in 1996, two young boys fishing in an ohio lake found what looked like a human skull. all of its teeth were missing, and markings on the skull told a tale of unspeakable violence. police had no idea who this person was or how long the skull had been in the water. hamilton, ohio is an industrial city of about 62,000 people in the southwestern part of the state.

it's an area blessed with natural beauty. residents enjoy the many rivers, streams, and lakes that dot the landscape. on august 7th, 1996, 12-year-old tim lyons and his friend tj dejohn headed to linden lake for an afternoon of fishing. but instead of a blue gill or catfish, the boys reeled in what looked like a skull. >> it's hard to believe that you'd find somebody's head down there, that you're just fishing, minding your own business, and you reel in some lady's head. it is just unbelievable. >> the boys left the skull on the bank, uncertain of what to do. >> i know my mom and dad, they didn't believe me. they thought i was just goofing off. >> like, a whole day passed before we even -- we went back down there and it was still there. >> this time the boys contacted

the police. >> first cop that came down there was pretty much a prick. he came down there and showed us everything. he threw a rock at it and said, it's real. you boys just opened up a big investigation like we did something wrong. >> 20 minutes later, the whole police force was down there, and they had boats and everything, people scuba diving down there, searching for other clues. it was crazy. went nuts from there. >> the police scuba divers could not find any other body parts in the lake, and a search of the immediate area was also fruitless. the local coroner examined the skull and determined that the individual hadn't been in the lake long, perhaps only a few weeks, because there was still some soft tissue clinging to it. who was this person? how did he or she die? and where was the rest of the

body? to assist in the identification, the coroner sent the skull to the college of mt. saint joseph outside cincinnati to dr. beth murray, one of only 63 board certified forensic anthropologists in the united states. >> this case was one of the most challenging, fascinating, personally rewarding, but also at the same time personally terrifying cases that i think i've worked. >> dr. murray noticed a deep indentation on the top of the skull, which suggested the killer used a machete or a cleaver on the top of the victim's head. and dr. murray found other cuts and scratches all over the skull. >> and there were signs of trying to get the flesh out of the skull, and it gave me chills to realize that someone had sat with this skull in their hands and defleshed it.

>> this skull had a nose cavity indicative of a caucasian. a battery of nearly two dozen measurements fed into a computer program confirmed this was the skull of a woman. dr. murray estimated that the victim was under 35 years of age. >> the sutures of the skull, the lines where the individual's skull bones knit together, those were still very open. and they typically will tend to close with age. >> evidence suggested someone had used many different types of tools in an extraordinary effort to conceal the woman's identity. a series of jagged parallel marks indicated a serrated knife the size of a kitchen steak knife had been dragged along the sides of the skull. cut marks on the cheekbones indicated the jaw had been forcefully removed with a small, single-edged blade like a pocket knife.

and there were several puncture wounds in the eye sockets, an indication that the killer removed the victim's eyes. the teeth were also missing. in the upper jaw was a broken tooth root, which told dr. murray that the teeth had been deliberately pulled. >> and when you held the skull at just the right angle, you could see that the weapon that was used was a needle nose pliers. you could see marks in the bone where the pliers has been inserted and the teeth snapped out. i had never seen anything like this before in my life. >> it would be the most difficult murder investigation local officials had ever encountered.

although investigators knew the skull found in linden lake was that of a caucasian woman under the age of 35, they knew nothing else. marks found on the skull indicated that the flesh had been removed, as had her teeth, in an attempt to hide the woman's identity. >> i've seen a lot of criminals

try to hide their crime and conceal their activity. it's almost expected. but i've never seen anybody go to this length of activity to conceal a crime. >> hamilton police discovered that only four individuals had recently been reported missing. one was 21-year-old tina mott. reported missing just two months before the skull was found in the lake. tina mott was the single mother of an 18-month-old son, johnny. she had been living here in a quiet yet residential street with her boyfriend, tim bradford. tina mott was originally from new york. she met her boyfriend, tim, while she was selling magazines door to door. they settled in tim's hometown of hamilton where tina worked as a clerk at a local store. tim was a framer at this art shop.

when questioned by police, tim said that tina had gone back to new york to visit her family and left the baby behind. police soon discovered that tina mott never reached new york. tina was reported missing not by her family, but by tim's mother, elizabeth bradford. >> so at first, she didn't really think anything about it. but when she started calling new york to see if she was up there and she wasn't, she knew she was wasn't away on her own will because she knew she wouldn't leave the baby alone. >> elizabeth bradford also told police she was afraid of her son and his temper. armed with a warrant, police searched a storage locker that bradford rented shortly after tina disappeared. inside, they found this set of 19 kitchen knives with small, medium, and large serrated

blades. police also found a book on how to kill with your bare hands and a notebook on satanic rituals. tim bradford's mother told police that her son practiced devil worship. also suspicious was tim bradford's behavior during tina's disappearance. an atm security camera captured pictures showing tim bradford withdrawing money from tina mott's bank account after she disappeared. investigators also learned that tim bradford occasionally used drugs. >> we know from statements that tina had supposedly told people she worked with she was afraid of tim because of his drug usage. i'm speculating here, but when he is using drugs that his violent temper is a little more flammable, you know, that he erupts a little bit quicker and has a shorter fuse and that's why she's afraid of him.

>> next, police searched the couple's apartment. inside, they conducted a luminol test. a chemical is sprayed on a surface. it can reveal blood that has been cleaned up with water and detergents. on the living room carpet, investigators found an area believed to be human blood. they also found blood on the bathroom floor in the crevice between the floor and the tub and also near the toilet. police suspected the linden lake skull was that of tina mott, but they needed scientific proof to be certain.

when a human skull was recovered from linden lake in ohio, investigators needed to find some forensic technique to make a conclusive identification. the most effective means of identification is by analyzing the teeth of the victim and comparing those to known dental x-rays, since no two sets of teeth are exactly alike. but in this case the lower jaw of the skull was missing, and the upper teeth had all been pulled.

another method of identification is called skull photograph superimposition. an anthropologist takes a photograph of the skull and then superimposes it over the photograph of a missing person in hopes of matching the facial characteristics. other techniques attempt to put a face on the skull using facial reconstruction and forensic sculpture. it's a technique usually used when all other means of identification have failed. but in the case of the linden lake skull, scientists got a genetic break. they discovered that the killer removed all but two of the wisdom teeth, which had been embedded in the gum, which the killer may not have seen. >> when the perpetrator pulled the teeth, he didn't realize

those molars were up underneath the gum line. so those were protects and preserved. >> dr. murray extracted tooth pulp from the wisdom teeth and sent it for dna testing along with a blood sample from tina's 18-month-old son. but scientists could not obtain a usable dna profile from the tooth pulp. >> it's possible that the reason is that the teeth were still unformed. and when teeth are still forming, their roots are open, open cavities. >> it was also possible that tiny single cell microorganisms in the lake called diatomes damaged or altered the cells in the tooth pulp. as a last resort, dr. murray tried to extract dna from the skull itself with a surgical drill. she carefully removed six bone samples from the thickest part of the skull. >> with sterile techniques, the middle section of the core that

i took out half never touched anything but that sterile drill. >> the skull bone fragments were sent for mitochondrial dna testing which is used in cases where the biological sample is either degraded or small in quantity. >> and the mitochondrial dna is unique because you receive it only from your mother. so any maternal relative you have can be tested against the sample. >> mitochondria are found in the cell's cytoplasm outside the nucleus. each cell contains hundreds of mitochondria. scientists have isolated two regions of the mitochondrial dna where differences within the human population appear. >> they will look for exact matches between the mitochondrial dna in the sample they have and the maternal blood relatives they have.

the mitochondrial dna from the skull was the same as the y mitochondrial dna from 18-month-old johnny mott. which meant that the skull was that of his mother tina. and one of the long knives found in the storage shed rented by tina's live-in boyfriend tested positive for human protein. with this news, police brought tim bradford in for questioning once more. >> i asked him if he knew how to hunt. yes. did you know how to dissect an animal and skin it, prepare it for food? yes. how to dispose of the internals of an animal? yes. he learned that through his childhood upbringing. >> finally, tim bradford told police a story of almost unspeakable violence and horror. it was the story of tina mott's last moments alive. my advice for healthy looking radiant skin.

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when dna testing concluded that the linden lake skull was that of tina mott, police confronted her live-in boyfriend, tim bradford, with the forensic evidence against him. after several hours, bradford confessed. bradford led investigators to a

nature preserve less than a mile from where the couple lived, and in the deep brush were tina's bones, scattered throughout the area. after 14 months, animals had gotten to the remains and only about half of tina's body was recovered. every bone found had been cut either by a hacksaw or a knife. tim said that on the night of the murder he and tina were playing a game of monopoly. bradford admitted using drugs that night. at some point, the couple got into an argument, tempers flared, and tim admitted to hitting tina, bloodying her nose. tina went to the bathroom to clean up and bradford said he started to put away the fishing gear he had used earlier in the day. bradford said tina came running out of the bathroom to continue the argument. bradford said he had a fish

fillet knife in his hand, and in the ensuing scuffle, tim admitted that he slit tina's throat. bradford said he left the apartment and when he returned, tina's lifeless body was in the bathtub. how she got there was a mystery to him. bradford said he worked through the night to dismember the body. he flushed her internal organs down the toilet. >> it's unbelievable that a human could do this to another human that he loved and fathered a child with. i cannot grasp that. >> bradford admitted using each of the 19 kitchen knives in the process, and bradford confirmed using needle nose pliers to remove the teeth in an effort to prevent a dental identification of the remains. >> cut into the flesh to begin with is hard enough. then to cut the head off, hold

it in my arms or my hands, and pull the teeth out? it's unbelievable. >> bradford carried the bones from the apartment in his backpack and in a trash bag to a deserted field where he dumped them. later he said he went to linden lake and threw the skull into the water. >> if that skull never appeared, this case would have never been solved. it would never have proceeded as a homicide. it would have just gone down as a missing person and been in missing persons forever. >> tim bradford had no explanation for why he killed tina other than to say he loved her and was sorry. tim bradford was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and of abuse of a corpse. he was sentenced to 12 to 25 years in prison.

tim bradford acknowledged his guilt in this exclusive letter he wrote to the producers of this program. bradford says, quote, i have committed an atrocity in the eyes of god and of man, and for that, i accept full responsibility. my actions belie my true feelings for tina. i truly loved her with every fiber of my being, end quote. bradford claims the pain of his own actions go well beyond those imposed by his prison sentence. quote, the nightmares i have had since that night, the dreams i have where i wake up with tina's name on my lips, those will stay with me forever and they should. it is a burden i must carry in my heart until the end of my days. >> in this case, mr. bradford, the way he treated the corpse of

the person that he supposedly loved, tells you that there's almost two parts to this person. one where he really loved the woman and can't deal with the fact of losing her and wants to talk about what he did to her because he feels guilty about it, but another side of him that could detach himself from all emotion to lean over a bathtub and deflesh the body of somebody that you love. it is just humanly impossible. i just hope that through law enforcement, officers and young detectives may be seeing this case be aired, that they realize don't give up. when you get these little clues and you have gut instincts telling you something isn't right, push the envelope a little bit. keep on going after the evidence. because that's what happened in this case and it resulted in us walking through a field and maybe we got our shoes all muddy and got a little bit dirty and everything.

but we found the last of her remains and were able to put a final conclusion to this case and i'm very proud to be a part of that, quite frankly a small canadian farm town made national news when a woman claimed she was raped by her own doctor. dna tests proved the doctor was innocent. the victim insisted the dna test was wrong. what does a high school graduate know that the world's top scientists do not? nestled along canada's beautiful southwestern prairie is the tiny town of kipling, saskatchewan. the population is so sparse, the farm animals outnumber the residents. in a town this size, everyone knows one anothe