12x10 - Catch 22

[bunniefuu]

A woman was
ambushed in her own driveway.

Eyewitness accounts differed.

But a handwriting
expert found evidence

that she had a secret admirer
with a not so secret motive.

In the 19th century,
Manchester, Connecticut

was the silk capital
of the world.

Today the mills are
apartments, and the town

is enjoying growth
and new investment.

- I believe the population's
around 58,000 people.

We have a large retail center
in the north section of town

which draws a lot of
people into that area.

Manchester was home
for Gayle and Doug Isleib, who

had been married for a
little over three years.

They both had grown children
from previous marriages.

She was Grammy to anybody.

Her grandchildren
were her whole world.

Even my cousins
who have children,

they were her grandchildren.

We were a very close
family, very connected.

But in the spring of 1996,

Gayle's family noticed that
she was behaving suspiciously.

And I said
something to her about it.

I said, Mom, what
are you doing hanging

blankets from the windows?

And her response to me
was, well, you never

know who could be out there
looking in your windows.

On another occasion, Gayle

had refused to let her
daughter drive her car.

She parked behind me.

And I said, Mom,
where are your keys?

And she refused to
let me take her car.

She was like, oh, no, no, no.
Just move my car.

I don't have enough gas.

And she made up one
excuse after another.

Even a simple
phone call set Gayle on edge.

You could
tell when the phone rang

she was nervous
about it, about who

it might be on the other end.

- I think that she felt
like she was protecting us

by not exposing us to any
danger that might be around.

On April 30, 1996, Gayle

ended her shift at the
Walmart store around 10:00 PM,

then drove home.

Her husband Doug said he heard
Gayle pull into their driveway.

Then he heard a commotion.

He went outside and saw

a gunman standing
next to her car.

He ran to call police.

When police arrived, they

discovered Gayle Isleib had been
shot multiple times in the head

and was pronounced
dead at the scene.

Investigators found
seven 22-caliber shell

casings scattered
around Gayle's car.

It was very close and personal.

And there was some indication
that several of the wounds

were close contact
type of wounds.

And police noticed
that Gayle's husband Doug was

holding a 22-caliber
revolver, the same caliber

w*apon used in
his wife's m*rder.

- Well, naturally,
we have a sh**ting.

He's at the scene with a g*n.

Well, that's going
to be the first place

you're going consider something.

Doug claimed he grabbed his g*n

for protection
after he called 911.

Police asked Doug to describe
the man he saw k*ll his wife.

- He thought that the subject
that he saw in his driveway

was a Hispanic male,
light-skinned male.

But this contradicted
his 911 call to police.

He also mentioned robbery.

But Gayle's purse and jewelry
were still in her car.

Two neighbors corroborated
parts of Doug's story.

They heard the g*nshots and the
sound of a car speeding away.

- Very shocking, especially
in this neighborhood.

Another witness saw
a white car leaving the scene.

However, the one thing
everyone agreed on what

that Gayle Isleib
had no known enemies.

- You'd never think,
geez, somebody

must be stalking my mother.

I mean, it just never
would come to your mind.

- The first thought in my mind
was, how the heck are we going

to solve this thing, because
we really at the beginning

had nothing.

When police arrived
to the scene of Gayle Isleib's

m*rder, her husband Doug was
holding a 22-m caliber p*stol,

the same caliber w*apon
used in her m*rder.

But the g*n was fully loaded.

And this model did not discharge
its spent shell casings

like the w*apon
used in the m*rder,

so Doug was eliminated
as a suspect.

There was
no rhyme or reason to it.

The Isleibs seemed to be a
husband and wife who were just

minding their business,
living their lives.

Gayle was a devoted mother,
it's pretty obvious.

She was a devoted grandmother.

The assailant fired
seven sh*ts at close range.

Five of them struck
Gayle Isleib in the head.

One of the
things that we looked at

was the possibility
that maybe perhaps this

was a road rage
type of incident.

Maybe she cut someone
off on her way home

and the person wound up driving
and taking some sh*ts at her.

Family members and
friends told investigators

that Gayle Isleib
had no known enemies,

so they began
their investigation

by talking to Gayle's coworkers.

This is a group
of crackerjack investigators.

Paul Lombardo went to
Walmart the next morning,


store opened up.

And he started
interviewing coworkers.

Gayle worked
in the shoe department

and told coworkers
that a fellow employee

had been bothering her.

- I think some of the words
that the employees used

were that this person was
infatuated with Mrs. Isleib

and would just constantly
be talking to her

and harassing her.

The employee was


He was half of Gayle's age.

Yet that didn't
seem to deter him.

Montgomery
would come in on his days

off and hang around
the shoe department

and follow Gayle around
when Gayle was working.

It became obvious that
he was drawn to her.

And his feelings
were unrequited.

When police
entered Montgomery's home,

he wasn't there.

But they noticed a
white car like the one

described by witnesses.

It was registered to
Montgomery's stepfather.

Inside, in the
ashtray, police found

the remains of a
partially-burned note

and several pages
of intact notes.

Dogs.

Bring mace and duct tape
to tie up dog's mouth.

Come up with excuse.

I'm returning her cake dish.

Wipe down all weapons.

Get icepick from grocery store.

Get him subdued then stick
icepick through his ear.

It looked like
a criminal checklist.

But why did it mentioned using
an icepick to k*ll a man?

Was it possible
that the intended

target was Gayle's husband?

At this point, we had

no way of talking
to him about that.

So we had to find other means of
tying these notes into Tyrone.

So they sent the note
to forensic document examiner

Jim Streeter, along with
known handwriting samples

from Tyrone Montgomery's
employment application.

- There were numerous individual
handwriting characteristics

and habits that I observed.

We had the use of
almost a cursive J

in this print-style writing.

And often it almost
resembled a letter

L, a cursive letter L.
That was one letter.

There was a consistent use
of an entry stroke appearing

to the left of the perpendicular
in a lowercase E that

was consistent
throughout the writings

of both the questioned
and the known.

Streeter concluded that Tyrone

Montgomery had
written the checklist.

But where was he?

Investigators learned
that he checked himself

into a local
psychiatric hospital

shortly after Gayle
Isleib's m*rder.

Apparently
he had made the comment

at the hospital that a
friend of his had just died

and he was feeling suicidal.

Or was this a ruse so he

wouldn't have to
speak with police?

There

that are affected by one
violent act like this.

And this happened to take
the center of our world.

She was the center
of our family.

The prime suspect
in Gayle Isleib's m*rder

was her coworker, 25-year-old
Tyrone Montgomery.

Tyrone Montgomery apparently

worked in the department
right next to Mrs. Isleib.

He didn't have any kind
of criminal record.

But he was one of
those employees

that the other
people in the store

talked about as being a little
different or a little out

of the ordinary.

According
to co-workers,

Montgomery asked Gayle
Isleib several times

to go out with him.

When she refused, he
exhibited bizarre behavior.

He apparently
either got a ride from her

or gave her a ride somewhere,
pulled out a BB g*n,

and said, see how easy it
would be to hijack you,

and stuck the g*n in her
ribs, words to that effect.

- He was young, 25.

My mother was 54.

She had a family, married,
grown kids, kids older than him.

You know, what do you think is
going to become of all that?

You know?

Gayle never filed
an official complaint,

although coworkers say there
were numerous incidents.

- There were several
occasions where Tyrone asked

her out to dinner
and she refused.

One person indicated that
they saw Tyrone put his arm

around her back and she
pushed his arm away.

- It was obvious that
he had... at this point

was living some type of
fantasy and believing

that she was going
to go off with him.

No one knows
why Gayle kept quiet

and tried to handle the
situation on her own.

You know, I'm
really sorry that I couldn't

help her with that,
and that she felt

she had to deal
with it on her own,

because I know if that was me,
I would be terrified, terrified.

Not long
after committing himself

to the psychiatric
hospital, Montgomery

granted police a
brief interview.

We asked him about

whether or not he had
k*lled Gayle Isleib.

And his denials were very
calm and quiet, actually.

So that was kind of
an interesting note.

Montgomery ended
the interview quickly.

So investigators asked the staff
for the clothes he was wearing

when he checked
into the hospital.

As pursuant
to the hospital policy,

they had laundered the clothing
before it was handed over

to the Manchester
police department

via a search warrant.

So any analysis was worthless.

But crime scene analyst
Virginia Maxwell

examined the one
item the hospital

didn't touch,
Montgomery's boots.

When I was
examining those work boots,

I found a cut in
the sole, in which

there was a glass
fragment lodged.

- We knew that the suspect
was probably standing just

outside the driver's side window
when the first sh*ts were fired

at Mrs. Isleib and there was
a significant amount of glass

on the ground around that area.

And this would have indicated
that there was some transfer

of that glass onto his
boots from the crime scene.

But as investigators well knew,

there is automobile glass on
virtually every city street.

So Maxwell measured the
refractive index of the sample.

If you place a rod
into a glass of water,

it appears that the rod is bent.

And that's not because the glass

rod is actually bent.

It's simply because the
speed of light in water

is different to the
speed of light in air.

Therefore, our eye perceives
that the glass rod is bent.

The extent to
which the light changes

is known as the
refractive index.

Maxwell crushed both the
glass from Montgomery's boot

and the glass from Gayle's
car, then placed the samples

on separate slides with
silicon oil and heated them.

When the oil reaches the same
refractive index as the glass,

the shards seem to disappear.

This proved the refractive index
of the glass in Gayle's car

and on Montgomery's
boot was the same.

But when we do testing

with refractive indices,
the best we can say

is that that known
sample could have been

the source of that
questioned sample.

So the evidence was
consistent but not conclusive.

Police had a suspect.

But they still needed
something to link

him to Gayle Isleib's m*rder.

With a warrant, investigators
searched Tyrone Montgomery's

home, looking for
the 22-caliber w*apon

used in Gayle Isleb's m*rder.

But they didn't find it.

They did, however, find some
interesting reading material.

- We found some indications
that he had purchased

some books, books on
how to be a hit man.

And what they were were
these books on quote,

unquote, "how to
commit a m*rder."

We began to find parallels
to what he had written

in his note, some
of the things he

had done prior to the m*rder.

Montgomery owned
another book, entitled

"Methods of Disguise," a
possible explanation for why

Doug Isleib gave
conflicting information

about the assailant.

- It all began to
kind of fit together,

that the likelihood of him
wearing makeup at the time

was probably pretty good.

In the basement, investigators

found a makeshift firing range.

There were several 22-caliber
rounds in the walls,

and spent shell
casings on the floor.

The b*ll*ts recovered
from the wall

were too damaged for comparison.

But the casings on the
floor were compared

to the casings from
the crime scene.

Under a comparison microscope,
firearms expert Ed Jachimowicz

studied the marks
on each casing.

- Every time a cartridge was
cycled through the action

of the firearm, it
produced that very detailed

microscopic mark
on every cartridge.

Surprisingly,
the marks on the casings

had a distinctive series
of scratches under the rim.

To ballistic experts,
this was clear evidence

that the g*n was not
properly assembled.

- This particular
model of firearm

was a take-down, meaning that
you could break it into pieces

and transport it from
one place to another.

And it just wasn't
quite together properly.

Whoever assembled this just
didn't push the frame back

into the barrel tight
enough, so there

was about a millimeter
gap between the frame

and the barrel.

The ballistics evidence clearly

showed that the g*n fired
in Montgomery's basement

was the same g*n used
to k*ll Gayle Isleib.

Prosecutors believe that
Montgomery was angry

when Gayle Isleib
refused his advances,

so he hatched a plan to k*ll
Gail's husband with an icepick

and kidnap Gayle at gunpoint.

On the night of the crime,
he parked up the street,

disguised his
appearance, and waited

for Gayle to return from work.

When Gayle drove
into her driveway,

she saw Montgomery with the g*n.

Montgomery panicked, and fired
seven sh*ts into the car.

As he fled, a tiny piece of
glass was embedded in his boot.

Handwritten notes in his
car, the b*llet casings

in his basement, and
the glass in his boot

tied him definitively
to the m*rder.

You're finding
the pieces here and there.

And you're starting to
fit these pieces together.

And that's a really big piece.

Tyrone Montgomery was arrested

and charged with felony m*rder.

Although police didn't
need information

on how he got the
w*apon, they wanted it.

So they questioned once
again the manager of the g*n

department at
Montgomery's store.

And this time, the manager
admitted Montgomery bought

a 22-caliber r*fle shortly
before Gayle Isleib's m*rder.

Montgomery told him he
wanted it for hunting.

- I don't think you're going
to drop a moose or a deer

with a 22-caliber r*fle.

You might take down a squirrel.

You might take down a rabbit.

You might take down a pheasant
if you're a very good shot.

But you're not going to take
out any kind of animals,

game animals in this
part of the country

with a 22-calibear r*fle.

When the manager
learned Gayle Isleib was k*lled

with a 22-caliber
w*apon, he panicked

and changed the store's logbook.

- What it would have
done for Montgomery

was it would have given him
a g*n that was untraceable,

because there would have
been no record of that g*n

having been sold at that store.

Now that police
had the serial number,

they found the r*fle in the
possession of a local man who

had bought it as
a second-hand g*n.

Ballistic tests proved
this was the m*rder w*apon

and it had been
assembled improperly.

- Looking at the side or
the circumference surface

of the cartridge case,
the most obvious mark

in this particular case
was that accidental mark

left by that firearm not
being properly assembled.

In October of


was convicted of felony
m*rder and sentenced

to 65 years in prison.

It's difficult to know why
someone like Montgomery

would believe a kidnapping
plan like this would work.

But the science
spoke with certainty.

- In certain aspects he
did a lot of planning.

In certain aspects his
planning was pretty pathetic.

His covering of his
trail, I should say,

was pretty pathetic.

- This case probably was
more of a team effort

than I have really
encountered in all

the years I worked
as a detective.

- We were very lucky
that they were

able to preserve
certain evidence

and then do their
testing and come back

with some solid,
concrete undisputed facts

that just I think
made it very easy

for the prosecution to
really get a good conviction.