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On June 21st, 1978, 22-year-old Carla Brown was found brutally murdered in the basement of her
home. >> It looked as if the killer had committed the perfect crime, and police could find very little
evidence. But years later, investigators noticed something on a crime scene photograph
that had previously been overlooked. The killer had left behind a clue. [Music] 22-year-old Carla Brown and her fianceé,
a man we'll call Mark Hart, had recently purchased a home together in Wood River,
Illinois. Although the couple had a rocky past, friends and family saw this as the
beginning of a new phase in their relationship. Carla Brown was a beautiful little girl,
grew up into a beautiful young woman, was very popular in in her hometown in the Wood River area, had taken some
college classes, had been a high school cheerleader, was one of those girls that
everybody knew. Girls liked her, guys liked her. Uh she was just one of those people that was special and everybody
recognized that. On June 21st, Carla Brown took the day off from work to unpack.
Yes, the house is great. >> And spoke to one of her friends on the telephone. >> Maybe we can have you over for dinner.
>> They had talked for a few minutes. In fact, we even talked about getting together later on that afternoon.
>> Wait a second. I just heard something at the door. >> And Carla interrupted the conversation
and said, "Listen, I'll have to call you back. I'll see you later. There's somebody at the door." And that was the
last uh that her friend ever talked to her. Around 5:30 that afternoon, Carla's fiance and his friend stopped by the
house after work when they walked into the basement, they saw a horrible sight. Carla
>> Carla was lying face down in a bucket of water. >> She had her hands tied behind her. There
was evidence of struggle, a death struggle in the basement uh and a very strong suggestion of a sexual rape. But
investigators were confused about some of the things they saw. There were two men's socks tied around Carla's neck.
They were tied neatly, inconsistent with what you would expect to see in a life and death struggle. The white electrical
cord used to tie the victim's hands was not tight enough to effectively restrain
an individual during an assault. There was too much length of cord behind her to where her hands could come up in
front of her. It would seem like to me that she would have access to the attacker given that much freedom with
the length of rope that was tied between the two wrists. >> She was found wearing a sweater her
fiance said she would never wear in the summer. The top button was fastened. Another inconsistency with a life and
death struggle. The socks around Carla's neck were from inside the home. The make
to one was found in her fiance's dresser. The other was under the sofa in the adjacent room. Under the sofa was a
puddle of water tinted with blood. The sofa cushions were also wet and there were blood drops on the floor near the
sofa. In the rafters was a coffee corff from the kitchen. To homicide investigators, it looked as if the
coffee corff had been used to rinse blood from the sofa cushions. The attack occurred near the sofa and the body was
later moved into an adjacent room and placed into the barrel of water. The crime scene staging told investigators
that the perpetrator spent a great deal of time inside the house after the murder. But who knew that Carla Brown
was home and alone on the day of the murder? And who would have felt free to spend so much time in the home cleaning
up and staging the scene? Police began their investigation with a close look at Carla Brown's fiance.
The autopsy report on Carla Brown indicated death by strangulation. Although she was found nude from the
waist down, there were no signs of sexual assault. Investigators were convinced that the killer spent a great
deal of time in the house after the murder staging the crime scene. I didn't know Mark very well, although
they had dated for a number of years, uh, off and on, and there were times in their relationship that it wasn't great,
but, uh, she seemed to always be crazy about him. Anyway, >> police also questioned two neighbors who
had been sitting in the yard next door on the day Carla and her fiance were moving in.
Hey, Carla. Carla Brown. I'm John Pranty. We went to school together. Remember me?
>> Hi. How are you? [Music] >> Both men had alibis as to where they were on the day of the murder, and they
both willingly took lie detector tests and passed. With no other leads, police asked the
FBI for a psychological profile of the killer and turned to FBI behavioral analyst John Douglas.
>> In my research, we began to break down crimes by disorganized and organized. Disorganized means extremely uh sloppy
carelessness on the part of the offender. Uh the crime could be very very uh impulsive. Organized means that
there's a high degree and high level of criminal sophistication on the part of the subject.
>> To Douglas, this crime scene was disorganized, an indication that the killer was inexperienced and probably
had never killed before. He came to the home with no intention of committing murder, but did so after some sort of
confrontation or rejection. Since he spent so much time inside the home, Douglas believed that he was
familiar with the victim and her routine and might be living in the neighborhood
or very close by. Douglas said the killer was an unmarried white male in his mid to late 20s, high
school educated with a sloppy appearance. The use of electrical cord to tide the victim's hands indicated the
killer had taken shop classes or had vocational training. Douglas also told investigators that
they may have already interviewed the murderer and that he was capable of passing a polygraph test.
>> And then it got kind of spooky. I mean, I was sitting there and I wasn't sure I
was believing what he was saying after a certain point. He started talking about
how this individual would react and what kind of vehicle he'd be driving and he started talking about a Volkswagen.
There was a high probability this guy' be a Volt driving a Volkswagen and that it would be red or orange in
color. This led investigators to focus once again on the two men sitting next door
on the day Carla Brown and her fiance were moving in school together. >> But investigators needed more than just
a psychological profile. They needed hard evidence. Crime scene technician Alva Bush
remained deeply troubled by the Carla Brown murder. For one thing, he and his colleagues could not determine what
caused the wounds on Carla Brown's face and chin. The first real break in the case occurred when Bush attended a
seminar on image enhancement at the University of New Mexico. Dr. Homer Campbell taught that seminar. He worked
for the state of New Mexico as a medical investigator. Dr. Campbell was demonstrating a
photographic technique that uses cameras, monitors, and computers to show details of crime scene photographs that
cannot otherwise be seen. >> This was a technique that had been used for several years both by engineers in
non-destructive testing of materials and also by archaeologists uh looking at aerial photographs to find
uh ancient ruins. After the seminar, Bush told Dr. Campbell about the Carla Brown case.
>> And I said, "Doc, do I have a case for you?" And I told him about the Carla Brown case and that we were never able
to identify what type instrument had damaged her face. I asked him to please send me the photographs uh that they had
uh of the uh deceased person and also to send me an autopsy report. Dr. Campbell used his image enhancement
equipment to look more closely at the crime scene photos of Carla Brown. The system not only improves the contrast of
the photographs, but can also create what appear to be threedimensional views, adding depth to the image. When
Dr. Campbell was through, he knew what caused the injuries to Carla Brown's face.
>> He tells me that maybe the TV tray may have been the instrument that she was hit in the head with. This TV tray was
lying on the floor within three foot of the victim where she had probably been on
the couch, but I had missed it. >> The tray tables were still in storage untouched in the two years since the
murder. In an extraordinary piece of luck, Dr. Campbell found microscopic traces of blood and hair still present
on the tray table. And what Dr. Campbell said next was even more revealing. >> He says, "What about the bite mark?"
And I I said, "Bite mark? What bite mark? What are you talking about?" >> When we looked at the photograph and
went ahead and enhanced it and magnified it. Present on the shoulder was a bite injury on the shoulder. And by looking
at that bite injury, you could actually pick out individual teeth all the way across.
>> I trade that for five eyewitnesses anytime. So eyewitnesses can make mistakes. Things like fingerprints
don't. And it was my understanding that bite marks properly preserved uh with an identified defendant could
give you the defendant as good as a fingerprint. >> The killer had left behind a clue. All
investigators needed now was a suspect. Two years after the brutal murder of 22-year-old Carla Brown, investigators
got the break they needed when a photographic enhancement revealed a bite mark on Carla's shoulder. Police now
turned to the two men sitting in the yard next door when Carla Brown moved into her new home. Both matched the
FBI's behavioral profile of the killer. Police checked their alibis again. Although both had passed the polygraph
tests, police discovered that John Pranty had spoken about the murder to others.
>> John Pranty had mentioned to his friends that he had seen her body that day, that
he had looked over the shoulder of some policemen while they were investigating in the basement, and he described uh the
condition of her body. and he even mentioned that she had bite marks on her neck and collar bone.
>> The police were the only ones inside the house after Carla Brown's body was found.
>> That was a shock to us as police officers because there's no way that he could have known that unless he put the
bite mark there. Also, the information about the location of the body, the way the body was found,
the only way that that would have been known is either to have been there on the investigation
uh or to have put the body there yourself because we never released that information to the public or to the
media. >> Since the bite marks were overlooked during the original autopsy, investigators wanted to make sure
nothing else was missed. So Carla Brown's body was exumed for a second autopsy. This time it was performed by Dr. Mary
Casease, the chief medical examiner for St. Louis County. >> In the original autopsy, um there was
the liature strangulation and the body was examined and for some reason the head was not examined and so I opened
the cranial cavity and there was bruising in the scalp. Somebody struck her on the head. and question is whether
or not for example this blow would cause loss of consciousness. >> Dr. Casease thought that Carla Brown may
have been alive when she was placed in the barrel of water because when she was found there was foam around her mouth
>> because she was in water and she was producing that foam. I feel like there may be some component
of drowning that she was still um even though she'd been strangled that she was still maybe to a minimal degree uh
breathing because I I believe that she may have breathed in some water. >> During the autopsy, more photographs
were taken of the suspected bite wounds which were sent to the New York State Police Forensic Unit for an independent
evaluation. Prosecutors wanted to make sure that the mark on Carla Brown's neck was in fact a
bite wound. >> In my opinion, the pattern injury uh on Carla Brown's neck had all the
characteristics that a bite mark would have. >> Dr. Lavine was asked to compare the bite
wound to three different dental casts prosecutors sent along for analysis. Dr. Lavine had no idea to whom the casts
belonged. After making wax impressions of the models, Dr. Lavine concluded that two of
the models were not consistent with the bite wound. >> I took the third model and examined all
the uh individual characteristics that those teeth would have caused. compared those characteristics with the
characteristics on the clarified photograph of Carla Brown's neck uh that I had and came to the opinion that only
that model was consistent with having caused uh that pattern injury or that bite mark.
>> He measured the teeth. He went back to the photograph. He turned them different
ways. He held them up in the air. Finally, he laid the dental impressions on the table and he pointed to him and
he said, "That's your man." >> Model number three belonged to John Pranty. Interestingly, Pranty also matched John
Douglas's psychological profile. He was in his late 20s, had a history of troubled relationships with women. He
attended industrial art school and had a sloppy, unckempt appearance. Pranty spent a great deal of time in the
neighborhood, often visiting his friend who lived next door to Carla Brown. And just as John Douglas had predicted,
Pranty had passed an earlier polygraph test, the most unusual aspect of Douglas's profile was the prediction
that Pranty would be driving a red folkswagen. Uh, where that came from, only John
could say, but in fact did turn out that the individual did have a Volkswagen. >> Prosecutors believe that when Carla
Brown's fiance left for work, John Pratty walked over and knocked on the door. >> Maybe we can have you over for dinner.
>> Carla was talking on the telephone. >> I understand. >> Hello. >> Wait a second. I just heard something at
the door. Let me call you back. [Music] What do you want? >> Need some help moving in?
>> I want you to leave. Come on. >> Why don't we talk a little? >> I want you to leave now.
>> There was some kind of argument or struggle, possibly after she had rejected Tranty's sexual advances. He
forced her into the basement and hit her with a tray table. At some point, he bit her on the
shoulder and strangled her. Afterwards, he staged the scene to make it appear to be a sexual assault.
But when he changed her clothes, he made the mistake of fastening the top button,
the first clue that the scene had been staged. He tied her hands with electrical cord,
wrapped the socks around her neck, [Applause] and placed her into the water while she
was unconscious but still alive. Pranty tried to remove the blood stains on the sofa with water he carried from
the kitchen in the coffee carff which he left in the rafters above the sofa. The clothes Carla was wearing that day
were never found. Pranty may have taken them as a trophy. In July of 1983, John Pranty was tried and convicted of
firstdegree murder and was sentenced to 75 years in the state penitentiary. After five long years, Carla Brown's
family finally had some closure. I would like to tell him that he he took away a
very wonderful person um who had a lot to offer and a and a family who cared very much about Carla and that it was
very very selfish of him to to not consider uh another person's life uh as as something as something that can just be
thrown thrown away uh on a on a particular day. >> He got caught because the techniques of
investigation and law enforcement completely overpowered him. He got away with the crime because he was lucky. He
got caught because law enforcement changed his luck. Don Weber along with journalist Charles
Bosworth chronicled the many ups and downs of this case in a best-selling book, Silent Witness.
>> Carla's family was so intrigued by the pipe mark evidence that uh she embroidered a little tapestry that she
presented to Don Weber as a token of her appreciation. And it offers the slogan that Don had used that you can lie
through your teeth, but your teeth don't lie. And around the border is the uh pattern of rectangle space rectangle
space triangle which is the bitemark pattern that Don had proved had been made by John Pranty.
[Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Season 4 Episode 8 | Mark Fair left for work and his fiancee, Karla Brown, stayed home. Later, he found her dead. During the autopsy, bite marks on her body were reexamined and forensic odontology identified the killer.

Brief Summary

The murder of Carla Brown led to the capture of John Pranty through forensic evidence and psychological profiling.

Key points

The Murder of Carla Brown. 22-year-old Carla Brown was found brutally murdered in her home, leading to a complex investigation.
Psychological Profile of the Killer. FBI analyst John Douglas provides insights into the killer's behavior, suggesting familiarity with the victim.
Breakthrough Evidence. Two years after the murder, a bite mark found on Carla's shoulder leads to a suspect.
John Pranty's Conviction. John Pranty was tried and convicted of first-degree murder, receiving a 75-year sentence.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

He took away a very wonderful person.

Carla's family reflects on her loss.

19:30WatchOct 15, 2025

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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