Forensic Files (HD) - Season 13, Episode 48 - Lights Out - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[Music] up next a young girl sees her mother's killer but can't identify him there was nothing she was a complete
blank with no other evidence the case turns cold after kathy was laid to rest i was always struggling trying
to find out who could have done this until forensic scientists decided to play act the crime
basically what we were doing was we were strangling each other and when they did found evidence hidden
for 15 years it takes science and luck to solve cases in this case it took a lot of luck
[Music] mike odum met kathy martin in high school they dated and soon decided to make a
life together but before they could get married mike was arrested for selling heroin
a mistake that put him behind bars for two years i remember while he was in the penitentiary and kathy was dead set on
waiting on him to get out to date him again which she did shortly after his release mike and kathy
did get married and had two children tasha and shawn kathy's father even gave mike a job
working in his sign business kathy was set on making the marriage work did everything she could
things were going well until one night when mike couldn't get in touch with kathy who said
she'd be home with the two children kathy didn't answer the phone so mike called his next-door neighbor
and asked him to see if anything was wrong the neighbor went over beat on the door
nobody answered he looked in and i think the tv was going there was just something suspicious
but instead of calling police the neighbor drove a quarter mile into town found a policeman and they both went
back to the odom's house together the officer entered the unlocked house inside on the living room sofa was
four-year-old tasha beaten and unconscious but still alive [Music] he found two-month-old sean unharmed in
the back room in the next room he found kathy odum on the floor naked and covered in blood
she'd been stabbed to death an ambulance rushed four-year-old tasha to the hospital
when kathy's father arrived at the scene police told him little about what had happened
i said where's the children he said well the children have been taken to the hospital
and he said that would be a good place for you to go and check on the children frank described to me what it was like
to be sitting in the hospital and he looked up at a tv set and that's when he learned that his daughter had
been killed i didn't know that at the time and i seen that well i went outside the hospital and sat
down cried a long time until i got myself back together a little bit to uh you know i i never did go back to the
house that night which was strange when mike odum got there police paid special attention
to his appearance mike owed him the husband drives up and he's wearing blue jeans and a blue
shirt and one of the investigators notices that he's got stains on his shirt is that blood is it not blood a search
of the odom's home revealed blood in the bathroom which meant the killer had cleaned up before leaving
but police found no evidence of a break-in all the doors were locked except the front door this indicated
kathy probably knew her killer [Music] kathy odom's autopsy showed she had been stabbed
19 times and sexually assaulted this is a crime of passion that it's not a stranger killing because
why would a stranger feel the need to stab her 16 times plus slash her throat three more times
kathy odom's clothes told police something about what happened she took them off she folded them up
deliberately you know her clothes haven't been ripped off of her so she voluntarily
took her clothes off police believe that the killer attacked kathy odom's daughter tasha
in order to make kathy do whatever he wanted number one it would make tasha stop
crying and more importantly it would convince kathy that he's serious and she better go along with what he's
going to do apparently the killer used a cord from a nearby lamp and bound kathy's wrists before sexually
assaulting her then stabbing her to death in the end she ended up losing her life while she
was protecting herself and her children as family members tried to cope with kathy's murder
they prayed for four-year-old tasha's recovery they had tasha on ivs she was in a coma
state she had been beaten bad as doctors worked on the little girl police talked to her father mike his
emotions i mean he was emotional he was distraught but there were some people that at the scene that thought
we need to look at this person a little bit more also suspicious mike odum didn't come
straight home after work on the night kathy was murdered instead he went out with friends that's why he
was calling his wife that night to let her know he'd be late we've seen it before
where an individual has arranged a murder he's at another location he calls the person
you know go check on my wife so we're always suspicious of the husband until we can get them cleared out when
police interviewed mike odum they saw stains on his shirt which was taken to the forensic lab for testing police
also found suspicious stains on the floor mats of tim robinson's car the neighbor who first contacted police
we had to get the floor mat we had to send it to the lab and have it tested the medical examiner estimated that
kathy odom was murdered about six hours before her body was found which would have been about one o'clock
in the afternoon mike odum and his neighbor tim robinson both claimed to be at work at the time
while investigators checked their alibis they got a potential witness tasha odom
emerged from her coma and told investigators she remembered a man entering the house and coming up to her
what tasha could remember was that the person put their hands up over their face and
so that tells you right there they knew tasha she said he had yellow hair like you nanny your hair yellow
my godem didn't have blonde hair and neither did tim robinson but the killer's hair
color was all tasha could remember there was nothing she was a complete blank she remembered nothing
when the forensic tests came back the stains in tim robinson's car turned out to be
motor oil the stains on mike odom's shirt were paint in addition co-workers provided
solid alibis for both of them and they each passed polygraphs they don't have anything to
do with it then we want to get them cleared out as quickly as possible so we can move on to
the next person and that next person was mentioned by everyone who knew kathy it was
her brother-in-law greg marquart everyone knew their relationship and that it wasn't good that he had this
weird obsession for her that she didn't like him that she was afraid of him and that he had tried to
make advances toward her before to put a move on her before and she didn't like it and there was ample
evidence greg had been in the house they found his fingerprints his hair throughout the scene
there was only one problem as a family member who'd been in the house numerous times this didn't
prove a thing the only witness to kathy odom's murder her four-year-old daughter tasha
had sustained a massive blow to her head she had injuries to her face with swelling and everything
and it would appear that she was hit you know with a fist but after two days in a coma tasha
rallied before her release from the hospital her uncle greg marquart came to visit it was an
encounter tasha's grandmother would never forget natasha how are you doing hi greg
how's she doing tasha when she saw greg she looked over at me like scared to death look
when they asked little tasha whether it was her uncle greg who entered the house
on the day of the attack she said she couldn't remember they tried different things to try to bring
out those memories at one point they even hypnotized her hoping they could find some grain of memory she was so
traumatized you know she never recalled it thirty-five-year-old greg markwart had
been married to kathy odom's sister shelley for four years shelley and greg had served time in prison for possession
of cocaine it's the drug scene of the 80s they were caught up in in fact one of the reasons kathy wanted
to move to a new house was to get away from greg who had made many sexual advances toward
her she was scared of greg she said i would not want to be alone with him by myself oddly
despite these rebuffs greg marquart was surprisingly open about his attraction to kathy
particularly to one part of her body he had a thing for kathy's tummy which is sort of odd i
mean why would he pay attention to her tummy and be obsessed by that this fixation was so obvious
kathy talked about it with friends kathy even was saying i don't know what it is
but he's just you know there's something about my stomach that you know and he wants to have sex with
me i've heard of people having fetishes with feet or hands but that's the first one having
a fetish with a stomach that i've heard of coincidentally kathy odom had been stabbed repeatedly
in the stomach and these are deep penetrating wounds when questioned by police mark wart
denied any involvement but said little else at some point in that detective's interview greg
said uh excuse me i need to go out and put money into the parking meter he got up
he left he never came back greg's wife shelly the victim's sister said greg drove her to school at 10 30 on the day
of the murder and picked her up again at 2 30. this four-hour window was more than
enough time for greg to commit the murder and clean up before picking up his wife
from school the way i would describe shelly is she's extremely codependent and absolutely was under the control of greg
marquart this much i know that he got her hooked on heroin which to me is the worst thing that a
human being could do to another one an analysis of the crime scene provided little help
greg's fingerprints and hairs were found in kathy's house but other family members prints were found
there as well he was her brother-in-law and he had been to the house before so it was natural that you would find
his fingerprints and his hairs although kathy had been sexually assaulted this crime occurred years
before dna was widely used in murder investigations at the time in the 1980s they were using
serology basically they were doing blood group typing and it was very difficult you
need a very large sample and plus you would only get a blood type the blood type from the rape kit
was consistent with greg marquart's blood type he was a type o about 50 of the population is a typo so that's not
giving you much information so without more evidence the case went cold after kathy was laid
to rest and time went on i found myself at the cemetery most all the time but i was always struggling trying to
find out who could have done this they say if you don't solve the crime within a month with all the fresh leads that's
not a possibility there that you would greg and shelly marquart went on with their lives
but for kathy's father it was especially difficult the idea that he had to go through his
daughter's murder and then live believing for all those years with all his heart
that the man who did it was married to his other daughter can you imagine what that would be like
it took 11 years before dna testing became dependable enough to generate a dna profile
from the biological evidence in kathy odom's rape kit when that profile was compared to greg
markwart's dna it wasn't a hundred percent conclusive but it did show that greg was among the two
percent of the general population who could have been the perpetrator well when this came forward i thought sure we
had him but greg had an explanation he claimed he and kathy were having a consensual affair
and was with her on the morning of her murder but he insisted she was alive when he left greg
marquart was not arrested at that time because the district attorney we were talking to
did not feel like we could get a conviction on this case with him saying at that time i was
having an affair with her that we were having consensual sex they would have to prove
that greg was there that day and that greg was there to murder kathy but how would they do it
[Music] it had been four years since dna testing showed that greg mark ward was among the two percent of the general
population who could have sexually assaulted and presumably murdered kathy odom but investigators weren't
sure how to counter greg's claim that he was involved in a consensual affair with kathy around
the time of her murder while this was taking place investigators were working with
catherine long at orchid cell mark a private forensic lab in dallas catherine long her dad was the chief of
police in el paso texas so she thinks a little differently than your normal scientist
and cell mark was doing some unusual experiments at the time basically what we were doing was we were
strangling each other not for fun it was business to determine whether a killer would deposit skin
cells in the act of choking a victim we would swab their neck we would also swab the hands of the person who
performed the choking that's when they realized there was a significant transfer of skin cells and it was
actually very high investigators needed to find something in kathy's evidence file
that would have contained the perpetrator's skin cells the answer was the electrical
cord used to bind kathy's hands anytime you go anywhere you leave a piece of yourself behind
be it skin cells be it a hair follicle be it a fingerprint in an incredible piece of
luck the cord had been stored not in a plastic bag but a paper bag that paper bag
provides breathability so that if there isn't any moisture on that item it's going to dry and that will
therefore prolong the dna life it will actually preserve the dna longer than it would in a plastic bag
the cord was covered in blood so scientists swabbed the cord for the blood and any
skin cells that existed with the blood testing revealed two genetic profiles one was kathy
odom's dna the other was greg markwarts the only way marquart's dna would have been on the bloody electrical cord
found wrapped around kathy's hands was if he were the killer greg marquart was arrested and charged
with kathy odom's murder in prison markwart told the whole chilling story to a fellow inmate
marquart said he was high on heroin when he drove to kathy's house that day once inside he made a sexual advance
which she rejected you're gonna tell me that stop you're saying we don't feel like get out of
here to force her to comply he struck his four-year-old niece tasha repeatedly in
the head leaving her for dead the baby shawn was in the next room and greg threatened to kill him too
in order to save the baby's life kathy complied [Music] using a knife from the kitchen greg
cut the electrical cord from a lamp and bound kathy's wrist leaving his dna on the
cord after he sexually assaulted kathy he stabbed her to death [Music] he washed up in the bathroom and changed
into kathy's husband's clothing to keep blood out of his car little did markwart know advances in
science would be able to identify him as the perpetrator 15 years later sweet thank you god justice god knows what
we're going to have in 10 years or 20 years it's even better and more advanced than what we have now
it's amazing when faced with this evidence greg markwart pled guilty to kathy's murder
and was sentenced to 45 years in prison he died of liver disease after serving four years of his sentence
he was 56 years old couldn't happen to a nicer guy that's the way i feel about it
[Music] doesn't bring back kathy i'll always remember her the house she put together the things we
did it's tough to lose a child but i thank the good lord for everything he did it's just one of those cases that you
know just make i guess it makes you proud to be a part of uh that we were able to have a
good ending to it you know and that's just filing on him like greg was not able to get away with
murder in this case but there's a lot more out there that that are still unsolved
you

The decade-old murder of a young Texas housewife is investigated.

Brief Summary

Kathy Odom's murder was solved 15 years later through DNA evidence linking her brother-in-law Greg Marquart to the crime.

Key points

The Murder of Kathy Odom. Kathy Odom was brutally murdered, leaving her family in turmoil. 'She'd been stabbed to death.'
The Arrest of Greg Marquart. Greg Marquart was arrested after DNA evidence linked him to Kathy's murder. 'Greg Marquart was arrested and charged with Kathy Odom's murder.'
Justice After 15 Years. Advancements in DNA testing finally brought justice for Kathy Odom. 'Thank you God, justice.'

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Can you imagine what that would be like?

14:22WatchMar 5, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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