A massive hurricane
forced the evacuation
of North Carolina's Outer Banks.
Some of the evacuees
were suspects in a m*rder
investigation, and police had to
find some way to get them back.
The Outer Banks
of North Carolina
is one of America's favorite
getaway destinations.
Nearly seven million people
visit these beaches every year.
The beaches are very nice,
lots of good restaurants...
Real family-oriented place.
In 1993, Janet
Siclari came to Nags Head, North
Carolina, for a week's
vacation, along with her brother
Robert and several friends.
Janet was 35 years
old and had recently
broken up with her boyfriend.
Janet had a
previous 10-year relationship
with someone.
It just never was
totally right for her.
It had to be perfect.
And she never found
the Mr. Perfect
that she was looking for.
On their last evening in town,
Janet went to dinner
with her two girlfriends.
Later, they went to
a nearby nightclub.
The girls decided
that they wanted to get home.
They were tired, and
they wanted to pack up.
Janet was still having
fun and was partying,
so they left her with the
car, because she was going
to be basically by
herself and they
knew that she would
be easier to drive
back while they walked together.
At dawn the next morning,
a sanitation worker found
Janet's body on the beach,
just 10 yards from the
front of her hotel.
She was
only wearing a blue denim top
with no clothing
below the waist,
and she was clutching a
pair of white denim shorts
to her neck area.
A r*pe test kit proved Janet
had been sexually assaulted.
Next to Janet's body was a pair
of men's size-nine tennis shoes
with gray socks inside.
It was very
odd that there was this r*pe
and m*rder on the
beach, and this pair
of shoes within 30
feet of the body.
This was just sort of
a bizarre fact to me.
And we had always
been suspicious
that they were connected.
It's just too coincidental.
Police decided not
to release the cause of death
to the media so if a suspect
knew how she was k*lled,
there would be only
one way he'd know that.
Janet had been sharing a hotel
room with her brother, Robert.
He told police Janet got back
around 2:30 in the morning.
Robert was asleep
when he heard her
come in the room.
She came in, he said,
lit a cigarette,
put her purse down,
and said something
like, I'm just going to go
out and smoke this cigarette.
And walked right out the door.
Robert said he was
barely awake, but thought
Janet might have
been with friends.
He thought
that he heard some voices
outside the door,
some whispering,
and thought that perhaps
Janet was with someone else.
He wasn't real clear on
this ever in his statements.
Unfortunately,
none of the hotel employees
saw Janet enter or
leave the hotel.
That room was at the end
of a hall that faced the ocean.
And right outside their door was
a doorway and a set of stairs
that led out and down to the
deck and right to the ocean.
So she didn't have to go
back through the lobby
to get out of the hotel
to go to the ocean.
Police now had to
search for witnesses, anyone
who might have been in the
general area around 3 o'clock
in the morning.
And in a vacation community,
that wouldn't be easy.
No one, neither family
nor investigators,
could make sense of
Janet Siclari's m*rder.
This was a horrific crime.
This was a stranger
sexual as*ault and m*rder.
And if there is any other crime
that's more horrific than that,
I don't know what it is.
- Things like this
don't happen to people
who live their life
honestly and decently.
They just don't.
Carolinian was
a relatively large hotel that
went north and south
for some 100 feet.
It would have been a sound
barrier that would have
prevented anything, probably,
that had occurred on the beach,
except some wild
firework-type sound
or a g*nsh*t to have been heard.
Police attempted to retrace
Janet's steps on the
day of her m*rder.
According to her
two girlfriends,
Janet spent time
in the afternoon
with the hotel's
bartender, Read Powell,
and they immediately hit it off.
They were talking to each other.
Janet was flirting a little
bit, I think, with Read.
He was quiet and
he was shy, which
was probably very
attractive to Janet.
Later that evening,
Janet and her friends
ran into Read at
the Port O'Call Bar.
Read was there with
his girlfriend,
but he had gotten into a fight.
While Read
was at the Port O'Call,
he saw his girlfriend dancing
with another gentleman
and got a little bit
upset about that,
and there was a slight
altercation as a result.
When Janet's friends
went back to the hotel,
Janet stayed behind
to talk to Read.
They left the bar at closing
time, around 2:00 AM.
So he stated that
he was going to take a cab.
And at that point, Janet told
him there was no sense in that,
that she would give them a
ride since she was going right
by his house to go
back to the hotel.
When questioned, Read Powell
told police that after Janet
dropped him off at home,
he got the keys to his car and
went looking for his girlfriend
to patch things up.
His girlfriend was an employee
of the Carolinian, and they had
apartments there for employees.
The Carolinian was also
where Janet Siclari was staying.
Read drove
to the Carolinian Hotel,
and while waiting there for his
girlfriend in the parking lot,
he observed Janet arrive at the
hotel and go inside by herself.
Read said he didn't
speak with Janet at the time.
He eventually saw his girlfriend
when she returned to the hotel.
They got into a verbal argument,
and he ended up slapping
her across the face.
That pretty much ended
the conversation.
His girlfriend went
on to her apartment,
and he went back
to his apartment.
When police asked Read
what he was doing while waiting
for his girlfriend, he
made a shocking revelation.
He had gotten
hungry and carried with him
a steak knife and stick of
pepperoni, and sat in the car
as he was waiting for
his girlfriend to return.
This was a valuable
piece of information,
and possibly incriminating.
Janet had been stabbed to
death on the beach that night,
but police didn't release this
information to the public.
Read Powell admitted he was
sitting just 100 yards away
from where Janet was m*rder*d
with a knife in his hand.
Read Powell was a very
prime suspect in
the investigation.
They had had
interactions that day
indicating something more
than just a friendship or just
an acquaintance-type
relationship, so all of this
was very much a
concern of ours and led
us to look at him very closely.
The investigation
of Janet Siclari's m*rder
was just one day old
when Mother Nature
provided an unexpected setback.
Hurricane Emily, a
Category 3 storm,
was bearing down on the Outer
Banks of North Carolina.
The whole island was completely
turned upside down by a
mandatory evacuation caused
by a hurricane that
did significant damage
to the island.
So we lost the
crime scene and we
lost... we thought...
We were worried
that we were losing witnesses.
Approximately 80,000
people evacuated the area.
But the prime suspect, Read
Powell, stayed in town.
There was only one person
that we thought could be a
suspect, and that was Read.
He was the only person that
we had talked to extensively
that week and allowed
into our little circle.
Police searched Read's home
and confiscated
several steak knives.
The steak knives were submitted
to the laboratory to look for
the presence of blood on them.
However, none of them
demonstrated any indications
for the presence of blood.
Investigators also
took a sample of Read's DNA.
At the time, in
wasn't as advanced
as it is today.
The method at the time was to
compare the length and patterns
of autorads, which looked
very much like barcode.
We compared
the DNA profile from it
to the DNA profile
from the vaginal swabs,
and it was very
easy to determine
that it was not a match.
- I think we were all
somewhat surprised
that he was... this
was not a match.
Police discovered
there were 10 other men who
were either in the
vicinity of the m*rder
or had some contact with Janet
the week of her vacation.
All were asked to
provide a DNA sample.
I examined
them and their DNA standards
and compared them to DNA profile
obtained from the sperm cells.
Every single one of them
was eliminated in this case.
It began to look like
the perpetrator had already
left the area, either
because his vacation was
over or because of the
mandatory evacuation.
At that point in my career,
I'd never had a case
of this significance
that we were not able to solve.
So it was extremely frustrating
and extremely heartbreaking.
Months stretched into years,
and the case turned cold.
Of course
there's a lot of frustration
when you're trying to deal
with something like this.
You're thinking that
the more time goes on,
the more that they'll
never find the person.
And you just sort of try to live
with it and say that, you know,
you pray someday it'll
happen, but youi're
thinking, after five years,
it's not going to happen.
But during that period of time,
the FBI developed a
way for every state
to access the DNA profiles
collected in other states.
At the time, not
every state collected
DNA samples from
convicted felons.
But for the majority that did,
this new system was a godsend,
and they called
the database CODIS,
or Combined DNA Indexing System.
So in 1997, almost five years
after Janet Siclari's m*rder,
North Carolina officials
entered the k*ller's DNA profile
into the CODIS system...
And they got a match.
Amazingly, it matched someone
living just an hour away
in the same state
of North Carolina.
This was our first...
What we call first cold hit of
an unsolved m*rder/homicide,
no suspect.
And this was the first cold
hit the state had ever had.
The DNA matched
a commercial fisherman and
convicted sex offender.
One of those convictions
was for an as*ault
on a 12-year-old girl.
Berry claims he was
innocent of that charge.
She wouldn't if she was 14.
I got the paperwork in there.
Or she was 13 going on 14,
or something like that.
But, um, no, it
was all consensual.
She was 12 years old.
She was a kid.
When police
caught up with Berry,
he was in prison for
a parole violation.
Investigators showed him
photographs of Janet Siclari
and asked if he'd ever seen her.
At first he claimed he hadn't,
but in a subsequent interview,
he said he vaguely recalled her.
- I had to have had
sex with Janet.
I mean, that's
obvious from the DNA.
But it would have
been consensual,
and there was no... I wouldn't
have never k*lled nobody.
I'd never k*lled anybody.
For him to say
he had consensual sex with Janet
is untruthful.
It's a lie.
I think the evidence
shows that what happened
was a r*pe and a homicide.
We were dealing
with two crimes here... one
was a r*pe and one was a m*rder.
And while the evidence
of DNA, we felt like,
went very strongly towards
prosecuting a person
for the r*pe of
Janet Siclari, that
wasn't conclusive
evidence of a m*rder.
For more evidence, investigators
had to look at the shoes
found next to Janet's body.
And inside, they
found a huge surprise.
The prime suspect in
Janet Siclari's m*rder
was Thomas Jabin Berry.
He admitted he was in
Nags Head at the time,
but he claimed any contact he
had with Janet was consensual.
I had sex with
a lot of people on the beach.
I wouldn't have had any idea,
you know, if we met that way,
and then just started
walking and talking
and one thing led to another.
I've had that happen
several times in my life.
As a matter of fact, my first
wife and I met that way.
But a look at Berry's background
revealed his sexual history
was far from innocent.
There were approximately a dozen
other victims of sexual
as*ault by Mr. Berry.
We found one instant
where he actually
r*ped a young lady on the beach.
As for the night of the m*rder,
Berry admitted he was on dr*gs.
I think
Berry had been on the beach
that night somewhere, partying,
drinking, and doing crack.
He admitted in his statements
that he... that period of time,
he was high on crack a lot.
To Janet Siclari's
friends and family,
the possibility of her having
sex with a complete stranger
was totally out of character.
She wasn't one to have
a casual fling or an
affair with someone.
She was looking for something
really sturdy in her life,
at 35 years old, a
nice, good relationship.
But prosecutors didn't have
to convince Janet's friends.
They had to convince a jury.
In an attempt to find something
besides the DNA that tied Berry
to the m*rder, detectives turned
to the only other evidence
at the crime scene...
The tennis shoes.
Berry denied the shoes were his.
The only way we could think
to do that was to find someone
who could do shoe impressions,
to see if there was a way
to say... like a fingerprint,
except with a foot and a shoe.
Investigators
contacted Robert Kennedy,
a forensic expert with the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
He had an international
reputation
for using barefoot
impressions, particularly
on the inside of
shoes, as evidence.
I became involved
with the barefoot
research back in 1989.
And as a result of a serial
k*ller back in New Brunswick,
we needed to see if the
suspect's barefoot impression
would match the impressions
found inside of the shoe.
Kennedy soon established a
database of these impressions
and did a detailed study
of how they're made.
When somebody
wears a pair of shoes,
the foot generates a
large amount of heat
inside the shoes, so
the foot will sweat.
The weight-bearing
area of the foot
will cause indentation on
the insole of the shoe.
So you have a combination
of slight indentations,
sweat... dirty, darkened
marks inside of the shoe.
These marks are
unique to an individual's feet
and therefore provide a
potential basis for comparison.
Kennedy got inked
impressions on the bottoms
of Thomas Berry's bare feet.
Then he cut out the insoles of
the shoes from the crime scene
and photographed the surfaces.
The images were
overlaid for comparison.
There was no dissimilarities
between the impression that
Thomas Berry would make
and the Spalding
running shoe, so I
was able to form a conclusion
that Thomas Berry was
the likely wearer of the
Spalding running shoes.
To law enforcement,
this placed Berry
at the crime scene
with the body.
We always were
convinced they were connected
and that the shoes
went with this crime,
and that they all pointed to
Thomas Berry as our suspect.
Prosecutors believed
Janet gave Read Powell a ride
home from the bar,
then went to her hotel.
They believe her brother was
mistaken when he said he heard
voices coming from
outside the room.
Janet went back outside
to smoke a cigarette.
By tragic coincidence, Janet ran
into Thomas Jabin Berry, a man
with a history of
sexual v*olence.
He was also high on dr*gs.
Prosecutors believe
he used a knife
to force Janet to have sex.
Then he stabbed her to death
so she couldn't identify him.
Some in law enforcement
think Berry left his shoes
on the beach so his shoe
impressions wouldn't lead
investigators back to his aunt's
house near the hotel, where
they think Berry
spent the night.
In the end, Thomas Jabin Berry
was the one who did himself in.
If he had not violated the
conditions of his parole,
his sample would never have been
available for us to analyze.
During Berry's m*rder trial,
prosecutors learned
an unfortunate
piece of information.
He was back in the
holding cell during the trial
and he made a
comment to a jailer,
they'll never
sentence me to death.
And the jailer said, what
are you talking about?
He said, well, there's
somebody on the jury.
She's good friends with my mama.
She watched me grow up.
The jury
convicted Thomas Jabin Berry
of r*pe and first-degree m*rder.
But this particular
juror was the only one
to vote against
the death penalty,
so Berry was sentenced
to life in prison
with no possibility of parole.
Despite the forensic evidence,
Berry still says he's innocent.
- I've been trying
unsuccessfully, filing appeals
and trying to get back in court,
and I figured it couldn't hurt,
you know?
It may generate some publicity
and help me in some way.
- I say, you're a liar.
There's no question about it.
Because of all the types of
scientific evidence out there,
this evidence is irrefutable,
that Thomas Berry encountered
Janet Siclari on the
night of August 28.
There's no question about it.
That, we proved
beyond all doubt,
instead of beyond
a reasonable doubt.
And if Mr. Berry says
that, he's a liar.
12x11 - A Cinderella Story
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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.