Forensic Files Season 11, Episode 17 - Internal Affair - Full Episode | Forensic Files

an employee from a large brokerage firm disappeared her computer revealed she was leading a
double life and among the bits and bytes were the clues to her final destination
[Music] [Music] to friends and family 36 year old sherry durrell had an enviable life
married with three young children sherry had a high job with the stock brokerage
firm and the respect and admiration of her colleagues she was selfless she was warm she always did
things for other people she cared about others a lot sherry was also a punctual employee
so when she didn't come to work one day and didn't call her co-workers were concerned
they called her husband bob who said sherry left for work at the usual time that morning and he didn't know where
she was so sherry's friends called police a couple of officers look around knock
on the door nobody answers but they find an unlocked door so they go into the house and they walk
through the house everything looks orderly everything looks tidy cherries clothes jewelry and toiletries
were still in the house it seemed very unusual that a woman with three children would just suddenly
disappear for the next two days there were no signs of her [Music] then police got a call about a red van
driving erratically the license plate number identified the van as sherry durell's
the witness said it was weaving in and out of traffic slowing down speeding up to a point where he wouldn't let the
witness pass him unfortunately the witness didn't get a good look at who was driving the van
friends distributed missing person flyers throughout the community and a convenience store clerk
responded saying sherry was in his store the day after she disappeared the clerk there was sure that she'd seen
her on saturday evening came in purchased gas with cash and then left there was an initial thought that yeah
she's in the area and the van's been seen traveling along the freeway sherry's husband looked around their
home for clues and found some information on sherry's computer that he turned over to the police
we investigated that and discovered that mrs darrell had in fact pursued a relationship outside her
marriage there were emails and internet chat room conversations with a man named
kevin johnson and it was clear the relationship was serious i have tried to be indifferent to you
and keep my feelings in check i have been thinking about this a lot and feeling bad about my self-respect sort
of feeling like a call girl more than a friend the correspondence included talk of the
two running away together they talked about oh wouldn't it be great to go to costa rica the cost of
living there is so much cheaper when police interviewed kevin johnson he admitted the two had a brief affair
but insisted he hadn't seen her for the last six months police weren't so sure [Music]
one week had passed since sherry durrell's disappearance she hadn't contacted her children her
husband or kevin johnson the man with whom she had the affair i knew that she wouldn't leave without
telling her mom or calling me we were the two closest people to her she was too responsible of a mother
and a person to do that then investigators got their first solid lead they found sherry's van in a hotel
parking lot near the seattle airport that could have been a thought that she parked there
or she met somebody who came into town or she hopped on a plane and took off but there was no record she stayed in
the hotel or took a flight out of town it was very emotional finding that van and not her she wasn't anywhere near the
vehicle and so we found a van but we didn't find our our friend and that was that was really difficult a
forensic examination of the van revealed no evidence of foul play and there were no foreign fingerprints
even more troubling sherry's personal bank account hadn't been touched since her disappearance
she just got a bonus at work and she had just put that into the bank i think that
week so the theory from all the co-workers was well why would she be putting all this
money away and then not leave with it and not touch it police conducted extensive interviews
with sherry's friend kevin johnson he insisted he had nothing to do with her disappearance
and he was later able to provide some information what he was doing on the day that she was reported
missing sherry's co-workers told police about a comment she made the day before she disappeared
she said if anything happens to me my life is in my desk and in her desk among other things was a
long letter a draft of a letter that she'd written to her husband in an effort to try to explain
why she felt it necessary to leave it my spirit is crushed i feel that you are too controlling and obsessive and
jealous and i just can't live with those personality traits anymore i can't go on
pretending that there is nothing wrong i am unbearably unhappy the bottom line is
i don't love you enough to stay married also in her desk were books about divorce
she was planning the separation and she'd saved up some money and she had spoke to a couple of lawyers to get some
advice and she was making her plans to move on to her new life with her children
and sherry told friends that bob had been abusive and no sign of physical violence at all
it was more that she wasn't comfortable around him he was obsessive controlling he emotionally
controlled her and she just did not feel good around him he would apparently be sort of
monitoring her whereabouts occasionally she would go out to lunch with some of her friends mr doral would show up so he
in effect uh she describes a situation where you almost have a husband stalking his own
wife during police questioning bob dorell admitted there were problems in his marriage
as for him being involved in sherry's disappearance he said that was ridiculous police asked bob
what happened on the night before she disappeared bob said they went to dinner at a local
restaurant when they got home sherry spoke with her sister-in-law mrs durrall appeared perhaps slightly tipsy
and told her that she was going to bed and that her husband robert durrall had made her a drink
sherry's sister-in-law told police that she was very suspicious because bob seldom served his wife usually
it was the other way around they said that it was extraordinarily atypical for mr drawl to ever make his
wife a drink of any kind or to serve her any kind of food or drink and cherie's best friend had one final
insight it was a dream she had about sherry the night before she disappeared i woke my husband up
like at 12 30 1 o'clock in the morning and i said oh i had the worst dream about blood
everywhere and couldn't get back to sleep and and i feel like that was a message being passed to me like do
something with this you know the information found in sherry doral's desk at work
painted a revealing picture of her marriage at the time of her disappearance [Music]
so investigators decided to search bob dorell's work computer too bob was in charge of the computer system
at the king county housing authority as a government agency bob's computer was government property so investigators
seized it and turned it over to gordon mitchell an expert in the growing field of computer forensics
mitchell copied bob doral's hard drive to examine the information on it without altering the original data
this is an important process where they can actually discover is there something
going on here or is bob just a nice guy mitchell found evidence that bob deleted
certain files but they were still on the hard drive that's because computers don't erase
files they just mark the space occupied by those files for reuse that's part of why computers take so
long to start up and shut down files are being created and files are being deleted
a lot of the deleted files are simply information left in place the deleted information revealed
that bob was dating women he met on the online dating service match.com and was doing so at the same time his
wife sherry was dating kevin johnson bob's profile on the dating website was also revealing
mr drawl portrayed himself as a man who was living separately from his wife and who was completely unburdened by any
other romantic or personal attachments and was open to a relationship with the appropriate
woman in emails to prospective dates bob explained why a divorce was impossible to one young woman mr durall said that
he really did not want to pursue a divorce with his wife because it would be expensive and messy he actually went
so far as to say that he would be better off if his wife were dead in another email bob said he had a plan
to resolve his unsatisfactory marriage and what was that plan bob's internet search engine revealed he
looked for information on all sorts of diabolical schemes we were shocked to see
these searches on things like poison herbs death something about sedation of people
also about smothering but the most graphic one was actually a search that drawl did on the words kill
spouse i was stunned i was stunned the contrast between the the sort of apparently very high
level functioning man and the sort of almost jaw-dropping stupidity of the evidence they left behind was
really staggering investigators now had probable cause to search the doral's home
and they went straight to the master bedroom they found a spot on the carpet that looked like it had been cleaned
they swabbed it with phenolphthalein and it turned purple an indication it was blood
under the bed were two squares of carpet that had been cut out and replaced underneath
were large pools of blood that had been cleaned with water and detergents if a cleaning solvent was used
it didn't work very effectively around the bed almost invisible to the naked eye
investigators found the most incriminating evidence it was just hundreds and hundreds of very very small
red dots on the headboard on the wall above the headboard in the corners and on the bureau and on
the door jamb to the bathroom the blood near the floor didn't happen during the beating
that's blood was just coughing out of the lungs through the mouth and that was down very low to the ground
so someone was coughing up blood very close to the ground in the area of where this
large pool of blood underneath the bed had been investigators concluded the blood on the
walls and ceiling was medium velocity blood spatter [Music] consistent with someone
swinging a bloody object scientists compared the dna from the blood in the bedroom to the dna profiles
of sherry's parents and discovered that this was sherry's blood investigators also found
a blood stain on the doorway leading to the garage and in bob's car was a receipt for a specialty cleaning
product and police also solved another mystery where were the doral's children on the night of the murder
perfect opportunity for him his youngest child was going to be gone that evening his other two were at
camp and they were going to be alone in the house that night giving bob all night
to carry out his plan but where was her body 41 year old bob dorell sat in prison
awaiting trial for his wife's murder to police he denied it but to his god he said something else in a jail cell he
was observed and overheard apparently asking god to forgive him for what he had done
prosecutors didn't need to find sherry's body in order to go to trial no one could have survived the amount of
blood loss found in sherry's bedroom but for the sake of her family prosecutors approached bob dorell's
attorneys with an offer we said we would encourage mr drawl to lead us to the location of the body
of his wife and that we would not use evidence that he had revealed the whereabouts in trial
surprisingly bob agreed and led investigators to the cascade mountains about an hour's drive away
there at the base of a steep ravine they found cherry's body in a plastic bag under a pile of rocks
the autopsy revealed sherry died of blunt force trauma just as the forensic evidence suggested
prosecutors believe bob was as unhappy in the marriage as sherry was but concluded a divorce would be too
expensive he did not want to incur the costs of child support or of a divorce a division
of the property mrs gerald's parents were fairly wealthy mr drawl didn't want to lose his
inheritance on the night of the crime prosecutors think bob drugged sherry to make her drowsy
although toxicology tests that the autopsy were inconclusive [Music] the evidence proves bob hit sherry on
the head repeatedly with a blunt object creating the blood spatter on the floor walls and ceiling
bob wrapped her body in plastic then carried her body to the garage leaving the blood smear on the door
he dumped her body in the ravine near the cascade mountains and returned home to clean up the crime scene
the evidence shows that bob tried to clean up the blood in the bedroom but couldn't come close to removing it
all so you've got a guy who fancies himself an extraordinarily clever and crafty fellow who's done all months of
research on how to commit a murder and then he commits a mistake that a sixth grader would laugh at so he's a very a
very peculiar man a very dangerous man in some ways was his own worst enemy police think it was bob driving sherry's
van to the hotel parking lot when the witness reported seeing it and they think the store clerk was simply
mistaken when he claimed sherry was in his store the day after her disappearance we pulled the videotape
from the store that from that evening and sherry was nowhere on the table at bob dorell's trial
despite leading police to sherry's body he pled not guilty and took the stand in
his own defense he told an incredible tale of two men who killed sherry and forced him to
dispose of her body they said they'd kill him and the children if he went to the police
actually i was having a hard time trying not to laugh because i thought it was so ridiculous of a story that
after two years in jail you think he would come up with a better a better story but in reality i think
that he was putting half the story together during the trial in the end there was simply too much forensic
evidence the computer forensics and blood spatter told the story after only two hours of
deliberation bob dorell was found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to
46 years in prison i will impose a total of 560 months despite spending months researching and
planning his wife's murder he still wasn't able to get away with it i think the forensic evidence was
everything the direction of the blood the patterns how they went out around the room
like in many cases the evidence was really overwhelming not just a single thing but many many
items that helped us feel confident about what we were doing mr doral who was professionally involved
in the use of computers the extent to which he left evidence of premeditated murder
on his work computer in such a sort of blatant way really continues to boggle my mind
[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

When a woman went missing, friends and family were determined to find her. Their worst fears were confirmed weeks later when her body was discovered.

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

Sherry Durell's disappearance leads to her husband's conviction for murder after forensic evidence reveals his guilt.

Key points

Sherry's Double Life. Sherry Durrell led a secret life that shocked her family and friends.
The Disappearance. Sherry Durrell vanished without a trace, leaving her family and colleagues worried.
The Affair. Evidence revealed Sherry was having an affair, complicating the investigation.
Bob's Dark Secrets. Bob Dorell's online searches revealed disturbing intentions regarding his wife.
The Murder Trial. Bob Dorell was found guilty of first-degree murder after a swift trial.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I have tried to be indifferent to you.

Sherry's emotional struggle in her correspondence.

3:32WatchJan 20, 2022

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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