Forensic Files (HD) - Season 13, Episode 25 - Family Ties - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[Music] up next a home invasion and murder the injuries that she sustained are unimaginable it was what they call a
signature killing was a family member involved allegations of mafia involvement the relative is frankie the
fireman porco the press says the police can't solve it every day on the news talking about they've botched this
investigation they can't do anything right but the police are one step ahead of the
press and the killer [Music] working for the supreme court of new york state is a prestigious job
for 52-year-old peter porco a clerk for an appeals judge it was the perfect way to end his legal
career until one day everything changed it started off as any other day until peter porco didn't show up for
work and people began to get worried because that wasn't like him a court officer went to the parcco's
home and immediately saw signs of trouble he walked up to the front of the house
and in the door he saw a key a key by itself in the door lock the door was ajar he
looks down and he sees on the cement steps some drops of blood inside was a bloodbath he
looked over to his right and he saw a body laying there whom he recognizes peter parkou
peter porco had been bludgeoned to death it was a scene of shocking horror something that
most people who saw it find it difficult to talk about upstairs in the master bedroom was his
wife joan who was still alive but just barely a three-foot axe was next to her investigators could see
her brain while they were trying to save her life she was also hit with the axe along her
arms to give oxygen they're supposed to put a bag over her mouth and they couldn't figure out where her mouth
was joan was rushed to the hospital her life hanging in the balance blood spatter analysis
showed that joan porco was struck three times in the head with the axe while sleeping
peter parkout had been struck 16 times in the head but why was peter's body found
downstairs apparently sometime after the attack peter regained consciousness and started to go about
his morning tasks he had actually pulled on some clothes over the top of some wounds
and began walking around the house that's because the top part of peter's brain the
neocortex which controls higher functions like thought language and reasoning was
severely damaged in the attack the autopsy revealed his paleocortex underneath was intact
this controls his primal instincts and second nature habits this explains why he got up went
downstairs made breakfast performed the same tasks he did each and every morning unaware
he was mortally wounded the blood evidence shows he even went out to get the morning
newspaper and that the front door locked behind him he used the house key hidden in the
flower pot to open it then lost consciousness due to blood loss and died i am surprised that he was able to move
around the residents as he did before joan porco went into surgery an alert investigator who was also
a friend of the family asked joan a key question while she was still conscious i said to
her can you hear me and she shook her head visibly up and down in the yes notion that she
could the officer asked her if she knew who attacked her she shook her head again
in the yes notion up and down i asked her did christopher do this to you and she clearly again sh nod her head up
and down yes christopher was her 21 year old son [Music] the medical examiner concluded that
peter porco was the intended target of the brutal axe attack in his home since he was struck 16 times in the head
joan was hit three times nothing was missing from the porco's home either which pointed to only
one conclusion leads them to believe that maybe this is someone who was angry with someone in the family
that there was something more to this peter and joan porco had two children 23 year old jonathan was a lieutenant in
the u.s navy serving on a nuclear submarine hundreds of miles away 21 year old christopher attended the
university of rochester a three-hour drive away both had alibis for the night of the
attack but why did joan parco tell police her son christopher was responsible your mother
is communicating she's saying you were there i don't know why she said she knows i hope she does i was not
there he was cooperating he let them take a dna sample he let them look at his body to make
sure that there weren't marks or signs of a struggle like bruises three weeks after the attack joan porco
regained consciousness everybody was very surprised it was a miracle she obviously had a strong will to to
live and the doctors just did an amazing job and joan now told police that christopher
had nothing to do with the attack she said it couldn't have been christopher leave
my son alone joan also made a public statement supporting her son i am absolutely positive that my son was
in no way involved in this heinous crime i implore the district attorney's office to leave
my son alone and to search for peter's real killer and the forensic evidence or lack of it
corroborated christopher's story investigators found nothing in christopher's jeep the yellow
jeep was searched for blood and or bloody clothing any type of blood transfer whatsoever which would be
indicative of the attack there was no no blood located in the vehicle whatsoever
police also found no evidence that christopher had been on the highway between his school and
his home there was no recording of his easy pass going through the tolls that night
forensic analysts found no fingerprints or blood other than the victims on the axe
then police learned that peter parker had once received a death threat it was from a man who lost custody of
his children in a case before the new york state supreme court the man had vowed revenge
the man told him he was going to get a gun and he was going to come and kill the judge and peter porco
but that man had an alibi for the night of the murder then there was an anonymous letter sent
to the local newspaper from someone claiming to be peter porco's killer peter porca was not even a challenge
once i got inside i repeatedly hit him in the head and neck with a small axe i brought with me
i ignored all his pleading screams also i beat joan porco but unfortunately she survived
the writer took credit for another local murder and warned he'd kill again if you ever want to find
me you might want to stop going after easy suspects show me some respect i deserve catch me
if you can police found no fingerprints on the letter and they needed to find out who wrote it
while searching for the person responsible for the brutal acts attack investigators first tried to uncover the
motive we don't have ax murders here it was just an alarming tremendously alarming case police
learned that peter parker had a relative and organized crime who'd been in trouble with the law
the relative is frank porco known as frankie the fireman porco frankie porco was serving time in
federal prison for loan sharking there were rumors that frankie parker would turn state's evidence
and provide information in return for a lighter sentence it was what they call a signature
killing you know that the mob would do and it was the fireman's act because it was retaliation for frankie the firemen
but a background check on frankie the firemen cast doubt on this theory he was in prison because he wasn't a
snitch you know he had been made the offers to cooperate with the authorities to avoid prison and he didn't so he
ended up in prison then investigators learned that peter and joan porco had life insurance
policies totaling one million dollars investigators also learned that christopher parker asked for
investment advice before the murder christopher had gone to a financial counselor and asked him to
write up a portfolio for him he told him he was receiving millions of dollars from a relative
and before his father's death christopher emailed him asking for all sorts of personal
financial information yo pops if i could have you and mom's social security numbers and your new
york state driver's license numbers i need them for paperwork related to financial info for next semester
hope you're having a good day love chris then investigators checked the code numbers used
to deactivate the porco's home security system on the night of the attack [Music]
the security system's computer showed that whoever deactivated the alarm and presumably
cut the phone lines was someone known by the family the alarm had been disarmed at approximately two o'clock in the
morning so this was the master code that was used um which was the code the family had as
well as possible possibly one or two other people so despite joan porco's claim that her
son christopher wasn't responsible for the attack investigators took a fresh look
at where he was on the night of the crime christopher claimed he was in his dorm
room 220 miles away investigators obtained security video from the university of rochester campus
and from all the major highways and toll booths in between the parco's home and the campus they screened all of it
looking for christopher's yellow jeep the average person is videotaped 18 to 22 times a day
so there's a tremendous amount of media that's available to the to law enforcement at 10 30 p.m
they saw a yellow jeep leaving the university campus the security alarm at the porco's home
was deactivated a little more than three and a half hours later at 2 14 a.m the porco's phone line was cut
at 4 59 a.m and the same yellow jeep returned to the campus three and a half hours later
at 8 30 in the morning the timeline fit perfectly but was this christopher's jeep there are actually
more yellow jeeps than you might imagine in the state of new york there are thousands of yellow jeeps
video analyst james kennedy ran the security camera images through a computer filter so it's not like our
filtering software all of a sudden makes this stuff appear what it does it provides us
with in some cases subtle in some cases dramatic clarifications kennedy found specific details on the jeep like mud on
the passenger side door the passenger side window had a torn parking sticker and there was a political sticker on the
back tire cover those were compared to photographs of christopher's jeep taken by police
the day of the murder we were able to conclude that it was in fact the suspect's jeep unfortunately
the photographic analysis couldn't identify who was driving was it christopher or someone else
through forensic analysis investigators now knew that christopher parkou's jeep left the
university of rochester four hours before the axe attack on his parents [Music] and returned to the campus ten hours
later it was possible for him to get down to albany do what happened at the house
and then make it back up to the campus in the morning for him to make it in that time he would
have had to use the new york state throughway but investigators had no proof that
christopher porco's jeep was on the throughway that night or if it was christopher who was driving
there were no easy pass records of christopher coming home that night but investigators found christopher's
easy pass tag on the floor of his jeep on the morning of the attack they tell me if you take it off the
windshield and you get it down on the floor and or you know put it away somewheres it won't register
was it possible christopher paid the highway tolls with cash to avoid leaving a trail i don't believe
that those lanes are surveilled with video cameras investigators asked the toll collectors
if they recalled seeing a yellow jeep that night one toll collector said she remembered a
yellow jeep driving through right before quitting time around 11 pm but she couldn't remember anything about
the driver when they hand you the ticket it's stamped it's got the time on only a dozen cars went through that
tollbooth around that time investigators sent those 12 toll tickets to the forensic lab for testing
what we were looking for were any kind of skin cells if your hands are sweaty and you touch a toe ticket
there's a possibility that dna sources such as epithelial cells may be transferred onto these toll
tickets scientists found skin cells on several tickets they performed mitochondrial dna testing
on those skin cells and compared those dna profiles to christopher parco's dna profile
one ticket contained christopher porco's dna we have a toll ticket that ultimately
has christopher's dna on it when that dna came in that was the top of the mountain
it was what i considered a mountain of circumstantial evidence the possibility that the dna on the toll
ticket belonged to someone other than christopher porco was very small you would expect to see
that sequence and 0.04 percent of the population prosecutors believe the motive was money
investigators found evidence that christopher had forged his parents signatures on bank loan documents and borrowed 31
000 without their permission they also found evidence that peter and joan porco knew about the
forgery chris i want you to know that if you abuse my credit again i will be forced to file forgery
affidavits in order to disclaim liability you should come home so we can talk we
may be disappointed in you but your mother and i still love you and care about your future
christopher was not only spending huge sums of money on luxury items like his jeep
but he was also failing his college courses his world was crumbling around him a
world he had created a persona he'd created a lifestyle he'd created and he had to do something to try to
salvage it prosecutors believe christopher was desperate for money after his father had
cut off his funds so christopher chose to murder his parents for their life insurance money
surveillance video shows christopher left his college campus around 10 30. [Music]
he removed the easy pass tag from his car because he knew this would leave a trail of his
movements so he paid cash for the tolls and left his dna on a ticket [Music] he entered his parents home a little
after 2 a.m and deactivated the security system with a code known only to family members
prosecutors say christopher used an axe to attack his parents [Music] he struck his father 16 times and his
mother three times and left them both for dead christopher smashed the security system
panel thinking this would destroy the evidence that he used the master code but that information was stored
elsewhere he cut the phone lines into the house at 4 59 then drove back to the campus
in full view of the cameras at 8 30 a.m perhaps the most unsettling aspect of the case
was that peter porco regained consciousness and walked through the house after the
attack even going outside for the morning paper before he died in the foyer there still remain unanswered questions
i think one of the main questions that we just don't have the answer to is where are the bloody clothes and why did
joan porco implicate christopher on the morning of the attack but had no recollection of it
following surgery it's not uncommon when you have a head injury to lose memory in the time surrounding the event
a year after the attack christopher porco went on trial for the murder of his father
and the attempted murder of his mother with their face surgically repaired joan parco stood by her son during the entire
trial steadfastly maintaining his innocence it was going to take a lot to convince a
jury ultimately that the kid in front of them could have taken an axe to his parents
but the evidence was simply overwhelming the jury found christopher parker guilty and he was
sentenced to a minimum of 50 years in prison we really wanted to find something that made him innocent you
know and that we could say that no the prosecution's evidence just doesn't add up it doesn't match up
he didn't do this to his parents thank god but we didn't find that that's not how we found our verdict to this day
his mother believes he's innocent i spoke with her immediately after that verdict she was stunned
and shocked and that's all she really had to say at that point she hasn't really spoken with anyone
since i've never seen a case like this before this and i hope to never see a case like this after this

When court clerk Peter Porco doesn't report to his work in November 2004, a courts officer is ordered to the Porcos' family home in Bethlehem, NY.

Brief Summary

Peter Porco is murdered, and son Christopher is implicated in the crime, leading to a complex investigation and trial.

Key points

A Family's Tragedy. Peter Porco is brutally murdered in his home, while his wife Joan fights for her life.
A Mother's Defense. Joan Porco defends her son Christopher, insisting he had nothing to do with the attack.
The Evidence Mounts. Investigators uncover circumstantial evidence linking Christopher to the murder of his parents.
The Trial. Christopher Porco is tried for the murder of his father and the attempted murder of his mother.
A Mother's Belief. Despite the verdict, Joan Porco maintains her son's innocence, expressing her shock.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It was a scene of shocking horror.

Describing the aftermath of the attack on Peter Porco.

1:38WatchMar 5, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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