we couldn't catch them. >> it was hard for me to believe that he had actually killed his wife. and it had just finally broken down based on the shape of an "f" and an "l" and an "r," and just scratchings on a piece of paper. when a small child disappeared in alaska, investigators were initially unsure whether the cause was a grizzly bear or an abduction. the discovery of a fiber, a piece of molten steel and a chip of yellow glossy paint pointed police in the direction of a human. but others weren't so sure. as the alaskan summer drew to a close in 1991, children in the small town of tazlina spent as much time outside as possible. as the alaskan summer drew to a close in 1991, children in the small town of tazlina spent

as much time outside as possible. they knew that in just a few short weeks, school would start, and along with it, the cold alaskan winter. the lemaire family enjoyed life in the alaskan wilderness with hunting, fishing and riding four-wheel vehicles. 11-year-old mandy lemaire was the oldest child. >> she was a real interesting mix between a tomboy and a pretty little girl. she could be just as comfortable in a frilly dress at a social event as she could in hip boots, standing on a river fishing. >> the town of tazlina has only 241 residents, so the homes are situated some distance apart. mandy and her best friend, april, often walked a mile or more to meet their friends to

play. that was the plan on august 22, 1991. >> mandy and i took off, got about down to the wheelbarrow down there. i had a big fanny pack on and i had tripped and skinned up my leg. i came back up here to the store and they helped me out. i got all cleaned up. mandy was supposed to wait for me. >> but mandy may have grown impatient. >> i ran back down. didn't find mandy. mandy always played pranks. we thought she was hiding in the bushes and going to come out and scares you or something. she never did. >> two hours later, mandy's father called police. within hours, several friends and neighbors passed out fliers and searched the heavily wooded area from the ground and from the air. >> i knew that there was something wrong, and that there was no way she could have gotten lost.

>> alaskan state trooper jim mccann drove five hours from fairbanks to join the search. >> i came down here with the opinion that there is more to this than certainly a grizzly attack or a child lost in the woods, just from what i read in the paper and had been told over the telephone. >> the search lasted for days. search dogs were used, but weren't able to track mandy's scent. >> i've never seen such community action. everybody from the valley had got together. >> tragically, ten days after she disappeared, searchers found her body. she had been shot to death. >> without you having lived through something like this, you probably will never have a clue. and i don't know that i can describe it. my wife at the time, she ultimately couldn't handle it. >> no matter what you do, you always feel some kind of guilt. and that was the big thing. if i hadn't tripped, what would have happened? and i remember asking my mom that.

what would have happened if i hadn't tripped? >> complicated matters, there had been heavy rains a few days before the body was discovered, washing away trace evidence, as well as foot and tire impressions. >> it was clear to us she had been alive when she was down in that wash, and had been struggling to climb back up out of that wash. her little fingernails were broken and filled with dirt. >> police knew they would have to work harder than usual to find necessary clues.

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convicted of a car theft in new york and had some recent brushes with the law. >> he had been in some trouble recently when he went out of state. and he was a suspect in a death out of state, too. >> defarris denied any involvement in mandy's murder. his employer confirmed he was at work on the day mandy disappeared, so he wasn't considered a suspect. but defarris had some information of his own. he saw another local man, charlie smithart, driving his pickup truck on the road where mandy was last seen. >> he was described as a good guy to the kids. all the copper center kids could come to his shop and he would fix their bicycles and give them candy. certainly interesting to us. >> 61-year-old smithart was a retired steel worker, had been divorced twice and lived in a makeshift workshop behind his mother's home. coincidentally, smithart had assisted in the search for mandy.

>> he never put his name down on the search roster at the fire station to say that i am a member of this search team, i will search. but he would show up there and stand around and then he would go off on his own. we found that strange. >> smithart denied defarris' claim he was near the site on the day mandy disappeared and said he had an alibi. he said he was watching television with his mother, an alibi his mother confirmed. >> god knows he didn't do it and the person who committed this crime knows that charles didn't do it. >> in a town the size of tazlina, checking an alibi is easier than in most larger towns, and it helped investigators get their first break.

they learned that smithart's mother, lucille, had gone shopping at the copper river grocery store on the day of the mandy's disappearance and paid for the items with a check. >> the time and date on the register tape was the same. and the time was 3:17, when lucy said that she was home with her son. and she wasn't home. she was at the grocery store buying groceries at that time. >> 200 miles away in anchorage, criminalists used a gel adhesive tape to gather any trace evidence left behind by the killer. the tape lifts the evidence, but the adhesive isn't so strong that the trace elements can't be

removed for later analysis. investigators noticed what was perhaps their first clue. >> and i looked at him and he looked at me and i said, did you see that? something shiny. and we kept moving it around at different angles until we could see something. >> the spheres were no larger than the head of a pin. under a fiberoptic microscope, the spheres looked like metal. they also found several red and blue fibers and a yellow paint chip. could these few microscopic items help investigators find a killer? in new york state, we're changing the way we do business, with startup ny. we've created tax free zones throughout the state.

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this is an 11-year-old girl who had her life savagely taken from her, brutally killed and her body was left in the woods for animals to find. i think that made it hard on everybody who dealt with this case, myself included. >> in the weeks following mandy lemaire's murder, investigators had a very promising lead. a witness placed charlie smithart near mandy's home on the day of the abduction. and some young girls in town had even more damaging information to report. >> in the weeks before mandy's disappearance, charlie smithart, a 60-year-old man, had been seen offering rides to other young girls who bore a striking resemblance to mandy lemaire, such that one of the young girls, when her mother saw the

sketch in the newspaper that mandy was missing, that she thought she was looking at sketch of her own daughter. >> armed with a search warrant, investigators confiscated smithart's pickup truck for analysis. with a gel adhesive, criminalists lifted microscopic particles from the truck's interior. during the investigation, they noticed something else about smithart. >> i couldn't take my eyes off his shirt, because he had little sparkly things on his shirt. and i finally asked him, "what are those sparkly things on your shirt, charlie?" and he says, "i don't know, brass, aluminum. i'm grinding stuff all the time." >> that clue led investigators to the workshop behind smithart's mother's home. there criminalists collected paint samples, hair, fibers and all of the metal fragments they

could find. they also confiscated a pair of smithart's overalls. all of the evidence was shipped to chicago, illinois, to a research microscopist, skip palenik. palenik began looking at the small yellow paint chip found on mandy's clothing. using x-ray spectroscopy, he noticed something unique. >> glossy layers with no other layers behind it, in a variety of colors. that's quite unusual. and children's bicycles, of course, are painted with the single layers of the glossy paint. >> in the samples collected from smithart's workshop, he found a paint chip identical in composition to the paint chip on mandy's clothing. next were the red and blue fibers. again, he found they too were unusual. >> it turns out these fibers had

a very unusual cross-section. they were also very brittle. >> they were brittle because of degradation due to age and exposure. the fibers were triangular in shape, or trilobal. using an infrared spectrometer, palenik discovered the fibers were polypropylene, a synthetic fiber used for carpeting. he then analyzed the fibers gathered from smithart's truck and clothing. >> we find in smithart's environment exactly the same kind of fibers. not only the same cross-sectional shape, but the same pigments used to color them. everything is there. >> the fibers in smithart's truck were manufactured by the same company and had the same degree of environmental damage as those found on mandy's clothing. finally, palenik examined the most unusual evidence, the

metallic spheres found all over mandy's skin and clothing. the scanning electron microscope identified the spheres as carbon steel. from his experience, palenik knew precisely what had shaped the metal in this way. >> using a high-speed cutting tool to cut through steel, you will produce these spheres. the metal particle is raised to high enough temperature it actually melts into the spherical form. >> the metal spheres were compared to fragments found on the seat of smithart's truck. >> the particles were consistent in all aspects of having originated from mr. smithart's environment. it would be extremely unlikely to have all those particles come together just by chance somewhere else. >> now armed with forensic evidence, investigators wanted to learn as much as they could about smithart's background, so they flew to california to interview one of his daughters. there, they found evidence that mandy lemaire wasn't his first victim.

>> we walked around, out in her front yard and down her road for a couple of hours until she trusted me. and with tears in her eyes said that her father had started molesting her, interestingly, at the age of 11, the same age as mandy lemaire was when she was murdered. and that all her sisters had also been molested. >> after a three-month investigation, charlie smithart was arrested for the kidnapping, sexual assault and murder of mandy lemaire. it wasn't soon enough for mandy's family.

>> i can tell you, the temptation was strong to take matters into my own hands. i won't lie to you. but i told myself that i can never explain to it two boys. many residents of tazlina i'm living the life of dreams. i'm living the life of dreams, with good people all around me. i'm living the life of dreams. no! i'm living the life of dreams. i'm feeling hopefully. feeling quite hopefully, it's right up here, turn right, turn right. with good people all around me. right, right, right, right, right! with good people all around me. ok look you guys, she's up here somewhere. with good people all around me. there she is! cara! come here girl! i'm feeling hopefully. and the light shines bright all through the night. oh i don't know it. and the light shines bright all through the night. yes, you do. and the light shines bright all through the night. 42. and the light shines bright all through the night. good job. and the light shines bright all through the night. and the light shines bright all through the night. and our dreams are making us nice stories. and my loves are well sleeping just right.

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many residents of tazlina found it difficult to believe that a neighbor could commit such a heinous crime. >> the community was very split up there. it's half-native, half-white community. and mandy was white and charlie was native. and it had the split down the center. the white community had felt charlie was involved and the native community felt he was not involved. >> charlie smithart's trial began two years after the crime. mandy's parents and her two little brothers sat in the first row every day of the trial. smithart insist he was innocent. >> mr. smithart, you are going to have to be quiet at this time. >> gonna throw me in jail? i've been in jail 20 months for

a crime i did not commit. >> i'm going to have have you removed from the court. >> that's fine. throw me in jail. i've been in there 20 months for a crime i did not commit. >> prosecutors believe that molten steel from smithart's metalwork formed the tiny spheres that were attached to his shirt. smithart was wearing that same shirt when he saw mandy walking to meet her friends. it's unclear whether mandy accepted smithart's offer of a ride or whether he forced her into his vehicle. the forensic evidence suggests the tiny metal spheres attached to smithart's shirt were transferred onto the seat of his truck, and later, on to mandy's clothing during the abduction. the same red and blue trilobal carpet fibers were in the truck and on mandy's clothing. a single yellow speck of glossy

paint from smithart's workshop was also found on mandy lemaire. even after two weeks in the woods and after heavy rains, trace elements were still there. the murder weapon was never recovered. prosecutors believe smithart may have dumped it in the tazlina river. >> this type of killer will do this again. and hopefully, i'll still be locked up. and then what are you people going to say if it happens? my way of thinking, you are an accessory to him. you are an accessory to him. and the troopers that investigated this case, because i know i'm innocent. >> skip palennick's testimony was particularly persuasive. >> my role is to come in and report factually what i found

and not advocate for one side or the other, but my opinion. and i stated my opinion in court and hopefully gave the jury something useful to base deliberations on and finally the verdict. >> i felt like he did a really good job of explaining it. >> charles smithart was found guilty of kidnapping, murder and sexual assault. and he was sentenced to 114 years in prison. >> mr. lemaire introduced me to his son, who he said was interested in forensic science. and what he handed me was a courtroom sketch that he made, hand drawn picture that said, "thank you for helping catch my sister's killer." it tugs at your heartstrings. >> this crime affected everyone in tazlina in different ways. >> now that i live in her old house, it haunts me. my memories come back. certain smells bring back memories.

my son sleeps in her old bedroom, and there is a sticker on her window that she and i had stuck there when we were little girls. >> some people think it ought to be over. it's never over. i went through awful days leading up to when mandy's graduation would have been. for years prior, i couldn't go to graduations. i -- then several years after that, when girls that would have been mandy's age were being married, were getting married, i couldn't go to those. it's a whole life long. she's not here. she's missing this time of her life. >> six years later, alaska supreme court overturns smithart's conviction because some evidence the defense team had planned to introduce had been denied.

had planned to introduce had been denied. smithart died of lung cancer in alaska prison while awaiting a retrial. c for six years a serial killer prowled the streets of new york city hunting his victims. he promised to kill 12 people, one for each astrological sign. and he only struck while certain constellations were visible. it took forensic astronomy, handwriting analysis, and a world war ii code breaker to find him. late one cold night in march 1990, 49-year-old mario orozco was walking home from his