tv Forensic Files CNN May 3, 2015 12:30am-1:01am PDT
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evidence. >> i hope this sends a message that you're going to continue to look at these cases and you're not going to get away with murder and that the more they try to cover up their tractiks, the more tracks they leave. up next, three college students are murdered. >> he picked on young women, pretty women. >> police immediately have a suspect. but not everyone was convinced he was the one. >> if he's going to brag about three, why not four. >> he never mentioned her. >> and it's terrifying to think there's more than one monster in your community at one time.
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>> it was a week before the fall semester began in 1981. susan was just with ginning. >> she was going to be doing some of the broadcast work. >> on august 17th, susan left the radio station just before 6:00 p.m. and planned to meet her girlfriend for dinner but never arrived. >> the friend who she was supposed to have supper with, called her roommate, mary, and mary didn't know where she was at and approaching midnight, they started calling all their friends and went to places where they thought she might have
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gone. >> the next day, with still no word from susan, the police were notified. that night, officers noticed some trampled vegetation near a dirt foot path students used to walk from one side of the campus to the other. >> as he walked into the weeds a little deeper with a flashlight and all of at once, he saw susan's body. >> this was something that really undid us. this was obviously a horrible thing and i immediately started crying. it was a very terrible moment for me. >> it appeared that susan had been beaten, strangled and sexually assaulted. police assumed the crime occurred just after she left the radio station between 6:00 and 6:30 p.m., which meant she was abducted and attacked in broad
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day light. >> this was in the middle of the day that this happened and that was one of the scary things. >> and police interviewed all of susan's friends, including her past romantic relationships. >> there had been a few people who had attempted to date her that she denied, so they of course became part of a growing suspect pool. >> and they had to consider whether the perpetrator was a stranger. >> because of the location, they were looking at dorm tower lists and who lived in the area. >> she was such a blameless victim. the thing we're all worried about is someone snag us and
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within days of susan schumake's murder, don paul phillips topped the list of suspects. >> he was a terrible temper. and i met him when he was 15 or 16 years old in a fight and he tried to beat somebody up with a baseball bat. >> he was a suspect in a murder of two other illinois university students two years ago. teresa clark was found raped and murdered off campus. at the time phillips lived in an
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apartment feet away. >> we had no witnesses, we didn't have much to go on and we felt pretty comfortable, he might be our person. >> and one year later, sherry was also found raped and stabbed in her apartment and again, john paul phillips was living in the neighborhood. >> well, it turned out he was a few blocks north. >> there wasn't enough evidence but in susan schumake's murder, they got a break. they found two foreign hairs on her body, presumably from her killer. >> one was a body hair and a pubic hair recovered from susan's body. >> he willingly provided hair
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samples and based on examination, the hair was not a match, so he was eliminated as a suspect. despite that, the family was convinced that phillips was responsible for the murder. >> and they didn't arrest or charge him, which i didn't understand at the time because i thought they had enough reason to. >> later, phillips committed several assaults that landed him in jail. >> he went out to a camp ground and approached to them. >> but they finally got a break in susan schumake's case. they found her back back in the creak behind the dorm tory.
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her wallet was missing. they said she usually carries about $10. and they found a small red bag with toiltry items and inside, police found identification. >> he finds a pharmaceutical bottle that has the name daniel woloson but it was prescribed that correctional center. >> they found that he was on parole. so, he became a person of interest. >> 21-year-old daniel woloson had recently been released and was a handyman at the time of the murder. >> he was living about a quarter mile away from the crime scene. >> he said he had an alibi, that he was with a friend. >> and the officers took him to the various locations, trying to
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find this person with whom he spent the night and were unsu unsuccessful. >> he cooperated with police and provided hair samples but the next day when police went to speak with him again, he was gone. and in his room, he found a torn note, some of the pieces were in the toilet and the rest were in a trash can. >> i don't know why it's always me. i know i can't handle prison again. i know everyone is better off this way. >> woloson's hair was not consistent with the hair found on susan's body, so he was eliminated as a suspect. the case threatened to go cold until john paul phillips, now in prison for rape and kidnapping,
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. in november of 1986, john paul phillips went on trial for the murder of joan weatherall, one of the murders he allegedly confessed to to a secell mate. on the day he was sentenced, phillips addressed the court. >> he said, well, i didn't kill her but i hope she felt every bit of it and the judge immediately sentenced him to death and he went off to prison
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on death row. >> but before had sentence was carried out, he died in prison of a heart attack. although he bragged killing women, he never mentioned schumake but the family still thought he was responsible. >> we thought phillips was responsible and he went to jail and died there, so we thought t was over and done. >> others weren't so sure, for one, susan's murder was different than the others. >> most of his murders were under darkness and that wasn't the case for susan schumake. >> her roommate had kept the picture from the case file on
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the desk. >> you can see the father standing with had daughter very proud and knowing the story that i knew that time, that she had been murdered, it was something that always held my attention. >> by 2000, a new dna process called pcr made it possible to test a small biological sample, where in the past, larger samples were needed. >> we're just copying the specific portions of dna that we're interested in analyzing. >> so they tested the small biologic sample taken from the autopsy and were able to test it. john paul phillips was not on
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file, so they requested the state exhume his body. a dna sample was taken from his bone marrow. it did not match the dna from the crime scene. >> i spoke with susan's mother and she was very disappointed and i tried to control her that we would go forward. >> we thought it was over. >> and it didn't match the state wide data base of well known killers. if it wasn't fims or anyone who committed the murder before the dna data base was committed. then who was it? >> the obvious answer was let's dig back in the case and see who else was a suspect in those days and who else can we get a dna standard from and let's keep
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going until we get suspects. >> the first person on their list was daniel woloson. he was originally a suspect, and worked close to the murder and ran away when police tried to question him. by now, he was divorced with one child and did not want to talk with police. >> he said he had provided hair samples back in 1981 and he was not interested in cooperating with their investigation. >> investigators wanted a dna sample. woloson refused to provide one and the courts refused to order one. siting the lack of probable cause. woloson's hair was on file from the original investigation but the sample didn't contain root
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material, so they couldn't be used to generate a full genetic profi profile. so, they decided to use a it unconventional method to get woel's i'm caridee. i've had moderate to severe plaque psoriasis most of my life. but that hasn't stopped me from modeling. my doctor told me about stelara® it helps keep my skin clearer. with only 4 doses a year after 2 starter doses... ...stelara® helps me be in season. stelara® may lower your ability to fight infections and increase your risk of infections. some serious infections require hospitalization. before starting stelara® your doctor should test for tuberculosis. stelara® may increase your risk of cancer. always tell your doctor if you have any sign of infection, have had cancer, or if you develop any new skin growths. do not take stelara® if you are allergic to stelara® or any of its ingredients. alert your doctor of new or worsening problems
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ecales was convinced he was closing in on susan schumake's killer but only dna could fruv a prove it and the suspect wasn't willing to provide it. so michigan state police decided they would take it in a completely legal manner. >> they decided to have surveillance on him. so we could identify him or eliminate him. >> it wasn't easy since he worked in an autoparts salvage yard, only other employees could get close to him without rousing suspicion. then police learned that he recently sold his car and they knew he smoked cigarettes, so they traced the car to the new owner. >> they asked about cigarette buts in the ash tray and he said
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i don't smoke in the car and my friends smoke them out the car. >> they hoped one was from daniel woloson. they gave it to andrew. >> there was a homicide about 20 years ago of a college student and, me being recently out of college, it was a little personal to me. >> one by one, andrew cut open the cigarette filters, off an good source of dna. >> because that's where the saliva and skin cells have been deposited. >> they were drenched with liquid. and it was sent to laboratory for comparison. and it matched daniel woloson.
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naturally, lieutenant eckles, would need another dna test to confirm the dna results from the cigarette. untirlks l then, he wanted to pt woloson from leaving, so he confronted woloson with some made up evidence. >> it was important for me to extract some type of information from him that would give me enough to arrest him. i give information about a witness, which was not true. i told him there was somebody who worked with him at the apartments and had seen him walking behind wearing a yellow backpack and i took it further and said there was a fingerprint from that backpack and he said you know, i only took $10 from
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that backpack and i knew it was true. >> so, he was arrested and forced to provide an additional dna suspect. and that left no doubt he was the source of the dna on susan schumake. they cannot fathom a reason for susan schumake's murder. they believe he saw her walking alone on the dirt path and decided to attack her. it was late in the day, no one heard or saw anything. he left behind his dna, then took her yellow backpack, stole $10 from her purse, dumped it in the creak, then dropped his bag with a pharmacy prescription in it not far away. >> it's the randomness that's so frightening, she wasn't selected. she just happened to be in the
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wrong place at the wrong time. >> despite the evidence against him, woloson pleaded not guilty. in march of 2006, 25 years after susan's murder, daniel woloson was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to 40 years in prison. the university has now built a well lighted pedestrian over pass, so students no longer have to walk through the over grown dirt path where susan was abducted and murdered. it was named in susan's honor. >> my wife had made the comment, of i wonder how much it costs to have these over passes built and i said i'll tell you, it cost one human life. >> that's why we do what we do to bring justice to these families. so the families deserve a lot of credit. they are the ones that push us
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through the way. >> i went to the site of the murder and i had been beaten. there were a lot of flowers it was built as the fight of the century. for many, it didn't meet the hype. we'll have the reaction from the mayweather x manny pacquiao fight. the duchess delivers a baby girl. in baltimore, maryland, after a week of protests, crowds gather for a mostly peaceful day of unity. welcome to viewers here in the united states and around the world. i'm george howell, this is cnn news room. did you watch the fight? the results are in. floyd mayweather defeated manny pacquiao in one of the most
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