Forensic Files (HD) - Season 13, Episode 34 - Sign of the Crime - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[Music] up next two brutal murders put a city on edge we're all bothered by it it's it's hard to sleep at night was
this the work of a serial killer there were multiple similarities between the two scenes police have few clues
these crime scenes primarily were all debris basically but plenty of motive he has
obviously a hatred towards women the case went cold until a lover's quarrel flew out of control
[Music] in the early 1990s seattle washington was one of the fastest growing cities in the country renee
powell a 43 year old registered nurse visited seattle on vacation and never left she blew him just like a
flower she bloomed you cannot believe how she looked and how she talked and she giggled and she
left but two years after renee moved to seattle tragedy struck on a cold february night
a fire broke out in her apartment when firefighters extinguished the blaze they found renee's body the victim was
face down arms to the side legs apart an ice pick was found between her legs most of her clothes had been torn off
there were only remnants of a shirt that she had been wearing [Music] renee had been gagged and bound and
appeared to have been strangled to death before the fire the origin of the fire showed a possible
motive it appears that the fire had been lit between renee powell's legs although there were no
signs of forced entry renee's purse and credit cards were missing and all her electronic equipment was
missing like her tv and vcr she had recently been doing laundry because there was laundry
stacked on a sofa you could tell she had recently put together or made a pitcher of iced tea because there
was a pitcher full of iced tea on the counter and you could see where the ice cubes
had melted from the heat of the fire i picked up the phone and my sister was voice was very unusual
she said she's gone she's dead i said who's dead and she said renee i said renee who
she said renee's i said she can't be dead i just talked to her at the autopsy the medical examiner
found evidence that renee had been sexually assaulted [Music] we just couldn't come up with that
person that would be wanting renee dead never was able to find any person no family no relatives no past
lovers no no one at work then a month after renee's murder there was another fire
in the same apartment complex suspecting arson police used a helicopter with heat sensors to see
if anyone was hiding nearby watching the fire it doesn't see objects per se it sees
heat signatures or heat given out by a person there were no suspects hiding in any of the bushes
when the fire was extinguished they found another female victim 54 year old barbara walsh the similarities between
the two homicide scenes and the two women were extensive both barbara walsh and renee powell were single
lived alone and worked in the healthcare field both apartments were on the first floor
there was evidence that both women had been doing their laundry at the time their attacker entered their apartment
both women had been bound using undergarments their own undergarments the bindings also
included electrical cords had been cut off from lamps within the apartment the killer was organized
and his crimes well planned in both units he took down the smoke detector before setting the fire
and even took down the doorbell ringers he went out of his way to make sure that
the fire wouldn't be discovered prematurely both victims had been stabbed strangled
and burglarized both were doing laundry in the basement before they were attacked
we theorized that she had left the sliding glass door unlocked when she went down to the laundry room to start a
load of laundry and when she returned the suspect had been in the apartment the similarities were
too blatant to be ignored and the conclusion too horrific to avoid the two most gruesome murders that i've been involved
in my reaction to seeing the violence and overkill was this individual will kill again
based on the evidence seattle police suspected the same man raped and murdered two women in the same apartment complex
residents were demanding round-the-clock protection and that is the saddest thing that has
ever happened to me that i can't even feel safe in my home we're all bothered by it
it's it's hard to sleep at night and i mean i'm a positive person and i hate to like
now look at everybody i see walking down the street as some suspicious arsonist the victims renee powell and barbara
walsh had no known enemies she had this laugh that if anybody knew her they'd never forgot
her laugh a very generous person you know she didn't have a lot but she was willing to help anybody
the nature of the murders had police checking every registered sex offender within a 50-mile
radius we talked to people for weeks trying to find something that would lead us towards a
killer and and came up empty but what stood out most to police was the remarkable
similarity of the two cases both victims were bound and sexually assaulted although
dna evidence was recovered from only one of them both lived on the first floor and were
doing laundry before they were attacked both had electronic items stolen from their apartments
and there were other similarities that detectives identified as the killer's signature the signature
consists of five parts which would involve binding the victim stabbing the victim
disposing of their body setting fires or arson and then taking souvenirs since much of the evidence was destroyed
in the fire police turned to the public for help and within days they got more than 600 tips
one in particular logged as number 316 caught their attention we had an individual that lived nearby
a short distance about three miles away that was brought to us from a domestic violence advocate at the
the nearby court 23 year old gary dolan had a history of minor offenses but he'd never serve jail time
it was his own sister who reported him to police she was alarmed by hundreds of incredibly lurid
poems he'd written and shown her most of his writings were angry writings the one in particular dealt with
with forcing a kind lady to have sex with him after he'd strangled her grabbing her head and snapping her neck
the poor little old lady hit the deck now she's dead there's no life in her later tonight i'll eat her for dinner
some poems talked about sexual activity with older women sexual activity with with dead people
i'm happy with my life sharpening the blade of my unholy knife this is where true hatred lies screams
of agony my victim dies police certainly knew that they were working with someone who
was very sick gary dolan was unemployed and had no alibi for either murder he also refused to take a polygraph test
and he wouldn't provide a dna sample so police had to find another way to get it
we knew he smoked we knew we could get dna from the cigarette butt but we couldn't take the cigarette butt
from him unless he abandoned it sheriffs followed gary until they saw him outside smoking
a cigarette they questioned him at length hoping he'd cast the butt aside when he
was finished which to their relief he finally did that butt was sent for testing and the
results provided yet another setback the dna profile from the cigarette butt did not match the dna profile from the
crime scene so gary dolan was eliminated as a suspect and for the next two years the trail of
the killer turned cold two years we've beat our head against the wall trying to find the
killer [Music] investigators often request a psychological profile of a serial killer
in the belief this insight will help in efforts to apprehend him in these two murders the victims were
bound sexually assaulted their bodies placed in a position that would shock investigators and then
both scenes were set on fire these elements were unusual these women were substitutes they became targets and
victims because he's taken his revenge feelings his hatred of some female in his life and acting
out against them so he's replaced the person that's been in his life with these victims
for two years investigators searched for the killer with no success then investigators got a new lead from an
unusual source a woman incarcerated in the local prison i mean this tip is just too much to not
not handle right away and we go up and we talk to her her name was princess gray she was in jail
awaiting trial for assaulting her boyfriend robert parker when he had the audacity
to leave her for another woman she had assaulted the new girlfriend and then later when they were in court on
that she had also assaulted robert in the courtroom and so she was now in jail on those assaults princess gray said her
ex-boyfriend robert parker was the man who murdered renee powell and barbara walsh
it was the kind of tale police had heard hundreds of times before princess gray did have reason to lie she
was the jolted woman but gray said she and robert lived just a hundred and fifty yards away
from the apartment complex where renee powell and barbara walsh were murdered he started bringing stuff in the house
and i was like what are you doing where'd you get this stuff i was just like just
move just be quiet be quiet and quiet so he brought the stuff in then he put pepper
all over the floor inside routes and inside and outside the pepper would throw off the scent of any police
sniffer dogs in the area she said she still had the items parker took from the crime scenes
and where's that now i have it okay at your apartment yeah in the couple's apartment
investigators found the items stolen from renee powell and barbara walsh's apartments
tvs vcrs coats and other items identified by the victim's relatives when questioned by police
23 year old robert parker denied any involvement in the murders there were no fingerprints there were no
eyewitnesses he never admitted to being in those apartments but a background check revealed passed
brushes with the law at the time of the murders robert was making his money by selling drugs on the street and
it pawning property and selling property most likely stolen property that he got
in drug trade and stuff but then princess gray recanted her story apparently she and robert parker had
reconciled their differences princess gray now claimed they found these items in the trash
she claims that he was in the apartment all night that she had gone out and found the
property by some garbage cans or a dumpster without princess gray investigators had
no evidence it wasn't unexpected since her and parker shared a child but damn it when you have someone who
is providing you good evidence that directly connects the killer with the crime scenes
it's a hard nut to swallow you started bringing stuff in the house princess gray implicated her boyfriend
robert parker in the murders of renee powell and barbara walsh but later recanted after the two had
reconciled which version was correct she had facts that no one but the investigators
the victim and the suspect or someone close to the suspect would know but investigators didn't give up
princess gray had given them hours of information all on tape countless details of her life with
boyfriend robert parker some of it telling was your sex life pretty normal then yeah except for one time or of having
sex and he started to act like he had split personality and she started like choking me and calling
me and and stuff and gray said something else about parker's personal hygiene she had mentioned that
after she and parker had made love he frequently would go into their bathroom clean up using their towels and then
just leave the towels laying about the vanity we had found two towels in barbara walsh's bathroom that were
laying on top of her vanity although the towels had been in the fire investigators wondered if parker might
have used them after the sexual assault of barbara walsh to find out investigators took a close
look at those towels the towel was kind of folded or wadded up and as we opened up and started to
examine it we found four four hairs that were if they weren't heat damaged they were you know they
were certainly visually different from from barbara walsh's hairs and one of those hairs had the potential
to be a gold mine of evidence the first hair that i glommed on to was probably the largest here and it had a
root and it had a root with some some tissue onto it dumb luck kept that towel from burning up and
burning the pubic hair with it investigators now had dna evidence from both crime scenes biological evidence from
renee powell's rape test kit and the hair from barbara walsh's apartment scientists compared robert parker's dna
to those dna samples robert parker's dna profile was compared to the profile previously generated from the vaginal
swabs it was a match robert parker had denied ever being in the victims apartments and
now the evidence directly contradicted him we felt damn good it was just indescribable relief
to get dna which is pristine unattackable scientific evidence went up to that point you only had the
circumstance and the testimony of someone like princess gray two years after the crimes
twenty-three-year-old robert parker was arrested and charged with two counts of murder prosecutors
believe parker spent weeks watching his victims with renee powell he waited in the woods
next to her apartment when she went to the laundry room in the basement she left her door open
he went inside grabbed a knife from the kitchen and hid when renee returned he attacked binding her
arms with lamp cords from inside the apartment then sexually assaulting and stabbing
her to death he grabbed some items of value a vcr a coat dismantled the smoke detector
then set the fires to destroy evidence the case of barbara walsh was virtually identical
she too was doing her laundry and had left the door open while she went downstairs
[Music] like the first crime parker used materials he found inside the apartment
[Music] [Applause] after the sexual assault and murder he used the towels in the bathroom to clean
up before setting the fire in the folded towels one hair with the root intact survived the
intense heat smoke and flames a tiny hair found with the help of an angry girlfriend
intent on getting revenge the towel itself was was singed and burned a little bit but it wasn't
like it was burned up completely and so the hairs that were inside this towel were never exposed to the high
high heat investigators think the motive for parker's crimes was in part his anger and resentment towards
his girlfriend princess gray i believe that robert had been home with princess and that
there had been some kind of an argument where he left princess and and left angrily i assume it's
because he had a lot of pent up anger to princess who was dominant extremely difficult person to
deal with and i suspected that contributed to the release of this sexual deviancy
that we see in the murders after a four-month trial robert parker was convicted of two
counts of aggravated murder and sentenced to life in prison his crimes were planned all the way down
to his attempts to destroy the evidence but science uncovered evidence he didn't even know
existed it remains incredibly unsettling that there could be other parkers just walking the streets
among us and there's nothing to tip you off there a lot of cases would go unsolved
if they there was no forensic science around you just never know because it can be microscopic or it can
be something as big as a footballer or something like that it's it's that's the that's the beauty of forensic
sciences you just don't know what's going to be the most important part of your analysis

In little more than a month, two women who lived in the same apartment complex were brutally murdered. The similarities of the crime scenes led police to conclude they were dealing with a serial killer who harbored an intense hatred of women.

Brief Summary

The episode details the murders of Renee Powell and Barbara Walsh, leading to Robert Parker's arrest through forensic evidence.

Key points

Brutal Murders Shock Seattle. Two brutal murders put a city on edge, leading to a chilling investigation.
The Tragic Story of Renee Powell. Renee Powell, a registered nurse, was found dead in her apartment after a fire.
The Search for a Serial Killer. Police suspect a serial killer is behind the murders of two women in the same complex.
DNA Evidence Leads to Arrest. DNA evidence from crime scenes leads to the arrest of Robert Parker, a prime suspect.
The Unsettling Reality of Serial Killers. The case highlights the terrifying possibility of other killers living among us.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It's hard to sleep at night.

0:09WatchMar 5, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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