Forensic Files Season 11, Episode 3 - Just Desserts - Full Episode | Forensic Files

an ex-convict was suspected of a brutal double homicide because his driver's license was found at the scene
in the past this might have been enough for a conviction but a dish of ice cream
pointed investigators in a different direction [Music] [Music] on the day before thanksgiving in 2003
a saint petersburg florida shop owner noticed a jeep near his store it had blood and
it had all kinds of things inside of it had a purse inside of it and the seat belt was hanging out and just a lot of
things you could tell it wasn't right the right front windshield was shattered and we found a purse with contents and
identification and money and so forth relating to the female passenger the jeep belonged to richard and carla
van dusen carla's cell phone was found on the front seat just a half mile away neighbors called police to report two
dead bodies on the road outside their home they were identified as richard and carla van dusen
richard was laying face down in the dirt of the driveway and carla was laying on her side
both had been shot in the head and uh we later learned through an autopsy that carla had also
been stabbed richard and carla had been married for three years they had three grown children from
previous marriages my son he said they're dead and i said did they have an accident
and i said are you sure several times i asked him if he was sure and then he told me that they had been
found and that they were had been murdered and i just i don't even remember after
that investigators had two crime scenes the jeep and the area where the bodies were
found based on the evidence and the location of the bodies investigators think that
the killer was someone the van duzens knew we felt that there probably was a third
party involved in the vehicle with them richard van dusen is forced out of the car at gunpoint we feel that he's
certainly killed outside of the car carla van dusen is shot while seated in the car
it looked like carla saw what was happening turned her head lifted her left hand and the bullet went through
the windshield her hand and into her head later the killer cut her seat belt and removed her body from the jeep
investigators believe the killer then drove the jeep a half mile away and abandoned it
on the ground near the jeep police found a florida driver's license it belonged to someone named
henry sullivan we learned that mr sullivan had a comparatively extensive criminal arrest
record from narcotics to crimes against persons battery and aggravated battery probation violations he had a reasonably
extensive record when police went to henry sullivan's apartment they found a vintage red 1971 chevrolet
cheyenne pickup truck parked outside his apartment incredibly the truck belonged to the murder victims
richard and carla van dusen it had been completely restored it was a classic truck it was a definite eye catcher and
in fact what i would describe as one of a kind pickup truck when questioned henry sullivan denied
any involvement in the murders with his driver's license found at the crime scene it looked like an open and
shut case but it was just the beginning [Music] friends and family couldn't believe that
richard and carla van dusen were murdered richard was a copy machine sales manager
whose hobby was collecting antique cars carla was a courtroom reporter on weekends she worked as a clown
entertaining sick children at local hospitals [Music] they were pretty well known in the
community they lived in a small beach town outside of st petersburg called tierra verde a very beautiful sugar sand
beaches the prime suspect was 32 year old henry sullivan he couldn't explain why his driver's
license was found near the van dusen's abandoned jeep and insisted he was innocent sullivan said you know
i lose my ids all the time in fact i just lost one you know a couple weeks before you came to
interview me the driver's license was dusted for fingerprints none were found police also looked for fingerprints
inside the van duzen's jeep especially on the seat belt after having applied ninhydrin to the
seatbelt and allowing it to dry completely i re-examined that seat belt for the presence of fingerprints and found none
but the killer left behind one piece of evidence a nine millimeter bullet found on the
floor of the victim's jeep when investigators searched henry sullivan's apartment
they found a nine-millimeter pistol investigators found that sullivan was in possession of two nine millimeter
pistols and that matched with the murder weapon that investigators had been looking for
one was inoperable the other nine millimeter handgun was test-fired into a tank of water
that bullet was microscopically compared to the nine millimeter slug found in the
van dusen's jeep analyst erika henderson carefully examined the distinctive marks called
lands and grooves made when each bullet goes through the barrel of the gun when you look down the barrel of a
firearm you will see the ridges and valleys these ridges and valleys once a bullet
is fired will be imparted on the bullet so the bullet will also have these ridges and valleys
the test bullet and the one from the crime scene were turned repeatedly as henderson checked
and rechecked the markings i just worked the evidence so i try to have tunnel vision because i
don't want anybody ever to come around and say you know you have a biased opinion
but the result showed that henry sullivan's gun was not the murder weapon [Music]
crime scene analysts then turned their attention to the vandusen's classic red pickup truck found behind henry
sullivan's apartment as they examined the vehicle there was another bizarre incident in
this already unusual investigation we are approached by a white male subject who identifies himself as william de
parvin who announces himself to us as the owner of the truck and said that he had purchased it the
day previous deparvine lived in the same apartment building as henry sullivan and he said
he bought the truck from the vandusens just the day before he said the vandusens placed an ad for
the truck in the local newspaper deparvine went to look at the truck bought it and said the vanduzans later
delivered it to his apartment he said he paid them sixty five hundred dollars for it and when they left he
never saw them again his approach to us was very up front and forward he was quite conversational and
he wasn't didn't appear to be defensive or belligerent or anything of the sort most of deparvine's story could be
corroborated but there were several discrepancies what's he doing with a bill of sale for
6 500 when when van dusen's telling a co-worker the day before he's he's found a buyer for thirteen
five now that just tells us something not right here deparvine said the vandusens
left his apartment around 5 30. but carla van dusen called her mother at 6 37 p.m with information that
contradicted that the night that they were killed i got a phone call from carla and and she was
very excited she said yeah i'm in the car i'm i'm driving behind rick and the guy that bought the truck
because he knows where to get the paperwork done tonight although carla never mentioned the
buyer's name the call placed the buyer presumably to parvine in the pickup truck with richard
van dusen an hour after deparvine said they left his apartment it just kind of went through my mind as
to what is the hurry you know that you have to go out at night to to get this paperwork done
deparvine denied he was the man in the pickup truck with richard van dusen [Music]
a background check revealed this wasn't deparvine's first brush with the law we found that mr department had an
extensive felony arrest record and that he had just been released from prison and was on probation
deparven had just served nine years on a weapons possession charge and henry sullivan was still a suspect
we still have the henry sullivan angle and also we don't lose sight of the fact that there may be an unknown perpetrator
involved in this crime there may be something else completely unrelated to the sale of the pickup involved
based on dna testing and blood spatter analysis investigators believe richard van dusen
was pulled from his jeep and shot outside the vehicle his wife carla was sitting in the
passenger seat and was shot through the windshield but on the steering wheel investigators found blood which did not
come from carla or richard the samples that were tested from the steering wheel were consistent with
being human blood those samples were tested to develop a dna profile perhaps the killer nicked his hand while
cutting the seat belt to remove carla's body and the blood dripped onto the steering wheel while he drove the jeep
to the dump site investigators asked their initial suspect henry sullivan for a dna sample
testing showed it was not his blood in the car sullivan wasn't involved in crime so the
mystery was how did his card get there and investigators soon had another theory
for how it got there henry sullivan had a brother who was stopped for a traffic violation on the
night of the murders he told police that night that his name was henry we have another person using
henry sullivan's name and date of birth could he be the killer and the one that's dropped the driver's license at
the at the scene where the vehicle was found justin sullivan had a warrant in existence for his
arrest wholly unrelated to any of the matters pertaining to this case in an attempt to evade that
he gave his brother's name our curiosity was peaked to the point that we thought perhaps justin sullivan
was using henry's identification in it and it could have conceivably been that justin
dropped the id card at the scene of the crime but like his brother justin denied any involvement in
the murders he said he had an alibi that he was with friends at a nightclub which
they corroborated then investigators asked their third suspect william deparvine for a dna
sample he said no we don't have any probable cause at this point in time in the investigation to
indicate that mr parvin is involved in the murder therefore we don't have enough information to draw a search
warrant without a warrant police couldn't get a genetic sample directly from deparvine but
there were other ways we were looking for him to either eat something drink something and discard it
chew gum and discard it or even spit so that we could swab that up a team of detectives was assigned to
follow deparvine everywhere he went hoping to somehow get his dna sampled when someone's out on foot like in a
mall we work in pairs of two so therefore if you've got ten people you've really only got a team of five
following a person and you need at least eight to ten people to follow somebody so that they
don't know they're being followed deparvine had earned a law degree while he was in prison and he was very careful
either because he was disciplined or he knew he was being followed mr parvin is an intelligent individual
he's not your average type of criminal he led a very monotonous very bland type of lifestyle
he would get up in the morning he would go to work he would come back home and stay inside
his little apartment and go to sleep deparvine was a construction worker and he had no social life to speak of
for months the surveillance continued with no luck but the deparvine made a mistake during
the christmas shopping season he stopped at an ice cream store and bought a dessert known as
a blizzard my partner at the time and i watched him eat the blizzard and felt that the way
he was slowly eating the blizzard and taking the spoon and raking it across his teeth
that that spoon would possibly give us some dna from mr deparvine de parvine discarded the cup in the
spoon and investigators immediately retrieved the spoon from the trash technology has become incredibly
sensitive and incredibly powerful and there is the ability to obtain dna from the smallest piece of evidence in a very
reproducible very reliable manner on the spoon scientists found saliva they extracted dna and compared it to
the blood found on the steering wheel of the van dusen's jeep the results left no doubt
the dna profile that was developed from the steering wheel was matched to the dna profile that was
obtained for william deparvine is known standard [Music] william de parvine was arrested and
charged with first degree murder yet he continued to maintain his innocence he claimed his neighbor henry
sullivan was the culprit and that the driver's license proved it a jury would have to decide
[Music] william de parvine admitted that he was with carla and richard van duzen on the
night they were murdered deparvine says he bought the couple's truck and after he paid for it he never saw them again
but prosecutors didn't believe that they say the van dusen's delivered the car but deparvine didn't have the money
so he asked the vanduzans to follow him to his friend's home to get the money [Music]
phone records indicate carla called her mother at 6 37 to say she was driving behind the man who
bought their truck although no one knows why they apparently left the pickup truck at
one location and all three got into the jeep on their way to get the money [Music]
as deparvine led the vanduzans to the deserted road they may have realized that there was no
friend that there was no money and that this was a setup [Music] deparvine used a nine-millimeter weapon
to order richard out of the jeep and shot him [Music] he shot carla through the windshield the
bullet passed through her left hand as she tried to protect herself then deparvine cut carla's seatbelt to
remove her body from the jeep and in doing so accidentally cut his hand his blood dripped under the steering
wheel as he drove the jeep back to the pickup truck [Music] before he abandoned the jeep he planted
henry sullivan's driver's license which he may have stolen since sullivan lived in the same apartment building as he did
to cover his tracks deparvine forged the bill of sale for the truck in the amount
of five hundred dollars half of what the van dozens were asking for it where he disposed of the murder weapon
remains a mystery he was on a work release when he killed carl and rick i had been told that
federal investigators had had deemed him to be a psychopath a sociopath and i was told
by one of the prosecutors that they did not think this whole crime happened because he
wanted that truck it happened because he was looking for somebody to kill at the trial deparvine insisted he was
innocent and took the stand in his own defense as soon as mr deparvine took the stand then prosecution
turned very aggressive and went after mr deparvine and basically started to pull apart all the alibis
deparvine told a series of stories trying to explain what happened but none of them matched the physical
evidence the point where i made up my mind that he must be guilty was after i heard his
complete testimony and decided that all of the alibis that he was coming up with were just beyond
belief the jury took three hours to find deparvine guilty and he was sentenced to death
[Music] in the end some saliva on a plastic spoon and a small nick on his hand told
investigators how he committed the crime and how he killed two innocent people who were just trying to sell their truck
and be on their way i was never really into forensic science or even you know gave it any thought
but since that time has happened i have become hooked on court tv and i've learned a lot about the way the
law works and about the way forensics uh play into a a case where there's no eyewitness
especially [Music] [Music] [Music] you

The prime suspect had a criminal record, and his driver's license was found at the scene of a brutal double-homicide.

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

A couple is murdered in Florida; DNA evidence links the killer to the crime scene, leading to a conviction.

Key points

Double Homicide Investigation. An ex-convict is suspected of a brutal double homicide, but evidence points elsewhere.
The Van Dusens' Tragic End. Richard and Carla Van Dusen are found murdered, shocking their community.
DNA Evidence Leads to Arrest. Forensic evidence from a spoon leads to the arrest of William Deparvine.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It looked like an open and shut case.

Initial evidence points to a clear suspect.

4:29WatchJan 20, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

More from Forensic Files

Solve the Crime

Read a real case one clue at a time, then see how your call held up against the investigators.