Forensic Files Season 11, Episode 20 - Live Wire - Full Episode | Forensic Files

it was a christmas gift delivered to a jacksonville florida home there was no card or label identifying the center but
inside were some clues a thin piece of wire and some cryptic numbers on a sales receipt held the key
to a brutal and senseless murder [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] january 6 2001
was packing day for lillian jarvis and her two children she was moving her family to a new
apartment in the same town just a few miles away son lillian was a very wonderful girl we
didn't have any secrets we talked about everything and i don't even want to tell
you what everything means either lillian spent most of her professional life working with special needs children
she was very sweet girl she would do anything for anyone on moving day it was lillian's mother who first saw
the gift on the front porch there was no card just a note saying sorry it's late
she carried the package inside the house lillian was actually inside the bathroom
packing some toiletries and things marjorie came back into the house with the package kind of excited you know oh
look look there's a christmas package here and everybody gathered around to see what it was
inside was a green fisherman's tackle box [Music] the explosion was immense it blew a hole straight through the roof
shards of galvanized steel proved it was a pipe bomb the fire component was extremely
uncommon the impact of the bomb threw my daughter across the room i knew my daughter was dead i knew she was dead
when she landed there's no way she could have got out of there forty-four-year-old lillian jarvis was
killed lillian's mother suffered burns on her face and torso but fortunately she
survived lillian's boyfriend dan show walter also had burns on his face and upper body
he lost the sight in one eye and sustained permanent hearing loss lillian's daughter was unharmed
it was very difficult to tell who the package was intended for the package did not have a label on it that we were
aware of uh denoting who this present or package was intended for a little child could have come by and
picked it up and opened it thinking it was a christmas gift and not even thinking that it wasn't on their house
or anything i mean children will do those things firefighters could smell the remnants of
gasoline making this an extremely unusual bomb i think most bomb builders are revenge motivated to get even with
the victim or or to kill the victim for some reason some motive other than just a random
killing most of the individuals that do bombings or criminals basically think they're smarter than
everybody else but there's always one mistake they make that's gonna get them caught
since the package didn't have a shipping label it was most likely delivered by hand
but was lillian the intended target bomb experts conducted a grid search inside and outside the home in which
lillian jarvis was killed and little by little searchers found quite a few pieces of
the bomb bomb builders think that the bombs are destructive and that they destroy
evidence but in fact bombs don't destroy evidence they create evidence and they create very unique
imprints of evidence there were i believe over 160 items and all of that had to be sifted and separated and
looked at under the microscope or or magnifying ring i spent upwards of several months to a year looking through
and going through all of that evidence by testing the debris with gas chromatography
scientists confirmed that gasoline was used in the bomb so not only was she blown up then she
was also burned up and this again shows that there was a personal hatred of this target
experts believe that the gasoline was in a balloon inside the tackle box the bomb was identified as a type of
pipe bomb wrapped with ball bearings to make it more deadly investigators also found bits and pieces
of the tackle box enough to identify the macon model fortunately there were stickers and
labels on some of the pieces that i was able to reconstruct and able to identify
this tackle box as a plano tackle box thousands of these tackle boxes had been sold in the area making it virtually
impossible to trace they're sold in jacksonville as well as other parts of the country so we we have
ran into a problem in trying to identify who may have bought that taco box as well it's a pretty generic item
but investigators did find an extremely important piece of evidence in the rubble
a tiny piece of metal wire no wider than a thread a single wire that it was a little heavier gauge than
some of the other wires the house wires that i had been seeing in the evidence i
recognized it as a model rocket igniter just from my past experience and seeing these in other devices
the first suspect in the bombing was lillian's ex-husband william jarvis because he had been clearly unhappy
about the divorce he was a 39 year old air traffic controller with no criminal record
he would be calling her hours of the day and night harassing her to come home and
i love you i'm sorry and yada yada and it just kept getting worse and worse but his daughter katie was in the home
at the time of the blast no one believed william jarvis would ever put her in harm's way
there was some real confusion as to whether or not a father would actually send a device to where his daughter was
staying therefore we kind of ruled him out then investigators learned that lillian's mother marjorie worked for an
organization that had received a bomb threat just 24 hours earlier the night before there was a bomb threat
called to where i work which is community hospice and they were thinking that someone
didn't like me or they didn't like the company when we were investigating to see if marjorie was a target through
hospice and the bomb threat they received we looked very hard at the fact that the
caller was a female and had a very strong southern accent this was a tantalizing clue
lillian's new boyfriend dan showalter almost died in the blast his ex-wife connie
had a southern accent dan had a protection order against county he received because connie had attempted
to take their daughter take custody and flee the state with the daughter when questioned connie showalter said
she was out of state when the bombing occurred and her alibi checked out plus if you just look at the nature of
this particular killing which is highly personal with a very very vicious device it's
just not women don't do that to women one piece of evidence found in the rubble suggested that lillian jarvis may
have been the intended target after all it was wrapped in some angel christmas wrapping paper and lillian was known to
have a fondness for angels a background check revealed lillian had developed extensive and sometimes
intimate relationships over the internet [Music] we were concerned that perhaps this bomb
had been left by somebody that she had met online that had developed a relationship with and that that
relationship maybe have gone bad and we conducted almost 100 interviews on various people that knew lille
through the internet five days after the bombing friends and relatives held a candlelight
vigil for lillian jarvis in a park nearby detectives posed as tv news crews to conduct surveillance
and they actually filmed the vigil interviewed some of the people there and we used that footage to see who showed
up and maybe who didn't show up that might help in the investigation [Music] you'd be surprised how often killers
show up at these things [Music] bombing victim lillian jarvis developed many friendships online following her
divorce investigators spoke to everyone on lillian's buddy list and email address
book but all were virtual dead ends then they learned something suspicious just two days after the bombing
lillian's ex-husband william jarvis was due in court he owed lillian a considerable sum of
money as part of their divorce settlement and he had been refusing to pay he was to be in court with a check for
close to forty four thousand dollars cashier's check to present to the judge for this money that he owed her that was
the date the judge had told him he said he was not letting him go one more day the money was for back child support and
lillian's 50 share of the house they owned together was the timing of the explosion just a coincidence
investigators didn't think so so they asked the judge for a search warrant to look inside william jarvis's
home at his desk was a hint that some items from the house had recently been removed
the tower computer was gone in fact there was still an input and there was carpet of a tower computer yet there was
none and where did it go investigators then searched the home of jarvis's new girlfriend
we found two cd roms which are in her underwear drawer in her bedroom we were positive these were the cds belonging to
william jarvis because there were various emails personal pictures documents relating to his divorce and
his children and some of those documents were incriminating some documents and brochures on how to
build a bomb he had demonstrated that he had an interest in the oklahoma city bombing he had approximately 50 pages of
that one of the interesting items that we found in that bomb was a sound bite and the sound bite stated i'll blow this
place up and be home in time for cornflakes which actually came out of the movie total recall
in william jarvis's home investigators found two walmart sales receipts for items purchased just three
weeks before the bombing the receipts had fallen by a nightstand next to a bed and evidently been missed
on the receipts were what's known as sku or sku numbers it stands for stock keeping unit a way for stores to keep
track of inventory we went to walmart with that sku number walmart was able to tell us that that
sku number is unique to a certain item that no other item they sell would have that same skew number
the sku numbers revealed jarvis bought a package of sd's brand model rocket igniters
[Music] atf forensic chemist rob reed used x-ray fluorescent spectroscopy to compare the
sd's wires from their rocket igniter to the wire recovered from the bomb site x-ray beams identified the chemical
elements of the wires the estes model rocket igniters have a particular alloy that's used for the
bridge wire and the leg wires it's also very unique this is proprietary information that estes doesn't share
with anyone they shared it with us for our own reasons and trying to help solve crimes
the wire in the bomb debris had the same metal alloys as the estes brand igniters
the companies that make these products have no control over how we use them as consumers they have an intended purpose
but sometimes people in their sick minds will twist them and use them for something that's
going to hurt someone we had been working long and hard on this and you almost start to take a personal
interest in in the case and to get the first we had other suspects but to get the first piece of evidence
that directly linked our best suspect to the device it's like winning the lottery
investigators swept william jarvis's kitchen floor for any microscopic particles that might be present
under the microscope scientists found irregularly shaped spheres of nitrocellulose
an ingredient of smokeless gunpowder the same type used in the bond also on the sales receipt was proof
the jarvis purchased christmas wrapping paper the sku number proved it was the same
wrapping paper used with the bond [Music] it was a very rare form of wrapping paper which had been distributed through
some stores in the southeast of which one of these stores was this walmart store
where these particular items were purchased the receipt also showed jarvis bought
condoms investigators suspected jarvis used the condoms to hold the gasoline in the bomb
we did some tests to see how long a condom could contain gasoline and we found that
the couple of hours it would have taken for him to transport the device from his home
to the victim's house was more than enough time that there was no leakage or seepage of the gasoline
from the condoms we were sure at that point that we had our man and that we were going to be able to prove it in
card as well but jarvis denied any involvement in the bombing and said he had an alibi
he claimed he was at home on his computer at the time of the bombing which was an hour's drive away
his online computer service confirmed he was on his computer so how did he do it
[Music] prosecutors believe william jarvis had two motives for killing his ex-wife
lillian the first was money bill jarvis ended up owing lillian alimony and child support payments in
the neighborhood of around 1800 a month he was also as part of the settlement property settlement had a balloon
payment due to her of almost thirty thousand dollars that was due to be paid to her in october
and he did not pay it the other thing was william jarvis viewed his wife as less of a person than him and he was
quite upset that she would run around and do things that he did not approve of and therefore she had to be punished
in other words jarvis didn't approve of lillian dating other men after they were divorced
three months before the murder store receipts show that william jarvis purchased the same brand of rocket
igniter and wrapping paper used in the bombing [Music] he also bought condoms which
investigators believe held the gasoline in the bond the evidence shows that jarvis made the
bomb on his kitchen table microscopic particles of smokeless gunpowder fell onto his floor
on the morning of the bombing prosecutors believe jarvis woke around 5 a.m and logged onto his aol account
possibly to establish his alibi then he drove to lillian's house 40 miles away to deliver the bond
prosecutors don't believe jarvis was home when his computer logged off aol they believe aol ended his online
session at 5 15 due to inactivity [Music] jarvis left the package on lillian's doorstep around 6 a.m
he knew lillian liked this kind of wrapping paper so the children would know it was for her
lillian's mother first saw the package around 6 30. she didn't think it was for her because
she didn't celebrate christmas when she handed lillian the package no one except william jarvis
could have anticipated what would happen next i believe william jarvis waited around
in the neighborhood until he heard the explosion then instead of going home he went to work 45 minutes before his
shift started we don't think he wanted to go back to his house fearing that people might be
there waiting for him therefore he had to be at work and he just went to his normal
routine of going to work except he was early that day which is unusual william jarvis's hatred for lillian
could easily have resulted in the death of his daughter katie had she been the one who opened the
package the last image of my daughter is seeing her standing by the sink opening the gift that was wrapped for
christmas and it exploded and she was thrown in mid-air across the room and everything went up in flames
including her william jarvis was tried and convicted of first degree murder and arson
he was sentenced to three consecutive life terms in prison with no possibility of parole
the forensic evidence proves that jarvis planned the bombing for months but was convinced
the explosion would destroy all the evidence i'd say the most critical piece of evidence in this entire case was one
tiny piece of wire that our lab technician found and this tied him to the bomb without
one piece of wire this case probably wouldn't have been solved that was the smoking gun
in this entire case that one piece of wire and that just goes to show that you may think you're smarter than the
police but you're not eventually we'll get you [Music] [Music] [Music] you

The bomb was constructed to cause as much damage as possible...And it did, killing the victim with deadly force and flame. A painstaking search yielded tiny clues, which identified the killer as surely as if he'd signed them.

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

Lillian Jarvis was murdered by a pipe bomb; her ex-husband William Jarvis was convicted based on forensic evidence linking him to the crime.

Key points

A Christmas Gift Turns Deadly. A mysterious package leads to a tragic bombing, killing Lillian Jarvis.
The Investigation Unfolds. Investigators uncover evidence linking Lillian's ex-husband to the bombing.
Justice Served. William Jarvis is convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I knew my daughter was dead. I knew she was dead when she landed.

A mother recounts the moment of the explosion.

2:38WatchJan 20, 2022

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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