each shooting and that all had different astrological signs due to nothing more than luck. a popular high school gym teacher mysteriously left town without saying goodbye to anyone. he later sent letters to explain why. but a closer forensic look at those letters and the microscopic piece of tissue gave investigators an entirely different explanation for where he went and why. west yellowstone, montana is primarily a resort town. only 1,000 residents live here year round.

but in season, the beauty of the national forest lands and yellowstone national park are the main draw. >> yellowstone is basically the gateway to yellowstone national park. there are a million visitors that come through here every year, so it's a service-oriented town. >> reene and brad brisbin owned a restaurant here in town. he also worked at the local high school. >> brad enjoyed life. he loved to play practical jokes on people. >> brad was a very loyal, honest, trustworthy friend who would do anything, including giving you the shirt off his back, to help you. >> friday, november 9, 1990 started like most days until brad got a telephone call at work and left class unexpectedly. >> i actually met him in the hall. he had his jacket on.

he was getting ready to leave. i asked him where he was going and he said to help out a friend. he said he would see me at dinner later on that night. >> brad said he was going to belgrade about 90 miles away to pick up his friend larry moore who needed a ride. >> it was odd. he doesn't leave his job for very much. it was odd. >> what made it even more bizarre, brad never returned home. >> that's when we knew something -- i mean, we knew something was already wrong because brad hadn't come home, and that wasn't his nature. that wasn't the way brad brisbin was. >> when police interviewed larry moore, he said he met brad at the diner as planned. but he said brad was depressed and inebriated. >> brad told larry that he was tired of life and tired of his wife, tired of the restaurant and was going to leave. borrowed some money from him,

left the restaurant. >> moore said brad left the diner, got into a red car with washington plates and drove off. moore said the driver was a woman and that he didn't recognize her. brad's car was still in the diner's parking lot and there were no signs of foul play. >> he loved his family, there was no problem. never any indication that there was anything in his mind remotely related to leaving his family. >> i knew that they didn't know her family, the dynamics of the family, and just to hear people saying, you know, maybe he did just run off and they didn't know him. >> brisbin and the moore families had been friends for years. moore's wife shelly worked with brad. shelly coached the girls' high

school basketball team and brad coached the boys'. investigators heard rumors that brad and shelly were having an affair. >> i didn't believe so. we talked to reene and she denied an affair. we talked to shelly and she denied one. the only other person we could ask was missing. >> shelly and brad disappeared two days before brad disappeared. shelly said her alleged affair with brad was a figment of larry's imagination. >> she actually pointed to larry as having done something to brad because of some of the domestic violence against her and the fact that he had accused her of having an affair with brad. >> a few weeks after brad's disappearance, a letter from brad arrived at police headquarters. he said he was alive and well and living in washington state. but after seeing the letter, police weren't too sure.

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the last known person to see brad brisbin alive was his friend larry moore. police started their

investigation by carefully examining larry moore's truck. >> he allowed me to search the pickup and it was immaculate. when i went around to the camper, i noticed he was patching holes in it with a putty knife. >> inside the camper, investigators found bullet holes in the floor and in the liner underneath. they also found a bullet fragment from a .357-magnum pistol. larry told police he once tried shooting a mouse in the camper while on a hunting trip. but something caught the eye of investigators. a small piece of what appeared to be tissue on a window curtain. >> about the size of a quarter. there's no way to describe it other than it looked like a piece of chicken skin or something like that. >> being unsure what it might

be, he took that -- the entire curtain with the tissue on it, and we got it sent up to the missoula state crime lab. >> a ouchterlony test identified the tissue as human and the striations meant it was muscle. >> but that doesn't show you that the person is dead. we can all deposit muscle tissue and still be very much alive. >> but before police could question larry moore about this forensic discovery, a letter arrived postmarked from spokane, washington. it was from brad brisbin. in it he apologized for creating what he called a real strain on everyone involved. >> i decided to start a new life for myself. i had to make a clean break from everyone and everything to make this work. it just seemed to be the only way out for me. >> a few days later, larry moore received a similar letter. in this one, brad wanted to make sure his wife reene was taken

care of. >> all personal property we own, i want her to have everything. i'm starting a new life with a new person. >> but investigators noticed a slight problem. the name of brad's wife reene was misspelled. >> the letter to the sheriff, it congratulated him to his appointment and the sheriff is in an elected position, so there were huge mistakes. there were just huge red flags. >> investigators tested the letters with ninhydrin, a chemical solution which reacts to the amino acids in fingerprints. after it was applied, the documents were dried thoroughly. scientists found numerous fingerprints on the two documents, but none matched brad brisbin. they weren't larry moore's fingerprints, either. next the letters were analyzed by a forensic document examiner.

both letters were typed with the same typewriter. the paper was inexpensive, the kind often used in high schools. the type showed no defects, making it difficult to identify the typewriter used to create them. and only the signature was handwritten. >> the signature itself is a full cursive signature. it is full of tremor. it looks labored and it looks slow, and it does not look like it is the product of habitual movement. >> experts compared this questioned signature to several documents brad signed shortly before his disappearance. >> the upper case b in the name brad was actually constructed in three pieces. there is a break. it has the up and down spine on

the left side of the letter, but between the top and the bottom of the letter, there is a break. interesting, the break is in a place where you would naturally stop if you wanted to look to see how you were doing and continue writing. >> police suspected larry moore may have written the letters, but it was difficult to tell since the questioned signature wasn't actually handwriting. >> this is a drawing of somebody's signature. it's not handwriting at all. and it's very difficult sometimes to actually determine who it was that made the drawing. >> although document examiners were unable to tell conclusively who signed the letter, they were certain it wasn't brad brisbin. investigators still had no idea where brad brisbin was or what may have happened to him. . pay the electric bill. keep towels piping hot. get kids to sit still. play beard styling tunes. learn new razor tricks. hire a pro waxer. post before and after pics. i can do all that with my

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works. police now knew that the letters mailed from spokane, washington weren't written by brad brisbin. they strongly suspected larry moore may have been involved in brad's disappearance. on the step of moore's camper, police noticed what looked like blood spatter. under a microscope, scientists

found it was more than just blood. it was tissue. this was identified as human. and the sample had both small granular cells and larger purkinje cells. this meant only one thing. this was muscle. but they wanted a second opinion. >> so they sent this tissue to a fellow named mike collin who is a neuropathologist in ohio. he looked at it and said, yeah, it's mammal and it's cerebellum. it's the brain stem. >> the cerebellum sits at the base of the brain and is primarily responsible for memory and motor movement. since the cerebellum controls the heart muscle, no human can survive without it. a ballistics expert compared the location of the brain tissue in the camper with the bullet holes. using a two-point laser, he

marked the center of the bullet hole and then followed the bullet's path. it showed that the shooter was firing from a standing position. >> clearly few people shoot holding the gun up over their head, and if you realize their body was interposed between that, we only have a few feet to deal with. so it can't be a standing man, for example. it could be a collapsed man or a person nearly down on the floor. >> next, ballistics experts examined the bullet fragment found on the floor of the camper and discovered what was called soft damage. >> it deforms in a different way than it would if it hit wood, concrete, drywall, metal, and it slows down. the longer the path through a victim or tissue or a tissue simulant, the more life is lost. >> to find out whose tissue was in the camper, they sent the sample for dna testing, but they didn't have the body to compare it to.

>> we can help you to determine whether this tissue is from the missing person by comparing the dna from the tissue to the family members and the children and the mother of the person who is missing. >> children get half of their dna from the mother and half from the father. by taking a dna sample from brad's wife, his four children and his mother, scientists could isolate brad's dna profile through a process of elimination. for this, scientists used an rflp test. at the time the most sophisticated dna test available. >> whose ever tissue sample that was was completely consistent with being the father of both sets of children and consistent with being the son of the mother of the missing person. >> next, scientists tested the tiny fragment of brain tissue. it was too small for rflp

testing since it was about the size of a pinhead. so scientists amplified it, using pcr, a process that duplicates a small sample to make it large enough to test. the pcr dna tests revealed that the brain tissue in larry moore's camper was brad brisbin's. >> i knew it was going to be a match. this confirmation that the blood matched was huge. i never felt anything like that before. >> with this discovery, the medical examiner ruled brad brisbin's death a homicide. larry moore was arrested and charged with murder. but prosecutors knew their case would be difficult to prove without a body. they lived. ♪

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which is perfect for me, because i think everything should just work. works? works. works! works? works. works. prosecutors believe that the motive for brad brisbin's murder was jealousy. larry moore suspected brad was having an affair with his wife. moore admitted he called brad at work to ask for a ride. the forensic evidence suggests the two met at the diner and moore somehow lured brad to the back of his camper. once inside, brad was ambushed. >> could you get me those pliers down there?

>> brad was on the floor when moore shot from a standing position numerous times. one shot hit brad's shoulder, leaving a piece of muscle. another struck brad in the head. no one heard the shots because it was a busy truck stop with lots of traffic. authorities had no way to tell where moore took the body. >> he knows he's got equipment in west yellowstone. he owns an excavating company, so he owns backhoes, that kind of thing, so he could get rid of a body pretty easy. >> prosecutors believe moore steam cleaned the camper and got rid of the cot to hide the forensic evidence. but the brain tissue convinced

medical experts that brad was dead. all prosecutors had to do was convince a jury of that. >> as a prosecutor, clearly you want to make damn sure that this is the right guy and there has been a murder. i can't think of anything worse than being in a position of finding out you convicted the wrong person. >> larry moore denied killing brad brisbin and pleaded not guilty. prosecutors argued that larry moore killed brad brisbin in a jealous rage, convinced brad was sleeping with his wife, shelly. to throw investigators off the trail, moore forged brad's name on several letters. the forensic evidence convinced the jurors of two things. one, that brad brisbin was dead.

and two, that larry moore was his killer. >> we, the jury, find the defendant guilty of the offense -- >> moore was sentenced to 60 years in prison. it was the first murder case in montana to be tried without a body. and it was also the first time in the state that dna was used in a criminal case. just two years after his conviction, larry moore made headlines again. he was charged with conspiring to build a bomb in prison. to avoid federal charges, moore agreed to lead authorities to brad brisbin's body. moore directed officials to a campground where he hid the .357-magnum pistol he used in the murder. >> it was found at the base of a tree in one of the campgrounds. >> moore also led police to a

gravel pit a few miles outside yellowstone, where they unearthed brad's body. >> he didn't tell us anything about the homicide. when we did find brad's body, larry did turn a little pale and go sit in a vehicle, but he never did tell us the real reason or the story behind how it actually happened. >> a forensic examination of brad's body confirmed what forensic scientists had told the jury in court two years earlier. >> the determined cause of death was multiple gunshot wounds to the head and upper thoracic region, in other words, the chest area or the back. >> even though moore led police to the body and the murder weapon, he never confessed. until now. in an exclusive letter to the producers of this program, he

admitted his guilt. >> i am guilty as charged and am thankful that the truth finally came out with the help from modern technology. i have learned that telling the truth is the only answer. >> his words bring little comfort to the brisbin family. >> i think the hardest part has been the kids. it's not right to have to grow up without a father. >> i would love to be face to face with larry moore and ask him why and get a straight and honest answer about why he killed my dad. because i think he owes it. i think that's the least he could do for this family. >> as a teenager, it completely where he could my world. >> each forensic test was a piece of the mosaic, and when put together showed clearly what occurred during brad brisbin's last moments alive.

>> without it, we couldn't have proved that brad was even dead. he would still be a missing person. even before the attack on the world trade center in new york, intelligence agencies were watching a number of suspected terrorist cells throughout the united states. the fbi uncovered evidence of a terrible crime by some individuals using the cover of a st. louis grocery store. but it took a forensic autopsy and a tape to reveal the entire story. 16-year-old tina isa was the kind of daughter most parents