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a murder in australia had everyone baffled especially police but in a bizarre twist
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a device in the victim's body recorded vital information that made forensic history
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[Music] [Music] so [Music] tasmania is a tiny island off the coast of australia considered to be one of the
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most unspoiled and remote spots in the world [Music] in the city of la froy for example there
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are only a handful of residents the people that live in froy are sort of people that i think just want to be left
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alone to some degree they're not employed most of them i would guess that probably
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20 25 people at the most would probably live in lafroy and that includes small children
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early on the morning of october 9 2000 ivan jones went to his cousin's house to
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ask for a ride while his cousin got dressed jones took his dog for a walk and found
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one of the neighbors dead the victim was identified as 72 year old david crawford a retired veteran of the
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royal australian navy the way that mr crawford was dressed was a fair indication that he had been in
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bed he was wearing pajamas and had been awoken at night and had left the house to
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see whatever confrontation it was that awoke forensic pathologist dr robert kelso
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went to the crime scene and tried to determine when crawford was killed the time of death is actually quite
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tricky but at the time i measured the body temperature and noted the ambient temperature
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dr kelsey estimated the murder took place sometime between 4 and 7 30 in the morning when the body was discovered
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but there was no way to tell anything more conclusive this window is quite difficult to work
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out mainly because of the vagaries of determining the time of death from the body temperature
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neighbors told police they heard dogs barking just before dawn but that wasn't unusual
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with the wildlife around the town it may be that it was kangaroos that spooked the dogs or maybe the dogs
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smelled a person police found no signs of forced entry but crawford's wallet was missing from
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his bedroom there were no signs of a struggle inside the house and no foreign fingerprints
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either in the front yard investigators found what looked like a blood stain they waited for nightfall then sprayed
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the area with luminol seconds later a clear unmistakable image appeared you see this
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axe head appear at night with the luminol yes it was it was pretty amazing the image was so clear
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investigators could determine what type of axe it was a particular type of acts called a
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canadian axe where the head goes down and forms the bottom edge as a point and then there's
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quite a definite arc of the bottom of the head and you can see that quite clearly in the luminal it
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was amazing with only a few dozen people in town the killer was probably someone crawford
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knew really i mean every able-bodied man who could swing an axe or woman who could
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swing an axe in the town could have been a suspect at some stage david crawford's death was a blow to
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everyone in lafroy tasmania who knew him to be a kind and generous man he helped people out in the township
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before the elderly people he used to take them out and about and shopping into doctors and things like that but he
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wasn't one that had had parties or have heaps of people in he was quite happy
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with himself going to see his grandchildren he was quite happy doing things like that that was his life
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the blood stain discovered on david crawford's lawn was unmistakably the outline of an axe
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the forensic pathologist believed that an axe was most likely the murder weapon dna testing revealed the blood
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was crawford's the axe however was gone obviously a little town like lefrey would have a few axes around but if we
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were able to find the axe with blood on it and match it up then we were well on the way to getting a conviction
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as a former mining town lafroy was riddled with mine shafts many of which were underwater
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they were perfect places to hide a murder weapon this is an actual police video of those
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searches there's a lot of shafts and we used underwater cameras in some fairly derelict old shafts and we
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drained a substantial dam on the township and just with the hope of locating the
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expert again to we had no luck or no joy with those searches with crawford's wallet missing police
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assumed the motive was robbery historically tasmania has had very little crime but many retirees kept a lot of cash on
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hand in tasmania the people especially elderly people keep money in their homes and that rumor if you live
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in a small town that room assume gets around that yeah such and such got a lot of money they keep it under the mattress
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or in a jar or something and this goes on then police learned of another interesting coincidence
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the man who found crawford's body 19 year old ivan jones reported seeing a suspicious man casing the neighborhood
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jones had claimed he had told mr crawford that someone was stalking him that someone
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had been seen by jones with a torch around the house on an evening before or several evenings before the
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murder jones told police what he initially told crawford that he did not recognize the man
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lurking in the neighborhood on a hunch investigators asked jones where he was at the time of crawford's murder
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jones said he was home with a sister and her boyfriend his alibi was that he was
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asleep in his sister's house he was asserting that he had been asleep between the hours of
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one o'clock and six which covered the period of the murder jones sister confirmed his alibi and
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said as far as she knew he never left the house next police interviewed jones cousin
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darcy mclean who found crawford's body along with jones maclean said he was asleep in his home
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around the time of the murder but since he lived alone there was no way to corroborate it
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then darcy gave police two very useful pieces of information first he claimed that someone had stolen
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an axe from his home second he said that his cousin ivan jones behaved suspiciously on the morning of david
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crawford's murder from darcy mclean we were led to believe that it was unusual for ivan jones to go
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to his house at 7 30 in the morning and ask for a lift to his parents place i understand he'd never asked darcy mclean
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to do that before so yes it was unusual in that respect but ivan jones had an alibi
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darcy mclean didn't david crawford's autopsy took place in the royal hobart hospital the day after
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his body was discovered the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head most likely caused by an axe or similar
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implement crawford had been a healthy 72 year old man except for some heart trouble
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he had a condition called cardiomyopathy which simply means that he had some had
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heart disease of unknown cause then dr kelso made a discovery that would change the course of the
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investigation he found that crawford had a heart pacemaker implanted in his chest
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a pacemaker is a way of stimulating the heart it delivers anything from about two to five volts into the heart to make
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it pace that is contract i was vaguely aware that pacemakers have a recording unit inside them
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if so crawford's pacemaker might reveal the exact time of his murder unfortunately pacemakers hold
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information for only a short time before it's recorded over the autopsy took place
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almost 30 hours after the murder which meant the pacemaker memory might have already
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been erased we knew that we didn't have a great deal of time that we were running out of time
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i recall being a little bit nervous a little bit worried that we might get a reading
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the hospital's pacemaker specialist quickly scanned it to gather the pacemaker data and load it onto a
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computer in an unbelievable turn of events this particular pacemaker had something
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very few pacemakers had at the time a computer chip that had what's called an event memory
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this is unique to this product and is in fact uh was hardly ever used and by sheer chance the pacemaker
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technician involved recognized that if there was going to be any information it would have been on the event record
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the software produced a detailed graph that yielded a spectacular array of information
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the interesting part that we could work out is that we could tell exactly when the patient awoke
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when the patient went outside and was being assaulted and finally when the patient had died in between
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that time there was a period when the patient was unconscious and bleeding to death and at that point the pacemaker
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went back to its dormant state the event record showed that david crawford went to sleep
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shortly after 10 o'clock at 4 46 he woke up at 4 54 his heart was beating well over 100
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beats per minute which is when he was attacked the confrontation was over at 504
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and david crawford lay bleeding until his heart stopped pumping at exactly 5 34 a.m
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scientists retrieved this information with only hours to spare it was about to be wiped
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within an hour or maybe two hours that information would disappear and investigators discovered why crawford
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would have gotten out of bed crawford's neighbor who lived across the street was in the hospital and had asked
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crawford to keep an eye on his house until he was released everyone knew that he would be in
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hospital the neighbor was presumed to have money in his house as well according to his son he was that sort of
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person that if you heard a noise he would get up and investigate the noise all police had to do now
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was find out who didn't have an alibi for 5 34 that morning it reminded me of a quote of eleanor
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roosevelt who said that many people will walk in and out of your life but only true friends will leave
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footprints in your heart in this case we left a pacemaker thanks to dr robert kelso and his quick
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response to the readings on the pacemaker found during david crawford's autopsy
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investigators now knew the exact time of crawford's death 5 34 in the morning
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having these timelines we have the perfect witness there's no way that that in court
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could be discredited ivan jones and darcy mclean the two cousins who found crawford's body were
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the prime suspects but if one of them did it he made a colossal blunder had he waited just a couple of hours
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longer before calling police crawford's pacemaker memory would have been erased
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had he laying there for any length of time longer than he did without being discovered then we would have lost the
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time in the pacemaker but who was the killer [Music] darcy maclean said he was sleeping at 5
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34 on the night of the murder he lived alone so there was no way to corroborate his
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alibi he also claimed that an axe was missing from his home a search of his house revealed nothing
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ivan jones said he was asleep in his sister's home until he woke up at 6 00 a.m
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but joan's sister provided a slightly different timeline she said she last saw ivan at 3 a.m when
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he asked her for a cigarette and then not again until 6 a.m when she heard him in the shower
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so no one could confirm his alibi between 3 and 6 a.m and police believed that ivan's 6 a.m
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shower was no coincidence a man who's been involved in a violent murder mum would also expect there to be
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blood on his body and of course the investigation found that he had a shower almost a bath
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by six o'clock and that his clothes had been washed and that bleach had been
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used in the washing machine where he washed his clothing in a search of ivan's home
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investigators found a possible link to the murder one of our detectives located a torch
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in a hole in the foundation of that residence it was very clean it was not covered in
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dust so it certainly hadn't been there for any great length of time to put a flashlight
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under the house is just something that way out of the ordinary not something anybody would do unless they had
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something to hide there were no fingerprints on the flashlight so forensic analyst debbie mccool looked
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for possible dna evidence i didn't find any obvious blood stains i took a swab from the outer surface of
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the torch i removed the batteries and swapped those as well and she made sure to swab the one place
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that's easy to overlook the area underneath the on off switch hoping to find
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dead skin cells well dna can get onto an object just by handling it by swabbing the item
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we can often obtain a dna profile amazingly there were enough skin cells to develop
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a dna profile the skin cells in the crevices of the on off switch were not ivan jones or darcy
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mcleans they were the skin cells of the murder victim david crawford proving it was his flashlight
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mr jones i don't think was a person of high intelligence first of all he committed a gruesome murder that's bad
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enough but then to keep the torch with the dna at his home just shows the mindset of a person
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investigators believe that jones planned to burglarize the empty house across the
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street from david crawford to break in jones stole the axe from darcy mclean's
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home [Music] but when he got to the house a neighborhood dog started barking and
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woke david crawford he got up and grabbed his flashlight to investigate crawford saw jones
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[Music] and that's when jones attacked crawford lay bleeding from his wounds
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yet was still alive jones dropped the axe went into crawford's home and stole his wallet then he picked up
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the axe and crawford's flashlight and fled david crawford's heart stopped beating
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at 5 34 am jones disposed of the axe and crawford's wallet but for some reason
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kept the flashlight to establish an alibi jones made sure his sister and her boyfriend heard him taking a shower
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around 6 a.m in an attempt to further shore up his alibi jones went to his cousin's house
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at 7 30 that morning and he arranged to find crawford's body with his cousin there as a witness
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hoping the discovery would eliminate him as a suspect but jones didn't know about the
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pacemaker had he waited to call police just a little while longer the pacemaker's memory would have been
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lost long before the autopsy had an excellent alibi it is possible that in the court of law he may have
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been found not guilty in that there was insufficient evidence this was the absolute perfect evidence
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to put away this man this case marked the first time in the world that data from a pacemaker was used in a
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murder trial in october of 2001 ivan jones was convicted of murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison
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[Music] the pacemaker was a silent witness but it told the jury all they needed to know i'll carry with
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me for the rest of my career and i encourage other investigators to uh to give that consideration to pacemakers
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because you know time of death is not known you never know what you'll get out of the data
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from a pacemaker these things were never heard of years ago in solving crimes like this and i think it's
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marvelous that something like that technology and that was able to do that seems very ironic that this man had a
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pacemaker which actually outlived him because it was designed to keep him alive of course but
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nevertheless acted as a a real witness to what's happened an external machine if you like
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which saw what was happening when nobody else did [Music] [Music] you