Forensic Files (HD) - Season 13, Episode 2 - House Hunting - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[Music] up next a vibrant successful real estate professional is brutally murdered
this involved the entire range of violence even hardened professionals are troubled by what they see
for there to be that much blood left at a scene that's what we consider overkill
police find a possible witness and try hypnosis to get every detail how many times you see a
composite sketch and you're like okay this looks like just about every human being on the face of the planet
it was a real who done it i hate to do it the killer leaves behind a clue but would it be enough people will kill
for the most trivial of reasons [Music] on a hot summer day a married couple decided to look at a sample home
in the craves ranch housing development in mckinney texas when they walked into the sample home
they couldn't find the sales associate but they knew right away that something was wrong
and they walked into the living room and then they saw a blood trail leading into
the kitchen and that's where they found the sales associate sarah walker in a pool of blood
the victim was stabbed 27 times there was an incredible struggle furniture and plants were knocked over
it looked like the victim fought for her life it just didn't happen in a little two by
four square area if you can picture a bar room brawl that's probably what was happening
in that show house there would be that much blood left at a scene that's what we consider overkill
sarah walker was 40 years old recently divorced and the mother of two children i
answered the phone it was the mckinney police department he said sarah has been assaulted
as a result has died of her injuries and i just started screaming no no no sarah worked for a real estate company
showing model homes to potential buyers and was very successful she also appeared
in some sales videos dr horton is so proud to be in a neighborhood like this it stands out above all the rest
she was thrilling and she was exciting and full of energy she would walk into a room and
she would just light up the place she had enough energy for you know four or five people police
found a bank surveillance video recorded a few hours before sarah's murder showing her making a deposit
in the video she was wearing an expensive ring and watch neither one was found on
sarah's body the watch wasn't at her home when we searched her home it wasn't in her car
it wasn't anywhere in her office so we started to think pretty soon that whoever had killed her
had taken that ring in that watch she had it on two hours before she died that helps us prove that in fact a
robbery occurred police also discovered that the killer most likely posed as a client she was talking to my
cousin she said i'm sorry i have to go somebody just walked in which means there's a customer here
i'm gonna go sell a house just 30 minutes later sarah was dead it was hard for investigators to imagine
a crime of this magnitude in an upscale housing development things just didn't match really it just
struck me as the last place i would expect a crime like this to occur we had a real whodunit on our hands if
it was a random attack we were very concerned that someone who would kill sarah in this manner was somebody who
would probably not hesitate to do this again with a killer free no one especially
mckinney police could sleep easily as investigators analyzed the scene of sarah walker's murder they quickly
discovered that she was killed in the living room after a horrific struggle it was also clear that the killer was
injured too he turned the deadbolt knob and he closed the blinds but his hand was already cut so he left
his blood in both of those places and then at some point he dragged sarah into the kitchen
and he tried to clean up because that was his blood in the sink investigators also found perfectly round
drops of blood on the floor of the kitchen near the body that shape is indicative
of blood being dripped straight down from a 90 degree angle straight down the blood evidence
provided police with the killer's dna profile at the autopsy the medical examiner
discovered no sign of sexual assault but he did find something extremely unusual apparently during the struggle
the killer bit the victim on the neck it almost brought this crime down to the level of savagery
i'm looking at the evidence of one animal biting this woman because she's some sort of pray for him
that he's going to take and do with what he wants to and it really it really was a disgusting
feeling in a search for suspects investigators first looked into sarah's personal life
they discovered that sarah had recently been divorced from her second husband randy tate there was no love lost
between the walker family and randy tate let's put it that way randy tate was the last known person to
see sarah alive sarah dropped their son off at his house earlier that morning before she went to work bottom line is i
want him to catch whoever did this according to her family and friends it was a divorce she did not
want she wasn't happy with it she was hurt by it so we knew that there were some tough
feelings randy tate claimed he had an alibi that he was playing golf with friends at
the time of the murder he was initially very cooperative but then started to become
hesitant in our mind to cooperate when it came to dna and that sort of thing and
it seemed to be very angry but tate did provide his dna and it did not match the blood dna at
the crime scene next investigators check an internet dating site that sarah joined called
millionairematch.com when sarah got divorced that was very difficult on her self-esteem it was very hard to get back
into the dating world sarah didn't date many men since her divorce but when your photograph is on an
internet dating site profile there's always the risk of danger think about it this way
if i exchange one email with a random stranger or if i just write something like no
thanks i'm not interested you have a suspect right there if you return 30 or 40 no thank yous in a week
and trust me women get inundated with that many requests well you've got 40 suspects
investigators interviewed all the men sarah spoke to from the site each provided a dna sample
and all were eliminated by this time several weeks had passed and the trail of sarah's killer was
turning cold then unexpectedly nelson via vicenzio the husband of another realtor came
forward with some new information he said on the morning of sarah's murder his wife got a call from a man who
identified himself as chan lee he wanted to see the model home located across the street from the home
where sarah was killed she felt a little suspicious about him and wondered if he was legitimate
and she tried to call the hotel he said he was at to find out what time he was coming
and he was not in the room that he said he was in in fact no chan lee was registered at the hotel
but she still agreed to meet him remember when you're in the real estate business
you're in the business of making a commission so you're going to accept all comers because you want to
sell that house you want to make that commission the realtor did take precautions
my wife asked me if i was going to come along and i said yes and i did it for my reasons when they
arrived an asian male drove up in a white mustang he had a t-shirt no sleeves jeans
sneakers very athletic and i asked him excuse me sir is your name chan lee and he
looked up in the sky did not make any eye contact with me and sort of gave me a vague look saying
like no but he didn't express anything the man walked quickly to his car and drove away
while nelson and his wife waited in the town home they saw sarah walker arrive for work
across the street i yelled at my wife come and check this out there's a beautiful striking blonde coming out of
this sports car and she's going to the model my wife said oh that's sarah and i said oh
sarah's looking very good she said well yeah when nelson and his wife realized that
their appointment was a no-show they left and saw the white mustang parked next to sarah walker's car
nelson said they considered stopping by to say hello to sarah i said well are we going to go visit
with sarah and my wife said no we're hungry so we left they left at approximately 1pm
sarah's body was discovered 20 minutes later if they had walked in prior to the defendant killing sarah would he
would we have three bodies the possibility of we have visited sarah and found myself
and ourselves in the middle of it of something terrible it will always be my mind
i consider nelson's wife be very lucky i think there's a high likelihood that she
would have been the victim that day had she not brought her husband along with her to
that subdivision police now had a possible eyewitness but would it be enough real estate saleswoman sarah walker was
robbed and murdered in the sample home of an upscale neighborhood housing development
her friends and family reacted with disbelief the family has suffered beyond imagination
i believe she deemed it to be safe she she was very very excited about the community when she was first placed over
there my fondest memory of sarah she would laugh at all of my jokes whether they
were funny or whether they were stupid she would still just laugh and so that always made you
feel good in a fortunate turn of events a witness came forward telling police he might have seen
sarah's killer unfortunately by the time he came forward several weeks had passed and police
feared he might have forgotten some of the man's physical characteristics nelson just had such a brief look at
this person i was hopeful but i was was actually kind of doubtful that that it was going to work so police
decided to try forensic hypnosis before asking nelson any questions about the man's
description the purpose of forensic hypnosis is to bring out the detailed memory from the subconscious nelson was
sent to richard shang a texas ranger and a trained forensic hypnotist you get them relaxed and then in that
relaxed state you bring up a date or an offense and place them back in a position to
where they were where they might recall an incident forensic hypnosis has been used by law
enforcement since the 1800s in texas they've reported a 75 success rate under hypnosis
the images in your mind the remembrances become so much clearer that i've got a lot of faith in his
hypnosis the memory is already there in his mind the memory i'm not placing a memory in his mind it's
already there we're just actually going back and revisiting that day and time the hypnotist wanted
nelson to think of the incident as if he were watching a movie and then freeze framed the image of the
man he saw at the model home nelson described the suspect as asian muscular around 27 years old
five foot seven inches tall with a buzz haircut after he described each feature he then
looked through a book of photographs to choose the most similar everyone if you look closely
they have different shaped eyes and mouths and noses and that book gives the witness an
opportunity to flip through the pages and pick out different features that the suspect had
slowly an image emerged of the man nelson saw that day i was saying that with these facts
and the sketch will hit jackpot the composite drawing kind of brought the case back to the front burner again
because for a while we had nothing the sketch was released to the media and immediately produced results yet
another local real estate agent said she recognized the man she rented a home to him
and she said once he came to her home asking to use her phone when she refused to let him inside he
grew angry he's banging on her back door and now she's terrified her dog's going crazy
this guy's now in her backyard banging on her back door so then she calls the police
police identified the man as twenty-five-year-old kasul chantakaman his parents were from laos but he was
born in the u.s a background check indicated he drove a white mustang worked as a delivery
truck driver and had a history of violence from age 15 forward he was in jail he assaulted a classmate severe enough
to be sent to juvenile detention when he was 15 he was out on that offense for several months
and then stole a car after that he robbed and kidnapped two elderly women in north carolina
he was released on parole just six months before sarah walker's murder he was paroled to texas because his
sister lived here and his sister was willing to help him try to get his life back on course when
he was interrogated by police casual denied any involvement in sarah walker's murder
we're trying to find out the truth i think you know what's true man that you were in the
house and you washed your hands or you went over there and got a drink of water casuel's left hand was covered
with recently healed scars as if he'd been in a knife fight the scars weren't lined up
all along the same plane they were kind of going every which way and police had a secret weapon the bite
mark on sarah's body would it match kasul's teeth thanks to an eyewitness and forensic
hypnosis investigators now had a suspect in the murder of sarah walker twenty-five-year-old kasul chanta kaman
although he denied any involvement prosecutors were convinced that he was the killer who sewell is a
psychopath and a sociopath and by that i mean that no matter where he is he's always thinking about himself first
it's all about him what can he get for himself what can he do for himself and others
others are objects to be used for his pleasure for his needs say your name for me please
come on since the perpetrator bit the victim sarah walker investigators took photographs of
kasul's teeth and made dental impressions the impressions were then compared to images of the bite mark
what we tried to do is we tried to make it not match we tried to rotate the models we tried
to flip them around we tried to make it not work and it just kept going right back to perfect match it was
as positive as i've ever been about doing a forensic dentistry case ironically evidence found on kasul's
cell phone indicated he had a fascination with biting he'd been fantasizing about this he had a
photograph on his cell phone of him pretending to bite his own dog finally casuel's dna profile matched the dna of
the blood found on the floor next to sarah's body certainly anytime you have dna i can't
tell you how valuable that is in today's environment with jurors they appreciate it they accept it and
since it's specific to one individual it's invaluable to us as prosecutors prosecutors believe
casual preyed on female real estate agents because they often worked alone on that tragic day in mckinney texas the
evidence shows that casull called his first target asking her to meet him at the model home
but she sensed trouble and brought her husband which frightened him away excuse me sir
are you chan lee but casual didn't give up he saw there was another model home across the street
and he saw sarah walker arrive for work oh you know what somebody just walked in
i won't be able to stay on the phone prosecutors believe he went inside and tried to rob sarah
give me that watch there was a fight while trying to subdue her kasul bitter then he used his knife and stabbed her
more than 20 times and cut himself in the process nelson via vicenzio and his wife
were just outside while the murder occurred had they stopped in to say hello to sarah
they too might have been victims he would not have stopped he definitely would have kept going
a beautiful successful woman her life tragically cut short sarah's family still tries to cope with the loss
although she's not here with us now she is in a place that we all dream of that we all hear of
and i believe that she's probably doing the same thing up there as she did while she was here
which is helping people find their home in october of 2006 casull was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death
people will kill for the most trivial of reasons reasons that no that no rational person
would ever imagine what the science did in this case is it made that defense attorney get up in his
opening statement and say my client is guilty and this was a robbery combat he would not have said
that if we hadn't had the physical evidence that we had in this case this case turned out to be the perfect
marriage of good police work excellent science and prosecutorial expertise it was the perfect blend of all three of
those things coming together to where we got this case from the day sarah was murdered
until he was convicted and sentenced you

In 2006, Texas real estate agent Sarah Anne Walker was found brutally murdered in a model home. Weeks later, a witness came forward who may have seen the killer. Police used forensic hypnosis to help him recall every detail of the man's appearance.

Brief Summary

Sarah Walker was murdered in Texas; Kasul Chantakaman was convicted based on DNA evidence and eyewitness accounts.

Key points

Brutal Murder of Sarah Walker. A vibrant real estate professional is brutally murdered in a model home.
Eyewitness Account. A witness comes forward with crucial information about the suspect.
Forensic Breakthrough. Forensic hypnosis helps investigators create a composite sketch of the suspect.
The Impact of Sarah's Murder. Sarah's family struggles to cope with her tragic loss.
Conviction of Kasul Chanta Kaman. Kasul Chanta Kaman is convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It was a real who done it.

0:32WatchMar 5, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

More from Forensic Files

Solve the Crime

Read a real case one clue at a time, then see how your call held up against the investigators.