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, minnesota.

>> it was maybe ten miles from my house, so i said i would do it. >> when snyder arrived, he saw that there had been a two-vehicle accident. apparently, a jeep collided with an abandoned car that had broken down and was parked on the side of the highway. >> when i was met by the deputy, he informed me that one person is deceased, the female passenger in the red jeep, and the other vehicle that was struck was unoccupied. i could see the ambulance personnel working on a male who was covered in blood and he was screaming. >> the jeep driver, steve hollerman, was rushed to a nearby hospital. steve's passenger, his 41-year-old wife, deborah, was dead. >> everybody knew her. i mean, she was that well-loved. there was disbelief and shock. >> if you got to know deb, you liked deb. she was the life of the party. she was somebody that people

gathered around because she was fun to be with. >> steve hollerman survived the crash with only minor injuries and toxicology tests revealed no drugs or alcohol in his system. he told investigators that he and deborah were on their way home from shopping when he inadvertently drove off the highway and struck a parked car. >> i said, do you remember what you hit? he said, i hit a car. do you know where the car was? he said yes. i said did you see the car on the shoulder? he said, yes, i saw the taillights. and i asked him if he tried to maneuver the vehicle or tried to brake or avoid the collision and he didn't have the time to do that. >> the right front end of steve's jeep hit the back, left side of the parked car. steve said he was driving approximately 60 miles an hour at the time of the accident, and he was wearing his seatbelt, but deborah was not. >> that was out of her

character. she was pretty religious about wearing seatbelts and made it a point to everyone else that they needed to have theirs on, too. >> at deborah's autopsy, the medical examiner found skull fractures and evidence that her brain had been jolted violently inside her skull from side to side. >> the finding of the pathologist that did the autopsy was that the death was a result of a motor vehicle accident. the blunt force trauma and the injuries that were observed, the skull fracture, the bruising of the brain, any of those could have been consistent and would have been consistent with being killed in a motor vehicle crash. >> although patrolman tony snyder wasn't a doctor or formally trained in forensic science, he couldn't believe the coroner's report. >> i was sick to my stomach when i heard those words come out of

his mouth, 'cause i thought i was at a dead end now. i was not comfortable with it at all. but to be honest with you, i was tore up inside. i couldn't even sleep that night. >> snyder was bothered because this accident didn't seem bad enough to have caused a fatality, as he had seen in so many other accidents. >> i've been to accidents like that where people -- actually, their head had went clean through the windshield and they're speaking to me when we get there. and this windshield wasn't broken out. it was barely cracked. >> and snyder thought the amount of blood in the car was inconsistent with deborah's injuries. >> there was a lot of blood in the vehicle, more blood than i had ever seen at any accident in my life. and i've been to hundreds of accidents. >> but so had local traffic investigators, and they disagreed with snyder. they came to the same conclusion as the coroner, that the car crash was an accident. tony snyder's options were

dwindling, until an anonymous telephone call shed new light on an already mysterious case. 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-- 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. ♪

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surrounding the car crash that took her life. >> how can there be a car on the side of the road for a couple of days? i mean, isn't it someone's responsibility to take a car off of a state highway? >> highway patrolman tony snyder was less concerned about the abandoned car and more concerned with steve hollerman's driving skills. he was convinced there was more to the story than steve was telling. >> i asked him if a deer jumped out, if he was playing with the radio knobs or if he was on the cell phone. i asked him if he was blacked out, blacked out, was dizzy, fell asleep, and none of those things was the reason he went off the roadway. he just said he -- he didn't know. >> steve told investigators that he and deborah had been shopping and were heading home when the accident occurred. so snyder checked steve's story by reviewing the videos taken by the store's security cameras.

they show the hollermans at the store that night, but they left several hours earlier than steve claimed. >> the last store he left was around 7:30 p.m., and i got the call to come to the crash at 10:00 p.m., so there's quite a bit of time missing to drive 18 or 20 miles. >> in addition, the items the hollermans bought at the store weren't in the jeep at the time of the accident. so where were the hollerman's between 8:00 and 10:00 p.m.? an anonymous telephone call gave tony snyder a clue. >> there was no name, no way to get a hold of anybody, but just so you know, somebody called steve hollerman has been having an affair. >> that piqued our interest even more to say that there was more into this and we were going to look into. >> surprisingly, deborah's friends all knew about the affair, and, apparently, so did deborah. >> she was aware there was an

affair going on and she was going to confront them. her girlfriends have told us that. >> investigators eventually discovered the identity of steve's girlfriend. she was employed by the local hospital where steve worked as a lab supervisor. when questioned, she openly admitted the affair. >> she basically said that they'd been seeing each other for a year. they were in love with each other. they went on outings together. and she admitted that they had sex that day in his cabin. >> the cabin was the hollermans' summer home at green lake. it was just a mile and a half from the crash site. with a warrant, investigators searched the cabin and found evidence confirming the story they'd heard from steve's girlfriend. >> you can see a bed where it looked like it had been recently slept in or used in some way. >> and they also discovered that steve and deborah had been in

the cabin before the car crash. several items they had purchased that night were in the cabin. so snyder decided to take a closer look at the hollerman's jeep as well as the accident scene. steve said he was driving 60 miles an hour before the accident occurred. accident reconstruction experts have a way of confirming this. if a parked car is hit, the distance it moves after impact can tell you the speed at which it was hit. it's based on sir isaac newton's laws of physics, specifically, conservation of momentum. when one object strikes another, as in this demonstration, its momentum is transferred to the other. all things being equal, the speed of the first ball is equal to that of the last. the weight of the two cars, plus the friction between the tires and the road surface factor into

the analysis. >> the coefficient of friction is a measure of how slippery that surface is. so that's a very important piece. the other thing is the angles that are involved with approach and departure from the impact area for vehicles that are involved in a collision like this. >> scotland used surveying equipment to measure the distance the parked car moved after impact as well as the angles of impact. a computer program performed the physics calculations, and the result, steve's jeep was traveling between 38 and 42 miles per hour when it hit the parked car, not 60 miles per hour as he claimed. these calculations also proved that steve had enough time to avoid hitting the parked car. >> he had slightly over two seconds from the time that he left the pavement till the

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investigators now suspected that deborah hollerman had been murdered. her family couldn't believe her husband, steve, had anything to do with it. >> it was disbelief. my god, the poor guy lost his wife. he's gone through a month of mourning and now they do this to him? >> but patrolman tony snyder feared steve may have committed the perfect crime. >> i literally didn't sleep at night. several nights, easter dinner at my mom and dad's, i hardly ate. and they thought i was mad at them or upset with the family or sick or something. i was so obsessed with this, i couldn't eat. and i was worried i was -- i was running out of options to get this figured out. i was running into a lot of dead ends. >> since the original autopsy ruled deborah's death as

accidental, snyder asked dr. janice amatuzio for a second opinion. >> as i looked of those photographs of the vehicle, which i had not seen before that, and i looked at the injuries and i said there's something we don't know here. i think this case deserves more investigation. there's way too much blood inside the vehicle. >> dr. amatuzio wanted to examine the hollerman's jeep herself. >> because, let's face it, steve hollerman's future was at stake here and the truth about deborah hollerman's death was at stake. the most important thing for everybody to remember is that what we were trying to get at was the truth. >> dr. amatuzio was approximately the same size and weight as deborah, so she did something extraordinary. she donned protective clothing and climbed into the blood-stained car. >> it was a little creepy. it was sobering.

i realized i was sitting on the last spot that deborah hollerman had been sitting before she died. >> the first thing she noticed was the blood smear on the windshield had what looked like a fabric pattern. >> in fact, it looked like the heavy-knit sweater that deborah had been wearing the night that she died. >> this was a key finding, because it proved that deborah was bleeding before the crash occurred. >> the only way that that much blood could have been deposited on the inside of the vehicle at the time of the crash was if deborah hollerman had been bloody before the crash. in other words, she had been injured before the crash. that is the only way that she could have gotten that much blood on to her sweater, on to her hair, on to her face. >> and there was more evidence that deborah was bleeding before the crash.

>> on the passenger side rear window, you can see where blood had came from the seat and was running down the window. >> the l-shaped pattern demonstrated once again the physics of momentum. when blood drips down the window of a jeep traveling at 40 miles an hour and it stops abruptly, everything in the jeep, including the blood, continues to move forward. scientists believe that's what caused this l-shaped pattern. the final three pieces of evidence were crucial to understanding events before and after the crash. deborah's blood was found on the lever used to adjust the driver's seat. >> the driver's seat where steven hollerman was seated was pushed as far back as the seat could go. >> the steering wheel was bent. and investigators found steve's bloody shoe print on the passenger side window.

this indicated that steve moved his seat back after he was in contact with deborah's blood, then grabbed the steering wheel to brace himself for the crash. the evidence also proved that steve hollerman tried to break the passenger window after the crash. >> my opinion is he was trying to break the window out at the accident scene. he needed glass because there was a lot of blood and there was no glass anywhere. >> lastly, dr. amatuzio discovered what really caused deborah's death. ameriprise asked people a simple question: in retirement, will you outlive your money? uhhh. no, that can't happen. that's the thing, you don't know how long it has to last. everyone has retirement questions. so ameriprise created the exclusive.. confident retirement approach.

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forensic experts found what they believe was the murder weapon used to kill deborah hollerman. it was the knob used to adjust the passenger side mirror. >> the adjustment knob was caked with blood and long, brown hairs. it was clear to me that that adjustment knob was the instrument that created the injury pattern of the four lacerations or tears on her scalp, and in all likelihood, caused the depressed skull fractures. >> this proved that steve killed

deborah by hitting her head repeatedly against the knob. >> it was a severe beating. it was severe. >> so when death is the result of an assault, we classify it as a homicide. >> steve hollerman was arrested and charged with deborah's murder. >> he acted surprised and dumbfounded that he was under arrest. when i cuffed him and put him in my car, he's like tony, why is this, why is that, like we were friends. >> steve hollerman's lover admitted spending the afternoon with steve at the couple's summer cabin. later that night, around 7:00 p.m. stephen and his wife took their purchases to the cabin. deborah may have found evidence that steve had been there earlier with his lover. regardless, the forensic evidence suggests an argument ensued and had turned violent.

while in the jeep, steve repeatedly smashed deborah's head into the mirror knob inside window, causing the brain injuries that killed her. then steve tried to devise a plan to cover up the crime. while driving home, he saw the parked car alongside the highway and decided to stage an accident. he got the jeep into position moved his seat back with his bloody hands, and made sure his seatbelt was fastened while deborah's wasn't and then braced himself for impact. the jeep traveled 130 feet at 40 miles per hour directly into the back, left side of the parked car. deborah's arm and bloody sweater struck the windshield, proof that she was bleeding before the crash. after the crash, steve tried to break the side window to make

the crash look worse, but a passing motorist stopped before steve could do it. >> i'm convinced he tried to cover it up. whether he had that figured out before he assaulted her and tried to kill her, i believe he did come up with a plan to cover it up and to make it look like she died in the car crash. >> at the trial, steve pleaded not guilty. he admitted striking deborah during an argument, but said he was driving her to the hospital for treatment when the accident occurred. the judge didn't buy it. steve hollerman was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 30 years in prison. >> the most fascinating case that i've dealt with in my 15 years as an attorney. >> if you look long enough, pretty soon, the scene begins to speak to you. it really just depends on the amount of attention that you give it. it's really meticulous attention

to detail. i've learned over the years that if we look hard, we will eventually get to the answers. >> without a careful look at the evidence and the use of science to reconstruct the cash, deborah hollerman's death might have remained an accident, and her husband would have walked free. >> tony snyder is adopted as our family hero. highway patrolmen don't investigate murders. they give out traffic tickets. and for him to do what he did -- i mean, he didn't have experience in investigating murders. he went to his superiors and they gave him the opportunity to follow his heart. and we just need to thank everybody that was involved in it to give our family peace. >> tony snyder is back to his old job as a patrolman. this case was his first brush with forensic evidence, but

might not be his last. >> i'm sure i'll probably never see anything like it again in my career, but i'm ready for it if i do. a beautiful home, an affluent woman, a vicious murder. while her husband mourned, investigators searched for clues. a greetings card, an exotic dancer, and an operating room schedule showed investigators a side of medicine they hadn't seen before. it was valentine's day 2001, and susan hamilton had a busy day planned. her husband, dr. john hamilton, was an obstetrician. susan ran his medical clinical.