we did not lose just a very good actor, we may have lost the best one we had. that's it for us, thanks again for watching.

purchased gas with cash and then left. there was an initial thought that, yeah, she is in the area and the van has been seen traveling along the freeway. >> sherry's husband looked around this their home for clues. and found some information on sherry's computer that he turned over to the police. >> we investigated that and discovered that mrs. durall had in fact pursued a relationship

outside her marriage. >> there were e-mails, and internet chat room conversations with a man named kevin johnson. and it was clear, the relationship was serious. >> i have tried to be indifferent to you and keep my feelings in check. i have been thinking about this a lot and feeling bad about myself respect, sort of feeling like a call girl more than a friend. >> the correspondence included talk of the two running away together. >> they talked about, wouldn't it be great to go to costa rica, the cost of living there is so much cheaper. >> when police interviewed kevin johnson, he admitted the two had a brief affair, but insisted he hadn't seen her for the last six months. police were not so sure.

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one week had passed since sherry durall's disappearance. she hadn't contacted her children, her husband or kevin

johnson, the man with whom she had the affair. >> i knew that she wouldn't leave without telling her mom, her calling me. we're the two closest people to her. she was too responsible of a mother and a person to do that. >> then investigators got their first solid lead. they found sherry's van in a hotel parking lot near the seattle airport. >> that could have been a thought that she parked there or she met somebody who came into town or hopped on a plane and took off. >> but there was no record she stayed in the hotel or took a flight out of town. >> it was very emotional finding that van and not her. she wasn't anywhere near the vehicle so we found a van, but we didn't find our friend.

and that was really difficult. >> a forensic examination of the van revealed no evidence of foul play and there were no foreign fingerprints. even more troubling, sherry's personal bank account hadn't been touched since her disappearance. >> she just got a bonus at work and had just put that into the bank that week. so the theory from all the co-workers was why would she be putting all this money away and not leave with it, not touch it? >> police conducted extensive interviews with sherry's friend, kevin johnson. he insisted he had nothing to do with her disappearance. >> he was later able to provide some information what he was doing on the day she was reported missing. >> sherry's co-workers told them about a comment she made the day before she disappeared. >> she said if anything happens to me, my life is in my desk.

and in her desk, among other things, was a long letter, a draft of a letter, she had written to her husband in an effort to try to explain why she felt it necessary to leave him. >> my spirit is crushed. i feel that you were too controlling and obsessive and jealous, and i just can't live with those personality traits anymore. i can't go on pretending that there's nothing wrong. i'm unbearably unhappy. the bottom line is i don't love you enough to stay married. >> also in her desk were books about divorce. >> she was planning the separation and she had saved up some money and she had spoke to a couple of lawyers to get some advice. she was making her plans to move on to her new life with her children. >> and sherry told friends that bob had been abusive. >> no sign of physical violence at all. she wasn't comfortable around him. he was obsessive, controlling,

emotionally controlled her. she just didn't feel good around him. >> he would apparently be sort of monitoring her whereabouts. occasionally she would go to lunch with some of her friends and mr. durall would show up. so he, in effect, she describes the situation where you almost have a husband stalking his own wife. >> during police questioning, bob durall admitted there were problems in his marriage. as for him being involved in sherry's disappearance, he said that was ridiculous. police asked bob what happened on the night before she disappeared. bob said they went to dinner at a local restaurant. when they got home, sherry spoke with her sister-in-law. >> mrs. durall appeared slightly

tipsy and told her she was going to bed and that her husband robert durall had made her a drink. >> sherry's sister-in-law told police that she was very suspicious because bob seldom served his wife. usually it was the other way around. >> they said it was extraordinarily atypical for mr. durall to make his wife a drink of any kind or to serve her any kind of food or drink. >> and sherry's best friend had one final insight. it was a dream she had about sherry the night before she disappeared. >> i woke my husband up like at 12:30, 1:00 in the morning and i said i had the worst dream about blood everywhere and couldn't get back to sleep. and i feel like that was a message being passed to me like do something with this, you know.

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to go further, to be better. we're dedicated to being a company you can count on, because you've always been customers we believe in. your energy plus ours. together, there's no limit to what we can achieve. the information found in sherry durall's desk at work painted a revealing picture of her marriage at the time of her disappearance. so investigators decided to search bob durall's work

computer too. bob was in charge of the computer system at the king county housing authority. as a government agency, bob's computer was government property so investigators seized it and turned it over to gordon mitchell, an expert in the growing field of computer forensics. mitchell copied bob durall's hard drive to examine the information on it without altering the original data. >> this is an important process where they can discover is there something going on here or is bob just a nice guy. >> mitchell found evidence that bob deleted certain files, but they were still on the hard drive. that's because computers don't erase files, they just mark the space occupied by those files for reuse.

>> a lot of the deleted files are information left in place. >> the deleted information revealed that bob was dating women he met on the online dating service match.com and was doing so at the same time his wife sherry was dating kevin johnson. bob's profile on the dating website was also revealing. >> mr. durall portrayed himself as a man living separately from his wife and was completely unburdened by any other romantic or personal attachments and was open to a relationship with the appropriate woman. >> in e-mails to perspective dates, bob explained why a divorce was impossible. >> to one young woman, mr. durall said he really did not want to pursue a divorce with his wife because it would be expensive and messy. he actually went so far as to say he would be better off if his wife were dead. >> in another e-mail, bob said

he had a plan to resolve his own satisfactory marriage. bob's internet search engine revealed he looked for information on all sorts of diabolical schemes. >> we were shocked to see these searches on things like poison, herbs, death, something about sedation of people, also about smothering. but the most graphic one was actually a search that durall did on the words "kill spouse." >> investigators now had probable cause to search the durall's home and they went straight to the master bedroom. they found a spot on the carpet that looked like it had been cleaned. they swabbed it with phenolphthalein and it turned purple, an indication it was blood. under the bed were two squares of carpet that had been cut out

and replaced. underneath were large pools of blood that had been cleaned with water and detergents. around the bed almost invisible to the naked eye, investigators found the most incriminating evidence. >> it was just hundreds and hundreds of very, very small red dots on the head board, on the wall, above the headboard, in the corners and on the bureau and on the doorjamb to the bathroom. >> the blood near the floor didn't happen during the beating. >> that's blood coughing out of the lungs through the mouth. that was done very low to the ground. so someone was coughing up blood close to the ground in the area where this large pool of blood near where the bed had been.

>> the blood on the walls and ceiling was blood spatter. consistent with someone swinging a bloody object. scientists compared the dna from the blood in the bedroom with the dna profiles of sherry's parents, and discovered that this was sheri's blood. investigators also found a bloodstain on the doorway leading to the garage. and in bob's car was the receipt for a specialty cleaning product. and police also solved another mystery. where were the duralls' children on the night of the murder? >> a perfect opportunity for him. his youngest child was going to be gone that evening. his other two were at camp, and they were going to be alone in the house that night.

>> giving bob all night to carry out his plan. but where was her body? 41-year-old bob durall sat . they flip the switch-- and the light comes on. it's our job to make sure that it does. using natural gas this power plant can produce enough energy for about 600,000 homes. generating electricity that's cleaner and reliable, with fewer emissions-- it matters. ♪

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41-year-old bob durall sat in prison awaiting trial for his wife's murder.

to police, he denied it, but to his god he said something else. >> in his jail cell, he was observed and overheard apparently asking god to forgive him for what he had done. >> prosecutors didn't need to find sherry's body in order to go to trial. no one could have survived the amount of blood loss found in sherry's bedroom. but for the sake of her family, prosecutors approached bob durall's attorneys with an officer. >> we said we would encourage mr. durall to lead us to the location of the body of his wife, and that we would not use evidence that he had revealed the whereabouts at trial. >> surprisingly, bob agreed and led investigators to the cascade mountains, about an hour's drive away. there, at the base of a steep ravine, they found sherry's body in a plastic bag under a pile of

rocks. the autopsy revealed sherry died of blunt force trauma, just as the forensic evidence suggested. prosecutors believed bob was as unhappy in the marriage as sherry was, but concluded a divorce would be too expensive. >> he did not want to incur the costs of child support or of a divorce and division of the property. mrs. durall's parents were fairly wealthy. mr. durall didn't want to lose his inheritance. >> on the night of the crime, prosecutors think bob drugged sherry to make her drowsy, although toxicology tests at the autopsy were inconclusive. the evidence proves bob hit sherry on the head repeatedly with a blunt object. creating the blood splatter on

the bed, floors wall and ceiling. bob wrapped her body in plastic, then carried her body to the garage, leaving the blood smear on the door. he dumped her body in the ravine near the cascade mountains, and returned home to clean up the crime scene. the evidence shows that bob tried to clean up the blood in the bedroom, but couldn't come close to removing it all. >> so you have got a guy who is an extraordinarily clever and crafty fellow who has done months of research on how to commit a murder, and then he commits a mistake that a sixth grade worry laugh at. so he is a very peculiar man, a very dangerous man. in some ways was his own worst enemy.

>> police think it was bob driving sherry's van to the hotel parking lot when the witness reported seeing it, and they think the store clerk was simply mistaken when he claimed sherry was in his store the day after. >> we pulled the tape and sherry was nowhere on the tape. >> at the trial, despite leading police to sherry's body, he plead not guilty and took the stand in his own defense. he told an incredible tale of two men who killed sherry and forced him to dispose of her body. they said they'd kill him and the children if he went to the police. >> actually, i was having a hard time trying not to laugh, because i thought it was so ridiculous of a story that after two years in jail, you think he would come up with a better -- a better story. but in reality i think that he

was putting half the story together during the trial. >> in the end, there was simply too much forensic evidence. the computer forensics and blood splatter told the story. after only two hours of deliberation, bob durall was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to 46 years in prison. >> i will impose a total of 560 months. >> despite spending months researching and planning his wife's murder, he still wasn't i believe to get away with it. >> i think the forensic evidence was everything. the direction of the blood, the patterns, how they went out around the room. >> like in many cases, the evidence was really overwhelming, not just a single thing, but many, many items that helped us feel confident about what we were doing. >> mr. durall, who was professionally involved in the

use of computers, the extent to which he left evidence of premeditated murder on his work computer in such a sort of blatant way really continues to boggle my mind. there were lots of suspects in the murder of a millionaire oil man and many salivating over the man's estate, and that fact alone helped crack the case. >> ron and rosana shaw had just moved into their luxurious, new home in youngsville, louisiana, but they still had some things to do before the birth of their new baby. on this night, ron helped his pregnant wife by doing the grocery shopping. >> ronnie put two bags of

groceries on my arms. we started walking towards the house. and all of a sudden, three men jumped from behind the garage. [ gun shots ] >> i was in shock. i was just waiting for them to shoot me. they put the guns to my head. >> they told rosana to open the safe in the master bathroom. >> open the safe, lady. now! >> i tried to open the safe, and i just couldn't. i was so nervous, i was shaking. then he said, "you'd better open it this time or i'm going to kill you." >> rosana finally remembered the combination. >> he was disappointed. i guess he was expecting a lot of money, a lot of cash in there, but it wasn't a lot. >> the men took $7,000 in cash and a box of jewelry. >> i thought okay, now he's going to kill me. >> in desperation, rosana begged for her life. >> i got on my knees, and i told

him, i'm pregnant. >> the killer backed off, but left her with a warning. >> he said, "if you come out of here, i'm going to kill you." >> the men left, and rosana called police. 52-year-old ronald shaw was pronounced dead at the scene. police knew right away that this was an inside job. >> whoever was responsible for the death had to know the layout of the home or certainly at least there was a safe contained inside the bathroom of the home. >> rosana was unable to give a detailed description of the killers because they were wearing masks. >> i could tell they were young. they were black males. and they -- the first one was wearing a red ski mask with some black around the eyes.

he's the one that was very close to me. he had some gold teeth. >> ron shaw was a successful oil man. he had developed the concept of placing global positioning satellite chips in his drill bits which improved accuracy when drilling for oil. although the shaws were a wealthy couple, police weren't sure the motive was robbery. >> they left jewelry in the safe. they left an additional $5500 in the safe. cold coins that were valuable. he had $1,133 in his pocket, a rolex watch on his arm, and none of these were taken. >> and police found the box of jewelry several hundred yards behind the shaws' home. >> we had considered that the motive may have been a murder-for-hire, as opposed to a robbery. >> the question was who wanted ron shaw dead?

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region. >> it was huge. it was characterized as a well organized home invasion of people who police believe laid in wait for the shaw family. >> the victim was portrayed as a very wealthy business executive. and then to have him killed in front of his wife certainly hit a nerve with society in general. >> the shaws' home was only a few months old. not all of the landscaping had been completed. and this produced the first piece of evidence. >> it's a new construction. there was builders sand in the back of the house. so, as the suspects stepped in that sand in the back of the house and went through the house, they left real nice shoe impressions down the hallway. >> the outside print was

preserved with a substance called denstone. >> kind of like pancake batter. then you're able to lift those impressions and bring them back to the crime laboratory. >> inside though home, investigators lit the hardwood floors from various angles and saw two more sets of shoe impressions. criminalists lifted the prints with gelatin strips. >> you roll the gelatin with the black side down on to your questioned shoe impression. when you peel it off, the adhesive in the gelatin adheres to the dust particles on the floor. >> with some research, investigators identified the prints outside as a pair of size 10 nike air jordans. the perpetrators inside also wore nike shoes. one wore the air medal force model, the other the shocks trainers. when police interviewed the neighbors, several of them said they saw a burgundy-colored car parked a short distance away from the shaws' home. >> the vehicle was occupied by

black males. either they deserved these black males within the vehicle or standing outside the vehicle, but it was parked in front of a vacant lot in this particular neighborhood, so it did stand out. >> and about a mile from the crime scene, search dogs found a potentially crucial piece of evidence. >> while they were walking around in the roadway, they discovered a red ski mask with blue outlines on it next to the roadway, which was in direct line of sight to the rear of the victim's property. >> this ski mask, red with dark trimming around the eyes, was similar to the one described by rosana shaw. at ron's autopsy, the medical examiner confirmed that ron shaw was shot three times with a .38-caliber weapon. >> there were two torso shots. one of those torso shots, the bullet remained. the other torso shot, the bullet went all the way through his body.

>> in the yard, investigators found the projectile that passed through shaw's body. this along with the two inside shaw's body were sent to the forensics lab. under a microscope, firearms expert chris henderson discovered that the lands and grooves on two bullets were the same. the third bullet was different. >> we determined that we had two different shooters based on the class characteristics of the bullets. >> in their search for potential suspects, police had to consider whether rosana shaw had anything to do with her husband's murder. ron's grown son from his first marriage certainly thought so. >> he had distress for her. he wondered what her motivation was for marrying his father.

had she married for money? >> and there were others who had a potential motive. a background check revealed ron had shifted funds from one oil drilling research project to another. one was successful. the other wasn't, which created substantial losses for investors. >> there were a couple of them that had actually lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. it didn't surprise them at all that the victim had met such a violent death, because they felt that his business practices were dubious and unethical. >> with so many potential avenues to explore, investigators focused first on who knew that the shaws had a safe. >> the people that knew about the safe was the safe company, my family, ronnie's family, people at the office, the architect, the construction workers, friends. there was a lot of people that could have known about the safe. >> the general contractor who

built the shaws' home fully cooperated with authorities. >> ernest touchet revealed the names of several disgruntled employees that he felt might play a role, and later added that he also had two grandsons that had worked on the home and that had also recently had several run-ins with the law. >> but investigators dismissed that idea. the perpetrators were black, yet, ernest touchet, and presumably, his grandsons were white, and ron shaw knew these boys personally. >> ernest touchet came to my husband and asked to hire his two grandchildren to keep them out of trouble. you know, they needed to do something. so my husband says sure. my husband really appreciated the grandfather, ernest touchet, so, he said, of course, bring

your two grandchildren and i'll hire them. >> police didn't believe the touchet boys would repay ron shaw's kindness in this way, or would they?

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ernest touchet, told police he feared his two grandsons might have been involved in ron's murder. initially, police thought little of it, since the perpetrators were black and ernest touchet was white, until they looked at the mugshots of his grandsons. >> shannon touchet was a black male and was a product of an interracial marriage that his mother had had during her earlier years. >> 17-year-old shannon touchet had worked on ron shaw's home and would have known about the safe hidden in the master bathroom closet. investigators went to shannon's home. he wasn't there, but his mother was, and she was very helpful. >> she reported to us that she

had found some bullets and a black bag, a black bag that she recalled had at one time also contained ski masks and drugs. >> police found the bag in shannon's bedroom. the drugs and ski masks were gone, but they did find 13 unfired .38-caliber bullets. investigators wondered whether these bullets matched the ones that killed ron shaw. firearms expert chris henderson examined the knurls on the fatal bullets. knurls are the ridge-like pro tuitions that hold the lubrication needed to fire them. henderson then compared those knurls with the knurls on the bullets found in shannon touchet's bag. >> we had the same number of knurls, same width, and those knurls looked kind of like railroad tracks going around the outer surface of that bullet.

all the physical characteristics, everything we could physically see and measure were indistinguishable from one another. we could not tell the difference between one and the other. >> police brought shannon touchet in for questioning. he insisted he knew nothing of ron shaw's murder. he said he was with his girlfriend that night. >> she did verify his alibi and stated that shannon touchet was, in fact, with her in lake charles. >> but looking at shannon's shoes, investigators noticed he was wearing nike air jordan basketball shoes similar to the shoe impressions at the crime scene. scientists took casts of shannon's shoes and compared them to the cast from the impression in the sand outside ron shaw's home. >> we concluded that the shoe impressions at the crime scene were basically indistinguishable from those of shannon touchet's shoes. they had the same wear, the same physical characteristics, they were nike air jordans, same size. >> shannon's other mother disputed his alibi. she told investigators that

shannon was out with two friends on the night of the murder, reggie basile and ronald benson, and they were driving a burgundy car, similar to the one witnesses saw near the murder scene. when questioned, both reggie and ronald denied any involvement in the robbery and murder. police obtained a search warrant and confiscated all of the shoes belonging to the two men. but none matched the shoe impressions found inside shaw's home. so investigators decided to look for genetic material inside the red ski mask that had been discarded after the murder. the forensic scientist turned the mask inside out and swabbed around the mouth area hoping to pick up cells from saliva. >> using the entire surface area

of the swab to collect as much of the potential material that's there. >> using a dna test called str or short tandem repeats, scientists found dna from three different individuals inside the mask. but investigators needed to know who was wearing the mask before it was discarded. to find out, they analyzed the swab from the ski mask to determine who left most of the saliva behind. and the results of this test were clear. >> in this case the major contributor of dna matched that of ronald benson. >> the red ski mask was very important because it corroborated the story that we were able to receive from mrs. shaw. mrs. shaw indicated that the person with the red mask was the most aggressive in the robbery.

>> the identity of the other two dna profiles in the mask was inconclusive. the ski mask implicated ronald benson. the shoe impression outside the shaws' home implicated shannon touchet. but there was no forensic evidence linking reggie basile to the crime. >> as an investigator, that's hard to leave in the end of the day with. knowing that there's nothing else you can do, and you feel fairly certain of who's responsible for doing it. >> investigators hoped that would change. meet your needs every day of the week.

shannon touchet, reggie basile, an ronald benson were all arrested for the murder of ron shaw. >> it was decided the only way was to arrest all three suspects simultaneously and interview them in the same building at the same time going from room to room until we got the confessions from all of them. >> shannon touchet, the individual that was the ring leader. the one that had the information about the location of the safe, he ultimately turned on his two associates. >> shannon admitted that benson and basile both participated in

the murder. >> reginald and ronald was going to go in the house when she opened the door. i was going to stand outside and wait for them. >> shannon said the motive was robbery. this was how shannon repaid ron shaw for giving him a job at his grandfather's request. >> i was talking about my job which mr. shaw, he was paying me good. i was telling them about that and how he had money and stuff. we started planning for, like, two weeks before and then we finally went and did it. >> prosecutors say the three men drove to ron shaw's neighborhood and waited for the shaws to come home. witnesses saw the three men loitering in the area. when the shaws arrived, they were ambushed. ronald benson fired twice.

reggie basile fired the third shot. shannon touchet stayed outside leaving the shoe impressions in the sand. benson and basile took rosana inside and forced her to open the safe. for reasons that are unclear, they didn't take all of the valuables inside the safe. but they spared rosana's life. >> i think my daughter saved my life that night. when i told that man that i was pregnant, it just did something to his mind that decided not to kill me. yes, my daughter saved my life. >> while running to the getaway car, they drop the box full of jewelry. as they drove away, benson threw his ski mask out of the car unaware that it contained his dna.

shannon touchet left ammunition matching the fatal bullets in his gym bag. the murder weapons have never been found, for the shoes that left the impressions inside the shaws' home. shannon touchet and reggie basile pled guilty to first degree murder and aggravated robbery and were sentenced to life in prison. ronald benson chose to go to trial. the jury found him guilty. he got the same sentence. life in prison. >> the forensic efforts on the part of our crime lab were invaluable to the final conclusion in this case. without them there would have been no conviction for any of the three defendants. >> it was amazing to me the --

about the dna, the shoe prints, all the evidence they can gather from the crime place. that can help find out who did it. >> there's a lot of technology if things are done right, everything falls into place. and sometimes a little bit of luck helps. a small texas community mourned the tragic death of an outstanding high school athlete and scholar. at first, there wasn't much hope that the killer would be apprehended, but tiny paint chips and bits of plastic provided evidence far more accurate than an eyewitness. san antonio is one of the fastest growing cities in texas. which in turn required the construction of one of the most sophisticated systems of state highways in the country.