Forensic Files Season 11, Episode 13 - Undertaken - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[Music] the medical examiner ruled the death an accident but a forensic detective
disagreed the final resolution took three long years and raised questions about the
accuracy of an autopsy [Music] [Music] paterson new jersey is an industrial suburb outside new york city which has
its share of violent crime one of the town's most unusual cases happened in 1980.
i would personally rank it as being one of the most interesting challenging cases i ever had
29 year old frankie pullian was found dead on a deserted road underneath an abandoned car
apparently the person driving the vehicle hit frankie then fled the scene leaving the vehicle behind
frankie pullian worked for a local funeral home as a handyman before that he served a brief stint in
the u.s military he would run errands for the funeral home and the funeral home was also kind of a
stopping off point for the police as well and it was one of the the more successful black funeral homes
in paterson police discovered that the hit-and-run vehicle had been stolen a month earlier
the owner was a retired policeman who lived nearby who had an alibi for the night before he was an elderly gentleman
there was no way that anyone would even in their wildest dreams or imagination uh suspected he was involved in this
to approximate the time of the accident patterson police checked patrolman's records for the night before
and found an important clue earlier that morning at approximately 4 a.m the same patrol unit did pass that
area and the significance of that is when they did pass at that time the maverick and the body were not there
since frankie's body was discovered at 6 00 am the accident occurred sometime between
4 and 6 a.m [Music] but what was frankie pullian doing walking along this street in this part
of town so early in the morning it wouldn't be a place where you'd generally be taking a walk but it
certainly would be a good place for a crime because it was dark and it was unlikely there'd be other people
around frankie's body went directly to the funeral home where he worked the medical
examiner conducted the autopsy there a common procedure at the time state county did not have a centralized
more and what they did have were contracts with various funeral homes that would act as morgues
the medical examiner concluded that frankie died of massive trauma the result of the hit-and-run accident
there was nothing to show otherwise that it was other than a hit and run due to the nature of the injuries
that were reported by the m.a but despite the autopsy report investigators were troubled
they thought some of the elements of the accident scene looked staged this car was at the far end of dead end
street the car looked like it was facing out i don't know how this individual driving this vehicle could have gotten
enough speed to run over somebody and kill them in the short distance investigators searched the stolen
vehicle for clues to the driver's identity there were no fingerprints in the car
not even on the steering wheel but investigators found blood inside the car on the passenger side which was very
suspicious then instantly it gets more interesting and the focus of the investigation
began to change to find out whether frankie pullian's death was truly the result of a
hit-and-run vehicle accident investigators called in walter suhaka a nationally recognized expert in accident
reconstruction luckily police had taken numerous photos of the scene and what suhaka didn't see in those
pictures was telling behind the car there were no skid marks anybody that comes down the road that
hits a pedestrian in those days before abs brakes the first thing a person would do would be slam on the brakes
there's no skid marks there should have been serious front-end damage to the car but
there was none and the position of the body under the car didn't make any sense in a pedestrian accident with a
gentleman who's five foot eight inches tall and he weighed 144 pounds you would expect that if he was struck by a car he
would end up on the hood of the car striking the windshield and then roll off the side
also it looked as if the impact literally knocked the victim's coat off his body suhaka said this could not be
the natural result of an accident how does the coke come off it did not make sense also there was a watch with just a
watch face with no straps that didn't make sense at all we never found the straps
but most telling was the blood found in the tire tracks behind the car if frankie had been hit by the front of
the car and lodged underneath his blood wouldn't be behind the rear tires [Music]
and mr suhaka found blood spatter on the windshield inside the car and blood drops on the inside trim of the
passenger side door obviously there wouldn't be blood inside a car from a collision outside
it was one of my suggestions that we need to exhume the body to find out what the actual injuries were
since the death had officially been declared an accident it took more than three years of legal
wrangling to get permission for the exumation the second autopsy was conducted by dr
gita natarajan a pathologist with the state coroner's office the first thing i noticed is the
level of preservation and the condition of the body being fair the second most important finding was
that the external body surface failed to show any injury there were no bruises there were no
brush burn like he was dragged by a vehicle dr natarajan discovered four linear fractures along the back of the skull
one a depressed circular fracture was not noted in the first autopsy this blow by a hammer-like object to the back of
the head did not happen from being hit by a car it's a very small area of concentrated energy
and that's unusual when someone is struck by an automobile you can't take an automobile and make it you know
and have a person's skull being struck by by a small area of one and a half by three quarter inch
and there were wood splinters around the wound well first of all under a car in front
of car there's no wood why would there be wood splinters in the skull this was never mentioned during
the first autopsy nor do i believe that an autopsy or an examination of the full examination of the skull was ever
done during the first autopsy there were also no broken limbs virtually unheard of when a pedestrian
is hit by a car so dr natarajan changed the official manner of death from accident
to homicide but how were these injuries overlooked in the first autopsy the medical examiner who did the autopsy
who issued the initial death certificate was not a forensic pathologist he was not even a pathologist he was a
general practitioner he did what best he he could do under the circumstance but he was not
trained formally in pathology or in forensic pathology and that autopsy was conducted at the
funeral home of e lee white the victim's employer apparently white started the examination
before the coroner arrived the medical examiner remembers mr white calling him and saying
doc i will go ahead and start with the case so when you get here i'll have the organs out
investigators now suspected that the original medical examiner didn't perform much of an autopsy
apparently he accepted the hit-and-run scenario since frankie's body was found underneath the car
regardless investigators now knew frankie pullian was murdered but why there were two separate autopsies
performed on frankie pullian's remains done three years apart the original autopsy concluded frankie's
death was the result of an automobile accident the second autopsy concluded he was
murdered with a blunt instrument before his body was placed beneath the car had law enforcement had that information
in the very beginning obviously this case would have gotten in much different direction right from day one
and the photos of the vehicle provided evidence of where frankie was killed when i started reading reports they said
there was blood inside the car i i had to read the report twice it just didn't make sense turned out there was spatter
from blood on the inside windshield in on the dashboard serology test identified the blood in
the car as type o the same blood type as frankie pullian now suspicious investigators dug a little deeper into
frankie's background for a man making less than ten thousand dollars a year frankie had
nine separate insurance policies on his life with a total payout of nearly a million dollars it's very unusual that
you would take out almost a million dollars worth of insurance and then within a few short months someone should
die i mean that to me that raises a flag automatically the insurance premiums total 3 500 a
year almost half of frankie's annual salary first thing you're thinking is that certainly this is not right it's very
odd to say the least but it certainly raises the possibility that there's an insurance fraud going on
and who were the beneficiaries of frankie's life insurance policies one was his boss and long-time
benefactor e lee white for his employer to insure him so heavily with multiple policies for large
sums of money was very suspicious and which now creates a motive for the death of franklin bullion
another beneficiary was erna boone listed on the policy as frankie's sister but records showed frankie had no sister
and that erna boone was the maiden name of e lee white's wife and two of white's friends
lawrence scott and william brown were also beneficiaries brown had been convicted a few years
earlier for fraud lauren scott and william brown who both had affiliations with the funeral home
and with mr white also were beneficiaries on the policy and the familiar relationship that was
cited there was one of being cousins they weren't cousins coincidentally the insurance policies
also contained an accidental death provision meaning there was an extra payout of 350 000
if frankie pullian died in an accident [Music] the last of the policies was issued just
five days before frankie's death frankie's medical records indicated he was released from the military because
he was neurologically impaired i think within six to eight months he was released discharged from the service
because he couldn't pass the particular tests that were required of him yet the man who underwent the physical
examination for the life insurance policies was not neurologically impaired that individual who purported to be
franklin pullian was healthy and fit certainly it wasn't the same person and there was another bizarre incident
at the physical examination the person who represented himself to be mr pullian had notes handwritten notes
and every time he was asked a question about his life his lifestyle he referred to his notes
which i would think would cause some concern but apparently did not a forensic document examiner compared
frankie's known handwriting samples to the signatures on the insurance policies and concluded
they were forgeries so someone who met with the insurance riders the insurance salesman
had to pose as mr pulliam it's pretty crazy and these are the things that we would look at and all of
a sudden you realize you know what there's something that really is wrong here when questioned by investigators e lee
white admitted he purchased the life insurance policies but said he had nothing to do with frankie's
death then a witness came forward with some not so surprising information on the night before frankie's murder
she saw the car from the staged accident scene parked outside e lee white's funeral home
[Music] the only ones who stood to gain from frankie pullian's death were his boss
elie white's wife and two fellow employees lawrence scott and william brown they were beneficiaries of nine
different insurance policies on frankie's life that totaled nearly a million dollars
humans are very greedy people and now they see that there's an opportunity for them to make almost a million dollars
they forget about their consciences and they'll do anything to make a fast buck prosecutors believe that mr white was
the ringleader and he had planned the crime for years hiring frankie for the sole purpose
of killing him it's extremely sad but apparently the people that perpetrated this crime
realized that that's the kind of victim that they needed they needed to find someone that no one would care about and
no one would come forward and knock on doors and look to question anything that had
happened mr white purchased multiple life insurance policies on frankie's life and sent imposters to the required
physical examinations a witness reported seeing the stolen car parked outside the funeral home the
night before the crime [Music] the evidence indicates someone no one knows who lured frankie pullian into the stolen
vehicle and hit him on the back of the skull [Music] this created the blood spatter on the
inside of the windshield and dashboard and the dripping blood on the chrome strip
on the bottom of the passenger side door the perpetrators placed frankie's body on the ground
and drove over it but in doing so left blood behind the vehicle they made other mistakes too like
leaving frankie's clothing and shoes in the wrong position ely white knew that frankie's body would
come directly to his funeral home for the autopsy he also knew he could start the autopsy
without raising the suspicions of the medical examiner who apparently did little to investigate the death on
his own he did not go to the scene he did not look at the vehicle he did not talk to
the officers who were at the scene he did not look at any photographs he did not examine the clothing of the victim
these are all types of things that one would expect would be done following a proper protocol of an
autopsy and investigators believe white chose frankie pullian as his victim because he was single and had no
close family living in the area e lee white and his alleged co-conspirators were all charged with
murder and insurance fraud they claimed there was no physical evidence tying them to a murder and
investigators agreed but they said the circumstances linking the defendants to the crime
were overwhelming you take all of that together you know that there was an intentional killing
but you know that it was a staged accident and you know that four people stood to make
over nine hundred thousand dollars if this theory of an accident could hold up you put all of that together and it
spells out one thing to us and that is murder for profit perhaps what's most tragic about the
case is that frankie pullian was an unwitting participant in his own murder he was the kind of
person that would not suspect anything beyond the obvious [Music] e lee white lauren scott and william brown were all
found guilty of first degree murder and insurance fraud and sentenced to life in prison this
case is probably the most fascinating case i had in the 23 years that i served as a judge the murder mystery is
actually who did it there were three people that were tried and three people convicted
but who did it there has been no one that has come forward with any information regarding the homicide of franklin
pullian that would indicate who the actual killer was the compelling conclusion was that the
individuals who were the owners and beneficiaries of these policies were the ones that were responsible for bringing
about the death of franklin pulling we can't say that they did it by their own hand we don't know who did it
but we know that they conspired to have it done ely white's wife erner was convicted of
fraud and theft by deception she was placed on probation investigators say eli white and his accomplices almost got
away with a cold calculated murder but their greed and the clues they left behind
finally exposed the truth if frank and pullian didn't die so soon after the policies were written maybe no
one's suspicions would have been aroused at that time but i think they saw this pot of gold and they probably tripped
themselves up because they wanted a fast payoff it all comes down to forensic evidence
and forensic evidence doesn't lie it doesn't make up stories what it is [Music] [Music]
[Music] [Music] you

The medical examiner ruled the death an accident, but the detectives investigating the case thought the evidence at the scene indicated otherwise.

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

Frankie Pullian's suspicious death led to murder charges against his employer and accomplices due to insurance fraud.

Key points

Frankie Pullian's Mysterious Death. Frankie Pullian was found dead under suspicious circumstances, leading to a complex investigation.
Insurance Fraud Motive. Frankie had nine life insurance policies totaling nearly a million dollars, raising suspicions.
Murder for Profit. The investigation revealed a conspiracy involving multiple beneficiaries of Frankie’s life insurance.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It’s extremely sad but apparently the people that perpetrated this crime realized...

Reflecting on the motivations behind the crime.

16:07WatchJan 20, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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