after the trial, and no one, not even his own lawyers, know where he is today. >> i have had a letter that he sent me later that year that basically thanked me for testifying on his behalf, and that he was going to have a certain place in his heart for the welfare of the flies in the future. when a young woman walked outside her home to investigate a strange noise, she was abducted at gunpoint. but the victim knew something about forensic evidence, and she was determined to prove she had been inside the assailant's truck. the clue she left behind and her recollection of detail led police straight to the criminal's front door. jackson township is just

north of canton, ohio, home to the pro football hall of fame. it's an upscale bedroom community. much of the area is undeveloped, especially along the old erie canal. the mckernan family lived just two blocks from the canal. 18-year-old stephanie mckernan shared the home with her husband jamie and his 18-year-old sister, whom we'll call megan. on saturday night, may 6th, 2000, stephanie and megan were outside when two men in a pickup truck stopped to talk. >> asked us both if we were single and how old we were, and we both said we were not available. >> the men were both polite and when rebuffed, drove off. a few hours later after the women returned home, they heard a noise outside. megan grabbed a flashlight. stephanie picked up a can of

spray paint, and both went outside to investigate. >> hey girls. >> they were met by a man with a rifle. he claimed to be a police officer and ordered the girls to get into his truck. >> we were like, no. so he put the gun in both of our faces numerous times and asked us, do you want to die, do you want to die, do you want to die. >> you want to die? >> in the scuffle, the assailant hit stephanie with his rifle. megan hit the man in the face with the flashlight. he then grabbed megan, dragged her down a hill to his pickup truck, and drove off. when stephanie regained consciousness, she called police. >> oh, my god!

she's gone! megan, megan. i gotta get my husband. >> did you happen to get a license plate? >> i didn't get a license plate. i know it was a truck. i think it was blue. >> when police arrived, stephanie was hysterical and was unable to provide much detail about the crime. police were skeptical since the boys had numerous prior run-ins with police. >> they're always running their motorcycles through the yards up and down the street. they were always having a party. we were always down here for something. there's definitely got to be more to this than what we know. >> but there was evidence at the scene to corroborate stephanie's story. officers found megan's sweatshirt and sandals, along with the cover for the scope of a rifle.

there were shoe prints leading in the direction the assailant was headed. at the bottom of the driveway, police found tire impressions, and near the road was a purple glove and an ice scraper. over the next few hours, megan's family and the police searched the streets and parking lots of jackson county, but she was nowhere to be found. $21. could something that small make an impact on something as big as your retirement? i don't think so. well if you start putting that towards your retirement every week and let it grow over time, for twenty to thirty years, that retirement challenge might not seem so big after all. ♪

18-year-old megan mckernan was kidnapped at gunpoint from the backyard of her home. evidence left at the scene showed signs of a struggle, but revealed little about the kidnapper's identity. >> this was obviously someone that megan had no knowledge of, not familiar with, and this was actually a legitimate thing that had happened to megan. >> while investigators interviewed megan's family and friends, a police officer kept watch at the crime scene.

suddenly, the officer saw a woman running towards him. it was megan mckernan. >> her first words was, i have been raped. >> although battered, megan was fortunate to have survived her two-hour ordeal. >> an hour before, we were looking for her in a ditch, so to see her come running towards me was definitely a happy moment. >> police rushed megan to a nearby hospital, which had a special unit to treat rape victims and preserve crucial forensic evidence. nurses carefully collected and documented all of the evidence they could find and also preserved her bloodstained clothing. police photographed scratches on megan's face and other injuries,

including cuts and scrapes to her back and arms. >> she knew what she needed to do to get through the situation, and that is a success in and of itself, to make it out alive. >> megan told police that the man drove her to boyd's corner a remote location about five miles from her home, and assaulted her in his truck. >> i was trying to push him off of me, but he had his arms above me and holding himself off of the seat with the other. he said he'd like to have a girl like me. he'd like to get married to a girl like me, that i am so pretty, and that he is so sorry for beating me up. >> megan pleaded with the man to let her walk home. >> he told me that he wouldn't let me walk because i didn't have no shoes on and it was a pretty far distance from my house. >> instead, he offered to drive her. >> she actually gave him better directions to get her back home. there were two ways to get

there, and she actually talked to him about don't go this way, go this way, it's faster. >> he dropped her off a block from her home. megan was able to recall many important details about her assailant and his truck. she said the truck was a chevy s-10, blue with a dark cab. there was an air freshener with a tweety bird cartoon character hanging from the rearview mirror. the interior was muddy with holes in the bench seat. megan remembered grabbing the truck frame in a desperate attempt to resist her attacker. >> she definitely wanted to leave some type of sign or calling card, if you will, that she was there, that this had taken place, just in case she didn't make it out alive. >> she also said the back end of the truck may have been dented.

>> when we went down to boyd's corner, he turned around and backed up to the guard recall and he hit the guardrail pretty hard. >> megan described her assailant as a stocky blond male with facial hair, about six feet tall, with piercing blue eyes. between his eyes was a crescent shaped cut when megan struck him with the flashlight. >> she kept her eyes open, and she looked at his face and his body, so she was able to describe portions of the man that a reasonable stranger wouldn't know. >> forensic scientists measured and photographed the shoe and tire impressions outside the mckernan's home. several of the shoe impressions belonged to megan's family, but there were a number of unidentified shoe impressions, presumably those of the assailant.

at boyd's corner where the assault took place, police found more tire impressions and scuff marks on a guardrail. boyd's corner is an isolated area on an abandoned road leading to a cul-de-sac. because it was a gathering spot for teenagers, police assumed the assailant was a local man familiar with the area. the use of a weapon also suggested this wasn't his first crime. >> we wanted to make sure that the person who did this to her wasn't out there hunting someone else. so we wanted to make sure the community was aware of the information. >> police appealed to the community for help. a newspaper article appeared three days after megan's assault, asking if anyone recognized the description of

the assailant or his truck. that same day, police received an anonymous telephone call. you got a little something on the back of your shoe there. a price tag! danger! price tag alert! oh. hey, guys.

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jackson police department, how may i help you? >> an anonymous caller told

police where they could find a truck similar to the one they were looking for in the megan mckernan assault case. >> we go to the address that was given to us by the anonymous caller, there's the suspect vehicle. it matches perfectly. it's a blue chevy truck with a black cab. >> the truck was owned by douglas bailey, but police immediately ran into two problems. bailey didn't match the victim's physical description, and he didn't have the cut on his forehead made by megan's flashlight. >> is that your truck in the driveway? >> yes, sir. >> mind if i take a peek on the

way out? >> but then police saw the tweety bird air freshener, the same one megan had described, hanging from the rearview mirror. and behind the front seat was a rifle similar to the one the girls described. criminalists dusted the truck for fingerprints. they discovered prints on the frame by the passenger door. by using a special adhesive strip, they lifted those prints for analysis. >> they were found next to the passenger's door and were in a smeared condition, which would, in my opinion, indicate that someone had been forced into the vehicle or attempted to be forced into the vehicle. >> he then compared those prints to megan's, looking specifically for individual ridge characteristics. megan's fingerprints had the same ridge characteristics and spacing as the fingerprints on the truck. >> those fingerprint impressions were made by the right index finger, the right middle finger, the right ring finger, and the

right little finger of megan mckernan. >> with a search warrant, police confiscated a pair of boots from the bailey home to see if they matched footwear impressions found at the crime scene. >> they can be like a fingerprint in so far as they can be individualized as having been made by a specific shoe to the exclusion of all others. >> floria says shoe soles develop tiny cuts from stepping on objects such as glass or stones. these accidental characteristics are unique to each shoe. using fingerprint dusting powder, floria covered the sole, then used a sheet of adhesive tape and a roller to make a copy of that sole. next, floria compared the size, shape and accidental characteristics to the footwear impressions lifted from the crime scene. they were a match.

tires also have accidental characteristics like footwear. when the tire impressions from the crime scene were compared to the baileys' pick-up truck tires, they were found to be consistent. >> there was a glove that was left at the scene. the match was inside the vehicle itself. >> the truck belonged to douglas bailey, but the shoes did not. they belonged to his 28-year-old son, craig, who had recently been released from prison after serving seven years of a 25-year sentence for burglary. doug bailey wasn't surprised to hear his son might again be in trouble.

craig bailey was attending alcohol abuse recovery meetings at this local treatment center, and that's just where the police found him. >> without saying a word, he turned around, put his hands behind his back, we handcuffed him and took him out to the car. he never said a word and never questioned us as to why we were there to take him into custody. to me, that was a sure sign of someone who had committed the crime or certainly was guilty of something. >> and it wasn't long before police discovered that the anonymous callers were craig's father, doug, and his girlfriend. work better on pain than tylenol arthritis. so why am i still thinking about this? how are ya? good. aleve. proven better on pain. thanks for tnorfolk!around and i just wanted to say, geico is proud to have served the military for over 75 years!

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police suspected 28-year-old craig bailey, a career criminal, was the man who kidnapped and assaulted 18-year-old megan mckernan. megan's description of her assailant fit craig bailey perfectly, even the crescent shape cut between his eyes. >> megan selected craig bailey out of a photo lineup of six people. she did not hesitate when she selected the person that did this crime to her. >> doug bailey told police that he and craig were on their way to a movie when craig stopped to speak with megan and her sister-in-law, stephanie. later that night, craig dropped his father off at home and said he was going out to meet some

friends. his father had no idea his plan was to return to the girl's house. despite overwhelming forensic evidence against him, craig bailey refused to accept a plea bargain and pleaded not guilty at the preliminary hearing. meanwhile, investigators worked to strengthen their case against him. forensic scientist jennifer bloink analyzed megan's rape kit. >> if i get a nice, bright purple color change reaction, i know that i possibly have semen on that swab. >> which is what she found. bloink also tested the samples with fatabase tablets. >> what a fatabase tablet is is

basically a starch that is chemically connected to a dye. >> the test turned deep blue, meaning saliva was present. those samples were subjected to a dq-alpha dna test. test strips analyze six specific locations on the dna strand. craig bailey's dna matched the semen and saliva samples from the rape test kit. >> only one person out of 3,000 people would have the dna profile that we detected from the semen on the thigh.

if all of those individuals happened to be caucasian. >> and finally, a bloodstain found in the pick-up truck matched megan's dna. >> there was a literal mountain of evidence to suggest and to prove that he in fact did commit the crimes of felonious assault, rape and kidnapping. >> megan's blood inside the truck and her fingerprints positioned in a way that clearly demonstrated she was forced into the vehicle all prove these points to the jury. >> the forensics to this case put the icing on the cake. >> it allowed us to conclusively link the suspect to the scene and to the victim herself. >> craig bailey was convicted of first-degree kidnapping and rape and two counts of felonious assault. he was sentenced to 46 years in prison. since bailey was on parole when he committed the crime, the

judge reinstated the 18 years remaining on bailey's previous sentence. >> he didn't show any anger. he didn't show any remorse. he didn't show any incredulity. i believe by the time he would get out would be approximately 81 years old. >> if it wasn't for megan, we might not have had a conviction. there could have been a dynamic attorney in there that would have maybe confused or polluted the issue of was it a real crime? these girls asked him to come back or just enough to put a little bit of reasonable doubt into the mind of the jury. so it was megan and her articulation and her conviction and her willingness to survive and make it through that made the case. >> hey, girls. >> investigators say everyone can learn from megan mckernan's quick thinking and amazing

recall. >> leave pieces and parts of whatever you can behind, rip clothing, hair, fingernails, dig in, have at it. don't go away and leave us nothing, because what we might find might just be what's left over you. just after opening a car restoration business, phil roush became seriously ill. doctors had difficulty finding the cause. to forensic scientists, it looked like foul play.