unlike closing arguments in court we are up against a time limit here. >> we are see you next monday night. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com up next, police hear an incredible story. >> a man claims he his mother was killed by a hitchhiker he picked up. the son says he's telling the truth but refuses to take a polygraph. >> what does he have to hide? >> we have proof. >> what proof? >> can forensic science provide the answers? >> this is probably one of the most bizarre cases i've been involved in.

shortly after midnight, charles holden returned home from work and saw a suspicious looking man lurking outside the home he shared with his mother. instead of confronting the man, he drove to a pay phone and called police. >> is anybody out there at your house? >> my mother's next door to my trailer and she lives alone. i'd like to get somebody out there as soon as i can because i don't want him to break into my mother's. >> when police arrived, they discovered a window had been broken. inside they found the man's mother dead in her bedroom. >> it was a very bloody and brutal crime scene. blood everywhere, blood spatters throughout the bedroom. >> she had been stabbed repeatedly in the chest and face. >> this is what i would consider to be overkill. and this can suggest that this is a person that has a close relationship with the person and

knows that person and is very intimate, could possibly be intimate with that person. >> but the way the body was arranged, it looked like the victim had been sexually assaulted. but the medical examiner found no evidence of it. >> so this made investigators think that maybe the way the body was found, that maybe the scene had been staged. >> there were no valuables missing from the house, and dorothy's purse was untouched. >> so that ruled out the robbery motive or possible theft gone bad. >> dorothy donovan, twice widowed with seven grandchildren was an unlikely victim of violence. and her family said she had no known enemies. >> it's a very safe farming community. people knew each other. most people didn't even lock their doors. >> dorothy's grown son charles who had called police to the scene made an unusual comment when he saw his mother's body. >> he made the statement, i

can't believe he killed her. i can't believe he killed her. >> and charles now told investigators that he knew the man walking outside his mother's home. he said it was someone who had asked him for a ride earlier that night and got angry when he refused. charles claimed he might have killed his mother for revenge. >> those things just don't happen, that you would pick up a hitchhiker and then all of a sudden he ends up at your house and your mother's dead. >> what you said happened doesn't make sense. it doesn't make sense for it to happen that way. >> at that point, i really wasn't buying into it. >> you're not believable, charles. you're saying the words, but you're not convincing. >> i'm telling the truth. >> no, you're not. >> police now questioned whether this man even existed.

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when police found 70 year old dorothy donovan brutally murdered, her son charles told police a story so implausible no

one believed him. charles claimed that on the night of his mother's murder, he worked the 4:00 to 11:00 shift at his factory and then got a hamburger. while walking to his truck, he was approached by a man who was looking for a ride to georgetown. he said he wasn't going that far but was headed in that direction. after driving a few miles, charles told the man that was as far as he was going and that he'd have to get out. charles said this, because he lived just a half-mile away and didn't want the hitchhiker to know which house was his. but the man became angry. charles got out of his truck.

the hitchhiker grabbed a screwdriver he found on the floor and the fight continued outside. charles claimed the man threatened to kill him if he didn't drive him the whole way. so charles agreed. as they made their way back to the truck, charles got in first. >> charles was able to pull away before the hitchhiker could get to the passenger side of the vehicle. he drove off leaving the hitchhiker standing in the intersection. >> shaken by the experience, charles said he drove around for a while instead of going straight home. >> he doesn't want to go right home because he's afraid that the hitchhiker's going to see him and know where he lives. >> about 20 minutes later charles drove up the driveway to his home and to his shock and surprise, he saw the hitchhiker walking around his property. that's when he went to call police. >> the type of weapon was never conclusively determined by the medical examiner, just that it was a cutting instrument.

it could have been consistent with a screwdriver or a knife. >> there are a lot of things going through investigators' minds thinking that the story that charles is telling is just not adding up. >> when charles was finished with his story, police gave them their unvarnished opinion. >> you're telling us about a black man who assaulted you at the intersection and then minutes later murdered your mother. that's what you're trying to get us to believe, and i'm just saying it's just not logical. i don't think it's physically possible for that black man to get to your intersection, to your house, kill your mother in the time it takes you to ride from the intersection to your house. it's just not possible, charles. it's not believable. >> and how did the hitchhiker know where charles lived? after all, there were other homes in the area. and the hitchhiker not only had to walk a half-mile, he also would have had to make a turn in the road.

>> the story was so difficult to believe, because how did this person pick this house, number one. and picking this house, why did he go in and kill this person that was laying in bed? >> he was certainly taken aback by my accusation that he had something to do with his mother's death. but i felt that's the way the interview needed to go. because it just didn't seem logical or likely that the events that he was describing actually took place. >> and investigators also discovered a possible financial motive. >> shortly before dorothy's murder, dorothy had taken out an accidental death insurance policy, and charles was named the beneficiary of that policy. >> charles holden did have some financial problems at the time of this incident with some farming debt that he'd incurred over the past year and this was benefitting him so he could pay off those debts.

>> even more incriminating, charles who had no criminal record, refused to take a polygraph. >> anytime someone refuses to take a polygraph, that always adds suspicion to that individual. what's he trying to hide? maybe he didn't kill his mother, but maybe he knew who did. >> it didn't take lock for investigators to find evidence at the crime scene. evidence left by the killer. >> charles, you're not telling the truth. >> yes, i am. >> you wouldn't come in and say this. we just wouldn't do it if we briefed it happened any other way. >> no, i did not. >> and we have proof. >> what proof? >> that proof was left on the handrail of dorothy's farmhouse. >> there was a bloody palm print on the railing, which turned out to be the most important clue of this case. >> going to be your fingerprint. >> there were other bloody

fingerprints in the farmhouse, but those weren't as clear. >> it was a good print, even though it was slightly fragmented. it was not the entire palm. it was only a small section of a palm print. >> when investigators compared the bloody palm print to charles' prints, they got an unpleasant surprise. >> the palm print was compared to charles holden's known prints, and it was not a match. >> investigators now had to face the possibility that charles' story might actually be true. [ male announcer ] nothing says, "you're my #1 copilot," like a milk-bone biscuit. ♪ say it with milk-bone.

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investigators still believed charles holden had something to do with his mother's murder and may have hired someone to kill her. >> even though there was the forensic evidence, it didn't match charles holden. there could have been some connection between charles holden and the person who committed the murder. >> investigators suspected that the hired killer might have been the man with charles at the fast food restaurant. >> detectives went back and were able to locate some of the people who were in the parking lot that night. and they were able to find that there was in fact a black male walking through the parking lot, looking for a ride and actually did see this person get in the car with charles.

>> investigators asked charles to describe the hitchhiker. and from that description, police created this composite sketch. the large glasses were the most distinctive part of the image. investigators looked for criminals who fit this description. and put together a photo lineup. >> charles picked an individual by the name of rich mitchell out of this lineup. also three other witness from the hardee's that night picked out mitchell as the hitchhiker. >> 33 year old richard mitchell looked remarkably like the composite drawing. and he'd' been arrested a number of times for forgery and petty theft. >> we were pretty optimistic that we had found the person who might have committed this crime. >> investigators found mitchell

at his home in delaware. and they knew immediately this was a dead end. >> as soon as i saw richard mitchell, i knew he was not our guy. he had a full beard. and the suspect we're looking for was clean shaven. >> furthermore, mitchell's palm prints didn't match the print from the crime scene. he also had an alibi. >> as it turned out, he was not our man. >> back at the crime scene, investigators found another clue. blood on the light switch in the victim's living room was not the victim's blood. presumably, it belonged to the killer. >> he could have cut his hand on the door when it broke the glass to reach in to unlock the door to get into the house. >> a sample of the blood was sent to the fbi's forensic lab which confirmed it didn't belong to the victim's son charles or any of the other suspects in the case. >> certainly is a frustrating situation when you know you have

good evidence, and you just can't match it up. >> it was very frustrating. you have a lot of anger. you have so many questions. >> despite his denials, suspicions remained that charles holden still might have had something to do with his mother's murder. >> even though several witnesses had corroborated charles holden's story about this hitchhiker, investigators still felt the situation was too unbelievable to have happened the way charles said. and felt that charles may still have been involve in this incident. >> more than ten years after the murder, the state of delaware was able to access codis. >> it's actually a software suite. and what it does is blends forensic science and computer technology to aid in investigations of crime. >> and when the fbi entered the dna profile of dorothy donovan's

killer, they finally got a match. >> this was our home run hit, if you will. it was great. we were ecstatic. >> i really couldn't believe it. it was only in there for one week, and now she's calling me back and telling me that already we have a match. >> the dna matched a career criminal named gilbert cannon who was living in delaware at the time of dorothy's murder. in the interim, he'd served time in prison for drug and robbery charges but had been released. but by this time, no one seemed to know where he was or even if he was still alive. around here you don't make excuses. you make commitments. and when you can't live up to them, you own up, and make it right. some people think the kind of accountability that thrives on so many streets in this country

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a dna database match identified gilbert cannon, a career criminal as dorothy donovan's killer. he bother a striking resemblance to the composite drawing created more than a decade earlier. >> they had some mug shots of him from back in the early '90s, and they matched quite well with what gilbert cannon had looked like back around 1991. >> but they identified him as the source of the dna. he had been released from prison for a robbery conviction and no one knew where he was. eventually, police found him at

a girl friend's house, just 40 miles from dorothy donovan's farmhouse. >> took us about two and a half months to finally locate gilbert cannon. >> but cannon adamantly denied any involvement in the murder. >> i'm not going to sit here and say that i killed somebody or that i was even there. >> investigators knew cannon's dna was at the crime scene. but they also took his finger

and palm prints for comparison. >> i had suggested that when they took it to make sure that they rolled the palm towards the outside to cover any of the area we may need in question. >> rod higman compared this fresh print to the print on the handrail in dorothy donovan's house. the result was clear. the print belonged to gilbert cannon, and he was confronted with the evidence against him. >> one thing i can tell you is you were there. it's impossible for you not to be there, gilbert. we're just telling you. on tape, that is your dna. no ifs ands or buts. no one else's. it's a perfect match. i don't know what you were doing back then. i have no idea. and we were actually hoping to sit down and get -- because gilbert, you know. >> like i said. i ain't killed nobody. that ain't even me. >> a few hours later cannon reconsidered. >> he knocked on the window of the holding cell and advised investigators that he wanted to talk to investigators. >> basically, i don't know if it was the drugs or whatever. i honestly, i mean, don't have any reason to lie about it then.

>> cannon told police that on the night of the murder, he was high on cocaine and looking for more. and that's when he ran into charles holden at the fast food restaurant. holden agreed to give him a ride but refused to take cannon all the way into town. there was a fight. cannon found a screwdriver in the truck. and the fight continued outside. eventually, charles holden agreed to drive cannon the rest of the way. but charles managed to get back into the truck first and took off. cannon said he had no choice but to walk down the road in the same direction. he said he passed a few houses, but they all had lights on. looking for a place to sleep, he stopped at the first house that

looked empty. when he broke in through the back door, he woke the homeowner, dorothy donovan. cannon was afraid she'd be able to identify him, so he used the screwdriver he took from charles' truck and stabbed charles' mother to death in a drug fueled rage. he left his palm print and dna inside the home. charles saw him on the property and called police, convinced that cannon had somehow followed him. cannon claims it was just a coincidence that he chose dorothy's house. he was unaware of any keck between dorothy and charles. >> investigators asked him if anyone else was with him, if he knew charles holden, did anybody

ask him to do it. and his response to investigators was no. that he acted alone. >> when they told cannon that charles was my mother's son, he was totally surprised. that was such a relief to us. that showed us that charles was not connected with him. >> in the face of a possible death sentence, gilbert cannon pleaded guilty to first degree murder and was sentenced to life without parole. the science proved not only that gilbert cannon was guilty, but that charles holden, a man kind enough to give a ride to a stranger, had nothing to do with his mother's murder. >> charles holden was exonerated because of the advancements in the computer technology and the forensic technology. >> this is probably one of the most bizarre cases i've been involved in, just because of the what you thought were conflicting stories at the beginning. >> being able to provide them some closure with the help of

science. and the state police is incredible. >> it the police had not done such a really outstanding job in pursuing this for so many years, that cannon would probably still be walking free. >> they know that her atm card had been used, and she looked very calm. >> she's alive now. maybe she'll be alive five minutes from now. >> but police soon lose the trail. >> investigators use the only tools they have to find the victims. >> they need to act quickly in order to try and save their lives.