>> but it's never going to bring shirley back, and we know that, but at least by leaving that courtroom, having him sentenced to life, we knew we had done everything we could for shirley. a mother of two found dead in her bedroom a pistol in her hand and a suicide note point to a self inflicted wound. but a customer in a bar, a jacket on a doorknob and a saliva test raised some interesting questions. fort lewis in washington state is one of the largest military bases in the united states. it is part of a self-contained

city that is home to thousands of military families. corporal chris davis, a communications specialist loved military life. his wife, dorothy, did not. the couple had been married ten years and had two daughters, ages five and two. >> my sister was kind of getting depressed off and on, she had had tom down times. i knew that dorothy was on medication and she was on an anti-depressant. >> on the night of march 13th, 1991, corporal davis was having drinks with friends a it a bar near the base. he stepped out to the lobby to call his wife around 8:00 p.m. and she sounded despondent. so he left his friends and went home.

when he entered their bedroom, he found a horrifying sight. dorothy was dead. a .22 caliber pistol in her hand. >> mrs. davis is lying on the bed with the covers up to her abdomen. she appears to have a gunshot wound to her right temple. >> police video taken at the scene indicates there was no forced entry into the house. and the davis' children were asleep in their bedroom, whatever happened didn't awaken them. there was no evidence of an argument or an altercation. >> dorothy herself had no signs of physical trauma or defense wounds. what it looked like was dorothy was literally lying in bed as if she were sleeping. >> in the bedroom, investigators found a bottle of anti-depressants and three sealed envelopes. one was addressed to her husband chris.

>> my darling love, as said many times, it's the coward's way out. so i'm a coward. for i could see no other way out. i asked got to forgive me. >> the second note was also addressed to chris. and the third was to her sister. >> dear patty, i'm sorry. by the time you get this, i'll be gone. i didn't know what else to do. >> she could see no other way out, she acknowledged the difficulties in her marriage, and how she felt that her husband no longer loved her. >> i can remember when they came and brought me the letter that my sister had written to me, and it was very hard to read. it was very upsetting. and at that time i couldn't understand why something like that would be written. >> yes, these letters are written by dorothy, yes, her fingerprints are on it. >> further evidence of suicide seemed plain enough. the gun in dorothy's hand was

gripped firmly, a phenomenon called cadaveric spasm. >> what happens here is that the cells become rigid immediately at the time of death supposedly because of emotional stress or physical activity right at the moment of death. >> cadaveric spasm is something that cannot be simulated. it cannot be duplicated. it's either present or it's not present. if it is present, that means that the gun had to have been in the victim's hand at the time of her death. >> at dorothy's autopsy, the medical examiner found evidence of a contact wound the her head consistent with a self-inflicted injury. there was no exit wound. >> the .22 caliber round was still in her skull. toxicology tests found nothing unusual in dorothy's system. but the coroner did find something else. >> the autopsy confirmed that

she was two to three weeks pregnant. and she had told family and friends that she was pregnant. >> the coroner ruled dorothy's death a suicide. she was just 33 years old. >> i just kept saying there's no way she'd hurt that baby, she'd she wouldn't shoot herself. she wouldn't do this. i had those thoughts at times. there's no way -- no way she'd harm herself and do this. she loved those girls. they were her life. >> that is where the story would have ended had it not been for a witness that came forward with an interesting tale about a jacket. let me get this straight... [ female voice ] yes? lactaid® is 100% real milk? right. real milk. but it won't cause me discomfort. exactly, no discomfort, because it's milk without the lactose. and it tastes? it's real milk! come on, would i lie about this?

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the military community at fort lewis in washington state reacted to dorothy davis' suicide with shock and grief. the coroner ruled dorothy's death a suicide. but many were skeptical. including a woman who was with corporal davis the night dorothy died.

the witness said that chris left the bar to call dorothy from a pay phone in the lobby. she said, she too went out to the lobby a short time later and chris davis wasn't there. he returned 20 minutes later. >> witness told us at this point that corporal davis was red faced and appeared to be out of breath. he was no longer wearing a jacket he was wearing earlier. >> so, where was chris' jacket? investigators saw it in the photos taken of the scene the night of dorothy's death, hanging on the doorknob of the couple's bedroom. i thought, he oh, my god, look, here's the maroon jacket. but it's important. it's not thrown -- it's not dropped. and the person who comes in and

finds their wife lying there, perhaps mortally wounded is not going to take his jacket off nice and neat and hang it up on the doorknob. >> was it possible that chris davis never called his wife? but used those 20 minutes to drive home, kill dorothy and then return to the bar to establish his alibi? a police recreation showed it was possible. average time, 17 minutes. so even though we were locked into that 20 minutes by our witness, we felt pretty comfort it was still possible for him to have gone off, committed that crime, staged the scene and got back to the nco club within that time frame. >> if this were true, what about the suicide notes? was it possible they had been forged? investigators sent these notes to forensic document examiner sandra holmwood to see if the handwriting matched dorothy's known handwriting samples. >> the writer had a very distinctive capital "d." lower d and backwards lower ways

f, when it went in a clockwise motion instead of a counter clockwise motion as we are taught. there were many letters in and of themselves that were consistent between the known and questioned writing and there were no differences that would suggest that it was written by a different writer. >> sandra homewood concluded that dorothy had indeed written the notes. >> when the lab report came back and said that dorothy had actually authored all of the letters, the investigators concluded at that time the investigators did, that perhaps what they were looking at is in fact a suicide. >> but in the aftermath of dorothy's death, her husband chris, appeared to be anything but grief stricken. >> within weeks of dorothy's death, chris davis actually moved a person into the house who was there to act as a nanny

or to take care of his children. >> everyone on base knew this woman was more than a nanny. she had been having an affair with corporal davis for more than a year. >> people knew we were -- knew we were romantically involved, because he was very loving in public. something i was getting from my husband at the time. no affection, no nothing. >> apparently he got over his grief quite quickly. >> this however did not implicate him in his wife's death. in fact, chris' infidelity may have caused dorothy's depression. >> myself and everybody else we believe that she actually took her own life with her own hands. we believed it. >> i did not see violence in chris ever once with my sister or the family. i knew that he was not honest and that he was an adulterer and that he was a thief. but i never really thought that

he would ever physically hurt her. >> investigators weren't so sure. really started to paint a different picture. a disturbing picture. in that, maybe what we have here is not a suicide. maybe what we have here is a murder.

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as the investigators looked into the death of 33-year-old dorothy davis, they heard reports that her husband chris ran the household with an iron fist. and wasn't the east easiest man to get along with. >> i don't know what drives him. i think what drives him is he has to be in control. if he's not in control, look out. >> and investigators learned something else that was suspicious. three years earlier, dorothy davis had another brush with death. it was a night when chris left their house with their infant daughter. they went out for a short drive because the baby was having trouble sleeping. after they left, dorothy awoke to find their home full of

smoke. there was a fire burning in the living room. for some unexplained reason, the smoke detectors hadn't sounded. >> the police came. the fire crew came. they took the television set out and they saw there was a malfunction in the television set and the case was closed. >> in light of dorothy's death, this fire three years earlier looked suspicious. >> things make you go hmm. this is what i call where i come from, this is a clue. things like this do not happen to a person twice in the same manner. this -- this was a clue. >> now corporal davis was officially a suspect and the manner of his wife's death changed from suicide to undetermined. for his new girlfriend barbara, life with corporal davis suddenly took a turn for the worse. >> that's when everything started changing. i couldn't use the phone. i wasn't allowed to go grocery shopping, wasn't allowed to have

money. i was like imprisoned in the house. >> but the forensic evidence still pointed to suicide. until steve chandler reinterviewed the officers who first responded to the 911 call on the night of dorothy's death. >> what i found out was somewhat of a shock. he describes that dorothy was holding the pistol with all four fingers around the butt of the pistol. when i asked him if all four fingers were around the butt, how did she fire the gun, to which he responded, i don't know. >> and if there was foul play, why had dorothy written the suicide notes? they clearly indicated dorothy's desire to end her own life. her sister did some detective work on her own and found the

answer. >> i found out from the therapist that she had been seeing that she instructed her to write everything down and her feelings, and that's what i believe that was from. i don't believe she ever had any intention of ever harming or hurting herself. >> she apparently was adamant about documenting her daily activities, her feelings and whatnot in personal diaries that she kept up. these diaries were obtained and reviewed and they indicated a long history of depression. >> to find out whether dorothy had truly meant to kill herself when writing the notes, investigators sent them to fingerprint expert bill thomas for examination. thomas sprayed the notes with

ninhydrin, a chemical that acts with the amino acid in perspiration. >> we placed those letters and envelopes into a humidifying chamber. under the conditions, the prints will develop like a photograph on photograph paper. >> it revealed that dorothy was not sweating when she wrote the notes. something that usually occurs when someone intends to end their own life. >> and told him, that they needed to take another look at this case. because there was something wrong. >> but perhaps the most definitive proof would come from the envelope flaps. who had licked them? dorothy or chris?

investigators wanted to know who had licked and closed the envelopes that held dorothy davis' suicide notes. to find out, scientists needed dorothy's dna for comparison. unfortunately her body had already been cremated so they had to reconstruct her dna profile by analyzing the dna from both her parents and her two children. >> her dna type was determined by cross-referencing the possible types that she could have received from both the mother and the father and

looking at the resulting types that she donated to both of her children. >> chris' dna profile was on file as part of his military records. scientists cut a small piece of envelope flap, put it into a solution that dissolved everything but the human cells and performed a pcr dna test. the results? the dna test revealed that chris had licked the envelope flap. >> placed that letter in the envelope and sealed it himself. that is the only reason his saliva was on those envelopes. dorothy had no intention of committing suicide. those letters were a cry for help. and that chris used those letters to pad his scheme to murder his wife for financial gain. >> one year after dorothy davis' death, her husband, chris, was arrested and charged with her

murder. >> when i heard chris was arrested, it was like yeah, thank you, lord, thank you. they finally got him. >> prosecutors believe that chris tried to kill dorothy three years earlier by disconnecting the smoke detectors and setting the house on fire before leaving with his daughter on a car ride. that attempt failed. then chris found dorothy's journal and the suicide notes she had written earlier. this provided his cover story. >> he had suicide notes, what better way to mislead investigators than suicide notes obviously authored by the victim? >> on the night of the murder, chris went to the noncommissioned officer's club to establish an alibi. after a while, he said he was going out to the lobby to call

his wife. instead, he got into his truck and raced home. dorothy was most likely asleep when chris got into position to shoot her in the right temple at just the right angle. however, when he planted the gun in her hand, he forgot to position her index finger on the trigger. chris staged the scene with the true crime book and the container of anti-depressants. the most crucial part of his plan was planting the suicide notes dorothy had written months earlier. meanwhile, at the nco club. chris' friend noticed he wasn't using the telephone in the lobby as he would later claim. and when chris returned, his friends noticed he wasn't wearing the jacket he had on earlier. he had left it by mistake in his

bedroom, captured on film for all to see. chris davis ignored dorothy's cries for help. the ones articulated so clearly in her notes and diary. instead, he used them against her. he had simply destroyed those letters then they wouldn't have been there for us to examine. >> if he had not licked those envelopes, if he had not done that, he would have walked free. >> chris dave was found guilty of his wife's murder. he was dishonorably discharged from the army and sentenced to life in prison. >> chris is cold blooded. he's sick. he's demented. he said he is not, he is a liar. i have seen it. first hand. how sick, evil this man can be. i saw it. >> chris, was very, very money hungry and that what he was

looking at by the death of dorothy was freedom. he didn't have to worry about child support. he got rid of his wife and he got a cool $150,000. >> without that forensic evidence, chris would be a free man today. and there would be no justice for dorothy. it looked like a routine traffic accident until a patrolman with no training suspected something worse, but he couldn't prove it until a bent steering wheel, a security camera and a physics calculation showed what really led to a young woman's death. highway patrolman tony snyder was heading home after finiin