Forensic Files Season 11, Episode 6 - Dockter Visit - Full Episode | Forensic Files

to solve the murder investigators needed to find the fatal bullet but where was it
could the laws of physics solve the mystery if not a killer would walk free [Music]
world war ii in the skies over europe american airmen fought a deadly and dangerous war
for every 100 airmen who flew missions over europe 70 never came back one of the highest casualty rates in the
history of warfare [Music] walter joachim was one of the fortunate ones he was in the eighth air force in world
war ii was a waste gunner and a b-17 and survived 34 missions over nazi hill territory
joachim risked his life and almost lost it countless times but only his family and fellow veterans
knew it he never talked about it so i didn't know what he did in the military kind of surprised me because he's such a
conservative fellow you just can't imagine him being behind a machine gun in an airplane
seventy-six-year-old yokum a widower and retired accountant lived by himself on the outskirts of boulder county colorado
on a fall day in 1993 his housekeeper noticed something was wrong she went and knocked on the door got no
answer she said that's very usual for him because he's a you know pretty punctual guy
um you know was never late was always there when she was supposed to show up she
went around the back of the house and decided to knock on the back door and notice that there was a broken
window and she got concerned at that point and decided to notify the police [Music]
investigators from the boulder sheriff's office discovered walter yokum dead at the bottom of the stairs
he had been fatally shot through the neck i don't think i slept for a couple of days
it's hard to imagine somebody that you know has just been violently murdered outside detectives noticed several clear
foot impressions in the mud crime scene technicians took plaster casts for future comparison
there was a particularly good set of footprints that were cast from that and they were a lug soul type of a boot
kind of a work boot kind of a soul [Music] the point of entry was through a broken
bedroom window on the ground floor there were muddy footprints leading to the foyer
at the stairwell detectives found gunshot residue as you can see the pattern of the gunpowder on the wall
left an outline where the barrel the end of the barrel was it demonstrated exactly where the the shooter was
standing at the time that he killed mr yokum there was an empty gun holster upstairs
on the dining room floor we called the son who said did he have any guns and what were they and he says oh yeah
his my dad had his 45 which he kept from world war ii he says everybody kept their guns when
they left the army this was a distinctive gun it was a cult semi-automatic used by many world war ii
servicemen soldiers routinely scraped off the gun serial numbers after the war but joachim's gun was missing
so too was his credit card and some cash adding to the mystery was the awkward position of walter yokham's body
he was lying on his back with his arms extended and his knees in the air someone had come and moved him
after rigor morris had set in because he was nearly face up with both arms somewhat in the air and gravity just
doesn't allow you to do that this meant the killer was inside the house at least
three hours maybe longer our working theory in the beginning was that this was a burglary was interrupted
and what was really bad about that is that burglaries are one of the hardest crimes
to solve the most bizarre clue was found near joachim's foot it was the foil wrapper of a reese's
peanut butter cup there was an empty bag of peanut butter cups in the refrigerator
i would have to say that all we knew about the killer was that he wore boots and he enjoyed reese's peanut butter cup
that's a cold-blooded killer someone that can do that um just having just murdered somebody then
go through refrigerator and see what there is to eat and then stand there and look at him
while you're eating some of his candy [Music] clues from the crime scene indicated
walter yokum most likely heard an intruder grabbed his gun and was heading down the steps when the intruder shot
him at the beginning of the investigation there's an autopsy and at that point we discovered that the
bullet's not in the victim's body so it's like for the next task for those of us going back
out to the scene is we gotta find this bullet this was a problem without the bullet
investigators would know nothing about the murder weapon and would have no ballistic evidence once they identified
a suspect so everything suggested there was one shot fired and it went through the
victim and out somebody went on the roof looked around couldn't find a bullet we
looked in the gutter couldn't find a bullet how are we going to find this bullet
because if it exited the house you've got literally acres and acres and acres of places that bullet could be and it's
it's a bullet that big to find it investigators turned to the science department at the university of colorado
once it enters the atmosphere then it's not likely to change its configuration although it might be tumbling
so the three things you need to know are the initial velocity the initial angle with respect to the horizontal
and the amount of air resistance that you could expect we knew from the wound it was probably a 38 357 9 millimeter
that middle size caliber we knew it wasn't the 22 it was too big for that and it was too small for a 45.
a bullet from these caliber weapons would be traveling at approximately a thousand feet per second
but the bullet passed through a human body went through the ceiling then the roof shingles
it's very difficult to determine how much energy is lost as the bullet passes through those three
obstacles but in order to determine where the bullet falls you need to know the velocity just after it passes through
the roof to study how much velocity was lost investigators reassembled everything the
bullet passed through a beef roast was used to simulate the victim's neck behind it was a piece of plaster ceiling
and behind that a section from the roof when the bullet was fired its speed was tracked with a chronometer
a device that works very much like a radar gun there was a great deal more energy lost
by the bullet in passing through the victim and the ceiling in the roof than was originally thought
the next step was to determine the angle at which the bullet left the house gunshot residue told investigators
approximately where the killer was standing [Music] they knew where the victim was when he
was struck and the hole in the roof told them where the bullet exited [Music] investigators used a rod to approximate
the trajectory which was 68 degrees if the bullet is going almost straight up then the horizontal force due to air
resistance is small and so you can solve the problem of a bullet going straight up because it's a
one-dimensional problem and get something that you can work with analytically at a speed of approximately 850 feet per
second the bullet exited the house at a 68 degree angle with gravity and wind resistance
factored in scientists predicted the bullet would be fairly close to the house we asked a local
treasure hunting club to use their metal detectors and we marked off the entire yard and field
beyond the house with a grid and then we asked people to search this grid for that bullet
and they found it just 90 feet from the house it was a 38 caliber bullet we were very excited we had our missing
link we we had the bullet we really believed this this was the boat that killed walter yokum
unfortunately it was of little value initially i was pretty excited about it but then i was discouraged because the
bullet was so mangled that it wasn't going to give us any ballistics the base was still relatively intact and
about maybe a quarter of an inch up the base was intact but other than that it was it was pretty mangled
now investigators needed to identify some suspects there probably was no prior relationship
between walter yoakham and the killer so investigators checked police records for anyone arrested for burglary around
the time of the murder [Music] there was only one james dobson he'd been released from prison on a
burglary conviction just a few days before joachim's murder and he had a habit of eating at his
crime scenes he was breaking into houses to steal food fact that he's eating food from the
house at the scene of these burglaries and you have reese's peanut butter kept wrappers
on the floor all kind of point to mr dobson it would it's just logical that you go look at
him but eating candy wouldn't be enough investigators would need much more [Music]
some of walter joachim's neighbors told investigators about some suspicious looking men in the neighborhood on the
night of joachim's murder so they asked the neighbors to view a lineup that included their prime suspect
james dobson your witness look at them and decide if any of them are the guy and
in this case i believe mr dobson was familiar to the witness but they couldn't say that's the guy
dobson denied any involvement in joachim's murder and there was no evidence he owned a
weapon capable of firing a 38-caliber bullet and dobson didn't own boots that matched
the impressions found at the crime scene so investigators wanted to know if there
were fingerprints on the peanut butter cup wrapper found next to joachim's body processing that wrapper
i was not able to obtain any latent prints off of that surface in fact there were no foreign prints
anywhere in the house in order to identify more potential suspects colorado investigators searched
police records to identify any unusual criminal activity around the time of walter yocum's murder
and one incident in particular stood out [Music] two undercover officers noticed a pickup
truck with north dakota license plates leaving the home of a known drug dealer on the day after joachim was killed
the truck was registered to kevin doctor so she called bismarck north dakota to ask them about who is this kevin doctor
guy they said well you know it's funny you should call about him because we just
arrested him yesterday 29 year old kevin doctor was a career criminal with a history of drugs and
weapons offenses they said he's a convicted felon so arrested him for possession weapons by a
previous offender and one thing led to another you know of course the next question is well what
kind of guns did he have when arrested doctor had a 357 and a world war ii era 45 caliber colt pistol
like the one missing from walter yokham's holster but that wasn't all when kevin was arrested in addition all
the other paraphernalian things like that that were found in the car there was coincidentally or not coincidentally
a bag of reese's peanut butter cup miniatures the same type that were found at mr joachim's residence it's not a
scientific thing but to me if i was on a jury i would put a lot of stock in this
just because it makes sense the 45 caliber pistol had the serial number scraped off of it
just like walter joachim's gun and it had some ammunition in the clip highly distinctive ammunition
the base of the bullet was stamped with the letters r-e-m-u-m-c it's a remington
manufactured ammunition and umc stands for union metallic cartridge i called up remington and the guy
answers the phone says oh yeah i've worked here 43 years that ammunition was made from 1912 to
1961. the same type of ammunition was found in walter joachim's house he kept the gun and the bullets
for almost 50 years it's kind of winning three numbers on a lottery ticket you know
you can't go down to the hardware store or the gun store and buy that ammunition
there were 38 caliber bullets in doctors 357 which were subjected to inductively
coupled plasma emission spectroscopy a bullet from the crime scene was compared to
the bullet from a cartridge and mr doctor's gun and three bullets from cartridges recovered from
his truck and they were found to be analytically uh indistinguishable that is they all had the same composition of
lead having two batches of lead that are similar the fbi uh rated that at about one and two thousand five hundred so as
far as circumstantial evidence that's pretty good scientists went one step further
kevin doctor was wearing work boots when he was arrested impressions were made and compared to plaster casts of boot
prints found outside of joachim's house the cast from the crime scene didn't have enough detail to show any
accidental characteristics which are marks that result from everyday wear and tear
the class characteristics the size the tread patterns and the manufacturing impressions
were there for comparison the overall characteristics on the different cast were consistent with what was present on
the boots that were submitted so the evidence against kevin doctor was mounting he owned boots like the impressions at
the crime scene he had the same taste in candy as the killer and had no explanation for why he
was in possession of walter yocum's gun and ammunition [Music] kevin doctor was the prime suspect in
the murder of walter yoakham and apparently he was a big talker investigators spoke to doctors friends
who said doctor bragged about committing a robbery in colorado and said his friend 21 year old jason fowler acted as
a lookout we went to uh jason fowler and said look we've got another person ready to give
you guys up and you're gonna go down do some hard time in a mainline joint and he says
well okay i think i'm ready to talk jason fowler told us that he and kevin doctor had a drug habit
that they supported their drug habit by breaking into homes and stealing items fowler told investigators that he and dr
case joachim's house since no lights were on they assumed no one was home doctor left his boot impressions in the
mud as he broke the downstairs bedroom window the noise apparently woke walter yokum
who grabbed his world war 245 pistol and went to see what was going on doctors saw him first and fired one shot
killing joachim instantly fowler says they left the scene and went to a local bar
[Music] after several drinks they decided to return to joachim's house to rob it
[Music] doctor ate the peanut butter cups as he searched for items to steal he moved joachim's body to look through
his pockets after rigor mortis set in all they took was twenty dollars in cash a credit card and joachim's highly
distinctive 45 caliber handgun he pulled out a green 45 and he had blood all over his
fingertips just kind of wiping that off and he pulled the chamber open and there's no bullet he says this
stupid old man didn't have a bullet in the chamber even he died for nothing this truly was a senseless killing
um not that there's any killing that makes sense but this one was particularly senseless
the day after the murder undercover officers saw kevin doctor's truck leave the home of a known drug
dealer it was the break investigators needed had they not gotten that license plate doing that drug deal
we probably never would have had that name certainly not as directly as we did kevin doctor pled guilty to
second-degree murder and was sentenced to 40 years in prison jason fowler pled guilty to burglary and
was sentenced to 25 years in prison one final note it's easy to see why the neighbors first
chose james dobson as the man they thought they saw near the crime scene dobson bore
a striking resemblance to jason fowler everybody that worked on this case are probably
in my opinion the best there is and so it really didn't surprise me when it went into the solve column because of
the the caliber of people that worked on it it was just one of those cases of excellent police work
that and some luck and they'd all fallen together in a case that easily could have gone
unsolved and so yeah when i got done with that and i looked back on it i was kind of like wow i can't believe we
actually were able to do that [Music] [Music] [Music] you

A World War II veteran was found dead in his home, and the investigation ground to a halt when the prime suspect had a solid alibi. But a lucky break led to a shady character who wore distinctive boots and had a sweet tooth.

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

Walter Joachim was murdered in 1993; forensic science helped identify Kevin Doctor as the killer.

Key points

The Mystery of Walter Joachim's Murder. Walter Joachim was found dead in his home, leading to a complex investigation.
The Discovery of the Bullet. Investigators faced a major challenge when the bullet was missing from the crime scene.
Kevin Doctor's Arrest. Kevin Doctor, a career criminal, becomes the prime suspect in Joachim's murder.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

A killer would walk free if not found.

0:18WatchJan 20, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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