06x13 - Evil Intent

[bunniefuu]

NARRATOR At the district nine morgue in Orlando, Florida,

Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Jan Garavaglia sees firsthand

how people die every day.

All right, we're ready, right?

NARRATOR But of all the K*llers out there,

there's one in particular that affects women everywhere.

It's epidemic.

It's epidemic.

NARRATOR And these cases stand out

in her mind as some of the most devastating and alarming

she's ever seen.

It's hard not to get emotional.

It could have just as easily been me.

NARRATOR Altered lives, baffling medical mysteries,

shocking revelations, these are the everyday cases of "Dr. G--

Medical Examiner."

It's just before dawn on Sunday, May , , when emergency

officials get word of a nearby fire in suburban College

Station, Texas.

The fire department was called because smoke is

coming out of this apartment.

NARRATOR Firefighters carefully make

their way into the residence and discover a blaze.

The apartment was filled with smoke.

They see smoldering flames.

NARRATOR But as they enter the master bedroom,

they make an unexpected and gruesome discovery.

We got a body.

A woman is there, and she's dead.

And so they immediately put out the fire

and call law enforcement.

NARRATOR Within minutes, Police Detective Jeff Capps

arrives to scope the scene.

There was a female.

She was partially nude from the waist down.

She was face down.

Her torso was kind of leaned up against the bed in her bedroom.

And she appeared to have been b*rned.

You could tell that the fire had been

started in between her legs.

There's a lot of papers and makeup brushes

and things that were gathered for fuel.

NARRATOR It appears right away that a perpetrator set

the fire in this specific manner for a reason,

most likely to destroy evidence.

This could be a sexual as*ault that he's trying to cover up.

NARRATOR Suddenly, what started out

as a routine house fire is beginning to look

more like a grisly m*rder.

Police immediately launch a full-scale homicide

investigation.

And their first order of business

is to identify the body.

Our crime scene investigator found the driver's license

of the deceased.

NARRATOR The victim is -year-old Carolyn Casey,

a bright and well-liked child care

worker with a promising future ahead of her.

Now the difficult job of delivering

the news to her family falls to Detective Capps.

Probably one of the hardest things

that we have to do as officers is sit down

with a family member and tell them that their loved

one has being k*lled.

It's a very emotional time for the families.

I remember that day like it was yesterday.

The memory is still so clear.

I hit the floor and I screamed so loud.

You can't believe you're getting

a phone call like this, that your daughter has been k*lled.

That's a loss that nobody really knows how to deal with.

We had a real close relationship with Carolyn.

We were just dumbfounded.

We just couldn't believe it.

NARRATOR And although they are beside themselves with anguish,

Detective Capps must question Carolyn's family in an effort

to uncover any information that could

help lead to the perpetrator.

DR. G From what we've gathered from the family,

she's a good girl.

She has a job.

She works in a daycare.

She didn't have any enemies that we were aware of, so why

would somebody do this to her.

DR. G You know, it's a small town,

it's a seemingly safe area.

There's not a lot of homicides where she lives.

I think the family was floored at the fact

that they find her dead, and dead in her own apartment.

NARRATOR Once the initial on-scene investigation

is complete, Carolyn's body is transferred

to the Bear County morgue.

Now police will be looking to Dr. G for answers.

The medical examiner's role is very

crucial in our investigation.

We're hoping that she will link some physical evidence back

to the case.

DR. G The police need to know what happened to her.

It's my job to get as much information

off that body as possible to help
[ … ]

law enforcement get their man.

NARRATOR At this stage only one thing is clear--

the clock is ticking.

And with each passing minute, it's possible that Carolyn's

k*ller could strike again.

And as Dr. G prepares to examine the body,

Carolyn's family does their best to come to terms with the fact

that their daughter is being autopsied.

Well, as a dad, you know, knowing your child

is going through an autopsy, it is kind of a backwards thing,

you know, having an autopsy done.

But we knew that that had to be done in order

to find out what had really happened.

Because if it was a crime, we needed

to know what the details were.

NARRATOR As Dr. G pulls back the protective sheet,

she gets her first good look at Carolyn's body.

What I see is a young woman who looks ,

long blonde hair back in a scrunchy.

Pretty blond hair, isn't it?

She has a t-shirt on, she has a watch on,

and she has remnants of socks that are charred.

Her body is covered with soot.

NARRATOR Dr. G's first step is to search

for any forensic clues.

External exams are pretty much everything with a homicide.

Although, we need to do the internal exam to often

get to how they're m*rder*d or sometimes even the mechanism.

It's that outside of the body that interacted

with that perpetrator.

So that's where most of our clues are gonna be.

NARRATOR She begins by zeroing in on a part

of the body that could be the key to identifying the k*ller.

Let's see what's going on here.

You need to really look at the hands.

Because if there's a struggle, she may be clawing at him.

She may be fighting back.

[screams]

NARRATOR Carefully, she removes the bags

that investigators placed over Carolyn's hands at the scene.

Paper bags are put over the hands

to preserve any evidence that is there

and to keep the hand from being contaminated with anything.

Paper is used so the air can still circulate.

You don't get any moisture buildup that could

maybe wash away any evidence.

[screams]

DR. G Nah, there's nothing there.

I don't see a lot of bruising on her hands.

But we clip the nails very closely

to see if we can find the perpetrator's

DNA under her nails.

NARRATOR She also collect samples of Carolyn's own DNA

from several parts of her body.

It's what forensic experts refer to as standards.

So I would take head hair standards,

because let's say they find a hair on somebody

they suspect, the people looking at that hair

would know if it's hers or not.

And, of course, I would take her blood for a blood standard.

NARRATOR Dr. G then packages the trace evidence

and sends it to the crime lab for analysis.

But she's not holding her breath.

They may play a pivotal role or they may play no role.

It's like setting the ship a sail.

I don't know how it's gonna end.

NARRATOR Next, she surveys the clothing that

was recovered from the scene.

And one thing immediately grabs her attention.

The police found torn panties that

appear to have been ripped at both seams

and at the waistband.

NARRATOR And inside the undergarment is a telling clue.

There was fecal material inside the panties.

Feces in underwear, believe it or not,

is something I see a lot.

Oftentimes people who are extremely afraid will defecate.

NARRATOR Then Dr. G morgue technician carefully

removes Carolyn's clothing.

And right away, she spots another important detail.

She's got fecal material smeared

on her body in different areas.

NARRATOR But there's no fecal matter on Carolyn's hands.

So there's only one way it could have

ended up all over her body.

So it's the perpetrator, whoever

took those panties off, appears then to have touched her

and smeared it on her.

The fact that her panties were ripped off,

the fecal material gets smeared onto her,

and the fact that she was burnt between the legs

all indicate to me that some type

of a possible sexual as*ault was at least attempted.

NARRATOR As disturbing as it sounds,

Forensic Psychologist Dr. Nancy Slicner has seen this type

of behavior in K*llers before.

This kind of perpetrator shows a need

to degrade, abase, and humiliate their victim

to an extraordinary degree.

Sexual as*ault is about power and control.
[ … ]

I think what was going through Carolyn's

mind is absolute pure terror.

There is no way out of this.

This person has power over her life and death.

NARRATOR It's a troubling finding,

but even more concerning is the prospect

that Carolyn's k*ller could already

be targeting his next victim.

There is a great deal of planning.

There is a great deal of thinking

about how they're going to do this, how they're

going to find the victim.

That perpetrator is still out walking around.

They need him caught.

They need to know who did this.

NARRATOR Dr. G believes that -year-old Carolyn

Casey was sexually assaulted.

And now she's on the hunt for hard evidence to prove it.

We're looking for trauma in the vaginal region.

We look for scratches on the thighs.

We'll look for bruising.

NARRATOR But this is no easy task

because the perpetrator took great pains

to cover his tracks.

I think this fellow was trying to destroy

something between her legs.

Her assailant set fire to an area

around her genitals to get rid of any forensic evidence,

any semen, any hair, any fibers on the body.

It's very focal.

The rest of her is not b*rned, but yet the area

between her legs is charred.

It's burnt so bad on the lower aspect of the leg

that you can see the bone.

All right, let's see.

I'm hoping that I can still find evidence there.

NARRATOR But after a thorough examination,

Dr. G comes up empty handed.

No.

If his goal of burning the body was

to destroy evidence of sexual as*ault, he did a good job.

I can't tell if there was any trauma there or not.

NARRATOR Next, Dr. G takes swabs for a r*pe kit.

If it turns up any trace DNA, it could

reveal the k*ller's identity.

But fire and heat will destroy and denature DNA.

But I'm hoping it didn't.

NARRATOR Unfortunately, she won't

know for sure until the results come

back from the very busy lab.

The DNA is gonna take months to get.

There was such a backlog back then.

NARRATOR In the meantime, she washes the body and searches

for other clues that might shed light

on what happened to Carolyn.

The police need to know if I can give them

any information about what was going

on during the time she d*ed.

Once we clean that soot off of her, to me

we've got some evidence that's quite clear.

We've got contusions in at least three

different parts of her neck.

We've got some small abrasions.

It looks like fingernail marks and pressure

that were on the neck.

It looks like a strangulation.

And I do see, she's got petechiae in her eyes.

Petechiaes basically just can rupture the little blood

vessels that indicate increased pressure in your head region.

It is one of the things we look for with strangulation.

NARRATOR And as her eyes move down the body,

she spots another brutal detail.

I do find kind of ill-defined kind of big bruises

there on her upper chest area.

These bruises, oftentimes, it's them on top of the victim

with their knees pinning them down while they're strangling.

NARRATOR But while Dr. G suspects that Carolyn was

strangled, she can't say yet if it's

the official cause of death.

Just because you're strangled doesn't

mean that's what k*lled you.

Ultimately, it's the cause of death that's going

to be the most important thing.

Because we don't have any witnesses

and we don't have a perpetrator, so we

need to gather as much forensic information as we can.

NARRATOR But at this stage, she does know one thing for sure.

There's such brutality.

This takes a cold heart.

I can't imagine who would do this to this woman.

NARRATOR And no one is more eager to see

the k*ller unmasked than Carolyn's grieving family.

I was so hurt to know that someone took a life.

What a monster.

Who would do such a thing?

This has got to be difficult for any family,

just knowing that the case has not been solved yet.

They're waiting for my phone call

to let them know what happened.

NARRATOR In the small town of College Station,
[ … ]

Texas, Detective Jeff Capps is leading the police

investigation to track down the k*ller

of -year-old Carolyn Casey.

In something with the magnitude that this was

for our community, we don't have homicides

like this on a daily basis.

So it is a huge concern that we find this suspect.

They wanted the person who did this behind bars.

We had a group of people that were just following up on all

the leads that were coming in.

And you're receiving tips from all over.

NARRATOR Police are investigating

all possibilities, from a random burglar to a friend or coworker

with a grudge or even a violent boyfriend

that no one knew about.

We'll talk to as many people that we can find

to try to determine where she may have been last

and who she was with.

NARRATOR But Detective Capps soon gets a break.

Carolyn was last seen at a party in a neighboring apartment.

He wastes no time compiling a list

of everyone who attended the party,

then he interviews them one by one.

And -year-old Ynobe Matthews seems

to stand out from the crowd.

Hi, Mr. Matthews?

As we started talking to him, we

started getting the feeling that something wasn't quite right.

And I requested to see if he would come

with me to the police department so I could

talk to him in more detail.

NARRATOR At the station, Detective Capps

runs an extensive background check that

immediately sends up red flags.

Mr. Matthews was a suspect in a sexual as*ault

case in a neighboring city he was working on.

But they were still trying to gather

some evidence to make the case.

But just because he is under suspicion in another city,

just because he's answering things suspiciously,

none of that is enough to pin this on him.

NARRATOR And Ynobe seems to have nothing to hide.

He willingly provides detective Capps with DNA samples.

We collected a specimen of his hair,

blood, fingernail clippings.

And he provided us with a set of clothing.

NARRATOR Police consider the possibility that they've

got the wrong guy and continue their search

for the perpetrator.

We had many other leads that were

coming in that weren't being followed up on at the time

as well.

NARRATOR Now more than ever, they're counting on Dr. G

to help them zero in on a suspect.

We need some hard evidence.

Is there anything we can find that can link that victim

with the perpetrator?

If I don't find anything, this case may very well go unsolved.

Where we lead from here is we'll start at the head.

And we'll look to see if there's any trauma.

NARRATOR First, Dr. G palpates the head,

but finds no signs of bruising.

Then she carefully peels open the scalp

looking for evidence of injury.

When I reflect her scalp, I see

one little contusion, maybe a slight blow

to the top of the head.

NARRATOR It's possible that in addition to being strangled,

Carolyn sustained a fatal head injury.

To find out, Dr. G opens the skull on the hunt

for any damage to the brain.

There's nothing else there.

No internal trauma to the skull or brain that

would account for her death.

She was not beaten about the head.

NARRATOR Now, she must look inside Carolyn's body

in an attempt to paint a clearer picture of her final moments.

Dr. G creates a Y-shaped incision on Carolyn's chest,

opening her torso with extreme care.

I'm looking for evidence of any kind of trauma

to the chest or abdomen.

Let's see what's going on here.

But she had no broken ribs, no blows to the chest.

I don't see any g*nsh*t wounds.

I don't see any s*ab wounds.

Nice lungs, though.

NARRATOR And at first glance, the inside of Carolyn's body

appears to be in good shape.

She looked perfect on the inside.

She's a -year-old girl.

She ought to look perfect on the inside.

She should've lived a long life.

NARRATOR Doctor G wonders if the fire

ultimately caused her death.

To find out, she checks the bronchi that lead

from the trachea to the lungs.

It's an apartment fire.

It's full of smoke.

If she was alive, she'd be breathing in that soot.

So we'll check for soot down her airway.
[ … ]

That looks good, unfortunately.

There's no soot.

NARRATOR She can now say for sure that the fire was

set after Carolyn was k*lled.

Now Dr. G is fairly certain that Carolyn was strangled to death."], index ,…}

But to confirm it, there's one last place to look.

The last step in this autopsy is a neck dissection.

We slowly remove that skin and flip

it up to about the jaw line.

And she has some extensive hemorrhage

on the strap muscles, the muscles

on the front of the neck.

Ah, ha, ha.

NARRATOR But that's not all.

Now look at this.

She had a fracture of the left side of her hyoid bone.

That's a lot of trauma.

That hyoid bone, kind of a u-shaped bone,

is very flexible.

And it's well protected.

There's a lot of force being used

on that neck if it's fractured.

She's clearly strangled.

That's her cause of death.

When you're strangling someone,

you're looking into their eyes.

You're looking into the fact that you're taking

away their life, their soul.

You have power over everything.

The overwhelming anger that he was feeling

is coming from somewhere.

A lot of these individuals come from chaotic backgrounds.

Empathy doesn't develop.

And they feel that they're entitled to anything

that they want out of life.

NARRATOR Now that the autopsy is complete,

Dr. G reports her findings to Detective Capps

and the district attorney in charge of prosecuting

the case Bill Turner.

While police officers and prosecutors can sit around

and theorize what the evidence from the crime scene showed,

Dr. G gave us the scientific background

to say this is what happened.

Was that OK?

NARRATOR Based on her findings, police quickly piece together

a profile of the perpetrator in the hope

that it will help them track down the k*ller, and soon.

They've got a lot of ground to cover.

The police need to find a suspect

that's fitting the profile of somebody that would do this.

We definitely need to ensure that the suspect

is no longer out on the streets and able to do this again.

If we don't do our job, somebody else

is gonna get hurt.

NARRATOR Dr. G has just completed the autopsy

of Carolyn Casey, whose family has

been devastated by her savage and senseless m*rder.

She was actually taken by someone else's hands.

How do you wrap your mind around that?

It just-- it rocked our world, let me tell you,

to think somebody could do something like that to her.

Our world got ripped apart.

I can't imagine the trauma that they must feel that

their -year-old daughter is m*rder*d, and m*rder*d in such

a way with such brutality.

They need justice.

NARRATOR In the course of his investigation,

Detective Capps has so far identified

only one person of interest--

Ynobe Matthews.

He was a suspect in a sexual as*ault

case in a neighboring city.

NARRATOR And as police dig deeper,

they uncover shocking new information.

We found that there was a number, as many

as a half a dozen young ladies, who

he became extremely violent and abusive sexually to.

They found that he was under suspicion

of not only sexual as*ault, but attempted

m*rder by strangulation.

NARRATOR In fact, one of his alleged victims, Kristin

Lancaster, claimed to have been assaulted by Ynobe while she

was visiting friends at the very same apartment

complex where Carolyn lived.

Their upstairs neighbor, Nobe, he told me his name was Nobe,

Matthews was there.

And I met him and was kind of talking to him a little bit

while he was there.

And, I mean, he seemed nice and normal.

My friend and her boyfriend got in a fight.

And everybody started leaving because they were arguing.

NARRATOR Soon, Kristen finds herself alone with Ynobe.

He closed door behind me and locked the door.

Serial rapists go to great lengths

to figure out how they're going to get

someone, where they're going to find them alone and vulnerable.

They enjoy thinking about how they're going to as*ault them,

how they're going to degrade them.

She was a perfect target for him.

NARRATOR And suddenly the unthinkable happens.
[ … ]

Ynobe begins to strangle and sexually as*ault Kristen.

Suddenly, I just started screaming as loud as I could.

And my friend heard me.

And she called the police.

And I spoke with a detective who took my statement.

They arrested him and took him away,

but there was no solid evidence.

There were no eyewitnesses.

And so then I guess, ultimately, it was my word against him.

He was released the next day.

He got away with it.

NARRATOR In Carolyn's case, like Kristen's, there still

isn't enough hard evidence to make an arrest.

But while Ynobe claims he's innocent,

authorities don't believe him.

At this point, without a doubt in my mind,

I felt like that he was responsible for her death.

I truly believed the community was at risk.

Other people were gonna be in danger.

NARRATOR In hopes of forcing a confession,

Detective Capps brings Ynobe in for additional rounds

of questioning.

I interviewed him three or four

times over a five-day period.

But he stuck with his story.

NARRATOR Unfortunately, only one thing can conclusively

tie Ynobe to the crime--

DNA.

The problem is it appears that the fire erased all traces

of biological evidence.

So there is a good chance that, you know,

possibly that DNA would have been destroyed with the heat.

NARRATOR Three weeks later, the DNA report finally

arrives from the lab, and Dr. G quickly

scans the pages for any evidence connecting Ynobe to Carolyn.

But the results of the sexual as*ault kit

were negative for any evidence of DNA.

It's disappointing.

NARRATOR But just when it seems they won't be able to link him

to the crime, Dr. G spots something on the very

last page of the report.

Ultimately, DNA under her nails matched him.

You know, that indicates that she's struggling,

she's scratching him.

She's getting his skin, his cells underneath her nails.

So everything-- it really helped us

bring this together and point to the fact

that, yes, he was there.

I told him that I needed to know, at that point,

whether or not he had indeed k*lled Ms. Casey.

NARRATOR Despite his methodical burning of the genital region,

Ynobe hadn't thought about Carolyn's fingernails.

And faced with the hard DNA evidence, he finally cracks.

He felt like he was caught.

He began to kind of break down.

And it went from him not really knowing

her to, yes, I was there.

He did tell me that he had k*lled Ms. Casey.

NARRATOR But the confession proves

to be only a small victory.

He confessed, but he confessed to consensual sex

and confessed to not meaning to k*ll her.

I didn't buy it.

He has to have some excuse for what happened,

and that's probably what his rationalization is.

And the hardest thing is, it's literally

your word against his word.

NARRATOR Now the prosecution has

their work cut out for them.

If a jury buys his story, he could

get off with as little as five years jail time

or even go free.

If they believed he wasn't responsible

then he can be acquitted and found

not guilty of all charges.

NARRATOR But the prosecution in Carolyn's family

are convinced Ynobe is guilty.

And they're eager to see him punished

to the full extent of the law.

We are going to go after the death penalty.

Anything less than the death penalty

would put the rest of the community at risk.

We were terribly concerned with making

sure that justice was done.

NARRATOR But to secure the sentence they're seeking,

the state must prove that Ynobe not

only intentionally k*lled Carolyn, but also

sexually assaulted her.

Now District Attorney Bill Turner

is counting on Dr. G's testimony to make the case to the jury.

So, you know, on a case like this,

my job isn't done by figuring out the cause of death,

by gathering the trace evidence.

You know, the last part of my job is to testify in court.

I think some people think I never see the light of day,

that I just spend my whole time in this room.

But I spend, you know, several days a month in trial.

Because our findings have to be explained to the jury.

The victim can't tell the jury what happened to them.

You know, ultimately, I'm the voice of the victim.
[ … ]

NARRATOR On May , , Ynobe Matthews

stands trial for the m*rder of Carolyn Casey.

All rise for the Honorable Judge Kenny Powers.

NARRATOR His defense team claims

that he accidentally k*lled Carolyn after they

engaged in consensual sex.

But District Attorney Bill Turner

is determined to prove that Ynobe

is guilty of both intentional m*rder and sexual as*ault.

I have worked on a number of cases of v*olence

against women.

This is the most serious that I have encountered.

In this case, I believed that true justice

meant Ynobe Mathews received the death penalty.

Carolyn's family were good, salt of the earth people.

And to see them go through this kind of tragedy

and have to suffer the way they suffered

would just really tear your heart out.

We wanted him to be brought to justice.

We wanted him to pay for what he did.

NARRATOR Dr. G takes the stand as an expert witness

and methodically walks the jury through what

she believes happened to Carolyn Casey on the day of her death.

You have to tell the truth.

You can't overstate what you found.

You can't understate what you found.

NARRATOR The prosecution is now counting on her testimony

to refute the defense's claim that Ynobe and Carolyn

engaged in consensual sex.

The key to this case was to prove that the m*rder occurred

in the course of a sexual as*ault.

And if the jury found it wasn't a sexual as*ault,

then they would take the death penalty off the table.

We had a problem because any physical signs

of a sexual as*ault were destroyed.

And the swabs showed no evidence of usable DNA.

So I have to speak for her.

He had already said he had had sex with her.

What we needed to say is that I doubt that it was consensual.

NARRATOR Dr. G explains to the jury

why she believes Ynobe sexually assaulted Carolyn.

She defecated in her panties and he rips them off,

and then he says he has consensual sex with her?

I doubt it.

Oftentimes your actions speak very loudly what you do

after you've k*lled somebody.

She was b*rned to hide the evidence.

That tells me a lot.

NARRATOR Then she details how Carolyn's

death was no accident.

If you strangle her enough to k*ll her,

you strangle her to k*ll her.

He's on top of her.

He's looking at her die relatively slowly.

There is no accidental manual strangulation, I'm sorry.

That's not flying.

NARRATOR Finally, in hopes of convincing the jury that Ynobe

is too dangerous to go free, the prosecution calls

Kristin Lancaster to the stand.

In a capital m*rder case, the jury

has to find beyond a reasonable doubt the person is

a continuing thr*at to society.

The most compelling testimony is if you

show a pattern of v*olence, a pattern of abuse.

NARRATOR Blow by blow, Kristin recounts

the horrifying as*ault that she narrowly escaped with her life.

It happened five days before my th birthday.

He forced himself upon me, pushed me down on the mattress,

and sexually assaulted me.

And, I mean, just you know, I was

begging him, please not not to do this to me, please, please.

And then he grabbed my throat and just

kept choking me and choking me.

And I couldn't breathe.

And it was just so painful it almost feeling the bones

in my neck were breaking.

I knew he meant to k*ll me.

I'm very, very lucky that I'm here today.

NARRATOR Echoing through the walls of the courtroom,

Kristen's quiet testimony helps illustrate

a frightening pattern of behavior.

He has a history of degrading women.

And it was going to happen over and over and over.

And he doesn't care about the consequences.

It explained and expressed to us

the terror that not only that young lady went through,

but also the terror that Carolyn Casey must have gone through.

NARRATOR In his closing statement,

District Attorney Bill Turner asks the jury

to ensure that no other woman will

ever experience the same fate at the hands of Ynobe Matthews.

We were standing there holding hands, praying, not

knowing of what the verdict is gonna be.

NARRATOR The jury deliberates for just

and / hours before returning with the verdict.

They convicted him.

They, ultimately, gave him the death penalty.

At the end of the trial, it's bittersweet.

She got justice, but, you know, what kind of justice?

Another life is taken and she's not back.
[ … ]

You know, it's somewhat philosophical,

but I don't believe in the death penalty.

But I didn't come up with the laws.

I just want the truth to be had.

He needs to never be able to do this again.

And our civilization saw fit that he should

pay ultimately for his crimes.

LARRY CASEY It come back the way we wanted.

We were relieved.

He got what he deserved.

And we could try to get on with our lives

for whatever that was worth.

AMANDA REID I was proud of Carolyn

that she brought Ynobe to justice,

granted she had to die for it.

But she stopped him from doing this to another woman.

It was a great sense of closure for me.

I felt now that finally I would be safe.

NARRATOR On January , , Ynobe Matthews is

ex*cuted by the state of Texas.

It's a very sobering time, no matter

how terrible the defendant may be, you're still

talking about a human life.

But justice was done.

NARRATOR Now, years after Carolyn's death,

her family still thinks about her every day.

You go back, you just think of the little things

that you miss.

Carolyn was so awesome.

We knew each other inside and out.

We were as close as two sisters can be.

She's not here anymore and, I mean, it's with us forever.

And it's just a void there in my heart.

I have a son that's .

I can't imagine him being gone.

You never move on from something like this.

It's always with you.

I mean, he didn't just m*rder her,

he affected everybody in that family.

Carolyn's death affects me because I'm a woman.

The man who k*lled her hated all women.

It could have just as easily been me.

As gruesome as this case is, as hideous as it is,

it's just one of many that I've done.

And unfortunately, many of them aren't solved yet.

At least this one is solved.

And this one justice, I believe, was served.

NARRATOR Doctor G's morgue is the final stop

for an astounding number of women who are

the victims of gruesome crimes.

And not all of them are random acts of v*olence.

In fact, some strike much too close to home.

At least one third of all women who are m*rder*d

are a result of intimate partner v*olence.

It's a huge problem.

Each year in my morgue, I see anywhere

from to women m*rder*d by an intimate partner.

It meets the CDC's definition of an epidemic.

It's the number one cause of injury to women.

And it's always way too many people

that end up in the morgue.

NARRATOR And it seems the -year-old Jennifer

Thompson, who was m*rder*d in her own home,

may be another such victim.

Jennifer Thompson is a friendly and hardworking hairdresser

who lives in the small town of Somerset, Texas

with her husband Michael and their three young daughters.

On the surface, they seem like a typical happy family.

But by all accounts, the couple had a tumultuous relationship.

He has anger problems.

He was controlling.

There was clearly some domestic v*olence in this household.

I've been watching you!

DR. G She was afraid of him.

In fact, one night driving home on the highway,

he pulls over, undoes her seat belt, opens the door,

and pushes her out the side of the road in front of the kids

and leaves her there in the middle of the night.

There's fear, there's terror.

And the batterer is usually remorseful, convincing

the person that they've just beaten

or that they've just terrorized that they're really

sorry, that they really love them,

that this was an act of love.

They were trying to work this out.

But the marriage counselor told her get out of there.

You need to get out.

NARRATOR Finally, after seven years of marriage,

Jennifer demands a divorce.

They had been separated for many months.

But he did not want the divorce.

NARRATOR Fearing for her safety,

she also gets a restraining order.

I think it's terrible to be so afraid that somebody

is going to hurt you.

NARRATOR But before the divorce papers are signed,

Jennifer is found dead in her home.

And her face is covered with blood.

She appears to be beaten.

She's at the bottom of her stairs
[ … ]

with the fitted sheet under her.

Right, it appears she's been dragged down the stairs.

NARRATOR And all signs point to her estranged husband Michael.

Somebody b*at this woman in her own house.

They set the alarm when they left and locked the door.

There was no sign of forced entry.

And there was nothing stolen from the home.

Sounds like an inside job to me.

NARRATOR The only person with both access to the home

and motive is Michael.

But police have no hard evidence to arrest him.

We had just circumstances that made the police suspicious.

NARRATOR And their hands are further tied by the fact

that Michael has a strong alibi.

He had extensive family, eight to people, that

were adamant that he'd never left the night

that the victim was m*rder*d.

And you think, well, could everybody be wrong?

NARRATOR Now, it's up to Dr. G to find

out what really happened.

The medical examiner is crucial to tie him to her body

to being there at the house.

I just want the truth to come out.

NARRATOR Jennifer Thompson's family is reeling from the news

that she was m*rder*d, beaten to death in her own home.

And what's worse, the prime suspect

is someone close to her.

The suspect was the ex-husband,

the father of the children.

It was a horrible ordeal.

NARRATOR Given that police only have circumstantial evidence

against Michael, they're counting on Dr. G

to tie him to the m*rder.

And on first glance, there's one potential clue

that could be the key.

She has what appears to be a hand

imprint on the side of her thigh and her hip region.

NARRATOR The print is stamped in blood,

and was most likely from the perpetrator's hands.

You could develop a fingerprint off of that.

NARRATOR A crime lab technician attempts to lift a print.

But it isn't clear enough to submit for a match.

Unfortunately, no prints could be developed.

NARRATOR However, Dr. G quickly spots another potential source

of identifying information.

Oh, look at this.

Somebody's blood is underneath her nails.

And we will preserve that.

We will take those nails and send them to the crime lab

to analyze for DNA.

NARRATOR This could be crucial in proving Michael's guilt.

But the results won't be back for weeks.

In the meantime, Dr. G turns her attention back to Jennifer's

badly beaten body.

She's got a lot of blunt trauma, five contusions

to the right upper chest.

On her leg, she has abrasions consistent somebody's

kicking her.

She's got a lot of contusions about the knees.

I think somebody is dragging her at some point.

She has marks on her neck that were all

consistent with strangulation.

NARRATOR And that's not all.

She's also clearly sustained several major blows

to the head.

She's got a lot of blunt trauma

to the head, fat lip, a laceration of the scalp.

She's got a big contusion on her jaw.

NARRATOR But it's clear that Jennifer

didn't go down without a fight.

She had some bruises on her hand.

She had bruises on her wrists.

It looks as if she was fighting off her attacker.

And there's quite a ruckus going on.

She is really b*at.

Ultimately, she's got both blunt trauma

to the head and strangulation.

But the actual cause of the death

appears to be the strangulation.

This was up close, it was personal.

There was a lot of anger in the injuries.

NARRATOR Authorities remain convinced

that Jennifer's estranged husband Michael is responsible.

But without proof, he still walks the streets a free man.

The case now rests on the DNA results,

which police hope will conclusively

link him to the m*rder.

We were hoping against hope that there

would be his DNA on her body.

NARRATOR And after a long wait, the report finally arrives.

The DNA came back.

It was foreign DNA, it wasn't hers.

And it matched her husband.

There is really no stronger link than having the man's DNA

under the victim's fingernails.

NARRATOR At last, police are able to arrest Michael

for the m*rder of his wife.

But his legal team has an explanation

as to how his DNA got under her nails in the first place.

Their defense was when she's fighting off the perpetrator
[ … ]

and the struggle is going on, she would

be grabbing at the carpet.

And his DNA would be in the carpet

because he lived there for years with her.

NARRATOR Fortunately for the prosecution,

Dr. G has seen cases like this before.

And there's one thing she can say for certain.

If Michael's DNA was from the carpet,

there would have been carpet fibers under his wife's

fingernails as well.

I'm the one that collected the evidence from those nails

and there were no carpet fibers.

NARRATOR It's the linchpin in the state's case.

And after a quick trial, justice is finally served.

He was convicted by the jury.

And he was sentenced to life in prison.

NARRATOR For Jennifer's family and the prosecution,

it's a victory, but one that's ultimately tempered by loss.

This was such a needless, senseless, awful k*lling.

It left, basically, the children orphans.

It left two families devastated.

NARRATOR Jennifer finally took a stand

against Michael's abuse.

But in the end, her choice to leave him

may actually have made her more vulnerable to his v*olence.

I think the biggest misperception about victims

of domestic v*olence is that, one,

that it's very easy to leave.

Actually, when they leave that violent relationship,

they're in the most danger.

That's the time when that batterer is most likely to want

to control them and sometimes seek that ultimate control,

which means to k*ll them.

NARRATOR And sadly, like so many other women,

not even the law could protect her.

Each year in the US, roughly two thirds

of domestic v*olence restraining orders, are violated.

She did all the right things.

Unfortunately, it still happened to her.

It's scary, but there's nothing society could do for her.

I think we failed her.

Domestic v*olence is a huge problem in this country.

Each year, intimate partner v*olence

results in , deaths and over two million injuries to women.

We can put an end to v*olence against women

when we finally say we will not tolerate it, as a society.

Also, education and prevention is the key.

Most perpetrators grew up in violent homes.

You learn this behavior.

That's why we've worked so hard to stop that cycle of v*olence.

Don't wait, pick up the phone and call

a domestic v*olence hotline.

They can help you create a safety plan.

That can be the difference between life and death.

A piece of inside information after years of being

in the morgue is, if you sense v*olence,

if you sense you're in danger, get out.

It can escalate to m*rder.

I see it time and time again.