Forensic Files - Season 12, Episode 19 - All Butt Certain - Full Episode | Forensic Files

a child witnesses a brutal murder i had to point out my uncle they had a little six-year-old girl who was saying it was
our uncle clarence case closed years later the girl recanted but the courts wouldn't let him go even dna
wasn't enough do they want me to hand them the killer on a silver platter okay that's what we'll do
[Music] [Music] june 7 1998 was a very hot night in barberton ohio [Music] hoping for a breeze 58 year old judy
johnson left her front door ajar sometime after midnight her granddaughter brooke heard a
commotion coming from the kitchen when she went to look she saw a man beating her grandmother i was scared so
i ran back to my grandma's room and covered up my head with a blanket but the intruder followed her into the
bedroom knocked her unconscious sexually assaulted her and left her for dead miraculously
brooke regained consciousness several hours later but found her grandmother dead
[Music] brooke then ran to a neighbor's house for help incredibly the neighbor made her wait outside
part of my left ear was missing and my whole left cheek was swollen but she told me that her kids had to finish
eating and she needed to get him dressed and everything so she left me sitting out on her porch for like 45 minutes
eventually the neighbor drove brooke home later that day at the hospital brooke gave police a
description of her attacker he looked like my uncle he had dark hair he was about the same height
and i just that's the only person i could think that he looked like her uncle clarence elkins was the
victim's son-in-law he lived about an hour's drive away and had no criminal record and no history of
violence his wife melinda couldn't believe that clarence would kill her mother i remember my reaction distinctly when
he told me that my mom had been murdered i mean i i actually doubled over in pain
you know like in a fetal position almost clarence denied any involvement but was quickly taken into custody
and i said to them yes i am his wife and yes i know that some women do stand up for their man and lie for them
but you're missing the biggest point here that was my mother and i want the person who did this to
pay and i'm telling you right now it was not clarence but police discovered that clarence
might have had a motive to hurt judy johnson their theory is that clarence is developed a hatred for his mother-in-law
because the mother-in-law was allegedly interfering in his marriage with melinda
there was a woman who said she was judy's best friend saying she was present when clarence elkins
called judy about a week before the murder and threatened to kill her that's pretty damning stuff
police found no physical evidence linking clarence elkins to the murder but the eyewitness testimony placed him
at the scene they asked me if i would point who hurt me and my grandma out and i remember i had just been around in
this little spinny seat i had to point out my uncle for her to point at clarence and say
that's who did this to me that was it that's all i needed on june 4th 1999 clarence elkins was convicted of first
degree murder and sexual assault he was sentenced to 55 years in prison i broke down i collapsed i
screamed i turned around to my sister and i said you know he didn't do this and i
collapsed and it was just it was just so chaotic they had a little six-year-old girl who was saying it was her uncle
clarence case closed but brooke later said she wasn't sure what or who she saw based on the eyewitness testimony of a
six-year-old girl clarence elkins was convicted of killing his mother-in-law and for the sexual
assault and attempted murder of his niece the police that very morning searched clarence's car for blood for hair fibers
for different things not a trace the car was fine searched his house even to the
point of searching the drains of a shower for blood and particles and things of that nature came up completely clean
clarence's wife melinda was sure that her niece brooke was mistaken when she identified clarence as the man who
attacked her after all she was only a child at the time and the house was dark shocked i mean to think that you can
convict someone on id testimony let alone a six-year-old child with no physical evidence to back it up how can this
happen sure enough four years after the murder brook sutton now 10 years old recanted
her testimony do you think today that uncle clarence was the same man you saw in the kitchen that night with your
grandma no i just had always had doubts i knew i was wrong because i put him in there
and i wasn't positively sure melinda petitioned the court for a new trial and was denied
so melinda took matters into her own hands and decided to conduct her own investigation
creating a list of all known criminal offenders living near her mother's home i had started a suspect list shortly
after my mom's murder i mean i was trying to to comprehend who would do this to my mom
who had access to her who did she know and she also sought help from an expert on wrongful convictions martin yant
together they poured over the case file and discovered some important pieces of information
first the witness who testified clarence elkins threatened judy johnson's life during a telephone call
also claimed judy called 9-1-1 to report the threat to police but there was no evidence judy johnson
ever called 9-1-1 the 9-1-1 call should have been logged it was obvious no such phone call had
been made and they also discovered that the coroner took vaginal swabs from judy
johnson during the autopsy on those swabs lab tests found a substance called acid
phosphatase an enzyme found in the male prostate gland but those swabs were never tested for
dna to be fair technology in forensic science is constantly improving six years after the murder melinda
elkins received permission from the court to test the swab taken from her mother's autopsy
the forensic lab was able to identify a dna profile from that swab as melinda always claimed
the dna did not belong to clarence elkins we knew at that point that clarence elkins was innocent we didn't know the
name of the true perpetrator but we knew his dna profile so for the second time melinda elkins petitioned the court for
a new trial prosecutors argued that the dna results were unreliable since the swab might
have been contaminated and the judge agreed refusing to grant clarence a new trial
and i was livid how dare they and if do they want me to hand them the the killer on a silver
platter okay that's what we'll do so now melinda decided to take the next step she would conduct her own forensic
investigation to learn how to go about it she discovered the world of forensic television
i think initially what attracted me to forensic files was when i first turned it on there was this
big loud voice of murder in blah blah blah town and forensic files investigates and i
thought wow you know i'm gonna watch this i was learning how to gather dna how to
preserve it you know there was a lot of different episodes that i watched that kind of put everything together
melinda decided to take her list of the convicted criminals living in her mother's neighborhood and
surreptitiously collect their dna samples for testing she begins teaching herself how to do
investigations she watches shows like forensic files takes notes and starts putting that into practice in
terms of investigating suspects collecting dna all the things that a private investigator would do
melinda followed these men to local bars and restaurants to collect their dna from anything they might have left
behind i would have to flirt with these people i would get their either a cigarette butt or i've i've
gotten their beer bottle i've gotten their drinking glass using her own money and contributions
solicited from her website freeclarence.com melinda hired a private lab to test these items for dna
unfortunately none of the samples matched the dna found on her mother in the meantime
clarence elkins languished in jail she knew in her heart that her husband did not
commit this crime and she was absolutely committed to getting justice not just for clarence
but for her mother for years clarence elkins sat in prison for a crime he claimed he didn't do
while his wife melinda worked continuously to free him so she endured tremendous skepticism and insults
along the way people feel that melinda somehow some big publicity halt the prosecutors wanted to portray me as just
some demo hick from the country who was you know trying to get this publicity and have my name out there and my face
shown on tv as being my 15 minutes of fame then one day melinda picked up the morning newspaper
and read an article about earl mann who had been convicted for sexually assaulting his three daughters
i first wanted to look at earl man's picture i went online under the ohio offender search
and i pulled up his picture and it was uncanny how clarence and him looked so similar
but that wasn't all now melinda understood why her niece brooke sutton was forced to sit outside the
neighbor's house for nearly an hour after the attack because the home belonged to earl mann
and his common-law wife it was like a light bulb that went off in my head and i'm thinking wow
is this too unreal or not what would be a normal person's reaction to a child showing up
at your door saying your grandmother's been killed and and you're bloody in a mess what would your reaction be it
wasn't what her reaction was definitely we ended up getting the rap sheet of real man was just pages and pages long
and most of the things started off with the work aggravated beforehand you know a lot of violent type of fences
melinda now had a pretty good idea who committed this crime but she needed to find some way
to prove it using tricks she learned from forensic files melinda first tried to get his saliva
i started writing earl mann some letters i gave him a brief description of what i
look like which is totally different than what i normally what i really look like
and just that i was kind of a lonely person and i was searching the web for pen pals but
you know was kind of sickening to me and what her objective there was to see if she could get
saliva uh the envelope flap if he were to write back to her what an amazing effort to try to get someone's dna i
wanted him to feel like well i could really get some money off of this check you know
and i never received a letter then melinda discovered that mann was not only in the same prison as her
husband clarence but their cells were fairly close come to find out that earl mann is
actually in the same pod as clarence as the same housing pod which probably consisted of 30-35 people
so melinda decided to involve clarence in the investigation using another technique she learned from television
how to collect someone's dna sample without them knowing they were getting discarded trash discarded
cigarette butts um paper cups out of the trash after they'd been thrown away so i knew at that point um that it no
longer belongs to you if you discard it melinda told clarence to follow earl mann with a clean tissue and baggy on
hand at all times i really didn't tell clarence a lot about the dna extractions that i was
getting but um a cigarette butt would have been sufficient if he smoked and he certainly did smoke
clarence did as instructed and one day he watched as earl mann left a cigarette butt in a clean ashtray
he picked it up with the tissue put it in the baggie sealed it and then put it in his bible
to flatten it and to conceal it until he could get it out of the prison which i have never
heard anybody ever getting dna from inside the prison and sending it out to have it
tested never heard of that melinda sent man cigarette butt for forensic testing at her own expense
and just as she expected earl mann's dna matched the bodily fluid on the swab from her mother's autopsy
oh my god my hands went up in the air and i'm like ah and in the very next instant it was
my god that is a person who murdered my mom i now know for sure which was difficult
but amazingly the court denied her motion for a new trial yet again so to free her husband
melinda had to do one last thing after six long years of trying to prove clarence elkin's innocence his wife
melinda and her representatives decided to bypass the local judicial process and
go to the top the attorney general for the state of ohio a prosecutor has a first obligation to
do justice and the more i looked at this case the more i felt that there had been an
injustice attorney general petron knew that the state had ways to either prove or
disprove this notion that earl mann's dna was somehow falsified and he didn't hesitate to use it
we had earl mann's dna in our database because we take dna from every convicted felon
and so we had his dna we did confirm that it did match directly with the dna taken from the crime scene
in december of 2005 more than six years after he was wrongfully convicted clarence elkins was a free man
it's just a time of joy and happy tears sadly even though melinda was responsible for clarence's freedom
their marriage did not survive the ordeal they divorced shortly after he was released
i wish him the best and i think this with us not being together is his chance for a new life
and it's just simply part of the devastated state that has been put on us that was
our marriage it's gone to no fault but to the state i blame he never blamed me clarence never blamed me and
i really would have blamed myself if i were him because i'd be angry if someone put me
in prison for something that i didn't do prosecutors believe earl mann's target the night of the murder was brooke
sutton but her grandmother woke up fought to protect her and paid with her life brook saw a man briefly before running
away he then assaulted her and left her for dead the next morning when brooke regained consciousness she
ran to a neighbor's house for help ironically she ended up on the doorstep of the man
who tried to kill her just a few hours earlier the dna evidence against earl man is is
overwhelming it's compelling it's um it's it's as absolute as you can possibly get in a criminal
case as far as i've ever seen in august of 2008 earl mann pled guilty to the rape and
murder of judy johnson and will spend an additional 55 years in prison melinda now spends her time
working for the ohio innocence project still fighting for people who have been wrongfully convicted
we survived this and now my sons are attending police academy because they want to make a difference in the world
they want this to never happen to someone again had melinda not had the faith and the
the drive to see this through to to create the stir to create the momentum uh clarence elkins would would still be
in prison and i think that um with the show and forensic files and and all the experts that you have that
come on the show and give details of how this works is another phenomenal thing that people
need to pay attention to because this could happen to anybody without melinda's efforts
let's face it clarence elkins would still be in prison you

A six-year-old girl ran and hid when she saw her grandmother being beaten to death, but the man followed, beat and assaulted her. She said the assailant was her uncle, who was convicted. She recanted her testimony years later.

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

Clarence Elkins was wrongfully convicted; his wife Melinda fought to prove his innocence and identified the real killer, Earl Mann.

Key points

A Child's Witness. A six-year-old girl identifies her uncle as the attacker in a brutal murder case.
The Fight for Justice. Melinda Elkins fights tirelessly to prove her husband's innocence after he is wrongfully convicted.
DNA Evidence Unveiled. Melinda discovers DNA evidence that exonerates her husband and points to the real killer.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I want the person who did this to pay.

Melinda's determination for justice after her mother's murder.

3:44WatchJan 28, 2022

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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