Forensic Files | Cement The Case | FULL EPISODE | HD | True Crime Procedure Investigation Drama | Forensic Files

[Music] Shirley and Ed Andronich were regulars in a neighborhood bar a few blocks from
their home in Winnipeg, Canada. On one of their nights out, Ed decided to leave early. Shirley wanted to stay.
There was a brief argument and Ed went home alone. It was surely Andron Witch's last night
alive. [Music] Ed and Shirley Andronowich had been married for 20 years. Ed was a
construction worker. Shirley was a housewife. They lived in the Fort Rouge section of
Winnipeg, Canada with their three teenage daughters. They went out that night together and
just as usual, they went out for a good time. And I guess a few hours later, my dad came home. He was tired. He didn't
want to be there anymore. And she just wanted to stay. And his friends are there, so she stayed with his friends.
>> Shirley left the bar around midnight and walked home. >> I heard her come home that night.
She was by herself. I don't know if she was drunk, but you could tell that she had been drinking.
>> Ed and Shirley argued again when she came home. Ed said Shirley went for a walk to calm
down, but never returned. The next morning, an employee at a nearby high school discovered a woman's
body in the schoolyard. >> It was very gruesome scene. There was some very senior homicide
detectives that were there that were a little taken aback of uh of what was discovered there.
They came to the door and I went and got my father and I went upstairs. Then I got called downstairs and uh
the uh the police looked at my father and said, "Do you want to tell her?" And he just kind of hung his head and
kind of nodded. And uh they told me they told me that you know we found your mother and
she's been killed. Shirley Adronowich had been sexually assaulted, beaten, and mutilated with
bite wounds over much of her body. It appeared that she had been strangled, then hit with a large piece of concrete.
there was the destruction of the facial features and there was an obvious sexual
assault had taken place. So this this was a uh a definite uh uh gruesome uh scene.
>> I've been a prosecutor for 23 years and I have never seen any case with as much
brutality to a human body. In a written statement, Ed Andronowich admitted that he argued with his wife that night, but
said he had no idea what happened to her after she left their home. Homicide investigators Bob Marshall and
Ron Oliver decided to question Ed Andronich again to learn more about what happened on the night Shirley
Andranowich was murdered. At one point he was sort of asked in a in a sort of a helpful sort of a question to him if he
had any idea who may have killed his wife. >> 12:30 in the morning. >> The answer Andronowich gave was a
bombshell. He said he was the murderer. >> He actually had some knowledge of some
of the aspects of the crime. For example, he knew where the body was. He knew that it was in behind the Grand
Park High School. And >> I was angry with the with the police. I mean, they thought it was my dad. And I
was angry with people who thought it could even be my father because I knew it wasn't. And
not only should they just, you know, knowing my father, know that he could not have done that, but trust my word,
even though I was only 14. >> To make absolutely sure, police questioned Andronic again on the
following day, and again, he confessed. Ed Andronic was charged with secondderee
murder. Ed Andronovich was held in a Winnipeg jail after confessing to the murder of
his wife. Although parts of his confession were inconsistent with the murder scene, Andranovich said he had
been drinking on the night of the murder and his memory wasn't entirely clear. Police began their forensic
investigation by turning to Dick Monroe, a forensic geologist with the Winnipeg Police Department.
The murder weapon was a 55 lb concrete block found near the body. >> His trunk was full of concrete
particles. That was exciting at the outset because he saw all this concrete, but the trick was, can you match the
concrete to the block? Can you put that block in his trunk? >> The process was tedious since there were
hundreds of particles recovered from Andron Witch's trunk. All very small >> because the murder weapon was rough.
because it was a broken piece of concrete. You're looking for like a jigsaw puzzle, a piece that would fit
onto it. Could you get a physical match? >> But Monroe was unable to find a match.
Next, police sent photographs of the victim's bite wounds to Dr. Davidu, a forensic odontologist at the Bureau of
Legal Dentistry in Vancouver. Ed Andronowich wore dentures, which were also sent for analysis. The question
that came up obviously was can artificial teeth in the form of a complete upper and lower denture
actually bite hard enough to remove human tissue. >> Dr. Suite performed a metric analysis
measuring the width and arch of Adonich's dentures to see if they were similar to the bite wounds on Shirley
Andronich's body. But Dr. could find few similarities. I think at that point we were all
leerary of of whether we had the right person or not. Uh I know I had a question in my own mind as to whether we
had the right person. >> During Shirley Andron Witch's autopsy, the medical examiner had swabbed the
areas around the bite wounds for possible forensic evidence. The swabs were rolled in a moistened
filter paper and the paper turned white. A positive presumptive test for the presence of saliva.
The next step was to determine the blood type of the saliva. >> We had a new technique at our disposal
called Eliza which allowed us to uh type saliva in the [ __ ] blood typing factors.
>> The ELISA test revealed that the perpetrator had type B blood. This did not match Edanovich's blood type.
>> Therefore, Mr. Andronovich being of blood type A could not have left the B type saliva found on the swabs from the
breast. Thereby meaning he did not he could not have been in my mind the murderer.
After two months in prison for a murder he confessed to but apparently didn't commit, Andronovich was released.
>> Feel better today? >> You happy to be outside? >> Not saying anything. >> But why had he confessed?
>> Andronovich back at that time had a terrible problem with alcohol. And when the detectives interviewed him and they
asked him such questions as, "Did you have a fight with your wife last night?" he responded and said, "Well, I might
have." And then when they went on and pressed him and said, "Well, did you hit her?" He said, "I might have."
Memory lapses while drinking are called blackouts and happen because alcohol interferes with the neurotransmissions
that form memory in the brain. And when they come out of the blackout, it's the realization, the recollection
uh all of a sudden that uh something bad may well have happened. And it's very common for alcoholics to feel remorse,
uh express guilt, uh even u imagine that they have done terrible things during the blackout period.
>> Now the police investigation had to start all over again. The murder weapon was a 55lb piece of
concrete to forensic geologist Richard Monroe. It appeared to be about 5 years old and looked as if it had once been
part of a bumper block used in parking lots. Monroe decided to visit the murder scene
to survey the area. He went around midnight to evaluate the scene the way it appeared at the time of
the murder. Standing where the body was discovered, Monroe wondered what exactly took place.
If the victim had been strangled and was unconscious, what happened next? Where did the concrete block come from?
Then Monroe saw it. An illuminated area about 500 ft away. In the shadows, Monroe found a piece of
concrete. About 12 ft away was another piece. Both were similar to the murder weapon.
The killer had been drawn to the area by lighting, his only visual cue. [Music] [Music]
To prove his theory, Monroe needed to find out whether the murder weapon and the pieces in the schoolyard had once
been part of the same block. [Music] Monroe performed a petrographic examination.
Petrography is the term for identification of minerals. [Music] Concrete is made of sand, cement, water,
and pieces of stone which is poured into molds to form the bumper blocks. As it dries, the mixed design settles
into a distinctive pattern which is visually different in each concrete block. When Monroe compared the murder
weapon to the other concrete pieces found in the schoolyard, the mixed design and position of the stones were
identical. >> The fit was um almost like a glove. uh when you get uh broken aggregates in
your your sand and gravel inside your concrete, it'll break and it's usually an irregular surface and you'll have
some they call class small stones that will break out of the concrete mold and what you're trying to do is fit that in.
And it's not just one fit, it's a collection of fits. Monroe suspected that the murder weapon might contain a
fingerprint, but lifting a print from a porous surface like concrete is extremely difficult.
>> It's almost like uh a fingerprint is sitting on top of a bed of nails. So your latent material which is very very
thin is sitting on top of something that is very very tenuous. As a last resort,
Monroe decided to try a technique usually used to find prints on non-porous surfaces called superlue
fuming. Superglue is made of cyanoacrylate esester. A drop of superlue is placed into a
chamber along with the item containing the print and the chamber is heated for up to 6 hours. By heating the superlue,
fumes condense and adhere to biological material such as the oils of a fingerprint.
Under a laser light, the biological material flueses, producing a clear image of the print.
Monroe followed these steps with the concrete, placing both the superglue and the concrete in a vacuum chamber.
[Music] But the color of the concrete is the same as the cyanoacrylate. In order to see a print, Monroe needed
to find a chemical that would attach itself to the cyanoacrylate. After a number of tries, Monroe finally
found one that worked. It was a biological stain known as Sudan black. Monroe found what he was looking for,
the killer's fingerprint, but it was badly smudged. Unfortunately, with the circumstances of
the event, uh, with the end of it being used as a pile driver and, uh, repeated blows on on the victim, uh, there was a
certain amount of slippage taking place with 55 lb block on the on the hands. >> But the discovery of the related
concrete pieces in the schoolyard was important. It revealed that it was a crime of opportunity and that the
perpetrator may have been on foot. But a full year passed and the trail was turning cold.
One year after the crime, local television stations and newspapers carried stories about the unsolved
murder, hoping to jog someone's memory or conscience. The media campaign led to the break police were hoping for.
[Music] One year after the brutal murder of Shirley Andronovich, an informant came forward saying that
his roommate had returned home on the night of the murder with stains on his jeans and boots that looked like blood.
I'm going to take a shot. They lived in an apartment building across the street from the murder scene.
Mark German was a 29-year-old unemployed construction worker. The informant also
revealed that German had burned his clothes the day after the murder. Samples of German's blood and saliva
were sent to the forensic lab. Tests revealed that Mark German had type B blood, the same blood type as the
saliva found on the victim. Photographs and impressions of German's teeth were also sent for analysis.
German had a distinctive wear pattern that had ground the biting edge of the upper and lower teeth into a flattened
surface. There were also some unusual spaces between the teeth and several chipped areas had not been restored.
>> As a result of some of the testing that I did and the comparison with the suspect's teeth, I was able to determine
that his teeth were in fact consistent with causing these marks. Or another way to explain that is his teeth could not
be excluded in this case as causing those marks. Finally, police had a shopping list they
found in the schoolyard on the night of the murder. It was a big schoolyard, and
police weren't sure whether the shopping list had any connection to the murder. On the shopping list was a fingerprint.
That print belonged to Mark Gar, placing him in the schoolyard around the time of
the murder. After initially denying he was involved, Mark German eventually confessed.
German said he was at the same bar as Shirley and Ed Andronic on the night of the murder, but he didn't speak to them.
[Music] He said he ran into Shirley Andranowitch later near the high school while she was
out walking. >> Can I see you at the bar before? >> German said they talked and had
consensual sex. [Music] German said he killed Shirley Andronich when she threatened to tell her husband.
German said he emptied the contents of her purse to make the scene appear to be a robbery.
But investigators didn't believe German's entire story. Staff Sergeant Dan Ron is a blood
spatter expert who studied the crime scene photos and noticed an inconsistency in German's story.
The distance blood travels from a head wound struck by an object the size and weight of a cement block is 10 to 12 ft,
creating medium velocity impact spatter. On the papers found within 10 to 12 feet
of Shirley Andronich's body, Ron discovered medium velocity impact spatter. >> The pictures of the evidence actually
showed that the contents of her purse had been strewn around at some location in a position where they were exposed to
the bloodletting, >> which meant that Shirley Andronich's purse was ransacked before she was
murdered, not afterwards. Mark German was convicted of firstdegree murder and sentenced to life in prison
with no chance of parole for 25 years. >> He took my mother. I was 14 years old.
It's it's almost half my life, you know, I've been without her now. And you can't I don't know how I'm ever
supposed to forgive somebody for doing such a terrible thing to me. [Music] There isn't a punishment severe enough
that we can give this guy for taking something like that from us. Not a day goes by when she doesn't come into my
mind. I just think about what it would have been like if she was still here. I miss her.
[Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Season 4 Episode 4 | In 1990, Shirley Andronowich's body was found mutilated. Eyewitnesses told police she had a fight with her husband the night before. But forensic evidence proved that he had nothing to do with her death.

Brief Summary

Shirley Andronowich was murdered, Ed confessed, but Mark German was later convicted based on forensic evidence and a confession.

Key points

The Last Night. Shirley and Ed Andronich have a fateful night out that ends in tragedy.
The Gruesome Discovery. Shirley's body is found in a schoolyard, shocking the community.
Confession Bombshell. Ed Andronovich confesses to the murder of his wife, shocking investigators.
The Real Killer Revealed. Mark German confesses to killing Shirley Andronich, but inconsistencies arise.
Life Sentence. Mark German is convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

There isn’t a punishment severe enough that we can give this guy.

A victim's family member expressing their grief and anger.

20:41WatchOct 15, 2025

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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