Forensic Files - Season 12, Episode 17 - Dog Day Afternoon - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[Music] a family dog witnessed a brutal murder whoever entered knew the victim knew the
dogs an animal expert finally got the dog to talk just not in the usual way [Music]
[Music] um there are two sides to palm beach county florida it's home to some of the wealthiest
people in the world but a few miles away lived people struggling just to pay their rent
we have great neighborhoods and really bad neighborhoods a lot of crime for the for the size of the community we
are we have a with an extensive amount of violent crime a lot of murders kathy and jeffrey lamb
didn't live in one of the palm beach mansions jeff was a tow truck driver kathy worked
for the walgreens drugstore chain i liked jeff he was a good kid he was good to kathy and the main thing was she
loved him and therefore i loved him on june 15 2004 jeff got home from work around 7pm
but when he walked inside he found blood everywhere what's the problem there he was hysterical on the phone uh he was
crying so much i think that 911 dispatcher kept referring to him as a woman okay ma'am i need you to take some deep
breaths take some deep breaths okay breathe in and breathe out okay now are you having an asthma attack
no my wife my wife is on the the blood spatter was completely up the one wall where the side of her head was
and then on the opposite wall behind her head which was a good five or six feet blood spatter was all over a desk and it
flew underneath the desk to the wall through a chair it was a lot of blood and it was it was
very gruesome when the ambulance crew arrived they pronounced kathy lamb dead at the scene
she had been beaten to death this wasn't an injury that was caused by one blow or two blows there were
multiple blows to the head this was something heavy that that made these that could create these injuries
and between the first blow and what eventually killed her she had to have been suffering
she was in pain and she had to have been thinking why the murder weapon wasn't found at the
scene although it looked like it was a blunt object with a hexagon shape at the end
two of the couple's three dogs were badly beaten too they were found unconscious nearby
they were both euthanized because of the head injuries the severe head injuries the dogs had blood on their paws and
mouths an indication they probably attacked the killer as he was striking kathy the pac
thing would have kicked in and the two of them would have packed up on this one individual so you would have had in my
opinion you would have had probably quite a bit of damage and the killer would be bleeding
profusely from those wounds it was decided that we would go ahead and clip their nails and swab their
mouths because again if this was a home invasion type situation there's a good chance that
these dogs had scratched or bit the intruder the couple's third dog was found in a
closed bedroom apparently unharmed it was a mystery why anybody would choose to go into this residence with
the three dogs especially being large dogs whenever i talked to detective kim bradley
she told me we will get justice for kathy we are going to find the person that did
this with no clear suspects at least none that we're being told about the sheriff's department is turning to the
neighborhood for help passing out these flyers with kathy lamb's picture on them
and asking anyone who may have had any information about what happened here to give them a call
kathy lamb's murder scene was stranger than any investigators had ever encountered
at first they assumed the motive was robbery kathy's husband jeff said the only thing missing was a pair of kathy's
gold diamond earrings the master bedroom all the drawers are pulled out nothing has been disturbed though the
clothes sit in there still folded up and there's no there's lots of jewelry and items on top of the dresser the medical
examiner estimated that kathy was murdered between 4 30 and 5 in the afternoon since jeff lamb found his wife's body he
was naturally considered a suspect jeff lamb had a very good alibi he's at his employment and there's several
people there that can vouch for his whereabouts at the time soon other suspects emerged
while police processed the crime scene a woman named joey steidel arrived and introduced herself as
jeff lamb's fiancee it's curious that the husband the grieving husband is now being
consoled outside of the crime scene by his fiancee i think human nature would tell you when
a guy is telling you he has a good relationship with his wife and a girlfriend or a fiancee shows up at the
crime scene it's gonna start making you think something's going on here while jeff admitted he had an affair
with joyce tydell he claimed their relationship was over jeffrey's story was that he had
reconciled with his wife and that they were going to be permanently living together again
and it was contradictory that joey stedel would come into it and say oh no we're moving over to this house in
jupiter joyce steidel was now a suspect too but she had an alibi for the time of the
murder she worked as a waitress at a nearby restaurant and dozens of customers saw her
next jeff's cell phone records identified yet another suspect on the afternoon of the murder jeff lamb
spoke with another female friend on the telephone the first phone call that was made after
we believe the murder took place was made to lisa adzabel who turned out to be joey stedel's neighbor
lisa adzerbelle was a married mother of two children when questioned by police lisa admitted
she too had a relationship with jeff lamb in fact lisa's husband had caught them together
in a compromising situation just a few weeks before kathy lamb's murder so i kicked my front door in and he was
on my couch you know shirt on and he had shorts on her pants on or something no shirt inside shoes and grabbed it well i
got mad at him and chased him out the backside glass door ray then said he called jeff on the phone
and then i left him a message on the cell phone that if he came around my house or family again that you know i
was mad you know said i would kill him you know i'll do anything protect my family and i don't want him around
when we first learned that raymond had been so angry with jeff he was somebody that we were interested in
we certainly had to investigate both ray and lisa adzerbel had an alibi for the day of kathy's murder and were
eliminated as suspects but police were still troubled by lisa's telephone calls to jeff on the afternoon
of the murder lisa said they were purely social phone records proved that lisa made these calls from home
but jeff's cell phone records indicated jeff wasn't at work as he claimed we get the phone records which showed he
is down by that house the phone towers are hitting off of phone towers closer to the house than
they are where he claims to be and investigators found another contradiction jeff said his dog bandit was in a locked
bedroom when he found his wife's body but investigators found bloody paw prints in the bedroom
and the blood was kathy's this meant the killer put the dog in the bedroom after kathy's murder
but why an unknown assailant not only attacked kathy lamb but also her two dogs nipper and dakota
presumably with the same weapon kathy's friends and even mr lamb himself said that those dogs that were in that
house would have torn apart a stranger but investigators couldn't understand why the dogs weren't all together
why were her two smaller dogs beat so severely and yet the biggest dog of the group was
never struck and the dog was also locked in a bedroom the third dog was a hybrid a wolf mix
that was owned by the husband investigators thought the blood on the dog's mouths and paws had come from
kathy's attacker but forensic testing disproved that the swaps and clippings that had been
taken from the dogs came back negative for any human dna the couple's third dog bandit was
initially believed to be unharmed but the humane society discovered he suffered injuries too but
not from the killer we discovered that bandit actually had several puncture marks
which had indicated that he had been in a fight and probably had been in a fight with the other two
dogs so the dogs attacked one another but not the killer even while the killer was beating them
and they stood there and they took their beatings and then they went and they hid
to animal behavioralists the reason was clear and then a stranger wouldn't wouldn't
have been able to beat those dogs brutally the way they were beaten without them fighting back somebody
obviously knew the dogs so it had to be somebody that you know they weren't going to
fight back it seemed pretty clear from the evidence that only one person could have done
this crime but prosecutors had a problem the surviving dog banned it obviously couldn't tell police what happened
so investigators had to dig deeper and started by looking into jeff lamb's finances
a few years earlier jeff's former employer accused him of stealing almost thirty thousand dollars
he returned the money and agreed to pay an additional 20 000 fine he wasn't a dumb man
but you didn't think he was like real bright and was going to set the world on fire
his current job as a tow truck driver didn't pay particularly well and these payments were a hardship
twenty thousand dollars in a lot of money to most people but to some people it's it's like a million dollars
police also discovered that jeff was the beneficiary of kathy's 29 thousand dollar life insurance policy
he was making restitution for prior criminal activity um i think he had was tired of making those payments
uh it was a very small life insurance policy but i think to him it was the answer to
what he needed and it didn't matter how he got it in a search for forensic evidence
investigators had the presence of mind to confiscate the clothing jeff was wearing the day of the murder
the clothes that we took from him at the scene was a t-shirt with the tasmanian devil on the front making
an l shape like this and underneath the caption loser he was wearing a pair of dark blue jeans
and black boots a forensic analysis found no blood on the shirt and boots but blood spatter expert
stuart james examined the genes section by section under a stereo microscope well the dark color of the gene
certainly made it more difficult to see blood but at 60 times magnification james could see things invisible to the
naked eye deep within the fabric on the gene's left leg near the inside of the thigh
james saw tiny specks of what appeared to be blood the suspected blood stains were actually down within the weave and
between the weave of the fabric which indicated to me that these stains were not the result of
transfer which would have just been on the top of the weave but rather down driven into the weave much more
consistent with impact spatter the blood spatter was the same size and shape as one would expect to find after
inflicting a beating with a blunt object dna testing of this blood revealed it was kathy lamb's blood
we have impact spatters at the scene on the wall and we also have impact spatters
on the left interior thigh area of the dark jeans of jeffrey lamb this was definitive proof
jeffrey lamb struck the fatal blows the splatters were so deeply embedded in the fabric
that it couldn't have just been an incidental contact that it had to be with force and
you know thank god he didn't change his pants and blood spatter expert stuart james
found one more thing he just happened to reach into one of the pockets just checking to see if
there was anything in there and he found an earring a little diamond earring that
belonged to kathy and jeff lammett told the police that those earrings were missing
investigators now had everything they needed except the murder weapon two months after kathy lamb's murder a
workman found a tire iron on the roof of his building he'd been on the roof because he'd been
leaking over at the tow company and he'd found a tire tool that was used on one of their big big
tow trucks it was the office building of the tow yard where jeff flam worked the tire iron had hexagonal heads for
loosening and tightening nuts it was tested for dna we tried everything to test the tire
iron but the problem is it's south florida and it rains all the time the tire arm was on the roof for two and a
half months the sun would have evaporated any dna as well as the water washing it off
but since it was so distinctive as were the wounds on kathy's body the tire iron was still a valuable piece
of evidence the hexagonal head was placed over photographs of kathy's wounds and you look at the injuries on kathy's
face like there's no way in the world anything other than this did it and it was so unusual i've never seen anything
like it in your life jeffrey lamb was arrested and charged with first degree murder
prosecutors believe jeff wanted out of his marriage he often told friends that kathy was a
poor housekeeper but apparently jeff was no better you know he called her dirty and yet his
truck was filthy i mean he had more garbage in his truck than you would throw out in the street i don't know if
you call him a hypocrite or something but he didn't live a better lifestyle than his wife
the couple separated for a few years but even after they reconciled jeff continued to have affairs
kathy tolerated his infidelity but she didn't like it i felt very sorry for kathy i felt very
bad because i knew that she loved him very much and i thought that she would be very
hurt over that jeff was paying off a twenty thousand dollar fine for embezzlement
and a divorce would have left him with even less money to make those payments jeff had a friend he had told him that
i'm i'm not going to lose my stuff and i'm not going to give up her life insurance policy i'll kill her before
she divorces me prosecutors believe jeff planned to use kathy's life insurance proceeds to start a new life
with his fiancee on the afternoon of the murder jeff was at work his fiancee's car was at the tow yard
for repairs according to co-workers jeff said he was taking the car to get gasoline and left
sometime between 4 30 and 5 o'clock the evidence suggests he went home waited for kathy to return from work
and when she did beat her to death with the tire iron in the process he got blood spatter on his jeans
the dogs didn't attack him but in their agitation they attacked each other to separate them he hit kathy's dogs and
took his dog bandit into the bedroom and closed the door [Music] he took kathy's diamond earrings to make
it look like a robbery one of those earrings was later found in his pocket jeff changed his shirt and shoes
but not his jeans he probably didn't see the blood on them jeff's friend lisa called him on his
cell phone just after 5 pm the call bounced off a cell tower near jeff's home proving
he wasn't at work as he claimed there's no evidence lisa knew anything about the murder
when he returned to the tow yard he threw the murder weapon up onto the roof thinking
no one would ever find it [Music] his co-worker did however two months later while repairing a leaking roof
the blood spatter was supported by these cell phone records and it was further supported by
the actions of the dogs it was planned he took my daughter from us her family and her friends
for 29 000 in september of 2006 jeffrey lamb was convicted of first degree murder
he was sentenced to life in prison without parole we were confident going to trial
because the case wasn't just based on science it was based on common sense i don't believe he gets up one morning of
one day and says how could i have done that to that human being beside the fact that she was my wife
besides the fact that i've known her since she was a teenager his first mistake was not to change his
clothes after he'd killed his wife the second mistake would be throwing a tool up on a roof where it
doesn't belong and somebody may discover it his clothing was the key to the case
if if the detectives had not asked him to remove his clothing we could never have convicted on the crime he would he
definitely would be walking free today you

A woman was brutally murdered in her home, and the only witnesses to the crime were the family dogs. An expert in canine behavior was convinced the killer knew both the victim and the animals, and he was determined find out what the dogs had seen.

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

Kathy Lamb was murdered by her husband Jeff, who was later convicted based on forensic evidence and financial motives.

Key points

A Family Dog Witnessed a Murder. A family dog was a key witness to a brutal murder, revealing shocking details.
The Gruesome Discovery. Jeff Lamb found his wife Kathy's body in a horrific scene of blood and violence.
The Murder Weapon. A tire iron found on a roof became a crucial piece of evidence in the case.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This was something heavy that made these injuries.

Description of the brutal murder weapon.

2:57WatchJan 28, 2022

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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