Seeds of Destruction | FULL EPISODE | The New Detectives

in the Arizona desert a detective needs to link a murderer to a crime scene the only witnesses are bean pods a grotesque murder on a quiet beach has the police baffled a forensic geologist hopes to transform a spoonful of sand into a witness the accusation after years of searching for a clandestine grave, the only thing that unites a murderer with his victim is the root of a tree. In the past, rural landscapes have offered safe haven to murderers hoping to keep their crimes hidden, now thanks to the burgeoning fields of forensic botany and geology. puts his faith in the silence of nature shows his own

seeds

of

destruction

the Sonoran desert how many lives have been brutally ended in desolate landscapes like this with only an audience of trees as witnesses today those unlikely observers are gaining a voice with which to expose The culprit, the caterpillar testing range outside Phoenix, Arizona, was an exciting diversion for a man returning home one Sunday in May 1992 while passing through a dry wash, he was struck by something out of place in the crude oil. landscape and approached to see it more closely, face down.

Above a canopy of Palo Verde trees lay the naked body of a woman who was not breathing. Deputies from the Maricopa County Sheriff's Department arrived at the scene due to the condition of the body, it appeared that the victim had been murdered within the last 12 hours, his clothing was strewn nearby and shoelaces were wrapped around his wrists and ankles. It seemed like the killer had spent some time with the victim before leaving her here. Detective Charlie Norton led the investigation. The victim was identified by her fingerprints as 30-year-old Denise Johnson. She had been arrested for prostitution.

Hours passed as the team pored over the crime scene. They hoped to weave fragments of evidence into the coherent narrative of a homicide. She had a white t-shirt or just a t-shirt around her neck and it looked like she might have been strangled as the team examined the torn clothing for clues a crucial piece of the puzzle came like a plea from beyond the grave the insistent beeping of a pager broke the silence of the desert was some unaware friend of Johnson's destiny trying to reach her or was this the forgotten property of a careless murderer?

A court order was obtained and the pager company made contact. The owner of the pager was traced through his identification number. The pager subscriber was a guy named Earl Bogan and when he said his son Mark had exclusive use of the pager because he didn't have any phone communication and that was basically the only way the family had to contact Mark while the police were processing the crime scene a man showed up with a statement at 1:30 the morning before he had noticed something strange: a white van with amber clearance lights leaving the proving ground, the driver ran a stop sign and then flew into the interstate combined with the pager information, this witness's testimony would give Norton an advantage in the investigation.

When Norton learned that Mark Bogan owned a white pickup truck with amber running lights, it seemed to him that he had found the killer. Now he would have to prove it. Boggan, accompanied by his wife Rebecca, agreed to be interviewed at the Sheriff's Department. In turn, in an interview with the police. recreated here Rebecca said that on the night of the murder Mark came home at 2:00 a.m. m. with a bloody and scratched face. He told Rebecca that he had been in a bar fight, but Bogan told police a different story and claimed that he had picked up a hitchhiker matching the description of Denise Johnson and had sex with her in his van.

Bogan admitted to lying to her. to his wife because he knew she would be upset with the truth the story was coming out too well for Norton and he wondered if Bogan was misrepresenting the The facts matched the evidence and I think someone contacted him and told him that investigators from the sheriff's office were looking for him so I think that basically alerted him and he came up with this story, according to Bogan, after his encounter between him and The hitchhiker argued that he ordered her to get out of the truck and that she out. He stole her wallet and pager.

Logan chased after him and struggled to get the wallet back. He claimed to have left Johnson alive on the side of the interstate. Norton suspected that Bogan was only telling him half of it. the story, I suspect probably what Mark told me when I interviewed him in terms of picking her up, having an argument and things like that. I suspect all of that is probably true, but the part he left out is where it happened and ended. kill her Norton believed that Bogan was a murderer but was not getting any help from the suspect. Not only did Bogan outright deny Denise Johnson, but it had been years since he had set foot on the caterpillar testing grounds that Bogan admitted that he had spent the night. with Denise Johnson would, ironically, make it more difficult to prove that he had killed her.

We don't have anything on this guy. Everything he told us closes Oliver. Our entire case. He had sexual relations with her. He knows who she is. Bogan's story, spotty as it was, had just disabled an arsenal of forensic weaponry. DNA analysis of bodily fluids or fingernail scrapings could only prove something Bogan had already admitted on the night of May 2, 1992. He and Denise Johnson had sex and then fought with Norton. The hope of bringing Bogan to justice would be to link him to the crime scene. A small patch of grass under a stand of Palo Verde trees at the proving ground.

Bogan's truck was seized and searched, but nothing was found linking Bogan to Johnson's death. Unexceptional Palo Verde seed pods were collected from the truck bed, but thousands of these trees grow in southern Arizona. The pods could have come from anywhere. It hardly seemed like the kind of evidence that could link a man to a murder fighting for a way to link Bogan. At the crime scene, Detective Norton returned to the proving ground, then inspiration struck upon noticing a Palo Verde tree with a fresh scratch and theorized that after dumping Johnston's body, the bogans truck had grazed this tree, causing the pods to flutter freely and land on the bed of his truck.

If DNA testing could show that the capsules in Bogan's truck matched the marked tree, Norton and his colleagues could dismantle Bogan's alibi, but there was a problem: the test they envisioned had never been done before to catch to a murderer. Detective Norton approached Timothy Helentjaris's associate. Norton, a professor of molecular genetics at the University of Arizona, wanted to determine if there was enough variability in palo verde DNA to distinguish one tree from another. When the Sheriff's Department contacted me, they told me they had some pods collected from the truck and thought they might have matched one of the trees at the site, they commented that one of the trees had scratch marks on it, so They had a particular tree in mind, so I asked him to collect pods from all the trees around the sites. but don't tell me which one was marked and just number them so it was a blinded study using a cutting-edge technique called Rapids for randomly amplified polymorphic DNA.

Helentjaris presented genetic profiles of sample trees and pods. The results were surprising. Palo Verde DNA. it seemed to be as complex as the human code it seemed that individual trees could be easily distinguished from each other dr. Helentjaris first confirmed that the pods from the Bogans truck were from the same tree and then compared that profile to DNA profiles from a row of 11 trees at the crime scene when we informed the Sheriff's Department which numbered tree it turned out to be. which actually had scratch marks that they suspected at first, so we felt pretty confident in our resolve there, the noose was tightening around Mark Bogan's neck, he was arrested and a court date was set armed with the conclusions of Helentjaris, the prosecution.

He was eager to confront the defendant with the silent testimony of a Palo Verde tree, but Bogan was not going down without a fight to convict Mark Bogan of killing Denise Johnson. The prosecution based his case on the admissibility of Rapids, a legally untested procedure. DNA analysis of humans had only been deemed admissible in Arizona courts a few months earlier, using plant DNA to prove the murder would be exaggerated, and yet the entire case hinged on it. Bogan's defense team hired its own expert Paul Keim of Northern Arizona University to refute Helentjaris' findings at a pretrial hearing.

If time could cast doubt on the validity of Helentjaris's technique, Bogan would likely come out. of the court as a free man, so I think the Bogan family expected my expert advice to be expert opinion on the new DNA fingerprinting method that was being used. here I would say that this was not a valid approach to forensic science and that it was not conclusive proof that his son had been at the crime scene; He was brought into the case as a hitman for the defense. Pym's loyalty was to science and the responsible use of laboratory tests.

His distrust of Rapids was valid since his debut. The new technique was known to give false readings if extremely careful controls were not maintained during testing. In my opinion, it meant that we had to subject it to a very high level of scrutiny and for us it was important that we understood everything that was done here and that it was done correctly when it was done with extreme care. Rapids provides researchers with a surprising new tool: the ability to observe the DNA of an organism without any prior information about the genetic makeup of that species. The first step in the process is to remove the DNA from the pods.

The

seeds

must be removed for testing. precise each represents a mixture of the tree's genetic material with the pollen that fertilized it and would therefore introduce separate DNA into the test the liquid nitrogen instantly freezes the capsule so it can be easily pulverized once the DNA has been purified it is ready to genetic amplification by PCR this heating process increases a minimal sample of DNA to provide technicians with extensive genetic information material for testing when reconstituted with water the DNA from the seed pods will be invisible to the eye but extremely revealing in other ways The Palo Verde sample is now ready to produce its genetic fingerprint.

To make that pattern visible, a process called blue gel electrophoresis is used. Dye is added to the DNA sample which is then inserted into the lanes in a gelatin-like slab. Exposure to an electric field causes the fragments in DNA to separate. The resulting barcode is then illuminated with ultraviolet light and photographed when contracted by Bogan's defense team. He had been skeptical about Rapids' ability to conclusively differentiate between Palo Verde trees, but when he studied Dr. Helentjaris' data and the painstaking process by which he compiled it surprised him how definitively the results were influenced by the findings of his colleagues.

He bought time for the prosecution side and under oath could not refute the results. In Kime's opinion, the tree and the capsule matched with a high degree of certainty. The defense team now faced an insurmountable setback from the investigators. fidelity to bogan science was waning when i examined the scientific evidence the first thing that was most obvious to me was that the DNA from the capsule that was found in bogan's truck in fact had exactly the same DNA fingerprint pattern as one of the trees where the body was found Helen Joris and chyme had placed mark bogan at the crime scene after he had killed Denise Johnson bogan backed his truck into a tree and unleashed the evidence that would later convict him the genetic findings did not refuted decimated the foundation of bogan's defense bogan was convicted of murder and sent to prison for life helentjaris's pioneering research established botanical DNA profiling as an effective forensic tool gave voice to two tiny seed pods without whose testimony a killer would still be walking among us a world away from the Arizona desert.

The New England coast may be as desolate a place to die as the arid landscape of Sonora, but like those seemingly inconsequential Palo Verde pods, there are molehills to be had. To speak on the morning of June 30, 1994, a woman and her two nephews were wandering Crescent Beach in Rhode Island. The buried treasure was the children's gold, what they found appeared to have been buried alive.Detective Arthur Clark of the East Providence Police Department was called to investigate. The woman buried on the beach The scene was more reminiscent of a Stephen King novel than anything the veteran detective had seen in person Two feet below the surface lay a woman in a red satin cocktail dress whose life had ended with multiple blows to the head.

We arrived at the scene around 10:15 and verified that they were human arms. It seemed like a body was buried in a shallow grave. We notified the medical examiner's office for the defendant. The victim's arms protruded from beneath the sand. Her hands were scratching the sky in what seemed like the end of life. It seemed unlikely that she had been buried alive. The medical examiner concluded that in her condition the victim would not have the strength to push her hands through the sand. Someone had placed her in this final gesture like a scene from a horror movie the killer seemed to be leaving a calling card but his message was inscrutable a circular pattern had been pressed into the sand around the body on it lay a shattered clock face its hands frozen at midnight but for the

detectives

as time progressed it seemed that some kind of grotesque ritual took place here they feared it could be the start of future murders they needed to work quickly before this killer struck again at this early stage of the investigation vital clues could be disguised as common trash, cigarette butts, candy wrappers and plastic cups.

They were collected from the scene along with sand samples from both the surface and bottom of the grave. At the time we didn't know what was evidence and what wasn't, so out of an abundance of caution we collected what we thought might end up being evidence, but before Clarke could make sense of To learn more about the victim, she didn't have to look far. Around 8 o'clock that afternoon, a gentleman named Christopher Hutta who lived in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, called the Pawtucket police to report his missing wife was Kendra Hütter, 30, from a photograph . Clark recognized her as the murder victim according to her husband Kendra and he had lived more as roommates than lovers beyond the façade of domestic contentment lived in a loveless marriage bound by financial need. and parental obligation agreed to date other people Christopher Hütter told police that Kendra had a date the night she died, police later learned that she met him through a personal ad.

The divorced white man described himself as a cheerful and attractive father hoping to add a touch of romance. into her life she contacted him and they made a date for the night of June 29 Kendra scribbled the man's name and her husband's phone number the card said Gary Detective Clark identified Gary as Gary - planted a trucker who lived with his mother and brother in Cumberland told police he had been on three dates with Kendra Hütter but denied being with her the night of her murder. The affable Tassone did his best to help Clark, telling police that he knew Kendra and her husband were having marital problems.

He suggested that perhaps the disgruntled Kristopher Hutter was the killer when Tassone told Clark that he had been on the beach where the body was found. Clark asked him to come to the station to continue the interrogation after taking the first statement from him. There were several things that weren't true. There were actually some inconsistencies in what he told us and what we had learned so far in a police interview recreated here: Sewn flatly denied being with Kendra Hunter on the night of the murder as the interview progressed. However, he revised his story. He admitted that he had gone on a date with her that night, but left her around 11 o'clock, but that contradicted what Kendra's husband reported, according to him, Kendra never came home that night, as far as they knew, Tassone was the last person.

To see the victim alive, the

detectives

pressed Detective Bilodeau and I spoke with him on and off for about four hours that night. He never showed any sign of emotion. He did not do it. He spoke very well. He was articulate, polite, calm. Nervous at all, quite naturally, Clark continued to question Tassone and, as the interview progressed into its grueling fifth hour, he finally repudiated an account that he and Kendra had been building sand castles when a noise startled him and he inadvertently , hit her. panicking head buried the body in the sand considering the extent of Kendra's injuries seven blows to the head Clark rejected the story there was no doubt in the detective's mind that the victim was killed intentionally we don't know why he was killed but it wasn't an accident on the surface it seemed like Tucson was starting to cooperate but his statement didn't make sense and Clark didn't know what to make of it the story he told about the accidental death was far-fetched and implausible but probably reflected a biased version of what What really happened from what Clark had already learned about the repudiated case was peppering his narrative with blatant lies, the resulting story was more confusion than confession, if only Clark could sift through the fantasy and get to the truth, he would have a chance. case closed for now Clark had to follow him and see where Tucson would take him under the guise of cooperation the suspect led police to a roadside embankment where he said he abandoned the shovel it seemed like just another delaying tactic but a shovel actually turned With this discovery, the evidence seemed to be on Clark's side.

He had a murder victim ritually buried. He had the alleged murder weapon. He had a suspect he could link the two of them to, but Clark only had two sounds. An unlikely story that would locate him. At the crime scene for the charges to stick, we needed to construct a more coherent account of what happened armed with a warrant. Police searched Sones' car. The finds were few and amounted to little more than a patch of sand. It seemed like Clark had found all the evidence. He had to find out that it was time to go to court, but at the beginning of the criminal trial in January 1997, Tassone began to backtrack, claiming that he had been forced to confess in exchange for immunity.

Tassone recanted his story and explained the sand in his trunk. as if he had come from an evening with another woman on the beach the shovel, he said, was just a shovel, the police couldn't refute it, suddenly Detective Clark discovered that the tide was turning against him without Gary confessing to him sones, Detective Clark at the Rhode Island police had to treat the case as if they had never had any confession - link - stitched to the crime scene Clark needed solid evidence but all he had was a handful of sand Clark knew the answer was written here but he couldn't read it.

To build a case on such unusual evidence was beyond the resources of his small department, he had to call in the experts. He sent the physical evidence to the FBI's forensic geology laboratory, the only one of its kind in the country. His geologist Bruce Hall examined the After shoveling the general debris from the crime scene and the sand recovered from Hassan's vehicle, the collaborator East Providence Rhode Island asked that we compare any soil or sand recovered from any of those items with some known samples of The sand they had recovered from the crime scene in this situation was a beach to see the past in a grain of sand, which is Hall's mission, each grain is a world in itself that differs not only between continents but also across continents. length and breadth of a coast, and every child knows that there is sand on the surface. of a beach is different from the sand below, but what few criminals realized is that these differences can be measured and compared.

We have seen soil samples from the tomb. We have some because it is a tomb. We are dealing in three dimensions. We have some that were taken several different locations on the surface of the earth. Now we have a profile, so to speak. We have a hole in the ground that can be anywhere from one to three feet deep. We now have several samples from various depths. The grains of sand found in the suspect's car came from the bottom of the excavated grave rather than from the beach surface, as the evidence itself claimed. Hall would soon discover that Tassone Paul focused on sand samples taken from the bottom of the victim's grave if there was sand.

Any of the TISS holdings match Clarke would have its case. The geological examination takes a three-pronged approach. Samples are compared based on color, texture and composition. Analysis begins with a careful look at the color. This first test does not require sophisticated equipment but is essential to determine Let's take samples that would have no relation to the repudiations. In case we see them under different lighting conditions, daylight again, fluorescent light, incandescent light, and we compare their color, this soil represents the soil recovered from the shovel, different from that collected from the beach, the blanket again on the arm .

Throughout we can see that there is a color difference, this soil did not originate from the same source as the known soil, however when we look at the soil from a vehicle it is strikingly similar with respect to color, color comparison showed that, judging by the grain of sand. Evidence that the shovel may not have been involved in the crime or that Tucson may have used it elsewhere before getting rid of it seemed like just another red herring to sew to throw the police off their trail. The song won that battle but it didn't. war the sand of his The car matched the color of the sand collected from the bottom of the grave.

Paul moved on to Phase Two with this sample analyzing the texture. The sand is rinsed with water and exposed to vibrating ultrasonic waves to remove any silt or clay attached to the sample. it was dried and placed under a stereoscopic microscope. Now Paul looks at the size and texture of the grains. A well-sorted sample consists of grains of the same size, such as table salt, while a poorly sorted sample contains a variety of sizes, such as a can of mixed nuts. Paul also notes that the shapes of the individual grains are round, angular or oval, for example, in the two-car sand, the grains were mixed consistently, the sample was said to be well-selected and composed of well-rounded grains, so that the sample was taken from the bottom of the The walls of the tomb were moving Geary toward Sonne, but Hall still had one more test to perform.

He examined the soil samples under a polarized light microscope to determine their mineral composition. Different minerals have different optical properties when exposed to polarized light. These characteristics allow Hall to identify them. Characterizing minerals is not fundamentally different from characterizing an individual. How tall that individual is. How much he or she weighs. What is his or her hair color? Eye color and you characterize a mineral in the same way. composed predominantly of quartz with a small amount of the mineral feldspar when he looked at the sand from the bottom of Kendra Hunter's grave under the same conditions, he found that the samples matched.

Bruce Hall had now proven that Gary Tassone was in fact with Kendra Hunter on the beach the night she died. and more than that, he proved that Sonne buried her body based largely on the strength of Bruce Hall's forensic evidence. The jury found Gary guilty of first-degree murder. He is serving a life sentence without parole. The strange man had lured a woman from her personal ads, hit her on the head with a shovel almost 20 times, and buried her in a way that was sure to be noticed. The motive and meaning of his crime remain a mystery.

It is also unknown if this was Gary's first hit on Sonne while he was driving. in his truck across the country, he placed ads in other newspapers luring unsuspecting women like Kendra Hütter to their deaths or was his first victim and also his last, although the tombstones may be faded by time. Nature does not forget death, the world has changed forever. For the family of a murder victim, the same applies to the landscape in which a body is buried. Cher Elder, 20, was known in the Denver suburb of Lakewood, Colorado, for having a mind of her own, which was not conducive to smooth relationships.

On the night of March 27, 1993 she had a skirmish with her boyfriend Byron Powers, apologies undoubtedly followed after a few hours of inactivity to let off steam. Cher caught arriving in Central City, a seedy gambling town an hour's drive into the Rocky Mountains, her escort and an elderly man. The man was good company and her bad mood dissipated as the night progressed at 1:00 a.m. 40 the next morning. Cher and her companion left the casino. She would soon join the ranks of the missing. The days passed with no sign of sharing. Her frantic father reported her missing. Lakewood Police Department Detective ScottRichardson, was assigned to the case.

Missing persons cases are a complicated decision. Richardson didn't want to waste his department's resources behind a massive search only to find out that time and energy had been wasted on a girl he had. I left town to calm down, it's a tough investigation: How involved do you want to get involved in a missing persons case and how complex do you want a missing persons case to be to find out that they are lying on the beach in Maui, somewhere that Richardson had? However, he had a bad feeling that Cher wasn't on vacation. Her first objective was to identify the man with whom she had last been seen.

A surveillance camera at the casino had captured her image. We didn't know who that man was and that was the last one. The time she saw him live, a friend of hers had seen her at the casino with this man, the man was identified as Thomas Luthor, an acquaintance of Cher's boyfriend, Byron Powers. Cher had been introduced to the older man shortly before their ill-fated gambling trip to Central City. The more she learned about Thomas Luthor, the more Richardson felt that she was no longer searching for a missing person; he now he was looking for a body on Thomas Luthor.

He had chosen the wrong shoulder to cry on about a known sex offender. Luther had just gotten out of a 10-year prison sentence for attacking and raping a young woman he had bragged about in jail and that when he got out the police wouldn't find the next woman he killed, this time he would make sure to bury the body. where Richardson would never be found We set out to thwart that plan. Our approach to the case at the time was to try to find the body of an elderly man for two reasons we needed it for processing and the Richardson family questioned Luther who stated that after leaving the casino he left the elderly man at the her boyfriend, Luther's car was seized and evidence searched, but nothing to suggest murder was found for weeks.

Richardson pressed on, even though he had very little hard evidence, knowing that this girl's body was somewhere, he kept the detective searching to outwit a smart criminal like Luther Richardson. He would have to raise the suspect's level of concern, hope

full

y forcing him to return to the grave or giving him a cautious check the day before. I called Luther at home and intentionally wanted to sound very confident. I said, "Hey, we have some tests and I want to." you here at 9 o'clock tomorrow morning hoping that would increase your anxiety and make a mistake Richardson managed to pull his prey out of the brush an informant told him that Luther planned to return to the tomb early the next morning if The body had been unearthed, he planned to flee the state immediately, meanwhile, undercover agents cast a wide net over the Denver metropolitan area following Luthor's acquaintances and scouting major highways.

The morning of their meeting with Richardson, police observed a man in a car parked on the side of the road. Police saw Luther come out of the woods and get into the car. He headed to his meeting with Richardson cockily, knowing that his pursuer was lying without a body. Richardson was unable to hold Luther. He was required by law to release him and his car passed the months. Without any progress in the case, meanwhile the main suspect moved out of state, with each passing day it became more likely that the old man's death would forever remain a secret among the murderer and the victim.

The only thing keeping Richardson going was faith in that old man. She was buried somewhere in Empire Valley, but finding her in the rugged lowlands would be an arduous task. This valley is about 15 miles long and when you get here, when you start looking for a possible tomb location, there is nothing but rock slides and piles. Weeks of searching around Empire Valley left detectives empty-handed and frustrated to find the body of an elderly man shared in this rugged terrain required the kind of experience that would tax the resources of almost any police department aware that there was Having reached the limits of his department, Detective Richardson was running out of options but wasn't ready to throw in the towel.

The relentless detective had one last inspiration and contacted Necrosearch, an elite body of scientists using a wide range of disciplines. To locate clandestine graves, necrosearch exists because a group of law enforcement officials and scientists got together and thought there had to be a better way to find murdered or buried people and the evidence for that goal has brought together leading scientists from all over Colorado, Comprising 15 specialties, including botany, geology, geophysics, forensic anthropology and entomology, the fundamental premise of necrosearch is that buried bodies change the ecosystem around them forever, the soil above a grave can sink under rain or snow, specific vegetation can flourish on the decomposing body at 3 9 6 9 insects and scavengers arrive this is a once in a lifetime case this took everything we had everything we could use from other sources from other agencies that is why necrosearch was asked to come and help it was very simple we are a large widely populated community here in the Denver metro area we have no experience in going out looking for graves we do not have many graves excavated in the city so far the team An all-volunteer necrosearch has participated in more than 100 cases in 30 states and seven countries, the group meets monthly to review potential cases for most petitioners, like Detective Richardson.

Necrosearch represents a last ray of hope. Necrosearch asked me to attend their meeting and present the case to see if it was something Necrosearch could help me with. and so the case was presented to the necroinvestigator at that time and boy did they ask me questions that I had never thought of such as what color was what color was dirt on Luther's pants when he came to get his car because that could indicate that was crawling out of a mine shaft, it may have been in a sand pit and it was pretty evident at that point that when I contacted necrosearch, these are the people that can help me because they have the experience in trying to locate a grave, the terrain rocky hindered the It strives to make disturbances in the ground difficult to detect.

The team probed the earth for clues undetectable to the human eye. On the geology side, we are looking for disturbances in the layers and everything is in layers. You wouldn't believe it, but come here. Dig down a few feet and you will find several layers within the rock or within the soil and we are looking for information to see where it has been disturbed. Aerial searches and infrared analyzes ruled out many potential grave sites, but still, as the months passed. no body was found, it seemed that Thomas Luther's boast of outwitting the police was coming true in late January 1995, a clue led Detective Richardson and the necrosearch to a steep slope of pine trees next to the road, the Rocks covered most of the area, a grave could be hidden anywhere the necrosearch would. some preliminary testing of the location, but they were closed due to weather, it had already been almost two years since Cher's disappearance, then a crucial breakup occurred.

Byron Powers Shares' boyfriend landed in prison for assault. It seemed that Cher made a fatal mistake in her choice of companions. In an effort to lessen the charges against her, the powers that be filed a tip with the police, she said that she knew that Luther had killed Sher Elder and knew where he had buried his body. The powers had been there about three weeks after Cher's death. To help Luther better conceal the grave, the powers directed Richardson just past the point where the necroinvestigation team had given up, unlike most assassins who hurriedly dump bodies down a hill.

Luthor had taken his time selecting the tomb which would seem an unlikely choice to keep watch over what we ultimately discovered. is that Thomas Luthor carried the body of a shared old man straight up a hillside down a rockslide and up the hill, which is unusual, the pile of rocks that the powers that be pointed out was less than a foot from the spot which Richardson and necrosearch had been testing shortly before. the weather had forced them to abandon we were two inches from the body of an old man when we stopped digging the first time we dug again to remove the old man's body as if they were preparing an archaeological dig, the team set up a grate and embarked on An old-style excavation, laborious Lee, the team scraped the ground 10 centimeters at a time, archaeologist Steve Ireland was part of the search for shared elderly remains.

The initial two or three inches of soil was frozen, as I remember it was January or February, so there you had to use a pickaxe to get that top couple of inches that freezes after four days and two feet of digging , the team reached the bone excavated with fine hand tools such as brooms, toothbrushes and bamboo sticks, finally the remains of a body. took shape in the frozen ground dental records would identify the body as an elderly man. Preliminary autopsy results showed that the young woman had been shot three times in the head execution-style. This discovery could have been enough evidence to convince a jury that Luther had killed the old man.

But prosecutors would have a much better chance if they knew the time of death; if the body had been buried at least two years ago, at a time when Cher was known to have been with Luther, the murder charge would be much easier. to prove in court. The team's careful excavation uncovered a cluster of plant roots growing in the soft flesh of the victims. Necroinvestigation called on botanist Vicky Trammell to extract and preserve them. Could you determine the time of burial from this botanical evidence? When the excavation is done and the roots are cut, this stimulates the growth of new roots in the fresh soil of the fill, so the idea was that these roots should be approximately the same general age as the grave in order to determine the age of the grave. new growth, the roots were sent to a laboratory where they were cut crosswise and stained highlighting the Characteristics of the cells Most species of woody trees such as pines and firs that populated the area near the victim's grave form their roots In the same way and the new roots have a particular pattern of cells that can be recognized under the microscope most of the differences.

It involves the xylem, which is the water-conducting tissue in the plant and what I'm seeing is the water-conducting tissue in a sort of triangle and it's the shape of the triangle that tells me that this is a very young root of approximately a year of root. In another year, growth sees a significant change in the cells. The triangle of tissue gives way to larger water-conducting cells. This tells me that it is a secondary pathway from their cellular structure. Trammell estimated the roots were two years old and her findings sealed the case against Thomas Luthor. The grave was dug at some point after he was released from prison and he was known to be with the victim, ultimately a jury was convinced that Thomas Luthor killed Sher Elder.

He was sentenced to 48 years in prison without the possibility of parole thanks to the tireless search of Scott Richardson and the cutting-edge forensic methods of the necrosearch team. The Odyssey had finally come to an end. I don't believe in what they call closure. I think if you lose a loved one you will feel that loss for everyone else. of their life, but at least if they know what happened, they can possibly move on with their life in some way after the case is over. Necrosearch paid Detective Richardson the highest honor and included him in its selective ranks without his determination.

The eldest Sher would still be hidden in a desolate tomb. The earth is an impartial witness to a murder, but forensic botany and geology are finding ways to collect his testimony. Crimes considered unsolvable a few years before are now won with roots, seeds and sand. The landscape has become only a reason for condemnation. He began to scratch the surface that