-- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com cincinnati heart surgeon dr. darryl sutorius had a second chance at love when he married a pretty young divorcee. but happiness is sometimes elusive. dr. sutorius fell into a serious depression. and apparently committed suicide with a .38-caliber pistol. but why did he fire a test shot into the sofa cushion before killing himself? cincinnati, ohio. because of its size and

sophistication, its health care facilities are among the finest anywhere. dr. darryl sutorius was one of the city's most successful and respected heart surgeons, but he was also impatient and demanding. >> dr. sutorius was a very busy surgeon, but he didn't have the strongest people skills. >> he was perceived by many of his co-workers as very gruff, angry, kind of difficult to please sort of man. >> dr. sutorius met his wife, janet, who was a nurse at the same hospital. the couple had four children together. three daughters and a son. and it wasn't long before janet realized the many challenges of being married to a busy doctor. >> he was in a solo practice which took up all of his time. he was on call all of the time. >> the hard work and sacrifice paid off.

by the mid-1980s, dr. sutorius was earning $300,000 a year. but the climb to the top of his profession came with a price. the marriage was strained, due to long hours, pressure, and darryl's explosive temper. >> he was almost dangerous. he could put you down, he could make you feel really bad about yourself. and sometimes to the children. he liked to be in control. and he liked to be in charge. and he liked to be a provider and a caretaker. and while we enjoyed some of that, we weren't totally wanting to be controlled or taken care of. and that bothered him. >> after 30 years of marriage, the couple divorced. dr. sutorius was lonely, depressed and overweight and had a difficult time living apart from his children. >> he was interested in finding

a woman, i think, who didn't challenge him much, who would tell him how wonderful he was and stroke his ego, so to speak. >> for companionship, sutorius turned to a dating service. dating services are a big business in the united states. for a fee, clients provide their picture and personal information, which the service distributes to other clients. the dating service thought dr. sutorius and 45-year-old dante britteon would make a good match. ms. britteon described herself as the owner of a day care facility who had recently been divorced. after four months of dating, dr. sutorius and dante were married. it looked as if darryl was moving on with his life. but soon his new wife noticed problems. >> he was very nice and very kind, but he was so depressed. >> and along with depression, dante discovered that darryl was impotent. >> he was embarrassed to tell me.

and he wasn't i guess quite sure how i'd take it. and i just said, i told him, keep giving me lots of hugs and lots of kisses on the cheek, and just keep holding my hand. >> dr. sutorius was so depressed that he spoke of committing suicide to some of his colleagues. part of the problem were some startling secrets he found out about his new wife. (vo) around age 7, the glucose

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after dr. sutorius married dante britteon, the couple moved into a luxurious home in an upscale cincinnati suburb. dante relished the lifestyle that her husband's income could provide. >> she finally had her wish, you know? she had fur coats made. she had jaguars. she had a lexus. she had all the things she wanted. she went to spas. she went to the caribbean. she went on holidays. really, that's what she seemed to always want was that perfect lifestyle. >> but from the start, the marriage was in trouble. dr. sutorius was suffering from

depression, impotence, and the couple fought often about money, and who controlled the pursestrings. >> don't worry about the cost. i'll take care of it. >> there had been a terrible argument when dante learned darryl was going to pay for his daughter's wedding. >> we spend far too much money on your kids the way it is. >> dante resented spending money on darryl's children. >> if he were to buy something for the children, she would retaliate by going out and buying designer clothes, furs, jewelry, running up the credit card bill. basically in retaliation for him paying attention to his own children. >> dante's behavior prompted sutorius to look into his wife's background. he found out that much of what dante had told him were lies. her real name was della hall. she never graduated from ucla as she claimed. in fact, she hadn't finished high school.

and she had lied about how many times she had been married. >> dr. sutorius was della's fifth husband. she was the type of person who had to have the last word, who would often go out of a relationship with a bang, so to speak. >> and sutorius discovered his new wife had a long history of violence. >> she threatened husband number four with a gun. she threatened husband number three with a knife. she -- one guy, the common-law husband, she actually lit his bed on fire, drugged him and lit his bed on fire. he woke up in a burning bed. he lived through it. thank god. >> there were rumors that she had murdered previous boyfriends, possibly another husband out in california. we spent quite a bit of time working with the los angeles homicide squad, who were very cooperative and tracked down

several leads for us, but we were never able to identify a previous boyfriend or husband in southern california that was not currently alive. >> mrs. sutorius had also been convicted of threatening an earlier husband with a gun. an incident that terrified darryl. >> i spoke to one of his colleagues, another heart surgeon in cincinnati about this. and he said darryl came into work one day wearing a bulletproof vest. and this other surgeon could not believe it. he said, what are you talking about? and darryl said, well, you know, i'm fearful for my life. and i'm wearing a bulletproof vest. he admitted to it. >> officer, i need your help. >> after learning the truth about his new wife, dr. sutorius stopped a local policeman at a gas station. he handed the policeman a handgun belonging to his wife, and asked him to take it because he feared for his life.

the policeman noted that dr. sutorius seemed disoriented. dr. sutorius' next stop was his lawyer's office. although the marriage was only ten months old, sutorius wanted his wife cut out of his will. he also began divorce proceedings. by this time, the couple no longer slept together. he spent most of his time in the basement, and days would go by without the two of them seeing one another. on monday morning, february 19th, 1996, dr. sutorius didn't show up for work and didn't answer his pages. his nurse called 911. >> 911 emergency dispatch. >> i work for darryl sutorius, and he is a doctor, and i've been paging him. i'm afraid something's happened to him. this isn't like him, not to answer a page.

>> when police arrived at the sutorius home, mrs. sutorius said she didn't know where her husband was. police asked to search the home. dr. sutorius' car was in the garage. >> oh, my god, i found him! >> in the basement, they found dr. sutorius dead of a gunshot wound to the head. a .38-caliber pistol was on the floor. >> it had the appearances of a suicide. it was a gunshot wound to the side of the head. the gun was relatively close to the body. >> the blood was completely dry, and rigor mortis had set in. an indication that he had been dead for at least a day or two. it appeared that sutorius had been drinking and watching television when he fired the

fatal shot. >> well, i knew that he was certainly suicidal. his lawyer thought that he was suicidal. and there had been a chance that it had been suicide. >> the .38-caliber pistol used in dr. sutorius' death was registered to mrs. sutorius, who had picked it up from the store just 24 hours before he was killed. leave early

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first impressions indicated that dr. sutorius' death was suicide. he was depressed, on antidepressant medication, and he told friends he was considering suicide. mrs. sutorius said she didn't hear any gunshots from the basement. but the next-door neighbors heard a loud bang from the sutorius home sometime after midnight on saturday. when forensic experts arrived at the scene, they immediately saw other inconsistencies. two shots had been fired. one into the sofa cushion. the other to the head. >> it is not uncommon at all for the person who is going to use this firearm to take their own life, to test fire the weapon

first. to make sure they know how to use the weapon. >> the bullet entered just above the right ear, and there was no exit wound. blood was expelled from sutorius' mouth and nose. but there was blood spatter on dr. sutorius' left arm, as well as both sides of his right hand. it appeared that sutorius' right arm was in his lap at the time of the fatal shot and not behind his head holding the gun. proof of this was blood found on dr. sutorius' right palm. if dr. sutorius shot himself, the handle of the gun would have prevented blood spatter from hitting his palm when the shot was fired. >> you've got the problem, if if man, if darryl sutorius fired the fatal shot at himself, his hand would have been back here at the time. and not in the position to receive the blood spatter.

>> another discrepancy, blood on the front of the sofa in front of the body. >> this blood couldn't have come from him, and then hitting the front of the couch, at let's say a 40-degree angle. that this had to have been like flung off of somebody's hands. >> finally, there was the second bullet fired at the scene. it was possible that dr. sutorius had test fired the weapon before firing the fatal shot into his head. but the powder burns on dr. sutorius' right hand and on the sofa were on top of the blood. which meant the blood was there first before the second shot was fired. >> dr. sutorius most likely would not have been able to fire that shot himself. it was done by someone else. it is most logical that the hand was moved to an area where the second shot was fired, in an attempt to produce perhaps gunshot residue on the hands of

the victim. which would then, in the mind of the shooter, make this appear more like a suicide than a homicide. >> mrs. sutorius was the only other person in the house when darryl died. but what was her motive for murder? >> she had a $1 million motive. she wanted that money. he had a pension plan that her -- she was entitled to as his wife. >> if darryl had divorced her, received an allowance of between $1,000 and $2,000 a month. $1 million is a powerful motive for murder. but perhaps the most damaging piece of information is what della's mother told police. >> her mom gets on the phone, calls the sheriff's office and assures them that darryl sutorius did not commit suicide, assures them that he was

murdered and guarantees them her daughter is the one who committed the offense. the goodness that goes into making a power kale chicken caesar salad is rivaled only, by the goodness felt while eating one. panera. food as it should be. as the company that's all about printing. but did you know we also support hospitals using electronic health records

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oh, thank you,i like your place. make yourself at home i'll be right back. hm. she's got x1. alright. huh, hm, ohh... monster? she seemed so nice at dinner. i'm back! ahh! uhh, hi... heyyy, whatcha doing? ohh, just... watchin' law & order. unless you want to watch something else. awww, you're nervous. that's so cute. ♪ della fay hall, also known as dante britteon, was arrested and charged with murder in the shooting death of her husband, darryl sutorius.

her defense suggested a killer was loose in the neighborhood since a neighbor was brutally murdered a few blocks away three days after the death. but there were no signs of a forced entry in the sutorius' home. and prosecutors were convinced that the forensic evidence and motive clearly pointed to mrs. sutorius. around 2:00 in the morning, dr. sutorius was on the sofa in the basement watching television. his wife approached from behind with her .38 caliber pistol. she fired a fatal shot. blood from his nose and mouth spattered over his right palm, evidence that he was not holding the gun when it was fired. della then placed the gun in his hand and fired the second shot to make sure gun powder residue would be found on his hands.

but the blood on his palm showed otherwise, as did the powder burns on the sofa cushions, which were also on top of the bloodstains. during the murder, blood got on della's hand, which she tried to shake off. the blood hit the sofa from the front at a 45-degree angle. >> in moving dr. sutorius' hand and in moving -- and putting the gun into it, she committed some very fatal flaws to her defense that this was a suicide. you now have blood. she got blood on her hands and kind of flung it back. so now you've got blood spatter on the couch coming from the wrong direction. and it's down below where his legs would have been. and there was no scientific way to explain that from a suicide position. so she's got that problem. she's got blood going the wrong direction on the couch. she's got an arm where it

shouldn't be. she's got blood on both sides of his hands where it shouldn't be, and she's got smeared blood on a firearm where it shouldn't be. >> although dr. sutorius' death may have appeared to be suicide, the forensic evidence clearly pointed to murder. during the trial, the voice of dr. sutorius himself was heard in the courtroom. a message to his daughter left on her answering machine. >> don't call dante. don't talk to dante. just keep it between the two of us, please. please, i may not live through this. >> you could hear the fear in his voice that she's threatening to kill me. i'm afraid she's going to follow through on this. i may not live through this. please don't push this right now. >> a cincinnati jury deliberated

for just over four hours before delivering a verdict. >> we, the jury, find the defendant, della dante sutorius, guilty of aggravated murder. >> she was sentenced to life in prison and won't be eligible for parole until 2014. >> her own mother calls her a black widow spider. a fortune hunter who found her way to success by latching onto a successful man. >> noted crime writer aphrodite jones interviewed della in prison for her best-selling book "della's web." jones believes that when della heard about her husband's divorce plans, della concluded that murder was her only alternative. >> absolutely, della is a born killer. she is a born sociopath. she is somebody who views the world through her eyes only,

which doesn't add up with the reality, the consensus of reality in the rest of the world. in her eyes, the world is her oyster for the taking. and if she can't take it, she'll find a way to take it. there is no earning anything. there is no justification for anything. it's just all about her. >> the sutorius family cannot easily forget the years stolen from them through a senseless, irrational act of betrayal. >> he has wonderful children who are very accomplished and educated. and he would be proud of them. he now has two son-in-laws and two grandchildren who i think he would have adored, would have loved to have spent time with, and i think he would have come into his own in this part of his life, where he had accomplished what he had set out to do, and he could sit back and enjoy his accomplishments certainly with his children.

and i'm very sad that he was not allowed to enjoy that and i miss him. i miss him and we all miss him a lot. in 1998, a convenience store clerk in lansing, michigan was shot to death during a robbery. no one else was in the store at the time. but there was an eyewitness, a security camera. unfortunately, the story it told was far from clear. wanda mason was a 48-year-old single mother of three. she had worked in various cities across the country, trying with mixed success, to build a stable

life for her family. in 1997, she settled with her children in lansing, michigan. with money tight, she took a job at this convenience store gas station to make ends meet. about a year later, the owner decided to keep the store open 24 hours a day. wanda mason worked the very first overnight shift. >> she was kind of struggling. and so when the gas station was looking for someone to work the overnight shift because they hadn't been open overnight for a while, wanda just kind of jumped at it and she worked the overnight shift so she could be home with her family during the day and take care of her grandkids and that. >> the store was located in a low crime area. but as a precaution, a security camera was installed before the first overnight shift. a fresh videotape was unavailable, so workers used an old worn out tape until they could buy a new one.

at 4:18 in the morning, a group of customers entered the store to pay for gas and found wanda mason in a pool of blood behind the counter. they called 911. >> 911. >> we just came in here and there's a lady that's bleeding to death. i don't know if she got robbed or what. >> is she conscious or not? >> no. she's bleeding to death. i don't know if she's dead or what. >> by the time emergency personnel arrived, wanda mason was dead with a single gunshot wound to the head. a spent .22 caliber long shell casing was next to the body. police were surprised when wanda's 21-year-old son, donnie, came into the store just moments after they arrived. he showed up before police notified the family. >> we got there, there was people there and they told us that there was a lady lying behind the counter. so we went around back of the counter and my mom was laying there.

i lost it, i went crazy, it was my mom. what do you expect? i couldn't handle it. it was a tough thing to deal with. >> the cash register showed wanda mason had been killed for $351. strangely, wanda told family members just days earlier that she was not afraid to work the night shift because she had a plan in case she was robbed. >> she said that if somebody tried to rob her, that she'd help them carry to it the car. it wasn't her money and it wasn't worth her dying over. it was no concern of hers. that's the business' problem, not hers. >> police questioned everyone in the neighborhood and searched the store for clues. >> we had officers set up a perimeter and we got a canine track going. a couple blocks away, officers spotted a guy running down the road with a paper bag in his hand coming from the direction of the store. so they detained him and brought him back to the office so that we could talk to him.

we were hoping that we had already got our guy. >> the suspect, a 20-year-old african-american, was brought in for questioning. was the security camera video clear enough to identify whether the suspect was the killer?

when wanda mason was murdered in the convenience store where she worked, detectives turned to their one and only witness, the security video camera. full action video is made up of 30 frames per second. but this security video was designed in time lapse mode which is only four frames per second. the result is an unstable image, which was compounded by the fact that it was recorded on an old badly degraded videotape. police sent the tape to ed cheney at future media corporation. >> when we played it, some of the pictures shifted and distorted making the whole video's sequence look unusable.

but when we transferred the videotape to a broadcast video machine, we could then isolate the good images from the bad. >> on the left-hand side of the screen, the tape shows a car pulling up to the store at 3:49 a.m. a man wearing a dark jacket, enters the station and appears to be casing the area. he seems to notice wanda mason working in the back room. he then leaves without buying anything. 10 minutes later, the same man returns, this time with the hood of his jacket over his head. he goes straight to the back room beyond the range of the security camera. at gunpoint, he forces wanda to the front counter. she opens the cash register and the man takes the money.

he then steps back as if he's leaving. trembling with fear, wanda hides her face in her hands. then, the man puts the gun to wanda's head and fires. he lowers his hood, walks out of the store while stuffing the long barrelled pistol into his coat. police had a suspect in custody, a man found running away from the scene with a bag in his hand. but the bag did not contain the stolen money but candy. and he didn't have a gun. the young man said he was running from the scene because as a young african-american he feared he would be wrongfully arrested and he was right. the image on the videotape, though degraded, did not look like the suspect. >> we compared the guy on the tape to the guy we had in custody at that time.

it was pretty obvious they were not the same guy, so we had to ct him loose. we felt like we had just taken our first giant step backwards in the investigation. >> investigators still had two pieces of evidence. the spent shell casing and the degraded image on the security camera videotape. with this image, police sketch artist, rod sadler, drew this composite drawing of the suspect. three days after the murder, it was released to the press. >> police say that early saturday morning this man entered the marathon gas station in holt and shot wanda point-blank in the head. >> tips poured into the police. but since the composite drawing of the suspect was based on the scratchy videotape image, it was difficult to know which tips were relevant and which were not. >> when this case started out, all we had was the video. and you've seen the video, and if that's all you have, you're

not feeling very good about your chances of ever resolving this case. >> and while police continued their investigation, they were also suspicious of wanda mason's son, donnie warren. the videotape shows him highly agitated after seeing his mother's body. investigators wondered why he was in the store in the middle of the night, just moments after the murder, before police had time to notify the family. >> he showed up at the scene 10 minutes after the shooting. the police interviewed him, of course, immediately. he advanced a notion that the perpetrator was black. how could he possibly have known that? that information had not been made public. >> one of the customers that found miss mason's body told us donnie was running around the front of the store saying, i'm going to kill that [ bleep ]. how did he know it was a lone black male when we hadn't even reviewed the tape yet.

>> police discovered donnie warren was unemployed with very little money. on the night of the murder he was out drinking at a strip club. >> we theorized that donnie warren may have met the killer at the topless bar where he and his buddies had been hanging out that night and spending money they probably couldn't afford to spend. knowing his mother wouldn't resist a robbery, that store may have seemed like an easy target where they could hit the store split up the money, and nobody get hurt. >> tips continued to pour in from tips of people who thought they recognized the composite sketch. the question for police was whether this man was simply a random killer or someone connected to the victim's son. ♪

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she's bleeding to death. i don't know if she's dead or what. >> police suspected wanda's murder was a random act of violence but police were suspicious when wanda's son happened to walk into the store after 4:00 in the morning just moments after the shooting.

>> donnie's friends showed up a little too conveniently right after the murder, as if to console his mother. >> donnie denied having to do anything with his mother's murder and said his statement about an african-american male robbing his mother was just an unfortunate remark, nothing more than speculation said in anger. >> police received a tip from a woman who said she recognized the police composite sketch of the killer on television. she identified the man as ronald leon allen, her former boyfriend, who lived in the nearby town of jackson. ron allen was a small town criminal with prior arrests for assault and drug activity. his mugshot resembled the police sketch and the individual on the security camera videotape. >> we found out that ronald allen was a suspect in a shooting in jackson and the jackson police had two .22 caliber shell casings from that shooting. we took those shell casings and

the shell casing that we found near wanda mason's body to the crime lab to see if they may have been fired from the same gun. >> analysts said that the casings appeared to be from the same gun. but the only way to be sure was to test fire the actual gun for comparison and police couldn't find it. police also looked for a link between ron allen and donnie warren. >> we tried everything we could think of to connect donnie warren to ronald allen. every time we came up short. so we decided to put donnie on the back burner and concentrate all our efforts on ronald allen. >> was ron allen the shooter and could the videotape identify him? allen was 5'3" inches tall. what was the height of the shooter in the videotape? to find out, detectives went back to the store to recreate the murder. with gradated height charts set up around the store and using

the door and sunglass display as reference points, a height test was conducted using the same security camera, set at the same angle with the same framing that recorded the actual murder. when the test video was compared to the murder video, it showed the shooter was 5'4" inches tall. ron allen's mugshot was taken when allen was in his stocking feet. with shoes, allen would stand 5'4" inches. ron allen voluntarily agreed to take a polygraph test. >> did you have anything to do with what happened? >> no. >> he failed. at this point, police needed to make sure that ron allen was the man in the security videotape. >> one of the things that we have encountered time and time

again, is you have a small business owner and certainly they have limited resources and they feel that they get some kind of protection by having a video camera setup, security camera set up at their business and certainly that should work as a deterrent to some criminals. but when someone commits a crime anyway, if you have cheap or substandard equipment, it's not going to be much help to law enforcement. >> once processed and transferred, investigators got a little better look at the killer. but would it be good enough? to create a more advanced vehicle, you use the most innovative technology available. to craft a more luxurious vehicle, you use the most skilled hands on earth. like ones that spend 38 days creating a lexus ls steering wheel. or 2,000 hours calibrating an available mark levinson audio system. the high-tech, handcrafted lexus ls. luxury, uncompromised.

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even though investigators had a better image of wanda mason's killer, it still wasn't clear enough to make a positive identification with their suspect. the images were sent to dr. ron carpanella at an image reconstruction firm that work to repair the digital images from the hubble space telescope. those pictures from outer space were badly flawed. but video reconstruction transformed those inferior images into viewable ones. >> it was an opportunity to take some of our technology that was developed under nasa and department of defense funding and apply to it a local problem.

>> the first step was to reduce the distortion in the images in the security videotape by building mathematical models of each image. these models identify the excess extraneous information, which is then eliminated, leaving only the essential information behind. >> it's like focusing a camera, that's the process we were involved with. we had a set of algorithms that sharpened the image of the camera or equivalently it's like taking the thumbprint off your eyeglasses clearing them up such that you can see with high-definition what you're looking at. >> investigators now had a clean image. but the pictures were shot from a distance. in order to match the pictures to their suspect, investigators turned to forensic anthropologist, dr. norm saur. he applied a technique called photo skull super imposition.

he took the mugshot of the suspect, ron allen and super imposed it over the image taken from the security camera. >> what we were able to do is superimpose images over one another and compare aspects of morphology to evaluate the likelihood of identification. morphological features like shape of the face and eyes and shape of the root of the nose was an important feature in this case, the distance from the root of the nose to the hairline. >> slowly, the images were laid on top of one another and revealed the identity of wanda mason's killer. >> what he did was he identified certain unique characteristics in the face in the video, which makes us each look different from anybody else, and he was able, by focusing on those different aspects of the face

that are unique to an individual, was able to identify a mugshot of ronald allen as the perpetrator. >> prosecutors feared that defense lawyers would challenge the use of the processed videotape for identification. the only other evidence was the .22 caliber long shelled casing found at the scene. ron allen's cousin was looking through some of allen's stereo equipment when he noticed something behind the speaker cover. a long barrelled .22 caliber ruger handgun. >> we took the gun straight to the police test crime lab where tests confirmed it was the gun used in both the other location and wanda mason. that was great news. >> police also discovered that ron allen owned a cutlass automobile that had been

customized with expensive chrome wheels and a chrome rearview mirror. these same customized features could be seen on the vehicle outside the convenience store after electronic enhancement. ronald allen was charged with first-degree murder. police were satisfied that donnie warren had nothing to do with his mother's murder. >> i was innocent. and there was no way they could possibly ever say that i wasn't. i have faith in our justice system. i believe that -- i know there are a few innocent people that slip through the cracks. but for the most part, if you're innocent, you'll be found innocent. they can only put you in prison if they have evidence and if you're innocent there is no evidence. >> ronald allen was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life without parole, a measure of justice made possible by old-fashioned

police work and the latest in forensic technology. >> i really don't think wanda's family knows how lucky they are that they got justice in this case. it's kind of ironic that the one thing that was supposed to make this easier for us turned out to be such a nightmare. business owners have to understand that if they're going to use security equipment, they have to buy good equipment, keep it clean, use new videotapes, and have good lighting so we can get a good view of the suspect. they owe that to their employees, to the police agencies and to the public. >> the family of wanda mason probably doesn't know the lengths and the detail and the creativeness that went into this conviction. but they don't have to know. it's not our position in law enforcement to go and tell people what a great job we've done. our job -- people have elected me and the sheriff to protect them. they have elected us to arrest criminals and they have elected

me to do my best to convict them and protect the community. that was done in this case, and that's all that they need to know. that's what our job is and we that's what our job is and we did our job. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com in 1995, carolyn killaby of vancouver, washington, got into a heated argument with her husband. she then went to a local bar alone. no one has seen or heard from her since. but some saliva from an envelope and a speck of blood on a wristwatch helped solve the mystery of her disappearance. in 1990, carolyn and dan killaby were married, each for the second time.