08x18 - Hair of the Dog

[bunniefuu]

Narrator: with no forensic evidence found at a m*rder scene,

Investigators were baffled.

But they suspected that the victim's dog

Had witnessed the crime.

If she had, forensic scientists

Needed some way to find out what the dog had seen.

North liberty, iowa, is such a small town

It doesn't take much effort to know your neighbors.

But one resident the townspeople seldom saw

Was -year-old john helble.

Vannoy: john was somewhat of a recluse.

John kind of stayed to himself.

It wasn't unusual if we didn't see him for a month.

He'd be doing things at his home

Or repairing things or out with his friends.

At one point in time in john's life,

He was a narcotics user, and very possibly,

Also a narcotics dealer.

Narrator: in february of ,

John's mother was really worried.

She hadn't heard from her son in over two months.

Helble: we had been trying to reach my son,

And he wasn't answering, and we were afraid something was wrong.

Narrator: so she called the local sheriff,

Who found john's van parked in his driveway.

But no one answered the door.

They smelled an odor coming from inside the trailer.

He described that odor as being the odor of death.

Narrator: the officers forced their way through the trailer door

And found helble dead, slumped in a chair.

Paulson: the body appeared to be in a position

Of someone who would have been watching tv

And had laid their head down on their arm

On their pillow and gone to sleep.

The body was completely covered,

Had a blanket over the entire body --

Over the head, over all of the body.

Narrator: he had been sh*t twice in the back of the head

With a . Caliber p*stol.

The advanced state of decomposition

Revealed the m*rder happened weeks earlier.

There were no signs of forced entry,

And the trailer doors were locked.

Paulson: that indicated to us

That someone actually left the residence

And took the time to use a key to bolt that door shut again,

Keeping other individuals from being able to easily access

And enter the trailer.

Narrator: in the home,

Police found a small amount of marijuana

And some drug paraphernalia.

Schneider: john didn't deserve to have this happen to him.

He may not have been the perfect person,

He may not have had the best lifestyle,

But I could almost guarantee

He would give you the shirt off his back.

Narrator: but john's prized collection of g*ns was missing,

Including a uniquely customized

Gold cup . Semiautomatic p*stol.

Vannoy: this colt gold cup was described to me

From one of john's friends as,

"You would have to pry that g*n away

From his cold, dead fingers."

Helble: he was able to take g*ns apart and work on them, repair them,

Customize them, put fancy gold on them,

Things like that.

It sounded as if john had been k*lled for the g*n collection.

Narrator: and another one of john's prized possessions was missing --

His -year-old husky, keisha.

Schneider: oh, he loved his dog.

His dog was his life. She was his baby.

Helble: she had a lot of hamburgers, a lot of pizza,

Hot dogs, things like that.

I think she ate mostly people food.

She was very spoiled.

Narrator: police soon learned

That a dog matching keisha's description

Was found a month earlier

Wandering aimlessly several miles away.

Vannoy: she was standing in the middle of the street,

Dazed, looking around like,

"Where am i? What am I doing here?"

Narrator: john's parents identified keisha.

The evidence suggested she had been driven there

And dropped off.

Keisha was found during january

When the roads are typically dirty and muddy,

But keisha's condition was pretty clean.

The crime scene showed that the dog's leash,

Which normally was kept inside the trailer next to the door,

Was actually in the victim's van.

It suggested the victim's van

Had been used to transport the dog and dispose of the dog.

Narrator: this was just one unusual detail

In an investigation that was to become even more bizarre.

Narrator: an autopsy on -year-old john helble revealed

He had been k*lled long before his body was found.

But the medical examiner was unable to determine

Exactly when he was k*lled.

Without an idea as to when the time of death is,

It obviously becomes very much more difficult

To determine who are suspects

And who are people that you can rule out.

Narrator: helble's dog, keisha, was found on january .

Helble's telephone answering machine

Had messages not yet listened to.

The earliest unheard message was left that same day,

January .

John would not use the answering machine

To screen his telephone calls.

If someone called, john wanted to talk to them.

So therefore, we knew that january and ,

John was dead.

Narrator: with this information,

Authorities questioned john's friends and family.

We had three primary suspects in this case --

Mike harding, andrew rich, and sharon schneider.

Narrator: the first suspect, mike harding,

Was a friend of john helble's.

A witness recalled seeing harding's truck

Parked near helble's home around the time of the m*rder.

Mike harding was good friends with john.

We knew that john and mike

Had some narcotics business together.

Narrator: but harding had an alibi for the time of the m*rder,

And he passed the polygraph test.

The next two suspects -- andrew rich and sharon schneider --

Were friends of john's who lived about an -hour-drive away

In greybull, wyoming.

We learned from a good friend

Who saw andrew rich and john helble together

On january , , that in fact,

Andrew rich had been at the trailer house of john helble.

Narrator: but andy said john was alive and well

When he and sharon left to return home.

Police searched the couple's apartment

And found marijuana, methamphetamine,

And several . Caliber b*ll*ts,

The same caliber used to k*ll helble.

These b*ll*ts, along with the slugs from helble's body,

Were sent to the fbi lab for a neutron-activation test.

Vannoy: that's where the lead is shaved off of the b*llet,

It's melted down, and atoms are counted.

Narrator: counted, then compared.

But the atomic composition

Of the b*ll*ts recovered from john helble

Was not what investigators had hoped for.

Vannoy: the results showed us that the b*ll*ts

That we had recovered from john

Were not the same b*ll*ts that was removed

From andy rich's house in greybull, wyoming.

Narrator: investigators found smudge marks

On the inside windows of rich's jeep,

Similar to those caused by animals

When pressing their noses against the glass.

Was it possible that rich used his car

To transport helble's dog across town after the m*rder?

Police took keisha's noseprint

In the same way they collect human fingerprints.

Each dog's noseprint is as unique as a fingerprint.

Paulson: unfortunately, we weren't able to get

The type of smudges or prints, actually, from the vehicle

That would enable us to do that,

But it certainly was an interesting element

That we pursued for some time.

Narrator: after several months with no forensic evidence

And very few leads,

The investigation into john helble's m*rder

Was starting to turn cold.

So investigators turned to helble's dog

For more information.

As it turned out, that dog was going to play

A very important part in solving john's death.

Narrator: a year after john helble's m*rder,

Police suspected helble's best friend, andy rich,

Was somehow involved in his death,

But they had no proof.

All investigators knew

Was that rich had some unusual career aspirations.

Vannoy: we knew that his lifelong goal

Was to be a hit man for the mafia.

We had interviewed past girlfriends,

We had interviewed other associates of andy rich,

And he always portrayed himself as a tough guy.

That's how andy rich wants to be remembered.

We were concerned that sharon schneider,

The girlfriend of andrew rich,

Had information that she was fearful about telling us.

The impression was that she was being guarded

Out of her fear of andrew rich.

I was a good punching bag for him.

He abused me a lot.

There was a lot of abuse -- not just physical.

There was a lot of verbal abuse.

Narrator: police looked into sharon's background

To see if she had ever been involved in illegal activity,

And they found something.

Vannoy: sharon schneider was purchasing g*ns

In a different location.

She would give those g*ns to andy rich.

Some of those g*ns went to john helble.

We had a violation of the federal statute.

The federal firearms and narcotics statute

Was the wedge that we used

To split andy rich and sharon schneider.

Narrator: sharon told a different story

About that visit with john helble.

Schneider: I honestly couldn't live with myself anymore.

I had to face up to whatever was going to happen to me.

Narrator: sharon said she dropped andy off at helble's home

About three days before the m*rder,

Then left to visit her daughter about an hour's drive away.

A few days later, andy arrived driving john's van.

They put some of his g*ns into their car,

Took john's van to his home,

And then drove their car back to wyoming.

I had no idea that john was dead. No.

I had no idea about that.

I had wonders of why he had these g*ns.

Narrator: after a brief stay in wyoming,

Sharon said that andy left alone with the g*ns.

Schneider: he took off in the middle of the night

Or around : in the morning and headed to texas.

He was gone three weeks,

And it was andy's own stupidity

For telling me where he was going.

Paulson: we started to learn things from sharon

That we had suspected all along, and at that point in time,

It became really important for us to find any information

That we could that was going to corroborate

What sharon had to say.

Narrator: police visited the man andy rich stayed with

During that trip to texas.

He said rich had given him

An unusual gold cup . Caliber semiautomatic p*stol

To pay off a drug debt,

But by this time,

A year later, he no longer had the g*n.

Investigators then located

A second man rich visited on that trip

Who still had, in his possession,

A box of amm*nit*on rich had sold to him.

Inside the box,

Investigators found several short black-and-white hairs.

Microscopic analysis confirmed

That the hairs were from an animal,

But there were no roots attached,

So nuclear dna testing was impossible.

But they were able to extract mitochondrial dna from the hair.

Mitochondrial dna is passed to animals and humans

Only from the mother.

Joy halverson, a california veterinarian,

Specializes in animal dna.

Halverson: it will not be as unique a profile

As I might get from blood or saliva or hair with a root,

But it will still allow me to say,

"Yes, this sample matches the reference dog,"

Or "it doesn't match the reference dog."

Breeds of dogs and, to some extent, cats today

Are really only a few hundred years old,

And so they don't differ that much

That you could definitively say,

For example, "well, that's a dalmatian."

Narrator: halverson performed a pcr test,

Which stands for "polymerase chain reaction."

It's basically like taking one page out of a book

And ignoring the rest of the book

And xeroxing that page a million times,

And now you have that page in so much quantity

That you can see it.

Narrator: then the sample was sequenced

To get a visual representation of the dna type.

When she compared the dna from the hair in the amm*nit*on box

To a sample of keisha's hair, she found a haplotype

In both sets that was extremely rare,

Occurring only in in dogs.

Halverson: the chance of having that match just by random was pretty low,

Combined with, I'm sure, the circumstances of the case.

If I were sitting on the jury, I would find that

To be a compelling piece of evidence in the case.

Narrator: this was forensic proof

That rich was in possession of an item stolen from john helble.

Then investigators got another break.

The man who was given the gold cup p*stol

Said he still had the g*n box.

Inside was a note

Listing all of the custom alterations made to the p*stol,

As well as the costs.

Helble: doug vannoy asked me if I thought that was john's handwriting,

And I thought it was.

Narrator: but to be sure, investigators needed an expert.

For that, they turned to gary licht,

A forensic document examiner.

He compared the note to known samples of helble's handwriting.

Licht: the questioned material was written

With somewhat heavy pressure.

In the known writings, that was also written

With that same sort of pressure.

They were also all hand-printed,

And his known writings also relied heavily on printing

And not cursive.

Narrator: he looked for unique features

In individual letters in john's known writings --

Features he then tried to locate in the questioned document.

In the creation of other letters,

Such as a lower-case "d,"

I looked to see if it's made with one stroke --

In other words, if the pen moves down on the stem,

Back up slightly, and counterclockwise motion

Forms the loop on the lower-case "d."

Narrator: based on his comparisons,

Licht was able to draw a definitive conclusion.

I was able to identify

The writer of the questioned material as john helble.

Narrator: proof that it was helble's g*n and no other

That andy took with him to texas.

Based on the handwriting analysis and the dog dna,

Andy rich was arrested

And charged with john helble's m*rder.

Schneider: he was nothing. He was a user of people.

He would manipulate,

He would use them for his own gain.

He didn't care about anybody but himself.

Narrator: in court, rich had an interesting response

To the forensic evidence against him.

Narrator: the forensic evidence showed that andy rich

Was in john helble's home around the time of his m*rder.

Based on the position of the body,

Prosecutors believe rich k*lled helble

After he fell asleep in the living room watching tv.

[ g*nshots ]

The motive was apparently money.

Rich wanted to sell helble's g*n collection

For either cash or dr*gs.

The sh**ting may have agitated helble's dog.

[ Barking ]

To stop the barking, rich put keisha in helble's van,

Then drove her several miles away

Before letting her out in a strange neighborhood.

Little did he realize that keisha's hair would be found

In the stolen box of amm*nit*on

And that canine dna testing

Would prove it came from helble's beloved dog.

Schneider: andy hated that dog. Andy could not stand keisha.

I don't know why he spared her. I have no idea.

How can you spare an animal and sh**t a human?

Narrator: when rich sold helble's prize p*stol in texas,

He left the note inside with handwriting

That matched helble's known handwriting samples.

Paulson: the witness testimony and the forensic testimony,

Piled together,

Just added up like bricks in this case,

And it was because of the two and putting those two together

That we were able to solve this case in the first place.

Douglas eugene vannoy.

Narrator: on the day before his m*rder trial was to start,

Andy rich made a surprise announcement.

Helble: he said, "I k*lled john helble for his g*ns."

But he never turned around and never addressed the family.

Never apologized for what he had done

Or showed any remorse for what he had done.

Paulson: I was somewhat stunned by that.

I thought that that was the point in time

Where he would accept responsibility

And do the right thing.

The parents and family of john helble were sitting behind him.

It was his chance to try to make amends.

He failed miserably in doing that.

Even at andrew rich's own admittance,

John was one of his five best friends in this world.

And he's so much a piece of trash

That he k*lled one of his best friends.

Narrator: rich pleaded guilty to first-degree robbery

And voluntary manslaughter

And was sentenced to years in prison.

In exchange for her cooperation,

Sharon schneider was charged for drug possession

And was sentenced to months in a halfway house

And / years probation.

Sharon was not a witness to the crime.

Sharon had pieces of the puzzle that she gave us

That we could put together to solve the crime.

Paulson: I think it's very interesting how keisha helped ultimately

To be able to solve the crime of the homicide of her master.

I feel that keisha solved the case, along with the detectives.

She provided the evidence against andrew rich.

She got her man.