>> first, he threatened murder. >> i've got a gun in my hand. >> then there was a murder. >> whoever had done it, had been almost a maniac. >> charles manson, big letters, front page. >> convicted and put away for life but he always claimed his innocence. and was determined to prove it. >> he literally solved his own murder case from prison. convinced them, wait, we have an innocent man here. >> on the night of may 23, 1991,

a fire broke out in a rural farmhouse in upstate new york. by the time firemen got there, it was entirely engulfed in flames. >> they realized that the occupants was missing, daylight was coming and then they firemen and others were basically looking for her. >> emergency workers found the body 100 yards from the house on an overgrown footpath. >> she was naked. she had been brutally murdered. stabbed, beaten, burned, bitten. >> sabina kulalkowski was 49 years old. >> it became obvious right way whoever had done it was somebody that, well, quite honestly, had to have been almost a maniac.

>> the evidence showed that she was in the house when the fire started. >> at some point, sabina was alive in or about the structure when it was burning because she did have some soot in her lungs. >> between the farmhouse and sabina's body, police found a red t-shirt stained with sabina's blood. fire investigators found traces of accelerant inside the house and quickly ruled the fire arson. investigators thought the crime was one of passion. >> rage, pure rage. perhaps motivated by someone to get revenge. >> sabina lived in the farmhouse alone. her boyfriend, ron bench, lived there with her, until they broke up a few months before the fire. >> by all accounts, it was an amicable breakup, and they remained friends.

they continued to associate with one another, but they had ended their boyfriend/girlfriend relationship. >> ron bench had an alibi for the night of the fire. friends corroborated his alibi. police had another suspect. sabina was a social worker for the state of new york. her superiors were dealing with a disgruntled man who threatened to kill everyone in the office unless he was given custody of his daughters. >> he was angry with the child protective agency because they had placed his daughter in foster care and he did not like that. >> i want her back. i've been using the method. i've been using the system. and i've been paying attorneys. but i think if i ever got a [ bleep ] gun in my hand then you'll understand what the [ bleep ] i'm all.

if a crazy man comes in there. can't put a dead man in jail, can you? can you? >> roy brown, spent six months in jail from making those threats. and was released just six days before sabina's murder. >> his alibi was that he was with his girlfriend the entire night, and he gave a name, gave a location where they were, and they checked on it and found out that his girlfriend actually was in jail that night. so he obviously was lying to them about his whereabouts. >> brown denied any involvement, but he was arrested for arson and murder. >> called me up the day before, come over arrest you. i said, go on. are you guys serious? and come over, arrest me, all right. 10:00 in the morning, sure, pick

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roy brown was the prime suspect in the murder of sabina kulakowski. he earned that distinction by threatening to kill everyone in sabina's office due it a child custody dispute. >> roy was not a good guy.

roy had anger management issues. he did have a criminal record. nothing of any great consequence, but enough so that it's not the kind of guy you want to really hang out with necessarily. he was involving himself in some bad activities, as far as drinking and whatever else. and he had no real alibi for where he was that the point. >> brown insisted he had nothing to do with the arson or sabina's murder. but the circumstantial evidence was compelling. brown was offered a plea bargain, but refused. >> i told them to go screw themselves. i told the one lawyer, you know, i didn't do anything wrong. he said it doesn't matter they're going to send you to prison anyway. >> so roy brown went on trial. prosecutors found two witnesses who said brown was physically abusive.

>> roy brown's wife and girlfriend, boat of them stated under oath that he was a biter. they said when he was angry, he would bite them and used biting as a form of trying to control them. >> coincidentally, sabina kulakowski was bitten before she was killed. prosecutors asked to compare the bite marks to brown's teeth. >> roy brown's bite pattern matched some of the bites on sabina's body. >> but hired by the defense claimed the opposite. he said the bite wounds on sabina's body were created by someone with six front upper teeth and brown didn't have them. >> and he was very clear adamant in excluding roy who left the bite marks. >> the jury sided with the

prosecution, and convicted roy brown of sabina's murder. he was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. >> there was no real evidence that roy brown knew sabina kulakowski, much less where she lived. >> when brown got to his prison cell, he refused to sleep on the bed because he said it belonged to a killer, not him. >> i told them that, when i went in there the first night, i'll sleep on the floor, that bed doesn't belong to me. that's my desk. i turned it into an office desk. the mattress, i took a belt, piece of string, made a chair of it, sat it down, that's my law school. >> brown filed several appeals and all were denied, yet, he continued to work to clear his name. >> you can't get into the law library unless you bribe somebody or pay somebody. first thing they're going to do is beat the hell out of you for being there, just to make sure that you know who's in charge.

>> brown also told his lawyer, i'm learning a lot from tv shows. >> i studied law books, appeals in other cases, forensic science. anything i could do to try to utilize to prove my innocence. >> brown petitioned the court for dna testing of saliva found on sabina's t-shirt, but this request, too, was denied. >> i don't know who said the wheels of justice turn slowly but they are flat and i'm fixing to jack them off changing tires and throw a new spare in the trunk. >> it had to be discouraging and i would think that it would, you know, could end up say, i've had enough. >> then, something fortuitous happened. after spending 12 years in prison a fire broke out in brown's parents' home, destroying all 570 pages of his case file, and that fire fire

changed the course of the investigation.

12 years after his murder conviction, roy brown learned that a fire in his parents' home destroyed his copies of his case

file, all 570 pages. undeterred, brown wanted to replace it using what little money he had. >> so he went and paid his 15 cents a page that he's entitled to under the law and obtained statements. >> brown requested duplicate copies of everyone who gave statements to police during the murder investigation. >> there was like $28.50 i had to send them from jail. i only made $4 every two weeks, $4.20. >> the sheriff's office sent brown a list of everyone the police interviewed and that's when brown realized there were four affidavits in the file he had never seen before. >> roy got the list, looked at it and said wait a minute, what are all of these statements -- who are all these peel whose statements i have never seen before? >> there were statements from brandy bench and tammy -- tammy

told police that barry behaved suspiciously when he got to the fire scene. >> why are we stopping here? >> look around and see if you see any evidence. >> like what? >> like, i don't know, just look. >> she claimed he wanted to search an area 100 yards from the farmhouse. >> we had parked down the street from the farm and he had mentioned to me that maybe we should go down by the car and start back up on opposite sides of the road, looking for evidence or something, just to see if there was anything amiss or whatever. >> to roy brown, this was a critical piece of information. sabina kulakowski's body was discovered in that same area around daybreak.

>> they're still battling the blaze, you know, and he's not even up there helping. you know? he's walking down the road look way over here. if he was so concerned, why wouldn't he be looking up there? >> and barry claimed he had an alibi for the time the fire start. he said he was drinking in a local bar until 1:30 in the morning. but the bar patron claimed that bench left the bar around midnight. >> he was unaccounted for about an hour and a half. >> my reporting on barry bench showed that he had, as i understood, quite a temper. >> barry bench had a prior arrest and misdemeanor conviction for physically assaulting a young girl who later got a restraining order against him. >> one neighbor that i interviewed said that she actually worked with him and was afraid of him. he had a problem with women, according to this woman.

>> so taking matters into his own hands, brown wrote a letter to barry bench accusing him of murder. >> attention, barry bench, easily get a court order for samples from you for dna testing. after that [ bleep ] thing you did to sabina kulakowski and my false imprisonment i pray you confess your sins as you read this. merry christmas, but don't count on a happy new year. >> brown hoped that bench might reply, and lick the envelope flat in effect, sending his dna sample. instead, bench walked in front of an oncoming amtrak train and kill himself. >> i was kind of tick off because i figured [ bleep ] got away.

how can i get a test on this guy now that he's dead? >> brown needed to find another way to get bench's dna. he was so desperate, he considered stealing it. >> i was going to have the funeral, clip his fingernails and cut his hair while he was in the box. figured to get some dna from him. when you're where i was at, measures become desperate. and consequences for getting caught don't mean anything when you're serving life for something you didn't do. [ male announcer ] this is joe woods' first day of work. and his new boss told him two things -- cook what you love, and save your money. joe doesn't know it yet, but he'll work his way up from busser to waiter to chef before opening a restaurant specializing in fish and game from the great northwest. he'll start investing early, he'll find some good people to help guide him, and he'll set money aside from his first day of work to his last,

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for 12 years, roy brown sat in prison for sabina kulakowski's murder. after failing to get a new trial, brown contacted the innocence project in new york, asking them for help. >> the innocence project was found a little over 15 years ago to help convicted prisoners use what was then a new technology, dna testing, to prove they were wrongfully convicted and innocent of the crimes for which they were in prison. the innocence project accepted brown's case. while doing some research, the innocence project learned that

before brown's trial, prosecutors consulted dr. lowe levine a well-known forensic ontologist but chose not call him as a witness. >> i never finished my analysis, in my notes, in fact, i have one note on one of the photographs that if what i was looking for, what i thought was an upper was in fact an upper, i would exclude mr. brown. >> so the innocence project petitioned the court for permission to test the victim's red t-shirt found at the cream scene, thinking it might contain saliva. >> it's not impossible to find dna after a 15-year case, but it makes it more difficult. >> analyst tim goebel examined the shirt with an alternate light source, saliva and other biological materials will fluoresce when hit with this light. >> there were a number of florescent stains on the t-shirt and some were made by the markings of the previous

examining. >> not surprisingly, the stains were near the bite holes, an indication they were left by the person who bit the victim, presumably her killer. global removed the fabric, and performed str dna testing which is a more advanced form of pcr testing. the result, the dna profile from the saliva on the t-shirt did not match roy brown. but whose was it? barry bench's daughter, katharine, offered to help out. >> his daughter was a very courageous young woman who said, i want the truth. i want to know if my father committed this murder. and if roy brown is innocent. she actually contacted us after our papers were filed in court originally and said if you ever need me, i'll give you a dna sample. >> the dna analysis confirmed what roy brown already knew -- that the saliva stains on sabina kulakowski's t-shirt had come from barry bench.

>> the paternity testing showed that the john doe dna on the shirt came from the father of this woman, kate aren't, who was barry bench's daughter. >> unbelievably, when this evidence was presented to the court, the judge refused to grant a new trial. he said he had no proof that barry bench was katherine's biological father. >> you would think you would be home the next day. you wouldn't think they would try to drag this out. >> this is the kind of people i'm dealing with. >> with more prompting, the state of new york exhumed barry benches body and took a dna sample. it conclusively matched the saliva on sabina kulakowski's t-shirt and roy brown was finally released from prison 15 years to the day he was convicted. but the question remains, why

did barry bench murder sabina kulakowski? barry bench and sabina were acquaintances, sabina lived with barry's brother, ron, until they broke up a month before the fire. according to friends, barry bench was in financial trouble and may have wanted to sell the farmhouse where sabina was staying. no one knows what happened that night. but the forensic evidence shows barry went to the farmhouse to speak with sabina. >> what are you doing here? >> there was an argument, and things turned violent. the theory is that barry set fire to the farmhouse and was about to leave when he realized that sabina wasn't dead. there was another fight outside. by this time he couldn't take her body back into the

farmhouse. the fire was too advanced. so he dragged her body to the footpath 100 yard as way and left her there. >> why are we stopping here? >> this explains why barry searched that area later after firefighters arrived. he wanted to make sure she was dead. >> i had never had a case where the client solved his own crime from behind his prison cell using nothing but a pen and paper. he really did all the hard work. >> they locked me up and they made me turn a cell into an office, a bed into a desk, and a mattress into a chair. and law books i used them instead of weapons. i used that time and that typewriter. i beat the [ bleep ] with their own sticks. see? fifth grade education goes a long way when you're playing

with a bunch of corrupted [ bleep ] they can frame anybody right, that's how stupid those college geniuses are. my wife, she's bleeding all over the place. >> a family dog witnessed a brutal murder. >> whoever entered new the victim, knew the dog. >> an animal expert finally got the dog to talk, just not in the usual way. >> there are two sides to palm beach county, florida. it's home to some of the wealthiest people in the world, but a few miles away live people struggling just to pay their rent. >> we have a lot of crime for the size of community we are, we have an extensive amount of violent crime, a lot of murders.