that's it for us. thanks for watching. a mother of two found dead in her bedroom a pistol in her hand and a suicide note point to a self inflicted wound. but a customer in a bar, a jacket on a door nobody and a saliva test raised interesting questions. ft. lewis is one of the largest bases. it's part of a self

contained city that is home to thousands of military families. chris davis, a communications specialist loved military life. his wife, dorothy, did not. the couple had been married ten years and had two daughters, ages five and two. >> my sister was kind of getting depressed off and on, she had had down times. i knew that dorothy was on medication and she was on an anti-depressant. >> on the night of march 13th, 1991, corporal davis was having drinks at a bar with his friends. he called his wife and she sounded despondent, so he left his friends and went home.

when he entered the bedroom. he found a horrifying sight. dorothy was dead. a.22 pistol in her hands. >> mrs. davis is lying on the bed with the covers up to her stomach, she appears the to have a gun shot wound to her right temple. >> it was believed that there was no forced entry in the house. and the davis' children were asleep in the bedroom, whatever happened did not wake them up. there was no evidence of an argument, or altercation. >> what it looked like is that dorothy was literally lying in bed as if she were sleeping. >> in the bedroom, investigators found a bottle of anti-depressants and three sealed envelopes. one was addressed to her husband chris.

>> my darling love, as said many times, it's the coward's way out. so i'm a coward. for i could see no other way out. i asked god to for give me. >> the second note was also addressed to chris. and the third was to had her sister. >> deer patty, i'm sorry. but the time you get this, i will be gone, i didn't know what else to do. >> she could see no other way out, she acknowledged the difficulties in her marriage, and how she felt that her husband no longer loved her. >> i can remember when they came and brought me the letter that my sister had written to me, and um, it was very hard to read, it was very upsetting and at that time, i could not understand why something like that would be written. >> yes, these letters are written by dorothy, yes, her fingerprints are on it. >> further evidence of suicide

seemed plain enough. the gun in dorothy's hand was gripped firmly, a phenomenon that is a spasm. >> the cells are rigid at the team of death because of emotional stress or physical activity right at the moment of death. >> the spasm is something that cannot be simulated, it cannot be duplicated. it's either present or it's not present. if it is present, that means that the gun had to have been in the victim's hand at the time of her death. >> and dorothy's autopsy, the medical examiner found evidence of a contact wound to her head consistent with the self inflicted injury. there was no exit wound. the .22 round was still in her skull. toxicology tests found nothing

unusual in her system. but the coroner did find something else. >> the autopsy confirmed that she was two to three weeks pregnant and she had told family and friends that she was pregnant. >> the coroner ruled the death a suicide. she was just 33 years old. >> i just kept saying there's no way she'd hurt that baby, she'd not shoot herself, she'd not do this. i had those thoughts at times. there's no way -- no way she'd harm herself, she loved the girls, they were her life. >> that is where the story would have ended had it not been for a witness that came forward with an interesting tail about a jacket. [ tires screech ]

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the military community at fort lewis in washington state reacted to dorothy davis' suicide with shock and grief. the coroner ruled dorothy's death a suicide. but many were skeptical. including a woman who was with corporal davis the night dorothy died.

the witness said that chris left the bar to call dorothy from a pay phone in the lobby. she said, she too went out to the lobby a short time later and chris davis was not there. he returned 20 minutes later. >> witness told us at this point that corporal davis was red faced and appeared to be out of breath, he was no longer wear ago jacket he was wearing earlier. >> so, where was chris' jacket? investigators saw it in the photos. taken of the scene the night of dorothy's death. hanging on the door knob of the couple's bedroom. >> i thought, he oh, my god, look, here is the jacket. it's not dropped, and the person who comes in and who finds their wife lying there, perhaps mortally wounded is not going to

take his jacket off and nice and neat hang it up on the door knob. >> was it possible that chris davis never called his wife? but used those 20 minutes to drive home, kill dorothy and then return to the bar to establish his alibi? a police recreation showed it was possible. >> average time 17 minutes. even though we were locked into 20 minutes by the witness, we felt it was possible for him to go off, commit the crime, stage the scene and get back to the nco club within the i'm. >> if this were true, what about the suicide notes? was it possible they had been forged? investigators sent these notes to forensic document examiner sandra holmwood to see if the handwriting matched the known samples.

>> the writer had a specific lower d and backwards lower ways f, when it went in a clockwise motion instead of a counter clockwise motion as we are taught. there were many letters in and of themselves that were consistent between the known and questioned writing and there were no differences that would suggest that it was written by a different writer. >> sandra holm concluded that dorothy had indeed written the notes. >> when the lab report came back, and said is, that dorothy had actually authored all of the letters, we pretty much concluded at that time the investigators did, that perhaps what they were looking at is in fact a suicide. >> but in the aftermath of dorothy's death, her husband chris, appeared to be anything but grief stricken. >> within weeks of dorothy's death, chris davis actually moved a person into the house who was there to act as a nanny

or to take care of his children. >> everyone on base knew this woman was more than a nanny. she had been having an affair with corporal davis for more than a year. >> people knew we were -- knew we were romantically involved, because he was very loving in public. something i was getting from my relationship at the time. >> apparently he got over his grief quite quickly. >> this however did not implicate him in his wife's death. in fact, chris' infidelity may have caused dorothy's depression. >> myself and everybody else believe that she took her own life with other own hand. we believed it. >> i did not see violence in chris ever once with my sister or the family. i knew that he was not honest

that he was a thief and an adulterer, but i never really thought that he would ever physically hurt her. >> investigators weren't so sure. >> really started to paint a different picture. a disturber picture. in that, maybe what we have here is not a suicide. maybe what we have here is a murder. hey guys! sorry we're late. did you 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--

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as the investigators looked into the death of 33-year-old dorothy davis, they heard reports that her husband chris ran the household with an iron fist. and was not the easiest man to get along with. >> i don't know what drives him. i think what drives him is he has to be in control. if he is not in control, look out. >> and investigators learned something else that was suspicious. three years earlier, dorothy davis had another brush with death. it was a night when chris left their house with their infant daughter. they went out for a short drive because the baby was varying trouble sleeping. after they left, dorothy awoke to find their home full of smoke.

there was a fire burning in the living room. for some unexplained reason, the smoke detectors had not sounded. >> the police and fire crew came, they took the television set out, and he they saw the malfunction in the television set and the case was closed. >> in light of dorothy's death, this fire three years earlier looked suspicious. >> makes you go mmm-mmm, this is a clue where i come from. things like this do not happen to a person twice in the same manner. this -- this was a clue. >> now, corporal davis, he was officially a suspect. and the manner of his wife's death changed from suicide to undetermined. for his new girlfriend barbara, life with corporal davis suddenly took a turn for the worst.

>> that is when everything started to change. i could not use the phone. i was not allowed to go grocery shopping. wasn't allowed to have money. i was like in prison in the house. >> but the forensic evidence still pointed to suicide. until. steve chandler reinterviewed the officers who first responded to the 911 call on the night of dorothy's death. >> what i found out was somewhat of a shock, describes that dorothy was holding the pistol with all four fingers around the butt of the pistol. when i asked him if all four fingers were around the butt, how did she fire the gun and he responded, i don't know. >> and if there was foul play, why had dorothy written the suicide notes?

they clearly indicated dorothy's desire to end her own life. her sister did some detective work on her own and found the answer. >> i found out from the therapist that she had been seeing that she instructed her to write everything down and her feelings and that is what i believe that was from. she never had an intention of harming or hurting herself. >> she apparently was adamant about documenting her feelings in personal diaries that she kept up. these diaries were obtained and reviewed and they indicated a long history of depression. >> to find out whether dorothy had truly meant to kill herself when writing the notes, investigators sent them to fingerprint expert bill thomas for examination. thomas sprayed the notes with ninhydrin, a chemical that acts with the amino acid in perspiration, we placed the

letters into an envelope and under the conditions, the prints will develop like a photograph on photograph paper. >> it revealed that dorothy was not sweating when she wrote the notes. something that usually occurs when someone intends to end their own life. >> and told him, that they needed to take another look at this case. because there was something wrong. >> but perhaps, the largest proof came the envelope flaps. who had licked them?

investigators wanted to know who had licked and closed the envelopes that held dorothy davis' suicide notes. to find out scientists needed dorothy's dna for comparison. unfortunately her body had already been cremated so they had to reinstruct her dna profile. >> her dna type was determined by cross referencing the possible types that she could have received from the mother and father and looking at the

resulting types that she donated to both of her children. >> chris' dna profile was on file as part of his military records. scientists cut a small piece of envelope flap, put it in a solution that dissolved everything but the human cells and performed pcr dna test. the results, the dna test revealed chris had licked the envelope flap. >> placed that letter in the envelope and sealed it himself. that is the only reason his saliva was on the envelopes. dorothy had no intention of committing suicide. those letters were a cry for help. and chris used those letters to pad his scheme to murder his wife for financial gain. >> one year after dorothy davis' death, her husband was arrested and charged with the murder.

>> when i heard chris was arrested, it was like yeah, yeah, thank you lord, thank you, they finally got him. >> prosecutors believed that he tried to kill dorothy three years earlier by disconnecting the smoke detectors and setting the house on fire before leaving with his daughter for a car ride. that attempt failed. then chris found dorothy's journal and the suicide notes she had written earlier, this provided his cover story. >> he had suicide notes, what better way to mislead investigators than suicide notes obviously authored by victim? >> on the night of the murder, chris went to the noncommissioned officer's club to establish an alibi. after a while, he said he was going out to the lobby to call

his wife instead, he got into his truck and raced home. dorothy was most likely asleep when chris got into position to shoot her in the right temple at just the right angle. however, when he planted the gun in her hand, i forgot to position her index finger on the trigger. chris staged the scene with the true crime book and the container of anti-depressants. the most crucial part of his plan was planting the suicide notes dorothy had written months earlier. meanwhile, at the nco club. chris's friend noticed he was not using the telephone in the lobby as he would later claim. and when chris returned, his friends noticed he was not wearing the jacket he had on earlier. he had left it by mistake in his bedroom. captured on film for all to see.

chris davis ignored dorothy's cries for help. the ones articulated so clearly in her notes and diary. instead, he used them against her. >> he had simple destroyed the letters then they would not have been their for us to examine. >> if he had not licked that envelope, if he had not done that, he would have walked free. >> chris davis was found guilty of his wife's murder. he was dishonorably discharged from the army and sentenced to life in prison. >> chris is cold blooded. he is sick. he said he is not, he is a liar. i have seen it. first hand. how sick, evil this man can be. i saw it. >> chris, was very, very money hungry and what he was looking at by the death of dorothy was

freedom, did he not have to worry about child support. he got rid of his wife and he got a cool $150,000. >> without that forensic evidence, chris would be a free man today. and there would be no justice for dorothy. d belief. it looked like a routine traffic accident until a patrolman with no training suspected something worse, but he couldn't prove it until a bent steering wheel, a security camera and a physics calculation showed what really led to a young woman's death. highway patrolman tony snyder was heading home after finishing his night shift when he got a call about a traffic accident on route 95 outside of princeton, minneso