Forensic Files - Season 12, Episode 14 - Finger Pane - Full Episode | Forensic Files

a serial killer was loose and investigators had no leads until an alert investigator saw something
no one else had seen a possible fingerprint on the victim's skin the problem was how to collect it
[Music] [Music] texas city texas is one of the largest oil refinery sites in america
the oil business is labor-intensive which poses its own unique set of problems we have a large population of
contract workers that come in from out of state all over the country come in to work at the
refinery and it greatly impacts the community the police department from all facets traffic and crime and things like
that that became all too clear on may 16 2001 just after dawn in the marshland south of the city
municipal workers made a gruesome discovery they found the bodies of two young women
on the edge of a dirt road about 120 feet apart the first girl that we came upon
was nude except for her shoes was bound and bloody the second one was bloody nude
the victim's clothing was scattered near their bodies the contents of their purses had been
strewn above the scene forensic investigators estimated they had been dead for less than six hours
making the time of death sometime around midnight i've run across a lot of deceased scenes
and been involved in a lot of homicide since i haven't seen anything like it you
could just when you saw the first the first body the first victim lying there you could feel
the anger that was was carried out that day at least at least i could i could feel it it was uh
it was horrific we were dealing with somebody who's had absolutely zero regard for another human
being he was just mean and sorry it was my first thought the two women were identified as 31 year
old dana faisal and 32 year old kami kellemann background checks revealed both worked
as prostitutes i do believe that my sister was a manic depressant and she just couldn't get any help that
she needed so she took towards drugs she self-medicated herself and she got on the wrong drug and it just took her
dana faisal's story was similar she had a lifelong drug problem and she had been arrested many times by local
police they were both beautiful young ladies came from very good families had a lot going for him
it was a tragedy it was a tragedy that they went down that path why i don't think
anybody ever knows when we got there we realized the remoteness of that area in the sagebrush and the snakes and the
coyotes and the insects we couldn't get back in there to check to see if there was another girl
that had been killed so the coast guard conducted an aerial search fortunately there were no other victims
investigators looked at how the crimes were committed hoping to find clues to the killer's identity
in their view it was a disorganized crime scene indicating it might be his first murder maybe at the time he
got caught up in his actions in my opinion it was it was kind of a sloppy scene for somebody
to leave so much behind because there was so much that was gathered during the course investigation
near the bodies investigators found two white washcloths we thought of was there dna on it that
he put in her mouth did he put some other sort of substance on it that would help him achieve his goal of controlling
the girl investigators also found shattered glass on the ground and embedded in one of the victims legs
she apparently kicked out the glass to his vehicle and and shattered the window and there were some beer cans in
the area that looked new we picked up all those beer cans and certainly you'd always pick up those hoping you get
whatever you get off of them investigators collected all of this evidence not quite sure what if anything
would help them find the killer [Applause] [Music] two young women were murdered in the
marshlands of southeast texas and their families wanted answers i gotta say that no matter what they
were doing at the time of their death nobody deserves the way they died not at all
a criminal profiler gave police a chilling warning the person who committed these murders
would strike again he would in no uncertain terms told me that this this individual is going to
produce numerous bodies in this area if you don't stop them and stop them immediately
just before they were about to take the bodies to the city morgue an investigator thought he saw something
there was a blood smear on cami kelleman's left thigh which looked like it contained
a fingerprint every minute that you wait is it just goes down because we know they're out there in the
elements between that and the bodies are starting to sweat you have animals you have ants anything that will
start anything deteriorating if this was a fingerprint lifting it would be difficult
skin is porous and stretches easily two things that usually make it impossible to get a usable print
the odds of getting a bloody print on an actual body is very slim the area around the fingerprint was
treated with amido black a chemical that reacts with the proteins in blood the stain
makes a print visible as in this simulation of a print forming on skin the amido black enhanced the ridge
detail of the fingerprint created in blood anytime you have a lot of blood it will
just actually cover up your ridges so the the less blood there is the better print
would be when you do process it with a metal black so the very small places that had just a tiny
bit of blood that's where i got the print but there was a problem investigators couldn't see the print
clearly so they sent it to the fbi in washington dc fbi image analyst richard vorder brugie
scanned the image and examined it digitally on a computer he immediately saw the problem
the texture of the skin on the victim's leg obscured the fingerprint there are two different patterns we're
dealing with here you're dealing with the pattern of the fingerprint which is a very specific type of pattern and then
we've got this this texture of the skin that is distinct from the fingerprint with the aid of the computer vorder
brugi had to first identify the victim's skin pattern then have the computer remove as much of
that as possible it's a trial and error technique it's not unlike an archaeologist using a dental tool to to
scrape away fine pieces and leave the artifact intact as opposed to taking a bit a pick ax
and just swinging for the fences the computer helped identify the repeating patterns of the victim's skin
and i can show you how you can get rid of those wavelengths by just sending all of those bright spots to
zero and what was left was the print presumably of the killer all investigators needed now was a
suspect's print to compare it to meanwhile another print found at the scene a tire
impression had significant potential it was clearly from the side wall of a tire for those conditions to exist such
as the pressure of the tire hitting the side of the mud and the moisture and the
type of soil it was one in a million shot that that actually came out as perfect as it did
it was so perfect that technicians could actually read the brand of the tire we saw the entire commander logo on
there which is very very rare it was in perfect condition when we we saw it casts were made of the print
and when they were examined marks along the treads showed something unusual we concluded with the assistance of the
tire manufacturer that these were snow tires well if you've ever lived in this part of texas you know we don't
need snow tires investigators worked with the manufacturer to identify where these tires were sold
we were able to conclude that these tires were actually sold in a particular area of colorado my initial thoughts
that day were how in the world are we going to find this person it was an england haystack
the murders of two prostitutes had texas police believing they were dealing with
a potential serial killer well i think he's a monster i think we all realized the magnitude of what we had and that
this was going to happen again if we couldn't solve it we would have another one to solve
investigators spoke to other prostitutes in the area hoping one of them might help them they have a wealth of
information of what goes on out there i mean if you can get a good rapport with with one of the girls
you'd be surprised at the amount of information they know everything that goes on in the streets
and that's how they uncovered an important piece of information another local prostitute said she was
attacked three days before the murders she had been taken out to the same area and she had been treated in much
the same way as we suppose these other girls were treated other than the fact she was not killed
she said the man tried to tie her hands behind her back with medical tape and gag her with a white rag
fortunately she escaped by the grace of god she was able to to get loose or free herself enough
and she had the will to survive that night she had the will to survive she was able to walk that long lonely dark
desolate scary walk to the highway she described her assailant as hispanic in his early 30s with the tattoo of a
dagger on his right forearm and he was driving a white car she gave us a partial license plate of
of c41 and three out of six is pretty good to uh to to keep an eye out for and look
for incredibly she said she kept the washcloth he used to gag her it was made by the same manufacturer and
had the same thread count as the washcloth found at the murder scene she did everything right she's pretty
street savvy she has uh she's been around she's been in some situations i would expect she'd been in situations
where she depended on her wits and nothing else to save her authorities combed the area for a man
and a car that fit the woman's description a check of motor vehicle records indicated there were many white cars
with a c41 on the license plate we picked up several hispanic males driving a small
white car and they were brought in we took dna samples we took tire pictures of tires and
and we were investigating everything we could three days later detective paul edinburg was driving into
work and he passed a suspicious looking car headed out of town i just happened to look to my right
and there was a a small white four-door car this one caught my attention and saw the
first three on the license plate is c41 and i'm telling you my heart i think stopped beating
edinburgh pulled the car over the driver was 30 year old jose castillon an orderly at a local nursing
home i saw the forum with a tattoo of a dagger on there and i i was two or three seconds i was i was
speechless because what's going through my mind now is this is the guy that everybody's been talking about
interestingly castion's stepfather was a texas police officer castion's only previous brush with the
law was a misdemeanor conviction for which he served no time in jail when questioned castillon denied any
involvement in the murders employment and motor vehicle records showed castillon had recently moved to
texas from colorado and bought a set of commander brand snow tires when he was there
these were similar to the impressions found at the crime scene we saw a lot of uniformity between the
tire impressions of the defendant's vehicle to the actual cast that we had taken from the crime scene
as far as tread design tread size the logo itself investigators noticed the back window of castillon's car was
broken pieces of that window were compared to the glass found on the leg of one of the
murder victims the refractive index a measure of the speed of light as it passes through the glass was identical
in both samples finally investigators compared castion's fingerprints to the bloody print found
on one victim's leg it matched the middle finger on his right hand it was a huge moment it was the
definitive moment in we've got a very very good case and let's get it to trial we've got the
right man without a doubt two days after the murder of dana faisal and kami kelemann jose castillon was
arrested and charged with two counts of murder but prosecutors wanted to know why
police assumed alcohol was involved so they analyzed the beer cans found at the crime scene
through the code on the on the beer cans contact the manufacturer to find out where those beer cans would have been
what lot would they have been sold in where was that lot sold they tracked it down to the store and that store's
computerized sales system indicated a man bought the beer on the same night as the murders they examined their receipts
and found that this particular batch of beer was sold at this particular time and sure enough he'd written a check
for beer the check was written for 19.68 cents by jose castellon and what about the white washcloths
casteon worked at a nursing home that used hundreds of white washcloths every day
they took us back into their laundry area and we dug through and found washcloths from the same manufacturer
same description same thread count same so we knew we had a link prosecutors believe castillon probably
picked up both victims at the same time he was drinking and carelessly discarded the beer cans
the bar code proved that castillon bought them apparently castillon bound the women with tape and
gagged them with washcloths he stole from work one of the girls kicked the rear windshield and broke it
a shard of glass stuck to her leg after the murders when he dragged the women into the grass
he left the bloody fingerprint on kami kelemann's thigh when he drove away he left his tire impressions in the soft
mud i can't even begin to imagine and i really don't want to imagine they probably went out and decided that
they were going to go get high and party a little bit and she just got in the wrong car
i think they were friends and at one point they were picked up together and one saw the horror of the other one
dying evidence technicians working fast and in difficult conditions performed a minor
miracle by retrieving a print from the victim's skin later computer technology enhanced the
print and proved jose castillon was the killer the tire impression 2 was an almost perfect specimen
i think that if you tried a thousand times to duplicate that tire impression you could never do it the circumstances
had to be exact that he had been pretty sloppy considering he did leave so much evidence behind
maybe he just wanted to be caught because a lot of these cases they don't have that much evidence
and there was just gobs of evidence facing a certain death sentence castion agreed to plead guilty to
capital murder and kidnapping and was sentenced to life in prison without parole
it was overwhelming how many people do you think walk in and want to play the two consecutive
live sentences if they thought they had a chance no one perhaps not even jose castillon
himself knows what caused his rage toward women [Music] i can only rely upon what the
psychiatrist told us when we met with him it began as control dominance hatred towards women
and he said it manifested itself initially as just minor acts of violence but gradually would become more brutal and
now that he'd taken the step that he had that it was it was just going to be a downhill spiral from there
the nature of the crime indicates he was a serial killer in the making but the decision to process the crime
scene quickly and the technology that helped identify the print provided all the evidence needed to keep
him from claiming even more victims i think the fingerprint with the new science and with people willing to
experiment to get the science where it's accepted in court was was phenomenal that's one of the great
things about this technology is that it in this case it made a piece of evidence
that was effectively useless a critical component in the prosecution of this case
if you got a you know a fingerprint is accepted in every court in the land as being conclusive
and if you've got a the body of a female out here and has an individual's fingerprint
on her body in blood and what else can that tell you except he was there he has handled that body sometime
after there was blood on you

A serial killer was on the loose and police had to find him before he struck again. Their most promising lead was an unusual one: a bloody fingerprint on the body of one of the victims.

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 Texas serial killer is caught through fingerprint and tire evidence after two prostitutes are murdered.

Key points

Gruesome Discovery. Municipal workers find the bodies of two young women in Texas marshlands.
Chilling Warning. A criminal profiler warns police that the murderer will strike again.
Key Evidence Found. An investigator discovers a possible fingerprint on one of the victims.
Arrest of Suspect. Jose Castillon is arrested after being identified as a suspect in the murders.
Fingerprint Match. Investigators confirm a bloody fingerprint found at the scene matches Castillon's.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It was horrific.

Describing the emotional impact of the crime scene.

2:35WatchJan 27, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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