:29:41
JOHN TOBIN: She starts getting ill but she's not dead. She's throwing up and laying on the ground pretty much
00:29:46
almost in a fetal position. NARRATOR: For over an hour Lucy suffers. She's always been nothing but trouble to me, that's all.
00:29:52
NARRATOR: Then her adoptive father takes matters into his own hands. MAN: Don't give me that.
00:29:57
Come on. The father's-- I guess he said, this is it. And he went out and he sort of just physically
00:30:02
stomping on the victim. Stomped her to death, pretty much. She was laying on the ground.
00:30:13
According to the witness she could hear the bones breaking and the air being forced
00:30:16
out of the victim's body. NARRATOR: Then Lucy's parents go to great extremes to try to cover their horrible crime.
00:30:26
DANIEL VENICK: Taking the body and stacked logs on it and doused with gasoline and kept
00:30:32
the fire going all night long. And then afterwards, after the fire died down they cleaned the pit out and removed all the ashes.
00:30:42
NARRATOR: And the family never speaks of it again. Now, seven years later, Jennifer can no longer keep the secret.
00:30:55
JOHN TOBIN: Eventually this is eating at the sister. It's tearing her apart. NARRATOR: It is an incredible and heartbreaking story.
00:31:03
But while detective Tobin is convinced it's true the moment he hears it, he knows other authorities
00:31:09
won't be so sure. Jennifer could be lying. And that's a chance that the district
00:31:15
attorney doesn't want to take. JOHN TOBIN: The district attorney did not want to pursue the case as a homicide
00:31:20
because it lacked a body. NARRATOR: But police know that in this case, asking for a body
00:31:25
may be asking for the impossible. DANIEL VENICK: In this particular case, we didn't have a body per se, because it
00:31:30
had been subjected to this fire at intense heat for hours. JOHN TOBIN: Oh yeah, they sat out there
00:31:36
and they kept throwing wood on it. They were tending to it. They were raking it.
00:31:41
They were using shovels, breaking up bone. Afterwards, after the fire died down they cleaned the pit out, all the ashes.
00:31:49
NARRATOR: Lucy's body was burned, pulverized and hidden. Finding Lucy's remains in such a state
00:31:55
would be nothing short of miraculous. And without them, Jennifer's story can't be verified.
00:32:02
On their initial search, police come up empty handed. JOHN TOBIN: We didn't have any hopes of finding
00:32:09
the body at that point. We didn't know where to look. NARRATOR: But detective Tobin does still have one hope.
00:32:18
A scientist who might be able to unearth what he and the other detectives could not.
00:32:24
Forensic anthropologist Dr. Dennis Dirkmaat from Mercy Hurst College. Our job as forensic anthropologist
00:32:31
is about paying attention to minutes details related to the bones, related to the scene.
00:32:38
And that's what we're doing. NARRATOR: The morning after the police's failed search,
00:32:45
Dr. Dirkmaat arrives looking for the details they may have missed. DENNIS DIRKMAAT: This particular situation
00:32:50
they had a lot of information. They had a very good idea of who was involved and what happened,
00:32:56
but they didn't have a body. So the police called us to ask if we could come in and find these remains.
00:33:03
The assumption was that they were burned pretty dramatically. But they had been burned over the course of 10 hours.
00:33:12
A shovel had been taken to destroy some of the remains and the evidence, and then it was taken out of this fire pit,
00:33:18
wheelbarrow dumped somewhere. NARRATOR: But what seems hopeless to police is not hopeless to Dr. Dirkmaat
00:33:25
Even if the remains were cremated and burned and fragmented, there would still be remains.
00:33:30
Even after 15 years, after 30 years. If the remains were there, we would be able to recover them and maybe get some information
00:33:38
as to who this person was. NARRATOR: Investigators direct Dr. Dirkmaat to an area where they believe
00:33:51
the remains were dumped. His first task is to remove the debris without disturbing
00:33:56
any potential evidence. So we set up an archaeological site, and then removing the debris layer
00:34:03
by layer to see what we had. NARRATOR: He painstakingly and methodically sifts through
00:34:08
the soil at this site, looking for even the most minute of clues. Over the course of four hours we
00:34:16
completely excavated this area and found no human remains. OK. NARRATOR: Dr. Dirkmaat is starting
00:34:25
to fear that Jennifer's terrifying tale may never reach a jury's ears. But he's not ready to give up yet.
00:34:33
We walked about 25 yards away from that original excavation spot. I found a little piece of burnt newspaper.
00:34:41
And as we explored a little bit further and saw that in fact we had a little burned debris.
00:34:47
So we decided that we should explore this and see if this is, in fact, where the remains were deposited.
00:34:54
NARRATOR: Dr. Dirkmaat searches the area looking for teeth, tiny fragments of bone, anything that might yield
00:35:00
some sort of forensic clue. JOHN TOBIN: We weren't finding anything but just little animal
00:35:03
bones and stuff like that of field mice, chipmunks, whatever. NARRATOR: But eight grueling hours later, just as he's
00:35:10
about to call it a day, Dr. Dirkmaat makes a discovery that could be the key to unlocking the case.
00:35:18
DENNIS DIRKMAAT: We found few bits and pieces of burnt bone, some of them appeared to be animal,
00:35:23
but then we found a couple pieces that were, in fact, human. DANIEL VENICK: And they're showing to me
00:35:29
and I'm like geez, it looks like a stick. You know if they didn't have their expertise
00:35:32
to tell us what it was, I mean the average Joe Citizen would never know. NARRATOR: It takes Dr. Dirkmaat's
00:35:39
expert eyes to determine what tiny pieces are human bone. DANIEL VENICK: The remains were shrunk.
00:35:44
They were warped. They were fractured, they were fragmented. But in the end we could identify those as human remains.
00:35:52
NARRATOR: By the time he's finished, Dr. Dirkmaat and his team have recovered dozens of boxes
00:35:57
of what could be human bones. But what bones, and who they belong to, are questions that aren't even close to being answered.
00:36:05
And they'll need to be if police have any hope of proving that Jennifer is telling the truth.
00:36:10
So what we did was then collect all the remains into boxes and bring it back to the lab where we could
00:36:17
then carefully excavate it. NARRATOR: Coming up, even with the bone fragments in hand,
00:36:26
the obstacles to making a positive ID seem insurmountable. DENNIS DIRKMAAT: The fragments were so small
00:36:32
and probably had been altered at that fire scene. We couldn't get any estimates of the stature of the individual.
00:36:40
[MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: Investigators in Ohio believe that Lucy Gray's adoptive parents killed her and then burned her body
00:37:00
in an attempt to destroy all evidence of their gruesome crime. To build a case against Lucy's killers,
00:37:07
Dr. Dirkmaat must first determine what is bone and what isn't among the thousands of fragments
00:37:13
he's recovered from Lucy's backyard. DENNIS DIRKMAAT: It's sort of like a jigsaw puzzle
00:37:22
when you start out. There's no real pattern to it. You have isolated pieces, so when
00:37:27
we're looking at that these burned bones they are fragmented. They're misshapen.
00:37:33
They're a different color. But there are certain features that you sort of focus upon.
00:37:37
It's a visual thing. We know human bones. And so you have to take a look at the pattern
00:37:44
and see what do you recognize, what is recognizable to you. So we say, OK, well this looks like the body of vertebra.
00:37:52
It's sort of a visual conception of what these bones look like. A bone like this it could be actually a piece of wood.
00:38:01
And then there is a little test of the sound of it, so here's a piece of wood and has
00:38:08
a very different soft sound, whereas this has a little clinking sound. NARRATOR: Over a period of two months
00:38:21
Dr. Dirkmaat combs through tiny pieces of debris identifying nearly 3,000 fragments as being human bone.
00:38:29
But 3,000 fragments still don't add up to a 21-year-old woman. And that's what needs to happen before authorities
00:38:36
can be certain that Jennifer's story is true. Incredibly, Dr. Dirkmaat will try to use these charred
00:38:49
fragments to ID Lucy. He begins by looking for any fragment that could help clarify age, sex, or any
00:38:56
other biological identifiers. First he examines the tooth fragments and roots to see if he can narrow down the person's age.
00:39:03
With only minuscule bits and pieces, Dr. Dirkmaat faces a colossal challenge. The teeth that we did find were fully developed.
00:39:11
So all we could say is that we had an adult. NARRATOR: This small finding is Dr. Dirkmaat's first foothold.
00:39:18
According to Jennifer, Lucy was 21 when she died. Finding adult teeth fits this detail of her story.
00:39:27
He moves on, now looking for anything that could tell him whether these remains may have
00:39:33
belonged to a male or female. But this is a near impossibility. Determining sex is often done by looking
00:39:39
at the pelvis or the skull, or the general size of the bones. But all Dr. Dirkmaat has are splinters.
00:39:47
DENNIS DIRKMAAT: In many cases when we're looking at fragments of bone, we go on size as a hint at least as to whether it's
00:39:55
a male or female. It's smaller it tends to be female, larger male. But again, in this case you have modification due to heat
00:40:03
that that will reduce the size. So we have to be careful not to attribute all of these burn remains to females.
00:40:10
NARRATOR: He zeros in on one particular skull feature that forensic anthropologists often used to distinguish males
00:40:16
from females. The brow ridge located above the eye socket. From only tiny fragments Dr. Dirkmaat makes
00:40:24
another key determination. In the eye orbit, since females don't have large brow ridges they
00:40:30
tend to have sharp margins. In that case, we saw an indication of the sharp orbital margins and a number of other features
00:40:40
that gave us the hint. NARRATOR: Dr. Dirkmaat knows in this case, it is impossible to get a full positive ID
00:40:46
from these tiny remains. But he has made a key discovery. These bones belong to a female adult, a perfect match
00:40:54
to Lucy's profile. He hopes that this is enough evidence to prove to investigators that this could be Lucy.
00:41:01
Dr. Dirkmaat was able to provide us with a report. He was able to analyze those fragments.
00:41:05
He was able to determine that they were human, was able to tell the sex of the individual
00:41:10
from some of the fragments. DENNIS DIRKMAAT: We had spent two months carefully sifting
00:41:14
through this material and identifying every single fragment. So very confident of our findings.
00:41:21
Dr. Dirkmaat's profile, along with the sister's eyewitness account, are enough to convince the DA
00:41:27
to prosecute seven years after the brutal death of Lucy Gray. Murder charges are finally brought
00:41:33
against her adoptive parents. JOHN TOBIN: I think this turned out pretty well. It gave some closure to the sister
00:41:38
and I think mentally it helped her out a great deal. NARRATOR: At her trial, Lucy's mother
00:41:45
argues that she is a battered woman who was coerced by her abusive husband. The jury rules in her favor, and finds her not guilty.
00:41:54
At Lucy's father's trial investigators turned to Dr. Dirkmaat for his testimony.
00:41:59
DENNIS DIRKMAAT: Part of the process is to present to the jury that you know what you're doing
00:42:03
and that you are an expert in these types of areas, and convincing them that you know what you're talking about
00:42:08
in terms of heat alteration to the bones, in terms of how you figure out age and sex and all that.
00:42:17
DANIEL VENICK: And the fact that we were able to get the remains and have them identified by Dr. Dirkmaat,
00:42:22
and I think that helped the jurors reach their decision. NARRATOR: Jennifer's chilling testimony,
00:42:27
along with Dr. Dirkmaat's evidence, leaves no doubt in the minds of the jury. Lucy's father was found guilty of first degree murder.
00:42:35
He gets life in prison without the possibility of parole. For both Dr. Dirkmaat and the investigators,
00:42:44
this was one of the more difficult cases of their careers. This was a mentally retarded girl that was a child.
00:42:51
It was pretty hard to detach from this. NARRATOR: It was a tragedy that touched everyone involved
00:42:57
in the case, and police and Dr. Dirkmaat believe that their work helped Lucy's adoptive sister
00:43:04
Jennifer move on. JOHN TOBIN: We were able to find the victim. That gave some closure to the sister that allows her
00:43:11
to feel better about herself. We did do a very careful job. We knew what we were talking about,
00:43:17
that we were correct in our assessment and all the bones and determination of age and sex and all that.
00:43:23
And so that was proven out by the guilty verdict that was handed down.