justice is for the state to have proof that it really is a set fire. they didn't have that here. >> it wasn't a case of charging the wrong person with a crime. there was no crime at all. it was an accident. investigators thought this shredded computer disk held important information about a murder. the most soephisticated technology wasn't enough to put it back together. what did they do? they made forensic history. >> it's hard to comprehend that in the philippines there are 7,000 islands. residents say you can hide in these islands and never be found but living there had its challenges.

>> they got mosquitoes the size of dogs there. i mean just huge -- you see spiders that are as big as your head. you see weird stuff. stuff that you've never seen before. >> josh snodgrass grew up in the philippin philippines. his father was an airforce officer. his mother, julie, was from mississippi and had just adjusting to live over seas. >> the nicest woman you could have ever met. there wasn't a bad bone in her body. >> julie, as warm as she was to the american community, she wasn't crazy about the philippines. there were some people, probably not surprising, that didn't like the philippines. >> on february 25th, 1991, joe called to report his wife missing. he said they had an argument.

military record show that julie left the military base around 10:30 p.m. but this time she never came back. at 4:00 am the next morning, a cab driver found julie seated in her truck on a deserted dirt road, two miles from the base. she had been stabbed repeatedly. julie was still strapped in her seatbelt and her driver's side door was ajar. >> at that point it kind of toll us that maybe she had tried to get out and couldn't. >> there was a great deal of blood inside the car accept on the messenger seat. >> that led us to believe that obviously somebody was in the vehicle with her and stabbing her. likely had a lot of blood all over him or her. >> a search of foreign hairs or fibers did reveal a potential

clue. >> the only thing that we found that was not consistent with julie or any other hair from the family were some dark hair which could have been consistent with filipinos. >> in a field near by, police found a folding knife covered with julie's blood. there were also fibers from her clothing. unfortunately, there were no fingerprints. >> why was this truck sitting in the middle of the night on a dirt road in a restricted area where no service member would go and certainly no wife would go? >> julie snodgrass was just 33 years old. josh recalls his father's reaction when he heard the news. >> what i remember is seeing him shaking and shaking. something my dad never did. i can only equate it to someone with advanced parkinsons and shaking out of control.

>> joe snodgrass never left the military base that night so he was not considered a suspect. but who wanted to harm his wife? you love this game.

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the murder of 33-year-old julie snodgrass the wife of a u.s. service man shocked everyone who knew her. she was extremely well liked and had known well known enemies. >> i remember then feeling this was a crime of passion. somebody wanted julie dead and wanted her dead in the worst way. >> her body was flown to mississippi for burial. >> the funeral was intense. the wakes were intense. of course there was no open casket. i was wishing there would be because i wanted to see my mom again but she was gone. i never got to see her again. >> in a search for suspects, investigators didn't have to look far. many filipinos objected to the presence of u.s. military. julie's purse and values were

missing from the car so robbery was also a possible motive. >> unemployment in the filipino community was 60%. if any filipino had a job they were often supporting ten or 15 people who didn't have a job. >> but investigators were more intrigued by the rumors of problems in the couple's marriage. >> his wife and he had been separated. they had gotten back together. they got divorced. they remarried. there was a lot of turmoil there. >> as word of julie's murder spread, local informants told investigators that they might want to question the family's filipino housekeeper. >> her first name was lucy. very attractive. much younger than joe. i would say early 20s, possibly. >> my impression is that it was common knowledge that there was a very close, maybe, relationship beyond the house keeping relationship. >> lucy had been the snodgrass's

housekeeper for more than a year and was practically a member of the family but her demeanor raised eyebrows. >> she also wanted to be my mom to some degree. that's what i felt the whole time. she would say i'm your mom. >> i said you're not my mom. >> well i'm not going to be your mom. >> no, you're not going to be my mom and stuff like that. >> during questioning, lucy said she knew nothing about the murder and she denied rumors that she was having an affair with julie's husband but julie's son knew this was a lie. >> the only reason why i knew something was going on because i opened the door to the bedroom one day and saw dad doing something he shouldn't have been doing, you know? she passes a polygraph so the case is in the toilet, right? well -- >> so military investigators changed tactics.

she interviewed lucy once again, this time using local law enforcement. >> i think she was more comfortable talking to filipino investigators then to american investigators. she started changing her story. in a remarkable turn around, lucy now admitted taking part in julie's murder:she described how joe came to her. explained that he wanted his wife dead that he couldn't live with his wife anymore and wanted her out of the way. >> lucy said she hired her two uncles to carry out the murder and they in turn hired a third man to help them. >> so the story she told subsequently was devastating. that's not the end of everything but hold it. when was she lying the first time or the second time? >> when confronted with lucy's

confession, joe snodgrass anger ri denied any involvement in the murder of his wife and called his former housekeeper a liar. to prove it, he permitted investigators to search his house. they found these insurance policies under a mattress. huh, and they said what are these doing under the mattress and he said well, i really didn't want you to find those. a little suspicious looking. i didn't want you to find that. >> the policies revealed something troubling. joe had recently increased the amount of his wife's lie insurance from 200 $200 to over $400,000 on joe's desk at work. investigators found even more potential evidence. >> they came up with a bunch of floppy disks, those big 5 1/4 disks that we used to use. >> just as the investigation was starting to take shape, joe's colleagues in the office of special investigations made a

catastrophic blunter, one that threatened the entire case. >> it's a crazy story. something that you cannot imagine happening. >> the emotion was just incredible. it was a gut wrenching, sickening feeling. your education is built to help move your career forward. here's how: we work with leading employers to learn what you need to learn so classes impact your career. while helping ensure credits you've already earned pay off. and we have career planning tools to keep you on track every step of the way. plus the freshman fifteen, isn't really a thing here. and graduation, it's just the beginning. because we build education around where you want to go. so, you know, you can get the job you want. ready, let's get to work.

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investigators found two floppy disks on joe snodgrass's desk which they thought might hold evidence in his complicit with his wife's murder plot. before they checked the disks, investigators wanted to make sure that they actually belonged to joe snodgrass and weren't someone els. so she asked him to come to the interrogation room to identify them. >> snodgrass was in a cooperative posture. he was a law enforcement official so someone is investigating, well, naturally you try to cooperate and help so you can get him off the suspect list. >> as snodgrass examined the disks, investigators were momentarily distracted and he pulled out a pair of scissors and shredded them. now, they wrestled the scissors

away from him but there are pieces of this disk on the floor. i tell you, a couple of things go through your mind at this point. the first thing is how in the world did this man get scissors into the interview and second of all, how did he get the disk and do this? >> apparently, snodgrass knew investigators had his floppy disks and he came to the interrogation prepared. >> we knew that whatever was on that disk was absolutely -- should i say death to joe. >> snow snodgrass was immediately taken into military custody. he called us up and said they are arresting me for the murder of your mother and he said, i promise, i did not kill your mother. i said, okay.

you know? i believe you. >> investigators were desperate to repair not only the disks but the damage to their reputations as well. >> so they collected the pieces and sent them to the u.s. military's brand new computer forensics laboratory. >> they said you're not going to believe what happened. we were interviewing this guy he reached into a box and pulls out a diskette and starts cutting up this diskette. they are in the mail to you. i'm like, wow, okay. i'm not a magician i'm a computer crime investigators what are we going to do? >> to their display they couldn't find an instance of someone successfully reassembling a damaged floppy disk. >> we were calling everybody we could think of. all of our contracts. we went to the private sector. we pulledority all the stops. >> one federal agency offered to try but said it would take

months, possibly a year to figure out thousand do it. it would cost close to $1 million and there were no guarantees. >> after everybody gave up, we were driving around the belt way and my deputy had are you going to give me a shot. i said what are you going to do? he said i will try to scotch tape them back together. i said that's not going to work. >> his inspiration the adhesive note. first technicians used heat to smooth out the rum med pieces. unfortunately not all of the pieces could be sufficiently repaired so they needed to find a way to replace the damaged pieces to make a complete disk. >> so what we did was then take that original piece of evidence,

put it onto that disk and actually cut out a template of where it would fit into. we got the piece from the new disk, dropped the evidence in the place and then actually tape it on the back side so that it now became part of a hole. >> to hold the pieces together, they used a clear tape with adhesive like the post it notes holding one side together so they could read the other. using a test disk, the technicians placed it inside the drive and turned on the computer. the result was a disaster. we ended up actually slinging the head across the room in our office because during one of our tests, the disk actually broke the head off the disk drive and flung it across the room. >> the problem was the thickness of the tape. they needed to find a thinner

tape with the same adhesive properties. their research lead to a brand of scotch tape called 8\11. >> it doesn't leave a residue. it's very easy to apply and it's very easy to take off without damaging anything. >> so they used it to piece together the damaged floppy disks. to their enormous relief, it was a success. >> it took some initiative and it works. there were lots of cheers. so it was pretty cool. it was pretty rewarding that we actually developed a technique that was working and we actually were getting data. >> what some said would cost close to a million dollars had only costs $31, but was there any information on the disks that would implicate sergeant joe snodgrass in his wife's murder? unlimited cash back.

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thanks to the efforts of the u.s. military's computer forensic's lab, investigators were finally able to read what was on the floppy disks. >> the ones sergeant snodgrass had tried to hard to destroy. on one for all to see was a portion of a letter snodgrass

had written to his housekeeper lucy asking her to hire some hit men to kill his wife. >> at least ten times a day i say you will have luck down there finding someone. i talk to josh and jamie and they are starting to get real tired of her also. please help me with her and come back soon. if you need anything else let me know and i will try to send it to you. i have to go back to work now. i love and miss you, joe. >> this tied joe snodgrass to his wife's murder. >> i think the computer fragments were the catalysts in a sense that it made sense in the housekeeper's story. it corroborated her stories. it added credibility to her and the story of her uncle. >> how much money did joe pay to

have his wife killed. >> what's the cost of a wife? $1 $150. >> the information that was taken off the disk was crucial. it put the nail right in the middle of the coffin. when confronted in the information from the disks, snodgrass pled guilty to soliciting his wife's murder. >> he did not admit to -- he will admit to that. according to the forensic evidence lucy hired her two uchkles and another wan to kill snodgrass. since joe worked for the evidence of investigates, he alsoed him to help with one of

her cases. he asked her to drive off ways and make a payment to an informant. she complied. >> well she was being stabbed to death. julie snodgrass cried out in english, i hate you joe! i hate you, joe! the circumstances even more vile than if you had take ent knife and killed her. the manipulation that took place. the planning that took place. >> parentally lucy believed that joe would larry her and take her to the united states. >> they would have lived comf t

comfortably from the policy. snodgrass was sentenced to life in prison without parole. lucy was convicted of a philippine court and was sentenced to one year in prison. the third man involved in the murder has never been found. >> this was the third case where digital evident and the term forensics are put in the same sensence. computer crime investigation was not a discipline until we put these disks back together. >> they blazed a new path in the field of forensics. >> this case not only made forensic hift are ri but changed protocols around the world. >> the inimplications was for

$131 we can retrieve that data. now everybody has to change their protocol on how they safe guard classified information. at times a perpetrators dna is the only clue at a murd her seen. what happens when you don't have a suspect to care it to? this case made forensic history when scientists see the killer's physical description. in the 1600s. baton rouge louisiana got its name from french settlers meaning red stick and