Forensic Files (HD) - Season 13, Episode 14 - Calculated Coincidence - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[Music] up next a young woman is dead and the neighbor says the killer is a window peeper she was uncomfortable
about that she does not feel like it was a very safe place i had no idea how this could happen despite the
evidence the case can't be solved we're working on it but we don't have any viable leads at this time until police
find evidence their suspect had killed before i don't think he was finished i don't think he would have stopped
[Music] for stephanie bennett graduating from roanoke college was only the start
armed with the business degree she took a job with ibm and was anxious to finally earn some
money this was kind of her first foray into the world she was really starting her life she was a
young woman with a lot of potential she was excited about being on her own but after working there for about a year
one day she just didn't show up she was a very responsible young woman she was somebody
that always showed up to work on time when nobody could get in touch with her everybody got concerned so family
members asked her apartment manager to check up on her immediately i've got a dead person is
the person conscious she says stephanie was found dead on the bedroom floor she had a very dark
indention around her neck which is obviously due to strangulation stephanie didn't have an enemy in the
world it just i mean flabbergasted i had no idea what how this could happen or why it would
have to be stephanie it just there was no reasoning for any of this at all there was no sign of forced entry
into her ground floor apartment although the killer might have come in through her bedroom window
the window screen had been removed from that window which would indicate that somebody
had possibly gone in through that window nothing was stolen but some items in the
apartment a phone a water glass and a box of tissues were found in the closet of the second bedroom
the closet itself almost looked like something maybe somebody had been in that closet and waiting
the killer was apparently wearing gloves they told me there were no fingerprints
at all at the crime scene of anybody other than the ones that belonged in the apartment
outside in a line of bushes near the apartment investigators found items that might
have been linked to the murder there was six pair of women thong underwear strode in those bushes at that point it
appeared that um this crime may be sexually motivated in nature none of these items however was
stephanie's the medical examiner estimated that stephanie was killed sometime around midnight investigators learn
that stephanie was on the phone with her boyfriend walter robinson around 8 pm so walter was eliminated as
a suspect since he was a four hour drive away from stephanie's apartment and had witnesses to prove it stephanie
she was certainly a low-risk victim she didn't engage in anything that could be characterized as
risky behavior just a normal girl from a very good family then police learned of an email
stephanie sent several weeks before her murder she'd emailed my sister and said she was
afraid but she never conveyed that to me stephanie was afraid because a window peeper had been seen around her
apartment building there had been a report of the peeping tom and when she found out about that the
peeping tom had been looking into her window she didn't see it but a neighbor saw it and reported it
this alleged window peeper was now the prime suspect i remember how steph was never worried
about what others thought of her and live life in such a free-spirited way she was a dependable friend
and a beautiful person the murder of 23 year old stephanie bennett was difficult
to solve because it appeared there was no connection between stephanie and her assailant
you know i've been in this market for 13 years and i've covered a lot of murder cases
and i don't think there was ever a case that caused so much fear and concern in the community as this one
every day when i walk into my office i see stephanie's picture and it's a picture that was taking of
her smiling of her having fun with her friends having no idea that she would be dying at the hands of
someone i believe was truly evil during stephanie's autopsy the medical examiner found
signs of sexual assault and recovered a dna sample this sample was compared to dna samples of all
criminal offenders in both the state and national dna databases there were no hits there was not a lot
of other evidence that was found at the crime scene it appeared almost like what the suspect
brought with him he took away with him investigators also compared the dna to every male
who had any contact with stephanie more than 250 people and no one matched police spoke with
dozens of people who lived in the apartments near stephanie bennett's many reported seeing a tall thin man
wearing a sweatshirt loitering in the area one of stephanie's neighbors saw this
person looking into stephanie's window a police artist drew a sketch and released it to newspapers and local
television stations phone calls began pouring in because it was a high profile case here at that time numerous leads
came in but after tracking down hundreds of leads only one appeared promising a convicted
sex offender who lived in the area we were able to go out and make contact with this individual looked very
promising early on and got a dna sample our hopes were really up at that point and we got the call back from the state
bureau of investigation that it was not a dna match we were very disappointed with nothing
else to lose investigators went back and re-interviewed the people in stephanie's
neighborhood who claimed they saw the window paper in the area this time one neighbor reported
some new information we actually had one that reported seeing this peeping tom walking a dog that
appeared to be a large rottweiler type dog and that he saw him walking him from bridgeport apartments over into dominion
apartments stephanie bennett lived in the bridgeport apartments so we took our focus from bridgeport
over to the dominion apartments apartment managers there remembered a tenant with a big
black dog who had since moved away their very words to us was we know who you're talking about
his name is drew plant and he is a strange bird thirty-five-year-old drew planten had no
criminal history wasn't married and worked analyzing fertilizer ingredients at the north
carolina department of agriculture very reclusive individual later we went and interviewed people who knew him and
had worked with him and he was just very much to himself very few friends when police spoke with planton at his
workplace he claimed he'd never before heard the name stephanie bennett there wasn't many people within a
50-mile radius that was not familiar with this case planton refused to go to the police
station so officers made an appointment to meet him at his apartment the next day we told him that we would
see him at five o'clock and drew planting started shaking uncontrollably like he was freezing cold and it was so
bad that i looked back at him and said are you okay and he said i'm fine at that meeting planting denied any
involvement in stephanie's murder and refused to provide a dna sample we always said maybe when that first
person tells us no that would be our man but police had no evidence against plantain and he bore no
resemblance to the composite sketch so they couldn't get a court-ordered dna sample
for now it appeared police had hit another dead end police had no probable cause to force
drew clanton to provide his dna sample for testing but one of their scientific experts had
a suggestion i said we need to get a sample that was more intimate from him you need to get a sample which he had
which he had touched or used such as a cigarette butt or a toothbrush or an item of clothing
something like that but that wouldn't be easy it seemed planta knew he was being
followed surveillance was conducted on drew plant for a week at work and at home and we could not
obtain any dna from that week's worth of surveillance ultimately investigators followed planton to a
restaurant but plantain was one step ahead of them we ain't nothing but finger foods when
he would get up to go to the bathroom he would take his straw out of his cup and put his straw in his pocket and take
it to the bathroom with him he flushed all of his napkins for dessert plantain ordered some banana pudding
which he ate with a fork finally he picked up his fork and took two bites of banana pudding and
then took a napkin and wiped that fork for about five minutes um and left that fork
and of course our undercover detectives recovered that fork analyst mark beauday performed the
analysis i got a mixture of dna samples meaning there was one strong profile and there's
also one weak profile on there as well apparently the restaurant hadn't properly cleaned the fork
the strong profile was from an unidentified female the weaker one from a male was compared
to dna from stephanie's rape kit the one weak profile on the fork was very similar
to the profile that was found on the vaginal swabs coming from stephanie bennett
but this profile was so weak it would be inadmissible in court it was a partial match which told law enforcement it told
me that we're on the right track we just needed to get a good dna sample from drew clinton since planton worked
for the state investigators got permission to search his workplace mark beauday swabbed his computer
keyboard his radio and other items he handled dna from those skin cells was compared
to the biological evidence from stephanie bennett's rape test kit the dna profile that was obtained was an
exact match to the profile of the dna which is obtained from this sperm sample from the vaginal
suaves investigators believe this dna evidence placed plantan at the scene on the night
of stephanie's murder based on the evidence investigators believe the killer broke
into stephanie's apartment through the bedroom window and waited for her in the closet
[Music] investigators believe stephanie arrived home then called her boyfriend sometime
between eight and nine p.m prosecutors think her killer watched from the second bedroom
and that stephanie was completely unaware anyone was there [Music] [Applause] [Music]
later after stephanie went to bed he attacked the evidence shows she was sexually
assaulted and strangled to death but the killer left valuable dna evidence behind
i think calling mr bennett the the day that we arrested drew plant was one of the the highlights of my
career when police searched planton's apartment they found pornography lock picking guides
and knives they also found other disturbing evidence that opened the possibility
that plantain may have killed before when investigators searched drew clanton's apartment
they found several pieces of mail addressed to a woman in lansing michigan rebecca huseman
the postmark was six years old a background check revealed rebecca huseman was murdered in lansing
six years earlier and the case had never been solved coincidentally drew planten was a
student at michigan state university at the time which was also just a few miles from
lansing rebecca huseman was working as a topless dancer at the time of her murder
it was something she had not planned on but she needed the money she's a very beautiful young woman
and she was trying to make some extra money so that she and her fiance could get married
after rebecca was finished work one october night in 1999 a bouncer took her to her car and she
drove away [Music] as she drove up to her apartment someone possibly a customer from the strip club may have
made an advance whatever happened the killer fired with a 45 caliber handgun i did an ambulance the problem there my
girlfriend i i just woke up and i noticed that she wasn't with me so i go out there and she's out
in her car and her door's open and i go out there and she's got blood all over her face
and i can't hear a pulse or a heartbeat or nothing the motive clearly wasn't robbery
nothing in her vehicle had been disturbed rebecca's purse was still there robbery didn't look like to be a motive
it looks like to me based on my experience that it was a personal crime just because shooting somebody in
the face one time on the ground near the car was a 45 caliber shell casing it was the
only evidence at the scene we didn't have much evidence to work with at all we had no fingerprints
tire tracks footwear nothing everyone who worked with rebecca said she made a point of having no
personal relationships with any of the club's patrons she would leave the club and not have
anything to do with it outside of dancing there she didn't hang out with anybody she didn't
associate with the patrons you know outside of what she did there for her employment dozens of interviews
were conducted no clear suspects emerged we still focused on the club whether it was a customer or not uh we
were trying to look at some tapes and surveillance tapes and things of that nature but
there wasn't any altercations between her or any of the dancers when investigators in raleigh north
carolina found rebecca's mail in drew planton's apartment they called lansing investigators with
the news i said that if you have a 45 caliber handgun please let me know he says we got two
i says people planton's two 45-caliber guns were test-fired analysts were especially interested in
the marks on the shell casings imperfections from the firing pin are imprinted on the back of the shell
casing when it's fired and the imperfections on each firing pin are unique to each one made when the shell
casing from the murder scene was compared to the shell casing from drew planton's gun the results were
unmistakable some very well-defined linear marks parallel running linear marks that were present across
much of the primer surfaces of all the tests and on the evidence cartridge that was
entered in the iva site in michigan they also compared the lands and grooves on the test bullet
to those on the fatal bullet those also matched my opinion that it's that gun and only
that gun that could have fired it by this time plantan was already in custody in north carolina
and things weren't going well at his court appearance he refused to walk and had to be strapped to a gurney when
he was wheeled into court for his first appearance he did not open his eyes and i believe in drew plant's world as
long as his eyes was closed and he did not see it it may not have been happening but no
one will know for certain all the details in either murder shortly before he was to go on trial in
raleigh north carolina drew planten suffocated himself with the plastic bag in prison i was disappointed
that we weren't able to have a trial that we weren't able to sit in the courtroom
and hear a jury come back and say you're guilty of the first degree murder of stephanie bennett
and you have forfeited your right to live as a result of this crime i'd like to know why he picked stephanie
why what was his reasoning i mean it just just why mr planton uh was obviously a predator
we obtained information and evidence inside the apartment that led us to believe that he had looked
into doing this possibly with other females investigators are certain that the forensic evidence would have gained a
conviction but the real satisfaction is knowing that the evidence led to his capture after we found out
who planting was and did the search of his house we did find some information on
somebody he was probably currently watching for some time it was very eerie to find that person
and realize that you have maybe just saved her life by clearing this case well i know that
forensic science played a huge role in this case and really without the forensic science without the ballistics
without recreating this case rebecca huseman's murder would definitely gone cold and unsolved i truly believe that
forensic science was phenomenal in this case it was as one person put it it is where
old-fashioned police work meets modern science

A young woman is found dead in her apartment. With little evidence at the scene, the case turns cold... until police discover a link between their prime suspect and an unsolved murder committed six years earlier in a different state.

Brief Summary

The episode details the murder of Stephanie Bennett and the investigation leading to Drew Planton's identification as a suspect.

Key points

The Mysterious Death of Stephanie Bennett. A young woman is found dead in her apartment, sparking a complex investigation.
Drew Plant's Arrest. Police arrest Drew Plant, a prime suspect in the murder of Stephanie Bennett.
Forensic Breakthrough. Forensic evidence links Drew Plant to the murder scene, leading to his capture.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I had no idea how this could happen.

0:16WatchMar 5, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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