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[suspenseful music] [glass breaking] PETER THOMAS: Shortly
after Thanksgiving in 1987,
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an intruder broke into
the Tucker residence in Arlington, Virginia. It might have been
just another statistic,
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but the crime committed that
night launched a new era in police investigations. This is how DNA evidence
and psychological profiling
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helped catch a serial killer
and set an innocent man free. [theme music] REGGIE TUCKER: Everything
about her was very gentle.
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She was very soft spoken. She just had this
amazing softness about her, this human quality.
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PETER THOMAS:
44-year-old Susan Tucker was a publications editor
who worked for the United
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States Forestry Service. She was spending the
Thanksgiving holiday alone since her husband Reggie was
out of the country in Wales
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on a business trip. REGGIE TUCKER: Neither of
us could put the phone down. We kept saying, "I love you."
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And we said this
over and over again, I don't know how many times. PETER THOMAS: But without
explanation, telephone calls
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went unanswered. And neighbors noticed her
bedroom window wide open in the cold November weather,
so they called police.
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[door creaking] [knocking] As they approached the front
door, they noticed it was ajar.
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OFFICER: Can you hear? Police! PETER THOMAS: Inside,
a woman's purse was lying on the foyer floor.
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REGGIE TUCKER: I arranged
to call on a Monday. Couldn't get an answer. Just rang.
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Tucker? REGGIE TUCKER: I rang again. I rang again. I don't know how
many times I rang.
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PETER THOMAS: Susan Tucker's
badly decomposed body was lying face down on the bed.
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She had been dead for
four or five days. JOE HORGAS: Her hands
were tied behind her back.
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Her feet were tied. The head hang over the
side of the bed almost. PETER THOMAS: She had been
strangled and possibly raped.
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It appeared that the
killer more than likely was inside the home
for quite some time.
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I mean, it wasn't
just a very quick in and out type of a situation. You know, many of the
drawers had been ransacked,
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had been gone through. PETER THOMAS: When Reggie
Tucker first heard the news, he was devastated.
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So he said, "Sir,
I've got bad news." And I knew it. I just knew it at that point.
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And I just, you know-- my whole world just fell away. PETER THOMAS:
Detective Joe Horgas
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of the Arlington
Police Homicide unit was quickly assigned
to the case. His task wouldn't be easy.
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For one thing, the
killer had been careful. He had worn gloves and
left no fingerprints.
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JOE HORGAS: Yeah, this
has been wiped clean. PETER THOMAS: It
had been raining on the night of
the murder, and he
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meticulously cleaned the area
around his point of entry. He's smart enough to
know that footprints,
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which is what we were-- we would have gotten from
that, would maybe come back to haunt him, which
kind of tells you
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maybe some past
experience on burglaries. PETER THOMAS: Police collected
the sheets, nightgown,
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and the large sleeping
bag which covered Susan Tucker's body to
look for possible blood
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and semen stains. They found hairs on the bedding
around Susan Tucker's body,
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in the bathroom sink, and
on a washcloth discovered outside on the clothesline. And they gathered
shards of broken glass
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from the basement window. Everything was taken to the
forensics lab for analysis.
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But perhaps the
most important clue was also the most obvious-- the rope and knots used
to strangle Susan Tucker.
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The police were
convinced they had seen this killer's work before. Three years earlier,
a 34-year-old lawyer
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named Carolyn Hamm had been
raped and strangled in her home only four blocks away
from Susan Tucker.
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The killer entered the Hamm
residence the same way-- through a basement window--
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and tied his victim
using the same knots. And it's not a
common occurrence--
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not common at all-- to see victims killed by using
ligatures to strangle them, ropes tying up victims.
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It's really quite rare. PETER THOMAS: But the Hamm case
was closed when this man, David
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Vasquez, confessed to her
murder and was sentenced to 35 years in prison. Could he have had an accomplice?
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Horgas spoke to him
for several hours. And from the way he
was talking on everything
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and answering my
questions, I didn't think he knew a damn thing
about Carolyn Hamm's murder.
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PETER THOMAS: While Detective
Horgas began his search for Susan Tucker's killer, 100
miles away, in the capital city
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of Richmond, police there
were investigating a series of murders shockingly similar.
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REPORTER: The body of
35-year-old Debbie Davis was found inside her
South Richmond apartment.
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She'd been raped and strangled. PETER THOMAS: In
less than a month, two young women had been raped
and strangled in their homes
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just a few blocks
from each other. In each case, there was a
forced entry with the murderer
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entering by cutting the
screens and entering through an open window. Each victim was strangled.
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Both victims were white, between
the ages of 30 and 35 years. PETER THOMAS: Two weeks
later, he struck again.
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This time, a
15-year-old girl raped and strangled in her bedroom
while her family was sleeping.
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All three had been bound,
raped, and strangled with rope. The knots were
identical to the ones
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used in the Arlington cases. Detective Horgas suspected
that the killer of Susan Tucker
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was the same man who murdered
Carolyn Hamm and the three women in Richmond. If Horgas was correct, a serial
murderer was loose on a 100
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mile killing spree. [music playing] PETER THOMAS: Detective Horgas
believed the man who raped
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and strangled Susan Tucker
had also murdered Carolyn Hamm three years earlier. Horgas also believed
the same man
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was responsible for the
three rapes and murders in Richmond 100 miles away. The Richmond police
weren't so sure.
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I mean, they have three
murders that were within a couple miles square
radius, I'm guessing,
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or maybe even less
that, you know-- and now we're trying to say that
100 miles away, we're trying
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to link something to theirs. It's like, yeah,
get out of here. I mean, this is a local guy.
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Horgas was a man-- he was the perfect man for this
case because he was obsessed.
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He was-- he knew
something was wrong. PETER THOMAS: Author Paul
Mones wrote a best-selling book
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entitled, "Stalking Justice." It profiles the rapes and
murders of these five women
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and the history-making
investigation which followed. Joe Horgas is
motivated by the hunt.
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He's not a guy who's obsessed
by issues of right and wrong, except for his own internal
moral compass which tells him
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if there's an innocent
man in prison, I don't care if we
got the guilty guy,
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we've got to get the
innocent man out. And he was determined
to get this guy.
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PETER THOMAS: But if Horgas was
right that all of these murders were connected, he needed proof.
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For that, he turned
to the forensics lab, where scientists were examining
the stains found on Susan
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Tucker's nightgown and bedding. I found four semen stains. And when I analyzed
the sleeping bag,
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I found one very
large semen stain. I typed all of those stains. PETER THOMAS: The semen
came from an individual
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with type O blood and
the PGM1 enzyme profile. Although this matched
13% of the population,
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it also matched the semen
found at the Carolyn Hamm murder scene. Next, they turn their
attention to the hair found
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at the Tucker crime scene. DEANNE DABBS: And there
are characteristics, microscopically, that can
classify hair into one
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of three racial categories. PETER THOMAS: Which
are Caucasian, negroid, or mongoloid.
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The hairs found at
the Tucker crime scene appeared to be pubic
and did not appear to be
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from the victim or her husband. They were positively identified
as negroid in origin.
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This was another possible link
to the Carolyn Hamm murder case. Three years earlier at
the time of Hamm's murder,
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a black male wearing a mask
had raped a number of women in the same neighborhood.
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The masked rapist
was never apprehended and Horgas always suspected
that there was a connection
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to the Hamm murder. JOE HORGAS: Actually, the same
day that Carolyn Hamm's body
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was found, another girl,
lady, was in her house and this black male
with a mask and a knife
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burglarized her pla-- house, got her,
and actually he did some sexual activity with her.
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PETER THOMAS: The
Richmond police and later at the Arlington
police both sought help from the FBI's
Behavioral Science Unit
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in Quantico, Virginia. This unit has interviewed
hundreds of serial killers to learn what similarities exist
in their psychological makeup.
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They were able to predict a
number of important things about the killer. R. STEVEN MARDIGIAN:
We're getting a look
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at the behavior that's
left by the offender in the commission of his crime. We believe that by
looking at that behavior,
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we can interpret the
type of offender that may have committed the crime. PETER THOMAS: The fact
that the strangler attacked
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his victims in their
homes suggested that he had stalked
them first and knew precisely when to strike.
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The FBI concluded
that the perpetrator was between the
age of 18 and 30, the quiet type, a loner
who held a menial job.
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He probably had a troubled
relationship with his mother and began his crime
spree with arson.
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Historically, many
serial rapists and murderers begin with arson. Serial killers are usually
white but could be any race.
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He lived or worked
close to where he committed his first crimes. That's because criminals begin
their crime sprees in an area
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where they feel
most comfortable. He took sadistic pleasure
in strangling his victims.
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He would periodically release
the bindings so he could hear his victim plead for her life.
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It appeared that
the perpetrator had intended the victim
to suffer considerably.
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In one case, a shoe impression
was found on the victim's back. PAUL MONES: These women
were obviously, first, just
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terrified to the very bone
and then were systematically sexually assaulted. And you know, at the
end-- and it's not clear
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whether they were dead
when he did this or alive, but he also masturbated
on his victims.
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PETER THOMAS: And it
was these semen samples which would prove
to be extremely important pieces of evidence.
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I can remember our prosecutor,
Helen Fahy, a couple of days after the murder
asking me if this
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was going to be a DNA case. And I'm kind of, I don't know. We don't even know
what we got yet.
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PETER THOMAS: In 1987, when
Susan Tucker was murdered, DNA evidence was
still in its infancy.
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The first time DNA evidence
was used in a criminal case was only a year earlier in
England when DNA from a semen
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sample was used to
convict a bakery worker with the rape and murder
of two 15-year-old girls.
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[camera flashing] Horgas decided to try
this new DNA testing, sending the semen stains
from Susan Tucker's nightgown
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to the Life Code's
Laboratory in New York. Forensic scientists
were concerned
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that the samples may have
degraded or been contaminated. MICHAEL BAIRD: You
basically isolate the DNA.
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You cut it up. You generate
profiles or patterns. And you then generate
these patterns
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on a piece of X-ray film. So it's like a
picture of the DNA. And when you then
compare these pictures
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and the components are
the same in the two DNAs, that would indicate that
they're from the same source.
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PETER THOMAS: The final
results from the DNA tests would take up to 10 weeks,
but Detective Horgas
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still didn't have a suspect. [music playing] PETER THOMAS: Detective
Horgas suspected
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that the same individual who
raped and murdered Susan Tucker and Carolyn Hamm three years
earlier was the masked rapist
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who was committing crimes in the
same area but was never caught. So Horgas drove out to an area
of Arlington known as Green
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Valley, the area where
the masked rapist committed his first assaults. The FBI told Horgas
that rapists usually
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commit their first
crime close to home. If the first rape was the
first rape for this guy,
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then he would have
lived around there. And that was very crucial to
me, because I didn't know that.
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PETER THOMAS: And as he
drove through Green Valley, Horgas tried to recall the names
or faces of likely suspects,
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young men he'd run
across over the years who came from that area. And it just so happens
that Detective Horgas
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started to focus on this one
juvenile he had dealt with or remembered. I mean, he just
couldn't place the name.
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PETER THOMAS: And all I
could remember was Timmy. I could see his face. I remembered the
approximate time
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period and everything that he-- that I remembered him
from, but I couldn't remember his last name.
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MICHAEL HILL: So we were
running all these names through the computer,
seeing when they'd
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been locked up and released. And suddenly, he just
came in and he said, "Spencer, Timothy Spencer.
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That's the name." JOE HORGAS: And I saw where
he was arrested on January 29,
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1984, which was four
days after Carolyn Hamm, her body was found. PETER THOMAS: Spencer's
history unfolded.
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In trouble as a
teenager, he had a string of burglary convictions. And even more surprising,
just as the FBI predicted,
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Spencer had first
drawn police attention for arson, for setting
fire to his mother's car.
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JOE HORGAS: He was presently
in a halfway house in Richmond. Well, that-- wow. That's exciting now.
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PETER THOMAS: Spencer
was on probation, living in this
halfway house just a short distance from where the
Richmond murders took place.
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And according to
house records, Spencer had been signed out during
the Thanksgiving holiday,
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visiting his mother
in Arlington, the week Susan
Tucker was murdered. The fact that he got
out of prison two weeks
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before the first murders down in
Richmond, the fact that he was available for every
murder, the fact
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that he came to Arlington
when he did for our murder. PETER THOMAS: And
the FBI was correct
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about another important detail. Spencer lived in the area where
the first rape was committed.
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And that happened over there. And at the time, Timothy
Spencer was living down here, over this hill.
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PETER THOMAS: In his
mother's house, barely a mile from the homes of
Carolyn Hamm and Susan Tucker.
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On January 20, 1988, police
arrested Timothy Spencer. Within hours, they had
collected a blood sample, some
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of his hair, and confiscated his
clothing for forensic analysis. MICHAEL HILL: The
clothing was scraped
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down for removing any debris. And once that debris
was collected, it was taken to a microscope.
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Several dozen
particles of glass were removed from the debris that
was removed from his clothing.
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PETER THOMAS: The
glass fragments were of particular
interest to the police. [music playing]
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PETER THOMAS: After police
recovered glass particles from Spencer's clothing, they
were examined forensically
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to see if they matched glass
from any of the victims' homes. One technique is called
glass refraction analysis.
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By shining light from different
points on the spectrum through the particles, the
characteristics of the glass
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can be plotted on a
graph, in effect measuring how the particles bend light. DONAL MCCLAMROCH:
If you stick the pin
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into the water, which is
more dense than the air, it bends the light. What we're doing with
the glass particle,
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basically, is measuring how much
the light is bent in a refra-- and we call it refractive index.
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PETER THOMAS: They compared
the glass fragments found on Spencer's
clothing to the glass
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particles taken from the broken
window at Susan Tucker's home. JOE HORGAS: We were able
to say that that glass that
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was removed from
Spencer's clothing either came from that particular
pain or that particular source
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of glass or another
source of glass that had the same optical
characteristics. PETER THOMAS: When scientists
completed the DNA analysis
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of the semen stain found at
the Susan Tucker crime scene, they made a chilling discovery.
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MICHAEL BAIRD: And I remember
pointing out an X-ray film from the developer and
holding it up from these two
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separate cases and
being bombarded immediately that the patters
I'm seeing are the same.
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I'm seeing the same profile
on this case from one county versus this case from
the second county, which
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says to me that same
person's involved in both of those incidents. Really gave you
chills up and down
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your spine to see
something like that. PETER THOMAS: Horgas
was right all along.
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The semen sample
from the individual who raped and presumably
murdered Susan Tucker
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matched the semen stains
from the murders in Richmond. There were seven hairs that
were consistent with his.
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There was a glass fragment
that was consistent with his. His family couldn't provide
him with a complete alibi
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for the entire weekend. PETER THOMAS: And finally,
Timothy Spencer's blood DNA
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was compared to the semen
samples from the crime victims. Once we got a sample
from Mr. Spencer to test,
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we generated a profile that was
the same as the profile we got from the evidentiary samples.
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We had a frequency of
occurrence of greater than one in a million. So that means that only
one person in a million
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in the population
would have that particular genetic profile. And starting with the
first result, the blood type,
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it was a match, it was a match,
it was a match, it was a match. PETER THOMAS: On July
11, 1988, Timothy Spencer
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went on trial for his life. It was the first time
in the United States where DNA evidence would be
used in a serial murder case.
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It took the jury
less than seven hours to find Timothy Spencer guilty
of rape and capital murder.
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He was sentenced to death. I feel some kind of
relief, but I'll never have my wife back, you know?
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That's really the
bottom line, is I'll never really feel happy. I can't feel happy
about somebody
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being guilty of raping
and murdering my wife. I can't feel happy about that.
00:20:32
So whatever anger I feel,
I will feel till I die. Death was pronounced
by the attending
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physician at 11:13 PM. There were no complications. Mr. Spencer did not
make a last statement.
00:20:50
Thank you. Up until his
death, I don't think that Timothy Spencer
made the connection
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between semen and blood. I don't think he knew that the
same DNA that's in your semen
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is in your blood. Without DNA, it would have
been impossible to convict Timothy Spencer.
00:21:13
If he had committed
those murders a year or two years earlier, he
could not have been convicted.
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In fact, if this had
been 1984 or 1985, we probably would not
even have arrested him.
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Some people ask the question,
will DNA fingerprinting replace detective work? I don't think so.
00:21:35
Susan Tucker left Detective
Horgas the crime scene, and Timothy Spencer left part
of himself at the crime scene.
00:21:45
But his name would
never have come up if it wasn't for Detective Horgas. [music playing]
00:22:01
[music playing]