10x19 - Gold Rush

[bunniefuu]

NARRATOR: Sheila Williams had a
bright future, a boyfriend she

adored, and a
strong faith in God.

So why did she commit su1c1de?

Several bobby pins on
the floor and some gold

under her fingernails
help provide the answer.

[theme music]


lived a life of luxury

in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

He was a millionaire
many times over,

and seemingly had
everything a man could want.

But he paid a very steep
price for his fortune.

Six years earlier,
Josiah's aunt and was

driving him to his


On the way, she lost
control of her car

and crashed into a tree.

-Joey was in the front seat.

He went through the
windshield and impaled

himself onto the tree.

Josiah's aunt
survived the crash.

But Josiah's
eight-year-old brother,

who was riding in the
backseat, was k*lled instantly.

Josiah was badly d*sfigured.

-That is the reason why he had
the severe facial lacerations,

a head injury, and multiple
fractures to his face.

NARRATOR: The
insurance settlement

made him an instant millionaire.

KEN KOLKER: He got a judgment
of $3.5 million dollars,

and it was to be
paid in installments.

The money just
could not-- was not

enough to-- to undo the damage
that was done, because kids

in school were
calling him Scarface.

And he had a hot temper.

NARRATOR: After
high school, Josiah

started dating


Williams, an
unemployed hairdresser.

Soon, Sheila became
pregnant with Josiah's baby.

-Well, he had told her
anyway at one point

he was going to marry
her, because she told me.

And I said, you just met him.

NARRATOR: Sheila
had also experienced

a spiritual awakening.

She started to attend church
again and sang in the choir.

[singing] I'm climbing up.

I'm climbing on up.

On the rough side
of the mountain.

-I was so happy to
see her just come back

and renew her faith in Christ.

So she came back,
and pastor asked

her where are you going to be?

She said, from now
on, right back there

in the choir along with my
mom and dad, where I belong.

[singing] Climbing on
up, on the rough side.

NARRATOR: On Labor
Day in 1998, Josiah

called police to
report an emergency.

[phone rings]

-911 Emergency.

JOSIAH [ON PHONE]: She's
laying here in a pile of blood.

OPERATOR [ON PHONE]: OK.
All right.

Are there any weapons nearby?
JOSIAH [ON PHONE]: Yes.

She's holding a g*n in her hand.

NARRATOR: According to Josiah,
Sheila had k*lled herself.

JOSIAH [ON PHONE]: Man, I ain't
never seen nothing like this

before.
OPERATOR [ON PHONE]: OK.

Where did she sh**t herself?

JOSIAH [ON PHONE]:
It's in the head.

OPERATOR [ON PHONE]: Is
she breathing right now?

JOSIAH [ON PHONE]: Shelia?

No, she's not bleeding-- or,
she's not breathing no more.

NARRATOR: When
police arrived, they

found Sheila dead
on the kitchen floor

with a single g*nsh*t
wound to her head.

The g*n was next to her body.

Josiah told police they argued
about Sheila's pregnancy.

Josiah wanted her
to have an abortion,

but Sheila wanted
to have the baby.

Josiah said he left the
house to buy cigarettes.

When he returned, he
saw Sheila k*ll herself.

-He said she did
not say anything

at that point,
just shot herself.

-And I was like, what?
Oh my God.

I was like, no.
What happened?

What?

And I was just speechless.

-I didn't want to believe it
was true until I got all the way

here, you know, and I see all
my family members and everybody

here and I just
knew it was true.

I just knew it was true then.

NARRATOR: Studies show
that su1c1de is extremely

rare among African
American women.

As a group, they comprise
less than 1% of all suicides.

-It doesn't mean an
African American female

can't commit su1c1de.

It just means that it's an
unusual event, quite rare,

and certainly would warrant
additional consideration

of other possibilities.

NARRATOR: And Sheila's
autopsy revealed

some surprising news
about her pregnancy.

Josiah Ward and
Sheila Williams were

a classic example of
how opposites attract.

Josiah was lonely and withdrawn.

Sheila, warm and outgoing.

ESTELLA JONES: She was
the center of everything.

Fun, energetic, warm.

And she was the type if
you came to the door,

she would greet you with a hug
and a smile and a big embrace.

Welcome you in and make you
comfortable as she could

the whole time you was there.

NARRATOR: Sheila
and Josiah did have

a common bond, a troubled past.

Sheila was a high school
dropout struggling to find work.

She had been pregnant twice
before and lost both due

to miscarriage.

Josiah's problems included
his disfiguring car accident

and his inability to
handle the multimillion

dollar financial settlement.

He spent lavishly
on luxury items

and often loaned
money to his friends.

He was paying child
support for two children

he fathered with
two different women.

-There's an old saying, you
know, song, women, and drink.

And that's pretty much
what he spent it on.

-The money was corrupting him.

He was already an angry kid,
and the money was corrupting him

and drawing certain
kinds of people to him.

-I think that he gave
money to a lot of people,

and probably did not
get the love or respect

or whatever it was he was
looking for in return.

NARRATOR: At Sheila's
autopsy, the medical examiner

confirmed she was k*lled
by a single shot that

entered the left
side of her head.

-The trajectory
actually appeared

to go into her left cheek, lower
left cheek just above the jaw

and actually went
in an upward motion

into the left side of her brain.

NARRATOR: The preliminary lab
tests showed g*nsh*t residue

on Sheila's hands, a finding
consistent with su1c1de.

Toxicology tests revealed
Sheila's blood alcohol level

was 0.09, which in some states
is considered intoxicated.

And Sheila's autopsy
revealed a surprise.

Despite her previous
claims, Sheila Williams

was not pregnant.

KEN KOLKER: I don't know whether
she was just claiming she was

pregnant and she knew
otherwise, or she just--

if-- if she really
thought she was.

NARRATOR: Josiah's lawyer
claims the pregnancy was a scam

and Josiah was the target.

-Sheila Williams
was part of a group,

I would say five to six
people, that were-- set out

to victimize Joey
Ward for his money.

And they would use whatever
means they could do it,

befriending him,
having sex with him,

making false claims
of pregnancy.

NARRATOR: The man who alleged
the scam was a prison inmate

who claimed he overheard Sheila
discussing it with his cell

mate, who was Sheila's
former boyfriend.

Yet, Sheila's family
insists she was pregnant.

-Yeah, she told me that
she thought she was.

-A lot of thoughts start running
through my head, like did

she have an abortion, did
she have a miscarriage

and she didn't tell anybody?

You know, I didn't
know what to think.

-She could miscarry at a
very early stage in pregnancy

and may not have even
been aware of it, yes.

NARRATOR: To fully
understand the sh**ting,

investigators asked Josiah
to explain in detail

exactly what happened
when Sheila died.

-We asked him to
portray or reenact

how she was with the w*apon.

And so we asked him to stand
up and we took a photograph

of him doing that
in just the way

that-- that he said that
the angle of the g*n was at.

NARRATOR: Almost
immediately, investigators

saw inconsistencies.

Josiah denied there had been
any physical altercation.

Yet, investigators found
evidence to the contrary.

-We saw that Ms.
Williams had a weave that

was forcibly pulled
out of her hair.

And we observed several bobby
pins that were strewn about.

NARRATOR: Investigators
also found blood spatter

on the kitchen floor that
wasn't from the g*nsh*t.

It happened when the
g*n hit the floor.

-And that spatter would not have
been created if she had shot

herself and dropped
the g*n immediately

after sh**ting herself.

NARRATOR: That's because
they're shouldn't have been

a pool of blood on the
floor when the g*n dropped.

To recreate the blood
spatter at the scene,

forensic experts dropped
a g*n into varying amounts

of horse blood from
different heights.

The only way they
could reproduce it

was by pouring almost a
gallon of blood on the floor.

And tests revealed the g*n
fell only a short distance

into the blood, not
from head level.

-The reenactment of
the blood spatter test

did prove that the
g*n was actually

dropped at a height of
between 18 and 24 inches.

And that it was actually
dropped into a rather large pool

of blood, which disputed
Mr. Ward's claim.

NARRATOR: This proved
that Sheila was bleeding

long before the
g*n hit the floor.

Photographs taken just
after police arrived

showed the blood was not fresh.

-It was coagulating almost.

It was darker and coagulating.

It was starting to
pool and to get darker.

That doesn't happen right away.

NARRATOR: And a neighbor
came forward saying

he heard a g*nsh*t several hours
before the ambulance arrived.

-They thought they heard
something similar to a g*nsh*t

at about 2:30 or 2:45 AM.

The police 911 call didn't
come until about 4:47 AM.

So there was a span
of about two hours

that are really unaccounted for.

NARRATOR: But if Josiah Ward
m*rder*d Sheila Williams, why

was g*nsh*t residue
found on her hands?


dead in Josiah Ward's kitchen

from what he said was a
self-inflicted g*nsh*t wound.

Forensic evidence
collected at the scene

contradicted several
aspects of Josiah's story.

Josiah claimed Sheila held
the g*n with her left hand,

but investigators
didn't believe it.

-We discovered that
she was right-handed,

and she wasn't familiar
with the w*apon.

So for her to sh**t herself
with her left hand, first of all

was-- would' have
been quite odd.

NARRATOR: The b*llet had
entered her left cheek

and traveled upward,
lodging in her skull.

The medical examiner confirmed
what Josiah had claimed,

that the g*n was several
inches away from Sheila's face

when it went off.

-This g*nsh*t wound had g*n
powder stippling, stippling

being the unburned grains
of powder that come out

the end of the barrel
when the shot is fired,

indicating that the-- that
the barrel was not in contact

with the skin and was probably
several dent-- several inches

away from the skin when
the shot was fired.

NARRATOR: But Dr.
Start said this seldom,

if ever happens in a su1c1de.

-So physically it
may be possible.

But when one considers all
the circumstances surrounding

the case, certainly
to a reasonable degree

of medical certainty,
this case is

best classified as a homicide.

NARRATOR: Using a plastic
g*n, Dr. David Start

demonstrated the kind of wound
he would expect from a su1c1de.

DAVID START, MD: Most are in the
temple, intraoral in the mouth,

underneath the chin.

Occasionally, the
center of the forehead.

Very unusual for other
locations of the face.

NARRATOR: Assistant
prosecutor Kellee Koncki

was convinced Josiah Ward
m*rder*d Sheila Williams.

But she knew his defense would
argue it was su1c1de and point

to the g*nsh*t residue on
Sheila's hand as proof.

-It's a good defense, you know.

Especially when you have one
g*nsh*t wound and someone who's

saying that they are pregnant
and they're a teenager.

I mean, all those
things kind of point at,

well, maybe she k*lled herself.

NARRATOR: As a
matter of routine,

crime scene technicians
swabbed both Sheila

and Josiah's hands
after the sh**ting.

Prosecutors sent those swabs
to Skip Schwoeble, a nationally

recognized expert in
g*nsh*t residue analysis.

-When a g*n is fired,
the burn of the primer

escapes the firearm through
any available opening

in the form of a
cloud or a plume.

The vapors or gases solidify
into tiny particles, which

are deposited on
the hands, clothing,

and the immediate
proximity of the firearm.

NARRATOR: Schwoeble used a
scanning electron microscope

to analyze the
particles on the swabs.

The bright particles
are g*nsh*t residue.

-Overall, the g*nsh*t
residue related particles

on Sheila Williams' hands
was approximately five.

NARRATOR: This was significant.

But Schwoeble says
a person firing

a g*n would have much
more residue on the hands.

The amount on
Sheila's hands could

have come because
she was near the g*n.

Schwoeble next analyzed
Josiah's hand swab.

-Josiah Ward denied handling
the g*n, sh**ting the g*n.

Obviously if we find a large
concentration of g*nsh*t

residue or particles,
it's going to show us

that he was in proximity to the
sh**ting of a g*n, or, in fact,

did sh**t the g*n.

NARRATOR: And that's exactly
what Schwoeble found.

-Overall, the particle
population on Mr. Ward's hands

was larger than the
particle population

on Ms. Williams' hands.

-He was the one that
actually handled the w*apon

and discharged it during
the commission of the crime.

NARRATOR: But Schwoeble found
something on Sheila's hands

besides the g*nsh*t
residue, something

completely unexpected.

He found gold particles.

Lots of them.

-There were over 3,000 particles
on one of the hand samples.

Several on the
other hand, getting

close up to around


NARRATOR: Handling a gold watch
might leave 100 gold particles,

so 5,000 particles
was significant.

-We ran it by a lot of people
and no one could pinpoint it.

We thought, well maybe
it's something specific

to the g*n or the a*mo.

We just weren't sure.

NARRATOR: If the particles
on Sheila's hands

were from the g*n or
amm*nit*on, it would give weight

to the argument that
Sheila pulled the trigger

and k*lled herself.

Needless to say, prosecutors
and Josiah's lawyers

all wanted to know
where they came from.

Skip Schwoeble wanted to know
the origin of the thousands

of gold particles on
Sheila Williams' hands.

Investigators naturally asked
if she worked in a jewelry store

or wore expensive jewelry.

The answers were all no.

-He wanted to know from us
where this could have come from.

You know, what did she do?

What was she wearing?

Anything else in the
house, in the area that

could have left off
these particles.

NARRATOR: Investigators
were stumped

and were about to add
this to their list

of unanswered questions
when they looked again

at the photos of
Josiah Ward taken

on the night of the m*rder.

-We realized the shirt
Josiah Ward was wearing had

gold threading or gold
embroidered into the shirt.

NARRATOR: Armed with
a search warrant,

police found the
shirt in Josiah's home

and sent it off to the lab.

Schwoeble compared the
gold from the shirt

to that on Sheila's hands.

-You see an incredible
amount of detail.

We're looking at the size,
the shape, the morphology

or surface texture
of the particle.

NARRATOR: The microscope
magnified the particles

from Josiah's shirt 7,000 times.

And they were identical
to the gold particles

on Sheila's hands.

-It showed us that Josiah had
had physical contact with her

at the time of the m*rder,
which he had flatly denied.

-I always like the
saying, a picture's

worth a thousand words.

And I think in this
case, it really was.

NARRATOR: Prosecutors think
Josiah believed Sheila was

pregnant, since he
had already given

her money for an abortion.

And on the night of
the crime, Sheila

admitted she didn't use
his money for that purpose.

-Have an abortion
if I don't want one.

-Where's the money?

NARRATOR: Since he didn't
want to support another child,

there was an argument
that got physical.

Sheila's hair piece and
bobby pins flew to the floor.

The gold on Sheila's
hands from Josiah's shirt

proved there was a fight.

During the struggle,
Josiah fired a single shot

from a foot or two away
k*lling Sheila instantly.

Over the next few hours,
Josiah tried to stage the scene

to make it appear
to be a su1c1de.

He had to drop the
g*n on the same side

as Sheila's head wound, even
know she was right-handed.

And by the time he dropped it,
he did so into a pool of blood

from only a foot or two away.

Proof of yet another lie.

By the time police arrived,
the condition of the blood

proved the deception.

Just hours before Josiah Ward's
m*rder trial was to begin,

he confessed.

-He indicated that she
initially consented

to getting the abortion,
but then later indicated

that she did not want
to go through with it.

Which probably
increased the tension

that led to the
initial confrontation

that led to her death.

-I certainly believe the
forensic evidence was

a large part of why Josiah
confessed to the crime,

and why he subsequently
plead guilty without a trial.

NARRATOR: Josiah
said he sincerely

believed Sheila was pregnant.

If he had known the truth
that Sheila wasn't pregnant,

quite possibly, there wouldn't
have been the altercation.

In August of 1999, Josiah
Ward was sentenced to 25 years

in prison for second
degree m*rder.

-Makes me feel
better just knowing

that he didn't k*ll her
and get away scot-free.

Because you watch the news
all the time and you see it,

a lot of people,
they-- you know,

I don't think they
get what they deserve

and I was actually surprised.

-With this forensic evidence,
this strong forensic evidence,

we got a confession and a
conviction and a m*rder*r

is in jail.