Forensic Files - Season 12, Episode 1 - Sharper Image - Full Episode | Forensic Files

NARRATOR: A child was abducted from her home in the middle of the night. There were no witnesses.
But new cutting-edge photo technology revealed a clue that otherwise would have been missed.
[theme music] NARRATOR: Single mothers who raise children alone often make enormous sacrifices to make ends meet.
Karen Ferger was no exception. She worked the night shift at a food processing plant,
so she hired an acquaintance, Jack Hubble, as a live-in baby sitter. -It's just a typical, working-class family
with a single parent that's trying to make ends meet with the children. NARRATOR: On October 3, 1997, Jack Hubble and his wife
woke up and realized that nine-year-old Sharra Ferger was missing. -The Hubbles had contacted a few of the neighborhood friends,
and they began searching around to see if she was still somewhere in the neighborhood.
-I felt scared. I was nervous. I just felt like something happened to her, because there was part of me that died.
NARRATOR: At 3:30 that afternoon, the search for Sharra ended. -She was found in a field 300 yards from her residence,
had been repeatedly stabbed and left for dead out in the field. -I tried jumping the fence, but the cops held me back,
and when the paramedics came and they didn't get out, I knew that she was gone. -It's kind of a scary thing.
You know, when you have kids like this, it's a scary thing to think that somebody's
running around out there like that. -You never really know who your neighbors are.
This was a quiet, community neighborhood, and now, all of a sudden, it's something everybody's
going to remember is something said. NARRATOR: Investigators immediately questioned Jack
Hubble, since there was no sign of forced entry to the house and he was the last known person to see Sharra alive.
He said the night before, Sharra and her brother, Joseph, had fallen asleep on the sofa while watching television.
Hubble said he turned off the TV, covered them up, and went to bend. Later, Joseph came into his bedroom, frightened.
-Joseph heard noises. Pots and pans rattling in the kitchen. It startled him. Jack didn't really ask him why he was scared,
he just said, yeah, go ahead and you can sleep in the bed. NARRATOR: Joseph said Sharra was still asleep
when he went into the Hubbles' bedroom. Karen was suspicious, but she wasn't willing to believe
Jack Hubble had anything to do which Sharra's murder. -I wasn't sure he was capable of doing something like that.
-There was no sign of forced entry, so it was believed that whoever came into the house
had some way to enter that residence to get to Sharra. NARRATOR: But Jack Hubble's behavior in the 24 hours
before Sharra's death was troubling. -The night before my daughter's murder, Jack Hubble went into my oldest daughter's window
and tried to climb through it. Hubble, a recovering heroin addict, told investigators he was searching
for his methadone prescription. -He didn't have a real good explanation as to why he was in there.
NARRATOR: Crystal told police she was terrified. -He didn't try anything with her or anything.
She just got scared that he was in her room. NARRATOR: The next night, the night her younger sister
was murdered, Crystal locked her door and her bedroom window. Police suspected that Hubble tried again
to get to Crystal's room, couldn't and turned to Sharra instead. All they had to do now was prove it.
The senselessness of Sharra Ferger's murder shocked everyone in Blanton, Florida.
And the case made the national news. -Well, whoever did it, they're going to pay for it one way or the other.
An innocent kid. She ain't never done nothing. NARRATOR: At the autopsy, the medical examiner found evidence
that Sharra had been sexually assaulted, and that two weapons were used in her murder.
-One appeared to be a thin, sharp-bladed instrument consistent with what we would normally refer to as a knife,
and the other was a round object. It would be consistent with a Phillips screwdriver.
NARRATOR: Two different weapons raised the possibility of two perpetrators. The medical examiner also found a bite mark
on Sharra's shoulder and four human hairs with the roots attached. It appeared the hairs had been ripped from someone's head
during a struggle. -They obtained a DNA profile from that hair root. That DNA profile was then compared
to the DNA swab taken from Jack Hubble. And there was no match. NARRATOR: And the bite-mark impressions
didn't match Hubble either. After five days in custody, Jack Hubble was released.
-It was obvious that she had not left the neighborhood and that more than likely, the suspect
had come into the neighborhood and had to have been either seen by someone or possibly knew someone
that lived in the neighborhood. NARRATOR: So investigators asked all the men in the neighborhood
to provide teeth impressions. This generated an important lead. A forensic odontologist identified Dale Morris,
who lived down the street from the Fergers, as the person responsible for the bite mark
on Sharra's shoulder. -We told them, that's your man. Arrest him. So, that's how that went.
NARRATOR: Morris, a married father of a teenage stepdaughter, adamantly denied any involvement in Sharra's murder.
-I wasn't too crazy about Dale Morris. I just believe he's guilty. Something in me tells me that he's guilty.
NARRATOR: Morris told investigators he had never even met Sharra Ferger. NARRATOR: But investigators knew this wasn't true.
-In fact, it was learned that he had seen Sharra before, that Sharra had actually been in his residence visiting
his daughter. NARRATOR: During his interrogation, Dale Morris came about as close to a confession
as one could get. -Which was a spontaneous utterance basically indicating that if he had done the crime, he
must have done it in his sleep. NARRATOR: Based on the bite-mark identification and his statement to police, Dale Morris
was charged with first-degree murder. Tom Hanlon was the public defender assigned to Dale's case.
He described the so-called confession as "preposterous." -He made a statement. Well if it happened, it had to happen when I was asleep,
because I never went over there. And so, was that a confession? No, that was a guy trying to politely tell them to go drink
ice water with the devil, is what that was. NARRATOR: Convinced the bite-mark evidence
against his client was flawed, Hanlon wanted a second opinion. So he called Dr. Lowell Levine, a forensic odontologist who
had been involved in a number of high-profile cases. Dr. Levine believed the photographs of the bite mark
were too blurry for a quality analysis. -I told Mr. Hanlon, to make a very long story short,
that it would be a good idea if we could digitally clarify the police photographs.
NARRATOR: So Hanlon called NASA, who were experts in the field of digital photo enhancement.
NASA recommended using Lucis, a cutting-edge software that would sharpen the images considerably.
-The human eye can discern about 32 levels of contrast. A typical photograph has 255 levels of contrast.
This means that there's a lot of image information that our eye just can't discern, because the differences
in contrast just isn't big enough for us to register it. What Lucis does is it makes those small differences
in contrast large enough for us to be able to see. NARRATOR: When completed, the digitally enhanced photographs
revealed some new information. -The clarified photographs showed that that was just
part of a second line of teeth and that there were actually two lines of teeth, there were two complete bite
marks, in that photograph. Part of the top didn't show up real well until it was clarified.
NARRATOR: This gave Dr. Levine two bite impressions to compare with Dale Morris's teeth.
-It was my opinion Dale Morris could not have caused the bike mark. -When I was afforded an opportunity
to talk with Dr. Lowell Levine and he was able to sit down and actually show me why this,
in fact, was not Dale Morris's bite mark, I walked away from that meeting convinced
that we had had the wrong person. -You haven't been able to hug your wife for a very long time, have you?
-For four and a half months. I haven't been able to touch her for four and a half months.
Just talk to her through a plate-glass window for an hour. Yeah, an hour at a time, wasn't it?
Yeah. An hour at a time. -When the sheriff's office went out there and apologized,
as always, Dale accepted their apology and forgave them. NARRATOR: The investigation was far from over.
Homicide investigators identified two suspects in the murder of nine-year-old Sharra Ferger.
The child's babysitter, Jack Hubble, and a neighbor, Dale Morris. -I believe he was guilty.
I believe Dale Morris was guilty. NARRATOR: But both men had been excluded by the forensic evidence.
By now, six months had passed and the case was cold. -We found ourself, yet again, in a position where we really
did not know who committed this offense. And the people in the community were getting very upset.
-I'm still scared that-- I mean, there could be someone else. -Everybody's been on edge.
I mean, nobody trusts anybody. They walk down here to burn a castle, but people are still looking around,
you know, wondering who it was, who could it be? -We worked very hard to try to go
back and refocus this investigation. We knew we had to solve it. We knew that we couldn't just leave it.
NARRATOR: So investigators re-interviewed people in Sharra's neighborhood, looking for anything
that might have been overlooked. They started with Sharra's uncle, Gary Cochran,
who was with Sharra at a neighborhood carnival on the afternoon of her murder. -Well, whoever did it, they're going
to pay for it one way or the other. An innocent kid. She ain't never done nothing.
-We'd never got along. After me and Sharra's dad split up, for some reason he hated me because I wouldn't let Sharra visit her dad.
NARRATOR: And Cochran knew that the Ferger's side door lock was broken, which is how the perpetrator entered the home.
However, Cochran said he had an alibi for the night Sharra was killed. -An elaborate story that he had been out drinking
and wasn't even in the area, and that he ended up partying with some other people.
We checked out his alibi, and we found that he wasn't telling us the truth. NARRATOR: Cochran willingly provided a DNA sample, which
did not match the hair from the crime scene. But investigators didn't stop there.
-Hello? NARRATOR: They learned that Gary Cochran spent some time in jail for a drug-related offense and developed
a reputation for some odd behavior. -Interviewing inmates in the jail, it was determined that he had bitten approximately six
inmates while in jail with them. NARRATOR: Others said the same thing. -His ex-wife stated that during sex with Gary Cochran
that he often bit her to the point that he would draw blood. NARRATOR: This was significant to the investigation,
since Sharra Ferger had been bitten by her assailant. So investigators took molds of Cochran's teeth
and sent them to forensic odontologist Dr. Lowell Levine. Almost immediately, Dr. Levine noticed something distinctive.
-Mr. Cochran had two very unusual characteristics there. He's got a space between two pre-molars.
One is rotated, and the other one is either deformed or in some way has been broken.
And they left very distinctive bite marks or patterns in the issue. NARRATOR: But were the molds of Cochran's teeth
consistent with the bite marks on Sharra Ferger's shoulder? -I then told the detectives that it was Cochran.
NARRATOR: Cochran was incredulous. He insisted he was innocent, just like Jack Hubble and Dale Morris.
He said he was falsely accused. -Gary Cochran indicated that he had been with her earlier
that evening and playfully may have bitten her on the shoulder. NARRATOR: So investigators asked Dr. Levine
if the bite mark could have happened hours earlier at the neighborhood carnival.
-In my opinion, it looks more like a perimortem injury, an injury which occurred around the time of death.
And it just doesn't look like a six-hour-old injury to me. NARRATOR: But if Cochran was involved,
he had an accomplice who was the source of the DNA. -We knew that to solve this case,
to get to the bottom of this case, we had to find the DNA source that matched those hairs.
NARRATOR: If Gary Cochran had an accomplice in Sharra Ferger's murder, he wasn't saying who it was.
-We knew that there was a missing piece of the puzzle, somebody that we had to match up to the DNA
from the hair that was found on her body. NARRATOR: But a search of a national DNA database
didn't reveal a match. Then, investigators got a tip from an informant who saw Gary Cochran with his friend, 18-year-old Steve
Cannon, on the night of Sharra's murder. Incredibly, Cannon told investigators an outright lie.
He said he didn't know Gary Cochran or anyone in the Ferger family. -I knew Steve Cannon when he was little.
His aunt and his mom, I was friends with his aunt and his mom. And we used to hang out.
All the kids used to go to the park together. NARRATOR: And according to Karen Ferger, Steve Cannon once dated
her oldest daughter, Crystal, and had been in their home on more than one occasion.
Informants also told investigators that Gary Cochran and Steve Cannon were doing drugs
together on the night of Sharra's murder. -That night, when they drove into town to go to the bar,
they stopped at a place over here on 41 to get drugs. NARRATOR: So investigators collected a saliva sample
from Steve Cannon and sent it for DNA testing. Eight weeks later, they got the answer they'd been waiting for.
-With the DNA, we had a very concise determination, finding, 1 in 2.9 billion, that those hairs on the body
belong to Cannon. And that was conclusive evidence. It was totally unrefuted by any other evidence whatsoever.
-It was like finding the silver bullet. It was a shock. It was a big relief. NARRATOR: Based on the forensic evidence and eyewitness
accounts, prosecutors believe that Gary Cochran and Steve Cannon were drinking in a local bar on the night of the murder,
and also bought crack-cocaine. Sometime after midnight, prosecutors believe that the two went to the Ferger home
and entered through the side door, which Cochran knew was broken. The noise woke Joseph, who ran to his babysitter's room,
leaving Sharra alone in the living room. The two men may have gone to Crystal Ferger's room first,
but it was locked. Then they saw Sharra in the living room. No one knows how they persuaded her to go outside.
Cochran and Cannon, high on drugs and alcohol, put Sharra in the car and drove to the field 300 yards away.
But Sharra fought back. She pulled Cannon's head hairs, which led to the DNA match.
And Gary Cochran's bite mark implicated him as well. -I don't think this case would probably ever have been solved
without the bite mark or the hairs. I don't know that we would have ever been directed,
particularly not to Steven Cannon, had we not had the DNA evidence. -Well, I believe the Sheriff's Department did a real good job.
I was very satisfied with their work, even though it took so long for them to come up with the criminals.
They were just doing their jobs and trying to arrest the right person. -Well, both individuals were ultimately
indicted by the grand jury on the charge of first-degree murder. NARRATOR: In September of 2005, Gary Cochran and Steve Cannon
were tried and convicted of first-degree murder. They were sentenced to life in prison without parole.
The forensic evidence exonerated two innocent men, and brought justice to the two who were responsible.
-This was a case that, without forensic evidence, possibly would have been unsolved.
It was a case where you had, the first time for me, of a forensic odontologist involving a bite mark.
-We would have never learned of Steve Cannon had there not been a match to Gary Cochran's bite mark.
-I guess there would be one thing that you could say about this case, looking at all the circumstances involved,
Dale Morris to Gary Cochran, to Steven Cannon, and that is that the system works.
[theme music]

When a young girl was found dead, police quickly arrested the most likely suspect. But cutting-edge technology from NASA enabled a forensic odontologist to prove the wrong man was behind bars.

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

The murder of Sharra Ferger led to the conviction of Gary Cochran and Steve Cannon through forensic evidence, exonerating two innocent men.

Key points

The Abduction of Sharra Ferger. Nine-year-old Sharra Ferger was abducted from her home, leading to a tragic investigation.
The Discovery of Sharra's Body. Sharra was found in a field, brutally murdered, shocking the community.
Forensic Breakthroughs. DNA evidence and bite marks led to the identification of the true perpetrators.
Justice Served. Gary Cochran and Steve Cannon were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

An innocent kid. She ain't never done nothing.

Reflecting on Sharra's tragic murder.

4:48WatchJan 27, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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