12x01 - Sharper Image

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A child was
abducted from her home

in the middle of the night.

There were no witnesses.

But new cutting-edge
photo technology

revealed a clue that otherwise
would have been missed.

Single mothers who
raise children alone often make

enormous sacrifices
to make ends meet.

Karen Ferger was no exception.

She worked the night shift
at a food processing plant,

so she hired an
acquaintance, Jack Hubble,

as a live-in baby sitter.

- It's just a typical,
working-class family

with a single
parent that's trying

to make ends meet
with the children.

On October 3, 1997,
Jack Hubble and his wife

woke up and realized
that nine-year-old Sharra

Ferger was missing.

- The Hubbles had contacted a
few of the neighborhood friends,

and they began searching
around to see if she was still

somewhere in the neighborhood.

- I felt scared.

I was nervous.

I just felt like
something happened to her,

because there was
part of me that died.

At 3:30
that afternoon,

the search for Sharra ended.

- She was found in a field


had been repeatedly stabbed and
left for dead out in the field.

- I tried jumping the fence,
but the cops held me back,

and when the paramedics came
and they didn't get out,

I knew that she was gone.

- It's kind of a scary thing.

You know, when you
have kids like this,

it's a scary thing to
think that somebody's

running around out
there like that.

- You never really know
who your neighbors are.

This was a quiet,
community neighborhood,

and now, all of a sudden,
it's something everybody's

going to remember
is something said.

Investigators
immediately questioned Jack

Hubble, since there was no sign
of forced entry to the house

and he was the last known
person to see Sharra alive.

He said the night before,
Sharra and her brother, Joseph,

had fallen asleep on the sofa
while watching television.

Hubble said he
turned off the TV,

covered them up,
and went to bend.

Later, Joseph came into
his bedroom, frightened.

- Joseph heard noises.

Pots and pans rattling
in the kitchen.

It startled him.

Jack didn't really ask
him why he was scared,

he just said, yeah, go ahead
and you can sleep in the bed.

Joseph said
Sharra was still asleep

when he went into
the Hubbles' bedroom.

Karen was suspicious, but
she wasn't willing to believe

Jack Hubble had anything to
do which Sharra's m*rder.

- I wasn't sure he was capable
of doing something like that.

- There was no sign
of forced entry,

so it was believed that
whoever came into the house

had some way to enter that
residence to get to Sharra.

But Jack Hubble's
behavior in the 24 hours

before Sharra's
death was troubling.

- The night before my
daughter's m*rder,

Jack Hubble went into my
oldest daughter's window

and tried to climb through it.

Hubble, a recovering
heroin addict,

told investigators
he was searching

for his methadone prescription.

- He didn't have a
real good explanation

as to why he was in there.

Crystal told
police she was terrified.

- He didn't try anything
with her or anything.

She just got scared
that he was in her room.

The next night,
the night her younger sister

was m*rder*d, Crystal locked
her door and her bedroom window.

Police suspected that
Hubble tried again

to get to Crystal's
room, couldn't

and turned to Sharra instead.

All they had to do
now was prove it.

The senselessness of
Sharra Ferger's m*rder

shocked everyone in
Blanton, Florida.

And the case made
the national news.

- Well, whoever did
it, they're going

to pay for it one
way or the other.

An innocent kid.
She ain't never done nothing.

At the autopsy, the
medical examiner found evidence

that Sharra had been
sexually assaulted,

and that two weapons
were used in her m*rder.

- One appeared to be a thin,
sharp-bladed instrument

consistent with what we would
normally refer to as a knife,

and the other was
a round object.

It would be consistent with
a Phillips screwdriver.

Two different weapons raised

the possibility of
two perpetrators.

The medical examiner
also found a bite mark

on Sharra's shoulder
and four human hairs

with the roots attached.

It appeared the hairs had been
ripped from someone's head

during a struggle.

- They obtained a DNA
profile from that hair root.

That DNA profile
was then compared

to the DNA swab taken
from Jack Hubble.

And there was no match.

And the
bite-mark impressions

didn't match Hubble either.

After five days in custody,
Jack Hubble was released.

- It was obvious that she had
not left the neighborhood

and that more than
likely, the suspect

had come into the neighborhood
and had to have been either

seen by someone or
possibly knew someone

that lived in the neighborhood.

So investigators asked
all the men in the neighborhood

to provide teeth impressions.

This generated an
important lead.

A forensic odontologist
identified Dale Morris,

who lived down the
street from the Fergers,

as the person responsible
for the bite mark

on Sharra's shoulder.

- We told them, that's your man.

Arrest him.

So, that's how that went.

Morris, a married father

of a teenage
stepdaughter, adamantly

denied any involvement
in Sharra's m*rder.

- I wasn't too crazy
about Dale Morris.

I just believe he's guilty.

Something in me tells
me that he's guilty.

Morris told investigators

he had never even
met Sharra Ferger.

But investigators
knew this wasn't true.

- In fact, it was learned that
he had seen Sharra before,

that Sharra had actually been
in his residence visiting

his daughter.

During his interrogation,

Dale Morris came about
as close to a confession

as one could get.

- Which was a spontaneous
utterance basically indicating

that if he had
done the crime, he

must have done it in his sleep.

Based on the
bite-mark identification

and his statement to
police, Dale Morris

was charged with
first-degree m*rder.

Tom Hanlon was the
public defender

assigned to Dale's case.

He described the so-called
confession as "preposterous."

- He made a statement.

Well if it happened, it had
to happen when I was asleep,

because I never went over there.

And so, was that a confession?

No, that was a guy trying to
politely tell them to go drink

ice water with the
devil, is what that was.

Convinced
the bite-mark evidence

against his client was flawed,
Hanlon wanted a second opinion.

So he called Dr. Lowell Levine,
a forensic odontologist who

had been involved in a
number of high-profile cases.

Dr. Levine believed the
photographs of the bite mark

were too blurry for
a quality analysis.

- I told Mr. Hanlon, to make
a very long story short,

that it would be a good
idea if we could digitally

clarify the police photographs.

So Hanlon called NASA, who

were experts in the field of
digital photo enhancement.

NASA recommended using Lucis,
a cutting-edge software that

would sharpen the
images considerably.

- The human eye can discern
about 32 levels of contrast.

A typical photograph has


This means that there's a
lot of image information

that our eye just can't
discern, because the differences

in contrast just isn't big
enough for us to register it.

What Lucis does is it makes
those small differences

in contrast large enough
for us to be able to see.

When completed, the
digitally enhanced photographs

revealed some new information.

- The clarified photographs
showed that that was just

part of a second line of teeth
and that there were actually

two lines of teeth, there
were two complete bite

marks, in that photograph.

Part of the top
didn't show up real

well until it was clarified.

This gave Dr.
Levine two bite impressions

to compare with
Dale Morris's teeth.

- It was my opinion
Dale Morris could

not have caused the bike mark.

- When I was afforded
an opportunity

to talk with Dr.
Lowell Levine and he

was able to sit down and
actually show me why this,

in fact, was not Dale
Morris's bite mark,

I walked away from
that meeting convinced

that we had had
the wrong person.

- You haven't been
able to hug your wife

for a very long time, have you?

- For four and a half months.

I haven't been able to touch
her for four and a half months.

Just talk to her through a
plate-glass window for an hour.

Yeah, an hour at
a time, wasn't it?

Yeah.
An hour at a time.

- When the sheriff's office
went out there and apologized,

as always, Dale accepted their
apology and forgave them.

The investigation
was far from over.

Homicide investigators
identified two suspects

in the m*rder of
nine-year-old Sharra Ferger.

The child's babysitter,
Jack Hubble,

and a neighbor, Dale Morris.

- I believe he was guilty.

I believe Dale
Morris was guilty.

But both men had been excluded

by the forensic evidence.

By now, six months had
passed and the case was cold.

- We found ourself, yet again,
in a position where we really

did not know who
committed this offense.

And the people in the community
were getting very upset.

- I'm still scared that... I mean,
there could be someone else.

- Everybody's been on edge.

I mean, nobody trusts anybody.

They walk down here
to burn a castle,

but people are still
looking around,

you know, wondering who
it was, who could it be?

- We worked very
hard to try to go

back and refocus
this investigation.

We knew we had to solve it.

We knew that we
couldn't just leave it.

So investigators
re-interviewed people

in Sharra's neighborhood,
looking for anything

that might have been overlooked.

They started with Sharra's
uncle, Gary Cochran,

who was with Sharra
at a neighborhood

carnival on the
afternoon of her m*rder.

- Well, whoever did
it, they're going

to pay for it one
way or the other.

An innocent kid.

She ain't never done nothing.

- We'd never got along.

After me and Sharra's dad
split up, for some reason

he hated me because I wouldn't
let Sharra visit her dad.

And Cochran knew that
the Ferger's side door lock was

broken, which is how the
perpetrator entered the home.

However, Cochran
said he had an alibi

for the night Sharra was k*lled.

- An elaborate story that
he had been out drinking

and wasn't even in the
area, and that he ended up

partying with some other people.

We checked out his
alibi, and we found

that he wasn't
telling us the truth.

Cochran willingly
provided a DNA sample, which

did not match the hair
from the crime scene.

But investigators
didn't stop there.

- Hello?

They learned that Gary
Cochran spent some time in jail

for a drug-related
offense and developed

a reputation for
some odd behavior.

- Interviewing
inmates in the jail,

it was determined that he
had bitten approximately six

inmates while in jail with them.

Others said the same thing.

- His ex-wife stated that
during sex with Gary Cochran

that he often bit her to the
point that he would draw blood.

This was significant
to the investigation,

since Sharra Ferger had been
bitten by her assailant.

So investigators took
molds of Cochran's teeth

and sent them to forensic
odontologist Dr. Lowell Levine.

Almost immediately, Dr. Levine
noticed something distinctive.

- Mr. Cochran had two very
unusual characteristics there.

He's got a space
between two pre-molars.

One is rotated, and the
other one is either deformed

or in some way has been broken.

And they left very
distinctive bite

marks or patterns in the issue.

But were the
molds of Cochran's teeth

consistent with the bite marks
on Sharra Ferger's shoulder?

- I then told the detectives
that it was Cochran.

Cochran was incredulous.

He insisted he
was innocent, just

like Jack Hubble
and Dale Morris.

He said he was falsely accused.

- Gary Cochran indicated that
he had been with her earlier

that evening and
playfully may have

bitten her on the shoulder.

So investigators
asked Dr. Levine

if the bite mark
could have happened

hours earlier at the
neighborhood carnival.

- In my opinion, it looks more
like a perimortem injury,

an injury which occurred
around the time of death.

And it just doesn't look like
a six-hour-old injury to me.

But if Cochran was involved,

he had an accomplice who
was the source of the DNA.

- We knew that to
solve this case,

to get to the
bottom of this case,

we had to find the DNA source
that matched those hairs.

If Gary Cochran had
an accomplice in Sharra Ferger's

m*rder, he wasn't
saying who it was.

- We knew that there was a
missing piece of the puzzle,

somebody that we had
to match up to the DNA

from the hair that
was found on her body.

But a search of
a national DNA database

didn't reveal a match.

Then, investigators got
a tip from an informant

who saw Gary Cochran with
his friend, 18-year-old Steve

Cannon, on the night
of Sharra's m*rder.

Incredibly, Cannon told
investigators an outright lie.

He said he didn't
know Gary Cochran

or anyone in the Ferger family.

- I knew Steve Cannon
when he was little.

His aunt and his
mom, I was friends

with his aunt and his mom.

And we used to hang out.

All the kids used to go
to the park together.

And according to Karen
Ferger, Steve Cannon once dated

her oldest daughter, Crystal,
and had been in their home

on more than one occasion.

Informants also
told investigators

that Gary Cochran and Steve
Cannon were doing dr*gs

together on the night
of Sharra's m*rder.

- That night, when they drove
into town to go to the bar,

they stopped at a place over
here on 41 to get dr*gs.

So investigators
collected a saliva sample

from Steve Cannon and
sent it for DNA testing.

Eight weeks later, they got the
answer they'd been waiting for.

- With the DNA, we had a very
concise determination, finding,


those hairs on the body

belong to Cannon.

And that was
conclusive evidence.

It was totally unrefuted by
any other evidence whatsoever.

- It was like finding
the silver b*llet.

It was a shock.

It was a big relief.

Based on the forensic
evidence and eyewitness

accounts, prosecutors believe
that Gary Cochran and Steve

Cannon were drinking in a local
bar on the night of the m*rder,

and also bought crack-cocaine.

Sometime after
midnight, prosecutors

believe that the two
went to the Ferger home

and entered through
the side door,

which Cochran knew was broken.

The noise woke Joseph, who
ran to his babysitter's room,

leaving Sharra alone
in the living room.

The two men may have gone to
Crystal Ferger's room first,

but it was locked.

Then they saw Sharra
in the living room.

No one knows how they
persuaded her to go outside.

Cochran and Cannon, high
on dr*gs and alcohol,

put Sharra in the car and drove
to the field 300 yards away.

But Sharra fought back.

She pulled Cannon's head hairs,
which led to the DNA match.

And Gary Cochran's bite
mark implicated him as well.

- I don't think this case would
probably ever have been solved

without the bite
mark or the hairs.

I don't know that we would
have ever been directed,

particularly not
to Steven Cannon,

had we not had the DNA evidence.

- Well, I believe the Sheriff's
Department did a real good job.

I was very satisfied
with their work,

even though it took
so long for them

to come up with the criminals.

They were just doing
their jobs and trying

to arrest the right person.

- Well, both individuals
were ultimately

indicted by the grand
jury on the charge

of first-degree m*rder.

In September of 2005,
Gary Cochran and Steve Cannon

were tried and convicted
of first-degree m*rder.

They were sentenced to life
in prison without parole.

The forensic evidence
exonerated two innocent men,

and brought justice to the
two who were responsible.

- This was a case that,
without forensic evidence,

possibly would
have been unsolved.

It was a case where you
had, the first time for me,

of a forensic odontologist
involving a bite mark.

- We would have never learned of
Steve Cannon had there not been

a match to Gary
Cochran's bite mark.

- I guess there would be one
thing that you could say

about this case, looking at
all the circumstances involved,

Dale Morris to Gary
Cochran, to Steven Cannon,

and that is that
the system works.