13x03 - sh**t to Thrill

[bunniefuu]

Up next, a wealthy
businessman is k*lled by an

intruder.

Investigators find a
wide-ranging conspiracy.

The m*rder had been planned out.

Other people not only knew
about it, but had been asked to

participate.

Friends turn on friends.

I didn't do anything.

It didn't seem to be sinking
in with him how deep he was

involved.

But to get the
k*ller, one piece of evidence

had to be identified.

All these high-school kids
had been involved, and perhaps

one of them did it.

Just after midnight
in St. cloud, Minnesota,


returned home from a night out

with a friend.

He took a shower downstairs.

But before he went to bed, he
went up to the kitchen to get

something to eat.

In the foyer, near the front
door, he saw his father lying on

the floor, bleeding.

When paramedics arrive, they
found Jason's father,


at the base of the stairs.

He had been shot to death.

It looked like Ken maclennan
came down the stairs and

encountered an intruder.

When you come down dressed in
only a bathrobe, you don't

expect that someone's going to
be waiting for you with a loaded

r*fle.

There was wounds to the
temple, to the forehead, to the

throat, the chest area, to the
right hand, and one in the back,

as well.

The attack was so
fast and so unexpected,

maclennan had little time to
react.

He grabbed the end of the g*n.

He actually reached up, and the
g*n actually had contact with

his hand.

The shot goes through the hand.

There were at least six sh*ts,
perhaps seven, that were fired.

Every single one hit
Ken maclennan.

The k*ller took the
time to pick up the shell

casings... all except one.

There was one spent .22 shell
casing left on the hardwood

floor near the body.

The motive appeared
to be robbery.

We discovered that Ken's
wallet, along with some cash and

identification cards and also
some foreign currency and Ken's

watch were missing from the
residence.

Ken maclennan was a widower.

As a vice-president in charge of
international sales of a crafts

company, he often traveled and
had just returned from an

overseas trip.

He made a good living.

His value was over $1 million in
terms of life insurance and

actual assets.

The maclennan family was of some
wealth, and so we explored that

as a motive for his m*rder.

Who might gain from his death?

As the sun rose the
next morning, police found some

important evidence outside in
the fresh snow... some shoe

impressions from the backyard
leading straight to the front

door.

Police were convinced that these
prints belonged to the k*ller.

At Ken maclennan's
autopsy, the medical examiner

recovered seven .22-caliber
slugs from his body.

Those slugs were telling.

There were four different kinds
of amm*nit*on, raising the

possibility that there was more
than one sh**t...

Or the k*ller wanted to make it
look like there was more than

one sh**t.

Typically, burglars don't
want to confront the homeowner

or any other persons inside.

They want to get in and get out.

It would be very
uncharacteristic, in my opinion,

for someone to sh**t someone
that many times.

Since the victim's


his father's body, investigators
had no choice but to consider

him a suspect.

We seized the clothing that
Jason was wearing when we first

made contact with him.

That clothing had no apparent
blood on it.

We also conducted a g*nsh*t
residue test on Jason early that

morning, and those results came
back negative... that he did not

have g*nsh*t residue on his
hands.

Another potential
suspect was Ken's fiancée... a

Swiss businesswoman...
Alyssandra loughtons.

She had been living with
Jason and Ken during the time

that they were in Florida.

And the fact that she existed
and the fact that she lived in

their household was a subject of
stress between the father and

son.

But their wedding
plans were on hold.

We did obtain e-mails from
his fiancée, which indicated

there was some trouble in their
relationship at the time that

Ken was k*lled.

Yet she was still
listed as beneficiary of one of

Ken's life-insurance policies.

And that policy was valued at
$100,000.

But alyssandra was
in Switzerland at the time of

the m*rder and was written off
as a suspect.

Police turned their attention to
the shoe impressions found

outside of the crime scene in
the snow.

The victim's son, Jason, said
two sets of prints belonged to

him and a friend.

Since he wasn't allowed to smoke
in the house, Jason and his

friend went outside.

Their shoes were sent to
sue gross for comparison with

photos from the scene.

I will ink the bottom of the
shoe, impress a clear acetate

transparency against it, and
then I will compare this

transparency to the photograph
that was submitted.

These
transparencies confirmed the

two sets of impressions on the
left side of the house belonged

to the teenagers.

The third set of prints on the
opposite side of the house were

different.

That set of footprints that
led around to the home up to the

front door... and there was no
set leaving the front door.

That third set of footprints
around the other side of the

house became the focus of the
investigation.

The impressions
were run through a computer

program called "solemate,"
which can identify the make and

model of any shoe or boot
impression.

They were able to indicate
that with certainty, it was a

New York lugz-brand shoe that
had made that impression.

Further checking
revealed there were a number of

stores in St. cloud, Minnesota,
that carried the lugz boots, a

brand popular in the world of
hip-hop.

Then, police got a tip from an
unlikely source.

I received a call from the
father of a female student from

tech high school.

He stated that his daughter was
very upset over details that she

had learned while she was at
school that day about this

m*rder.

It was the story of
a wide-ranging conspiracy.

She was crying hysterically
and stated she was very fearful

for what she was about to tell
us.

As police
investigated the m*rder of

Ken maclennan, they heard rumors
that his relationship with his


good one.

According to friends, Ken all
but abandoned Jason's mother as

she lay dying of cancer, and
Jason deeply resented it.

Regardless of the
relationship between Ken and his

wife, if the woman's dying, it
just looks bad if you take off

and go to another continent and
don't come back for weeks,

leaving Jason, who might have
been 12 years old, to take care

of his dying mother.

It appeared that things
changed for him... that he

became more troubled, started to
have more trouble in school.

After his wife's
death, Ken continued to travel

extensively for work.

There were stories about
Jason being left alone for weeks

with virtually nothing in the
refrigerator and having no

money.

I don't know how exaggerated
these stories are.

Obviously, Jason didn't starve.

After Ken
maclennan's m*rder, police

received a tip from one of
Jason's fellow high-school

students.

At least one other
high-school student had been

asked to provide a g*n.

A number of high-school students
knew about this.

The informant said
that Jason asked several people

to help him k*ll his father,
but all of them declined.

They didn't think this was
really going to happen.

Others seemed in this stoned
world where nothing was real

anyway, and, "oh, far out, it
happened."

The informant said
one friend, Matt moeller, agreed

to help by providing the g*n in
return for money.

Matt was an average kid who
got dazzled by the money,

dazzled by the possibilities.

When a rich kid tells you "you
can be part of my life.

You can have a big, fancy house,
a fancy car.

Your life is going to be
different if you'll help me with

this."

He got caught up in it.

Police found a
.22-caliber r*fle in Matt's

bedroom, which they confiscated
and sent to ballistics.

There, Kurt moline test-fired
moeller's r*fle into a



And I sh**t in one end, and
the b*ll*ts hit the water and

they slow down and they drop to
the bottom, and then I vacuum

those up with a hose.

He took the
test-fired b*llet and compared

it to slugs recovered from
Ken maclennan's body.

The lands and grooves did not
match up.

A closer examination showed why.

A borescope, a fiber-optic
magnifier, revealed a series of

abnormal scratches on the inside
of the g*n barrel.

The scratches appeared to be
fresh, and by fresh, I mean they

were silvery colored.

They'd scratched through the
bluing, which would have been

applied at the factory.

Someone had
scratched the inside of the

barrel for the purpose of
preventing a ballistic

examination.

So the next step was to compare
the spent shell casings from the

scene to the casings from the
test-firing.

Looking at unique marks made by
the firing pin as it struck the

b*llet.

They were identical.

Also, inside the barrel was a
small drop of blood.

DNA testing proved the blood was
Ken maclennan's.

It made sense based on the
soot on the hand that

Mr. maclennan had actually
grabbed the g*n before the shot

was fired.

Because of that contact with the
hand, some of his blood then did

blow back into the barrel of the
r*fle.

When confronted
with this evidence, Matt moeller

admitted he was involved, but
insisted Jason maclennan was the

k*ller.

Matt said he heard the sh*ts.

Jason came back to the car,

returned the g*n, and then he
went home.

Returned the g*n, and then he
went home.

And Matt knew something that
hadn't been made public... four

different types of .22-caliber
b*ll*ts had been used.

One of the things they
actually discussed was using

different kinds of ammunitions
so that if g*nsh*t residue was

found as part of the
investigation, it would be tough

to track it back to his
particular g*n.

Matt claimed Jason
gave him $1,000 for use of the

g*n.

Yet, when confronted with Matt's
confession, Jason denied any

involvement in his father's
m*rder.

Involvement in his father's
m*rder.

Jason stuck to his story that
after he got out of the shower,

he found his father dead in the
foyer.

He insisted he had no idea who
k*lled him.

Police had two versions of
events surrounding the m*rder of

Ken maclennan, and they weren't
sure which one was true.

We knew that both of them had
reason to lie to us, so we had

to do the best we could to prove
for certain what really happened

versus what they claimed
happened.

Once
Ken maclennan's m*rder hit the

news, some local high-school
students in St. cloud,

Minnesota, called police, saying
the victim's son, Jason, had

offered them money to help him
k*ll his father.

One of the students that we
interviewed was present at the

maclennan home several weeks
prior to the homicide.

Matt actually stood in the
hallway of the residence while

Jason and this other student
watched and made g*n sounds...

"pow, pow, pow," when it was
apparent that Ken maclennan

would be coming in the house.

This raised the
possibility that there might

have been a third person
involved in the m*rder.

We were very concerned, based
on the fact that all these

high-school kids had been
involved in this, involved in

planning, asked to help, that
perhaps one of them did it.

The key break
happened with a student offered

to lead police to some
incriminating evidence.

The day after this m*rder
occurred, this student had

confided that he knew where the
bloody clothes were that Jason

had been wearing at the time
that this m*rder had occurred.

Police found the
clothes exactly where the

student said they'd be... buried
on property owned by

Matt moeller's parents.

They found a red plaid shirt,
a pair of blue jeans with one

glove in the back pocket, a pair
of white socks.

They also found some information
from Ken maclennan to include

his wallet, some business cards
from his employer, and some

foreign currency.

The clothes were
Jason maclennan's.

Students had seen him wearing
them the day of the m*rder.

DNA testing proved the blood on
the clothes had come from

Jason's father.

The fact that we could prove
beyond a reasonable doubt that

those jeans were
Jason maclennan's, with his

dad's blood on the bottom of the
pant leg, was an extremely

important moment in this
investigation.

The bloody glove
was even more telling.

DNA testing on skin cells showed
Jason had worn the glove.

Inside is found g*nsh*t residue
on the glove from four different

types of .22-caliber b*ll*ts.

Very important when that test
came back that not only was

there g*nsh*t residue on the
glove, but also corroborating

what Matt moeller had told us
about using different kinds of

amm*nit*on.

This seemed to
prove Jason fired the fatal

sh*ts.

But prosecutors had one major
problem... they still hadn't

identified who made the foot
impressions in the snow...

The ones that led to the front
door of the crime scene.

We knew that a number of the
other high-school students had

discussed this, that they had
talked about the money they were

going to get, that they were
going to live the high live.

And that was why we spent so
much time trying to identify

that third set of footprints.

If another student
was involved, a defense attorney

could raise the possibility of
reasonable doubt.

We had to be able to explain
to the jury where those

footprints came from.

So prosecutors
pressured Matt moeller,

reminding him that a
first-degree m*rder conviction

meant a life sentence.

He agreed to plead guilty to
second-degree m*rder in exchange

for a reduced sentence.

Matt then admitted the shoes
were his and turned them over to

police after hiding them in his
basement.

He said he made the shoe prints
in an effort to throw off

investigators.

I compared them side by side,
looking at their class

characteristics and the general
tread pattern and the size of

the shoe.

And this shoe corresponded to
the shoe prints at the scene.

Prosecutors believe
the motive for the crime was

Jason's hatred of his father.

Jason blamed him for abandoning
his mother as she lay dying of

cancer.

Jason also wanted his father's
money.

Ken's estate was worth about
$1.5 million, $1.4 million, and

Jason wanted to reap the
benefits.

On the night of the
m*rder, Ken maclennan returned

home from his business trip and
immediately went to bed.

Jason and Matt waited outside
until he was asleep.

Jason and Matt waited outside
until he was asleep.

And Matt used the third pair of
boots to walk to the front of

the house, leaving a trail they
hoped would trick investigators.

Jason went inside with a
.22-caliber r*fle.

Matt rang the front doorbell.

When Ken maclennan walked

downstairs to see who it was,
Jason ambushed him.

Ken grabbed the r*fle barrel,
but it was too late and Jason

fired seven sh*ts, k*lling his
father instantly.

Jason and Matt ransacked the
house to make it look like

a robbery.

They collected the spent shell
casings, but unknowingly left

one behind.

Matt disposed of Jason's
blood-spattered clothes and

tried to damage the inside of
the r*fle barrel to render it

useless as evidence.

But Ken maclennan's blood inside
the barrel and the shell casing

from the scene were more than
enough evidence for the trial.

Jason maclennan pleaded not
guilty and claimed he k*lled his

father in self-defense.

The jury didn't buy it.

Jason was convicted of
first-degree m*rder and

sentenced to life in prison.

Matt moeller pleaded guilty to
second-degree m*rder and was

sentenced to 30 years.

Sometimes I still wake up in
the morning and look out the

bars and just go, "wow," you
know?

I still can't believe that I'm
here in prison.

I still can't believe the
decision I made to put myself

here.

The boys' plan to
m*rder Ken maclennan went off

without a hitch, but the
cover-up couldn't withstand

scientific scrutiny.

We had a cover-up going on
here.

This was not a matter-of-fact
spur-of-the-moment thing.

That this had been planned, that
it was strategic, that they had

done the best they could to
throw off the investigation.

If nothing else, when a jury
saw this, they realized this was

not an accident.

The forensics in this case
was very important.

We had DNA.

We had ballistics.

We had blood spatter.

It's all of those forensic
answers that led us to believe

without question that Jason had
been the one to pull the trigger

and that Matt had in fact been
involved.