Forensic Files - Season 10, Episode 2 - Marked for Life - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[Music] in the 1950s police searched all over california for a man who had committed a
series of heinous crimes including murder all in the same night they checked literally thousands of
leads but eventually the case went cold almost five decades later advances in computer technology and handwriting
analysis prove the old adage that you can run but you can't hide [Music] [Music]
mile and mile of sand warmed by the sun beach beauties everywhere in the 1950s life was much simpler
it was the golden age of television with shows that reflected the innocence of the times
beaver how can you lose money just by counting it every time i look at it well i think
it's something i need and an automobile was more than just a way to get around [Music]
now the backseat of a car was kind of like a what a motel is now to to the young people
gave you a chance to kiss your girlfriend and you know be without any interruptions
and that's what bob was doing on may 22 1957. [Music] he and his date and another couple were
parked on a deserted stretch of road near el segundo california an area known as lovers lane
the windows were steamy as they normally get when you're sitting with their girlfriend kissing for an hour
or however long it is when bob opened the window for some air he discovered they weren't alone
now you saw the gun is the only thing that came through the window that was my whole life in that millisecond
the man a white male in his early twenties demanded their money and jewelry then he ordered the two couples
to get out of the car and to remove their clothes he then tied their hands behind their
backs and forced three of them into the backseat of the car [Music] then he sexually assaulted one of the
girls he just we couldn't stop it he had the gun later he forced all four of them out
into the field and lined them up in a row i thought for sure that he would kill the girl
because she probably had seen him but i guess he was going to kill all of us and we stood out there stark naked
for like three or four minutes then we just expected to hear the gun start going off
but the man drove off in the team's car without firing a shot before the teenagers could report what
happened their attacker went through a red light in front of two police officers
the car had not been reported stolen at that time therefore it was not in the system so there was no way for those
officers to have known that was a stolen vehicle or it had just been used in that crime
the policeman signaled the car to pull over the driver got out of the car then started shooting
[Music] both officers were shot three times the last thing officer throat did was
that he drew his own firearm and fired six rounds in the direction of the fleeing
suspect but by the time help arrived both officers were dead the stolen car was found a short time
later just four blocks away there were two bullet holes through the back window and one through the trunk
how does an officer who's been shot three times point blank in the back who's dying get up and shoot at a car
fleeing down the road and hit it three times i mean that is amazing two of the bullets were recovered but
the third couldn't be found was it possible that before he died officer phillips hit
the assailant you'd look at these photographs and you'd say he had to have been hit
in el segundo california two police officers were killed after stopping a car for running a red light
twenty-five-year-old milton curtis had been on the force for only two months he left behind a wife and two children
[Music] i was like what are they doing here and it was pretty much like he's sleeping why doesn't he come home
and sleep and she says he's in heaven the other victim 29 year old richard phillips was also married with three
children his daughter carolyn remembers the promise the police department made to
her mother we vow to you that no matter where you are no matter how much time goes by
we will find you if we ever solve this case police soon discovered that the murder
suspect had been driving a car stolen from the teenagers they had been robbed and assaulted
doerr described the assailant as a white male in his early twenties six feet tall 190 pounds with dark
blonde hair and an unfamiliar accent he wasn't from this area and he was soft-spoken and he was
slow not educated and he kind of had a draw howard speaks examined the stolen car
for evidence when they called me that there had been two policemen shot and killed
so i i knew the importance of the situation if there was any evidence that i could get i'd have to get it
speaks was initially disappointed with what he found nothing on the rear view mirror i
that's usually a good place if you're going to get a fingerprint if it's been moved to adjusting it you
know for the driver but nothing on this on the rear view mirror at all but the steering wheel was a different
story speaks found two partial prints on the steering wheel which appeared to be from
a left thumb [Music] and by putting that area together the two sides of the thumb put together
made the whole thumb print the likelihood of finding two partial fingerprints that are the same finger
it's very remote and in my 18 years of doing latent print work we we have not done it
since here investigators compared the left thumb print to every print in their files of
known criminal offenders at the time those examinations were all done by hand it took hundreds of hours but they
didn't find one that matched thousands of people were checked against that laden
and like i say since so many people had been changed checked i began to wonder if it was ever gonna
uh be identified the teenager said the assailant had a southern accent investigators thought he might be from
one of the nearby military bases i spent the whole week just going up and down the coast fingerprinting army
personnel but that too was a dead end i felt that at some point he would be caught
but then over a period of time too it was like nothing was being solved nothing was coming up everything went
cold on it it took another three years before police got their first real break a homeowner near the murder scene was
doing some yard work when he came across part of a handgun he was clearing out his backyard
and found the chamber to the handgun and thought well maybe it had something to do with the frame he found a year
prior so he went in his garage looked at it put it together and found that it was a match
police identified the gun as a nine shot harrington and richardson 22 caliber revolver
from the serial number police discovered the gun was purchased by g d wilson from a sears store in
shreveport louisiana at the time that they interviewed the the person who sold that gun he told him
that he believed the man was from out of town and uh his accent didn't sound like louisiana
accent it sounded more southern than that on the same day he bought the gun a george d wilson rented a room in the
ymca just across the street from the sears door we actually went into the room where
this george wilson had checked in and from this window of this uh room you could see the sears store
um and it was just kind of for us it was kind of overwhelming being in there and seeing that and trying to
figure out what was going on in this man's mind when he was there george wilson listed his home address in miami
florida the address turned out to be a rock quarry there was nothing there for approximately four years
they checked every person with that name in the united states all were dead ends
it soon became clear that george wilson was not his real name for years police in california searched
unsuccessfully for the man who robbed four teenagers stole their car then killed two police officers
despite several promising leads investigators were never able to identify a suspect
clues in that case that were taken from the time of the incident all through the
70s 80s 90s clues to other people that may have been involved anybody arrested at a lover's
lane with a gun anybody that fit the mo of this crime it was considered a clue i can't imagine i wouldn't have i
i would not have wanted to deal with that investigation that would have been overwhelming
then in september of 2002 nearly five decades later a woman called the el segundo police
department with an almost unbelievable story she said that her uncle had once bragged
about killing the two police officers back in the 1950s this call kind of rejuvenated everything
with hope when police confronted the man he denied it his prints were compared to the killer's
thumbprint left in the stolen car and did not match but this dead end piqued the interest of
a new generation of fingerprint experts dale falcon and don keer decided to take
a fresh look at the thumbprint lifted from the stolen car they now had computer technology
not available in 1957 so they digitally enhanced the killer's thumb print which made the images easier to see than
the original ink fingerprint sometimes there's areas that are not clear they could be smudged there could be
artifacts in there that are not clear so the computer may count that or read that as a particular characteristic
the digital copy of the killer's print was then loaded into iafis the fbi's computer database of fingerprints of all
known criminal offenders from every state in the country 47 million sets of fingerprints were
compared and one seemed to match we stood hovering over his computer screen looking at all the ridge
structure and the information there and everything coincided my words were oh my
god i couldn't believe it i had to sit down and have them repeat it and make sure they
weren't joking the print belonged to gerald mason who is now 70 years old living in columbia south
carolina he had been arrested for burglary in 1956 a year before the murders officials in south carolina had only
gotten around to submitting their fingerprints to the nationwide database just two months earlier
mason was married had children and grandchildren he owned a number of gas stations and had not been arrested for
any other crimes in the years since the murders now we've got a real suspect but we were
still a little bit apprehensive okay it's a fingerprint it's an old fingerprint what else do we have
one of the robbery victims bob door was brought in for a photographic lineup but couldn't identify mason as the man
who stole the car so police needed to look further so they needed something more
and what more was me the man who bought the murder weapon in 1956 and rented a room at a ymca in
shreveport louisiana had printed his name on the register paul edholm a forensic document examiner
was asked to compare gerald mason's handwriting to the signature of george wilson on the ymca register
we look at things whether documents are freely and naturally written whether the slant is the same
the height relationship of letters the alignment to the baseline how the letters themselves are formed and
whether there's open loops closed loops retraces how you punctuate how you dot eyes and cross t's
almost immediately ed holm noticed that some letters seemed to jump off the page
first was the capital g because we had g and george and g and gerald and as far as the height relationship
as far as the width of the letter as far as the slant the amount of strokes it took to form the letter each one of
those was consistent and that was very important there were other similarities in the
letter d and s o n and there was something more what i noted in mr mason's handwriting
was from 1957 at that time he was 23 years old until 1999 his handwriting did not
change one iota it was exactly the same ed holm was convinced that gerald mason signed the ymca register with the alias
george d wilson nearly five decades after the crime mason was arrested and charged with murder
when we introduced ourselves and told them we were homicide investigators he was a little bit irritated and it was
almost like you're here for that that happened so long ago i can't believe you're here bothering me with that you
know 45 46 years later based on the forensic evidence prosecutors believe gerald mason bought
the gun in louisiana then checked into a ymca using the alias george d wilson mason was a drifter when he went to
california in 1957. he may have been drinking near the hawthorne airport when he saw bob door's
car parked in the lover's lane [Music] he robbed the teenagers committed a sexual assault then stole
the car at gunpoint while fleeing the scene mason went through a traffic light and was stopped
by two police officers the officers didn't know the car was stolen mason got out of the car so the officers
wouldn't see the stolen goods on the back seat and when officer phillips turned away
he fired three shots into his back then three more through the windshield killing officer curtis
while speeding away officer phillips fired three shots with the world class precision
one went through the trunk hitting mason in the back when gerald mason was arrested
investigators asked him to remove his shirt sure enough he had a bullet wound on his back
proof that officer phillips got him very last thing he did in life was to mark forever
the man who killed him and his partner and that's pretty compelling because it's almost as if
someone is speaking to you from the grave telling you ladies and gentlemen i told you who it is i pointed him out
with my gunfire that was never reported as far as i know to the media i said why didn't you tell
us because we didn't want anybody to know about it and we didn't want him to go and get
plastic surgery or to you know whatever and it's amazing the gun was traced to shreveport
louisiana the handwriting was gerald mason's as was the thumbprint on the steering wheel
of the car [Music] i didn't realize i ran a red light and i got out of the car walked back to their
car my feelings were that what i had done was going to cause me to go to death row so when the officer
turned away from me i shot those officers to avoid a public trial gerald mason pleaded guilty to the
murder of the two police officers and was sentenced to two consecutive life terms in prison
he only admitted the crime because it was in his best interest to do so so that his family his wife his
grandchildren would not hear how he raped a teenager he traded the lives of two on duty
police officers to avoid capture it's impossible to express to so many people that's our name to the homeland
collected that night i do not understand why i did this it's contrary to one region
it does not fit in my life it is not the person i know how to test these crimes what people would say
about him being at 24 years old and committing these crimes and living a life crime free it doesn't matter he's a
thief he's a rapist and he's a murderer he just got old that's all there is to it all the
scientific this forensic evidence we're going to see a lot more cold cases being
solved based on the advancements in technology [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music]
you

A man who had committed crimes including murder was not caught. Almost 50 years later, advances in technology and handwriting analysis uncovered the criminal.

Forensic Files is the longest-running true crime series in television history. Evidence and interviews with experts help solve real crimes, disease outbreaks and accidents around the world.

Brief Summary

A cold case from 1957 is solved using modern forensic technology, identifying Gerald Mason as the murderer of two police officers.

Key points

The Golden Age of Innocence. In the 1950s, life was simpler, reflecting innocence through television shows.
The Attack at Lover's Lane. A couple's romantic evening turns into a nightmare when they are confronted by an armed man.
A Break in the Case. Decades later, a call about a bragging uncle reignites hope in a cold case.
The Fingerprint Match. Advanced technology leads to a match with a suspect's fingerprint from decades ago.
The Arrest of Gerald Mason. After nearly five decades, the man behind the murders is finally apprehended.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

You can run but you can't hide.

0:33WatchJan 13, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

More from Forensic Files

Solve the Crime

Read a real case one clue at a time, then see how your call held up against the investigators.