08x03 - Paintball

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NARRATOR: She was home alone making the dress she planned

to wear on her Friday night date.

But she had an uninvited visitor.

It took years before forensic science could identify

the individual who was there that fateful night.

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NARRATOR: It was .

President John F Kennedy was leading the country

at the height of the Cold w*r.

The world anxiously watched as the United States confronted

the Soviet Union over suspected m*ssile sites in Cuba.

JOHN F KENNEDY: All ships of any kind bound for Cuba, where

they're found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons,

be turned back.

NARRATOR: Racial tensions in the United States

weren't as easily deflected.

Desegregation of Southern schools

pit blacks against whites.

Leaders like Martin Luther King, JR

articulated a message of hope and reason.

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR: I have a dream

that some day, this nation will rise up--

NARRATOR: Hundreds of miles away,

in the small town of Hanford, California, racial tension

and the arms race were less important than tending

to business and making ends meet.

O.R. MACFARLANE: In a small community,

everybody knew everybody else.

It was all first-name basis.

Even all the races were all friendly.

NARRATOR: The Miller family provided

an important service to the community.

They managed the water that was supplied to area farmers.

O.R. MACFARLANE: Very neat family,

hard worker, Christian people.

So the Millers were quite well-known.

NARRATOR: The canal was located behind their home,

and someone from the Miller family

was always there to make sure the water

system worked properly.

On March , , -year-old Marlene

was the one to stay home while her parents

left for a night out.

Marlene planned to finish sewing a new dress

for an upcoming date.

Her parents returned home around : PM.

OZZIE NELSON [ON TV]: We'll see you next week!

Good night!

NARRATOR: The television set was blaring,

[music on television]

A screen was missing from the bedroom window,

and there was no sign of their daughter.

[police radio chatter]

NARRATOR: Deputy Sheriff O.R. MacFarlane was one of the first

to arrive on the scene.

O.R. MACFARLANE: It was obvious that we had a problem.

She was, in fact, missing, and there

was some foul play somewhere.

NARRATOR: Police found tire tracks on the dirt road

near the home, and there was other evidence.

O.R. MACFARLANE: There was a set of boot tracks leading out

onto Elder Avenue from the dirt lane.

There was a set of barefoot tracks leading back

into the lane, and which got in and out

of the car that was parked there.

NARRATOR: Nearby, police discovered a pair

of mismatched workman's gloves and a belt.

Robert Good was the first journalist on the scene,

covering the story for "The Fresno Bee" newspaper.

Once there, he found more than a story.

ROBERT GOOD: I started walking down the back a ways.

I walked -- feet down the bank and, there she was.

NARRATOR: Marlene was floating face down

in the reservoir behind the family home.

Marlene's brother, Walt, was searching

the area in a police helicopter.

WALT MILLER: And as we flew over the home,

I saw the hearse pull up.

And, uh, at that time, I knew that Marlene had been found.

NARRATOR: The autopsy revealed Marlene had been stabbed

in the chest, although the wound was not fatal.

There was water in her lungs, so the cause of death

was drowning.

Marlene's wrists were tied behind her back

with a knot used by most area dairy farmers.

O.R. MACFARLANE: It had this little knot in it.

It was something that you could do very quickly,

and, uh, keep the cow from kicking him.

NARRATOR: There were no signs of sexual as*ault,

but bruises on the body suggested

Marlene bravely fought her attacker.

In a search for witnesses, one of Marlene's high school

classmates told police he saw a strange car near Marlene's

house around the time of her m*rder.

O.R. MACFARLANE: He said it was an aqua-type blue fenders.

He liked the paint on the car.

Black on the hood and black on the top and black

clear down the trunk.

High school kid, that kind of-- you know,

' Plymouth looked pretty good to him.

NARRATOR: Police had tire impressions at the crime scene

and a description of the car.

Now all they had to do was find it.

A witness saw a black and turquoise Plymouth

parked near Marlene Miller's home

on the night of her m*rder.

Within hours, police found it.

O.R. MACFARLANE: I remember Hanford Police Department came

up with a car of that description parked in front

of the Royal Hotel in downtown Hanford on th Street.

NARRATOR: When Deputy Sheriff McFarlane peered

inside the rear window, he saw what would later

become a crucial piece of evidence.

O.R. MACFARLANE: I could see a pair of boots back there.

One was sitting flat, and the other was on its side.

And with a flashlight, I could see that the tread looked to me

like the same tread that was out there in Tome Lane.

NARRATOR: The car was registered to Booker T Hillery, Jr,

a local dairy worker who had recently been released

from prison for a previous r*pe conviction.

One of his coworkers told police that he saw Hillery driving

towards Marlene Miller's home after work

on the night of her m*rder.

And Hillery's employer identified the gloves found

at the crime scene as the ones Hillery wore.

The tires on Hillery's car, and the boots

found in the backseat, were similar to the tire and boot

impressions in the soft mud near the crime scene.

O.R. MACFARLANE: But that doesn't mean that he k*lled

her, even though the gloves were pitched out down the road

where the car tracks had-- that looked like his went.

So everything was circumstantial.

There was no real evidence to put him in the home.

NARRATOR: Booker Hillery denied any involvement

in Marlene's m*rder.

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Hillery said he drove by the Miller's home

every day since he worked at the dairy farm just down the road.

He said his tire and shoe impressions

in the area meant nothing.

Booker Hillery was arrested, tried,

and convicted of Marlene Miller's m*rder.

He was sentenced to death.

Once in prison, Hillery took full advantage

of the appellate process and petitioned

to have his conviction overturned.

ROBERT MALINE: It was discouraging,

especially for the family that had to constantly relive

this nightmare every time this case would come up.

WALT MILLER: Each time that we go through this process,

I keep thinking that maybe this is

the last process that they will have to endure.

And, uh, they just keep coming and coming.

O.R. MACFARLANE: It's frustrating.

Sometimes the criminal justice system to a police officer

is frustrating, all right?

NARRATOR: Every appeal Hillery filed was unsuccessful.

But in , the United States Supreme Court

ruled the death penalty was cruel and unusual punishment.

As a result, the sentences of everyone on death row,

including Booker Hillery, were commuted to life in prison.

The Supreme Court reversed their decision two years later,

but the commuted death sentences couldn't be reinstated.

Booker Hillery's legal maneuvering continued.

He appealed his conviction once again,

this time claiming that blacks had been excluded

from the grand jury that indicted him.

In , a judge granted that appeal

and ordered Hillery either to be retried or released.

ROBERT MALINE: What is disturbing

about it is that this was in .

The conviction occurred in .

And anyone can review the transcripts of the grand jury

hearing and determine that no matter what race you are,

you will find probable cause.

NARRATOR: Robert Maline was the prosecutor

in Booker Hillery's retrial.

ROBERT MALINE: I knew that I had to find out exactly what proof

I needed because I obviously had to retry this case,

and I had to retry it years after the first conviction.

NARRATOR: The physical evidence still existed,

but of the original witnesses were now dead.

Larry Orth was the chief investigator

for the Kings County DA's office.

LARRY ORTH: All the people were dead,

and to sit and have to read hundreds of pages of testimony

from , ', -- into a record of a present day trial

can almost put you to sleep.

NARRATOR: So investigators took the physical evidence

and looked at it again-- this time,

with some new forensic techniques

not previously available-- and found a surprise.

It had been years since Booker T Hillery was first

convicted of Marlene Miller's m*rder,

a conviction later overturned on appeal.

Criminalist Gary Cortner examined the physical evidence

from the first trial.

He started with the boots found in Booker Hillery's car

on the night of the m*rder.

The boots had been modified, the soles were the originals

from the Wellington boot company,

but the original white heel had been replaced with a black one.

GARY CORTNER: He did this to keep his shoes from wearing out

as fast, and in doing that, he made an-- almost

an individual shoe out of it because

of the two different components.

NARRATOR: Cortner compared Hillery's boots

to the shoe impression found near Marlene Miller's home.

They had the same sole, the same custom heel, and the same five

individual cut marks in the heel.

Next, Cortner compared the tires from Hillery's car

to the tire impressions found on the dirt

road near the Miller's home.

GARY CORTNER: We were looking for cuts or rocks

or anything that had been in the tires.

And in this case, we were very lucky

because there was a manufacturer's defect

that was picked up, and there were three cuts

in the tires very close to that.

NARRATOR: This placed Booker Hillery

in the vicinity of the crime scene, but not inside the home.

Larry Orth found something important while

reading through the transcripts from the first trial.

On the night of the m*rder, years earlier,

an alert detective asked Marlene's mother

to vacuum the carpet in the living room

where her daughter was abducted.

At that time, investigators found

some unusual microscopic particles

in that trace evidence, but they didn't know what they were.

LARRY ORTH: And they said they didn't have the technology

to do it, other than just to compare them

as far as shape, size, and that was it.

NARRATOR: The football-shaped particles

found in the vacuum cleaner bag still existed in the evidence

file, and were sent for analysis to an independent forensic lab

in Chicago.

Skip Palenik was the forensic microscopist

assigned to the case.

SKIP PALENIK: Having done microscopy

since I was eight years old, I had seen particles like this

before, and I knew what kinds of physical phenomena

produced this.

NARRATOR: Under magnification of times,

Palenik recognized the particles as paint,

the kind sprayed from an aerosol can.

Throughout the particles were cotton fibers.

This explained why the paint particles were round.

When paint is sprayed from an aerosol can,

the round particles flatten when they

hit a flat surface like wood.

When the paint dries, it creates a film-like covering.

But if the spray paint hits a fiber, it reacts differently.

SKIP PALENIK: If these spheres dry around nothing,

they just retain that shape because they're spheres.

However, if they come in contact with a fiber, then what happens

is capillary forces cause the-- the ends of the sphere-- which

starts out like this-- to draw out

where they come in contact with a fiber.

NARRATOR: Scientists performed an electron probe microanalysis

to identify the elements in the paint.

SKIP PALENIK: Every element that's

in there has its own x-rays that come off.

There are different wavelengths.

And we collect these different x-rays, that

are different wavelengths, or different energies,

and from their energy or their wavelength,

we can tell which elements are present in the sample.

NARRATOR: The components were titanium, lead, and iron.

An infrared microspectrophotometer,

which looks more like a computer than a microscope,

determined the paint's molecular composition.

The results are charted on a graph,

and scientists learned that the paint was

an oil-based alkyd with a Prussian blue pigment.

Investigators now wanted to know where

these mysterious microscopic blue paint particles came from.

And they also needed to know how they got on to Marlene Miller's

living room carpet years earlier.

As prosecutors prepared to retry Booker T Hillery for the m*rder

of Marlene Miller, they discovered

new forensic evidence-- microscopic paint particles

in the victim's home encased in cotton.

But in , at the time of the original trial,

the technology to identify these particles didn't exist.

But where did these paint balls come from?

For answers, investigators looked once more inside

Booker Hillery's Plymouth automobile.

Surprisingly, it was still in police custody

after all those years.

In the forensic lab, scientists noticed

that the ceiling of the passenger compartment

was lined with a cotton material,

and the material had been painted

with a blue spray paint.

GARY CORTNER: And pulling some of the headliner

off and examining it under the microscope,

I realized that there were millions of these things that

had been manufactured by him, in spraying the headliner.

And, uh-- and they were still there.

It was kind of like they were there for someone to find,

and I was lucky enough to be the one who found them.

NARRATOR: Scientists vacuumed the inside of Hillery's car

and analyzed the trace evidence.

They found thousands of paint particles

identical in color, shape, and chemical make up

to those found in Marlene Miller's home.

SKIP PALENIK: At the end of all this analysis,

what we have are-- first of all, green paint spheres.

The paint is alkyd enamel.

It's the same in both question and known.

It has the same color.

When you crush up little bits under the microscope,

they show the same kinds of crystal filler--

crystalline fillers that are inside.

The elemental composition is identical.

The infrared spectrum-- from the molecular composition--

is identical.

They both used Prussian blue.

GARY CORTNER: We couldn't say that, you know,

it came from the same spray can.

We're just saying, how did they get there?

They're so unusual in shape.

Why are they in both places?

NARRATOR: Investigators suspected that Booker Hillery

spray painted the interior roof of his car.

As he did, the round paint particles

attached to the cotton fibers and remained

cylindrical as they dried.

Driving around town, when Hillery hit a bump in the road,

the microscopic particles shed, landing on his clothing

and in his hair.

GARY CORTNER: These paint balls just followed him

around like a-- like a virus, and he

didn't know they were there.

NARRATOR: Prosecutors believe that when Hillery entered

Marlene's home on the night of her m*rder,

those microscopic paint particles dropped

onto the Miller's living room floor.

SKIP PALENIK: He became, literally,

a walking trace evidence factory.

NARRATOR: This evidence placed Booker Hillery

inside Marlene Miller's home.

ROBERT MALINE: We had everything else outside,

and a tenth of a mile away, but the paint

balls put him in the house.

That's how important they are.

NARRATOR: In , based on this new forensic evidence,

Booker T Hillery was tried and convicted once again

for the m*rder of -year-old Marlene Miller.

He was sentenced to the maximum penalty allowed-- years

to life, although the judge made it clear that he would have

imposed the death penalty if he had

been permitted by law to do so.

Ironically, it was Booker Hillery himself

who handed investigators the forensic evidence

used to convict him.

Local authorities had tried to sell his car shortly

after his first conviction in the s,

but Hillery wouldn't allow it.

LARRY ORTH: He in turn filed a motion in federal court suing

the county to stop them from getting rid of the car.

He dismissed the case, and we decided not to sell it.

And thank you, Mr. Hillery.

GARY CORTNER: When I looked up that day in the garage,

and having seen that sprayed headliner

was just indescribable.

I said, this is it.

Had he not have saved the car for us,

I would have never known where these particles came from.

NARRATOR: Today, Booker Hillery is years old.

He was denied parole at his most recent hearing in January .

O.R. MACFARLANE: Booker Hillery is where he belongs.

He should have been in the gas chamber before this,

but for whatever reason, he-- the system

didn't take his life, but he is where he belongs.

He does not belong back out in society.

NARRATOR: Investigators credit the foresight of the late Art

Thomas, the Kings County Chief Criminal Deputy, who, in ,

insisted that Marlene's mother vacuum the living room

floor where the abduction took place.

He kept that trace evidence in police custody.

O.R. MACFARLANE: That was the key to it,

and I know Art knew that was the key to putting him in the house

back then.

He was an investigator, and he was a damn good cop.

SKIP PALENIK: We can-- uh-- do what some people think can only

be done in, uh, works of fiction.

We are, I believe, sort of the living embodiment of Sherlock

Holmes and Doctor Thorndike and some of these kinds of people,

in that, we can take this little speck of evidence,

and literally make it speak.

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