Forensic Files Season 11, Episode 8 - Concrete Alibi - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[Music] a young woman just landed her first big modeling job a few hours later she
disappeared the weave pattern on some fabric the mixture of some concrete and a dog hair
were the keys to the mystery [Music] [Music] it was a friday night in central illinois around 10 p.m a motorist saw an
abandoned car along the side of the road the driver's side door was open the lights were still on the engine was
running but there was no one inside a purse was inside the car the inside of the vehicle
was a little bit disheveled it appeared to be a little bit suspicious there was no identification
in the purse the car's license plate number was registered to david swann a 34 year old employee of the local
newspaper when police called swann he said his girlfriend karen slover had borrowed his
car that night to pick up her three-year-old son christopher who had spent the day with his grandparents
but the car was nowhere near the grandparents home it was 40 miles away facing in a different direction
at that point she's just missing you know at that point we're not sure if it's a
kidnap it assume you assume it's a kidnapping hijacking on highway investigators asked family and friends
if karen might simply have run away everyone said it was impossible friends said karen had just gotten her
first professional modeling job and was excited about it she was an aspiring model and she had
received a phone call from paris international indicating that they were going to
possibly offer her some work out of state she was very excited about the modeling
job she was flitting around the office with a big smile on her face and pretty much letting everyone know that she was
excited about it two days passed still there was no sign of her then 40 miles away
some boaters on lake shelbyville noticed something they thought it was some garbage a
garbage bag that had floated up to the shoreline first thing i thought of when i saw that was how
this this is going to be bad inside the bag was a woman's head nearby police found other garbage bags
with the rest of her body i realized that there was a missing person from the friday night before a
female in a neighboring county and the thought flashed through my mind that this probably is that missing female
from the neighboring county dental records confirmed that the body was karen slover she was just 23 years
old she liked everybody everybody liked her who could do such a bizarre thing you don't think about that happening to
you until it does the bags were sealed with duct tape inside were chunks of cement and cinders
consistent with the material found on the floor of the car karen was driving apparently
the killer used the cement to keep the bags under water but the body gas is most likely raised them to the surface
analysts found six dog hairs stuck to a piece of the tape but there were no fingerprints found on the tape or the
bags the lake apparently washed away all other trace evidence i have been in law enforcement 33 years
and i have seen a lot of carnage this affected me probably worse than anything that i've ever seen
[Music] at karen slover's autopsy the medical examiner found she was shot in the head
six times with a 22 caliber handgun at point-blank range somebody was very angry and
i think when the actual murder occurred absolutely lost control and just continued to shoot until probably the
gun was empty the last time anyone saw karen slover alive was when she left work to pick up
her son who was spending the day with his grandparents more than likely karen was killed
sometime between 5 8 5 pm when she left her job and 10 o'clock when roughly 10 o'clock when her car was found out on
the interstate there was many theories involved one was was she abducted by a pervert
serial killer type investigation the first potential suspect was her ex-husband michael
the father of her little boy there was obviously some violence in that relationship we talked to several
people who indicated that michael had battered her in the past i don't think it was a good relationship
karen wasn't very fond of michael's family either they were the ones babysitting karen's
son christopher on the day of her murder karen had a tough time with her ex-in-laws they're the ones who watched
her son and it was frequently stressful when she either would go to drop him off
or to pick him up but karen's former husband michael slover had an alibi for the time of
karen's disappearance he was working as a security guard at cub foods he had made an arrest that afternoon at
cub foods the police had been there since michael had an alibi investigators turned their attention to
karen's current boyfriend david swann he'd had some run-ins with law enforcement he'd been put on probation
in the past he had pretended to be or impersonate a law enforcement officer in the past he'd spent time in a mental
ward at a hospital 34 year old david swann had been dating karen for only a short time
a background check revealed a disturbing incident he had been involved in killing a deer and then had
put the deer over a swimming pool and had used a chainsaw or like instrument to clean the deer
and due to the fact karen had been dismembered and we weren't exactly sure what the means of dismemberment were we
were interested in information like that and david's alibi was shaky on the night
of the murder he was attending a friend's wedding rehearsal and witnesses said he was 45 minutes late for the
rehearsal dinner that followed this created a 45-minute window that could not be accounted for
we were concerned that david swann was free for a period of time and could have possibly committed the crime during
that time period i felt like he very very possibly could have been the one i remember telling the
sheriff that i think i've got the guy [Music] karen told french he dreamt of moving to
georgia to pursue her modeling career was it possible that david grew angry over her plans to leave
investigators brought in a profiler to study david's past the fbi profiler indicated that david did match the
profile of the type of person that could be responsible for this type of crime but investigators had no hard evidence
against him and without it they couldn't obtain a search warrant despite repeated interrogations he
denied having anything to do with karen's murder if david swann was the killer he might have committed
the perfect crime [Music] police were convinced david swann was involved in karen slover's murder
he had an alibi for the night of her murder except for a 45-minute period he said he was running some errands
but no one could corroborate that [Music] after six months police decided to interrogate david one
last time hoping he'd incriminate himself we all held hands and prayed that lord
if this is your will that this if david swan is in fact the one involved you know let us get a confession if he
is not if he's not involved give us a sign we can go elsewhere in this last interrogation
police continued to ask where he was on the night of the murder during the time he couldn't account for
the pressure paid off but not the way police expected we had him in there over four hours and
right at the very end i mean we pushed and pushed and pushed him and right at the very end he tells us about this atm
thing [Music] david said that the reason he was late to the rehearsal dinner was that he went
to the bank investigators went to that bank and checked the atm surveillance video
it showed david swann just as he said it would we were able to verify through the atm tapes david swan did not
have a window of opportunity to commit this crime with david swan cleared there were no
other suspects investigators feared that karen slover's murder might never be solved i took it
personally i spent a lot of sleepless nights thinking about this case wondering what i was
missing what we weren't doing what we needed to do to actually come up with the killer in this case
as a last resort police looked one more time at the crime scene it was clear there had to be another car
at the scene there had to be more than one person involved with this you couldn't leave a
vehicle along the interstate and walk back to wherever you you left from someone had to drive there and pick you
up and take you back so who would have had the motive and the opportunity to commit this crime
karen's ex-husband michael had an alibi for the night of the murder but his parents did not they were the ones
watching karen's son christopher on the day of the murder michael slover senior he works at a
power plant up in the decatur area and once he clocked out he has no alibi after that time he's not slower who
wasn't employed or anything she had no alibi or anybody to collaborate their alibi
51 year old jeanette slover detested her ex-daughter-in-law karen and everyone knew
how much she loved her three-year-old grandson christopher i think the relationship between
jeannette and the boy was not normal that jeannette treated the boy as her own and
actually believed it was her own son in fact she told friends that after christopher
was born she began breastfeeding him investigators checked telephone records and discovered that michael jr called
his parents 12 times on the weekend of the murder also suspicious the slovers owned a used
car lot just one mile from their house the lot patrolled by two junkyard dogs was always dirty and in disrepair
just after karen disappeared neighbors said the lot got a makeover michael jr and michael senior were seen
by the neighbors out of miracle motors out cleaning up the lot cutting brush cutting weeds burning items and the
neighbors would told us that you know this place was a junk heap they'd never been out there to clean it up
was it possible they were trying to remove something connected to karen's murder
to find out investigators contacted richard monroe a well-known forensic geologist
concrete and cinders were found with karen's body could he tell if they came from the slover's car lot
both samples were placed in a scanning electron microscope and hit with high energy radiation
in a vacuum in the sem the darkness that's in the little chamber there is no light source the only light puts in is
the x-rays this enables the images of the samples to be magnified up to 5 000 times their
actual size visually the samples looked similar monroe then ground the samples into a powder and
bombarded it with x-rays to identify the chemical makeup of the samples monroe concluded that the material found
in the bag with karen's body and the material from the car lot were similar enough to raise suspicions
it wasn't a direct physical match where it was exactly from a certain piece but all the elements fit together to say you
have a high level of consistency but investigators needed more than that and to get it
they turned to an unlikely source the united states army [Music] more than two years after karen slover's
murder investigators now suspected that her ex-in-laws were involved the motive karen's former mother-in-law jeannette
wanted sole custody of her three-year-old grandson i think jeanette slover is filled with
rage i think that the relationship between jeanette and karen was not good i think that
jeannette felt like the boy was her own that karen was a threat to take the boy from her and she had to eliminate the
threat investigators found no forensic evidence inside the slover's house but concrete from their used car lot was
consistent with concrete found in the garbage bags with karen's body investigators wanted more proof
and went to unusual lengths to get it they called in the army to help them remove all the top soil from the
slover's 5 000 square foot car lot during the late winter snowstorm five gallon buckets were filled with
material for six painstaking months teams of investigators sifted through the debris
finally they found a potential clue a button that read authentic paris sports club
the jeans karen was found in had the exact same buttons i get goosebumps thinking about it right
now i'm not kidding you i mean i've got goosebumps just think i mean it was so exciting because we had worked so long
so hard on this and really had not come up with anything that was the first piece of evidence we felt like we had
that was going to lead us to the direction of the killers further sifting revealed some rivets
which were also consistent with karen's jeans then investigators found a different type of
button it was cloth covered plastic the type used on shirts and blouses i called the investigator and i asked
where's the white sleeve that was on karen's body he goes wet sleeve and i said i can see here in the crime scene
photos that there's a cloth covered button on that sleeve i want that sleeve scientists took a fiber from the button
on karen's blouse and placed it under a comparison microscope both buttons were composed of a cotton
polyester mix the next thing was to identify the weave patterns on both buttons in this case we had a simple one by one
weave pattern and that was consistent both with the button that was found at miracle motors
in the button that came from the sleeve of karen slover both buttons were the same size made of
the same material covered with the same fabric with an identical weave pattern finally
the slovas had two dogs and scientists wondered if the hair on the duct tape came
from one of them the analysis of animal dna for forensic applications is unusual in that there
are probably only three or four labs in the country that do it only one of the six dog hairs from the
duct tape provided enough dna for an analysis we concluded that there was a dna match
between the hair on the duct tape and the reference dog and that therefore the chances were very
high that the hairs came from the same dog jeanette and michael slover senior and
their son michael jr were all charged with first degree murder michael jr was charged because
he aided his parents in the planning and commission of the crime the motive the slovers were afraid karen
would move out of state depriving them of time with christopher based on the forensic evidence
prosecutors believe karen went to the slover's car lot to pick up her son [Music]
[Applause] [Music] during the dismemberment buttons from her blouse and jeans fell
on the ground and they used cement and cinders from their lot to give weight to the plastic
bags containing karen's body some of the dog hair stuck to the tape they used to close the garbage bags
and its dna matched the slover's dog they dumped karen's body into lake shelbyville and abandoned her car
along a deserted highway [Music] but the forensic evidence linked the slovers to the murder in
every imaginable way obviously this was a highly circumstantial case but the forensic
evidence we had was was pretty clear-cut although michael jr was working at the time of the murder
he called his parents 12 times that weekend and helped clean up the crime scene afterwards prosecutors were
convinced he was actively involved in planning the murder and cover-up the three slovers were all convicted of
first-degree murder and sentenced to 60 years in prison we were delighted that it was finally
over and the fact that all three of them were found guilty was even a major blessing because we
felt all three of them were were involved i think the lord had some intervention
in this and put us down the right path so that's just my little evangelizing to you
for what it's worth [Music] [Music] [Music] you

An aspiring model turned up dead, and the prime suspect was her boyfriend. When he was eventually cleared, investigators had to dig deeper to find the perpetrator. With the help of a forensic geologist, they identified the most unlikely suspects.

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

Karen Slover's murder leads to her in-laws' conviction through forensic evidence linking them to the crime.

Key points

The Mysterious Disappearance. A young woman, Karen Slover, vanishes after landing her first modeling job.
The Gruesome Discovery. Boaters find a woman's head in a bag, leading to the identification of Karen Slover.
The Investigation Unfolds. Police investigate multiple suspects, including Karen's ex-husband and current boyfriend.
Forensic Breakthrough. Investigators find buttons and dog hair linking the Slover family to the crime.
Justice Served. The Slover family is convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to prison.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Who could do such a bizarre thing?

Reflecting on the murder of Karen Slover.

3:36WatchJan 20, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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