what we can do. >> we here in science, in forensics, we're here for the truth. we're not here for the prosecution, we're not here for the defense. we're here for the truth. >> he will spend the rest of his life in a state penitentiary. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com up next, police hear an incredible story. >> he made the statement, i can't believe he killed her. >> a man claims his mother was murdered by a hitchhiker he picked up. >> and all of a sudden he ends up at your house and your mother is dead. >> the son says he's telling the truth, but refuses to take a polygraph. >> what does he have to hide? >> we have proof. >> what proof? >> can forensic science provide the answers? >> this is probably one of the most bizarre cases i've been involved in. shortly after midnight, charles holden returned home

from work and saw a suspicious looking man lurking outside the home he shared with his mother. instead of confronting the man, he drove to a pay phone and called police. >> he's on my property now. >> is anybody out there at your house? >> my mother is next door to my trailer and she lives alone. i want to get somebody out there as soon as i can because i don't want him to break into my mother's. >> when police arrived, they discovered a window had been broken on the back door of his mother's farmhouse. inside, they found the man's mother, 70-year-old dorothy donovan, dead in her bedroom. >> it was a very bloody and brutal crime scene, blood everywhere, blood splatters throughout the bedroom. >> she had by stabbed repeatedly in the chest and face. >> this is what i would consider to be overkill. and this can suggest that this is a person that has a close relationship with the person and knows that person and is very

intimate, could possibly be intimate with that person. >> with the way the body was arranged, it looked like the victim had been sexually assaulted, but medical examiner found no evidence of it. >> so this made investigators think that maybe the way the body was found that maybe the scene had been staged. >> there were no valuables missing from the house, and dorothy's purse was untouched. >> so that ruled out the robbery motive or possible theft gone bad. >> dorothy donovan, twice widowed, with seven grandchildren, was an unlikely victim of violence. and her family said she had no known enemies. >> it's a very safe farming community. people knew each other. lots of people didn't even lock their doors. >> dorothy's grown son, charles, who had called police to the scene, made an unusual comment when he saw his mother's body. >> he made a statement, "i can't believe he killed her. i can't believe he killed her."

>> and charles now told investigators that he knew the man walking outside his mother's home. he said it was someone who had asked him for a ride earlier that night and got angry when he refused. charles claimed he might have killed his mother for revenge. >> those things just don't happen that you would pick up a hitchhiker, and then all of a sudden, he ends up at your house and your mother's dead. >> what you said doesn't make sense. it doesn't make sense. >> at that point, i really wasn't buying into it. >> you're not believable, charles. you're saying the words, but you're not convincing. you're saying the words, but i'm not convinced you're telling the truth. >> i'm telling the truth. >> no, you're not. >> police now question whether this man even existed. [ male announcer ] you wouldn't ignore signs of damage in your home.

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when police found 70-year-old dorothy donovan brutally murdered in his delaware farmhouse, her son charles told police a story so implausible no one believed him.

>> only an idiot would believe that story. not an experienced policeman. >> charles claimed that on the night of his mother's murder, he worked the 4:00 to 11:00 shift at his factory job then stopped on his way home for a hamburger. while walking to his truck, he was approached by a man who was looking for a ride to georgetown. charles said he wasn't going that far but was headed in that direction. after driving a few miles, charles told the man that was as far as he was going and that he'd have to get out. charles said this because he lived just a half-mile away and didn't want the hitchhiker to know which house was his. but the man became angry. charles got out of his truck. the hitchhiker grabbed a screwdriver he found on the floor and the fight continued outside.

charles claimed the man threatened to kill him if he didn't drive him the whole way. so charles agreed. as they made their way back to the truck, charles got in first. >> charles was able to pull away before the hitchhiker could get to the passenger side of the vehicle. he drove off, leaving the hitchhiker standing in the intersection. >> shaken by the experience, charles said he drove around for a while instead of going straight home. >> he doesn't want to go right home because he's afraid that the hitchhiker is going to see him and know where he lives. >> about 20 minutes later, charles drove up the driveway to his home and to his shock and surprise, he saw the hitchhiker walking around his property. that's when he went to call police. >> the type of weapon was never conclusively determined by the medical examiner, just that it was a cutting instrument. it could have been consistent with a screwdriver or a knife. >> there are a lot of things

going through investigators' minds thinking, you know, the story that charles holden is telling is just not really adding up. >> when charles was finished with his story, police gave him their unvarnished opinion. >> you're telling us about a black man who assaulted you at the intersection and minutes later murdered your mother. that's what you're trying to get us to believe. i'm saying it's just not logical. i don't believe it's physically possible for that black man to get from that intersection, to that house, kill your mother in the time it takes you to ride from the intersection to your house. it's just not possible, charles, it's not believable. >> and how did the hitchhiker know where charles lived? after all, there were other homes in the area, and the hitchhiker not only had to walk a half-mile, he also would have had to make a turn in the road. >> the story was so difficult to believe, because how did this

person pick this house, number one, and picking this house, why did he go in and kill this person that was laying in bed? >> he was certainly taken back by my accusation that he had something to do with his mother's death. but i felt that's the way the interview needed to go, because it just didn't seem logical or likely that the events that he was describing actually took place. >> and investigators also discovered a possible financial motive. >> shortly before dorothy's murder, dorothy had taken out an accidental death insurance policy. and charles was named the beneficiary of that policy. >> charles holden did have some financial problems at the time of this incident with some farming debt that he had incurred over the past year. and this was benefitting him so that he could pay off those debts. >> even more incriminating, charles, who had no criminal

record, refused to take a polygraph. >> anytime someone refuses to take a polygraph, that always adds suspicion to that individual. what's he trying to hide? maybe he didn't kill his mother, but maybe he knew who did. >> it didn't take long for investigators to find evidence at the crime scene, evidence left by the killer. >> charles, you're not telling the truth. >> yes, i am. >> he wouldn't come in here, say this -- we just wouldn't do it if we believed it happened any other way. >> no, i am not. >> and we have proof. >> what proof? >> that proof was left on the handrail of dorothy's farmhouse. >> there was a bloody palmprint on the railing, which turned out to be the most important clue of this case. >> there were other bloody fingerprints in the farmhouse, but those weren't as clear.

>> there was a good print. even though it was slightly fragmented, it was not the entire palm, it was only a small section of a palmprint. >> when investigators compared the bloody palmprint to charles's prints, they got an unpleasant surprise. >> the palmprint was compared to charles holden's known prints, and it was not a match. >> investigators now had to face the possibility that charles' story might actually be true. and when you bundle your home and auto insurance through progressive, you'll save a bundle! [ laughs ] jamie. right. make a bad bundle joke, a buck goes in the jar. i guess that's just how the cookie bundles. now, you're gonna have two bundles of joy! i'm not pregnant. i'm gonna go. [ tapping, cash register dings ] there you go. [ buzzing ] bundle bee coming! it was worth it! saving you a bundle when you bundle --

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investigators still believed charles holden had something to do with his mother's murder, and may have hired someone to kill her. >> even though there was the forensic evidence that didn't match charles holden, there could have been some connection between charles holden and the person who committed the murder. >> investigators suspected that the hired killer might have been the man with charles at the fast food restaurant. >> detectives went back and they were able to locate some of the people who were in the parking lot that night, and they were able to find that there was, in fact, a black male walking through the parking lot looking for a ride and actually did see this person get in the car with charles. >> investigators asked charles to describe the hitchhiker.

and from that description, police created this composite sketch. the large glasses were the most distinctive part of the image. investigators looked for criminals who fit this description and put together a photo lineup. >> charles picked an individual by the name of richard mitchell out of this lineup. also, three other witnesses from the hardee's that night also picked out rich mitchell as the hitchhiker. >> 33-year-old richard mitchell looked remarkably like the composite drawing, and he'd been arrested a number of times for forgery and petty theft. >> we're pretty optimistic that we had found the person that might have committed this crime. >> investigators found mitchell at his home in harrington, delaware, and they knew immediately this was a dead end. >> as soon as i saw richard mitchell, i knew he was not our guy. he had a full beard. and the suspect we're looking

for was clean shaven. >> furthermore, mitchell's palmprints didn't match the print from the crime scene. he also had an alibi. >> as it turned out, he was not our man. >> back at the crime scene, investigators found another clue, blood on the light switch in the victim's living room was not the victim's blood. presumably, it belonged to the killer. >> he could have cut his hand on the door when he broke the glass to reach in to unlock the door to get into the house. >> a sample of the blood was sent to the fbi's forensic lab which confirmed it didn't belong to the victim's son, charles, or any of the other suspects in the case. >> certainly, it is a frustrating situation when you know you have good evidence and you just can't match it up. >> it was very frustrating.

you have a lot of anger, you have so many questions. >> despite his denials, suspicions remained that charles holden still might have had something to do with his mother's murder. >> even though several witnesses corroborated charles holden's story about the hitchhiker, investigators still felt as though the story was too unbelievable to have happened the way charles was saying and thought that charles may have been involved in the incident. >> more than ten years after the murder, the state of delaware was able to access codis, a national dna database of criminal offenders. >> codis stands for the combined dna index system, it's a software suite. and what it does is it blends forensic science and computer technology to aid in the investigations of crime. >> and when the fbi entered the dna profile of dorothy donovan's killer, they finally got a match.

>> this was our home run hit, if you will. it was great. we were ecstatic. >> i really couldn't believe it. that it was only in there for one week, now she's calling me back and telling me already we have a match. >> the dna matched the career criminal named gilbert cannon, who was living in delaware at the time of dorothy's murder. in the interim, he had served time in prison for drug and robbery charges but had been released. but by this time, no one seemed to know where he was or even if he was still alive.

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a dna database match identified gilbert cannon, a career criminal, as dorothy donovan's killer. he bore a striking resemblance to the composite drawing created more than a decade earlier. >> they got some mug shots from him from back in the early '90s and they matched quite well with what gilbert cannon had looked like back around 1990, '91. >> by the time investigators identified cannon as the source of dna at dorothy donovan's crime scene, he had been released from prison for a robbery conviction and no one

knew where he was. eventually, police found him at a girlfriend's house just 40 miles from dorothy donovan's farmhouse. >> it took us about two and a half months to finally locate gilbert cannon. >> but cannon adamantly denied any involvement in the murder. >> i'm not going to sit here and say that i killed somebody. or that i was even there. >> investigators knew cannon's dna was at the crime scene, but they also took his finger and palmprints for comparison. >> i had suggested that when they took it, to make sure they rolled the palm towards the outside to cover any of the area we may need in question. >> rod hegman compared this fresh print to the print on the handrail in dorothy donovan's house. the result was clear. the print belonged to gilbert cannon, and he was confronted

with the evidence against him. >> well, gilbert, one thing i can tell you is you were there. it's impossible for you not to be there, gilbert. we're just telling you, on tape, that is your dna. no ifs, ands or buts. it's no one else's. it's a perfect match. i don't know what you were doing back then. i have no idea. we were hoping to sit down and try to get you here. because gilbert, you know -- >> like i said, i ain't killed nobody. that ain't even me. >> a few hours later, cannon reconsidered. >> he knocked on the window of the holding cell and advised investigators that he wanted to talk to investigators. >> basically, i went out. i don't know whether it was the drugs or what -- whatever. honestly, i mean, i don't have any reason to lie about it now. i didn't have to say this.

>> true. >> cannon told police on the night of the murder, he was high on cocaine and looking for more. and that's when he ran into charles holden at the fast food restaurant. holden agreed to give him a ride, but refused to take cannon all the way into town. there was a fight. cannon found a screwdriver in the truck, and the fight continued outside. eventually, charles holden agreed to drive cannon the rest of the way. but charles managed to get back into the truck first and took off. cannon said he had no choice but to walk down the road in the same direction. he said he passed a few houses, but they all had lights on. looking for a place to sleep, he

stopped at the first house that looked empty. when he broke in through the back door, he woke the homeowner, dorothy donovan. cannon was afraid she'd be able to identify him. so he used the screwdriver he took from charles' truck and stabbed charles' mother to death in a drug-fueled rage. he left his palmprint and dna inside the home. charles saw him on the property and called police, convinced that cannon had somehow followed him. cannon claims it was just a coincidence that he chose dorothy's house. he was unaware of any connection between dorothy and charles. >> investigators asked him if anyone else was with him, if he knew charles holden, did anyone ask him to do it? and his response to

investigators was, no, that he acted alone. >> when they told cannon that charles was my mother's son, he was totally surprised. that was such a relief to us. that showed us that charles was not connected with him. >> in the face of a possible death sentence, gilbert cannon pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to life without parole. the science proved not only that gilbert cannon was guilty, but that charles holden, a man kind enough to give a ride to a stranger, had nothing to do with his mother's murder. >> charles holden was exonerated because of the advancements in the computer technology and the forensic technology. >> this was probably one of the most bizarre cases i have been involved of because of the what you thought were conflicting stories in the beginning. >> being able to provide him

some closure with the help of science and codis and the state police is incredible. >> if the police had not done such a really outstanding job in pursuing this for so many years, that cannon would probably still be walking free. up next, a mother and child are kidnapped in broad daylight. >> i didn't have any clue what anybody could have done. carjack, kidnap, murder. >> at first surveillance cameras tracked the movement. >> they knew it was her. they knew her card had been used. and she looked very calm. >> she was alive now. maybe she'll be alive five minutes from now. >> but police soon lose the trail. >> we realize that both of these were in great danger. >> they used the only tools they have to find the victims. >> they need to act quickly in order to try to save their lives.