him. i miss him and we all miss him a lot. in 1998, a convenience store clerk in lansing, michigan was shot during a robbery. no one else was in the store at the time. but there was an eyewitness, a security camera. unfortunately, the story it told was far from clear. wanda mason was a 48-year-old single mother of three. she had worked in various cities across the country, trying with mixed success, to build a stable life for her family. in 1997, she settled with her

children in lansing, michigan. with money tight, she took a job at this convenience store gas station to make ends meet. about a year later, the owner decided to keep the store open 24 hours a day. wanda mason worked the very first overnight shift. >> she was kind of struggling. and so when the gas station was looking for someone to work the overnight shift because they hadn't been open overnight for a while, wanda just kind of jumped at it and she worked the overnight shift so she could be home with her family during the day and take care of her grandkids and that. >> the store was located in a low crime area. but as a precaution, a security camera was installed before the first overnight shift. a fresh videotape was unavailable, so workers used an old worn out tape until they could buy a new one. at 4:18 in the morning, a group of customers entered the store

to pay for gas and found wanda mason in a pool of blood behind the counter. they called 911. >> 911. >> we just came in here and there's a lady that's bleeding to death. i don't know if she got robbed or what. >> is she conscious or not? >> no. she's bleeding to death. i don't know if she's dead or what. >> by the time emergency personnel arrived, wanda mason was dead with a single gunshot wound to the head. a spent.22 caliber long shell casing was next to the body. police were surprised when wanda's 21-year-old son, donnie, came into the store just moments after they arrived. he showed up before police notified the family. >> we got there, there was people there and they told us that there was a lady lying behind the counter. so we went around back of the counter and my mom was laying there. i lost it, i went crazy, it was my mom, what do you expect?

i couldn't handle it. it was a tough thing to deal with. >> the cash register showed wanda mason had been killed for $351. strangely, wanda told family members just days earlier that she was not afraid to work the night shift because she had a plan in case she was robbed. >> she said that if somebody tried to rob her, that she'd help them carry it to the car. it wasn't her money and it wasn't worth her dying over. it was no concern of hers. that's the business's problem, not hers. >> police questioned everyone in the neighborhood and searched the store for clues. >> we had officers set up a perimeter and we got a canine track going. a couple blocks away, officers spotted a guy running down the road with a paper bag in his hand coming from the direction of the store. so they detained him and brought him back to the office so that we could talk to him. we were hoping that we had already got our guy.

>> the suspect, a 20-year-old african-american, was brought in for questioning. was the security camera video clear enough to identify whether the suspect was the killer? when the flu hits, it's a really big deal. the aches. the chills. the fever. an even bigger deal? everything you miss out on... family pizza night. the big game. or date night. why lose out to the flu any longer than you have to? prescription tamiflu can help you get better 1.3 days faster. that's 30% sooner. call your doctor right away. and attack the flu virus at its source with prescription tamiflu. tamiflu is fda approved to treat the flu in people 2 weeks and older whose flu symptoms started within the last two days. before taking tamiflu tell your doctor if you're pregnant, nursing, have serious health conditions, or take other medicines. if you develop an allergic reaction, a severe rash,

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when wanda mason was murdered in the convenience store where she worked, detectives turned to their one and only witness, the security video camera. full action video is made up of 30 frames per second. but this security video was designed in time lapse mode which is only four frames per second. the result is an unstable image, which was compounded by the fact that it was recorded on an old badly degraded videotape. police sent the tape to ed cheney at future media corporation. >> when we played it, some of the pictures shifted and

distorted making the whole video's sequence look unusable. but when we transferred the videotape to a broadcast video machine, we could then isolate the good images from the bad. >> on the left-hand side of the screen, the tape shows a car pulling up to the store at 3:49 a.m. a man wearing a dark jacket, enters the station and appears to be casing the area. he seems to notice wanda mason working in the back room. he then leaves without buying anything. 10 minutes later, the same man returns, this time with the hood of his jacket over his head. he goes straight to the back room beyond the range of the security camera. at gunpoint, he forces wanda to the front counter. she opens the cash register and

the man takes the money. he then steps back as if he's leaving. trembling with fear, wanda hides her face in her hands. then, the man puts the gun to wanda's head and fires. he lowers his hood, walks out of the store while stuffing the long barrelled pistol into his coat. police had a suspect in custody, a man found running away from the scene with a bag in his hand. but the bag did not contain the stolen money but candy. and he didn't have a gun. the young man said he was running from the scene because as a young african-american he feared he would be wrongfully arrested and he was right. the image on the videotape, though degraded, did not look like the suspect. >> we compared the guy on the tape to the guy we had in

custody at that time. it was pretty obvious they were not the same guy, so we had to cut him loose. we felt like we had just taken our first giant step backwards in the investigation. >> investigators still had two pieces of evidence. the spent shell casing and the degraded image on the security camera videotape. with this image, police sketch artist, rod sadler, drew this composite drawing of the suspect. three days after the murder, it was released to the press. >> police say that early saturday morning this man entered the marathon gas station in holt and shot wanda point-blank in the head. >> tips poured into the police. but since the composite drawing of the suspect was based on the scratchy videotape image, it was difficult to know which tips were relevant and which were not. >> when this case started out, all we had was the video.

and you've seen the video, and if that's all you have, you're not feeling very good about your chances of ever resolving this case. >> and while police continued their investigation, they were also suspicious of wanda mason's son, donnie warren. the videotape shows him highly agitated after seeing his mother's body. investigators wondered why he was in the store in the middle of the night, just moments after the murder, before police had time to notify the family. >> he showed up at the scene 10 minutes after the shooting. the police interviewed him, of course, immediately. he advanced a notion that the perpetrator was black. how could he possibly have known that? that information had not been made public. >> one of the customers that found miss mason's body told us donnie was running around the front of the store saying, i'm going to kill that [ bleep ]. how did he know it was a lone black male when we hadn't even

reviewed the tape yet. >> police discovered donnie warren was unemployed with very little money. on the night of the murder he was out drinking at a strip club. >> we theorized that donnie warren may have met the killer at the topless bar where he and his buddies had been hanging out that night and spending money they probably couldn't afford to spend. knowing his mother wouldn't resist a robbery, that store may have seemed like an easy target where they could hit the store and nobody would get hurt. >> tips continued to pour in from tips of people who thought they recognized the composite sketch. the question for police was whether this man was simply a random killer or someone connected to the victim's son. vo: 85 percent of people who travel will go someplace they've already been.

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save even more on floor samples, demonstrators, and closeout inventory. the year end clearance sale ends sunday at sleep train. ♪ your ticket to a better night's sleep ♪ she's bleeding to death. i don't know if she's dead or what. >> police suspected wanda's death was a random act of violence but police were suspicious after her son just happened to walk into the store at 4:00 in the morning just moments after the shooting.

>> donnie and his friends just showed up in the store a little too conveniently, right after the robbery as if to console his mother. >> donnie denied having to do anything with his mother's murder and said his statement about an african-american male robbing his mother was just an unfortunate remark, nothing more than speculation said in anger. >> police received a tip from a woman who said she recognized the police composite sketch on television. she identified the man as ronald leon allen, her former boyfriend, who lived in the nearby town of jackson. ron allen was a small town criminal for prior arrests of assault and drug activity. his mugshot resembled the police sketch and the individual on the security camera videotape. >> we found out that ronald allen was a suspect in a shooting in jackson and the jackson police had two .22 caliber shell casings from that shooting.

we took those shell casings and the shell casing that we found near wanda mason's body to the crime lab to see if they may have been fired from the same gun. >> analysts said that the casings appeared to be from the same gun. but the only way to be sure was to test fire the actual gun for comparison and police couldn't find it. police also looked for a link between ron allen and donnie warren. >> we tried everything we could think of to connect donnie warren to ronald allen. every time we came up short. so we decided to put donnie on the back burner and concentrate all our efforts on ronald allen. >> was ron allen the shooter and could the videotape identify him? allen was 5'3" inches tall. what was the height of the shooter in the videotape? to find out, detectives went back to the store to recreate the murder.

with gradated height charts set up around the store and using the door and sunglass display as reference points, a height test was conducted using the same security camera, set at the same angle with the same framing that recorded the actual murder. when the test video was compared to the murder video, it showed the shooter was 5'4" inches tall. ron allen's mugshot was taken when allen was in his stocking feet. with shoes, allen would stand 5'4" inches. ron allen voluntarily agreed to take a polygraph test. >> did you have anything to do with what happened? >> no. >> he failed. at this point, police needed to make sure that ron allen was the man in the security videotape. >> one of the things that we have encountered time and time

again, is you have a small business owner and certainly they have limited resources and they feel that they get some kind of protection by having a video camera setup, security camera set up at their business and certainly that should work as a deterrent to some criminals. but when someone commits a crime anyway, if you have cheap or substandard equipment, it's not going to be much help to law enforcement. >> once processed and transferred, investigators got a little better look at the killer. but would it be good enough? ♪ carpenters: "rainy days and mondays" ♪ ♪ ♪ ac/dc: "back in black" ♪ ♪

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even though investigators had a better image of wanda mason's killer, it still wasn't clear enough to make a positive identification with their suspect. the images were sent to dr. ron at an image reconstruction firm that worked to repair the digital images from the hubble space telescope. those pictures from outer space were badly flawed. but video reconstruction transformed those inferior images into viewable ones. >> it was an opportunity to take some of our technology that was developed under nasa and

department of defensive funding and apply to it a local problem. >> the first step was to reduce the distortion in the images in the security videotape by building mathematical models of each image. these models identify the excess extraneous information, which is then eliminated, leaving only the essential information behind. >> it's like focusing a camera, that's the process we were involved with. we had a set of algorithms that sharpened the image of the camera or equivalently it's like taking the thumbprint off your eyeglasses clearing them up such that you can see with high-definition what you're looking at. >> investigators now had a clean image. but the pictures were shot from a distance. in order to match the pictures to their suspect, investigators turned to forensic anthropologist, dr. norm saur. he applied a technique called

photo skull super imposition. he took the mugshot of the suspect, ron allen and super imposed it over the image taken from the security camera. >> what we were able to do is superimpose images on one another and compare aspects of morphology to evaluate the likelihood of identification. morphological features like shape of the face and eyes and shape of the root of the nose was an important feature in this case, the distance from the root of the nose to the hairline. >> slowly, the images were laid on top of one another and revealed the identity of wanda mason's killer. >> what he did was he identified certain unique characteristics in the face in the video, which makes us each look different from anybody else, and he was able, by focusing on those

different aspects of the face that are unique to an individual, was able to identify a mugshot of ronald allen as the perpetrator. >> prosecutors feared that defense lawyers would challenge the use of the processed videotape for identification. the only other evidence was the .22 caliber long shelled casing found at the scene. ron allen's cousin was looking through some of allen's stereo equipment when he noticed something behind the speaker cover. a long barrelled .22 caliber ruger handgun. >> we took the gun straight to the police test crime lab where they confirmed it was the gun used in both the other location and wanda mason. that was great news. >> police also discovered that ron allen owned a cutlass

automobile that had been customized with chrome wheels and a chrome rearview mirror. these same customized features could be seen on the vehicle outside the convenience store after electronic enhancement. ronald allen was charged with first-degree murder. police were satisfied that donnie warren had nothing to do with his mother's murder. >> i was innocent. and there was no way they could ever say i wasn't. i have faith in our justice system. i believe that -- i know there are a few innocent people that slip through the cracks. but if you're innocent you will be found innocent. they can only put you in prison if they have evidence and if you're innocent there is no evidence. >> ronald allen was convicted of first-degree murder and

sentenced to life without parole, a measure of justice made possible by old-fashioned police work and the latest in forensic technology. >> i really don't think wanda's family knows how lucky they are that they got justice in this case. it's kind of ironic that the one thing that was supposed to make this easier for us turned out to be such a nightmare. business owners have to understand if they're going to use security equipment they have to buy good equipment, keep it clean, use new videotapes and have good lighting so we can get a good view of the suspect. they owe that to their employees, to the police agencies and to the public. >> the family of wanda mason probably doesn't know the lengths and the detail and the creativeness that went into this conviction. but they don't have to know. it's not our position in law enforcement to go and tell people what a great job we've done. our job -- people have elected me and the sheriff to protect them. they have elected us to arrest

criminals and they have elected me to do my best to convict them and protect the community. that was done in this case, and that's all that they need to know. that's what our job is and we did our job. in 1995, carolyn killaby of vancouver, washington, got into a heated argument with her husband. she then went to a local bar alone. no one has seen or heard from her since. but some saliva from an envelope and a speck of blood on a wristwatch helped solve the mystery of her disappearance. in 1990, carolyn and dan killaby were married, each for the second time.