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[dramatic music] - When a murder's committed,
it's always a race against time to find the truth, to
separate fact from fiction,
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to catch the killer, and to make sure that
justice is served. [dramatic music] What happens when the truth
vanishes with the victim?
00:00:23
I'm Dr. Richard Shepherd, and I've spent my entire career
as a forensic pathologist
00:00:27
performing nearly
23,000 autopsies, including on some of the
most high-profile cases
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of recent times. I've learned that the
dead don't hide the truth and they never lie.
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Through me, you'll be hearing
directly from the victim. From a state-of-the-art
laboratory
00:00:44
with groundbreaking technology that uses digitally
scanned sample bodies. I'll be investigating a
series of intriguing murders
00:00:53
where from the victim's
bodies, I'll be revealing to you the truth behind
those horrific crimes.
00:00:59
[camera lens flashing] [dramatic music] [bright music] [birds chirping] On the 1st of July, 1997,
in Oakland, California,
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police found the
dismembered body of a woman. The house had been
attacked by arsonists
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just two weeks earlier. [bright music] But who was the victim and what could her body
reveal about its own death?
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[tense music] [birds chirping] - East Oakland, not
a bad neighborhood. [tense music]
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A lot of people had been
in that neighborhood for many years. You know, there were a lot
of kids in the neighborhood
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and a lot of people
seemed to know each other. [tense music] - Residential neighborhood,
but like everything else
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it had its share of problems. [tense music] - It was predominantly
African American
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and what I would call a
working-class neighborhood. [tense music] [suspenseful music]
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- [Richard] But on the
15th of July, 1997, a grim discovery was made. [suspenseful music]
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- I was the crime scene
investigator on the scene, the primary one that
was in the field.
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I was called in the morning
and was told to respond to the address on 50th
Avenue in Oakland,
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and I was there to search
for evidence and a body. [tense music] The canine units went in first
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and searched the basement
as well as the home. [tense music] - [Richard] It wasn't long
before they were on the scent.
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- I get to the scene and I'm trying to get my
equipment out of the car. The guys were yelling
for me to hurry up
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and come on in the house. So I just grabbed my camera
and ran up into the house,
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and they took me into
the kitchen area, and propped open
a floor freezer. [tense music]
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It was very dark inside, and
I reached into the freezer to see what was in there,
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and it was, it appeared to be
plastic, like garbage bags. [tense music] From one of the garbage bags
I could feel an arm, an elbow.
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[tense music] Told everybody to be
quiet and be still, and I tried to feel for a
pulse, but there was none.
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[tense music] We secured that area and
I asked everybody to leave because now, I've got a
dead body in a freezer box.
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[tense music] [suspenseful music] We had to figure out how we
were gonna transport the body
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to the coroner's office. [suspenseful music] Few discussions occurred
and it was finally decided
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that we would transport the
body fully and completely inside the freezer box. We had to get a truck,
we had to get a dolly,
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we had to get some duct tape
because I wanted to make sure that the box was secured.
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[suspenseful music] I was there at the
coroner's office and I photographed the
beginning of the autopsy.
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The body wasn't burned, it
was starting to decompose, but her legs were cut
off, her torso was cut.
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[suspenseful music] There were four body parts
that came out of those bags. [suspenseful music]
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- The body parts were
found in the home of local woman, Stevie Allman, so they assumed
she was the victim,
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but they needed to be sure. [suspenseful music] [dramatic music] The first job of a pathologist
is to identify the body.
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The body goes through a
number of stages after death, which aren't particularly
time-dependent,
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but they usually start with
discoloration of the skin, then blister formation, then
bloating and liquefaction.
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And all of these changes are
environmentally dependent. You can see here on this sample
body on the digital table
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how rigor mortis
occurs after death, when the muscles stop
receiving oxygen. And that's a change that
starts immediately someone dies
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and is present in the hands and
the feet at about four hours and spreads the whole of
the muscle mass of the body
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at about 12 hours. Here they were posed
with a problem. This body was quite
severely decomposed.
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In fact, the body was
so severely decomposed, the crime scene investigators
couldn't work out
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if it was a man or a woman. Now, to make an identification,
you need to compare records
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that were made before death with those that were
discovered at the autopsy. We know the body was found
in the home of Stevie Allman,
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but who was she? [mysterious music] - Stevie Allman was very
kind, very giving person,
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and wanted to do good for
mankind, for her neighborhood, for the people that she
loved and care about.
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[mysterious music] - [Richard] Stevie lived with
her sister in a small bungalow at 50th Avenue, Oakland,
California, where she grew up.
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She came from a big family
with 10 brothers and sisters. - Most of the kids had
already moved outta the house,
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and were long gone, and
started their own families while Stevie lived in
this small white bungalow.
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[mysterious music] - Stevie Allman was a
hardworking woman, had a career, I think she was an accountant
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or some administrative position, that she had earned a
20-year retirement from. [suspenseful music]
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- Two weeks before
the body was found, a 911 call had come
in from a neighbor saying there was a fire
in Stevie Allman's home.
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[fire truck siren blaring] [suspenseful music] When firefighters
arrived at the scene,
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they rescued a woman at
the front of the house. [water hose spraying] [suspenseful music]
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- So when firefighters arrived, they asked her what happened, and of course,
what was her name?
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She identified herself
as Stevie Allman, and she said that drug dealers
had surrounded the house
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and had thrown fire
bombs into the house. [fire crackling] [ominous music] And that they were
fire bombing the house
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because they had been
videotaping the drug dealers in the area. - [Richard] She also
said that she intended
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to hand this evidence
into the police. [ominous music] Stevie was taken to Alta
Bates Medical Center
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for treatment of her injuries. - The Oakland Police Department
put out a $50,000 reward,
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and that was later
doubled by the governor of the state of California. And so there was
a $100,000 reward
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for anyone who could
give any information on the drug dealers who
allegedly firebombed the house.
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[suspenseful music] - When we have a citizen
of this type who gets out and fights for the
peace of the community,
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then we need to all
rally around her, and this police department
to solve this crime.
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[suspenseful music] [tense music] - [Richard] Stevie
told investigators that on the night of the fire,
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while she was sitting
in the living room, she heard a crash
in the kitchen. [glass shattering]
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Followed by a
one-gallon-sized glass jar hitting the kitchen floor
and breaking into pieces.
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[glass shattering] That crash was followed
immediately by glass jars being thrown into the
living room, the bathroom,
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and the front bedroom. [tense music] - I was called into this case, it was getting a
lot of publicity
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from the media, politicians. You know, I thought
everything was legitimate, that it was somebody
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who was doing something
for the community. [tense music] [suspenseful music] - [Richard] Stevie
claimed she was targeted
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because she was trying to
catch local drug dealers. - So I thought there's
good reason to investigate
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who's committing these crimes. [suspenseful music] - [Richard] Having spent
a week in hospital,
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Stevie issued a news statement. "I have no doubt they
intended to murder me and burn the house
down on top of me.
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Their warped minds thought
the act would clear the way to do their dirty dealing,
and at the same time,
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scare everyone else along
50th avenue and beyond into a submissive,
terrified slave state."
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- Everyone was talking
about was this family that had been firebombed because they were
taping drug dealers,
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and as a result, there was an
outpouring of public support for Stevie Allman, and
donations began pouring in.
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The donations totaled $4,700. Several contractors
offered to rebuild the Stevie Allman's home.
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[tense music] - [Richard] But while
investigating the arson attack, Sergeant Gregory was
beginning to feel
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Stevie's story wasn't adding up. [tense music] - We kind of walked
around the scene
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and things just didn't
look right to me. I've led to believe
that dope dealers carrying large ice tea
jars with gasoline in them
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had thrown them
through the windows. Well, this is not
the way you retaliate against somebody out in
the streets of Oakland.
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For one, I would be worried
if I was carrying that jar of gasoline that I'd be doused
with some of that gasoline,
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my own self, and it would
take a minimum of four people to do this because one
would have to carry the jug,
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one would have to
light it on fire, and we had two
different locations. So you're talking
four people minimum.
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- [Richard] However, there
was no evidence of anyone running from the house
on the night of the fire.
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- They were ice
tea fragment jars because you could see glass
fragments on the ground.
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What I thought was suspicious
from the very beginning was the fact that they were
on the outside of the house.
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If they were thrown from
outside of the house into the house through a window, the projectile would
go through the window.
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Instead, these were on
the outside of the house. Meaning to me, they
came from inside, out.
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[suspenseful music] - [Richard] Forensic
investigations concluded the same
thing, that the fire
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had most likely been
intentionally set with a flammable liquid
from inside the property.
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- We did a complete canvas
of the neighborhood that day, and very little
information was developed.
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One of the things that myself
and other officers did, asked neighbors, are you aware
of the dope dealing going on?
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Yes, of course. Were you aware that she was
videotaping these dope dealers? No, not so much.
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But there wasn't really
feeling on the neighbor's part that she was being targeted
by any of the dope dealers.
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[suspenseful music] We had gone through
probably a week of interviewing drug
dealers, prostitutes,
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neighborhood people, and it
just wasn't coming together. Dope dealers had told me,
the hardcore dope dealers
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that actually told
me in an interview, if she was that much
of a problem to us, we wouldn't use
fire and gasoline,
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we'd just put a
bullet in her head. Which to me, that's the way
problems were dealt with
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out there on the street. [suspenseful music] [tense music] - [Richard] Further
investigations reveal
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that only two weeks earlier,
there had been another fire when firefighters had been
called to Stevie's bungalow.
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- [Richard] But investigators
weren't getting closer to finding out who
was starting them.
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- Even after my canvas, talking to all the
other investigators that interviewed people in
the jail, I had nothing,
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nothing to substantiate that there was anybody
else burning 'em out. There was, oh yeah, I heard
that she was being burned out,
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you know, by dope dealers, but they're hearing this
third hand, you know, from somebody else.
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[tense music] Nothing to substantiate
any of that. - The Oakland Police Department
had not received one tip
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as a result of that reward
money that was put out there. And you know, the
reality is, in Oakland,
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most of the people will
turn their grandmother in for a hundred dollars,
whereas in this case,
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they had a hundred thousand
dollars reward out there, and that was very
unusual in Oakland
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to not receive not one tip with that kind of
money being out there. It was clear to many of them
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that there was something
strange going on in this case. - [Richard] Stevie's
accounts of the fires
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just weren't adding up. [suspenseful music] - Things like this that
are just so bizarre
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and out of the norm, this is what horror
movies are made out of. [suspenseful music]
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[dramatic music] [tense music] - On the 15th of July,
1997, a dismembered body was found in the freezer
of Stevie Allman's home
00:16:10
in Oakland, California. Who was the victim and what
secrets could the body reveal?
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Two weeks earlier, a woman
identifying herself as Stevie had suffered horrific injuries
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after her home was firebombed. [tense music] Although badly
burned, she survived.
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And she was showered
with support and money by local, public,
and politicians. After she said she'd been
targeted by drug dealers.
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But it wasn't long before
detectives became suspicious and wondered how much of
her story was actually true.
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[suspenseful music] When Stevie was injured
in the firebombing, it was all over the local news.
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- One thing that was
brought to the attention was that when the news
media took photographs
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of Stevie being put
into an ambulance and sent up to the hospital,
word got back to me
00:17:05
that that wasn't Stevie at all. [ambulance siren blaring] [tense music] - [Richard] Stevie's older
sister, Leotta Belleville,
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told police that
the injured woman was actually Sarah Mitchell, another sister who
lived with Stevie.
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- And she made it very adamant
to me that that was Sarah that was put into the
ambulance, not Stevie.
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[ambulance siren blaring] - Stevie was always what
you would call a homebody. Stevie would just go to
work and then come home.
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She was a very private person. If she wasn't at work,
then Stevie was at home. And so it was very
unusual for the house
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to have suffered
this fire damage and for Stevie to not be
present after several days.
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And family members began
asking, where is Stevie? - [Richard] Leotta
called her sister, Sarah,
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to see if she knew where the
other sister, Stevie, was. - And the first time she
asked her the question,
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she said, she's in Reno. Well, a little bit later
in the conversation, the sister asked her again,
well, where is Stevie?
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[suspenseful music] And when she answered
the second time, she said, I told you
she's in Lake Tahoe.
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[suspenseful music] Leotta said, well,
wait a minute. The first time you told
me that she was in Reno,
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and now, you just told me
that she's in Lake Tahoe. So what is it? [suspenseful music]
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- [Richard] Leotta
then immediately filed a missing person's report. - Then it's time to
call out all the stops
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and bring Sarah or Stevie into
the office to interview 'em to find out who,
in fact, they are.
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[suspenseful music] I wasn't able to get a
hold of her at the hospital because she was confined
to the burn unit
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and the burn unit has
to stay very antiseptic. [suspenseful music] - [Richard] Over a week
later, the injured woman
00:19:24
was released from hospital,
and officers located her at a hotel in Alameda and
brought her in for interview.
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- So I wanted to know
who I was speaking to because even during
our interview I was referring
to her as Stevie.
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[tense music] I had my suspicions
about the fire. [tense music] She had frontal burns,
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which told me that she
was in front of the fire. She had a full head of hair,
but the hair wasn't burned,
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nothing on her back. She had burns, burns, all
frontal burns, which is unusual because to get frontal burns,
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you're not running through
the house screaming as it follows you out the house. You're in front of the fire as
opposed to being behind you,
00:20:21
if that makes sense. [tense music] - [Richard] Still,
assuming she was Stevie, he wanted to know where
her sister Sarah was.
00:20:30
- And then when questioning her about the whereabouts of Sarah, she said, oh, nonchalantly,
very cavalier,
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she's off in Reno
with her boyfriend. [suspenseful music] It was like, when's the
last time you talked to her?
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Oh, I don't know, a few
days ago, maybe a week ago. That just seemed
totally out of the realm
00:20:52
of being realistic to me. - [Richard] So Sarah
had told her family that Stevie was in Reno and
this woman claiming to be Stevie
00:21:01
was now telling the police
that Sarah was in Reno. - She had multiple
identifications on her.
00:21:08
I mean, she had
Stevie's identification
on her and Sarah's. You know what I'm thinking,
if Sarah's off in Nevada,
00:21:17
what are you doing with
Sarah's identification? - [Richard] They
found in her purse
00:21:22
a check made out
to Stevie Allman by the Alpha Bates
Hospital for $2,744. [suspenseful music]
00:21:30
- So she's got a lot of
money on her, in her purse. Where did you get
the money, Stevie?
00:21:36
Well, I got this from donations
while I was in the hospital from people to get by.
00:21:42
[suspenseful music] - [Richard] Still unsure as
to whether she was Stevie or Sarah, Gregory decided
to take fingerprints
00:21:49
to confirm her identity. - And luckily for us, Sarah had a prior criminal
record, very minor.
00:21:57
She had been arrested
for prostitution for quite a few
years before that, but the fingerprints did
come back and confirmed
00:22:06
that the person that we rolled were that belonging to Sarah. [suspenseful music]
00:22:17
- [Richard] It was now clear
that it was Sarah Mitchell, not Stevie Allman, who had
been burned in the fire.
00:22:23
Sarah was pretending to
be her sister, Stevie. She had Stevie's ID on
her and had a large check
00:22:30
made out to Stevie
on her person. - At that point, we arrested
Sarah for forgeries.
00:22:37
[tense music] - [Richard] If she had
lied about her identity, what else had she lied about?
00:22:42
- My suspicion was, was that
Stevie was dead somewhere. [tense music] My feeling was that she
would be at the house.
00:22:51
The search warrant was prepared and we were told to put
it on hold the next day.
00:22:58
I had had a friend of
mine bring a cadaver dog from San Mateo County. It sniffs and smells
blood, body tissue.
00:23:08
[tense music] - [Richard] Whilst waiting
for the search warrant to come through, the cadaver
dog was outside the property
00:23:13
when nature called. [tense music] - He ultimately let his dog
relieve itself in the backyard
00:23:22
and the dog promptly went
right to a Skil saw blade. [tense music] The dog started licking
the Skil saw blade.
00:23:31
That told me that
there was blood residue on the Skil saw blade. So that told me that we were
on the right path right there.
00:23:38
Later on, other homicide
detectives and myself went ahead and served the
search warrant on the house.
00:23:47
- A week after Sarah's
true identity was revealed, the dismembered body was
discovered in the freezer
00:23:52
at the home of Stevie Allman. [tense music] Police were now sure that
two women lived in the house.
00:24:00
They were Stevie Allman, age 52, and her sister, Sarah
Mitchell, age 47. And they looked very
similar, the same body shape,
00:24:09
the same height,
the same appearance. So much so that neighbors
sometimes thought
00:24:14
that they were twins. And that's what
made identification
even more important. Three ways of identifying
a body were present.
00:24:23
First, we'd use now was DNA, but it's still in its infancy
then and probably wasn't used.
00:24:29
The second was fingerprints. They can be really valuable, only if somebody has
a criminal record
00:24:34
and their fingerprints
are stored by the police. But fingerprints can be
lost through decomposition
00:24:40
and so not be reliable. Finally, there are
the dental records, but only if somebody
has dental records
00:24:46
that are available
for comparison. So when we look at this lady
on the digital autopsy table,
00:24:52
we can see she's got
the changes in her mouth that are really important
for a dental identification.
00:24:58
Loss of teeth in the upper jaw, but marks where the
teeth have been, scanned teeth in the lower jaw
with evidence of dental work.
00:25:04
And this is what's important in making a positive
dental identification. [suspenseful music]
00:25:12
The dental records proved
the body in the freezer was Stevie Allman. [suspenseful music]
00:25:17
- Why was her sister
pretending to be Stevie? And why would anyone
want Stevie Allman dead?
00:25:25
[dramatic music] [ominous music] - In California, police were
dealing with a strange case
00:25:44
of confused identities. They had a dismembered body which had been clearly
identified as Stevie Allman,
00:25:51
but they also had a
very much alive woman who was insisting that
she was Stevie Allman,
00:25:57
even though her fingerprints
had identified her as Stevie's sister,
Sarah Mitchell.
00:26:02
[suspenseful music] When the body was discovered
at the home of the sisters, police moved in on Sarah.
00:26:09
[suspenseful music] - And it was at that point, Sarah Mitchell was charged
with the murder of her sister.
00:26:23
But there was still a
lot of investigation that needed to be done
because at this point,
00:26:30
it was a completely
circumstantial evidence case. - [Richard] To try
and uncover the truth,
00:26:35
investigators wanted to find
out more about the sisters. - It was Stevie,
Sarah, and the mother
00:26:42
that lived in the house. When the mother passed, it
was just Stevie and Sarah that lived in the house.
00:26:50
Both of them were very
similar, probably in height, I would say not tall
women, 5'6, 5'7 maybe.
00:26:57
[tense music] And within a few
years of each other, they tend to comb their
hair the same way,
00:27:03
straight back a lot of times. To me, they could
be very well twins. - [Richard] Despite
looking alike,
00:27:10
they were said to have very
different personalities. - Stevie Allman was very
hardworking, very industrious,
00:27:19
the kind of person
who always had a job and was always a
provider for her family.
00:27:28
[tense music] - Stevie had a retirement,
she was responsible, she was maintaining the
upkeep of the house.
00:27:37
She was doing everything she
could to be a good person in a neighborhood like that.
00:27:44
- Whereas Sarah, on the other
hand, was the exact opposite. Some would even go
as far as to say,
00:27:51
Sarah was absolutely lazy,
never wanted to work, she always was looking
for someone else to
take care of her.
00:28:00
- It's my understanding
that Sarah had just been kinda
living there, rent-free, just taking and
taking and taking.
00:28:10
- Sarah had gone through
her share of boyfriends, she was addicted to
prescription medication
00:28:17
and was always trying to get
over on somebody, you know, rather than earn a living
herself and do the right thing.
00:28:25
[ominous music] - Stevie thought that, you
know, it was time for Sarah to be a responsible adult,
take care of herself,
00:28:35
go get a job, and that
she wasn't willing
to carry the load. for Sarah. - I would describe
Stevie and Sarah,
00:28:46
the good sister and
the bad sister really. [ominous music] - But was Sarah really bad
enough to kill her own sister?
00:28:55
When the dismembered
body was recovered, it was hoped that it would
be able to reveal the truth
00:28:59
about its murder at autopsy. [ominous music] If the murderer was trying
to hide the evidence
00:29:09
by starting the
fire, they'd failed because the body was
protected within the freezer.
00:29:15
And so the whole of
Stevie Allman's body was available for autopsy. And when they
looked at the head,
00:29:22
they found areas of over
20 separate injuries. On the skin, many of
them had a tram line
00:29:28
or rail track appearance, two
parallel lines of bruising consistent with a linear object.
00:29:34
Internally, when they looked,
there were extensive fractures to the face and
also to the skull,
00:29:39
so fractured the cheekbone,
of the jaw, of the forehead, of the skull all over. But more importantly, there
was evidence of hemorrhaging
00:29:48
around the brain, and the
hemorrhaging would've occurred inside the skull,
around the fractures,
00:29:55
but also on and
within the brain, and that would've been
the cause of death. The pathologist couldn't be
certain as to the weapon used,
00:30:05
but he said that it was
elongated with a hard edge like a metal bar. [tense music]
00:30:14
- Well, it appeared that
the body had major trauma to the head, so we were
asked to go back to the scene
00:30:24
and see what we could find. I didn't know if I was
looking for a hammer, a crowbar, a pipe.
00:30:30
We just didn't know. So I was collecting a
lot of possibilities that may have had some blood
or hair transfer on it.
00:30:39
[tense music] - [Richard] The investigators
were also looking for evidence of how and where the body
had been dismembered.
00:30:46
- I know the crime
lab recovered the trap in the bathroom tub,
blood gets washed down,
00:30:54
there's always some type of
residue of blood that's left, and you can use what
they call luminol,
00:31:00
which is a liquid or spray
that can spray it on there, use a black light, and
it'll just pop right up.
00:31:10
We were able to also discover
some cut marks in the bathtub. [tense music] I recovered saws and knives,
and blades, and a crowbar,
00:31:22
and hammers, and like tools on
the back porch area as well. [tense music] Crime lab established that
she was killed in her bedroom,
00:31:35
possibly in her bed
while she was sleeping. And then the body was moved
from that room into the bathroom
00:31:44
where her body was dismembered. [tense music] [ominous music] - [Richard] A
neighbor told police
00:31:56
they saw Stevie and Sarah
together in their backyard on the 15th of June, four
days before the first fire.
00:32:04
[ominous music] This was the last time
Stevie Allman was seen alive. [ominous music]
00:32:11
Could the body help them
establish a time of death? Estimating the time of
death in a decomposing body
00:32:17
can be a real challenge, but
it's especially complicated where the body was
initially frozen
00:32:23
and only started to decompose when the freezer stopped
working after the second fire.
00:32:30
Estimations suggest that
Stevie had been dead for around a month, and
that fits quite well
00:32:38
with her being seen
on the 15th of June. [suspenseful music] There was nothing to
suggest why Sarah Mitchell
00:32:48
would want to kill her
sister Stevie Allman. So investigators looked
into her financial situation
00:32:54
to see if that would
provide any clues. - What we found was that
every one of her accounts
00:33:01
had been emptied. Sarah Mitchell had cleaned
out her bank accounts, her mutual funds, her
retirement account,
00:33:12
and had withdrawn
all of the money. And for every transaction,
there's a photograph
00:33:19
or a video of the transaction. On every transaction,
there was Sarah Mitchell disguised as her sister
and using her sister's ID
00:33:32
to obtain monies from
her sister's accounts. We had one of the top
forensic handwriting experts
00:33:42
in the United States,
Lloyd Cunningham, and confirmed that
the signatures that
Sarah Mitchell signed
00:33:53
in the name of Stevie Allman were forged signatures
by Sarah Mitchell. - By assuming that
Stevie's identity,
00:34:03
the checks would be
coming in to Stevie, all the good things
that Stevie did, Sarah was mooching off of that.
00:34:11
I mean, that's just total greed. [tense music] - [Richard] But
Sarah didn't stop
00:34:18
at emptying Stevie's
bank accounts, only 24 hours before
the second fire, she received a visit from
an insurance adjuster.
00:34:27
- I believe it was the next day that she burned the
whole house down and that if she burned
the whole house down,
00:34:34
she could also get the
insurance proceeds for the home. And we think that
that was the motive
00:34:41
for her burning the
whole house down. You know, this case took
so many bizarre twists
00:34:49
that it was crazy. [tense music] [dramatic music] [suspenseful music] - Police had been investigating
the murder of Stevie Allman,
00:35:14
whose body had been dismembered and put in the chest
freezer in her home. They discovered that her
sister, Sarah Mitchell,
00:35:21
had stolen her identity
and was stealing her money. Yet, Sarah continued to
maintain her innocence.
00:35:29
Despite this, police had
charged Sarah Mitchell with the murder of her
sister, Stevie Allman.
00:35:35
But now, they had
to build the case. Could the body give
any more clues? The body had revealed that
Stevie Allman was killed
00:35:43
by blows to the head, using
an elongated instrument with a hard edge that caused
hemorrhaging inside the skull.
00:35:51
And the body had also
been dismembered. Dismemberment murders
are quite rare. It also adds a huge
psychological overlay
00:35:59
to the type of person who
would commit that murder and then go on to
cut up a human body.
00:36:05
I can show you where the
body had been cut apart. First cut was through the knees
00:36:13
and the lower legs were missing. The second cut had
been through the waist. And both arms had
also been cut off.
00:36:23
I think the murderer
stopped at this point because she got the
body small enough
00:36:28
to fit into the freezer,
which was only four foot long. The one thing in the
investigator's favor
00:36:35
was that all parts of
the body were present. Now, I know from
personal experience
00:36:41
that dismembering a body
can be really difficult task even for someone with
specialist skills.
00:36:47
But in this case,
evidence from the body showed that the
person had struggled to cut through all of the
joints, and it became clear
00:36:55
that she must have used a saw to cut through
many of the bones. This must have been
a terrible end.
00:37:03
[ominous music] [tense music] - The forensic pathologist
took photos of the areas
00:37:15
where the cuts were made. You could tell by the
smooth cuts that it was done with an electric saw because
if it was a handheld saw,
00:37:26
you would have a
more jagged cut. And then it was consistent
with an electric Skil saw
00:37:35
because there was blood
everywhere in the room. There was blood spatter on
all four walls of the bedroom,
00:37:43
and that she was unable to
clean all of the blood evidence. So rather than clean all
the blood off of the walls,
00:37:51
she lit the room on fire. [fire crackling] There was no evidence of
anyone breaking into the house.
00:38:02
Even when they did the
arson investigation, it was determined that the
fire bombs were consistent
00:38:10
with having been ignited
from inside the house because there was no broken
glass inside the house
00:38:18
indicating that any
kind of fire bomb had been thrown
through a window. [suspenseful music]
00:38:25
- [Richard] Investigators now
believe Sarah staged the fire to conceal the murder
and the burns on her body
00:38:30
were splash burns, which
can happen to an arsonist when they set a fire. And they discovered she had
stolen Stevie's identity
00:38:38
even before she had killed her. - We found evidence of her
engaged in financial theft
00:38:48
from Stevie's accounts
even before the murder and the fire bombing. [suspenseful music]
00:38:55
And we also did think
that that was part of why she also killed her sister because there had been
previous incidents of theft
00:39:03
from Stevie's accounts. And Stevie had also warned her that if there was
a repeat incident
00:39:10
of her stealing from Stevie, that Stevie was going to
throw her out of the house.
00:39:17
So I think that once Stevie
Allman made that demand that Sarah would need to
go out, and get a job,
00:39:24
and really take care of herself, I think began the breakdown
of the relationship
00:39:31
between Sarah Mitchell
and Stevie Allman. And it was at some
time during that period
00:39:37
that Sarah Mitchell determined that she was going to
kill Stevie Allman, and assume her identity,
and take all of her assets.
00:39:48
[suspenseful music] [ominous music] And then we found several checks that had been fraudulently
cashed on Stevie's account
00:39:59
prior to the murder. So that was where we eventually
concluded that the motive for this whole case
was financial gain.
00:40:09
[suspenseful music] - [Richard] In November 2000, Sarah Mitchell faced trial at
Alameda County Superior Court
00:40:15
for the murder of her
sister, Stevie Allman. [suspenseful music] - Sarah had two attorneys,
and these guys were top-notch.
00:40:27
They were outstanding
defense attorneys. But, you know, good
representation doesn't
change the fact
00:40:36
that the evidence of her
guilt was overwhelming, despite it being only
circumstantial evidence.
00:40:43
And so, you know, during
the trial, you know, she would smile some days, and
some days she wouldn't smile
00:40:52
because she's heard evidence
of just the brutality of her crime, the cruelty of it.
00:41:00
Those were hard days even
for her to deal with. [ominous music] [suspenseful music]
00:41:10
- [Richard] After
a three-week trial, the jury delivered
their verdict. [suspenseful music]
00:41:16
Sarah Mitchell was convicted
of first-degree murder with the special circumstance
of intentional murder
00:41:21
carried out for financial gain. The special circumstance
clause made her eligible to die
00:41:27
by means of a lethal injection. [suspenseful music] - In America, the jury's
verdict has to be unanimous,
00:41:38
so there are 12 jurors, if
one juror votes not guilty, then the person
is not convicted.
00:41:46
And in this case, it was all 12. All 12 people indicated that Sarah Mitchell
is guilty of murder.
00:41:54
[tense music] I looked over at Sarah Mitchell and I saw absolute
relief on her face.
00:42:07
[tense music] You would think if you've
just been convicted of a special circumstance murder
00:42:14
that the person would be upset, instead what we saw on her face was absolute relief
that the trial was over.
00:42:25
[tense music] And it was at that
point, that both myself, and later, we found out
that for many of the jurors,
00:42:33
that when they
saw her expression after the verdict was read,
everyone in the courtroom knew
00:42:42
that she was guilty. [tense music] - They were gonna give
her the death penalty,
00:42:49
but one of her other sisters
did not want to pursue the death penalty. They'd already suffered
a big enough loss.
00:42:59
They asked the district
attorney, Terry Wiley, to ask for a life
sentence for her,
00:43:08
which is probably
better in the end, make her suffer a
little bit, you know? - [Richard] Sarah Mitchell
was given a life sentence
00:43:18
without the
possibility of parole. - The end of the day,
Stevie's not coming back
00:43:26
and neither is Sarah. So I suppose justice was served. [tense music] [suspenseful music]
00:43:38
- Never had a case with
a more depraved heart than Sarah Mitchell had. I mean, it's just, it was
just a depraved heart.
00:43:50
[suspenseful music] - It was very complex because
you have the two sisters that look so much alike.
00:43:59
[suspenseful music] Money, greed,
jealousy, and evil. [suspenseful music] This woman was evil.
00:44:08
[suspenseful music] She wanted everything
she couldn't have. [suspenseful music]
00:44:15
So she just thought, I guess
she'd take it from her sister. - I mean, who could
do that to a sister,
00:44:23
to a blood relative, to
any person for that matter, but to a sister that you've
grown up with your entire life,
00:44:32
I can't even imagine it at all. [somber music] - You know, this case
was all about greed.
00:44:40
And one sister feeling
entitled to be taken care of for the rest of her
life by her sister.
00:44:50
And as soon as the
sister indicated that she was not willing to
do that, she murdered her.
00:44:57
[somber music] And she tried to take her money, and she tried to
erase her sister
00:45:04
from the face of the Earth. And it just showed someone who had an absolute
lack of character.
00:45:13
[somber music] I was glad that we were
able to give the family some sense of justice,
00:45:23
because although
they did not want her to get the death penalty,
they did want her punished
00:45:28
for what she did to a very
valuable member of their family. [somber music] - Sarah Mitchell had
gone to extreme lengths
00:45:42
to try and hide the murder
of her sister, Stevie Allman. She'd dismembered the body
and hidden it in the freezer
00:45:48
at their home and then committed
arson on the home twice to try and get rid of the body.
00:45:54
But bodies never lie. And by literally piecing
Stevie back together, the truth behind her
murder was revealed.
00:46:02
[dramatic music]