Forensic Files - Season 10, Episode 3 - Plastic Puzzle - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[Music] 911 police emergency a hit-and-run driver left the scene of the crime but he took something with him something
very important and he left behind a piece of forensic evidence that microscopically told a
story more graphic than any eyewitness could ever have told [Music] on a cold february night in 1995
todd christensen a kalamazoo michigan policeman was on duty in his patrol car things had been quiet
and christensen thought it was going to remain so i was actually eating dinner in my car
relaxing with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich when a frantic citizen came up and
pulled up next to me he told christensen that a man was badly hurt a couple of blocks away
[Music] when christensen got there the man was alive but just barely he was what i call circling the drain
his breathing was was not good he was doing all he could to just suck in air at that time
major head trauma [Music] the victim 33 year old kirk hudson was rushed to the local hospital
[Music] when i went into the room and i saw him laying there and his injuries he just didn't hardly look like
the same person so it was real hard and my mom was of course real upset that was her only son
so it was very upsetting hudson never regained consciousness he was pronounced dead before police
could find out what had happened when my brother passed away it affected our whole family
my mom suffered two nervous breakdowns it affected all of us kirk's death was the final act in a
series of tragedies he was an unemployed navy veteran whose 28 year old wife died of cancer just a
few years earlier [Music] at the time of his death he had been caring for his mother she was sick and
elderly at the accident scene police found a damaged bicycle near kirk's body what we saw is definitely
evidence of a crime the vehicle parts the mangled up bicycle the person lying in a pool of blood
would lead any reasonable officer to believe that this guy got hit by a vehicle and then that vehicle then left
kirk's family told police he often rode his bicycle at night i think maybe that was how maybe he did
relieve his stress it didn't phase him really what time it was he was a night person
so that was his thing you know he'd ride his bike at night or wherever he wanted
to do near kirk's bicycle police found a trail of plastic and glass fragments a small convex mirror
some paint chips and an antenna the first thing that ran through my mind was the driver of this vehicle was obviously
drunk someone left the bar ran this guy over either knew it or didn't know it regardless
and laughed because they were drunk didn't want to get caught by the police this trail of vehicle parts led north
along the street indicating the direction of the driver from kirk's head injuries police
determined that he was riding the bike with the traffic on the right side of the road when he was hit from behind
this meant that the hit-and-run vehicle would have had right front end damage there was no evidence the driver used
his brakes before or after he struck kirk [Applause] and kirk's family couldn't understand
why someone would leave him to die in the street this was just an accident he didn't mean to do it or
she didn't mean to do it we just wanted them you know to say to us that they were sorry for what they had
did [Music] and that they didn't mean to do it so that's all we wanted [Music] there were no eyewitnesses to kirk
hudson's hit and run death but the force of impact left little doubt that the driver who hit him knew
what happened how could they just hit him and then just leave him there to me that was just
i couldn't even believe it i was like you know why couldn't they have just stopped
the only clues to the driver's identity were some pieces of truck or car parts left at the scene
we knew that the evidence on top of the ice was fresh because if it wasn't fresh
it had been frozen in the ice so all the pieces of light lens the antenna reflector lens any parts of the bicycle
the fresh paint all sitting on top we knew was fresh crime scene technicians identified the
location of each piece with a numbered marker and then drew a detailed diagram of the scene
every piece there were 28 in all was then photographed but it was doubtful whether these tiny
clues would be enough to identify the vehicle after i collected things from the scene
i thought that we'd done the best job we could but i gave it about a 30 chance of ever
finding the vehicle that was involved i didn't think that we stood a real good chance
[Music] among the pieces of the vehicle were also paint chips one of the chips was a little bigger than a quarter and
contained a wealth of information there were two distinct colors on the chip with a line running through them
it was a tri-colored piece of paint chip it's a maroon color a black pinstripe and moth
that was very unique that's a two-tone vehicle with a pinstripe a background check revealed there were
very few vehicles sold with that color combination which raised the possibility that it was a custom paint job
that helped narrow the scope of what we were looking for even more next investigators turned to the shards
of orange plastic recovered from the scene under the microscope they found a combination of small cubes
and rectangles designed to reflect and shine light this meant it was most likely from a
turn signal or parking light investigators then took each shard and attempted to piece together what they
had you literally may have one piece that's broke here and another piece that fits
into it or you get jagged pieces and they all come together microscopically and that's what you look for
on one shard investigators found a pentagon with a star inside it looked like a chrysler dodge logo
on this shard there appeared to be a serial number the one part had some markings on it
some numbers on it and i was in hopes that it would be part numbers that we could identify what
type of vehicle this lens is coming from had came from so investigators gathered all the pieces
from the crime scene and went to a local chrysler dodge dealership and there parts manager david johnson found
himself doing something well outside his job description i'd read about it in the paper about the
person getting hit in downtown kalamazoo and they thought it might be a van of some kind that had done it and when the
officer came in and questioned us it's like wow i wonder if it was a dodge johnson confirmed these pieces were from
the plastic casing of a turn signal he then took the serial number and went through old parts manuals and discovered
another piece of the puzzle there was no doubt in my mind what this came off of it had to be off of a dodge van once we
saw the paint chip and the antenna on it i knew it had to be a conversion van because those were not standard items
a conversion van is customized to the owner's specifications johnson said the parts from the turn
signal indicated the vehicle was a dodge ram a van made between 1986 and 1993. [Music]
a closer look at the small mirror found at the scene narrowed this down even further
this was a customized part and was only available from 1986 to 1987 police now knew the make and model of
the vehicle that killed kirk hudson within a two-year range we were in a real big hurry to try to
find the vehicle time is is pretty critical you know you don't want that vehicle
sitting out there for a long period of time incredibly in kalamazoo alone there were hundreds of vehicles fitting
that description nationwide tens of thousands and the driver and his van could be anywhere
[Music] after examining pieces of the vehicle that killed kirk hudson police knew they were looking for a 1986
or 87 move and maroon dodge ram a conversion van with a black pinstripe police had a list of the hundreds of
people whose vans fit the description it's like looking for a needle in a haystack
it's not an easy thing to do kirk hudson's family was informed but warned not to get their hopes up
my brother did have a family and they didn't care you know he was a person and it was important for us to
follow through on this and make sure that justice was served a description of the van was released to
the media some calls came in but they were all dead ends then about a month after kirk hudson's
death a customer in a local bar started to ask some questions i was had my normalcy and the bartender
said something about an accident where a guy on a bicycle had been killed i said
really when the woman who asked that she remain anonymous wanted to know more about the
accident when she heard the accident took place just a few blocks from the bar and read the description of the hit and
run vehicle she suspected she knew the identity of the driver he had the only dodge van in that
neighborhood that color i don't even remember what year his dodge van was how old it was and who it was
whatever i just know that that vanna had to be his van she called police to voice her suspicion
that the driver of the van was jim northy and she said she was with northey on the
night of the accident the two had been drinking together i couldn't even possibly come close to
saying how many he had i wasn't keeping track she said northie left the bar alone in
his van shortly before the accident occurred northey was 46 years old and had seven
previous convictions for drunk driving vehicle records confirmed he owned a 1987 dodge ram conversion van
the same color as the one in the accident but when police discovered where north he worked
they started to doubt whether they'd ever solved the case worked at this local recycling place where they
shred vehicles we were afraid that the vehicle got shredded and it's in a thousand pieces out there in the
junkyard someplace [Music] police rushed to northey's home and found the windows of his garage tape
closed with towels and plastic bags nobody could see inside which is unusual for a garage which just
got up my interest even more when questioned jim northey denied he was involved in a hit-and-run accident
but he acknowledged that his wife had driven the van and gotten into a minor traffic accident a few weeks earlier i
could see that the van had been involved in an accident the front light right light assembly had been
replaced it was just hanging there from the wire but police weren't sure how they could
tell whether the damage was caused by the hit-and-run accident or the other traffic accident northey referred to
then almost by chance police discovered an important clue when i got to a workbench it was covered
with several things tools work stuff that type of thing and i proceeded to take everything off from this workbench just
piece by piece and as i got to the bottom i found one piece of orange lens light lens just like the ones we'd found
out at the scene but it wasn't enough just to find a similar piece of plastic the most
important thing was did it match [Music] although jim northey denied hitting kirk
hudson with his van police confiscated the vehicle and ran it through a series of tests
the first thing we did is we we processed the van with luminol we looked for trace blood
we next process the the van to see if there was any hairs or fibers that came from the victim
but more than a month had passed since kirk hudson's death and there was no biological link between northeast van
and the crime scene so police turned to more durable evidence the plastic and paint from the suspect vehicle
a comparison analysis was done on a paint sample from northeast van and paint chips from the crime scene
the colors and chemical composition of both samples were identical the state police crime lab did match up
paint from the the vehicle and paint from the scene next investigators turned to the tiny chip of
plastic they'd found on northie's workbench as if they were putting together a jigsaw puzzle
they tried to fit this chip into the turn signal partially reassembled from the crime scene
incredibly the piece fit when an amber lens breaks the pieces don't ever break the same way
again so basically we had a fingerprint found at the scene there was no doubt this tiny shard of plastic told an
important story it was proof that jim northie had removed the broken turn signal lens
placed it temporarily on his workbench and when he went to throw the broken item away inadvertently left behind this
one tiny piece that matched the broken pieces at the crime scene investigators now turned to kirk
hudson's bike they placed it next to the suspect van in an attempt to gauge the point of
contact there was a dent in the bicycle that would have been similar from where the
van hit it same height the same location passenger side just all kinds of jigsaw
puzzle pieces fitting together like a glove i saw the damage to the bicycle matching
up to the van the parking light blends at the same height as the seat the color scheme of the van as to what
we picked up out there the antenna i got that warm fuzzy feeling that we've done our job we got the vehicle
involved based on the forensic evidence jim northie was charged with leaving the
scene of a fatal accident it was good to have the person's name that was important not that we knew him
but just who it was that maybe you know we could get some closure northie was offered a chance to plead to
a lesser charge in exchange for a reduced sentence but he refused the defense team was convinced the tiny
bits of plastic and paint assembled by forensic technicians weren't enough to convince a jury
but they faced a major hurdle since no one had seen northie driving all they had was the physical evidence
to put his van at the crime scene there were no eyewitnesses and when there are no eyewitnesses
it's that remains a difficult part to sort out in your mind until you hear all the
evidence the pieces of amber parking light lens that you took from the scene during the trial
prosecutors spent hours telling the jury how each and every piece of plastic and
paint fit together when completed it told the story of how kirk hudson had been hit
and left to die scientific evidence is always compelling juries love scientific evidence they
watch csi they watch your show this is the rare type of case where we actually have a lot of scientific
evidence it had to be more than coincidence that a piece of plastic or a paint chip or a
piece of glass doesn't just happen to be there and when they showed them blew them up magnified them it was easy
to see how they exactly matched and that was very convincing as a juror all of these little markers here that i
refer to are pieces of evidence after a three-day trial and only four hours of deliberation the
jury found jim northey guilty the jury put him behind that wheel beyond a reasonable doubt that pretty
much is the end of the story he was sentenced to four years in prison kirk hudson's family still grieves
but they're grateful the killer unknowingly left behind the information that led to his capture
i know that all those little pieces came to be one piece that really you know helped solve the case
maybe if this had happened 20 years ago it might not have gotten solved but it took all those little pieces to
come together to get it solved so we're very grateful for that evidence is great for any criminal proceeding
it's you know i can sit here and say you ran a stop sign and you say no i didn't but
if i say i got your fingerprint or i got your parking light you can't argue it it's evidence another
moral of this story is dogged police work and investigation patience determination
can bring people to justice that otherwise might have avoided it [Music] [Music]
[Applause] [Music] you

A man riding a bicycle was fatally injured, and police believed he was the victim of a hit-and-run accident. Tiny clues found at the scene created a picture of the vehicle which struck him and led police to its driver.

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

Forensic evidence from a hit-and-run leads to Jim Northey's conviction for Kirk Hudson's death in Kalamazoo.

Key points

The Tragic Hit-and-Run. Kirk Hudson was left for dead after a hit-and-run accident. His family was devastated.
The Driver Identified. A witness identified Jim Northey as the driver responsible for the hit-and-run.
Forensic Evidence Uncovered. Investigators found crucial pieces of evidence at the scene, leading them closer to the driver.
Justice Served. After a trial, Jim Northey was found guilty and sentenced to four years in prison.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

He was circling the drain.

Describing the victim's critical condition.

1:30WatchJan 14, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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