tell those investigating officers the things that would be available today, i think it would be beyond their imagination. what can a skull tell you about a person's life? and can their bones reveal how they died? a forensic artist, an anthropologist, and a global positions satellite would tell more about this victim than anyone could ever imagine. >> yellowhouse canyon is 200 acres of very rough terrain just outside the city limits of lubbock, texas. in 1870, it's where the comanche indians exchanged their prisoners for horses.

125 years later, the area became known for something else, when some hunters found what looked to be a human skull. >> we treat it as a crime scene, making the assumption that it is a strand of hair. forensic anthropologist dr. harrell gill-king estimated the bones had been exposed to the elements for over a year. one piece of bone called the sacrum indicated the victim was female. >> the shape of the sacrum in females is distinctive. it's much more flared.

it's all part of the birth difference between females giving birth and males not. >> the shape of the skull suggested the victim was caucasian, and the cranial sutures were not yet closed, meaning the victim was young, between 18 and 24. the anthropologist also found evidence of knife wounds. >> i think we had one to the shoulder blade, six to the vertebrae, and then another four or five. so, 12 or 13 injuries that we discovered and mapped into the cut map. >> dr. gill-king ruled the manner of death to be homicidal violence. when word got out that a young woman had been murdered in yellowhouse canyon, calls started to pour in. >> one woman came up and said that she knew her husband had done it because he was a knife freak, and said, oh, by the way,

we're having a custody battle tomorrow, can you give me a copy of this report for my lawyer? >> investigators checked the dental records of 64 young women reported missing throughout the united states, and none of them matched. so, investigators asked forensic artist karen taylor to try to put a face on the skull. >> granted, it's sort of a last-ditch effort when the forensic artist is called in. the job of the forensic artist is to trigger interest, to create that link. i often refer to it as being the middle man. >> at that point, she was my best hope. in fact, she was about our only hope. we were just about out of things to do. >> taylor pioneered a technique called two-dimensional facial reconstruction, which is part science and part art. each race has facial skin which is different than other races. using known scientific data, taylor applied rubber markers to

approximate the facial tissue thickness of a caucasian. >> the tissue thickness varies on our faces. if you feel on your face, it's much thicker down in this cheek area and much thinner on the forehead. so, we cut and apply rubber markers to those landmarks, and that helps give a guideline as a starting place to create the contours of the face. >> taylor then photographed the skull and placed a piece of translucent vellum on top of the picture. she then used her talent and forensic expertise to illustrate her most prominent features. >> the average human eyeball is about 25 millimeters in diameter. it just so happens to be the size of a u.s. quarter. so, i lay a quarter down within the aperture and trace around it. >> the nose and ears are more difficult to approximate since they are made of cartilage and

had decomposed, but research shows that a female caucasian's nose has skin that extends ro h roughly one-fifth of an inch to each side of the nasal cavitt. >> the nose particularly struck me because i could see a marked asymmetry at the base of the nasal aperture, the nasal opening. it's slanted to one side at the bottom. and i learned through experience of previous cases that that would probably show up in life. >> investigators found a single red hair in the soil near the bones, which taylor used as her guide. >> that was a very good clue for me, but i made it interpretable, not blond-blond and not dark-dark, but somewhere in the middle, and i made a similar decision with the eye color. >> when finished, the drawing was released to the media throughout the state of texas. investigators hoped someone would recognize her.

it was like most other days in beverly tillery's life, having her morning cup of coffee and scanning the newspaper

before going to work. but the forensic drawing of the unidentified woman found in yellowhouse canyon immediately caught her eye. >> if you look at the pictures of my children, you'll see that they all have practically the same jaw line and the same cheek structure. it's kind of a square-type thing. >> beverly was convinced it was her 17-year-old daughter, belynda, who had been missing for more than a year. >> she showed me the paper and she asked me if i thought that looked like belynda, you know, and the more i sat there and looked at it, i said, yeah, it's got a lot of her characteristics. >> dental records confirmed what the family suspected. the skull was belynda's. at the time of her disappearance, belynda worked as a dancer at a local nightclub owned by a gang called the banditos. >> they are an outlaw motorcycle

gang. they're into everything. the people that frequent their clubs are generally the same type people. so, the fact that belynda tillery was working there would not be a good thing. >> after i heard belynda's name, i drove down to the bar where she worked to see if anybody would talk to me about who she was, so i had more than a name to go in six inches of news print. >> but no one at the club was willing to talk. >> the man selling tickets, he certainly didn't know anyone named belynda. if this wasn't bleak enough, an old woman came from the back, also a staff member at the establishment, and began to say the same thing he had said, just in a much more emphatic way. >> according to belynda's family, belynda danced at the club on the night she disappeared. her brother had given her a ride home. >> last time i spoke to my sister, she wasn't feeling well. i had just assumed she went to sleep. >> but the next morning, belynda

was gone and hadn't left a note. belynda's family told police why she hadn't been feeling well lately. >> she kept getting sick and we took her to the doctor and found out that she was pregnant and that's what caused her to change and want to settle down and be the daughter her mother wanted to raise, you know? >> belynda had plans to return to school, get her diploma, find a better paying job so she could raise her child properly. belynda's family believed the baby's father was her ex-boyfriend, troy armstrong. >> drank too much. he was much older. he was ten years older than her. i wasn't really enthused with him. >> he had a long history of just small, petty crimes. very transient. lived in his cars, lived with friends, had a narcotic habit.

>> when police tried to interview armstrong, they discovered he had left town months earlier. >> he was reported to be living in roswell, new mexico. i drove to roswell, spent two days looking for him, was not able to find him. >> but they were able to track down his current girlfriend, angela allen. >> she said she loved him. as they stayed together a while, he became more and more abusive, and eventually he beat her up a couple of times, as best i recall. >> angela said she knew all about belynda. >> i heard a couple of messages on an answering machine. one of them was that she was pregnant and that she needed to talk to him about it. >> angela told police that she and armstrong ran into belynda in a local bar shortly before she disappeared, and there was a confrontation. >> she wanted to see him to

clarify the fact that she was going to raise this child herself and it was hers no matter who it belonged to. >> angela told investigators she ended her relationship with armstrong when she learned belynda was pregnant. angela gave police several items armstrong had left with her before he left the area. among them, a large knife. police asked forensic experts whether this was the murder weapon. the answer was maybe. >> in my experience, people who attempt to match a particular knife to an injury venture a little too far from the shores of sanity. >> over time, the bones tend to warp and the wounds change a little bit. >> nevertheless, investigators needed to find troy armstrong to

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forensic artist karen taylor was able to put a face on the skull found in yellow house canyon which, in turn, led to the discovery that it was

17-year-old belynda tillery. her ex-boyfriend, 27-year-old troy armstrong, was the prime suspect, but investigators had no idea where he was. angela allen had dated armstrong after belynda did and was initially reluctant to help police. >> i had to talk to angela two or three times, and every time i'd talk to her, i'd get a little more information. >> i knew the second that i started helping the police that i was putting myself in danger. >> eventually, angela told police that when armstrong learned about belynda's pregnancy, he invited belynda to go camping with him in yellow house canyon so the two could discuss the pregnancy. angela said armstrong acted suspiciously when he returned from yellow house canyon. >> he showed up on my doorstep

on his return trip and he had blood on his hands. there was a cut on his hand. >> armstrong said he accidentally cut his hand during the camping trip. >> there was no reason for me not to believe it, you know? >> was telling somebody else without using the exact words that he killed her. you have the location where the body was found, you have a method that he had blood on his hands, which obviously means that she wasn't shot, it means it had to be a close, physical attack, as with a knife. >> he was pretty cocky about the whole thing. pretty much did not make it any big secret that he had killed her. >> when angela learned that belynda's body was discovered in yellow house canyon, she knew the truth. >> i think it was one of the first things that came out of my mouth was, he really did kill her, didn't he? that was whenever is all hit, that everything was real, and he really could have done

something, you know, to me and my family, anybody. >> as the circumstantial evidence mounted, police issued a warrant for armstrong's arrest, but they didn't know where he was. angela allen told police that troy's best friend worked in california for a trucking company and suggested they look for him there. >> i wanted to make sure he was caught. i was very much up on that. >> police asked trucking company officials for the location of troy's friend. fortunately, they knew exactly where he was because every one of their trucks was equipped with a global positioning system, or gps. >> when detective watson heard that the truck had a gps in it, back then, it was like, you know, gp what? what does that do? >> satellites orbit earth

tracking vehicles, boats, airplanes that are equipped with a gps receiver. >> it's like leaving a trail of bread crumbs behind so that when you look at it on a map, you see a trail of dots representing the path of travel of that vehicle. >> the gps satellite tracked the moving truck driven by armstrong's friend as it made its way through nebraska. >> they were giving me the information in realtime. kept them on the phone, i notified the nebraska highway patrol what i was doing, asked them if they could attempt to locate this truck as it was approaching the york, nebraska. >> within a few hours, nebraska police set up a road block and stopped the truck. they asked the driver if he knew of armstrong's whereabouts. much to their surprise, they found armstrong hiding in the truck sleeper compartment. >> i had no concrete evidence. i just knew that he was an acquaintance of this driver and that he had been riding with him at some point.

>> troy armstrong was arrested and charged with belynda's murder. >> he's got these beady little eyes that makes you feel uneasy. looks like a rat, smells like a rat, you know, pretty much going to be a rat. and he had rat written on him from the beginning. >> armstrong insisted he had nothing to do with belynda's murder. but among armstrong's possessions was the key to a storage locker. inside that storage locker were items armstrong couldn't possibly explain why they were there. this is the first power plant in the country to combine solar and natural gas at the same location. during the day, we generate as much electricity

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when troy armstrong was arrested for belynda tillery's murder, he had a key to a rental storage locker in new mexico. inside were belynda's personal belongings. >> they were the type of personal items that she most likely would have been carrying the night that she was killed -- a driver's license and other things that she would have had in her possession after leaving her employment at the nightclub. >> prosecutors believe troy armstrong had no interest in supporting belynda tillery's baby. they say he was angry that his new girlfriend, angela allen, ended their relationship when

she learned of belynda's pregnancy. prosecutors uncovered evidence that armstrong borrowed sleeping bags and camping equipment from a friend, then asked belynda to go camping with him so they could discuss her pregnancy. later that night, troy picked up belynda at her home and went to yellow house canyon. once there, prosecutors believe they argued and the situation turned violent. the forensic evidence suggests belynda was stabbed over a dozen times in her back and left for dead in yellow house canyon. later, armstrong went to angela's apartment, telling her he had cut his hand. >> troy armstrong, extremely

violent individual, somebody that had no regrets in stabbing a teenage girl that was pregnant 12 to 15 times with a large knife and leaving her in a field. >> at the trial, angela allen revealed a devastating piece of information. >> he told me that he'd killed her and if i ever said anything about it and about the blood on his hands, all that stuff, that he'd kill my kids and my dad too. >> after a four-day trial, a jury deliberated for only two hours before finding troy armstrong guilty of first-degree murder. >> my final argument was, give the life sentence, unless you can find anything decent about him. you know, in less than an hour, they came back with a life sentence. i think that says a lot about troy armstrong. >> even angela thinks he got off too easy because armstrong

killed two people that day. >> i believe that he should have gotten the death penalty because nobody considers that baby. >> little man with a big ego. and he's violent. that's really him in a nutshell. he's a violent, little man. >> she wasn't famous. it wasn't a high-profile case, but it's a case that took a lot of people to put together, it took a lot of effort, and it's something that you sometimes don't see in somebody that is forgotten about. >> belynda tillery's family still mourns the loss of their daughter, but because of forensic facial reconstruction and forensic anthropology, they know the truth. >> when karen taylor put the face on the skeleton, that's what broke the case.

>> no doubt, forensic art is art/science. we use all the scientific inputs possible, but there is a point where art kicks in and supplements science. that forensic art allowed the dead to speak, and i think that's a really good thing. in today's electronic world, security cameras track our every move. a simple cell phone call pinpoints our location by the nearest cell tower. every minute gps navigational systems can monitor our vehicles and boats. from other worldly signs to a tear mark on some duct tape, investigators unravel a crime in two cities, a crime of betrayal, lust and greed.