she was stunned and shocked, and that's all she really had to say at that point. she hasn't really spoken with anyone since. >> i've never seen a case like this before this and i hope to never see a case like this after this >> until one tiny clue turns the case around. it was after midnight on a chilly march evening when virginia russell was driving home from a party with her

boyfriend, rodney hartman. the couple had been dating for three years and were talking about getting married, but on this night, tragedy struck. >> look out! >> she was thrown from the car. the car flipped like eight times, and they were both ejected from the car. >> when an ambulance arrived, they pronounced rodney hartman dead at the scene. virginia was rushed to the hospital. for 48 hours, virginia hovered between life and death, but she survived. toxicology tests showed virginia had a blood alcohol level of 0.16, almost twice the legal limit. >> they had charged her with the felony dui. >> virginia was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison for vehicular homicide. >> it was hard enough that she had lost somebody in her life,

and then to be doing time for it and be taken away from her family again, i mean, it was a very difficult time for virginia. >> when virginia was released from prison, she told her family she found work cleaning houses. one evening, while spending time with her family, virginia got a message on her pager at 8:54 p.m. >> yeah, i can do that. >> we asked her where she was going, and she tells us that she has to go clean a house for an individual. we said our good-byes and hugged her and told her we loved her, and she told us that as well and it was the last time. >> early the next morning, a man walking his dog found a woman's body near an athletic field in rosewood, south carolina.

the victim had been shot three times, execution style in the head. two shell casings were found nearby. fingerprints identified the victim as virginia russell. >> pretty shocking. she hadn't been out two months when this incident happened. >> she was missing her right shoe. there was no dirt or debris on her foot, but her stockings were ripped and she had scrapes on her knees. the missing shell casing indicated virginia may have been shot once in another location and then dragged to where she was shot two more times. >> there's obviously more to this homicide than just this one particular location where the body was found. >> police found two empty beer bottles 20 feet from virginia's body.

no one was sure if they were connected to the murder. they also found a single hair on virginia's body. there was no sign of sexual assault, but two purses were found near the body. >> there weren't but $2 in change in the purses, so investigators believe that part of the motive may have been robbery. >> a background check stunned virginia's family. her real profession wasn't cleaning houses. she was a call girl. >> it was a total shock. but then again, i guess virginia had to do what she needed to do, because it was very difficult for her to find work because of her background. >> as the family coped with the tragedy, investigators were forced to deal with a problem of their own. virginia's profession meant a large list of potential suspects.

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investigators found virginia russell's car in an abandoned parking lot two miles from the location of her body.

there was a single shell casing inside. >> obviously, she was initially shot in the vehicle. you could see the blood spatter that went throughout the car, consistent with her having been shot in the head. >> on the passenger floorboard spattered with blood was a potential clue. >> we found a six-pack of michelob beer, that the carton was still there, but it had one bottle, full bottle, still left in the carton. >> this was the same brand of beer as the two beer bottles found near virginia's body. blood inside the door confirmed virginia had been dragged from the car. her missing shoe was on the driver's side floorboard. in a search for virginia's killer, investigators wanted to know who had paged her on the night of her death.

the call was traced to this apartment, rented by 27-year-old justin bullard, who owned an aquarium cleaning business. justin bullard denied any involvement in the murder and said he never met virginia. he had no criminal history. >> mr. bullard's alibi was he was home alone. and the problem with that was him being home alone and no one else to corroborate him being there at the time. >> with the search warrant, investigators found a wealth of evidence inside his apartment. >> we find in his apartment a .380-caliber pistol. >> the pistol, registered to justin bullard, was apparently the same caliber as the gun used in virginia's murder. and investigators found something else. >> there are several pages ripped out of the phone book, and each of those pages relate to escort services and phone

numbers for escort services. >> on a pair of bullard's boots, analysts noticed some slight discoloration. the boots were examined under a microscope. they were stained with what appeared to be high-impact blood spatter. >> high-impact spatter might be invisible. if the surface that it's deposited on is absorbant or dark in color, it's very likely that it would be very difficult to simply visualize it. >> dna tests on the bloody boots tied them to virginia's murder. >> the swabs were subjected to pcr testing and the results came back consistent with the victim. >> whoever was wearing those boots was probably in contact with the victim at the time she was murdered. >> next, investigators tested bullard's handgun. >> the firearm that was submitted to me was a russian-manufactured makarov

semiautomatic fire, chambered to fire .380-caliber ammunition. >> the test casings from the gun were examined with a comparison microscope. viewed side by side, the shell casings left no doubt the murder weapon was justin bullard's gun. >> the boots were mr. bullard's. the gun was mr. bullard's. the last phone call from the victim was to mr. bullard's apartment. >> but despite the overwhelming evidence, bullard not only denied he was the killer, he came up with the incredible tale that someone must have stolen all his things, committed the crime, then returned them. that's correct. cause i'm really nervous about getting trapped. why's that? uh, mark? go get help!

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the prime suspect in virginia russell's murder was justin bullard. inside bullard's apartment, investigators found all the evidence they needed for a conviction. virginia's blood was found on bullard's boots. his handgun was the murder weapon. names and phone numbers of escort services were near his telephone. and virginia russell was paged from bullard's phone just hours before her murder.

>> looks like rambo, acts like rambo and dresses like rambo, it may be rambo. >> bullard claimed a roommate might have committed this crime with items taken from his apartment. bullard said he had allowed a friend to live with him temporarily because the electricity in his friend's apartment had been turned off due to lack of payment. as preposterous as this seemed, it took on more significance when prosecutor knox mcmahon learned of a similar crime that happened three days before virginia's death. a call girl went to an apartment to meet a client. she said there were no lights on in the apartment, only candles. >> did you call for a date? >> the client wouldn't identify

himself but asked her to undress. then, without warning, he pulled a knife and demanded money. >> he then tells her to run and don't look back. she is only partially clothed. >> the apartment was leased to a known drug addict, roy beck. but was he the perpetrator? the victim was shown a photo lineup. >> she positively identified roy beck. the physical description she gave fit roy beck. >> that's the guy. >> it did not fit mr. bullard. >> coincidently, roy beck was the friend justin bullard said was living with him at the time of virginia russell's murder. that meant two suspects were staying in the apartment that was the source of all the evidence in virginia russell's murder. >> you definitely have two people.

bullard owns the gun, owns the boots. it's his apartment. and roy beck is staying there and has access to these items also. >> there was no root on the hair found on virginia's body, so scientists couldn't perform genetic dna testing. all analysts could say was that visually, it looked more similar to beck's hair than bullard's. but inside roy beck's apartment, the one with no electricity that the call girl visited, police found a potential clue. >> we found three bottles of michelob beer. >> so, now you have two michelob light beers at the body scene, one unopened and a carton in virginia russell's car and three at beck's unpowered apartment. >> scientists swabbed the beer bottles from the murder scene, looking for a possible connection.

unfortunately, they didn't find enough saliva or skin cells to generate a dna profile. >> testing for saliva at that time on the mouth of a beer bottle wasn't as commonly done as it is today. >> the bottles were then subjected to super glue fuming. these fumes will adhere to finger oils and often produce quality prints. >> glass is a very smooth surface, and the residue that builds up on the ridges and the fingers and in the palms of the hands will easily transfer from the surface of the hand onto the glass surface, and that glass surface will hold it. >> after 15 minutes in the fuming chamber, one partial palmprint emerged on one of the bottles found near virginia's body. this partial print didn't match virginia russell, justin bullard or roy beck.

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the forensic evidence from virginia russell's murder pointed to justin bullard. the gun, the bloody shoes, the telephone calls to the escort service from his apartment. but bullard had no criminal record and no apparent motive.

some of the circumstantial evidence pointed to his friend, roy beck. the beer bottles in his apartment were the same brand as those found next to virginia russell's body. and the background check revealed beck was addicted to crack cocaine. >> he was a drug addict, and obviously, to feed that dragon, you've got to have a lot of cash. >> prosecutor knox mcmahon thought the beer bottles at beck's apartment and those found at the crime scene were too much of a coincidence, so he decided to take a second look. >> if you look at those beer bottles, there is a born-on date, and there is a code under the born-on date. >> the date was october 22, 1996, followed by the letters "wf." >> "w" is the geographic location, in this case williamsburg, virginia. within williamsburg, virginia, there are multiple lines within

the plant and "f" designates which line the bottling took place on. >> but the key piece of the information was the final part of the label, the number 58. at the time, the williamsburg brewery produced 600 cases of beer every 15 minutes, and each of these 15-minute periods was given a number. >> 58 meant the 58th 15-minute period of a 24-hour day, which was 2:15 to 2:30. >> with over a million beers bottled at the brewery every day, only 1% were bottled in any 15-minute period, so only 14,000 bottles would have the same code. so, what would be the chances that roy beck would have three bottles of beer in his apartment with the same code as the bottle found inside virginia russell's car and the two next to virginia's body?

>> the probability of that happening was incredibly small. you would have to have all the people involved at the same location at the same time buying the same beer. >> the odds of the beer bottles coming from different six-packs were more than 1 in 32 million. >> these six beers came from the same six-pack. >> roy beck was arrested and charged with virginia russell's murder. prosecutors say beck, desperate for money, called the escort service to arrange for an outcall, which means the girl would go to the customer's home. the first time he called the escort service, he asked that the girl meet him in his own apartment. when she arrived, beck robbed her of a couple of hundred dollars at knifepoint, then let her go.

without power, beck moved in temporarily with justin bullard. and when he needed more money for drugs, called the escort service again, this time from bullard's phone, and set up the meeting with virginia russell. >> sure. >> he took bullard's boots and gun and the beer from his own apartment. when virginia arrived, beck got into her car, and they went to a deserted location. each drank a beer and threw the empty bottles out the window. prosecutors think beck was acquainted with virginia from a previous meeting and decided to kill her so she wouldn't identify him. blood spattered on the remaining beer bottle and on the boots beck had stolen from bullard. beck dragged virginia's body onto the road, then shot her two

more times. he stole all the money from her purses, then drove virginia's car two miles away, where he abandoned it. beck later returned bullard's blood-spattered boots and gun to bullard's apartment without him knowing it, setting him up for the crime. but beck didn't know that the three bottles of beer left in his apartment would tie him to the bottles at the murder site and to one in virginia's car. >> it was very significant in this investigation. it -- it was the one thing that could really put beck at every crime -- at all three crime scenes. >> at his trial, roy beck insisted justin bullard was the killer, but the science showed otherwise.

>> i, myself, did not feel it was bullard when he was on the stand and all. i mean, just the look in his eyes. i felt like it was beck the whole time. >> roy beck was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. investigators described this as one of their most unusual cases. two suspects, each connected to the crime by the same evidence, until something as seemingly insignificant as the label on a beer bottle showed who was lying and who was telling the truth. >> that's what sank him, just those bottles of beer. i guess he didn't have that in his plan. >> the beer bottles themselves ended up being one of the more telling aspects of the case. and it's very unusual to be able to help solve the crime by the use of beer bottles and the date they were made.

it's very unusual. >> that's just the type of circumstantial evidence that you just don't get every day, that you just don't see every day, that people can look at it, and see it, touch it and relate to it. oakwood, illinois is a quiet, small town of less than a thousand residents. and little, if any, violent crime.