avenue you look at this case, forensics, forensics. but in this case it is the forensic files. no doubt about it. with no forensic evidence found at a murder scene, investigators were baffled. but they suspected that the victim's dog had witnessed the crime. if she had, forensic scientists needed some way to find out what the dog had seen. north liberty, iowa, is such a small town it doesn't take much effort to know your neighbors. but one resident the townspeople seldom saw was 28-year-old john helble.

>> john was somewhat of a recluse. john kind of stayed to himself. >> it wasn't unusual if we didn't see him for a month. he would be doing things at his home or repairing things or out with his friends. >> at one point in time in john's life, he was a narcotics user and very possibly also a narcotics dealer. >> in february of 1999, john's mother was really worried. she hadn't heard from her son in over two months. >> we'd been trying to reach my son, and that he wasn't answering, and we were afraid something was wrong. >> so she called the local sheriff who found john's van parked in his driveway. but no one answered the door. >> they smelled an odor coming from inside the trailer. he described that odor as being the odor of death. >> the officers forced their way through the trailer door and found helble dead, slumped into

a chair. >> the body appeared to be in a position of someone who would have been watching tv and had laid their head down on their arm, on their pillow, and gone to sleep. the body was completely covered. i had a blanket over the entire body, over the head, over all of the body. >> he had been shot twice in the back of the head with a .22-caliber pistol. the advanced state of decomposition revealed the murder happened weeks earlier. there were no signs of forced entry, and the trailer doors were locked. >> that indicated to us that someone actually left the residence and took the time to use a key to bolt that door shut again, keeping other individuals from being able to easily access and enter the trailer. >> in the home, police found a small amount of marijuana and some drug paraphernalia.

>> john didn't deserve to have this happen to him. he may not have been the perfect person in the world. he may not have had the best lifestyle in the world. but i could almost guarantee you he would give you the shirt off his back. >> but john's prized collection of guns was missing, including a uniquely customized gold cup .45 semiautomatic pistol. >> this colt gold cup was described to me, from one of john's friends, as you would have to pry that gun away from his cold, dead fingers. >> he was able to take guns apart and work on them and repair them, customize them, put fancy gold on them, things like that. it sounded as if john had been killed for the gun collection. >> and another one of john's prized possessions was missing, his 3-year-old husky, keisha. >> oh, he loved his dog. his dog was his life. she was his baby.

>> she had a lot of hamburgers, a lot of pizza, hot dogs, things like that. i think she ate mostly people food. she was very spoiled. >> police soon learned that a dog matching keisha's description was found a month earlier, wandering aimlessly several miles away. >> she was just standing in the middle of the street, dazed, looking around like where am i, what am i doing here? >> john's parents identified keisha. the evidence suggested she had been driven there and dropped off. >> keisha was found during january when the roads are typically dirty and muddy. but keisha's condition was pretty clean. >> the crime scene showed that the dog's leash, which normally was kept inside the trailer next to the door, was actually in the victim's van. it suggested the victim's van had been used to transport the dog and dispose of the dog. >> this was just one unusual

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an autopsy on 28-year-old john helble revealed he had been killed long before his body was found, but the medical examiner was unable to determine exactly when he was killed. >> without an idea as to when the time of death is, it obviously becomes very -- much more difficult to determine who are suspects and who are people that you can rule out. >> helble's dog, keisha, was found on january 22nd. helble's telephone answering machine had messages not yet listened to. the earliest unheard message was left that same day, january 22nd. >> john would not use the answering machine to screen his telephone calls. if someone called, john wanted to talk to them. so therefore, we knew that january 22nd, 23rd john was dead.

>> with this information, authorities questioned john's friends and family. >> we had three primary suspects in this case -- mike harting, andrew rich, and sharon schneider. >> the first suspect, mike harting, was a friend of john helble's. a witness recalled seeing harting's truck parked near helble's home around the time of the murder. >> mike harting was good friends with john. we knew that john and mike had some narcotics business together. >> but harting had an alibi for the time of the murder, and he passed a polygraph test. the next two suspects, andrew rich and sharon schneider, were friends of john's who lived about an 18-hour drive away in greybull, wyoming. >> we learned from a good friend

who saw andrew rich and john helble together on january 18th of 1999 that in fact andrew rich had been at the trailer house of john helble. >> but andy said john was alive and well when he and sharon left to return home. police searched the couple's apartment and found marijuana, methamphetamine, and several .22-caliber bullets, the same caliber used to kill helble. these bullets, along with the slugs from helble's body, were sent to the fbi lab for a neutron activation test. >> that's where the lead is shaved off of the bullet, it's melted down, and atoms are counted. >> counted, then compared. but the atomic composition of the bullets recovered from john helble was not what investigators had hoped for. >> the results showed us that the bullets that we had

recovered from john were not the same bullets that was removed from andy rich's house in greybull, wyoming. >> investigators found smudge marks on the inside windows of rich's jeep, similar to those caused by animals when pressing their noses against the glass. was it possible that rich used his car to transport helble's dog across town after the murder? police took keisha's noseprint in the same way they collect human fingerprints. each dog's noseprint is as unique as a fingerprint. >> unfortunately, we weren't able to get the type of smudges or prints actually from the vehicle that would enable us to do that, but it certainly was an interesting element that we pursued for some time. >> after several months with no forensic evidence and very few

leads, the investigation into john helble's murder was starting to turn cold. so investigators turned to helble's dog for more information. >> as it turned out, that dog was going to play a very important part in solving john's death. (woman) the constipation and belly pain feel tight like a vise. how can i ease this pain? (man) when i can't go, it's like rocks piling up. i wish i could find some relief. (announcer) ask your doctor about linzess-- a once-daily capsule for adults with ibs with constipation or chronic idiopathic constipation. linzess is thought to help calm pain-sensing nerves and accelerate bowel movements. it helps you proactively manage your symptoms. do not give linzess to children under 6, and it should not be given to children 6 to 17. it may harm them. don't take linzess if you have a bowel blockage.

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a year after john helble's murder, police suspect that his best friend, andy rich, was somehow involved in his death, but they had no proof. all investigators knew was that rich had some unusual career aspirations. >> we knew that his lifelong goal was to be a hit man for the mafia. we had interviewed past girlfriends. we had interviewed other associates of andy rich, and he always portrayed himself as a tough guy. >> we were concerned that sharon schneider, the girlfriend of andrew rich, had information

that she was fearful about telling us. the impression was that she was being guarded out of fear, her fear, of andrew rich. >> he abused me a lot. there was a lot of abuse. not just physical. there was a lot of verbal abuse. >> police looked into sharon's background to see if she had ever been involved in illegal activity, and they found something. >> sharon schneider was purchasing guns in a different location. she would give those guns to andy rich. some of those guns went to john helble. we had a violation of the federal statue. the federal firearms and narcotics statute was the wedge that we used to split andy rich and sharon schneider. >> sharon schneider told a different story about that visit with john helble. sharon said she dropped andy off

at helble's home about three days before the murder, then left to visit her daughter about an hour's drive away. a few days later, andy arrived, driving john's van. they put some of his guns into their car, took john's van to his home, and then drove their car back to wyoming. >> i had no idea that john was dead, no. i had wonders of why he had these guns. >> after a brief stay in wyoming, sharon said that andy left alone with the guns. >> took off in the middle of the night, or around 4:00 in the morning, and headed to texas. he was gone three weeks. it was andy's own stupidity for telling me where he was going. >> we started to learn things from sharon that we had suspected all along. and at that point in time, it became really important for us to find any information that we could that was going to corroborate what sharon had to say. >> police visited the man andy rich stayed with during that trip to texas. he said rich had given him an unusual gold cup .45-caliber

semiautomatic pistol to pay off a drug debt, but by this time, a year later, he no longer had the gun. investigators then located a second man rich visited on that trip who still had in his possession a box of ammunition rich had sold to him. inside the box, investigators found several short black and white hairs. microscopic analysis confirmed that the hairs were from an animal, but there were no roots attached, so nuclear dna testing was impossible. but they were able to extract mitochondrial dna from the hair. mitochondrial dna is passed to animals and humans only from the mother. joy halverson, a california veterinarian, specializes in animal dna.

>> it will not be as unique a profile as i might get from blood or saliva or hair with a root, but it will still allow me to say, yes, this sample matches the reference dog or it doesn't match the reference dog. >> halverson performed a pcr test, which stands for polymerase chain reaction. >> it's basically like taking one page out of a book and ignoring the rest of the book and xeroxing that page a million times. and now you have that page in so much quantity that you can see it. >> then the sample was sequenced to get a visual representation of the dna type. when she compared the dna from the hair in the ammunition box to a sample of keisha's hair, she found a haplotype in both sets that was extremely rare, occurring only in 1 in 300 dogs. >> the chance of having that

match just by random was pretty low. combined with i'm sure the circumstances of the case, if i were sitting on the jury, i would find that to be a compelling piece of evidence in the case. >> this was forensic proof that rich was in possession of an item stolen from john helble. then, investigators got another break. the man who was given the gold cup pistol said he still had the gun box. inside was a note listing all of the custom alterations made to the pistol as well as the costs. >> doug asked me if i thought that was john's handwriting, and i thought it was. >> but to be sure, investigators needed an expert. for that, they turned to gary licht, a forensic document examiner.

he compared the note to known samples of helble's handwriting. >> the question material was written with somewhat heavy pressure. in the known writings, that was written with the same pressure. it was hand printed. and his known writings relied heavily on printing and not cursive. >> he looked for unique features in individual letters in john's known writings, features he then tried to locate in the questioned document. based on his comparisons, licht was able to draw a definitive conclusion. >> i was able to identify the writer of the question material as john helble. >> proof that it was helble's gun, and no other, that andy took with him to texas. based on the handwriting analysis and the dog dna, andy

rich was arrested and charged with john helble's murder. in court, rich had an interesting response to the forensic evidence against him. ready for another reason to switch to t-mobile. get 2 lines of unlimited 4g lte data for just $100 bucks a month. it's america's best unlimited family plan. and it's only at t-mobile.

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his murder. based on the position of the body, prosecutors believe rich killed helble after he fell asleep in the living room watching tv. the motive was apparently money. rich wanted to sell helble's gun collection for either cash or drugs. the shooting may have agitated helble's dog. [ dog barking ] to stop the barking, rich put keisha in helble's van, then drove her several miles away before letting her out in a strange neighborhood. little did he realize that keisha's hair would be found in the stolen box of ammunition and that canine dna testing would prove it came from helble's beloved dog. >> andy hated that dog. andy could not stand keisha. i don't know why he spared her. i have no idea.

how can you spare an animal and shoot a human? >> when rich sold helble's prized pistol in texas, he left the note inside with handwriting that matched helble's known handwriting samples. >> the witness testimony and the forensic testimony piled together just added up like bricks in this case, and it was because of the two and putting those two together that we were able to be able to solve this case in the first place. >> douglas eugene rich. >> on the day before his murder trial was to start, andy rich made a surprise announcement. >> he said, "i killed john helble for his guns," but he never turned around and never addressed the family. never apologized for what he had done or showed any remorse for what he had done. >> i was somewhat stunned by

that. i thought that that was the point in time where he would accept responsibility and do the right thing. the parents and family of john helble were sitting behind him. it was his chance to try to make amends. he failed miserably in doing that. >> rich pleaded guilty to first-degree robbery and voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 35 years in prison. in exchange for her cooperation, sharon schneider was charged for drug possession and was sentenced to six months in a halfway house and 2 1/2 years probation. >> sharon was not a witness to the crime. sharon had pieces of the puzzle that she gave us that we could put together to solve the crime. >> i think it's very interesting

how keisha helped ultimately to be able to solve the crime of the homicide of her master. >> i feel that keisha solved the case along with the detectives, and she provided the evidence against andrew rich. against andrew rich. she got her man. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com 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 tof