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tv   Forensic Files  CNN  May 18, 2014 1:00am-1:31am PDT

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something of that magnitude but there's a lot of deceives in the world. >> with this type of crime scene the way it was laid out and amount of evidence that was left for us, it was a home run. you couldn't ask for anything better. >> my husband has locked himself in our bedroom. >> the death certificate came back as a suicide. >> or was it murder. >> what in the name of heaven is he doing commwith a turkey bast. there's something more going on with this. it's creepy, it's chilly >> and eight would take years before the forensics could figure it all out. >> this case was a forensic bonanza for me. the heating and air
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conditioning business was a lucrative one for david castor. his attention to detail were well suited to the job. >> my dad was a very particular guy. he liked everything a certain way. whenever we worked on something, if something was like a quarter inch off or wasn't perfectly level, we'd start right from scratch, do it again. >> things were going well for david castor until his father died. the two had been very close and david was having a hard time dealing with the loss. >> he was very depressed. i really felt for him. i just couldn't imagine what was going through his head. >> david's wife stacy told friends he began to drink heavily and his behavior became erratic. when he locked himself in the bedroom and wouldn't come out, stacy called police. >> my husband has locked himself
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in our bedroom for the last day. he got aggressive but wasn't violent. >> it's okay. don't cry. are you guys going through something? >> his father died a month ago and he's been kind of weird acting the last month. >> david rrks you inside? >> a sheriff's deputy arrived at the house, found the bedroom door locked and with stacy's permission broke the door down. >> this is a terrible scene. sp on the bed. >> emergency medical personnel pronounced david dead at the scene. >> for lack of a better word, i felt kind of raped, like a relationship was stolen from me, like it was just taken away. >> on the nightstand next to the bed were two glasses.
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>> one was half full of a green liquid. another clear glass had some remnants of something in it. you could see it on the bottom. >> the green liquid was sent to the lab for testing. >> were you able to identify die equity lean glycol, the main component of anti-frez. >> equity lean glycol is toxic in large quantities. the autopsy returned david castor ingested a lethal dose. under the bed emergency personnel found a shotgun and a container of antifreeze. investigators wondered if david castor had a gun, why would he use antifreeze to kill himself? >> maybe he didn't use the shotgun under his bed because he wanted to kill himself over 72 hours as opposed to 72/100 of a
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second. >> one of the deputies looked in a trash basket in the kitchen area and found a turkey blaster. the turkey baster had some traces in it. >> again, it showed antifreeze and scientists found dna on the tip of the kurty baster. >> the only dna on the turkey baster is at the tip and it belongs to david castor. what in the name of heaven is he doing committing suicide by turkey baster? i've never heard of such a thing. >> so investigators now wondered if they were dealing with a murder. day, people fall. 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.
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the official ruling of suicide in david castor's death was a hard sell for the investigators who were at the scene. they hadn't seen many suicide cases where ethylene glycol was used, and there were several
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contradictions. >> they wemy gut was telling me was more going on with this. it just wasn't right. >> for one thing, the victim's wife, stacy told the 911 operator things that were contradicting. >> friday night he got intoxicated. >> yet the toxicology report showed no alcohol in his system. >> that caused us to raise our eyebrows again. >> there were two glasses found on david's nightstand, on the rims of both glasses was david's dna. david's dna were on the glass with the small amount of residue but only stacy's fij ger pripts were on the glass that held the antifreeze. >> david had been drinking out of that glass and poured it why didn't it contain one fingerprint of his.
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>> and the antifreeze bottle on the floor told a store. >> there's vomitus dripping on the bed and on the anti-freese jez but no vomitous on the bottle itself. >> proof that it was placed there after he consumed the antifreeze and got sick, and investigators found several things very odd about stacy. >> when i interviewed stacy, i asked her if she knew what the substance was in antifreeze that can kill you, and she said to me,e etekt knoll glycol. i found it strange because most people don't knew that but she did. >> at times she would miss pr pronounce the word antifreeze
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idea. >> that's why the anti-free idea -- >> she used the word anti-free in the interview, a very odd way of staying antifreeze and stacy also admit thad she knew antifreeze could be used in a homicide. >> she said, oh, by the way, david and i had watched a true crime show where a woman killed her husbands, plural, with antifreeze by putting it in their jell-o. >> this was an interesting comment since david castor wasn't stasis's first husband to tie under suspicious circumstances. five years earlier stacy's husband mike wallace died unexpectedly at the age of 38. nobody did an autopsy. there's stacy saying he had a bad heart and the physician comes in and from a visual
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examination looks at him and says, well, this is a heart atta attack. >> mike's family had wanted an autopsy, but stacy said no. >> the family was very upset about there not being an autopsy and wanted to know what legally is the next of kin that makes that decision. >> a look at mike wallace's medical records showed no signs of heart problems before his death. even more bizarre, stacy had most husbands mike wallace and david castor buried next to one another. in between the two was where stacy planned to be buried when she died. investigators petitioned the court fehr permission to exhume michael wallace's body to see if there was any connection between his death and the death of stacy's second husband david castor. a judge approved the order.
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>> the doctor who was going to be conducted the autopsy felt very strongly if there was some type of poisoning in the system, that it would still be there. >> why? because the active ingredient in antifreeze, equity lean fwlie kol in lethal achlts causes the body to create something it normally does. >> equity lean glycol formed crystals which will affect the kidneys of an individual, eventually leading to death. >> those crystals remain intact for years after death, and the medical examiner found them during michael wallace's autopsy. >> upon getting the results back from the medical examiner's office, there was absolutely no doubt in my mind that stacy had killed both of her husbands. >> buts just as prosecutor prepared to arrest stacy caster for her two husbands stacy made another call to 911. >> my daughter, i believe, has taken some kills.
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>> is she flaccid. >> yes. i'm leaning over her. she's having trouble, i think. it sounds like there's something in her throat. ashley, ashley. >> paramedics arrived to find stacy's daughter ashley close to death. next to her was a suicide note along with an empty bottle of sleeping pills and an empty bottle of vodka. >> there is a suicide note in which she claims responsibility not only for the death of david castor but also for the death of her own father michael wallace. >> mommy, i did this because i love you. i couldn't let daddy be mean to you and me anymore. once i put the anti-free in daddy's gatorade, it took only day or so, and when they dug daddy up, i knew what was going to happen.
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they think you did it, but you didn't. it was me. >> but investigators were faced with a dilemma. was ashley truly capable of a double homicide. >> if ashley wallace killed michael wallace, she would have only been 12 years old at the time and could she formulate such an elaborate murder scheme. >> and if ashley didn't survive, they might never know. >> my biggest fear is that ashley was going to die because her vitals would crash and then they would spike back up and that's one thing i don't think i would have ever gotten past is if ashley died. narrator: these are the skater kid: whoa narrator: that got torture tested by teenagers and cried out for help. from the surprised designers. who came to the rescue with a brilliant fix male designer: i love it narrator: which created thousands of new customers for the tennis shoes that got torture tested by teenagers.
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ashley wallace's younger sister brie found ashley unconscious one morning and urged her mother to call 911. >> the doctors say she was probably ten minutes from death. >> thanks to brie's quick action and medical treatment, ashley survived. >> i actually woke up in the hospital and i had no idea what day it was. i had no idea where i was. one of the detectives was asking me questions like, what was in that note that you wrote. i was like what letter, what pills are you talking about? all i remember was having a drink with my mom. that's all i knew.
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>> ashley denied writing any suicide note and denied any involvement in killing her father mike wallace and stepfather david castor. >> i was always skeptical. i didn't know what happened. i didn't know what to believe really. >> prosecutors felt that whoever typed the note was also the person that poisoned the two husbands. >> to find out who typed the suicide note, investigators confiscated the castor family's computer and sent it to computer evidence specialist francis brackin. the first thing he noticed is it was created in microsoft word which most people don't know about. >> when you open a document, even if you don't save it as a document the program auto saves it for you and it gives it an
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unusual name you don't recognize. >> interestingly only one person in the family used microsoft word. >> microsoft word had never been used on the ashley wallace account, but it had been used on the stacy castor account. >> bracken found evidence there were numerous drafts of the suicide note which the writer made a point of not saving, but fragments of the final note still on the computer's hard drive were timestamped. the time stamps automatically recognized by the computer showed ashley could not be the writer. >> i was able to determine that microsoft was not use after 2:27 p.m. on 9/12, the same day which shows ashley cow not have written the note because she was in school the final day. >> the final clue was in the
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note. stacy let something free. >> the cops said there was anti-free in the suicide note. >> it hit me like a ton of briggs. my first reaction was, oh, my god, anti-free, what stacy said in the interview is exactly what was in the note. it wasn't a note and it was a confusion and it was stacy castor who confessed in the note. >> but stacy denied involvement in the two deaths and continued to maintain her daughter ashley killed both men. it would be up to a jury to decide. hey, razor. check this out. listen up, thunder dragons, it's time to get a hotel. we can save big on killer hotels with priceline express deals. somewhere with a fitness center? hey you know what man, these guys aint no dragons. they're cool. these deals are legit. yeah, we're cool.
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tell the truth, the whole truth, so help you god? >> i do. >> be seated. >> as stacy castor was about to go on trial for the murder of her husband david castor and the attempted murder of her daughter ashley, the question on everyone's mind was motive. >> i'll say that she is completely amoral, she is completely self-absorbed. everything in life reinvolves around her. she's narcissistic to the extreme. she is troubled only by the
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inconvenience of other people. mike wallace becomes an inconvenience, aisle get rid of him. david castor's an inconvenience, i'll get rid of him. pick up some cash on the side. parting gifts from don pardo as i leave this stage of life. my daughter, i've got to to frame her. >> financially stacy got a $50,000 insurance payout after her first husband's death. there was even more money after the death of stacy's second husband. >> our best estimate is that she probably pocketed with the house, the business, the cars, the life insurance, close to $200,000 for david castor. >> investigators believe since stacy got away with her first husband's murder, why not try it again. prosecutors say stacy put antifreeze in one of david's drivgs sometime on friday night. by the next day, david was
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unconscious but still breathing. the evidence shows stacy tried to get david to drink more, but that didn't work. that's why only stacy's fingerprints were on that glass. so stacy used the turkey baster to force more antifreeze into david's mouth. that's how david's dna was on the tip. once stacy realized she was about to be charged with david murder and the murder of her first husband michael, stacy came up with a plan to pin the murders on her daughter. stacy created the suicide note on the family computer, using phenomenon ittic spellings to words she routinely miss pronounced and typed the document around 2:30 in the afternoon when ashley was in
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school. later that night stacy mixed sleeping pills and other drugs into ashley's drink and left her to die. if ashley's younger sister hadn't found her unconscious in bed the next day and demanded her mother call 911, ashley would most likely be dead too. >> she killed two husbands. then she tried to kill her own flesh and blood. there are no words that i'm familiar with in the english language that adequately convey that type of person. >> on the witness stand stacy insisted ashley was the killer. >> you referred to her very negatively, didn't you? >> that's right, did. >> because she, after all, killed your two husbands. >> yes, she did. i can't give you a reason why she did it.
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>> the jury didn't buy it. stacy castor was convicted of murder and the attempted murder of her own daughter. she was sentenced to a minimum of 50 years in prison p. >> you're not just a danger to the general public. you're danger to the people who love you and are closest to you. >> prosecutors could still charge stacy for the murder of her first husband michael wallace, but with stacy serving a 50-year prison term, there doesn't seem to be much need. ashley wallace has no contact with her mother. >> i hate her. i hate her. i don't understand. i don't get it. i don't think i ever will understand why she did what she did. >> without the forensics, this case would have ended in 2005 with the death of david castor being ruled a simple suicide as
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it was. and stacy castor would still be walking the streets today. >> and everything that she said and everything that she did just back fired right in her face. >> because you're a killer. bottom line, look at yourself in the mirror. you know what you did and you know what you tried to do to your daughter rmt. . up next, a serial killer was on the loose in new york city. >> these people were chopped up. it's just a savage way to die. >> you found you pissed somebody office. >> the media called him the last call killer. >> last call for drinks. that's the last everybody had seen of him. >> nearly a decade later the police still have no suspects until advances in forensic sciences finally help pinpoint the killer. >> it's the most bizarre case i've ever been involved with.

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