Narrator: with no forensic evidence found at a m*rder scene,
Investigators were baffled.
But they suspected that the victim's dog
Had witnessed the crime.
If she had, forensic scientists
Needed some way to find out what the dog had seen.
North liberty, iowa, is such a small town
It doesn't take much effort to know your neighbors.
But one resident the townspeople seldom saw
Was -year-old john helble.
Vannoy: john was somewhat of a recluse.
John kind of stayed to himself.
It wasn't unusual if we didn't see him for a month.
He'd be doing things at his home
Or repairing things or out with his friends.
At one point in time in john's life,
He was a narcotics user, and very possibly,
Also a narcotics dealer.
Narrator: in february of ,
John's mother was really worried.
She hadn't heard from her son in over two months.
Helble: we had been trying to reach my son,
And he wasn't answering, and we were afraid something was wrong.
Narrator: so she called the local sheriff,
Who found john's van parked in his driveway.
But no one answered the door.
They smelled an odor coming from inside the trailer.
He described that odor as being the odor of death.
Narrator: the officers forced their way through the trailer door
And found helble dead, slumped in a chair.
Paulson: the body appeared to be in a position
Of someone who would have been watching tv
And had laid their head down on their arm
On their pillow and gone to sleep.
The body was completely covered,
Had a blanket over the entire body --
Over the head, over all of the body.
Narrator: he had been sh*t twice in the back of the head
With a . Caliber p*stol.
The advanced state of decomposition
Revealed the m*rder happened weeks earlier.
There were no signs of forced entry,
And the trailer doors were locked.
Paulson: that indicated to us
That someone actually left the residence
And took the time to use a key to bolt that door shut again,
Keeping other individuals from being able to easily access
And enter the trailer.
Narrator: in the home,
Police found a small amount of marijuana
And some drug paraphernalia.
Schneider: john didn't deserve to have this happen to him.
He may not have been the perfect person,
He may not have had the best lifestyle,
But I could almost guarantee
He would give you the shirt off his back.
Narrator: but john's prized collection of g*ns was missing,
Including a uniquely customized
Gold cup . Semiautomatic p*stol.
Vannoy: this colt gold cup was described to me
From one of john's friends as,
"You would have to pry that g*n away
From his cold, dead fingers."
Helble: he was able to take g*ns apart and work on them, repair them,
Customize them, put fancy gold on them,
Things like that.
It sounded as if john had been k*lled for the g*n collection.
Narrator: and another one of john's prized possessions was missing --
His -year-old husky, keisha.
Schneider: oh, he loved his dog.
His dog was his life. She was his baby.
Helble: she had a lot of hamburgers, a lot of pizza,
Hot dogs, things like that.
I think she ate mostly people food.
She was very spoiled.
Narrator: police soon learned
That a dog matching keisha's description
Was found a month earlier
Wandering aimlessly several miles away.
Vannoy: she was standing in the middle of the street,
Dazed, looking around like,
"Where am i? What am I doing here?"
Narrator: john's parents identified keisha.
The evidence suggested she had been driven there
And dropped off.
Keisha was found during january
When the roads are typically dirty and muddy,
But keisha's condition was pretty clean.
The crime scene showed that the dog's leash,
Which normally was kept inside the trailer next to the door,
Was actually in the victim's van.
It suggested the victim's van
Had been used to transport the dog and dispose of the dog.
Narrator: this was just one unusual detail
In an investigation that was to become even more bizarre.
Narrator: an autopsy on -year-old john helble revealed
He had been k*lled long before his body was found.
But the medical examiner was unable to determine
Exactly when he was k*lled.
Without an idea as to when the time of death is,
It obviously becomes very much more difficult
To determine who are suspects
And who are people that you can rule out.
Narrator: helble's dog, keisha, was found on january .
Helble's telephone answering machine
Had messages not yet listened to.
The earliest unheard message was left that same day,
January .
John would not use the answering machine
To screen his telephone calls.
If someone called, john wanted to talk to them.
So therefore, we knew that january and ,
John was dead.
Narrator: with this information,
Authorities questioned john's friends and family.
We had three primary suspects in this case --
Mike harding, andrew rich, and sharon schneider.
Narrator: the first suspect, mike harding,
Was a friend of john helble's.
A witness recalled seeing harding's truck
Parked near helble's home around the time of the m*rder.
Mike harding was good friends with john.
We knew that john and mike
Had some narcotics business together.
Narrator: but harding had an alibi for the time of the m*rder,
And he passed the polygraph test.
The next two suspects -- andrew rich and sharon schneider --
Were friends of john's who lived about an -hour-drive away
In greybull, wyoming.
We learned from a good friend
Who saw andrew rich and john helble together
On january , , that in fact,
Andrew rich had been at the trailer house of john helble.
Narrator: but andy said john was alive and well
When he and sharon left to return home.
Police searched the couple's apartment
And found marijuana, methamphetamine,
And several . Caliber b*ll*ts,
The same caliber used to k*ll helble.
These b*ll*ts, along with the slugs from helble's body,
Were sent to the fbi lab for a neutron-activation test.
Vannoy: that's where the lead is shaved off of the b*llet,
It's melted down, and atoms are counted.
Narrator: counted, then compared.
But the atomic composition
Of the b*ll*ts recovered from john helble
Was not what investigators had hoped for.
Vannoy: the results showed us that the b*ll*ts
That we had recovered from john
Were not the same b*ll*ts that was removed
From andy rich's house in greybull, wyoming.
Narrator: investigators found smudge marks
On the inside windows of rich's jeep,
Similar to those caused by animals
When pressing their noses against the glass.
Was it possible that rich used his car
To transport helble's dog across town after the m*rder?
Police took keisha's noseprint
In the same way they collect human fingerprints.
Each dog's noseprint is as unique as a fingerprint.
Paulson: unfortunately, we weren't able to get
The type of smudges or prints, actually, from the vehicle
That would enable us to do that,
But it certainly was an interesting element
That we pursued for some time.
Narrator: after several months with no forensic evidence
And very few leads,
The investigation into john helble's m*rder
Was starting to turn cold.
So investigators turned to helble's dog
For more information.
As it turned out, that dog was going to play
A very important part in solving john's death.
Narrator: a year after john helble's m*rder,
Police suspected helble's best friend, andy rich,
Was somehow involved in his death,
But they had no proof.
All investigators knew
Was that rich had some unusual career aspirations.
Vannoy: we knew that his lifelong goal
Was to be a hit man for the mafia.
We had interviewed past girlfriends,
We had interviewed other associates of andy rich,
And he always portrayed himself as a tough guy.
That's how andy rich wants to be remembered.
We were concerned that sharon schneider,
The girlfriend of andrew rich,
Had information that she was fearful about telling us.
The impression was that she was being guarded
Out of her fear of andrew rich.
I was a good punching bag for him.
He abused me a lot.
There was a lot of abuse -- not just physical.
There was a lot of verbal abuse.
Narrator: police looked into sharon's background
To see if she had ever been involved in illegal activity,
And they found something.
Vannoy: sharon schneider was purchasing g*ns
In a different location.
She would give those g*ns to andy rich.
Some of those g*ns went to john helble.
We had a violation of the federal statute.
The federal firearms and narcotics statute
Was the wedge that we used
To split andy rich and sharon schneider.
Narrator: sharon told a different story
About that visit with john helble.
Schneider: I honestly couldn't live with myself anymore.
I had to face up to whatever was going to happen to me.
Narrator: sharon said she dropped andy off at helble's home
About three days before the m*rder,
Then left to visit her daughter about an hour's drive away.
A few days later, andy arrived driving john's van.
They put some of his g*ns into their car,
Took john's van to his home,
And then drove their car back to wyoming.
I had no idea that john was dead. No.
I had no idea about that.
I had wonders of why he had these g*ns.
Narrator: after a brief stay in wyoming,
Sharon said that andy left alone with the g*ns.
Schneider: he took off in the middle of the night
Or around : in the morning and headed to texas.
He was gone three weeks,
And it was andy's own stupidity
For telling me where he was going.
Paulson: we started to learn things from sharon
That we had suspected all along, and at that point in time,
It became really important for us to find any information
That we could that was going to corroborate
What sharon had to say.
Narrator: police visited the man andy rich stayed with
During that trip to texas.
He said rich had given him
An unusual gold cup . Caliber semiautomatic p*stol
To pay off a drug debt,
But by this time,
A year later, he no longer had the g*n.
Investigators then located
A second man rich visited on that trip
Who still had, in his possession,
A box of amm*nit*on rich had sold to him.
Inside the box,
Investigators found several short black-and-white hairs.
Microscopic analysis confirmed
That the hairs were from an animal,
But there were no roots attached,
So nuclear dna testing was impossible.
But they were able to extract mitochondrial dna from the hair.
Mitochondrial dna is passed to animals and humans
Only from the mother.
Joy halverson, a california veterinarian,
Specializes in animal dna.
Halverson: it will not be as unique a profile
As I might get from blood or saliva or hair with a root,
But it will still allow me to say,
"Yes, this sample matches the reference dog,"
Or "it doesn't match the reference dog."
Breeds of dogs and, to some extent, cats today
Are really only a few hundred years old,
And so they don't differ that much
That you could definitively say,
For example, "well, that's a dalmatian."
Narrator: halverson performed a pcr test,
Which stands for "polymerase chain reaction."
It's basically like taking one page out of a book
And ignoring the rest of the book
And xeroxing that page a million times,
And now you have that page in so much quantity
That you can see it.
Narrator: then the sample was sequenced
To get a visual representation of the dna type.
When she compared the dna from the hair in the amm*nit*on box
To a sample of keisha's hair, she found a haplotype
In both sets that was extremely rare,
Occurring only in in dogs.
Halverson: the chance of having that match just by random was pretty low,
Combined with, I'm sure, the circumstances of the case.
If I were sitting on the jury, I would find that
To be a compelling piece of evidence in the case.
Narrator: this was forensic proof
That rich was in possession of an item stolen from john helble.
Then investigators got another break.
The man who was given the gold cup p*stol
Said he still had the g*n box.
Inside was a note
Listing all of the custom alterations made to the p*stol,
As well as the costs.
Helble: doug vannoy asked me if I thought that was john's handwriting,
And I thought it was.
Narrator: but to be sure, investigators needed an expert.
For that, they turned to gary licht,
A forensic document examiner.
He compared the note to known samples of helble's handwriting.
Licht: the questioned material was written
With somewhat heavy pressure.
In the known writings, that was also written
With that same sort of pressure.
They were also all hand-printed,
And his known writings also relied heavily on printing
And not cursive.
Narrator: he looked for unique features
In individual letters in john's known writings --
Features he then tried to locate in the questioned document.
In the creation of other letters,
Such as a lower-case "d,"
I looked to see if it's made with one stroke --
In other words, if the pen moves down on the stem,
Back up slightly, and counterclockwise motion
Forms the loop on the lower-case "d."
Narrator: based on his comparisons,
Licht was able to draw a definitive conclusion.
I was able to identify
The writer of the questioned material as john helble.
Narrator: proof that it was helble's g*n and no other
That andy took with him to texas.
Based on the handwriting analysis and the dog dna,
Andy rich was arrested
And charged with john helble's m*rder.
Schneider: he was nothing. He was a user of people.
He would manipulate,
He would use them for his own gain.
He didn't care about anybody but himself.
Narrator: in court, rich had an interesting response
To the forensic evidence against him.
Narrator: the forensic evidence showed that andy rich
Was in john helble's home around the time of his m*rder.
Based on the position of the body,
Prosecutors believe rich k*lled helble
After he fell asleep in the living room watching tv.
[ g*nshots ]
The motive was apparently money.
Rich wanted to sell helble's g*n collection
For either cash or dr*gs.
The sh**ting may have agitated helble's dog.
[ Barking ]
To stop the barking, rich put keisha in helble's van,
Then drove her several miles away
Before letting her out in a strange neighborhood.
Little did he realize that keisha's hair would be found
In the stolen box of amm*nit*on
And that canine dna testing
Would prove it came from helble's beloved dog.
Schneider: andy hated that dog. Andy could not stand keisha.
I don't know why he spared her. I have no idea.
How can you spare an animal and sh**t a human?
Narrator: when rich sold helble's prize p*stol in texas,
He left the note inside with handwriting
That matched helble's known handwriting samples.
Paulson: the witness testimony and the forensic testimony,
Piled together,
Just added up like bricks in this case,
And it was because of the two and putting those two together
That we were able to solve this case in the first place.
Douglas eugene vannoy.
Narrator: on the day before his m*rder trial was to start,
Andy rich made a surprise announcement.
Helble: he said, "I k*lled john helble for his g*ns."
But he never turned around and never addressed the family.
Never apologized for what he had done
Or showed any remorse for what he had done.
Paulson: I was somewhat stunned by that.
I thought that that was the point in time
Where he would accept responsibility
And do the right thing.
The parents and family of john helble were sitting behind him.
It was his chance to try to make amends.
He failed miserably in doing that.
Even at andrew rich's own admittance,
John was one of his five best friends in this world.
And he's so much a piece of trash
That he k*lled one of his best friends.
Narrator: rich pleaded guilty to first-degree robbery
And voluntary manslaughter
And was sentenced to years in prison.
In exchange for her cooperation,
Sharon schneider was charged for drug possession
And was sentenced to months in a halfway house
And / years probation.
Sharon was not a witness to the crime.
Sharon had pieces of the puzzle that she gave us
That we could put together to solve the crime.
Paulson: I think it's very interesting how keisha helped ultimately
To be able to solve the crime of the homicide of her master.
I feel that keisha solved the case, along with the detectives.
She provided the evidence against andrew rich.
She got her man.
08x18 - Hair of the Dog
Watch/Buy Amazon Merchandise
Documentary that reveals how forensic science is used to solve violent crimes, mysterious accidents, and outbreaks of illness.
Documentary that reveals how forensic science is used to solve violent crimes, mysterious accidents, and outbreaks of illness.