25-year-old that had a bright future. in front of her. she came from a good family. and had a good social network. had everything in the word to live for. and in one instance, this cold-blooded killer takes her life. up next, a body is burned beyond recognition. >> there was nothing to identify this person. >> unique construction material provides a clue. >> this laster is not like normal plaster. >> i was saying, what is this? is this something i've never seen before. >> but who was the victim and who wanted him dead? >> i have to somehow arti artistically interpret what has changed from the fire. just after midnight one christmas eve, motorists along route 83 near baltimore reported a brush fire just off the southbound lane.

a volunteer firefighter was first on the scene. >> he climbed down the embankment which is a steep embankment. he walked his way towards the fire. when he got there, at first he thought it was a mannequin or something of that sort. but as he got closer he realized it was a human being. >> after the fire was extinguished, the victim was unable to be unidentified other than to say he was a black male. >> there was no wallet, there was nothing on this person to immediately identify who this body was. >> the scent of accelerant was unmistakable. >> we had found a can that was next to the body that we came to understand was an accelerant that had been helped to light the fire. >> underneath the body was a partially melted sheet of

plastic tarp. >> it was a two-person job. that one person carrying a dead human body down that embankment over a guard rail and the distance that it had to go, especially with the icy conditions. no way one person do have done it. it had to be a two-person job. >> there's every indication that we had what we call a dump scene, where they dumped the body. >> medical examiner discovered that the victim had been shot three times in the head. the bullets exited the man's skull. since no debris was found in the man's lungs, the medical examiner knew the man was dead before the fire started. >> it was clear that the hands were duct taped. the feet were duct taped. that this person was being burned beyond recognition. >> so investigators took the unusual step of trying to

generate a compost sketch from what little remained. >> we knew and recognized until we could identify this victim, we're not going to be able to really get our wheels moving in the investigation. >> fortunately, the skull was impact. so measurements such as the brow lines, height of the cheekbones, the length and width of the jaw survived. >> the victim had received three gunshot wounds to the head so that the teeth, for the most part, were gone. and there was significant burning on. the one side of the face, charring on the other side of the face, and then a swelling from the intense heat of the fire. >> a small part of the victim's cornrow hair style remained intact which helped detective lang create more a more

likeness. in two days, detective lang finished his sketch. >> a little bit of art. >> it wouldn't have been possible to get this image. >> another 15 minutes of fire and it would have been a very different case. >> the image was released to media outlets throughout the region. three days after the crime, a woman from harrisburg, pennsylvania, called saying the drawing resembled her boyfriend, 26-year-old wesley person. >> she commented that the composite did not depict an earring that was in his left ear. that was a feature i intentionally left out of the composite. >> investigators were already familiar with wesley person. >> this wasn't the first time i came across wesley person. i dealt with wesley person about six years before this. i was the prosecutor of wesley for a drug trafficking case. >> person's prints were on file from that arrest, and were compared to partial prints that

survived the fire. >> most of his fingers had been burned away with the exception of two of his fingers that were partially protected by the garment that had been pulled over his body and used to bind him up. >> the prints matched, wesley person. investigators now knew the identity of their victim, but to expose his killers, they had to find the actual murder scene. there is only one way to celebrate this unique similarity. witness the cheesesteak shuffle. ♪ cheesesteak, cheesesteak ♪ ♪ it's the cheesesteak shuffle! huh! ♪ ♪ every day, all day, cheesesteak, cheesesteak! ♪ ♪ every night, all night cheesesteak, cheesesteak! ♪ ♪ 9 a.m. cheesesteak! ♪ 2 p.m. cheesesteak! ♪ 4 a.m. cheesesteak! ♪ any time (ruh!) >>geico. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance.

there was no mystery as to how wesley person was murdered. he was shot three times in the head execution style. and then his body was set on fire along a highway in maryland. >> they had no witnesses, all they had essentially were these charred remains off the side of the road. that's about it. >> investigators learned that wesley's cousin was one of the last to see him. the two went christmas shopping together. and he said that wesley was carrying a large amount of cash. >> i can't say how much it was, because i don't know, but he pulled out a nice wad. and when he was peeling, he was looking to see if he had a 20,

but he didn't. all he had was 50s and 100s. >> wesley's cousin said when they were finished shopping, wesley left with friends whom he didn't know. he said there seemed to be some tension among them. >> they go to the back of the car and they talk. when they're talking back there, it's an intense conversation. >> it wasn't an argument, but you could see that he was talking like he was either frustrated or angry, but it wasn't loud. >> the three men drove off. and the next day wesley person was dead. police questioned wesley's family and learned that the men matching the description were wesley's longtime friends justin glover and lawrence morale.

both men were in their early 20s and like wesley had minor brushes with the law but had never served time. and had no violent offenses. >> my understanding, they had known each other going back to when person lived in new york. >> when questioned by police, both men denied any involvement in wesley as murder. they said they dropped wesley off at his house. and that was the last time they saw him. >> shopping bags of recent purchases from that morning that wesley had were found in the house. we feel certain that wesley person did make it back to the house. >> police obtained a search warrant and checked every room. >> we've luminoled that house top to bottom. we could find nothing. absolutely nothing in that house, that gave us any indication he was shot and killed there. >> police also checked lawrence morel's car, the one wesley person got into after christmas

shopping. >> we checked the trunk and interior of the car for any evidence of shooting scene. any evidence of trace blood or anything. couldn't find anything in the car. >> then investigators found a potential clue. at wesley person's autopsy, they found some material inside the plastic tarp next to his body. >> the medical examiner finds that in the small of the victim's back was a great deal of construction debris that came out of the fire unscathed. >> it consisted of small bits of painted drywall and some chunks of plaster. >> they were about the size of a thumbnail. now, this plaster was not like normal plaster. >> what made it abonormal were these thread-like strands embedded in every piece.

>> i would say, hmm, i wonder what that is? is this something that's important or something i've never seen before. it was a curious nature that led me to pull it out of other samples. >> trace analyst kasandra burke extracted these threads. and looked at them. >> as soon as i looked at them under the microscopes i could tell they were animal bears. >> prior to the 1940s, animal hairs were commonly used in laster. this meant that the murder site was probably in a house built before 1940. unfortunately, there were thousands of them. female announcer: what will you get with your new sleep train mattress?

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beam us up. ♪ that's my phone. hey. [ female announcer ] the x1 entertainment operating system, only from xfinity. tv and internet together like never before. on the day wesley person went missing, his cousin told police wesley had been carrying a large amount of cash and left the shopping mall with his friends justin glover and lawrence morrell. but police wondered why did wesley person have so much car even though he was unemployed. a background check revealed wesley was being investigated for bank fraud by a local credit union, as were his friends,

justin glover and lawrence morrell. >> they were involved in a bank scheme. and essentially what the bank scheme involved was using falsified records to obtain loans. and they would take the loan money and pocket it. >> the alleged scam utilized the front person. usually a young woman looking to buy a used car. after getting a loan from the credit union, she wouldn't buy the car. instead, she'd split the money with wesley person and his partners. when the loan wasn't repaid, the credit union couldn't repossess the car for non-payment because no car had been purchased. the scam ruined the woman's credit rating, but wesley an his partners walked walked away unscathed. >> a lot of people in the banking community were giving out loans without a lot of background investigation. >> during a two-year persiod,

wesley person and his two partners embezzled about $120,000. was it possible that a falling-out among the three scam artists was the motive for murder. >> disrespect always plays a part in a lot of murders in this community. if these guys were pure businessmen, they wouldn't have killed him. >> a background check of wesley's friends reveal an interesting coincidence. lawrence morrell was involved in the construction business. he'd buy distressed residential properties in harrisburg, pennsylvania, fix them up, and then sell them for a profit. >> the victim was wrapped in plastic. construction plastic. plastic that would be consistent with someone who is rehabbing a house. >> this also might explain the unusual plaster found with wesley's body. could one of morrell's construction projects be the

actual murder site? >> we found five properties listing him as the owner in harrisburg, pennsylvania. when we begin looking at these properties we were able to determine that three of those properties were vacate accountant at the time of the murder. >> the property that needed the most work was on south 13th street in downtown harrisburg. records showed it had been built in the 1930s. around the same time builders used animal hair plaster like the kind found with wesley person's body. >> we're hoping for slugs or hoping for bullet holes in the walls. we're hoping for anything we could get. we were unsuccessful. >> investigators sprayed luminol in the basement of lawrence morrell's construction property on south 13th street and ran into an unexpected problem. >> as we're looking at that, crime lab techs explained to me that in harrisburg, the soil's

iron-rich. and iron in itself will give false positives during a luminol test. >> but in the basement, investigators found a pile of debris swept into a corner. they gathered everything and sent it to the forensic lab. >> under a microscope, scientists found pieces of drywall with the same blue and pink paint layers as the drywall found underneath wesley's body. >> what are the odds you that and i both went to home depot and bought the same paints all the time and painted our walls the same colors year after year after year? >> but were both samples the same paint? analysts put both samples under a scanning electron microscope. >> you're using the microscope and all of the features of the microscope to be able to see what's included in that chemical composition of the paint. >> the chemical structure is in

both samples were identical. scientists also found animal hair plaster. but this wasn't just any animal hair. the animal hair in the plaster found underneath wesley's body had something in common with the animal hair in the plaster from the renovated house. >> i was able to say that these were animal hairs that were from the same animal. they knew that they had the right residence. they knew that they had the right people. >> but the ultimate truth came from a piece of duct work from the basement floor. testing showed it contained a tiny speak of human blood. and dna testing left no doubt who the blood had come from. >> it ended up being blood of wesley person. we had found our crime scene. we had the victim's blood there.

>> investigators felt they knew who planned this attack. >> justin glover is an idiot. lawrence morrell is the smart one here. he's the one with the brains to be able to put this thing together. >> but could they place justin glover and lawrence morrell at the scene? who drove to the control room [ woman ] driverless mode engaged. find parking space. [ woman ] parking space found. [ male announcer ] ...that secured the data that directed the turbines that powered the farm that made the milk that went to the store that reminded the man to buy the milk that was poured by the girl who loved the cat. [ meows ] the internet of everything is changing everything. cisco. tomorrow starts here. the internet of everything is changing everything. ♪ led to the one jobhing you always wanted.

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what is this place? where are we? this is where we bring together the fastest internet and the best in entertainment. we call it the x1 entertainment operating system. it looks like the future! we must have encountered a temporal vortex. further analytics are necessary. beam us up. ♪ that's my phone. hey. [ female announcer ] the x1 entertainment operating system, only from xfinity. tv and internet together like never before.

both lawrence morrell and justin glover denied any involvement in wesley person's murder. they both claimle they had alibis for that night. so investigators checked the men's cell phone records. >> glover is trackable because he is constantly either receiving calls or he's making calls. from those cell phone calls, we're able to see what tower, the closest tower that the cell phone was going to hit off of. >> glover said he was with his girlfriend. >> he made a series of telephone calls to his girlfriend from his cellular telephone. it's not consistent with being with her the whole night. >> the cell phone shows that glover cass in the area where the body was found. >> and the check of lawrence morrell's cell phone records show he was in the area as well. >> at 4:30 in the morning, his cell phone is used right near

the capitol building. >> morrell was checking his voice mail. oddly, so was someone else. at the exact same place and the exact same time. >> it shows when you look at the cell phone records that they were together. >> ten weeks after wesley person was killed, justin glover and lawrence morrell were arrested and charged with his murder. >> prosecutors believe wesley person cashed a check for a fraudulent bank loan without telling his partners. and in doing so signed his own death warrant. >> wesley person never paid them the money they were owed. >> justin glover and lawrence morrell were supposed to receive at least $1,000. >> justin glover and lawrence

morrell wanted revenge. they picked imup in harrisburg and took him so many to get the money he had stolen. then they forced wesley back into their car and took him back to the home that morrell was renovating. the evidence shows this is where they shot person three times in the head. his blood spattered on to a piece of duct work on to the basement floor. the two men cleaned up the scene but didn't see the blood on the duct work. they wrapped the body in construction plastic, unaware that bits of animal hair plaster were wrapped with it. plaster that tied the body to the house. after driving 65 miles to the outskirts of baltimore, they

hauled the body down an embankment. doused it with fuel and set it on fire. but the fire didn't consume wesley's entire body. enough remained to create this likeness. and the animal hair plaster and construction plastic ultimately led police to the murder scene. >> without that pile of debris, without that piece of duct work, wesley person's case would be unsolved today. >> justin glover and lawrence morrell were convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole. >> first thing of i think of when i think of this case is exceptional forensic investigation. hands down, the best forensic work i've ever seen in any case i've ever been involved in. >> this is one case that

probably encompasses every genre of forensic science out there. >> this is is probe the most exciting case i've had yet. >> you would think that friendship trumped money. but in this case, i guess money trumped friendship in this case. searching for a need until a haystack. a missing malaysian jetliner probably hundreds of miles off course when it vanished without a trace. this morning an intensified and refocused search to find hundreds of passengers who disappeared into thin air. we're live with the very latest. is the cia spying on the u.s. senate? senate leaders launching explosive accusations. did the intelligence agency illegally spy and tamper with investigation. >> happening now, a huge winter storm barreling across the country. millions from the midwest to maine, they're goi