>> it's amazing what science can do. it's amazing. otherwise, it would have been he said-she said, you know? but it's amazing what science can do. a christian missionary was murdered in her apartment. the perpetrator left little evidence behind. but a new computer program found clues on a bloody sheet. and the case made forensic history. >> kirkland, washington, an upscale suburb of seattle, which has some of the best educated citizens in the united states. over 95% have either a high school or a college diploma. 27-year-old dawn fehring fit right in.

>> dawn was very much interested in foreign languages, and she was an exchange student in paris first and learning french and then went to vienna, austria, and learned german. >> dawn was an accomplished violinist and dancer who had recently returned from japan where she was doing christian missionary work. she was living in this apartment building in kirkland for just two weeks when her neighbor, a local fireman, noticed her front door was left open and decided to investigate. so is he grabbed his portable phone, knocked on the door, called out to see if anyone was there, and when he didn't receive a response, he entered into the unit. >> in the kitchen, there were freshly baked cookies. >> hello? dawn? >> in the bedroom, he found his neighbor, dawn fehring, on the floor. >> 911 emergency. why are you calling?

>> i found a body. she's laying on her side. rigor mortis has set in. the body's cold. it's covered. >> her head is covered? >> yes. >> you covered it? >> no, i just checked the body to see if she was okay. >> dawn was pronounced dead at the scene. >> it was total denial for me. i couldn't believe that it was happening. i mean, there's no motive. she has no enemies whatsoever. >> i don't think she knew anybody. i don't think she even knew the people across the hall. she had not as yet said anything to any of us about the other people in the condo. >> the autopsy revealed a fist-sized bruise on the back of dawn's head. she had also been sexually assaulted and strangled to death with the bed sheet. >> it appeared to us that the attack was quick. it didn't look like the suspect spent much time at the crime scene. and again, that night, no one heard or saw anything, and there is units above and below and

across from her, and people were home at the time. >> the one thing that the investigators knew immediately when they entered the scene was that whomever it was that did this was a smoker. >> they knew this from the ashes on the mattress and the burn mark on the table where he put the cigarette out. he didn't leave the cigarette butt behind. >> that means one of two things, either he had a cigarette in his mouth when he went in, or after he had realized what he had done, he said to himself, oh, my god, what am i going to do now? and it was then that he left the cigarette and thought about what he might do to try and cover it up or clean it up or abandon it. >> there was also a bloodstain on the fitted sheet. tests showed the blood was dawn fehring's. investigators didn't find any any foreign fingerprints or shoe impressions at the scene. none of the neighbors saw or heard anything suspicious and nothing had been stolen from the apartment. >> from a prosecutorial

perspective, most of the time you get killed for a reason. somebody knows you, whether it's a legitimate reason or not, and most of the time it's not, but there's always a reason. almost always a reason. >> in this case, there was none. >> dawn fehring led a very low-risk lifestyle. she wasn't involved in a romantic relationship and again, her main priorities in her life at that time was her christian faith, her family and her studies to be a missionary. so, there were a number of times when i think we all individually and collectively looked at one another and said what the hell are we going to do now? when he agreed to cosign for his daughter's credit card... he thought it was the end of the conversation. she didn't tell him that her college expenses were going up. or that she maxed out her card during spring break. when the satellite provider checked his credit, he found out his daughter didn't pay her bills. but he's not worried. now he checks his credit report and score at experian.com, allowing him to keep track of his credit

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hello? >> the freshly baked chocolate chip cookies in dawn fehring's kitchen provided an insight into her last moments alive. grocery receipts identified the store where dawn purchased the ingredients. and they showed that dawn was in the store at 9:45 p.m. >> investigators couldn't find anyone who had seen her between the time she left the store and when her body was discovered the following morning. >> dawn fehring was an innocent victim doing the most

all-american of events, which was making cookies for her mother for mother's day in the privacy of her own home. >> a background check revealed dawn was a very private person who did not date, drink or use drugs. she had been in town for only two weeks. >> one of the interesting things that you learn when you do this kind of work, the medical examiner and their observations that they make of a person and the remarkable observation that he made about dawn fehring was that she was so modest that she didn't even have pierced ears. >> investigators checked the whereabouts of all registered sex offenders in the area and each of them had an alibi. >> the registered sex offender who lived in this neighborhood actually had a history of abusing children and not grown women. and not to suggest that that never the two the shall meet but most often you have one target group or another if you're a sex offender. >> we had a number of potential leads.

we had at that time a serial killer investigation in that part of the county was under way. >> the green river serial killer attacked dozens of women in the pacific northwest. but those murders differed from this one, since the green river victims weren't killed in their homes. investigators were fairly certain that dawn's killer lived somewhere nearby. >> we initially looked at everyone in the building. there was nothing that really stood out. people had alibis. they were pretty much accounted for. and when we ran the criminal history checks on those persons, we didn't come back with anything of concern. >> and it also appeared that the killer knew dawn lived alone. >> if it had been someone who just followed her home from the grocery store or off the street, you're taking a huge chance by entering into someone's residence and gambling that they're there alone. >> although dawn had been sexually assaulted, the medical

examiner could find no biological evidence left by the perpetrator. the only possible piece of evidence was the bloodstain on dawn's bed. the blood was dawn's. but was it possible that the blood held other clues? >> the evidence techs looked at it and reviewed it, and the officer asked, what are our chances of identifying somebody with this? and in unison, they both said "slim to none." >> if the killer had touched the blood, it might show his fingerprint, but the blood was on a porous bed sheet, another roadblock. >> getting prints on fabric is extremely difficult, pretty rare. there's only, you know, not very many cases documented for that. >> a quick call to the fbi's crime lab suggested they could try to see if there was a print in the bloodstain with a substance called amido black.

amido black has long been used on laboratory slides to enhance the contrast. it also reacts positively to the protein in blood. with nothing to lose, forensic scientist pat warrick took the fbi's suggestion and soaked the bed sheet in the amido black solution. >> none of us believed in a million years that we were going to get anything out of this because the moment the sheet went into the amido black solution the first time, it turned completely blue. >> but to the trained eye, something did start to appear. >> we just couldn't believe it. you know, here we have a section of fabric, this sheet, and then we can see easily, readily see handprints, fingerprints, in blood on the sheet, and a lot of it is stuff that was not visible at all, even right before we started, and it's just covered

with it. >> the partial palm print that emerged didn't look like it could be used for any kind of identification. the fabric was the real problem. >> you have to get in close and look for detail, ridge detail, friction ridge skin detail. so we look at it with magnification. as soon as you get in close, all's you can see is the weave of the fabric. you can't really see any detail because the weave is interfering with that. that's all you can see. >> the palm print now looked like a dead end. and detectives had to face the possibility that dawn's murder would never be solved. but investigators kept digging, and being at the right place at the right time produced results. while they were standing outside dawn's apartment, a passerby started asking questions. >> he stood outside of that

scene for hours, and i vividly recall standing in the parking lot and watching this big, fat slob, for lack of a better term, meander down the stairs. and as he walked by all of the investigators, he sort of shouted out, "hey, man, do i have to be concerned about my personal safety around here?" >> his name was eric hayden. and he lived with his girlfriend in the apartment above dawn fehring's. >> the first time the detective spoke with eric hayden, he claimed he had never seen the person who lived there before. the second time they spoke with him, he claimed he had seen her but that he had never had any contact with her at all. >> when questioned about his whereabouts on the night of the murder, hayden claimed he was out drinking with friends until very late that night. and he had no prior arrests for sex-related crimes. >> we felt it was significant because this is a very unusual thing just to wake up one day in your early 30s and go out and commit a crime like this.

that's unusual. >> but something about hayden bothered the investigators. >> eric's hand was shaking. he pointed it out himself and he says, wow, look at me, my hands are shaking. this is really making me nervous. >> was a simple conversation with police that nerve-racking? or was there something else? hey, razor. check this out. it's time to get a hotel. we can save big with priceline express deals. hey you know what man, these guys aint no dragons. they're cool. these deals are legit. yeah, we're cool. she's cool. we're cool. hey! have an awesome vacation thank you so much! you're so sweet. yummy! key lime pie at 90 calories. it is so good for not giving in.

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eric hayden, a 32-year-old millworker, was starting to emerge as the prime suspect in dawn fehring's murder. he lived in the same apartment building. and according to other residents, hayden behaved suspiciously. >> there was a female neighbor that described eric hayden as weird. and when i asked her what do you mean by weird, she said well, on one occasion i saw him down in the parking lot. it was raining. he didn't have any shoes on. he was smoking a cigarette, and he was watching people come and go. and as i watched him, i realized he was paying particular attention to the women. >> and during questioning, hayden initially claimed he was out drinking with friends at the

time of the murder. later, he said he was drinking alone. >> when his story started changing, they considered the fact he admittedly drinks to the point where he doesn't know what's going on. >> hayden was also a smoker, which was significant since the killer left cigarette ashes behind. >> but the only forensic evidence in this crime was the palm print on dawn's bed sheet. and the print was so poor, there was no way to make a comparison. desperate for answers, detectives called in forensic investigator eric berg. they wanted another opinion on whether or not something could be done with those sheets because they had reached the limit of what they were able to do with chemistry. >> berg took a digital photograph of the print on the bed sheet and scanned it into his computer. the problem was immediately apparent. the ridge details on the print were obscured by the thread patterns on the sheet.

as if a screen had been placed over the print. >> well, i want to find out who left this because i think it's my bad guy. i see the outline of a hand but i can't see the details. hugh do i get rid of that screen? that's really the question i'm asking myself when i'm looking at the screen. how do i get rid of that? >> then berg had an idea. he needed some way to remove the thread pattern from the image, but he needed to find some kind of filter. >> the filter is a nice word for algorithm. it's a mathematical process that can go through an image and do something to it. we have one that i designed that basically seeks out repetitive patterns, something that repeats itself in a predictable way and allows you to remove that without affecting the rest of the image. >> berg took a sample of the bed sheet's thread pattern and had the computer subtract that pattern from the image, leaving only the palm print, and it

worked. >> it was beautiful. i didn't expect this or i didn't expect it to be that clear, but details are suddenly just the hdtv analogy. they were popping off the screen that you did not see before. i mean, you could see formation but you weren't seeing the details. and now all of a sudden, you were seeing those details. >> and there was a remarkable amount of detail. >> here we have pretty much half of a hand from the fingers all the way down to the base of the hand that's in view that is readily visible. so, we had just a tremendous amount of information as far as doing latent print examination or a comparison. >> the digitally enhanced palm print from dawn fehring's bed sheet was then compared to eric hayden's palm prints. pat warrick focused on the ridge patterns and breaks in the

patterns. these are unique to each person. there was no doubt the print on dawn fehring's bed sheet was made by eric hayden. eric hayden was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. prosecutors were convinced they had an ironclad case. but would the judge allow this evidence to be used in court?

as eric hayden awaited trial for the murder of dawn fehring, prosecutors had to deal with a number of problems. the technology used to reveal the print had never been admitted as evidence in a criminal trial. >> the standard argument in this particular type of case is that the evil empire, the cops are out there and they're just trying to convict innocent people out here of murder and all kinds of terrible crimes, and they'll stop at nothing to do that, including taking computer evidence, manipulating it, adding information, putting stuff in there that would unfairly bias the case against their client. >> when prosecutors walked into court, they had to convince the judge that the only thing they did to the palm print on the sheet was to enhance it. >> we don't add anything to the

evidence. the evidence is what it is. we will take away that that is interfering with our ability to identify, subtracting, but we're not going to put in a fingerprint ridge or a palm detail or anything that's missing. >> the judge left it to the jury to decide. eric berg brought his computer into the courtroom and demonstrated the process. >> everybody looked at it, and they were just amazed. >> it was readily apparent that it was a palm print. and i remember, i was standing back behind the jury, looking at them look at eric berg. and in the background was the defense counsel, who took one look at me and threw his tie over his shoulder and spun around in the chain, essentially saying, i'm done. and for all practical purposes, eric hayden was done. >> the palm print told the story of what happened to dawn fehring.

>> prosecutors believe eric hayden was drunk when he returned to his apartment on the night of the murder. as he walked up the stairs to his apartment, he noticed dawn's door was slightly ajar. she may have left it open because of the heat from the baking the cookies. the evidence shows hayden struck dawn on the back of her head, knocking her down, then sexually assaulted her and strangled her with the bed sheet. as he got up, he steadied himself on the mattress, placing a partial bloody palm print on the sheet. he smoked a cigarette while trying to compose himself, not knowing that the palm print, later enhanced by computer technology, clearly placed him at the scene. >> this is the classic example of trained investigators walking into a scene and having the good

sense to preserve something, whether it's going to turn into a piece of evidence or not, doing nothing to contaminate or screw it up before they get it to the people who do know what can be done with it. >> eric hayden was convicted and sentenced to 26 years in prison. after the trial, dawn fehring's friends and family set up a scholarship in her name for students who wished to do missionary work. >> there's been over $20,000 that's been working in the world that would not have been there if it hadn't been for her death. >> the technology used in dawn's case set a legal precedent and is now used in cases all over the world. >> i'm blown away looking back and some 11 years later, that people are still referring to this case and using the technology that was used in it. we had no idea at the time how significant this was going to

be. >> i don't think god causes things to happen, but he makes use of them. and the timing to me is just amazing that this technology had just been found at the time when it was needed for solving dawn's it was needed for solving dawn's case. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com breaking news this morning. the american soldier held captive by the taliban for years finally back in the united states. army sergeant bowe bergdahl touching down in texas just hours ago. we are live with what is in store for him today. iraq in crisis. president obama now promising to help the country take out the terrorists who have been destroying their cities, but what can and should the united states do now? we're live in iraq with the very latest. and severe storm threats across the country bringing fierce winds, look at that, baseball-sized hail, and dangerous, dangerous flooding. inpe