09x01 - Road Rage

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NARRATOR: A young woman d*ed under suspicious circumstances,

and there were no witnesses and very new leads.

But investigators hoped the tiny red fiber, some paper towels,

and the tire could solve the mystery.

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NARRATOR: Interstate runs along the eastern side

of the Cascade Mountains in the Pacific Northwest.

-Highway is very well traveled

and truck traffic is unbelievable,

but it's a major state highway.

NARRATOR: Early one June morning, a man driving

along the interstate in Oregon spotted

something on the side of the road.

When he stopped to investigate, he

discovered it was a sleeping bag.

-He went back to check it out to see if it was any good.

It was a decent sleeping bag so he

threw it in the back of his truck.

NARRATOR: But later that day, he took a closer look at it.

Inside, he found a pair of women's sneakers and a purse.

Both were covered in blood.

-The first thing I thought was we

had a female dead body somewhere on .

I mean, women don't leave their purse and sleeping bags.

NARRATOR: There was no money inside the purse,

but there was a driver's license.

It belonged to a -year-old woman named Carrie Love, who

lived in a small town near Seattle

about miles from where the sleeping bag was found.

Carrie's mother told police that her daughter left home

a few days earlier to visit her father in Los Angeles.

-She told me that she was going to be staying with her father

down there.

And she was really looking forward to that,

because it been a while since she had seen him.

-We walked for miles up , on both sides,

just walking parallel to the road

to see if we could find anything that was discovered.

NARRATOR: But they found nothing.

Then Cooper remembered that there was an isolated truck

stop about miles from where the sleeping

bag had been discarded.

-It's out of the way.

It's dark, black, pitch black out there at night.

And if that's the case in this scenario,

that's what I would have done.

I would have dumped her there.

-There was a drag mark in the gravel where it appeared

that something had been drug through the gravel parking

area.

NARRATOR: And that's where they found Carrie Love's body

buried beneath a mound of gravel.

Nearby, investigators found sheets of green paper towels

with pieces of duct tape attached to the ends.

-When I held this up to my face, I

could see the nose and the chin, because whoever was wearing

this had expired all this mucus and liquid into the paper,

and then it dries.

-We wanted to make sure anything that we had was preserved

for the forensic aspect of this later on.

Blood, obviously, has to be preserved.

Fingerprints have to be preserved.

So when you start realizing you're dealing with a homicide,

then everything is ratcheted up %

in terms of making sure you take care of things.

NARRATOR: Investigators were certain

that something at the crime scene

would lead them to the k*ller.

All they had to do was find it.

-This young woman's dead.

She should be dead.

Now it's my life's job to make sure this person is

punished for it.

NARRATOR: Carrie Love's body was discovered in the hunting area

of one of the most prolific serial K*llers

in American history.

-The first thing that flipped through my mind

was had the Green River k*ller to a hold of her.

NARRATOR: More than women had been k*lled in the area.

And the Green River k*ller had never been apprehended.

Before police removed Carrie Love's body

from the gravel pit, forensic scientist

were careful to collect as much evidence as possible.

-We did recover trace evidence from the body

later that we might have lost If we'd just drug her out.

There was a fuzz ball of fibers was adhering to her abdomen.

And there was or different kinds of fibers.

NARRATOR: Investigators hope that Carrie's autopsy wouldn't

tell them what happened during her last moments alive.

-The autopsy lasted, I think, a little over nine hours.

And that was because, in doing what we had to do,

we set the pattern and the tone, and the group of guys that work

with this, are the best you can get.

NARRATOR: Under Carrie's fingernails

were several red cotton fibers, an indication

that she had fought her attacker.

Petechial hemorrhages in Carrie's eyes

indicated she had been asphyxiated.

There were also two deep s*ab wounds to her chest.

And on our left arm and chest, investigators

discovered what was perhaps the most telling piece of evidence.

These were contusions that brought blood

up to the surface of the skin.

The pattern looked to some like tire impressions.

-This came from the side of the tire being pressed down

on her arm, but it was a very geometric pattern.

I mean, you could see it.

It was square and then there'd be

a rounded part, and then a square part.

It just spoke to me that said, that's part of a tire.

NARRATOR: The paper towels found near Carrie's body

were a common brand, nothing unusual,

but forensic scientist Mike Howard

did find something distinctive.

You could just hold the towel up to the light,

and there were the little holes along,

and they were random, along one edge.

NARRATOR: Each brand has a unique pattern, which

is produced by large rollers in the manufacturing process.

-This roller will start to wear, and when it does,

sometimes it will actually punch clear through the paper towel

and leave holes.

In this particular case, the paper towels

did have a blemish in it where the roller had been punching

through and leaving random holes in the towels.

I went around to various stores.

I probably bought about rolls of towels.

None of them had the little holes in like that did.

NARRATOR: Investigators learned that Carrie Love worked

as a dispatcher for a small trucking company

called Northern Star.

The owner of the company was a man named, Jesse Pratt.

-When I first saw his picture, I thought

he was the reject from Hell's Angels.

It was my first impression.

He added this bushy permed long hair, and scruffy-looking,

just a real scary type person.

NARRATOR: Pratt told police that he offered Carrie

a ride to Los Angeles in his truck, but Carrie declined.

She wanted to take an airplane instead.

-Carrie decided, according to Jesse, that she wasn't going

to drive to LA, she now wanted him

to drop her off at Sea-Tac airport in Seattle.

NARRATOR: But none of the flight manifests

showed Carrie Love on board.

-Obviously, being in this business,

you knew that was a crappy story,

but he had to make up something.

NARRATOR: A background check revealed Pratt had been married

four times and had a history of v*olence towards women.

All of his ex-wives claimed he had beaten them.

Even worse, in Pratt was sentenced

to years for kidnapping one of his girlfriends,

but was released after serving only months in prison.

-He served time in Walla Walla prison.

Unfortunately, he was let out way earlier

than he should have been let out.

NARRATOR: Some of his past girlfriends

told investigators Pratt had been involved in prostitution.

-Every girlfriend he had, he tried to make a hooker out of.

It was just a matter of time and, frankly, I'm

stunned that there aren't more victims out there.

Jesse Pratt is the most pathological, destructive

criminal that's come through here, and we've had several.

NARRATOR: When police looked inside Pratt's truck,

at first they found little of value.

-It was obvious the truck had been cleaned up.

It was too clean.

There weren't even hardly fingerprints in that truck.

NARRATOR: So forensic scientists would have to look elsewhere,

because evidence is often in the most unlikely spot.

Jesse Pratt acknowledged that Carrie Love worked for him

as an administrative assistant while Pratt hauled

freight with this -wheel truck.

Pratt said he offered Carrie a ride to Los Angeles

to visit her father, but Carrie refused.

And he said he dropped her off at the Seattle airport

and drove to Los Angeles alone.

-When we examined the truck, there

were two rolls of paper towels in the truck, one of which

was opened.

And it just happened to be Bounty brand.

NARRATOR: It was the same brand and color

of paper towels used in Carrie's asphyxiation.

-I stripped some of the green die out and did an analysis

of the dye so the dyes were the same.

I ran them on an instrument called an X-ray fluorescence

spectrometer to look for the metal elements that were

present, even though there weren't a lot.

NARRATOR: What are metals doing in paper?

When the wood is made into pulp, the excess fibers

are removed with sulfur, some of which remains in the paper.

And sodium from the wood remains in the paper end product, too.

In a process known as ashing, Howard

b*rned each sample to ash.

A neutral chemical compound was added,

then placed in the fluorescence spectrometer

where the metals fluoresce as the X-rays pass through.

Both samples had identical amounts of sulfur, sodium,

potassium, and other trace metals.

-They had the same metallic components in the towels,

so we were able to link those towels from the dump scene

back directly to the towels in the truck.

NARRATOR: The roll of towels in the truck also

had the same puncture marks from the manufacturing rollers

as the towels at the crime scene.

Next, forensic scientists compared the red cotton fibers

underneath carries fingernails to a red cotton t-shirt

Pratt was wearing when police questioned him.

They were microscopically similar,

made from the same materials and the same dyes.

-That fingernail raked the article of clothing.

It could've been done in passion.

It could've been in hatred.

It could have been in fighting.

NARRATOR: The fibers from the discarded sleeping bag

were also discovered in the sleeping area of Pratt's truck.

-So we now had a fiber link with multiple fibers

to link Carrie Love both with the sleeper compartment

and with the trunk, and with the sleeping bag at the dump scene.

NARRATOR: Among Pratt's business papers,

Cooper found an interesting lead.

A gas receipt for the day before Carrie's body was discovered.

-For diesel fuel in Redd's Gasoline Station.

NARRATOR: So Cooper called Redd's Gas Station

to see if they could remember Jesse Pratt.

-And he says, yeah, that driver had

a full beard and a big pot belly.

And I'm sitting there, I'm starting to breathe hard,

because I can't believe what he's recalling.

And I says is there anything else?

He says, yeah, that young good looking

little girl that was with him.

NARRATOR: When faced with this eyewitness testimony

and forensic evidence, Pratt quickly changed his story.

He now admitted that Carrie had been in the sleeper compartment

of his truck, because the two had consensual sex,

but said Carrie had stolen some money from him during the trip.

-So he was angry at her.

They had some fights over it, but then after they got up

on Highway , he just couldn't take it anymore,

and he boot her out of the truck at night,

and said find your own way.

Now to me, that was the stupidest story

you could've made up, because if I'd had been on a jury,

I'd have convicted of m*rder just for that.

-Jesse could look at me, smile, carry on a conversation,

and I knew from his demeanor and his tone of voice,

he was flat out lying.

Or creating whatever he wanted me to believe.

NARRATOR: But investigators wanted to do one more test.

They wanted an expert to examine the tires on Pratt's truck.

Could they hold the key to the death of Carrie Love?

Investigators knew that Carrie Love's k*ller had driven

over her body after she was dead.

There was a tire pattern across her chest,

and a strange burn pattern across her left forearm that

appeared to be caused by friction.

The mark resembled the pattern found

on the side of a truck tire.

-It wasn't the flat portion of the tire

that was b*rned into her.

It was the side of the tire.

NARRATOR: To see of one of Jesse Pratt's tires

had caused these injuries, investigators

called Peter McDonald, the premier tire

evidence expert in the country.

-They had heard about my expertise

and thought this might be useful.

NARRATOR: The first thing McDonald had to do

was to take impressions of every tire on Jesse Pratt's truck.

He knew just by looking at the tires

that all tires had recently been retreaded.

And for some unexplained reason, all the tread patterns

were different.

The tire mark across Carrie Love's body

appeared to resemble the right rear tire on Pratt's truck.

The question now was whether the side pattern on that tire

could be matched to the burn mark

on Carrie Love's left forearm.

When a tire is retreaded, a new sheet of rubber tracking

is glued onto the tires' core, and is then spliced together.

McDonald was most interested in that splice

where the retread was glued together

on the outside of the tire.

He laid paper over the side of the tire,

and pushed it down to lift the impression.

The side pattern on the tire was a short bar

followed by a rounded square.

But at the point where the retread was spliced together,

the bar was shorter than anywhere else on the tire.

-The one particular bar that I focused my attention to

was unique.

And that only would occur where there's

a splice of the retread.

NARRATOR: Back in his lab, McDonald cut out the pattern,

mounted it on a rubber stamp, then applied ink.

He pressed it on his left forearm.

The pattern was identical to the pattern b*rned into Carrie

Love's arm, and identical to the side pattern on the tire

from Jesse Pratt's truck.

Both patterns had the same shortened bar at the spot where

the retread was spliced together.

-That same short bar showed up on Carrie Love's arm.

If it hadn't been for these unique features,

I couldn't have made a positive identification.

NARRATOR: On that same tire, McDonald

noticed a serial number XZA on the new retread.

He traced that number back to the company

that treaded the tire.

The manager revealed the tire was retreaded

just two months before Carrie's death.

And he also revealed who had paid for the work.

-The check that was written for $ for a retread,

and it was signed by the victim, Carrie Love.

-It's been shown by the number of women

that he has hurt in the past before Carrie

that he can't be in society.

And he needs to be held accountable for what

he has done.

NARRATOR: Prosecutors believe Carrie accepted

Pratt's offer of a ride to Los Angeles.

Along the way, Pratt demanded sex.

Carrie refused, and there was a confrontation.

The forensic evidence suggests that Pratt covered her nose

and mouth with the paper towels and stabbed her to death.

But in the struggle, Carrie grabbed Pratt's shirt,

and those red cotton fibres help tie Pratt to the crime.

In a final act of vengeance, Pratt

drove over her with his truck.

He later hid the body underneath the gravel at the truck stop,

and discarded Carrie's sleeping bag and personal items

along the side of the highway.

Every piece of forensic evidence pointed towards Jesse Pratt.

The red cotton fibers underneath Carrie's fingernails

with the same as those from Pratt's shirt.

The paper towels held over Carrie's mouth

were from the open roll in Pratt's truck.

And the tire impression on Carrie's arm that matched

the tire on Pratt's truck all told the same story.

-I thought we had a pretty strong forensic case.

NARRATOR: Jesse Pratt was tried and convicted

of aggravated m*rder and was sentenced to death.

-I never felt it was open and shut, because juries,

you don't know what juries are talking about back there.

You don't know.

One person could take over the jury

and just ruin all the work that the attorneys have done.

-I don't think Jesse Pratt would ever

have dreamt that his own tire tracks

would help convict him of m*rder.

-The w*apon that he used to maim and mutilate her, and do

horrible things to her head, to have that bite him in the back,

so to speak, was just incredible.

-I've been here years, and this is by far the best,

most well investigated case that I've ever seen.

-The whole process was just amazing.

In my next lifetime I want to be a forensic scientist.