Unlikely Sources | FULL EPISODE | The New Detectives

After drawing on all their re

sources

, investigators are unable to link the killer to his crime. There are six bottles of beer. They present a case. A woman is pulled from a watery grave. The only witnesses have taken wings. The

detectives

must use an empty cocoon to catch a murderer. A cunning serial poisoner. Stay one step ahead of the law to stop him Investigators need to extract a confession from a graveyard of deleted computer files Police rarely have the benefit of smoking guns or bloody fingerprints to solve crimes after obvious clues are revealed Cool

detectives

with an eye for detail can Use science to probe the most

unlikely

sources

November 1996 Friday the 13th, a man and his dog were taking their usual morning walk around the football fields of the YMCA in Columbia, South Carolina, but That day something stopped them in their tracks, which he thought was a childish act.

The joke turned out to be frighteningly real. Face down on the grass lay the motionless body of a woman with her hair covered in blood. Authorities confirmed that the woman was dead from multiple gunshot wounds to the head at point-blank range using her body temperature as an indicator. Estimated to have died just a few hours earlier, sometime between 3:00 and 4:00 that morning, investigators scoured the grass, not knowing what might provide a clue, photographing and collecting all the trash found around the body that the shoulder pad of a woman's blouse might have. was torn away during the fight an empty purse pointed to robbery as a motive two empty beer bottles could contain a killer's fingerprints it was too early to tell expanding their search the police found evidence of more immediate value three bullet casings and two bullets This told investigators that the woman who had been shot at this location was not simply dumped here, it also gave them the basis for a ballistic comparison, but first they need a suspect and before they can find one, they need to know who the victim was. .

The body was taken to Richland Memorial. Hospital where she was identified by her fingerprints as Virginia Russell, 30. She had a police record for drunk driving at the lab. The forensic case was paralyzed. Technicians could not find any physical link to the killer. The shoulder pad was a dead end The fingerprints on the beer bottles were too smudged to identify The body lacked any foreign hairs, fibers or other samples that could link a suspect to the crime sergeant Detectives turned to friends and family to talk to the victims' aunt investigators learned at the hospital The place where her body now lay was actually the last place Virginia was seen alive.

She had spent the last night of her life visiting her cousin's sick baby. Her relatives were happy to see that after a struggle with alcoholism, Virginia Russell was turning her life around since she took a new job at a night cleaning service, her wallet was always

full

of cash, this caused detectives to speculate about theft as a motive the wallet had not yet been found, they looked for more information the aunt remembered that Russell's pager rang when Russell returned the page, she was heard taking instructions. to an address in the Olympia neighborhood, but Russell was not headed to clean an office nor was that the line of work that paid her bills, as another family member admitted to police.

Virginia Russell was a prostitute who worked for an escort service. Putting her in the company of a host of shady characters, most of whom hid their identities with such a list of suspects, the case would be challenging, if not impossible, to solve, but the police took a break the day after it was discovered. body, they found his car in a parking lot in Olympia there was blood on the console in the back seat inside his trunk there was a single bottle of Michelob light of the same brand found near his body the car was towed to the police laboratory where The technicians looked for fingerprints, hair and fiber, they found nothing.

They took blood samples from the dashboard that matched the victim's blood type. Russell must have been shot at least once while she was in the car. Detectives had taken another step toward reconstructing the actual crime, but were nowhere in their search when Sergeant Andrew Caldwell at the Richland County Sheriff's Office learned of the murder. He suspected it was not an isolated incident. At the time he was bewildered by a rape case and wondered if the same brutal individual could be responsible for both crimes. His theory was based on more than one walk. One of the main similarities was that both were employed by escort services as prostitutes, as well as the location of Virginia Russell's car.

Regina Russell's vehicle was found within sight of the apartment where the sexual assault had occurred earlier. If Caldwell could solve the rape case, he could catch a killer in the process. On the night of November 10, three days before Virginia Russell's death, a service driver dropped off a 20-year-old prostitute in Olympia, she She was going to meet a man who said his name was Daniel Davis, the man attacked her. almost immediately if she wanted to live he told her she would have to fulfill his every whim he dragged her to the bedroom and sexually assaulted her after the attack he emptied the young woman's wallet and kicked her out of the house while she wandered around dazed When he arrived in the neighborhood where his attacker left, he took one last look at his face before calling for help.

Daniel Davis was a false name and investigators discovered that the apartment was rented to a man named Roy Beck Jr. who matched the description the victim gave police his name was familiar throughout the department a series of robberies have kept him in and out of trouble since his teenage years from a computer database investigator Randy Strange compiled a group of images from a mugshot library when mentioning the details of the suspect in terms of age race height hair color the computer automatically gives as possible candidates who matched the suspect as Roy Beck all the men were in their twenties around five five with dark hair of that lineup the victim identified Roy Beck Jr.

When the attacking officers went to Beck's apartment to arrest him for the attack on the prostitute, but he was one step ahead of them, they found Mandy's place and, in disarray, the power had been turned on, beer bottles and other trash scattered on the ground. Armed with a search warrant, investigators combed through the mess for clues relating to the rape, found ammunition for several Gondor detectives thought they had found a positive link between Beck and the murder of Virginia Russell II, but none of the ammunition coincided with the murder. The bullet investigators directed their energy into finding Beck to get their hands on him, they prepared a statement, obtained an arrest warrant for the sexual assault and then contacted Beck's former girlfriend, we were able to persuade her to help us find him, which she called and he returned. page from her and asked her to come pick him up at an apartment complex in the city when Beck emerged from her hideout to meet her, he was arrested and taken to the station for questioning.

Meanwhile, detectives went up to the apartment where Beck had been hiding. The apartments belonged to Beck's friend Richard Bull. Yard Boogaard gave his consent for a search. Investigators pointed out a loaded gun on the couch, which was not the only weapon they found. We were able to locate a large Rambo style hunting knife that was described for our violation. victim and used in that crime, as well as a phone book in Beck's room that he was using with various escort services underlined and highlighted the night of the gun and a pair of boots were collected and taken to the laboratory where the first solid links were found with the murder of Virginia Russell. were falsified ballistics that showed that the gun found in the Bull Yards apartment was used to kill Russell the boots had blood consistent with the type of victim with the evidence accumulated against him it seemed impossible that Beck could avoid a murder conviction, but He did his best to get away from this by blaming his friend Richard Bull Yard, the gun was in fact registered to Bull Yard and Beck argued that the boots belonged to him as well.

Investigators could not deny that all the evidence was found at Bull Yards, not Beck's apartment. we were at a stalemate: Rape victims' testimony had established Beck's violent pattern of soliciting prostitutes and stealing, but that evidence was circumstantial at best with no tangible clues. Investigators have no way to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Beck had ever been with Russell or that he, not Bull Yard, had fired the gun as the case unraveled before their eyes. The only physical evidence connecting Roy Beckett Virginia Russell and Virginia Russell's car were six bottles of Michelob light beer investigators had found two empty bottles next to the body three empty bottles in Roy Beck's abandoned apartment and one unopened bottle in the victim's car, if it could be proven that they came from the same six-pack, would prove that Beck had been with Russell that night, but with no usable fingerprints linking the beer bottles. it seemed impossible anheuser-busch distributes almost two hundred million bottles of Michelob light each year finding a connection between the six bottles seemed remote without it Roy Beck would be free to link a murderer with his criminal detectives in South Carolina had the

unlikely

task of proving that six bottles of beer came from the same six-pack, for help they turned to the Anheuser-busch bottling plant in Williamsburg, Virginia, in turn, Mark Landers, the director of quality control, relied on a coating system which the company had adopted precisely that year, the code in question was October 17, 96 and the other four characters were W F 58, the first part of the code showed that the beer was bottled on October 17, 1996, the W represented the Williamsburg plant and the F indicated a particular line within the system, the final part of the code. 58 specified that the beer was bottled during the 58th 15-minute increment of that day, as bottles are packaged and labeled, placed on six-pack conveyors, and, in one case, all bottles produced during a 15-minute period minutes will contain the same exact code in the lender's expert opinion the beer bottles in Beck's house came from the same case as the bottles found near the victim it was an irrefutable argument that locked in his crime he looked for the beer bottles as a last effort allowed detectives to reconstruct Virginia Russell's final hours with Beck after leaving the hospital, her escort service center to Beck's house, where they drank the first three beers of the six-pack, police assumed that when Virginia left room, Beck discovered the pile of money in her purse.

Police theorized that they took the beer and headed to a soccer field where they drank the fourth and fifth bottles. At some point Beck decided that stealing his victim was enough. He wanted to kill her. He shot her in the head and dragged her out of the car. and shot him two more times, then left, abandoning his car a short distance from his apartment, leaving behind the last unopened beer and with it the clue that the experts needed to link him to the crime. I remember during testimony that Beck's defense attorney heard this. testimony putting his head in his hands and shaking like he didn't know how to recover from this very damaging testimony that was happening and it was at that moment that I really felt good about the case and I knew that we were back and that he probably would. be convicted by paying strict attention to the most banal clues detectives made sure Beck would pay for his crime he was sentenced to life in prison sometimes it's not the evidence that's so improbable but the improbable way it is found in western Michigan The cool, fast-flowing Muskegon River is a popular summer attraction for canoe fishermen and inland tubers, but in June 1989 its calm waters revealed a violent secret to recreational divers searching the river's bottom for sunken treasures, Downed motors, lost fishing gear, old anchors in an instant. of metal told them that they were on something bigger than what they thought it was a red car belly up in a 15 foot gap and there was something floating inside it looking through the windows the divers saw the swollen shape of a human body They contacted the police when the car was removed from the water.

The authorities and the spectatorsThey could only wonder about the identity of the body inside, how the car had gotten into the water, and how long the river had hidden this sad grave. A

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y clothed woman was pulled from the car. Despite having been submerged in water, the remains were well preserved. Investigators searched the body and vehicle to identify them, but all they found were mud bug larvae and cocoons. The body was taken to the medical examiner's office. , meanwhile investigators search the area trying to find out. how the car got to the river the vehicle had little bodily injury the nearby overpass showed no signs of a car accident Galen Brookins the police chief of nearby Fremont looked for other entry points one of the theories we had considered was possible for the motor to go down this path that obviously other vehicles had and ended up in the river at this point in a very straight path the strong current had carried the car to the other side of the pilings where it finally settled in a deep ditch because the car had fallen in a deep ditch it was impossible to see it from the surface the detectives hoped the autopsy would reveal the secrets that the river had kept hidden the medical examiner had two tasks to help identify the body and discover how he died Dental x-rays and fingerprints were taken with the hoping to give this Jane Doe a name.

Head injuries indicated the cause of death. This woman did not die in a car accident. She had been hit at least six times with a hard, blunt object. The medical examiner was also able to determine that she was dead before she fell into the river. Someone attempted to hide her body by pushing their vehicle into the murky depths while the autopsy was being performed. Police conducted a search of the vehicle identification number and learned that the car belonged to David Smith, a nursing home employee who lived not far from the Muskegon River. The discovery of the car and the revelation of David Smith's name shocked the nearby Fremont Police Department nine months earlier, on October 2. had gone to the police station had come to report his wife's disappearance at a time when the police suspected nothing more than a typical domestic dispute and the spouse who was venting he and his wife had had a disagreement and she had left on Friday afternoon on September 30 and had not seen her since Smith told police that his five-year marriage to Hyeyeon, a Korean citizen, had turned sour after their last shouting match, she threw him a plate, then got into his car and drove off after the officer.

I interviewed him, he had not indicated that he should contact family and friends and try to determine if any of them had heard from him and then inform our department, but months passed without any follow-up from David Smith or any sign of the missing woman or her car When detectives checked on Smith, they were shocked at what they found, police learned through interviews with friends and family that Smith was not acting like a grieving spouse just four days after reporting his wife missing, He had filed for divorce. He had been actively dating since then and wasted no time pawning Hyeyeon's jewelry.

Clearly Smith did not expect to hear from Hyeyeon again although her behavior was suspicious, not illegal, the situation had all the ingredients of a homicide, except that there was no body. Determined to find Hyeyeon dead or alive in February 1989, four months before her body was recovered, Brookins turned to the Michigan State Police for help. State police worked the phones and contacted friends of the missing woman in the U.S. and Korea; No one had seen her or heard anything about her. Missing for five months since September, investigators were losing hope that Hyeyeon would ever turn up as phone interviews proceeded.

State Police Detective Richard Miller discovered a lie, although David Smith told authorities that he had not heard anything from Hyeyeon and told several friends about her. different story mr. Smith had made statements during her absence that he knew she was alive and well and that she had contact with some mutual friends and other parties, but investigators found no one to confirm Smith's story and he refused to undergo an investigation. lie detector test five months later. On the night of June 23, the suspect's car was pulled from the Muskegon River with a dead woman in it, the wait was finally over after the body was found, detectives obtained a search warrant for David Smith's home, which is now he shared with his new girlfriend, the technicians searched the house.

Looking for the slightest bit of evidence that could tell them if a crime had occurred here, the chances of finding anything were slim, but it had been almost a year since Hyeon's disappearance and there was no guarantee that this was even the crime scene they used. the researchers. An alternative light source to search for clues that a murderer would not think of cleaning. This reflector penetrates the layers of paint, making it easier to search for traces of blood. The beam highlighted some stains on a kitchen wall and beneath them the Police found what they were looking for Behind a freezer, traces of blood splatter stained the wall.

Crime lab personnel further expanded their search into the immediate area and upon pulling their Molina along the wall we discovered a large area of ​​human blood contamination. They believed this was the scene of the attack. From the pattern of blood spatter, investigators were able to corroborate the medical examiner's findings: Someone had been struck numerous times with a blunt object. From the amount of blood under the floor, it was likely that the person had been fatally wounded, but detectives faced a big problem. They were able to eliminate David as the source of the blood, but there were no records of Hyeon's blood type.

She had been in the water too long to determine from her remains. DNA testing at the time was also not sensitive enough to be an abuse. He was severely beaten in this kitchen, but detectives still couldn't present an airtight murder case to arrest Smith. Investigators needed some hard evidence to link him to Hyeon's murder and to catch his suspect. Police hope to catch Smith in the very lies he had told. Several people he knew Hyeyeon was alive in January, if the police could prove that she had been in the water before them, they could prove that Smith had intentionally concealed the crime, but they had a big hurdle to overcome.

We were able to show the cause of death, but we could not determine from its state of preservation exactly when he died. Miller had an idea, he remembered that when they pulled the car out of the water they had removed the cocoons from the windshield and fender, he knew that Insects are useful in determining the time of death on land. Could they do the same thing in the water to link David Smith to the death of his wife? Detectives in western Michigan needed to determine how long his body had been in the river. The only clue to him was a dick.

Police turned to forensic entomologist Richard Merritt to see if he could learn anything from this unlikely witness. When I received the samples from Detective Miller, I saw that they were black flies and black flies are a group that I have been working on for the past. 20 years, so I knew right away that there was something there that could identify and probably give more information that they didn't have about the merit of the case. It would depend on your knowledge of the life cycle of black flies to calculate where in the car you crashed. water like all insects the black fly goes through four stages of life the first stage is the egg black flies in the Muskegon River hatch in November or December and then develop into worm-like larvae black fly larvae remain in that stage and they grow during the winter in the river on any substrate to which they can adhere, it could be leaves, it could be rocks or in this case it was a car.

In April or May, the larvae entered the pupil stage, built cocoons around themselves and remained inactive until late. In May or early June when they emerge as adult flies to begin the life cycle again, the presence of cocoons on the car's upper yawns told Merritt that the vehicle had to have entered the water no later than November for that particular species was found in the car at the end of June, as it was the immature stage it had to occur throughout the winter in the car in the river, otherwise we would not have had that particular species.

The findings demonstrated to Detective Miller that David Smith had completely fabricated stories about his wife's whereabouts since her disappearance, he said. she was seen in january, the cunt said she had been at mr. since November. Smith said he told his co-workers and others that he knew his wife was alive and that she had had contact with several people around the country. Studies of the medical merits of the black fly larvae and the various stages we found in the vehicle prove positively and we assume that this simply was not the case. It is true that she was submerged in the waters of the Skiing River, the insects showed that Smith was undoubtedly lying to cover his tracks and apparently his were not the only ones when the news of the murder investigation came to light, the companion of work told police that a month before Hyeon's disappearance, David had been trying to find a hitman.

Police subpoenaed Smith's phone records. In September there were an unusually high number of calls to two numbers in Pittsburgh, one was the dry cleaning plant where his father worked and the other traced back to the home of one of the father's co-workers, Kenny Lamont Radomir, when investigators When LED Amir was confronted with evidence being held against his acquaintance David Smith, Vladimir Crumble told police that Smith had offered him $5,000 to kill his wife when he hired Vladimir Smith. Smith's marriage was solid, but he was already paying alimony to a first wife and didn't want another responsibility. He hired the boy Amir to kill the victim with a dose of bad heroin, but the plan didn't work, so Smith beat her to death with a wooden statue of Smith and Lattimer.

He then put her in her car and pushed it into the river thanks to the improbable testimony of an empty cocoon. Smith was arrested in December 1989, a jury found him guilty of murder and sentenced him to 15 to 20 years in prison for his role in the murder and conspiracy. Kenny Lamont Latimer received twenty to sixty years and Smith's father received three. and a half to five unlikely black fly testimony thwarted David Smith's plot to cover up his wife's murder in Dana Point California detectives would rely on more unlikely evidence to link a killer to his actions over the years Janet Overton, 46 years old, a civil servant and her health was deteriorating although she was dizzy and Lou was determined not to disappoint Hill Nestico one morning in January 1988 was looking forward to a family outing. she in the Pacific Ocean she never made it past the driveway.

Janet's husband, Richard, called the paramedics, but Janet could no longer receive help. Within a few hours she was dead. The autopsy that followed could do nothing to shed light on the cause of Janet Overton's death. A routine scan of her blood and tissue analyzes were performed to find commonly used substances. All conventional over-the-counter or prescription medications that had contributed to her death were eliminated. Her strange illness seemed to be as much of a mystery in death as she had been in life for four years. Overton suffered from weight loss, stomach pains, tingling fingers and a rust-colored rash.

None of the specialists could make a diagnosis despite extensive testing for viral infections, allergies, bacterial problems. Anything that could explain the strange illness called toxicologist Paul Sedgwick was completely baffled. They looked left and right, there are stacks of records a couple of feet high, and as far as I can see, they never found a specific cause for any of the symptoms they found. All they knew was that Janet Overton had been devastated from the inside out after her death blood and tissue samples were stored in the coroner's office the body was cremated her death might have remained a medical curiosity but then a telephone tip to the Lt.

Tim Carney of the Orange County Sheriff's Department turned it into a homicide investigation six months after Janet Overton's death, Richard Overton's first wife, Dorothy, told deputies to take a good look at her ex-husband's past. . Her daughter had made a strange discovery while she was visiting the house ofOverton. While going through some of Richard's things, he found a syringe, rubber gloves and a mascara tube, which he reported to his mother, who contacted the police. She dug through 20 years of records to uncover the Overton family secret. Dorothy Boyer told us that after divorcing her husband around 1967, there were a number of years in which she suspected that her husband had been poisoning her as the second Mrs.

Overton Dorothy's health declined between 1967 and 1973 she would become violently ill without explanation she was dizzy her mouth tasted like metal one day she noticed a strong sulfuric smell coming from her shampoo the same smell emanated from some of her food she began to suspect that Richard who had access to his house even after his divorce he was trying to kill her to be safe she set up a trap with the help of the Sheriff's Department Richard for his first wife Dorothy devised a plan to see if he was poisoning her she cleaned a new coffee can with isopropyl alcohol and then marked the lid to see if it had been tampered with.

The rest would be up to Richard. After three days, she discovered that someone had opened the lid. Fingerprints taken from the can were compared to those taken by Richard. When he applied for a municipal job, they met without the permission of his ex-wife. Richard Overton snuck into his house, went into the closets, and mixed some reddish powder into his coffee. When the contents were analyzed, researchers discovered a strong-smelling mineral called selenium. Selenium is an element that in small quantities is necessary for good nutrition and health in large quantities it is poisonous Richard was questioned. He initially denied poisoning Dorothy, but when faced with their evidence he confessed that Dorothy agreed to drop the charges as long as Richard stayed away from her.

Of his life now, 20 years later, Richard Overton faced another round of questions about the poisoning of his second wife, Janet, but before detectives could pursue him, they needed to discover whether selenium poisoning had contributed to Janet Overton's death. On paper, the two ladies. . Overton seemed to have suffered from the same undiagnosed ailment according to Lieutenant Kearney, it seemed like history was repeating itself. What we looked at was comparing Dorothy Boyer's medical history from the late 1960s and early 1970s to Janet Overton's medical history in the 1980s and what she saw was almost a mirror copy of the symptomatology of Dorothy Boyer's classic heavy metal poisoning and now the police wondered if the mascara that Richards' daughter found in her house contained selenium in a simple selenium test the questioned sample dissolves in a test tube hydrochloric acid and other chemicals are added if the solution turns red, indicating that selenium is present.

Tests on the mascara showed that it contains selenium. Detectives contacted the manufacturer of the mascara and discovered that selenium is not an ingredient in any of their cosmetics, if it was found in the product, it had to have been added after its purchase, if high amounts of the mineral could also be detected. In samples from the victim's body, investigators would have a solid basis in their case against Richard Overton, to the investigators' dismay, no abnormal amount of selenium was found in any of the victim's tissue samples. The investigation was stopped dead, but would not be closed for long thanks to a fortunate discovery in the laboratory of the open vial of Janet Overton's stomach contents.

Sedgwick was overcome by the bitter smell. Almonds are the signature of a poison much deadlier than selenium and I knew instantly that there was cyanide even 2 feet away. Only 50% of the population is genetically predisposed to smelling cyanide and because the original test was performed under a smoking hood, the smell was easy. lost if it had not been for Sedgewick's chance discovery, it is likely that the cyanide would have remained hidden forever. We did not detect cyanide initially because it is one of the least common compounds we see, requires special testing, and is not In the general outcry that was initially called, Sedgwick determined that samples of Janet Overton's blood, brain, and stomach contained cyanide, even a small dose of the white powder can be lethal.

A year after Janet Overton's death, her cause of death was ruled acute cyanide poisoning to Detective Carney. Richard Overton seemed to be the most likely suspect, but poisoning cases are notoriously difficult to solve. Forensic methods can be used to identify the deadly toxin, but are of little help in linking the poisoner to the body. Lieutenant Kearney knew he had an uphill battle testing a poison. The case can be difficult as time passes, it is still necessary to analyze the aspects of the investigation that include not only physical evidence and we are talking about years of poisoning, and we also have to analyze the motive and the opportunity and, so far, the investigators .

I hadn't discovered nor was it true that Richard Overton had a history of manipulation, but in person he didn't seem like the murderous type. He was a brilliant and accomplished man who had nothing to gain from the death of his wife. There was no financial reason. Janet's life insurance policy had been cancelled. did not pay his son nor was there a history of violence the 15-year marriage was loving and understanding Richard said that at first the detectives did not let on that they knew about his attempts to poison his first wife, they simply asked Richard who might have tried it To poisoning Janet, he mentioned that his wife had enemies due to her involvement in local politics.

Janet had also struggled with depression. She couldn't rule out the possibility that she had committed suicide. Then, five hours after the interview, the police dropped the bombshell. I faced it. with the 1973 investigation in which he poisoned his ex-wife, he denied it to me until I showed him the documentation of the report questioned by his shady past. Overton abruptly ended the conversation and refused to contribute further to the investigation. Detectives had caught Overton in a daring lie—he confronted him—during an interview with business partner Mel Hubbard. They caught him at another Overton and told detectives he didn't have access to the cyanide.

Hubbard told a contradictory story. Hubbard informed us that he, in fact, uses cyanide and extracts gold and silver from mineral samples and mining operations and maintains a sign that he had on hand at his residence, Mr. Hubbard also informed me that Richard had the keys to his residence and that he would look after his house when Hubbard was away during his mining operations. Finding out that Richard had had access to cyanide was like putting him in the same room as the murder weapon to place it firmly. Under his control, the detectives would need to find a motive; without it, they would have little chance of bringing this case to court and even less chance of a conviction armed with a search warrant.

The sheriff descended on the suspect's home, confiscating Richards' journals along with his computer and 131 floppy disks. Richard's children had told investigators that he kept a voluminous journal, first writing long-headed notes and then writing more detailed versions. on his computer, finding any confession in the suspect's own words would be the detectives' last chance to present their case. Careful inspection showed that some of the writing had been tampered with and the trees had been whitewashed. The page corresponding to the date of Janet's death had been removed using an ultraviolet light to see through the White House. Investigators discovered that Richard suspected Janet of having an affair.

There was a possible motive, but investigators needed more to prove it. Detectives hope to find answers in Richard's computer files. They spent hours scanning the hard drive and opening floppy disk after floppy disk, but came up empty-handed. It looked like Richard had erased or written almost over it. his entire electronic diary, but then detectives noticed something strange at the bottom of one of the documents, there were some jumbled lines of text and in the text there were phrases that suggested diary entries, maybe the data hadn't disappeared after all , but how to recover them. Computer detectives in Orange County, California, believed Richard Overton's computer would link him to the poisoning death of his wife Janet, but Overton had wiped his hard drive and floppy disk data recovery experts were called in to launch the investigation. first computer forensic investigation in Orange County history.

Overtoun had cleaned files. Computer experts like William Riddle knew that there was a good chance that the information was still in the computer. What most people don't know is that once you delete a file from a computer or delete the information that was in the file is actually still there on the computer, it's just that the computer has set off a little flag. or a character and has told the table of contents section of the computer that this space is now available for storage, so something in this space can be overwritten within a computer media is stored in files as magnetic information, Sometimes that information overlaps, the process is like writing and rewriting on the same sheet of paper.

Riddle began his work by copying all of Overton's computer files so he wouldn't risk losing the data forever. In his investigation, he installed a specialized computer program on his systems and then told about the grueling process of opening files one by one. the time. The program removes layers of text, leaving fragments of documents that were once stored there. It took him hundreds of hours to expose the file. A tangle of plain text, but that was just the beginning, using the handwritten diary as a reference, the technicians then sorted through the files, reconstructing Richard Overton's diary word for word from the Jumbo, the technicians were finally able to put the book back together. secret diary of Richard Overton and with it his intention. kill his wife, the recovery of Overton's damning words would prove to be a turning point in the case, although the suspect had proclaimed that he and the victim had a loving marriage, his own words extracted from electronic oblivion would prove otherwise, of In fact, there was a point in the albums where Richard Overton declared that his love/hate relationship with his wife had turned purely into hate and that something was going to happen very soon, this was just a few days before his death.

On January 24, investigators surmise that Richard was angry about his wife's infidelity and resentful that she had achieved political success without a formal education as he had done with his first wife, added selenium to beauty products and foods. of his wife to cause a long-term illness, at some point he stopped giving her He gave her selenium and it was eliminated from her body, then he administered a single lethal dose of cyanide to kill her. He thought that no one would ever be able to catch him and he was almost right if it had not been for his own writings, the detectives would have had only their suspicions after years of investigation they now had motive and opportunity the information recovered from the computer disks convinced the jury that Richard Overton had plotted for years to kill his wife after only six hours of deliberation he was found guilty of first degree murder he was sentenced to life in prison without parole even in the wasteland of computer files beer bottles and insect cocoons an enthusiastic investigator can find a murder conviction the most important clues are sometimes waiting to be discovered from the most unlikely sources