05x07 - Trail of Truth

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NARRATOR: In , a mother and her two young daughters

were brutally m*rder*d in their apartment in Anchorage, Alaska.

Microscopic clues from inside the apartment

identified a family relative as a possible suspect.

But how could investigators tell whether the evidence was fresh

or had been there since long before the murders?

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Anchorage, Alaska, is considered one of the most

scenic cities in the United States.

Bordered by the Alaska mountain range

on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other,

it draws tens of thousands of tourists each year.

The life blood of the state had been the oil business.

But in the mid s, prices for crude oil

crashed, forcing thousands of workers off the job.

John Newman was one of the oil workers who lost his job.

When he couldn't find other work in Alaska,

he left for California to take classes to become a locksmith.

His wife Nancy stayed behind to care for their two

young daughters eight-year-old Melissa

and three-year-old Angie.

-Angie was a cherub, beautiful blonde hair.

Just cute, charming, very charming.

Melissa was at that stage where she wasn't baby-cute anymore,

but she had all the potential to be beautiful.

NARRATOR: Nancy worked as a waitress

at Gwennie's restaurant, an Anchorage landmark.

She was known for never missing a day.

And when she didn't come to work one Sunday morning,

her co-workers were concerned.

-Nancy's sister Cheryl worked for us as a hostess.

And they were very, very close.

And I said, Cheryl, you know, you've got your car.

Can you run over and check on Nancy, see what's going on?

NARRATOR: Cheryl immediately drove

over to her sister's apartment.

Nancy Newman's front door was locked,

but inside was a scene of horrific v*olence.

Nancy was found in her bedroom.

She had been sexually assaulted and strangled

to death with a pillowcase.

Eight-year-old Melissa had met the same fate.

Three-year-old Angie had bled to death

after her throat was slashed.

-We'd never had a crime like that in town before, you know,

a whole family basically k*lled in, in their own house.

That was very heinous and definitely

out of the ordinary for Anchorage.

NARRATOR: The coroner underestimated the murders took

place some time on Saturday morning.

None of the neighbors saw or heard

anything unusual during that time.

Although there were no signs of forced entry,

Nancy Newman's camera and purse were

missing from the apartment.

A knife was also missing from a butcher block in the kitchen.

A cookie tin that normally held Nancy's waitressing tips

was empty on the kitchen table.

A damp wash rag was found in the bathroom sink.

-He was in a comfort zone inside that apartment.

He knew this situation of these victims enough

to know that he wouldn't in all likelihood be interrupted,

that he could spend a significant amount of time.

And we could tell he spent a significant amount of time.

He had three different victims, three different bedrooms,

two of them sexually assaulted.

And then we had the person completely cleaning up.

He was-- had to be covered in blood.

NARRATOR: John Newman was attending school in California.

Police could find no evidence that he had returned to Alaska

at the time of the murders, and was not considered a suspect.

But the killings reflected a great rage

on the part of the perpetrator.

Police wondered if Nancy Newman had made an enemy

among co-workers or customers of the restaurant.

-It was a difficult station that she worked.

It was normally, you know, single guys.

And maybe they were hung over.

Maybe they were just being jerks.

NARRATOR: As John Newman returned home to bury his wife

and two small children, investigators

wondered whether this was a botched robbery attempt that

had turned violent or an act of revenge.

After the murders of Nancy Newman

and her two daughters Melissa and Angie,

Anchorage residents feared that a random sex

k*ller was on the loose.

-Why didn't somebody hear Nancy's screams?

I used to have dreams at night.

I could hear a woman screaming.

And it would be, you know, when you first fall asleep,

and I'd wake up and I'd still hear the screams.

But I didn't know what to do.

I couldn't do anything.

And for a while I didn't know if it was dreams

or if it was really happening.

-Who in this community would commit such a crime where they

would actually k*ll two young children like that?

And if, if it wasn't the husband, then who?

And was he still out there on the streets?

And that had a lot of people who were genuinely scared.

NARRATOR: The lack of forced entry and the time spent

in the apartment led investigators

to believe the k*ller had been there before.

-Yeah, this is the worst case that I've worked.

I've had, I've been involved in one form or another

in over homicide investigations.

And this would be the worst as far as the victims go,

the brutality, the age, what was done to them.

NARRATOR: At the crime scene, investigators

searched for fingerprints using a technique

called superglue fuming.

When superglue is heated, the fumes

attach to the biological material in finger oils.

Then powder is used to reveal the print.

-Sometimes you'll be able to see them, sometimes you will not.

After the superglue fuming process is completed.

As a fingerprint examiner, once those fingerprints are fixed,

we either photograph them as they develop or add

different chemicals to that item to try to make the fingerprints

visible, so that we can preserve them and compare them

to suspects or other individuals.

NARRATOR: Kathy Monfreda found over fingerprints

in the apartment, many did not belong

to anyone in the immediate family.

These prints were found on the inside of the front door,

on the cookie tin, where Nancy Newman kept her waitressing

tips, in the bathroom, and in other areas.

Investigators identified the prints

as those of Kirby Anthony, a nephew of the Newman family.

Anthony was a -year-old drifter

who had recently moved to Anchorage from Idaho.

Since he needed a place to stay, the Newmans

allowed him to move in temporarily.

-Kirby had lived there with them.

They had let him stay there.

That he was a relative, they felt sorry for him.

They knew he had a troubled past.

And so he had a legitimate reason

for being in there, which means a lot to what we're

going to discover in trace evidence.

-They put him up. He stayed with them.

And I think they got along OK, although, we did hear later

and learn that he didn't get along

real well with Melissa, the eight-year-old.

NARRATOR: Kirby Anthony admitted that living

in a small apartment with two young children was difficult.

And he told police he moved out amicably,

just two weeks before the murders.

Furthermore, Kirby Anthony denied any knowledge

of the attack and said he had an alibi.

He told police he was out with friends on Friday

night and spent Saturday morning eating

breakfast at a Burger King restaurant.

In addition to the fingerprints, investigators

found large amounts of hair in almost

every room of the Newman's apartment.

The hairs were Caucasian and were not similar to anyone

in the Newman family.

Anchorage police sent the hairs to the FBI in Washington, DC,

hoping that they could shed some light

on the identity of the k*ller.

At FBI Headquarters in Washington, DC,

analyst Doug Deedrick examined all of the hairs and fibers

collected from the Newman's apartment.

There were thousands of hairs and fibers

throughout the apartment, which is not unusual.

But Deedrick found large numbers of hairs

in the victims' bedrooms, which were pubic.

-It is very easy to distinguish the differences

between the head hair and the pubic hair,

differences being in diameter, length, color,

internal microscopic characteristics,

the appearance of the tip.

Pubic hairs generally have a pointed tip,

whereas head hairs are often cut.

NARRATOR: His first task was to compare the hairs

to the victims and to their prime suspect, Kirby Anthony.

In Deedrick's opinion, the pubic hairs

were microscopically similar to hair

samples collected from Kirby Anthony.

But Anthony's hairs in the apartment

could be explained, since he had been living there

until days before the murders.

The question was when were these hairs left in the apartment?

To find out, Doug Deedrick devised a unique experiment.

-I had to take a vacuum home.

I had to vacuum the house.

And I don't believe the house has ever been any cleaner.

But every, every night for two weeks

I vacuumed and, and, then, compared afterwards to see

what types of hairs I found and how many hairs I found.

NARRATOR: Deedrick discovered that pubic hairs can

travel, or migrate, from room to room.

And the way that happens in a household

is through what is called "a secondary transfer."

Pubic hairs travel from room to room, primarily on socks.

The Deedrick experiment revealed that these transfers

were limited.

Very few pubic hairs from an adult's bedroom

migrate into a child's bedroom.

How then to account for the large number of Kirby Anthony's

pubic hairs in the children's rooms?

One explanation was that Anthony was

in the girl's bedroom nude or uncovered.

In addition, all of the pubic hairs found in these rooms

were clean and moist.

If the hairs had been there since the time Anthony was

living there, the shafts would have

been dry and collected dirt.

-When a hair is deposited, especially on the floor,

in the carpet of a residence, over time

the hair can exhibit chew marks from beetle larva

that tend to eat on the hairs.

The hairs will accumulate dirt or debris on the surface.

The hairs that were found on the body of Melissa

and on Angie, all three of those hairs,

pubic hairs, like Kirby Anthony's did not

have any dirt on them.

And they had, actually, what looked like fresh blood

on the surface of the hairs.

And that, I thought, was very significant.

NARRATOR: Next, Deedrick examined the damp wash rag

found in the Newman's sink after the murders.

On the wash rag were some green wool fibers

which matched the pair of gloves found

in Nancy Newman's bedroom.

Also on the wash rag were traces of the victims' blood.

Finally, Deedrick made a startling discovery.

On the wash rag were pubic hairs with partial egg casings

from pubic lice-- an extremely rare finding.

The hairs were microscopically similar to Kirby Anthony.

And investigators discovered that Anthony

had recently been treated for pubic lice.

And there was more evidence linking

Kirby Anthony to the Newman crime scene.

One was the location of Kirby Anthony's palm print

in a particularly unusual location.

-Above Melissa's bed on the wall,

an entire left hand print was developed.

NARRATOR: Melissa had been sexually assaulted.

The print, only inches above her head, was telling.

Anthony's fingerprints were also found on the container

that Nancy Newman used to hold the cash

tips from the restaurant.

Kirby Anthony's roommate told police

that on the morning of the murders

Anthony had walked into their apartment

with blood on his clothing and immediately

washed everything he was wearing.

The roommate also revealed that Anthony was counting

a large amount of change later that same day.

Police were still missing two important pieces

of evidence-- the m*rder w*apon and a motive.

As the investigation into the murders of Nancy Newman

and her two daughters continued, more and more evidence

pointed to the Newmans' nephew Kirby Anthony.

When the Anchorage police searched for a motive,

they learned that Kirby Anthony's departure

from the Newman apartment was not

as amicable as he first admitted.

-John, Kirby is making me very uncomfortable.

Now he's--

NARRATOR: John Newman told police

that his wife had called him in California.

She said Anthony was behaving inappropriately,

and, on at least one occasion, had struck the children.

-Kirby was acting inappropriate.

He was starting to physically discipline the girls,

get angry at them.

Um, it was very uncomfortable for Nancy and the girls.

And Nancy had relayed this information to John.

And John had told Nancy to tell him

to leave, get him out of the apartment.

NARRATOR: Police believe that it was an angry Kirby Anthony who

moved into this dilapidated apartment

just days before the murders.

Investigators had one last piece of physical evidence

to examine-- the vacuum cleaner Nancy

Newman used to clean her apartment.

A neighbor told police Nancy Newman vacuumed

her apartment shortly before the murders.

-I wouldn't call her exactly a clean freak,

not obsessively a clean freak, but for somebody with two

little kids-- and I had two little kids--

it was a very neat, well-ordered place.

NARRATOR: When Doug Deedrick looked inside the vacuum

cleaner bag, he saw many separate layers of dirt,

each layer was different.

The top layer was the most recent layer of dirt.

In it, Deedrick could find only one

pubic hair from Kirby Anthony.

The absence of Kirby Anthony's pubic hairs in the top layer

of dirt in the vacuum bag along with the presence

of a great deal of his pubic hair at the m*rder scene

indicated that Kirby Anthony had been inside the apartment

between the time it was last vacuumed

and the time of the murders.

-If I saw Kirby today, I'd sh**t him, run over him with a car.

Just whatever.

And you know that that would ruin my life.

This man has scarred so many people.

What he did to Nancy and the girls was unthinkable.

NARRATOR: Prosecutors believe that the microscopic trail

of evidence Kirby Anthony left behind clearly

shows his path on the morning of the murders.

The theory was that Anthony was angry

after he was forced to vacate the Newmans' apartment

and sought revenge.

The night before the murders, friends

said Kirby was using cocaine and alcohol.

GIRL: Mom, this meal stinks.

NANCY NEWMAN: That's enough, girls.

NARRATOR: The next morning, Anthony

entered the Newmans' apartment.

The children were sent to their rooms.

-John and I asked you to leave.

You shouldn't even be here.

You're not welcome.

NARRATOR: At some point, Anthony grabbed the kitchen knife

and forced Nancy Newman into her bedroom.

[music playing]

Wearing wool gloves he found in the bedroom,

he r*ped and strangled Nancy Newman with a pillowcase.

Then, he entered Melissa's bedroom,

assaulting and k*lling her too, leaving

his palm print above her bed.

The evidence suggests Anthony cleaned himself

in the bathroom, leaving the damp washcloth

complete with his pubic hair lice, the green wool

fibers, and the victims' blood in the sink.

He then k*lled three-year-old Angie, the only remaining

person who could place him at the scene.

Anthony left his fingerprints on the cookie tin

as it took Nancy's tips.

He also took Nancy's purse, camera,

and the knife he used in the murders.

The purse and the knife were never recovered.

The camera was later found in his possession.

-It was a crime of opportunity.

Kirby was a very disorganized k*ller.

He just walked over there for whatever reason,

became out of control, and continued

down this path of destruction.

NARRATOR: At the trial, Kirby Anthony pleaded not guilty

and acted as his own lawyer.

His defense was that he was framed by police,

but he had no explanation for the washcloth

and the wealth of evidence it contained.

-The courtroom was packed pretty much every day.

While they were waiting for the judge

to come into the chambers, Kirby Anthony turned and looked over

at John Newman who was in the gallery there,

and he said, "You're a fool, John."

And I can remember our cameras capturing John's reaction.

He was crying. He was in tears.

He was so angry.

-I would say the stupidest thing that Kirby Anthony did

was to have himself declared co-counsel

and try and represent himself.

And the other stupidest thing is actually

get on the witness stand.

I'd say the other stupidest thing he did

was he turned around to John Newman

in court that was filled with people and called him a fool.

NARRATOR: After two hours of deliberation,

Kirby Anthony was found guilty and sentenced

to years in prison.

Detective Mike Grimes has difficulty forgetting

the unspeakable v*olence that took the lives of a loving

mother and her two young children.

-We can scenario this and try and figure out why people do

things, you never can get inside their head.

There was a sexual motivation there.

I have theories that the reason he was asked to move out,

I think, something happened between him

and one of the little girls.

I think he was very resentful of it.

Kirby was a drug abuser, you know, particularly cocaine.

And I think knowing his psychopathic personality fueled

by cocaine, I think, he went over there in a rage.

NARRATOR: Nancy Newman's camera, the one found

in Kirby Anthony's possession after the murders,

contained family photos taken during happier times, pictures

of the lives destroyed by a senseless act of revenge.

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