Forensic Files (HD) - Season 13, Episode 42 - Shoe-In For Murder - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[Music] up next a young girl witnesses her mother's murder and do you say that she's
pleading but for years the crime goes unsolved this was somebody that crystal knew and
probably knew well a suspect comes forward with an unbelievable tale it was just the most bizarre story i've
ever heard in my life it's completely impossible but what if the evidence shows he's telling the truth the dna come back
and dna doesn't lie [Music] in the summer of 1992 crystal perry bought a small house in bridgton maine
the single mother thought it would be the perfect place to raise her daughter sarah my mother's number one priority
was taking care of me and she did all she could to you know buy a house for us as soon as she could and make sure that
you know i had a really stable upbringing crystal found work in a local shoe factory
and by all accounts was a good parent whoever you meet to speak with her they would say she
she worked very hard at the local shoe shop trying to make a better life for for she and sarah it was a steady
peaceful life but one night after 12 year old sarah had gone to bed she heard an argument between
her mother and the man [Music] i'm woken right up from sleeping with her saying no as loud as she can and the
loudest most terrified voice that you could ever imagine sarah didn't know what to do she opened
her door and looked out but couldn't see anything then she heard a drawer in the kitchen
open i heard silverware clanging against each other after that i heard a repetitive banging noise
which i figured was someone killing someone else with a knife then the screaming stopped i realized
i have to make contact with the outside world and i have to do what i can if she has any chance of living she
didn't hear the attacker leave she wasn't sure if the attacker was still in the house
incredibly sarah risked her own life and left her bedroom to check on her mother i saw a body on
the floor and i saw a lot of blood and as i was approaching it i was hoping that it wasn't her but pretty
sure that it was her mother wasn't moving sarah tried the phone but there was no
dial tone so she ran a half mile to a neighbor's house and knocked on the door but no one answered she kept running
and finally came to a small restaurant and i said someone's killed my mother and i think this person could be after
me i really need to call 911 when police arrived crystal perry was pronounced dead
at the scene it's a horrific scene crystal perry is lying on the kitchen floor there's blood
everywhere there's pools of blood there's footprints and blood there's blood drops
crystal perry had been stabbed more than 50 times there's a bloodshed event that occurred
in the living room area and that extended from that area into the kitchen where she was
found we classified this as a crime of passion because of the overkill which usually 99 of the time leads it to be
somebody known and some some acquaintance of the of the victim nothing had been stolen from the house
and there was no forced entry she was in her bathrobe it was later at night and for her to be comfortable um to open
the door if that's what happened it certainly suggest she either knows them or would
recognize them it looked as if the killer attempted to clean up while doing so he tracked bloody shoe
prints over the kitchen floor there were footwear impressions of varying quality and clarity
all throughout the flooring approximately 20 or more were visible this helped identify the number of
assailants crystal had bare feet so either there was one suspect at the crime scene
or there were two with the same type of shoe and the same outsole design so the likelihood of that is low
bridgeton was a small town only a few thousand people and his residents soon learned one of
them was a killer because crystal perry had been stabbed more than 50 times there was an extraordinary amount of
blood at the crime scene the fingerprints were too soaked in blood to be usable but blood spatter analysts noticed a
series of blood patterns on crystal's body that were distinctive what stood out to us was clearly you
could see some blood droplets which are on her leg on her exposed leg and when we examined the blood droplets
it was consistent with a passive blood drop passive blood drops are almost always
perfectly circular at the point of impact they result from blood dripping straight
down from a relatively stationary source and since these drops fell on top of crystal's body
it could mean only one thing they did not come from crystal there's no way that she would be able to
maneuver her body in such a way that blood drops would come down on the side of her legs
this was an event that happened after crystal perry was motionless that led to one conclusion the killer
was hurt during the attack and his blood dripped onto crystal's body blood is slippery blood is consistency
of motor oil your hand is going to slip down and probably go over the blade and you're going to get
cut these passive blood drops were also found in the kitchen there was drips of blood in the sink and
on the counter and appeared that he went to the paper towel dispenser and got some paper towels
because there was no drips coming back towards the body they were all going towards the sink investigators
found a shoe in a local store that matched the bloody shoe impression from the crime scene an oak harbor model
dany shoe so they had an idea of what the shoe of the suspect would look like at crystal's autopsy the medical
examiner found evidence of sexual assault and collected biological samples for future comparison
in a search for suspects police turned to crystal's ex-husband thomas who lived only six
miles away my parents divorced when i was three or four and um i didn't really have a relationship
with my father he was in town but i didn't know him very well at the time of the homicide crystal and
tom were not getting along they didn't care for one another it may well have been over child support issues
thomas had an alibi for the time of the murder he was home with his living girlfriend
at the time but thomas's alibi was problematic his girlfriend joanne steger had a
run-in with crystal perry shortly before the murder there was no love lost between the two of them
joanne is jealous of crystal and to the point where where she had even had a altercation in
a local bar one night the crystal was punched in the eye and she had a big black eye
they were quickly pulled apart by the bar owners joanne is actually charged with assault
those charges were ultimately dropped but thomas and joanne's alibis for the time of crystal's murder
were now considered suspect joanne's alibi was tom and tom's alibi was joanne police weren't the only ones who thought
joanne might be responsible somebody was always calling saying joanne's involved
i'm not saying that she's a girl that could commit murder but but uh she was a tough girl
but crystal perry's daughter sarah identified another possible suspect on the night of her mother's murder
sarah said she thought she recognized the man she heard arguing with her mother it was her mother's boyfriend 19 year
old dennis butler sarah said she'd seen dennis get angry in the past i had seen him go from being irritated to being
pretty angry very quickly dennis and crystal had a volatile relationship clearly there would be some hurdles with
her being 30 and dennis being 19. crystal says to a co-worker that there was an incident involving her
where dennis and her got into a fight and during the fight it was a verbal fight and he had showed a knife and made
a threat to kill her when questioned by police dennis denied he was at crystal's home that night
he said he was at his parents house his folks had no idea whether he was there or not
dennis offered to take a polygraph examination to clear his name twice he took the test and he failed
both times everything pointed to him everything and i mean the more we get into it the
more fingers begin to point at it [Music] [Applause] after crystal perry's murder her
daughter sarah then 12 years old was forced to move to texas to live with relatives
it was understandably a difficult time when i fell apart i really did fall apart and
you know cried a lot and had a lot of fear i didn't want to be left alone in the house
crystal perry's 19 year old boyfriend dennis butler was a possible suspect butler failed
two polygraph tests it tells us that he being deceptive he was not telling the truth on some of these answers which
indicated he was either directly involved or he had knowledge of what took place that night
butler wore the same size shoe as the footwear impressions at the crime scene but investigators did not find oak
harbor brand shoes in his home when investigators asked butler for his dna sample he
agreed but in return asked police for a favor in the event they returned to arrest him
he says i know everything's going to point to me and so when it does just you know try to give me a little
bit of courtesy here when you come to get me at my place of work would you come in the back door
because they've been really good to me and i don't want to embarrass the business
i think in my whole 15 years the homicide unit i don't think i ever had anybody say that to me but when butler's dna was
compared to dna from the crime scene to everyone's surprise there was no match i was shocked that it did not come back
dennis's they were all all in shock i think they were all probably 99 sure that dennis was the one
so shocking that investigators had difficulty believing the results dennis is such a logical
suspect they ask that it be tested again the results from the second test were the same the dna come back and dna
doesn't lie and it was not dennis the dna of blood from the crime scene was also compared
to crystal's ex-husband thomas his girlfriend joanne and several other suspects but again there was no match after the
dna results came back i think everything was on the table everything was potentially
possible again the dna from the crime scene was eventually compared to the dna profiles in the database
of known criminal offenders and again there was no match with that the case went cold the towns people were
very upset i think any time you have a case that goes unsolved for a long period of time
it has even more of a dramatic impact it's frightening for the people in town homicide cases are never truly closed
but the investigation continued with little progress i was on this case for four years before i
retired and quite frankly i stayed on an extra two years with the state police because of this case
we knew we had the physical evidence that could nail this person we just had to find a person to match
over the next 12 years several suspects were considered including a serial killer and a local
handyman whose romantic advances crystal had once rejected but dna excluded them both
eventually so much time had passed that i accepted that we weren't going to find this person
then incredibly investigators got a break the statewide dna database reported a cold hit
a man named michael hutchinson had recently served six months in a main prison for a
weapons offense and he was required by law to submit a dna sample for the database it
matched the semen from crystal perry's autopsy it is his dna it was dna to a mathematical certainty it was
him to the exclusion of everyone else it was his dna at the crystal perry residence
michael hutchinson lived within about a mile of crystal perry at the time of this incident occurred
hutchinson was 19 years old at the time of crystal perry's murder he was never on the screen he was barely
20 years old his name never surfaced because there was no relationship between the two of
them they were never seen together when questioned hutchinson made a startling confession
he admitted he was with crystal on the night of the attack his story is that he was having a secret romance with
crystal hutchinson claimed he and crystal were in bed when an intruder burst into the house
[Music] he confronted the man in the kitchen but was knocked unconscious he then wakes up sees the man over
crystal stabbing her and he runs out the door [Music] did police find a possible witness to
the crime or had they found the killer michael hutchinson claimed he had an explanation
for why his dna was at the scene of crystal perry's murder he claimed he was in crystal's home
having consensual sex when an intruder broke in he said he fled the scene during the
attack to protect himself and later was embarrassed to admit it he said he was ashamed because he
couldn't protect crystal or sarah and he got scared and ran out of the house and
he didn't tell anybody because he was ashamed even hutchinson's ex-wife who had filed two protection
from abuse orders against him insisted he was no killer i don't believe michael is a mother i
don't believe he's capable of it and i support him fully but hutchinson who worked in his
father's construction business was known to have drug and alcohol problems we had called my girlfriend saying that
you know he was a nut you know he'd drink and get get ugly and get meat people that we
spoke to just said that he um he was just a real erratic during this time he didn't know what to expect
from him investigators found numerous problems with hutchinson's story first crystal's bed looked as if only one
person had been sleeping in it and if hutchinson had been having an affair with crystal
why hadn't her daughter ever seen him i would have known i was living in the house we really lived as a pair
you know when you live with a single mother you know what's going on in her life the bloody shoe impressions
at the crime scene also disputed hutchinson's story it appeared from my analysis that there was
only one person there at the crime scene leaving down that outsole design when the blood
was wet finally analysts compared hutchinson's dna to the perfectly round blood drops on
crystal's leg dna tests proved this was hutchinson's blood and what that drop told us was that crystal was on the
floor she was motionless probably lifeless by the time and the person is bleeding on is
dripping blood onto her body so the blood was dripped onto her after she was deceased
michael hutchinson was arrested and charged with first degree murder prosecutors believe
hutchinson may have been high on drugs on the night of the murder they also suspect hutchinson and crystal
knew one another casually since it was a small town prosecutors believe he knocked on
crystal's door and used a ruse to get inside saying he had car trouble or asking to use the phone
[Music] they think his real motive was to make a sexual advance which crystal refused
there was a fight the evidence suggests hutchinson used a knife sexually assaulted crystal
then stabbed her to death at some point he cut his hand his blood dripped on the crystal's leg in perfect
circles proof he was standing over her and was not running away as he claimed [Music]
the final nail in hutchinson's coffin was the scar police noticed on his right hand
the day they arrested him we saw the significant scar that ran basically from the palm area across the
whole front of the hand during his trial hutchinson testified in his own defense
telling the same story of the intruder the jury didn't believe him either everything he told us was a lie and it
was it was pretty easy to prove once once we knew who he was it took the jury just
two hours to find michael hutchinson guilty of first degree murder he was sentenced to life in prison
with no possibility of parole i know this is a really big day that'll look for me and my family
but that it will also bring peace to a lot of other people the best i can do is accept that there is pure evil in the
world and that that there are people who are not redeemable although it took years to solve the
crime science eventually brought justice to a daughter who never lost hope i would say the
scientific facts in this case really have ruled out any sort of ambiguity that might have
been left in anyone's mind it was the investigators that found the blood spot that didn't belong on crystal perry's
leg but it was the dna that really solved the case because without that we never would have found michael
hutchinson if not for forensic science in this case we probably would have put the wrong person
behind bars you

A killer made great effort to obscure the shoe impressions left when he tracked blood on the floor, but he ended up creating new incriminating evidence…

Brief Summary

Crystal Perry's murder in Maine leads to a long investigation, ultimately revealing Michael Hutchinson as the killer through DNA evidence.

Key points

A Mother's Tragic Murder. Crystal Perry is brutally murdered, leaving her daughter Sarah to witness the horror.
The Unbelievable Tale. A suspect emerges with a bizarre story that challenges the investigation.
The DNA Breakthrough. DNA evidence leads to a shocking conclusion about the murder suspect.
Justice Served. Michael Hutchinson is found guilty of first-degree murder after a lengthy investigation.
The Power of Forensic Science. Forensic evidence ultimately solves the case that went cold for years.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I really need to call 911.

A young girl desperately seeking help after her mother's murder.

3:08WatchMar 5, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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