in 1981 police found a partial print
near a doorknob at a crime scene but
without a suspect police had no way to
compare the print to the 1 million
prints on file
changed that breathing new life into
what was a very old crying
you
Charles Whittlesea was one of this
country's outstanding architects in the
early 1900's he was the first to design
poured concrete structures he designed
and built all the train stations clear
across the United States Albuquerque is
one of his most famous and the next most
famous I would guess would be El Tovar
at the rim of the Grand Canyon which he
built 1902 Charles had four children but
his oldest daughter Enid identified with
her father's free spirit and creativity
more than the others
Enid shunned family pressure to attend
college and instead headed to vaudeville
at age 17 she began her career as a
Marion Morgan dancer she was also a
singer performing with the San Francisco
Opera Enid never married but she loved
children as she grew older she
eventually found work as the governess
but by the 1950s she retired and moved
into a family home on Cimarron Street in
Los Angeles she never owned a car but
was a fixture in the neighborhood riding
on her bicycle stopping to talk and
sometimes play with the neighborhood
children
she would relate to them a lot more so
than she would to adults she had kind of
a almost a childlike quality about her
the neighbors all call her the bicycle
lady and everybody spoke highly aware
she was pleasant she would talked to
people even into her 80s she still rode
her bicycle through the neighborhood but
as she grew older something changed she
was quite concerned about intruders
breaking into her house to the point
where she had built kind of a
jerry-rigged alarm system out of wires
and threads and cans to alert her if
anybody try to come in at window or a
door on march 13th 1981 one of the
neighbors noticed in its front door was
open inside the doorway
was blood
paramedics found 86 year-old Enid
Whittlesea in her upstairs bedroom dead
from multiple s*ab wounds Frank Bolden
was the first detective on the scene
glady being of a small frame that just
no way I could believe that she offered
much resistance there was no need for
the amount of injuries you know this
woman was subjected to the bedroom was
ransacked the motive appeared to be
robbery
several the drawers were open a lot of
the items were pulled out there was
blood on various items in and out of
drawers Bolden also noticed blood drops
leading down the left-hand side of the
stairs person leaving these blood drops
was in fact leaving the area of the body
going downstairs and going to the front
door at the front door was a blood smear
and print leading to the doorknob of the
door investigators hoped that the
fingerprints and the blood drops would
lead to the k*ller
the entire neighborhood including the
children were shocked and saddened by
the m*rder of 86 year old Enid
Whittlesea despite her cheerful
disposition her friends knew she was
particularly fearful of crime whether
the a premonition whether just a
coincidence
but there was something that that did
trouble her a lot she had always lived a
very kind life that had never bothered
anybody this was just not fair that
someone so dear and sweet would have to
end her days this way it was just was
not fair I mean to be mutilated like she
was inside the home was a wealth of
forensic evidence which told the story
of what happened during its last moments
alive we believe that the person had
come up on the front porch opened a
window on the front porch had crawled in
the open window except on the dusty
piano and left the footprint a knife
surface at some point we worked our way
upstairs where she was in the bedroom it
was just it's always very sad victim was
severely cut and stabbed in different
parts of her body she had defensive
wound on the outside of her right wrist
which to me showed that when the
defendant was trying to s*ab her she's
playing up armor defense he got her
wrist and at some point the suspect was
also injured it's not uncommon when a
knife is used that the attacker slides
because the blood is slippery they'll
slide over the blade and cut themselves
it appeared the suspect walked back down
the stairs bleeding from his left hand
the forensic evidence revealed that the
k*ller left through the front door and
stole in its beloved bicycle from the
front porch to make his getaway Michele
Kessler was assigned to collect the
blood drops from the home she started
with the grand piano because it was dry
and flaky
I used a clean disposable scalpel and
just collected it into a clean piece of
white paper and made it into a bindle
and closed it so I could breathe and put
it in a coin envelope Kessler used a
different technique on the bloodstains
on the front door well in those days we
used cloth squares dampened with water
and disposable tweezers or claimed the
tweezers in between with alcohol
fingerprint specialist lifted three
partial prints from a window
a fourth print was discovered on an
archway leading to the front door they
thought it might be a partial of a palm
print
investigators photographed the
footprints using oblique lighting it's
when you take a flashlight and you shine
it on an angle on an oblique angle it's
kind of like at home when you can't see
handprints on your furniture but you
turn on the light you're looking
sideways hence there's the fingerprint
the forensic evidence told police how
the crime was committed but the evidence
couldn't identify the k*ller
this was 1981 five years before DNA was
first used in a criminal case
police could find no witnesses to the
crime none of the neighbors had seen
anything suspicious detectives then
looked to other areas for leads
I was conversing with other detectives
and we were comparing notes we were
comparing prints but as far as a
specific suspect we had none comparing
the fingerprints and Enid Whittle sees
home two others arrested for similar
crimes in the area wasn't difficult but
comparing them to everyone in the file
was impossible he would have to search
just over a million cards if there was a
known suspect we can easily pull a card
and then do the comparison but without a
known suspect it would be very difficult
without a full pattern type and without
a fingerprint match the case remained
unsolved all investigators knew was that
the k*ller had type-b blood and was
left-handed
it would take another 16 years before a
new technology gave police their first
solid lead
all homicide cops would like to solve
their crimes kind of take it personal
you know and they usually have put a lot
of time and effort into it
Enid Whittle sees m*rder case was one of
several unsolved cases that languished
in Frank Bolin's cold-case file I
remember him telling me that during his
30-year career there was a handful of
cases maybe three cases that haunted him
that he wanted to solve before he
retired and this was one of them he had
the k*ller's blood from the crime scene
and some of his fingerprints but little
else but in the years since Enid's
m*rder in 1981 there had been more
technological advances in forensic
science than at any other time in
history in this age of personal
computers it's hard to remember that in
the 1980s very few people had even seen
a computer let alone used one large
expensive mainframe computers were the
standard
with an eye to the future the FBI and
the Lockheed Martin company experimented
with using computers to analyze and
compare fingerprints when scanners were
developed to capture the prints and the
files could be compressed and formatted
the AFIS was born a fist is actually an
acronym for automated fingerprint
identification system and it's a
computer system and what it does is it
photographs a latent print it scans it
and then it'll give us a candidate list
usually of ten people who have similar
characteristics to the one that we
entered into the system this new
technology revolutionized fingerprint
analysis not only for new cases but for
old ones I occasionally visit a lot of
my old cases then ask for a recheck of
the prints
so detective Bolan sent the four prints
found and eat at wittle C's home back to
the forensics lab AFIS found no match
for the three prints taken from the
window but the AFIS had better luck with
the partial palm print the partial print
was such a small area that you weren't
sure if it was actually from a
fingerprint or if it was from a palm
area of the hand in this case the AFIS
determined that the print was a partial
fingerprint and not a palm print and the
computer identified ten individuals
whose prints needed to be examined
further we're then able to pull the
cards of those candidates and do a
comparison and we do a side-by-side
comparison using a special magnifying
glass the latent print examination
identified the owner of the print Carl
Stewart I immediately began a background
search we found him to live within a
half mile of the victim he had a lengthy
record within the Worcester Division I
having been arrested several times for
theft and things of that nature
ironically Carl Stewart was sitting in a
Los Angeles jail following an arrest on
domestic abuse charges I went and found
the spouse that could file the charges
on him I sat down and I interviewed her
through her I have learned that he was a
person that didn't really care for
elderly people that he had been a burger
she also told police that Stewart
targeted seniors in Beverly Hills Culver
City and Wilshire near his home and she
said one more thing that Stewart was
left-handed on December 26 1996
detective Bolin and two others
interviewed Carl Stewart and this lady
was hurt to the point where she died
okay honey I didn't do that all right I
didn't do this you know no at first Carl
Stewart claimed he knew nothing about
the robbery or enid Whittlesea then he
changed his story
I seen her in the neighborhood as my
partner and I would release some
information on bits and pieces of
evidence he would rethink his statement
and make it work around the evidence
that was obtained and how it got there
when told his fingerprint was near
Enid's front door Stewart said he had
once been inside her home briefly but
had nothing to do with her m*rder
District Attorney hatin Zaki would make
the decision on whether to take this
case to trial crime happened on March
school and I thought to myself boy this
is an old case you know how are we still
can have witnesses available for
instance did we preserve all the
evidence properly all of the evidence
had been in the police property room for
the 16 years since the m*rder but one
important piece was not the coroner's
reference sample of Enid's blood was
missing it would take another forensic
breakthrough not available in 1981 to
solve that problem and bring Carl
Stewart to justice
investigators wanted to make sure that
it was Carl Stewart's blood inside inna
twiddle C's home to do that scientists
needed a sample of Stewart's blood as
well as inna twiddle C's but the swatch
of Enid's blood taken at her autopsy was
missing from the evidence file so what
we did in lieu of the coroner's blood
swatch we use Enid widdle C's uh pajama
top that was what we were hoping would
serve as her reference blood sample
because there was heavily blood-stained
small dried samples of that pajama top
were placed in sterile water water
dissolves sustained and it also causes
any cells that are present for example
white blood cells which contain DNA to
life they break open spilling up their
contents including the DNA out into the
water the next step was to clean the DNA
I had to pass through something called a
Sentricon tube it's basically a filter
and what it does is it accomplishes two
things it cleans the DNA and it also
concentrates it to a smaller volume of
water
the DNA is then replicated multiple
times into a workable sample through a
polymerase chain reaction or PCR six
genetic markers were typed and
illuminated by a blue color attached in
the PCR process I had one stain that
actually matched the genetic profile
being Whittlesea on the remaining items
I believe there were eight other
bloodstains from throughout the
residence that matched Carl Stuart's
genetic profile the evidence finally
proved that Carl Stewart left the blood
trail inside Enid wittle C's home Carl
Franklin Stewart left his blood at that
crime scene it's his blood what's the
defense gonna do on May 17 1999
hey do zakir presented the forensic
evidence of inna twiddle seized m*rder*d
to a jury Zakir believes that Carl
Stewart first noticed Enid during one of
her bicycle rides through the
neighborhood
later Stewart broken two in its home
through her front window leaving his
footprint on the dusty piano underneath
the motive was robbery
upstairs Enid confronted Stewart a fight
ensued causing the defensive wounds to
Enid's arms and hands during the
encounter Stewart cut his left hand
which left the trail of blood down the
left-hand side of the steps Stewart left
his partial print near the front door as
he left the scene
a print originally thought to be a palm
print but later identified as a partial
fingerprint by the automated fingerprint
identification system we knew he got our
man
we knew that Carl Franklin Stewart was
in that house because he left a
fingerprint and left blood so that's how
we knew we had our man it took the jury
just two hours to find Carl Stewart
guilty of first-degree m*rder he was
sentenced to life in prison with no
chance of parole
this was the first homicide
investigation assigned to Frank Boleyn
despite taking 17 years he refused to
give up
he will give 110 percent to every
investigation that he participates in
sometimes he's a little bit of a pain
but you know it's all for a good cause
and I enjoy working with him I can't say
it's a happy thing but I did take a
person off the street that was
responsible for horrendous vicious crime
and I would say that the world elderly
people females whoever in general is a
little bit safer today because his
person is behind bars so many
disappointments so many cases have gone
unsolved that you couldn't do you
couldn't do anything with and then along
comes new technology I think it is so
wonderful to think that after all these
years that they would go back when they
got better equipment and new
technological things and try to solve
these unsolved crimes and put these
people where they belong
it's marvelous
you
07x29 - A Bag of Evidence
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Documentary that reveals how forensic science is used to solve violent crimes, mysterious accidents, and outbreaks of illness.
Documentary that reveals how forensic science is used to solve violent crimes, mysterious accidents, and outbreaks of illness.