Forensic Files (HD) - Season 13, Episode 20 - DNA Dragnet - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[Music] up next did this surveillance image show a kidnapping or a casual encounter it was
a very curious surveillance tape digital photo enhancement shows the trip wasn't consensual if you get into a car
you go to the second spot most likely you just sign your your death certificate then there's
a second murder hauntingly similar to the first for the most part you had a female
you had an early morning event you had control you had geographical area close in time close to
the proxima was a serial killer on the loose every morning 55 year old librarian
demaris nguyen walked for miles in duncan park a 100 acre wooded area next to her house in spartanburg south
carolina if you're standing in the middle of the park um you might feel like you were on a well-traveled
trail in a national park but as soon as you took 10 or 15 steps on either side of the center you would
see houses so it is by no means isolated one morning however she didn't return home
a few hours later a municipal worker found her body in some underbrush in the park
less than a hundred yards from her home she was nude with the cord from her walkman around her neck jewelry still on
the body which is more important to me as a prosecutor than any other fact because you now know that robbery was
not the motive that something helps all of demaris's clothing was gone did the killer take it as some sort of
trophy the crime scene we had was a forensic nightmare for us because of the downpour where she was
lying began to fill up with water an autopsy revealed damaris had been sexually assaulted
the cause of death was manual strangulation but it looked like the killer tried using the cord to her
earphones why wrap the cord around the neck if you choked her with your hands her
walkman however was gone we felt like the suspect most likely took the walkman we had searched
through the park trying to locate you know the walkman her clothing any other items that we could find and
we just did not turn up anything it was just this overwhelming how can this happen
in our community and instantly people thought a stranger is amongst us demaris's husband james
said he was home and she went for her morning walk it was a saturday and he didn't have to
go to work when she didn't return he claimed he drove around the neighborhood looking
for her he thought he was going to find his wife around the corner you know holding her ankle or her leg
but he even said as the time went on something in his gut let him say this just is not right
but police found something suspicious in the couple's home it was damaris's walkman we have the
purple walkman still in her residence we have her outside across the street wearing a purple headphones
that was very interesting from the beginning when confronted with this evidence james
wynn offered an explanation one investigators found hard to believe he claimed damaris had
two walkmans and he offered to take a polygraph test to prove his innocence he failed and then james did something
even more suspicious he had his wife's body cremated against her family's wishes you know if
the husband didn't do it then why'd he have her body cremated it could never be looked at exhumed again and looked at
and and those are the obvious reasons police were convinced james nguyen was responsible for this murder until
they compared his dna to the evidence collected from his wife's rape kit we received a sample with the initial
submission it did not match the evidence from the rape kit and once they took him off the block
people then started going back to the well could it have been somebody else or did he get away with murder
the perpetrator's dna profile was also entered into codis the national dna database
there were no hits i think it means that the perpetrator had not committed a crime that qualified
him to be a part of our database it looked as if police had a random murder on their hands
the hardest type to solve duncan park is a landmark in spartanburg south carolina since 1926
families have used the park for recreation and picnics so it's an unlikely place for a brutal
murder investigators learned that on the day damaris wind was murdered four municipal workers were cutting
trees in the park all of them were asked to provide a dna sample as was any male who lived near
the park or worked with damaris we swabbed around 25 individuals we tried to pinpoint people
that we really thought may be involved and everyone we went to you know volunteered their swabs
again there were no matches five months later it was a similar murder in the reidville
community of spartanburg county 15 miles away it was the same essentially there were
some differences but for the most part you had a female um you had an early morning event 32 year old
rhonda ward drove into the parking lot of the convenience store where she worked
it was early in the morning and it was rhonda's job to open the store ronda was the type of lady that if
she was supposed to be there at seven she came in at 6 30. security cameras in the parking lot
showed a man walking up to her and having a conversation you can see a subject walking up the
sidewalk then he cut across coming to the parking lot approached her and she was standing at the door it
looked like the two knew one another they got into ronda's car and drove away this was totally unlike running it was a
break in her pattern and that's what also made me very suspicious 36 hours later ronda's nude body was
found in an apple orchard about 15 miles from the convenience store she'd been stabbed to death and sexually
assaulted but again because the time of the year it was cold decomp hadn't started
and we really we had a lot to work with blood underneath the body indicated rhonda had been murdered
where she was found and just like damaris winds murder the killer had taken ronda's clothes
when news of ronda's murder became public a potential witness contacted police she said that on the morning rhonda
disappeared she was driving by the orchard where the body was found she saw a white car parked on the
shoulder of the road with two individuals walking toward the orchard she said one looked like the victim the
other was a light-skinned black man at the time the witness didn't think anything of it
i'm certain he'd been there before knew about the area may have already planned it out in his
mind police assumed the killer had also stolen ronda's car fortunately after speaking with the
nissan car company investigators discovered the company had something they could do
the ability to start the car could be disabled if payment were not made and because of her death she missed a
payment and the car was disabled how they were able to do that with a satellite i don't know but i do know
that they disabled the car apparently the gambit worked police found ronda's abandoned car three miles
from the crime scene someone presumably the killer had set it on fire most likely to destroy potential
forensic evidence you just don't burn cars because they won't start unless you got something on
high but the radio was missing so police put word out to their informants to be on
the lookout for an individual trying to sell a nissan car stereo store employees who watched the
security camera videotape said the man looked like chester donovan a man rhonda had been dating it was someone that
rhonda had more than just a friendship with 32-year-old chester donovan was a teacher's aide at the
school ronda's children attended a background check revealed a previous arrest for domestic violence
donovan denied any involvement and consented to a polygraph test which he failed you've got him
identified you've got him filling a polygraph and he had a connection to miss ward with a
violent past so i mean obviously that was where the investigation was focusing when a witness reported seeing rhonda
ward walking towards the orchard with an unidentified man she was asked to identify him in a photo
lineup out of six people in that lineup the witness we had actually picked chester
out chester donovan was dating ronda ward at the time but donovan had an alibi he was at work
at the time rhonda ward was abducted he had an alibi better than the one i had that morning nobody
could tell you where i was at seven o'clock that morning except my wife he had about five people that could tell
where he was in addition to his alibi investigators performed a dna test and donovan's dna did not match the
biological evidence from the rape test kit but the dna test did provide an important clue
the dna of ronda's killer matched the dna profile of damaris winds killer i don't know that any of us actually
expected it there were a few that actually expected it but there were some that were like
well you know it'd be a luck hit if we get it investigators knew that the man with
ronda ward on the surveillance image was her killer two surveillance cameras captured the incident
but both produced dark and blurry images so spartanburg investigators contacted the secret
service which has a lab with state-of-the-art equipment for video enhancement i know most people associate us with the
protection of the president but the secret service was originally created in 1865 as a law enforcement
agency in fact the secret service was working on technology that would get one of its
first tryouts in this case it was just an amazing coincidence that a case of this high
profile came in to our office for us to work on it the secret service discovered that the
surveillance cameras in the parking lot were out of focus to correct that they returned to the parking lot set up
a beam of light through a panel in the same spot as ronda's car then photographed it with the
surveillance camera the single point source represents a single point of data on the image file so in a focused camera
this point source would be a round circle a autofocus camera would actually be a distorted
image of that circle and it's that image file then is used and imported into the software
to attempt to refocus the image this camera was pretty out of focus it was pretty bad
in terms of quality being able to clean up clarify some of the things in the video help identify some of the
actions that took place to to put together the story of what would happen the improved images revealed that
something different happened between ronda and her assailant something that investigators hadn't seen
before she gets in the driver's side and he has to walk around the front of the car when he gets in
there is a slight movement of the hand the man reached across from the passenger seat
and put the keys in the ignition the man must have grabbed ronda's car keys out of camera range
as soon as she got out of the car one thing that stood out to me as a woman is never let them take you to the second
spot if you get into a car you go to the second spot most likely you've just signed
your death certificate despite the enhanced video the images still weren't clear enough to
identify the suspect in this case it was just too far away from the crime you know from what happened to
be able to make out faces technology provided some answers but investigators weren't
any closer to finding the killer [Music] the murders of damaris wynn and ronda ward
were five months and 15 miles apart investigators had the killer's dna but no clues to his identity
his dna was not in any of the state or national dna databases in our state if you were convicted of a violent
offense then you were part of our database you were required to provide a dna sample to
sled be included in our database the requirement became effective in 2002 so either the killer had never been
convicted of a crime or if he had it was before 2002 as police searched their files for any
crime similar to these murders they got a tip they learned that a local man tried to
buy cocaine by trading a radio from a nissan automobile this was significant since the radio was
missing from ronda's car when it was found he went by the name snow so perhaps he
didn't think anybody would know who he was but police informants identified the man
as frederick evans evans lived within walking distance of ronda's workplace where this surveillance video was shot
and he was no stranger to law enforcement this was a bad man to the core and i've
seen some of the lowest of the low and the thing about frederick evans you look at
him doesn't scare you thirty-five-year-old evans a short-order cook divorced with a
13-year-old daughter served time in prison for rape and robbery prior to 2000. this
was only the latest in a series of crimes that began in his teens frederick evans
had one assault and battery with intent to kill where he sliced a man's throat with a box cutter one
larceny and simple assault where he stole a woman's purse and punched her in the face
evans denied any involvement in either murder police decided to call his bluff they
told him they'd shown the surveillance tape to his mother he said you showed it to my mom i said
absolutely and he said what did she say and i said mr evans you know what she said she
identified you in the video evans fell for this ruse and changed his story his story was that they knew each other
it was consensual sex um got rough they got in a fight um and she tried to stab him
and he turned around and stabbed her that's not even a good lifetime television movie i mean that's just
ridiculous investigators obtained evan's dna and the test results left no doubt his
dna matched the biological evidence from ronda ward's rape test kit his dna also matched the evidence
in damaris winds case frederick evans friends told police that evans was sleeping on a bench in duncan
park on the morning of damaris's murder [Music] prosecutors believe evans abducted her
dragged her to the woods sexually assaulted her then strangled her to death first with
her headphones and then manually for reasons that aren't entirely clear it appears
evans took damaris clothing and her walkman possibly as a trophy but didn't take her
jewelry [Music] in ronda's case prosecutors believe evans was walking through the store
parking lot when he saw ronda ward drive up to the convenience store to open it for the day
according to the surveillance video he grabbed her keys probably threatened her with violence
and told her to get in the car [Music] evans forced her to drive to a deserted location nearby
and that's when the witness saw the two walking towards the orchard and just as in
damaris's case evans sexually assaulted ronda killed her and took all of her clothes
later evans was unable to start the car because the manufacturer had disabled the starter
so evan set the car on fire but not before taking one last item the car radio which led to his capture
well ma'am it's not as it's it's not as it seems it's it's not as it looks you know what
is it tell me what it is there's two sides there restore them tell me your side of the story
i can't i don't have enough time to sit here and explain to you how why did you murder ronda ward into marriage
i'm not going out today one year after the crimes frederick evans went on trial for
multiple charges including murder and kidnapping you're entitled to know the impact that ronda ward's death has
had on her family and friends and you are entitled to know the character of frederick antonio
evans and you got it 20 years taking what he wants when he wants it evans did not testify in his own defense
i used to have this whole quote you know what you call defendants who don't testify at trial
and the answer is inmates the experience is one that i would not wish upon anyone
it is very time consuming it is very emotional it is very heartbreaking evans was convicted on all counts
and was sentenced to death you had looked at frederick evans he had a pattern it was just a pattern
that took a while for them to connect the only way in this day and age to get a death sentence is to have very
strong forensics and frankly the only way to get a conviction at the guilt phase
is to have strong forensics much more than eyewitness testimony or any of the other old standbys it's all about
science and if you don't have science you're not going to win you

Digital enhancement of security camera video shows that what appears to be a casual encounter is actually a forced abduction, leading to murder. When investigators suspect the crimes are not random, they fear a serial killer may be on the loose.

Brief Summary

The episode covers the murders of Demaris Nguyen and Rhonda Ward, leading to the capture of serial killer Frederick Evans through DNA evidence.

Key points

A Serial Killer on the Loose. Investigators suspect a serial killer after a second murder occurs in the area.
The Mysterious Disappearance. Damaris Nguyen goes missing during her morning walk, leading to a shocking discovery.
DNA Links Two Murders. DNA evidence connects the murders of Damaris Nguyen and Rhonda Ward, revealing a chilling pattern.
Frederick Evans Captured. Frederick Evans, a suspect with a violent past, is linked to both murders through DNA evidence.
Trial and Conviction. Frederick Evans is convicted of murder and sentenced to death after a lengthy trial.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Never let them take you to the second spot; you've just signed your death certificate.

A warning about the dangers of abduction.

13:30WatchMar 5, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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