forensics, forensics. but in this case it is a forensic file, no doubt about it. if she had. forensic scientists needed some way to find out what the dog had seen. north liberty, iowa, is such a small town, it doesn't take much effort know your neighbors but one resident the town's people saiddom saw was

28-year-old john hebble. >> john was somewhat of a recluse, john kind of stayed to himself. >> it wasn't unusual that we didn't see him for a month. he'd be out doing things with friends. >> at one point in john's life he was a narcotics user and very possibly also a narcotics dealer. >> in february of 1999, john's mother was really worried, she hadn't heard from her son in over two months. >> i'd been trying to reach my son and he wasn't answering and we were afraid something was wrong. >> so she called the local sheriff who found john's van parked in his driveway, but no one answered the door. >> they smelled an odor coming from inside the trailer. they described that odor as being the odor of death. >> the officers forced their way through the trailer door and

found helbel dead, slumped in a chair. >> the body appeared to be in a position of someone who had been watching tv and had laid their head down on the arm or pillow and gone to sleep. the body was completely covered. i had a blanket over the head, over all of the body. >> he had been shot twice in the back of the head with a .22-caliber pistol, the advanced date of the composition revealed the murder happened weeks earlier. there were no signs of forced entry and the trailer doors were locked. >> that indicated to us that someone actually left the residence and took the time to use a key to bolt that door shut again, keeping other individuals from being able to easily access and enter the trailer. >> in the home, police found a small a of marijuana and some

drug paraphernalia. >> john didn't deserve this to happen to him. he doesn't have the best life in the world but i can almost guarantee you he could give you the shirt off his back. >> but john's prize collection of guns were missing, including a gold cup semi automatic pistol. >> this colt gold cup was described to me as one of john's friends is you'd have to pry that gun away from his cold dead fingers. >> he was able to take guns apart, work on them, repair them. customize them. put fancy gold on them, thins like that. it sounded as if john had been killed for the gun collection. >> and another one of john's prize possessions was missing. his 3-year-old husky kiesha.

>> oh, he loved his dog. she was his baby. >> she had a lot of hamburgers, a lot of pizza, hot dogs, things like that. i think she ate mostly people food. she was very spoiled. >> police soon learned that a dog matching kiesha's description was found a month earlier wandering aimlessly several miles away. >> she was standing in the middle of the street, dazed like where am i? what am i doing here? >> john's parents identified kiesha. the evidence suggested she had been driven there and dropped off. >> kiesha was found in january when the roads were generally dirty and muddy but kiesha's condition was pretty clean. >> the crime scene showed that the dog's leash which normally was kept beside the door was actually in the victim's van. it's suggested the victim's van

had been used to transport the dog and dispose of the dog. >> this was just one unusual detail in an investigation that was to become even more bizarre.

an autopsy on 28-year-old john helble revealed he had been killed long before his body was found. but the medical examiner was unable to determine exactly when he was killed. >> without an idea as to when the time of death is, it obviously becomes much more difficult to determine who are suspects and who are people that you can rule out. >> helble's dog kiesha was found on january 22nd. helble's answering machine had messages not yet listened to. the earliest message was left that same day, january 22nd. >> john what would not use the answering machine to screen his telephone calls.

if someone called, john wanted to talk to them. so we knew january 22nd, 23rd, john was dead. >> with this information, authorities questioned john's friends and family. >> we had three primary suspects in this case. mike harding, andrew risch and sharon snyder. >> the first suspect, mike harding was a friend of john's. a witness recalled seeing harding's truck parked around the home around the time of the murder. >> mike harding was good friends with john. we knew that john and mike had some narcotics business together. >> but harding had an alibi for the time of the murder and he passed the polygraph test. the next two suspects, andrew risch and sharon snyder were friends of john's who lived about an 18-hour drive away in

greybull, wyoming. >> we learned from a good friend who saw andrew risch and john together on january 18th, 1999, that in fact, andrew risch had been at the trailer house of john. >> but andy said that john was alive and well when he and sharon left to return home. police searched the couple's apartment and found marijuana, methamphetamine and several .22-caliber bullets, the same caliber used to kill helble. these bullets along with the slugs from helble's body were sent to the fbi for a neutron activation test. >> that's where the lead is shaved up to the ball, it's melted down and atoms are counted. >> counted and then compared. but the atomic composition of the bullets recovered from john helble was not what

investigators had hoped for. >> the results showed us that the bullets recovered from john were not the same bullets removed from andy risch's news graybull, wyoming. >> investigators found smudge marks on the inside window of risch's jeep, similar to those caused by animals when pressing their nose against the glass. was it possible that risch used his car to transport helble's across town after the murder. police took kiesha's nose print in the same way they collect human fingerprints. each dog's nose print is as unique as a fingerprint. >> unfortunately, we weren't able to get the type of smudges or prints actually from the vehicle that would enable us to do that. but it certainly was an interesting element that we

pursued for some time. >> after several months with no forensic evidence and very few leads, the investigation into john helble's murder was starting to turn cold. so investigators turned the helble's dog for more information. >> as it turned out that dog was going to play a very important part in solving john's death. hiring die and not enough time in my kitchen. [ female announcer ] need to hire fast? go to ziprecruiter.com and post your job to over 30 of the web's leading job boards with a single click; then simply select the best candidates from one easy to review list. you put up one post and the next day you have all these candidates. makes my job a lot easier. [ female announcer ] over 100,000 businesses have already used zip recruiter and now you can use zip recruiter for free at a special site for tv viewers; go to ziprecruiter.com/offer5.

a year after john helble's murder, police suspected helble's best friend andy rich was somehow involved in his death, but they had no proof. all investigators knew was that rich had some unusual career aspirations. >> we knew that his life long goal was to be a hitman for the mafia. we had interviewed past girlfriends. we had interviewed other associates of andy rich. and he always portrayed himself as a tough guy. >> we were concerned that sharon snyder, the girlfriend of andrew rich, had information that she was fearful about telling us. the impression was she was being guarded out of fear. her fear, of andrew rich.

>> he abused me a lot. there was a lot of abuse. not just physical. there was a lot of verbal abuse. >> police looked into sharon's background to see if she had ever been involved in illegal activity. and they found something. >> sharon schneider was purchasing guns at a different location. she was giving guns to andy rich. some of those guns went to john helble. we had a violation of the federal firearms statute that we you'd to split andy rich and sharon schneider. >> sharon told a different story. sharon said she dropped john off at helble's home about three days before the murder and left to visit her daughter about an hour's drive away. a few days later, andy arrived driving john's van.

they put some of his guns into their car, took john's van to his home and then drove their car back to wyoming. >> i had no idea that john was dead. i had wonder wide he had these guns. >> after a brief stay in wyoming, sharon said that andy left alone with the guns. >> he took off in the middle of the night, around 4:00 in the morning and headed to texas. she was gone three weeks. it was andy's old stupidity for telling me where he was going. >> we started learning things from sharon that we zpkted all along. at that point in time, it became really important for us to find any information that we could that was going to corroborate what sharon had to stay. >> police visiteded man andy rich stayed with during that trip to texas. he said rich had given him an unusual gold cup semi-automatic

pistol to pay off a drug debt. but by this time, a year later, he no longer had the gun. investigators then located a second man rich visited on that trip who still had in his possession, a box of ammunition rich had sold to him. inside the box, investigators found several short black and white hairs. microscopic analysis confirmed that hairs were from an animal but there were no roots attached. so nuclear dna tests wasn't possible but they were able to extract mitochondrial dna from the hair. mitochondrial is passed only from a human to the mother. joy special ices in animal dna. >> it will not be as unique a profile as i might get from

blood or saliva or hair with a root. but it will still allow me to say, yes, this sample matches the reference dog or it doesn't match the reference dog. >> halvorson performed a pcr test which stands for polymerase chain reaction. >> it's basically like taking a page out of a book and xeroxing that page a million times. and now you have that page in so much quantity you that can see it. >> then the sample was sequenced to get a visual representation of the dna type. when she paired the dna from the hair in the ammunition box to a sample of kiesha's hair, she found a heplo type in both sets that was extremely rare, occurring only in 1 in 300 dogs.

>> chance of having that match just by random was pretty low. combined with, i'm sure, the circumstances of the case. if i were sitting on the jury, i would find that to be a compelling piece of evidence in the case. >> this was forensic proof that rich was in possession of an item stolen from john helble. then investigators got another break. the man who was given the gold cup pistol said he still had the gun box. inside was a note listing all of the custom alterations made to the pistol, as well as the costs. >> he asked me if i thought was john's handwriting, and i thought it was. >> to be sure, investigators needed an expert. for that, they turned to gary litt, a forensic document

examiner. he compared the note to known samples of helble's handwriting. >> the question material was written with somewhat heavy pressure in the known writings that was also written with that same sort of pressure. they were also all handprinted, and his known writings also relied heavily on printing and not cursive. >> he lookeded for unique features and individual letters in john's known writings. features he then tried to locate in the question document. based on his comparisons, licht was able to draw a definitive conclusion. >> i was able to identify the writer of the question material as john helble. >> proof that it was helble's gun and no other that andy took with him to texas. based on the handwriting analysis and the dog dna, andy

rich was arrested and charged with john helble's murder. in court, rich had an interesting response to the forensic evidence against him. ou run into traffic? no, just had to stop by the house to grab a few things. you stopped by the house? uh-huh. yea. alright, whenever you get your stuff, run upstairs, get cleaned up for dinner. you leave the house in good shape? yea. yea, of course. ♪ [ sportscaster talking on tv ] last-second field go-- yea, sure ya did. [ male announcer ] introducing at&t digital life. personalized home security and automation. get professionally monitored security for just $29.99 a month. with limited availability in select markets. ♪

the forensic evidence showed that andy rich was in john

helble's home around the time of his murder. based on the position of the body, prosecutors believe rich killed helble after he fell asleep in the living room watching t vcht. tv. the motive was apparently money. rich wanted to sell helble's gun collection for either cash or drugs. the shooting may have agitated helble's dog. to stop the barking, rich put kiesha in helble's van then drove her several miles away before letting her out in a strange neighborhood. little did he realize that kiesha's hair would be found in the stolen box of ammunition, and that canine dna testing would prove it came from helble's beloved dog. >> andy hated that dog. andy could not stand kiesha. i don't know why he spared her.

i have no idea. how he'd spare an animal and shoot a human. >> when rich sold helble's prize pistol in texas, he left the note inside with hand writing that matched helble's known handwriting samples. >> the witness testimony and the forensic testimony piled together just added up like bricks in this case. and it was because of the two, and putting those two together that we were able to solve this case in the first place. >> on the day before his murder trial was to start, andy rich made a surprise announcement. >> he said, i killed john helble for his guns. but he never turned around and addressed the family. never apologized for what he had done. or showed any remorse for what he had done. >> i was somewhat stunned by that.

i thought that that was the point in time where he would accept responsibility and do the right thing. the parents and family of john helble were sitting behind him. it was his chance to try to make amends. he failed miserably in doing that. >> rich pleaded guilty to first degree robbery and voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 35 years in prison. in exchange for her cooperation, sharon schneider was charged for drug possession and was sentenced to six months in a halfway house and 2 1/2 years probation. >> sharon was not a witness to the crime. sharon had pieces of the puzzle that she gave us. that we could put together to solve the crime. >> i think it's very interesting how kiesha helped ultimately to be able to solve the crime of

the homicide of her master. >> i feel that kiesha solved the case, along with the detectives. and she provided the evidence against andrew rich. she got her man. just weeks before testifying at a criminal trial, one of the key witnesses, a brilliant research scientist, was murdered. for 15 years, there were many suspicions, but little proof. ironically, advances in the very research the victim had been working on helped nail her killer. when you ask friends and colleagues about helena greenwood, you hear words like brilliant, quiet, honest and a hard worker.