Forensic Files - Season 10, Episode 41 - Wood-be Killer - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[music playing] NARRATOR: A killer tried to remove all evidence of the crime. But in the process, created entirely new forensic evidence
that almost had investigators stumped, until scientists tried a technique that had never been used in a criminal case.
And in doing so, made forensic history. [theme music] Farmersville, Texas is the epitome of small town America.
At one time, it was the onion capital of the state, a place where old fashioned values endure.
VIKKI PICKETT: And we still have people who will actually tell me, we lock our doors, this is Farmersville.
NARRATOR: 20-year-old Rachelle Tolleson was born here, grew up here, and it's where she chose
to raise her six-month-old daughter, Avery. MARK O'NEIL: She was a happy person.
She had her troubled times, just like any other teenager does. She was a great mom.
She was a very dedicated mom. NARRATOR: Rachelle was going through an unpleasant divorce,
and lived alone with her daughter, close to the center of town. Around 7:30 in the morning, on a warm spring day in 2004,
Rachelle's mother stopped by to visit. Inside she found Avery on the bed, alone.
But she couldn't find Rachelle. -I started calling, calling her name. She didn't answer.
(CRYING) I started looking in the closets and under her bed. And I-- I couldn't find her.
NARRATOR: There were signs that something had happened. The bed was moved, and the headboard had fallen forward.
A night stand was pushed away from the wall. But Rachelle's purse and her car were still there.
On the kitchen floor was a possible clue. It was Rachelle's divorce petition. And on it, a large shoe print, as if someone
had stomped on it. GREGORY DAVIS: Because it would indicate that someone, other than Rachelle, was in that home
the night that she disappeared. NARRATOR: Rachelle's mother called her soon-to-be
ex-son-in-law, Andrew Tolleson, to brief him on the situation. -I said, Andrew, we can find Rachelle.
We can't find her anywhere. He said, he couldn't leave work right now. NARRATOR: Police questioned as many of the town's residents
as they could, and organized a search party to look in every field and pasture. TIM WYATT: The search was huge.
There was just an immediate reaction all over the place, ATVs, four wheel drive vehicles, horseback, on foot.
It was a phenomenal response. NARRATOR: For five days the search continued, with no trace of Rachelle anywhere.
-I honestly believe that there was a lot of people that maybe didn't know Rachelle very well that were thinking,
oh, well, she just ran off. PAM O'NEIL: I just, I know her. She just would never leave Avery.
She wouldn't leave her alone for a second. I mean, that was-- that was her oxygen.
She loved her so much. NARRATOR: Then a man, hiking on state land about 10 miles
from Rachelle's home, discovered the charred remains of a young female. Dental records confirmed the victim was Rachelle Tolleson.
GREGORY DAVIS: About 100 feet away from where the body was located, there was a pit, an open area,
where they found several logs. They found an area that appeared to have been burned in.
VIKKI PICKETT: I had spent many hours with her mother. And to have to go back and tell her, we found her body,
but you can't see her. You can't identify your daughter. You can't touch her and tell her goodbye.
That was hard. -I don't know, my heart just stopped. And I just, I couldn't believe it.
I needed proof. I don't-- I don't know what else to say. NARRATOR: The investigation would be difficult.
The killer burned Rachelle's body to destroy any evidence. But police certainly knew where to start,
with Rachelle's estranged husband, Andrew Tolleson. -People do things they shouldn't do.
And we suffer because of that. NARRATOR: Most of Farmersville, Texas turned out for Rachelle Tolleson's funeral service
at the First Baptist Church. It was difficult for them to understand how Rachelle could
have been abducted from her home in the middle of the night and no one heard it.
TIM WYATT: There are no strangers in Farmersville. Her house was three blocks from the police station,
two blocks from the town square. I don't think the police believed that was a stranger crime, either.
Clearly everybody felt that she whoever had taken her. That she knew them. -Generally speaking, in a small community
it is going to be someone within, at least, that person's social circle. Even if they're not close friends,
it's someone who knows the victim. NARRATOR: The autopsy revealed Rochelle had been sexually
assaulted, stabbed, and strangled to death. VIKKI PICKETT: I was horrified. I'm also a mother and a grandmother.
Just knowing that one human being could do that to another human being is horrifying.
GREGORY DAVIS: The circumstances of this case were horrific. You had a young mother, a totally innocent victim, who
is kidnapped in the middle the night. Is brutally raped, choked to death, and stabbed.
And then her body is taken out to a remote location and disposed of, just like trash.
NARRATOR: To investigators, the one person with a possible motive was her estranged husband, Andrew--
especially since the divorce wasn't his idea. MARK O'NEIL: Rachelle just grew up a little faster
than Andrew did, in the time that they were together. -Andrew, stop! MARK O'NEIL: And I think it just split them up.
And I think Rachelle just realized, or felt like, I should say, that she wasn't going to get anywhere.
And that it was time to move on. NARRATOR: Andrew had an alibi for the night of Rachelle's murder.
He said he was at a party with friends. One of them drove him home later. And Andrew said he didn't leave this home again
until the next morning to go to work. GREGORY DAVIS: He was heavily intoxicated during that night.
And we had evidence that confirmed that he had been at his home the entire night, because of his intoxication.
NARRATOR: His alibi appeared to check out, until investigators learned there was bonfire at that party.
This was an interesting coincidence, since Rachelle's body had been burned in a fire pit.
So Lieutenant Larry Smart wanted to know if there was any connection between the bonfire and the crime scene.
LT. LARRY SMART: We collected those logs in order to have the forensic scientist look at the.
NARRATOR: Lieutenant Smart sent the wood samples from the bonfire and the crime scene fire
to Dr. Henri Grissino-Mayor, an associate professor of geography at the University of Tennessee.
HENRI GRISSINO-MAYER: I wasn't too enthusiastic, at first. And I probably came across as not very enthusiastic.
So I wasn't overly excited. NARRATOR: By just looking at, Dr. Grissino-Mayor recognized that the wood from both locations was mesquite.
The mesquite tree is extremely common in desert areas, and often used to grill food.
It burns slowly and produces very little smoke. But there really wasn't any way to tell whether both wood
samples came from the same source. There were no distinctive saw marks. And the tree rings were virtually useless.
HENRI GRISSINO-MAYER: This is a type of wood where it has small vessels all throughout the ring, and if it does not,
therefore, have very distinct rings when you sand them down. -I was really let down.
I felt like this was such good evidence for us. NARRATOR: But Dr. Grissino-Mayor remembered something--
a new test he had read about. A test that could identify the chemical fingerprint
of the wood. HENRI GRISSINO-MAYER: Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy is actually very young.
It hasn't been around for a while. But now, it's used by the FBI, it's used in counterterrorism.
And you learn all this Dr. Martin. It is an incredible new tool. NARRATOR: He sent the wood to Dr. Madhavi Martin at the Oak
Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. DR. MARTIN: We just put the wood underneath the laser beam,
excited a spark on the sample surface, called the elements-- hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, carbon--
and you will see it, immediately. NARRATOR: The spark known as a plasma cloud, contains all the chemical elements from the sample.
A spectrometer identifies those elements. Most of the elements were typical. But one was not.
DR. MARTIN: This one had titanium, which really jumped out at me. We saw, consistently, titanium across the whole spectra.
NARRATOR: Titanium doesn't naturally occur in wood. And this suggested that the mesquite tree was growing
near an industrial area, where titanium polluted the groundwater. 11 logs were tested, eight from the crime scene
and three from the bonfire. All had the exact same chemical makeup, and identical levels of titanium.
HENRI GRISSINO-MAYER: We were able to determine that the two sets of wood matched, with about a 99.99% level of confidence.
These two sets of wood came from the same population of trees, if not from the same tree.
NARRATOR: This was a forensic first. Never before have two sets of wood in a criminal case being found to have
the exact same chemical fingerprint. LT. LARRY SMART: 99.9 is just mind-boggling.
I was blown away by that. If they had come back and told us that they're 90% sure that the wood came from the same tree
or vicinity, we would have been excited about that. NARRATOR: Since the wood at the bonfire was from the same free
as the wood used in Rachelle's cremation, this was a remarkable piece of circumstantial evidence,
pointing to Andrew Tolleson as the killer. Or was it? Rachelle Tolleson was abducted from her home,
apparently, by someone she knew. And her burned body was found in a deserted state park.
Rachelle's estranged husband, Andrew, was at a bonfire party the night Rachelle was abducted.
And wood from the bonfire matched the wood used to burn Rachelle's body. A 99.9% certainty.
This evidence as a possible link between Andrew Tolleson and the scene of his wife's murder.
GREGORY DAVIS: Whenever someone turns up missing, particularly where there's a divorce involved,
everyone's going to be a suspect involving the ex-husband in this case. NARRATOR: But that conclusion was premature.
Partygoers told investigators that Andrew Tolleson had nothing to do with the bonfire.
It was someone else who brought the mesquite firewood to the party. It was 21-year-old Moises Mendoza,
an air conditioning repairman. And an acquaintance of both Rachelle and Andrew. PAM O'NEIL: They went to school together.
And as a matter of fact, I even pulled out pictures of Rachelle's elementary/middle school.
And as weird as it sounds, he was always in one of her classes. NARRATOR: When Rachelle and Andrew separated,
friends said Mendoza expressed interest in dating her. MARK O'NEIL: I think maybe Moises wanted to be, uh,
a little closer friend to Rachelle than what Rachelle wanted to be with him. NARRATOR: There was no evidence that the two ever dated.
But as acquaintances, they often saw one another at party's and social gatherings.
All this seemed innocent enough, until police looked into Mendoza's past. GREGORY DAVIS: Moises Mendoza had
an extensive criminal background. He had committed two aggravated robberies, where he had
attempted to abduct young women in Dallas, had been unsuccessful. NARRATOR: Mendoza was out on bail for one of those crimes
when Rachelle disappeared. A search of his home turned up a pair of boots. They were covered in soot, and smelled of gasoline.
To see whether these boots matched the print found in Rachelle's home, investigators sent him
to forensic analyst Michael Villarreal. He made test impressions of the soles. And then did a visual comparison with the partial print
from Rachelle's house. MIKE VILLARREAL: Once I notice that there were similarities
in the size, shape, and design, I did take a look for specific accidental characteristics
and see if the accidental characteristics on the shoe were also present in the partial heel impression.
NARRATOR: Accidental characteristics results from how a shoe is worn. They are unique to each set of shoes.
In this case, the boot print on the divorce decree was remarkably clear, perfect for comparison.
Cut marks in the heel of the boot left no doubt. MIKE VILLARREAL: I was able to determine that the submitted
shoes, in this case, did make that partial impression, to the exclusion of all others.
-What they found was this. It was an exact match. NARRATOR: Police also tested the pair of soot
covered jeans from Mendoza's house. Underneath the soot were tiny blood stains. The DNA profile of the blood matched Rachelle Tolleson.
Homicide investigators confronted Mendoza with the forensic evidence. LT. LARRY SMART: It was like he didn't care.
He was detached from the whole situation, had no remorse, was a very cool person.
GREGORY DAVIS: I'm convinced of this. In some people, there's a violent, evil streak
the controls them. That streak was in Moises Mendoza. He wanted something that night.
He was not going to have anyone say no to him. NARRATOR: On the night of the crime,
prosecutors say Moises Mendoza went to the bonfire party and brought along some mesquite wood to burn.
Witnesses said Mendoza was drinking and was angry. GREGORY DAVIS: He had gotten crossways with several people
at the party. He got crossways with two women at the party, where he threatened to kill those women.
He threatened to cut their heads off. He was making all sorts of threats. NARRATOR: When Mendoza saw Andrew Tolleson at the party
alone, he knew that Rochelle would be at home alone. -Hi there! Oh, you got me. NARRATOR: He left the party around 2:00 AM.
And the evidence suggests he drove to Rachelle's house. [baby crying] -Hey. -Hi.
-How's it going? -Good. Um-- NARRATOR: It's not clear what he said to get inside.
But the evidence indicates there was a struggle. Rachelle's divorce petition fell to the floor, which Mendoza
stepped on with his left boot-- clear proof he was there. Where he took shelter afterwards is unclear.
But the forensic evidence suggests he raped, stabbed, then strangled her to death.
DNA testing found Rachelle's blood on Mendoza's jeans. Later, he used some of the mesquite wood
to start the fire in the deserted state park, in an attempt to incinerate all evidence of the murder.
While he may have gotten rid of some forensic evidence, he unwittingly created more, which
provided an unmistakable forensic link between Mendoza and the crime scene. GREGORY DAVIS: Forensics could match it back to the same tree.
Not to the same grove, or the same type of tree, but to the same tree. And those are the types of results
we expect to see in DNA, not in trees or vegetables. NARRATOR: Three months after Rachelle's death,
Moises Mendoza was tried and convicted of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to death.
He actually chose the death penalty for himself when he decided that evening to go in that home,
and to take that young mother, and to snuff out her life, with absolutely no regard for her,
or her child, or her family. MARK O'NEIL: I know it's probably not right to say this,
but if it was up to me, he would have got a lot worse. And when I say a lot worse, I mean, torture-wise.
Because I think that the death penalty is not, uh-- I think it's too good for him.
NARRATOR: Rachelle's parents are now raising their granddaughter, Avery. And they're grateful that some enterprising detectives
searched for a scientific solution they didn't know existed. And that those scientists pushed further,
instead of simply saying, nothing could be done. The result made forensic history.
MARK O'NEIL: It's unbelievable, the technology nowadays that they can do. And the forensic testing, it's unreal.
And I think that it probably puts a lot of people's minds at ease, knowing that they can do these types of things.
-It' just phenomenal what they can do now. And I have tried to convince the younger detectives that they
really need to stay in touch with the scientists on all the new technology that's involved here.
Because that's going to be the future of law enforcement, is the forensics-- if it's not already.
[theme music]

A killer tried to incinerate and destroy everything that could link him to his crime. But in doing so, he inadvertently created new forensic evidence, evidence which came to light with a technique never before used in a criminal investigation.

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

Rachelle Tolleson's murder investigation used groundbreaking forensic techniques to link Moises Mendoza to the crime, leading to his conviction.

Key points

Rachelle's Disappearance. Rachelle Tolleson goes missing, leaving her mother frantic and searching for answers.
Forensic Breakthrough. A new forensic technique reveals a crucial link between the crime scene and the suspect.
Mendoza's Conviction. Moises Mendoza is convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I just, I know her. She just would never leave Avery.

PAM O'NEIL reflects on Rachelle's dedication as a mother.

3:32WatchJan 14, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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