Forensic Files - Season 12, Episode 20 - Jean Pool - Full Episode | Forensic Files

up next a college co-ed is left for dead in a lover's lane the blood is consistent
with her being struck up to ten times there were plenty of suspects but very few answers
the samples could have originated from 20 percent of the population was it a random murder or jealousy if he couldn't
have her nobody else could for decades the case went unsolved until now he is a cold-blooded killer they wanted
to solve this at the end of a long day in may of 1984 a farmer in tennessee made a startling
discovery he noticed some clothing lying in the field there was actually a body lying
there the victim was a young girl wearing only a bra her body was covered with two pairs of
jeans and a dark jacket one pair of jeans was hers the other was a pair of men's jeans
also there was a black jacket across her body with the sleeve tied around her neck
and a pair of panties that she was clutching in her right hand she was identified
as eighteen-year-old laura salman a local college student her life was stolen her life was stolen
and in such a horrible way the autopsy revealed laura salman died of blunt force trauma to the head
the murder weapon appeared to be the rocks found near her body the blood on those rocks and other material was
consistent with her being struck up to 10 times in the head with those rocks the medical examiner found evidence that
laura had consensual sex sometime before the murder most likely unrelated to the
crime we knew that miss salmon had been involved in an intimate relationship with someone
within uh the 24 or 48 hours prior to her death there were no injuries that would be
consistent with the forcible rape on the men's genes found with laura's body scientists found semen from a
different individual presumably the killer earlier that day laura worked at her cashiers job at the
kroger grocery store records show she left the store around 1pm she was supposed to be at an appointment
at middle tennessee state university but she never arrived she was supposed to go to mtsu campus to
check on her grades and meet some of the office personnel over there after that she was supposed
to go to her grandmother's house to go swimming investigators found laura's car near the
store miles away from the murder site investigators found no fingerprints in the car but they did find
a foreign hair they also found dirt in the wheel wells the fbi lab determined that they were
consistent and that the high probability that that vehicle had been on that road by the crime scene
dan goodwin was laura's friend and had been out with her a few nights before the murder
i just asked her if she'd like to see a movie and we wound up going to the movies on sunday may 27th of 1984 when
saw matinee show of the natural with robert redford at the funeral dan goodwin promised laura's mother
that he'd helped find the killer and she just grabbed me and hugged me and said please help me find who killed
my baby what they really needed was to find the owner of the men's genes [Music]
laura salman's body was found in an area which often served as a lover's lane for
high school and college students people went back there to party have bonfires make out that sort of thing
back there witnesses placed laura at a local nightclub on the night before her murder
where she was dancing with an unidentified young man but investigators couldn't locate him
the first suspect police interviewed was laura's high school boyfriend kyle gilly
he had a reputation as the jealous type but claimed he had an alibi kyle gilley's alibi had been that his
stepfather was a witness to the fact that he was home the day of the murder next a woman in nashville tennessee 40
miles away called police with a possible lead she claimed she'd been date raped by a man named
john taylor and during the ordeal taylor mentioned laura's murder the alleged victim said that her
attacker had threatened her by saying he would do the same thing to her as he had to laura or
words to that effect when questioned by police taylor denied the sexual assault and denied mentioning laura salman's
name however a background check revealed taylor attended the same university laura did
he was a member of the same health club he attended the same fraternity gathering functions as laura
and taylor was near the university on the day of laura's murder taylor had somewhat of a history with being
violent towards his girlfriends or female companions that too added to his possibility as a
suspect fbi analysts compared taylor's hair to a foreign hair they found inside laura's
car we received a report back from the fbi that the hair recovered from her vehicle was
consistent with john taylor at the time mitochondrial dna testing of human hair was still years away
so it was impossible to know for certain if this was taylor's hair we could never get that one key piece of
evidence that could place him with laura salmon on the day of the murder and the men's jeans found at the murder
scene had a waist size of 30 inches and a 36 inch inseam too big for taylor while it was possible taylor could have
worn them as far as the waist size goes at the time he was a much too short of a person to
have worn those on a daily basis ultimately investigators concluded a single hair
was not enough to charge him with murder through all of that evidence it pointed to him there was still no
smoking gun and nothing to actually tie them together and there were other suspects too in all
police investigated over 100 other suspects with no success sure it's very frustrating because
you hate to see a horrendous crime like this go unpunished unsolved i made a promise
to her at her grave that i would see that justice was done i didn't really know how i would carry
out that promise but that's the last thing i could do for her but laureen mackey's promise went
unfulfilled and 16 long years passed in the meantime dan goodwin began a career that would
eventually lead to law enforcement after graduation i became a newspaper reporter first at the
shelbyville paper and then i moved quickly to the daily news journal in murfreesboro where i became the police
reporter in short order i wrote a series on unsolved murders in 1987 that included laura's case but all along i
knew that i was more interested in police work several years later dan left journalism and became a police
officer the first cold case he was assigned was laura salmon's murder i didn't become a law enforcement
officer to work on this case but it was always on my mind so i was quite happy that i got to assist bill sharp in this
case one of the first things dan goodwin and bill sharp did was to send all of the evidence to the
forensic lab for testing obviously through the advancement in science through dna
and testing that maybe we could find the donor of the biological material and match that
with our killer while dna testing was underway sharpened goodwin pursued a new lead
which supposedly came from a local high school student now almost 16 years after laura's murder
in 2000 a student at oakland high school was overheard talking about the laura simon case saying that his father
had killed a girl and thrown her body in the quarry the student's father david patterson had
a police record for aggravated assault but by the time the rumor circulated patterson was dead when he himself was
shot to death we decided of course that we had to investigate that lead they asked
patterson's children to voluntarily submit dna samples for testing testing on david patterson's dna or that of his
family which produced a presumptive profile showed no possibility of him being any
of the male dna profiles that was present at the scene of her murder investigators also contacted john taylor
who'd been an earlier suspect in laura's murder his dna also did not match and dan goodwin himself provided a dna
sample he'd gone out with laura just a few days before the murder goodwin maintained it was a casual date
and said the two weren't intimate since i took her out to the movies just four days before and knew her
they decided it would be advisable to test my dna and it was tested and i was not present at the crime scene
but at least investigators had the killer's dna and were closer to finding him a lot closer than they knew
bill sharp and dan goodwin poured over the original case file of laura salmon's murder and found one name
that caught their eye kyle gilly gilly was laura's high school boyfriend a year younger than her gilly was
originally a suspect but was eliminated since he had an alibi one corroborated by a family member
but they found a curious note in the case file there had been a witness who contradicted gilly's alibi
she identified kyle gilly driving laura simon's car approximately a half mile from the road
that led to the quarry which led to where laura's body was recovered she was able to identify kyle through a photo
lineup as well as laura's car through a photo lineup this lady saw him looked at
him closely she drove by him and said he was just staring straight ahead is just a blank expression on his face
and they also discovered that gilly had a propensity for physical violence with girlfriends particularly
laura salmon he would get mad at her grab her by the head and start banging her head into
cars school lockers whatever was at hand he would punch her on one occasion he broke out both of her front teeth we
knew through the investigation that he and laura had a rocky relationship a stormy relationship as you will
another incriminating piece of circumstantial evidence was the pair of men's genes found at the crime scene
kyle was approximately six feet two inches tall and the jeans would have fit him
the tbi lab did examine the rustler blue jeans in 1984 and they were able to determine there
was some blood on there however as to the type of stains that were present and to the possible cause they did not make
any determination at that time under a magnifying glass crime scene reconstructionist jerry
findlay found tiny drops of blood embedded in the fabric about one thirty second of an inch in
diameter it was medium velocity impact spatter the kind usually produced when someone
is hit with a blunt object medium velocity is an instrument being wielded by a human
for example a baseball bat or a rock or something like that it's not going to generate that much force
the blood stains were clustered above the knee indicating the assailant was kneeling
as he attacked he didn't get any impact stains below the knee but he had plenty above the knee between the knee and the
waist so basically what we found was that the whoever was wearing those jeans was
in close proximity to the point of impact at the time of impact and dna testing confirmed
the blood on the jeans was loras police tracked gilly down in florida where he was twice divorced and working
for the manatee county public works department he also had a police record with arrests for aggravated sexual
battery attempted burglary and resisting arrest when questioned by police in florida
gilly once again denied any involvement in laura's murder during that interview kyle admitted that the genes were
probably his when we asked him about blood spatter and the fact that we had an expert that
could testify that the killer wore these genes kyle gilly requested an attorney and the interview
interrogation stopped with the court order investigators obtained gilly's saliva sample and sent
it to the lab did gilley's dna match the semen sample on the genes we got the results of that testing back
on may 31st 2000 the 16th anniversary of laurel salmon's murder that testing showed that kyle gilly was
the donor of the dna that was on the men's rustler genes that were draped across her body that was
what we were looking for we could put kyle gilly in those genes we could put kyle gilly at the scene of
the murder that was the final piece of the puzzle but what was the motive sixteen years after laura salmon's
murder her high school boyfriend kyle gilly was arrested and charged with her murder
laura's mother says she told the original investigators that gilly killed her daughter she says his jealousy was
out of control i'm telling you today that i am a mother who keeps her promises i told them why i thought it was him
or why i knew it was him and i was very frustrated that they didn't take that seriously
kyle gilly is a classic sociopath he is the center of the universe as far as he's concerned
he is what his parents made him and he is a killer for the record no one is willing to speculate why the
original investigators didn't look deeper into gilly's alibi it was clear to the cold case unit that
gilly should have been the prime suspect all along he's callous cold-hearted and had no
more thought of killing laura than stepping on a bug from the time he killed laura he had
thought nothing else of it he is a cold-blooded killer gilly and laura dated in high school but
gilly was a year younger and when laura went off to college she made a new set of friends
he didn't want her to have any friends and when she got to college he would go over there and stalk her
family and friends implored laura to end the relationship but she was terrified i tried to get
her go and get a restraining order and she was afraid to go because she was afraid of
what he would do to her and when she dated other men kelly felt threatened howard was very jealous and very
possessive we feel like that was the motive for the murder that if he couldn't have her nobody else could
the night before her murder laura told friend she had a date with a friend and the two went to a local
nightclub investigators believe gilly knew laura was dating others and may have followed
her to the nightclub that unknown dna was the motive and kyle was jealous and possessive and
found out that she possibly was seeing somebody else prosecutors believe that gilly and laura
had planned to go swimming on the afternoon of her murder kyle coaxed her out to the deserted
lover's lane where they talked then argued according to the forensic evidence gilly struck her in the head repeatedly
with a rock and blood spattered on his jeans prosecutors think gilly saw laura's
blood on his jeans which is why he left them there but those genes contained other
biological evidence with his dna on that day gilley wouldn't have known anything about that of course since dna
testing was still years away a witness saw gilly driving laura's car away from the crime scene
why the original investigators gave this information less weight than gilly's alibi
is yet another mystery in september of 2006 kyle gilley went on trial for murder
his defense claimed the presence of another man's dna was proof that someone else was at the crime scene and that
individual killed laura kyle gillie was a jealous piece and he knew no never mind
the jury never fell into the trap of thinking the unknown dna was a plausible other
suspect the jury found kyle gilly guilty of murder and he was sentenced to life in prison
dan goodwin finally kept the promise he'd made to laura's mother at the funeral i don't think miss mackey will be around
when kyle gilly is eligible for his first parole hearing in september of 2042. i'll be 83 years old but if i'm alive
and if my partner bill sharp's alive will be there to testify against releasing him
my opinion is that it was a just verdict and he got what he deserved they knew what they were doing they were trained
and they would leave no stone unturned that they wanted to solve this 20 years is a long time to wait for justice
the evidence in the case never changed it just took that long for forensic technology to catch up with the killer
cold cases are difficult the positive side is that forensic science is constantly advancing
so that what we couldn't do 20 years ago now we can do i cannot recall during my
time in the district attorney's office a case that's ever been worked this hard that so many hours have been put into
in 1984 we were at a stalemate we didn't have the dna the forensic evidence to convict
in 2000 we were able to through the forensic evidence put kyle gilly at the scene we showed that
kyle gilly was the killer without the forensic evidence there's no conviction you

In 1984, the body of college co-ed Laura Salmon was found on a Middle Tennessee farm, covered with her own denim jeans as well as the jeans of the killer.

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

Laura Salman was murdered in 1984; her boyfriend Kyle Gilly was later convicted based on DNA evidence.

Key points

The Murder of Laura Salman. Eighteen-year-old Laura Salman was brutally murdered, leaving a community in shock.
A Promise to Find Justice. Dan Goodwin promised Laura's mother to find her killer, a promise that took decades to fulfill.
Kyle Gilly Charged with Murder. After years of investigation, Laura's high school boyfriend Kyle Gilly was arrested for her murder.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Her life was stolen in such a horrible way.

1:27WatchJan 28, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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