Skip to main content

tv   Forensic Files  CNN  March 6, 2014 11:00pm-11:31pm PST

11:00 pm
>> get on the scale. >> only thing you can't kill is an idea. >> we're all accountable to the children of the city of chicago. >> they lit our house on fire. >> we're not doing this. let's go. >> i can't wait for this to be over. >> it's 24-7. it absolutely never ends. >> you need to tell the mayor to just quit his job. >> how do we change our friend rather than our foe? -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com >> she offered him a wild side he hadn't experience. >> then he vanishes without a trace. >> he was there one minute and not the next. >> for almost 20 years the disappearance remains unsolved. >> i hoped he would show up one
11:01 pm
day. >> until a chip of paint shows up. >> it terrifies me to know what a murder victim goes through every time they're killed. >> the kennecott mine outside utah is known as the richest hole on earth and copper isn't the only valuable mineral. >> they mine gold and silver and they have very expensive equipment, that sort of thing. theft is a big problem out there. >> as a result, security is very tight. >> you just don't go onto the kennekott property without encountering security. >> when the security guard wasn't on duty and the guard checked on a winter night in 1991, it was unusual. >> they went up and figured he
11:02 pm
might be in the restroom and went out and found his lunch was partly eaten, his hardhat was still there. >> the guard, bryan roof, was not supposed to leave the shack for any reason until the shift changed at 11:00. >> it was just a strange incident where he was there one minute and gone the next. there was no real explanation of why he was gone. >> snow had fallen just a few hours earlier. but there were no footprints around the shack. brian's car was parked in a nearby lot and there were no footprints anywhere near his car. >> it looked like he might have just stepped outside the door and vanished. but it was in a very isolated area. >> inside the shack, everything was in order. >> no sign of any foul play at all. no blood, nothing turned over or destroyed. >> 21-year-old brianed his wife, jennifer, had been married 2 1/2 years and had a 15-month-old baby.
11:03 pm
work records showed this wasn't the first time bryan went missing. just a few weeks earlier, bryan walked off his job and ran away to las vegas. >> he felt a big burden to provide for us, especially with this second baby coming, he felt that burden and he was trying to get through school and i know finances worried him a lot. he felt bad we had to move in with my parents at the time. >> bryan spent six days in las vegas. when he returned, he was a changed man. and not for the better. >> he was very cold and distant. a side of him i had never seen before. he was very cold, bitter about certain things, finances, things like that, and just angry. >> as investigators searched the guard shack for clues, the phone rang. the caller said she was bryan's
11:04 pm
wife, jennifer. >> she was surprised when somebody else answered the phone, when bryan didn't answer. they told her at that time they were the police and they were looking for bryan. she did tell them she had been talking to him around 6:30. he had told her that there's another employee coming, is how he termed it and he just had to go. >> as soon as police got off the phone with jennifer, the phone rang again. >> the deputy again answered the phone call, knew it was a different female voice and the caller told the deputy that her name was jennifer. somebody was claiming that they were bryan's wife that really wasn't. >> a missing man with two wives. police knew right away it was going to be an unusual investigation. [ male announcer ] at his current pace,
11:05 pm
bob will retire when he's 153, which would be fine if bob were a vampire. but he's not. ♪ he's an architect with two kids and a mortgage. luckily, he found someone who gave him a fresh perspective on his portfolio. and with some planning and effort, hopefully bob can retire at a more appropriate age. it's not rocket science. it's just common sense. from td ameritrade.
11:06 pm
11:07 pm
shortly after bryan's disappearance from his security guard, two women called the shack asking to speak to him, each woman identified their self-as his wife. one of the callers was indeed bryan's wife, jennifer. the other was 20-year-old christie bradley, married to dale bradley married to a security guard at the kennecott mine and one of his co-workers. no that's when they send someone to check out what's going on.
11:08 pm
>> christie told police she and bryan had become friends and talked regularly on the phone. >> dale would have christie bring dinner out to him and that's how bryan and christie met, at the job site when she would bring meals out to him. >> when questioned about bryan's disappearance, christie said she was home all day and hadn't seen him. dale said he was off from work and running errands all day. >> dale bradley said he was at the university of utah and when his car broke down he called bill easton, at a local bar here. >> five days after bryan disappeared, his wife, jennifer, discovered a potential clue. >> there were credit card bills i had never seen before. we had not applied for them together. also a phone bill. >> jennifer discovered that bryan was having an affair with christie bradley.
11:09 pm
>> it was a double whammy to have him missing and then to be hit with such horrifying news that everything had been shattered my whole life had been shattered, everything i had dreamed and hoped for was gone. >> jennifer also discovered christie was with bryan in las vegas a few weeks earlier. when confronted with this information, christie admitted the affair to both the police and her husband. >> she told me she thought bryan was really nice and cute and dale was really controlling to her and christie didn't like to be tied down. christie and bryan were able to that's, i think, the reason for the phone calls to the guard shack between christie and bryan. dale insisted he knew nothing about his wife's fair when bryan disappeared. dale had no criminal history but the affair gave him a motive to
11:10 pm
harm bryan, so investigators got a search warrant for his car. it was checked for blood and gunshot residue. >> none of which we found. we didn't find anything. >> in addition, dale and christie bradley agreed to take polygraph tests and they both passed. >> at that point, they kind of dropped his name from the list of suspects. >> meanwhile, investigators pursued another potential lead. two of bryan's fellow security guards had been arrested for stealing from the mine. >> they were arrested for stealing metals of kennecotte property and pawning them for junk metal shops. >> one of those guards was at the guard shack minutes after bryan was reported missing. >> bryan was one of those at the guard shack who reported some of those thefts going on. without bryan's body, police had no proof he was dead.
11:11 pm
officially, he was still a missing person. kennecott. there's this kid. coach calls her a team player. she's kind of special. she makes the whole team better. he's the kind of player that puts the puck, horsehide, bullet. right where it needs to be. coach calls it logistics. he's a great passer. dependable. a winning team has to have one. somebody you can count on. somebody like my dad. this is my dad. somebody like my mom. my grandfather. i'm very pround of him. her. them. i'm spending too much time hiring 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
11:12 pm
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.
11:13 pm
11:14 pm
shortly after bryan ruff disappeared, police discovered a theft ring run by security guards at the kennecott mine. >> they were stealing anything that wasn't nailed down. they were stealing gloves,
11:15 pm
shovels, you know, just any kind of equipment you would find around a mine. >> police wondered if bryan might have stumbled on a robbery in progress. >> so a theory came up that maybe these guys were stealing metals off of the property that night, bryan had stopped them and they had killed him to cover up the theft. >> but none of the other security guards could be linked to bryan's disappearance. >> he basically was completely alone up there in the mountain, and it really concerned him that it was an unsafe area, that there were no cameras, no electric gates, no security systems like they had in the other gates. >> weeks, and then months, passed with absolutely no sign of bryan ruff. >> it was an overwhelming fear. when i would be driving to work or driving to the store, it was a constant cloud over me of fear that somebody could just disappear and never come back.
11:16 pm
>> bryan's wife, jennifer, was forced to raise their little girl alone. six months after bryan went missing, she gave birth to another daughter. >> i just couldn't move on. i was stuck in that realm of grief until i knew what had happened to him. >> one year later, hikers discovered human remains in a camping area about 50 miles from the kennecott mine. >> at first, i just thought it was just rocks and then i thought maybe it was a dead guy. >> he still had his security outfit on, his wallet and everything intact. >> that's him. bryan patrick ruff. >> i got a phone call from the detectives and i asked them, i said, is it bryan? he said, yeah, it's bryan. and that's when my world fell apart. >> dental records confirmed the victim was bryan ruff.
11:17 pm
an autopsy showed he had been shot five times in the back. >> i thought that somehow he had gotten in the middle of something illegal and they killed him for that. >> search teams found five spent shells from a .22-caliber pistol near the body. investigators believe bryan was shot just a few feet from where he was buried in a shallow grave. >> the next day, they're out there working again, and one of the dogs from the k-9 unit recovers a boot, a black cowboy boot, that was identified as bryan's work boot. that was recovered about 200 feet east of the grave site. never did find a second boot. >> but so much time had passed and so much rain and snow had fallen that no other clues were found at the scene.
11:18 pm
>> it's really frustrating. there is no other way to put it. >> with no evidence to tie anyone to the crime, the case went cold and the years passed. until 14 years later, when todd park, a cold case detective with the salt lake county sheriff's office, received a telephone call from authorities in neighboring carbon county. >> when that call came in, it gave me, i guess, a fresh breath of air to look at another case and to -- to really dig into it. >> police in carbon county were investigating dale bradley on the suspicion of murdering his second wife, crystal. dale had been a suspect in bryan ruff's murder 14 years earlier. on a hunch, todd park contacted dale's first wife, kristi, who was now living in texas.
11:19 pm
>> she was surprised the case hadn't been solved, because dale told her somebody else had already been arrested for it, and she just assumed the case was done. >> but that obviously was a lie. and kristi told police something she hadn't mentioned during the original investigation. she said the day after bryan went missing, dale cleaned the inside of his car. >> he had never cleaned out that trunk as long as she had known him, as long as he had owned that camaro. >> why would dale do this? police wondered if bryan ruff had been inside that trunk. >> was there blood? was he shot in the car and wrapped in a blanket and looking for trace evidence, looking for blood in the car? >> but after 14 years, could police find dale bradley's camaro? honestly? i wanted a smartphone that shoots great video.
11:20 pm
so i got the new nokia lumia icon. it's got 1080p video, three times zoom, and a twenty-megapixel sensor. it's got the brightest display, so i can see what i'm shooting -- even outdoors, and 4 mics that capture incredible sound. plus, it has apps like vine -- and free cloud storage. my new lumia icon is so great, even our wipeouts look amazing. ♪ honestly, i want to see you be brave ♪ ♪ from a simple misstep, to tripping over a rug, to just losing their balance. and not being able to get up from a fall can have serious, lifetime consequences. being prepared is important. philips lifeline with autoalert is more than just a medical alert button. it's an advanced fall detection system designed to get you help quickly. if you fall and you're unable to push your button, the fall detection technology within autoalert can trigger the button to automatically place a call for help. our us-based staff will make sure you get the help
11:21 pm
you need right away. this is philips lifeline. we received a fall-detected signal. do you need help? call now about philips lifeline with autoalert, the only button with philips' advanced fall detection technology. we'll send you this free information kit about the importance of getting help quickly, should you happen to fall. when i fell, i couldn't press the button. i blacked out. and so having lifeline with autoalert really saved me. if they don't push the button, they're not able to push the button, it takes over and gets them the help that they need. multiple sensors inside autoalert can recognize the differences between your everyday movements and a fall. so if a fall does happen, and you're unable to push your button, autoalert can detect it and automatically place a call for help. autoalert is comfortable yet discreet, so you can wear it at all times. and because it's waterproof, you can even wear it in the shower or bathtub where many serious falls happen. over seven million people have benefitted from the lifeline service. no wonder it's recommended by over 100,000
11:22 pm
healthcare professionals nationwide. now is the time to be prepared. sooner or later, everyone falls. make sure you have autoalert before it happens. if you or someone you love would like information about philips lifeline with autoalert, call now for your free information kit and ask about free activation when you order.
11:23 pm
14 years after bryan ruff's murder, investigators never lost hope they would solve the case. >> the thing about bryan, he was a very good kid, and i think he would have been able to really make something of his life and his family if he was able to continue on in life. and that was cut short. >> when investigators heard that
11:24 pm
their original suspect, dale bradley, was now a suspect in yet another murder investigation, they decided to look once again at the evidence. and this time, on bryan ruff's boot, the one they found in the mountains near his burial site, they spotted something, some kind of scuff mark on the bottom of the boot that looked like reddish orange paint. >> when i saw that swatch of paint, it just flashed back to me that that was the same color of paint on dale bradley's car. and i got excited and i kind of got butterflies and thought, i got him. >> forensic scientist bill schneck examined this paint with a stereo microscope. >> and i noticed it was a smear, it wasn't like paint chips on the boot, it was smeared into the leather on the bottom of the boot. there was tremendous force to get that paint spear onto the bottom of his boot. >> was it the kind of force
11:25 pm
caused by trying to kick your way out of the trunk of a car, for example? bill schneck needed to know if the bakers of dale bradley's cam mayor -- camaro had painted the inside of the trunk. luckily, he had a friend who restored old cars. >> he just happened to have a '75 camaro when i was there. so they popped the trunk, and indeed, they had original paint in the trunk. that was useful. >> dale bradley drove a 1974 camaro at the time of bryan's murder. the mission now was to find it. >> they, through a lot of investigation, found that the car had been sold. >> unfortunately, two years after bryan's murder, the new owner sold the car for scrap metal. >> it's in little cubes. it's been melted down. >> but an examination of the case file revealed a surprise. 14 years earlier, an alert detective had taken paint samples from dale's car. >> i just took him -- because
11:26 pm
there wasn't really much else to take. >> bill schneck took paint samples from the boot and the car and placed them on slides with an immersion liquid. this eliminated any air trapped between the sample and the slide. using a polarizing light microscope magnified up to 1,000 times, schneck saw the paint was a lead chromate paint. >> and i contacted the national institute of science and technology and received a paint chip known standard on a '74 camaro. >> using a scanning electron microscope, schneck now did a three-way comparison. he examined paint from the boot, from the car, and from the file sample of a 1974 camaro. all were identical. and with this evidence, dale bradley was arrested and charged with bryan ruff's murder.
11:27 pm
>> it was shocking that anybody could do something so horrific, let alone somebody that claimed to be a good friend. >> prosecutors believe dale either knew or strongly suspected bryan ruff was having an affair with his wife, kristi, and was afraid she was going to leave him. >> i think he was so angry that kristi and bryan betrayed him that he was going to make him pay. >> the forensic evidence suggests dale's plan was to eliminate the person he perceived to be his competition. since he knew bryan's hours and when there would be the least amount of traffic, he knew exactly when to strike. dale probably forced bryan into the trunk at gunpoint. bryan tried to kick his way out
11:28 pm
of the trunk during the 30-minute drive when a piece of the paint became embedded in his boot. when dale got to the burial spot, prosecutors think he ordered bryan to remove his boots so he couldn't run away. he then forced him over to a shallow grave, which prosecutors think he dug earlier that day. then shot him with a .22-caliber pistol. the murder weapon was never recovered. >> it was so typical of dale's personality to be a coward enough to shoot somebody in the back and not face him when he was going to take his life. >> the paint and circumstantial evidence were difficult for dale bradley to refute. he agreed to plead guilty to
11:29 pm
second-degree manslaughter and kidnapping and was sentenced to 40 years in prison. what bradley didn't realize was that bryan's boot held an important piece of evidence that told a story. dale bradley remains a suspect in the murder of his second wife. it's ironic, in a way, that bryan ruff's desperate efforts in the trunk of dale's car resulted in the capture of his own killer. >> just one little thing, that's all it takes. in this case, it turned out to be the paint samples, coupled with all the circumstantial evidence in this case and the physical evidence that you have. that was just a clincher in this case. >> even today, though, there's a lot of detectives just focusing so much on dna, they're forgetting all of the other avenues that could be approached with trace evidence such as forensic examination. >> i'm glad there are people
11:30 pm
willing to continue looking at these cases that you're not going to get away with murder, and that the more they try to cover up some of their tracks, the more tracks they leave. >> up next, three college students are murdered. it looks as if one person killed them all. >> he picked on pretty women. >> not everyone was convinced he won the lottery. >> if he's going to brag about three, why not four? >> he mentioned all the other cases but not hsuehshan shoemaker. >> questions remained until decades old evidence revealed the terrible truth. >> it's a horrifying thing to think there's more than one monster in your community at one time.

141 Views

2 Favorites

info Stream Only

Uploaded by TV Archive on