Forensic Files - Season 12, Episode 29 - Guarded Secrets - Full Episode | Forensic Files

up next a married man falls victim to temptation he had made a mistake which i'm sure a lot of people can identify
with she offered him a wild side that he hadn't experienced then he vanishes without a trace he was there one minute
and then gone to next for almost 20 years the disappearance goes unsolved i kept that hope that maybe he would show
up on my doorstep until a tiny chip of paint tells of a terrifying ordeal it would drive me crazy to know what a
murder victim goes through every time they're killed [Music] the kennecott copper mine outside salt
lake city utah is known as the richest hole on earth and copper isn't the only valuable mineral they
mine gold and silver and they have very expensive equipment that sort of thing that
theft is a big problem out there as a result security is very tight you just don't go
onto kennecott copper property without usually encountering security so when the security guard wasn't on
duty in the guard shack on a winter night in 1991 it was unusual they went up and figured that he might
be in the restroom checked it out for a while they went up and found his lunch was partly eaten his hard hat was still
there the guard brian roof was not supposed to leave the shack for any reason until the
shift changed at 11 o'clock it was just a strange incident where he was there one minute and then gone the next and
and there was no real explanation of why he was gone snow had fallen just a few hours earlier
but there were no footprints around the shack brian's car was parked in a nearby lot
and there were no footprints anywhere near his car it looked like he might have just stepped outside the door and
and vanished but it was in a very isolated area inside the shack everything was in order
no sign of any foul play at all no blood nothing turned over or destroyed 21 year old brian roof and his wife
jennifer had been married for two and a half years and had a 15 month old baby work record showed this wasn't the first
time brian went missing just a few weeks earlier brian walked off his job and ran away to las vegas
he felt a big burden to provide for us especially with a second baby coming he felt that burden and he was trying to
get through school and i know that finances worried him a lot he felt bad that we had to move in with my parents
at the time brian spent six days in las vegas when he returned he was a changed man
and not for the better he was very cold and distant a sight of him i'd never seen before
he was very cold bitter about certain things finances things like that and just just angry
as investigators searched the guard shack for clues the phone rang the caller said she was brian's wife
jennifer she was surprised when somebody else answered the phone when brian didn't answer they told her
at that time that they were the police and they were looking for brian she did tell them that she'd been
talking to him around 6 30. he had told her that there's a another employee coming that's
how he turned it and he just had to go as soon as police got off the phone with jennifer the phone rang again the deputy
again answered the phone call knew it was a different female voice and the caller told the deputy that her name
was jennifer roof somebody was claiming that they were brian's wife that really wasn't
a missing man with two wives police knew right away it was going to be an unusual
investigation [Music] shortly after brian roof's disappearance from his security job two women called
his work phone asking to speak to him each of them identified herself as his wife
the company's caller id system revealed one of the callers was indeed brian's wife jennifer
the other was 20 year old christy bradley she was married to dale bradley was also a security guard at the
kennecott mine and one of brian roof's co-workers so that's when they sent detectives over
to dale and christy's house to find out what was going on christy told police that she and brian had become
good friends and talked regularly on the phone dale would have christy bring dinner out
to him and that's how brian and christy met is actually out at the job site when
she would bring meals out to him when questioned about brian's disappearance christy said she was home
all day and hadn't seen him dale said he had been off from work and was running errands all day
dale bradley said he was up at the university of utah when his car broke down he called his friend bill easton
who was down at a local bar here five days after brian disappeared his wife jennifer discovered a potential
clue there were credit card bills that i had never seen before we had not applied for
them together and also a phone bill jennifer discovered that brian was having an affair with christy bradley
it was a double whammy to have him missing and then to be hit with such horrifying news that everything had been
shattered my whole life had been shattered everything that i had dreamed and hoped for
was gone jennifer also discovered that christy was with brian in las vegas a few weeks
earlier when confronted with this information christie admitted the affair to both the
police and her husband she told me that she thought brian was really nice she thought he was cute dale
was very controlling to her and christy didn't like to be tied down christy and and brian were able to talk to each
other and that's i think the reason for the phone calls to the guard check between christy and brian
but dale insisted he knew nothing about his wife's affair when brian disappeared
dale had no criminal history but the affair gave him a motive to harm brian so investigators got a search warrant
for his car it was checked for blood and gunshot residue none of which we found we didn't find
anything in addition dale and christy bradley agreed to take polygraph tests and they both passed
when they found out about the affair i had heard they interviewed dale and christy and
dale passed a polygraph and at that point they kind of dropped his name from from the list of suspects
meanwhile investigators pursued another potential lead two of ryan's fellow security guards had been arrested for
stealing from the mine they were arrested for stealing medals off of kennecott property and
pawning them in junk metal shops or you know for junk metal in fact one of those guards was at the
guard shack just minutes after brian was reported missing brian was one of those at the guard
shack who reported some of these thefts going on but without brian roof's body police had
no proof he was dead officially he was still a missing person [Music] shortly after brian roof disappeared
police uncovered a theft ring run by security guards at the kennecott mine they were stealing anything that wasn't
nailed down they were stealing gloves shovels you know just any kind of equipment that you would find around a
mine police wondered if brian might have stumbled on a robbery in progress so a theory came up that maybe these
guys were stealing medals off of the property that night brian had stopped them and they'd killed him to cover up
the theft but none of the other security guards could be linked to brian's disappearance
he basically was completely alone up there in the mountain and it really concerned him that it was an unsafe area
that there were no cameras no electric gates no security systems like they had in the other gates
weeks and then months passed with absolutely no sign of brian roof it was an overwhelming fear
when i would be driving to work or driving to the store it was just a constant cloud over me of fear that somebody
could just disappear and never come back [Music] brian's wife jennifer was forced to
raise their little girl alone six months after brian went missing she gave birth to another daughter i just
couldn't move on i was stuck in that realm of of grief until i knew what had happened to him
one year later hikers discovered human remains in a camping area about 50 miles from
the kennecott mine well first i just thought it was rock and then i thought it was a dead guy
he still had his security outfit on as you say his wallet everything intact that's him
brian patrick i got a phone call from the detectives and i asked him i said is it brian and
he said yeah it's brian and that's when my world fell apart dental records confirmed the victim was
brian roof an autopsy showed he'd been shot five times in the back i thought that somehow he had gotten in
the middle of something illegal and they killed him for that search teams found five spent shells
from a 22-caliber pistol near the body investigators believe brian was shot just a few feet from where he was buried
in a shallow grave the next day they're out there working again and one of the dogs from the canine unit
recovers a boot a black cowboy boot that was identified as brian's work boot that was recovered about 200 feet east
of the gravesite i never did find a second boot but so much time had passed and so much
rain and snow had fallen that no other clues were found at the scene it's really frustrating there's no other
way to put it with no evidence to tie anyone to the crime the case went cold and the years passed
until 14 years later when todd park a cold case detective with the salt lake county sheriff's
office received a telephone call from authorities in neighboring carbon county when that call came in it gave me a i
guess a fresh breath of air to look at another case and to to really dig into it
police in carbon county were investigating dale bradley on the suspicion of murdering his second wife
crystal dale had been a suspect in brian roof's murder 14 years earlier on a hunch todd park contacted dale's
first wife christy who is now living in texas so when detective park contacted her 14 years after the fact she was
surprised that the case hadn't been solved because dale told her somebody else had already been arrested for it
and she just assumed this case was done but that obviously was a lie and christy told police something she
hadn't mentioned during the original investigation she said the day after brian went missing
dale cleaned the inside of his car he had never cleaned out that trunk as long as she had known him as long as
he owned that camaro why would dale do this police wondered if brian roof had been
inside that trunk was there blood was he shot in the car and wrapped in a blanket and looking for
uh you know trace evidence looking for blood in the car but after 14 years could police find dale bradley's camaro
[Music] 14 years after brian roof's murder and investigators never lost hope they
would solve the case the thing about brian he was a very good kid and he was a very good father
and regardless of the affair i think he was a very good husband he just had a lot going on and i think
he would have been able to really make something of his life and his family if he was able to continue on in life and
that was cut short when investigators heard that their original suspect dale bradley was now a suspect in yet
another murder investigation they decided to look once again at the evidence and this time
on brian roof's boot the one they found in the mountains near his burial site they spotted something
some kind of scuff mark on the bottom of the boot that looked like reddish orange
paint when i saw that swatch of paint it just flashed back to me that that was the
same color of paint that was on dale bradley's car and i got excited and i kind of got a little bit
of butterflies and i thought i got him forensic analyst bill schneck examined this paint with the stereo microscope
and i noticed it was a smear wasn't like paint chips that were adhering to the boot it's actually smeared into the
leather of the bottom of the boot there was tremendous force to get that paint smear onto his boot
was it the kind of force caused by trying to kick your way out of the trunk of a car for example
bill schneck needed to know if the makers of dale bradley's camaro had painted the inside of the trunk
luckily schneck had a friend who restored old cars he just happened to have a 75 camaro and
i was there so we popped the trunk and indeed they have original paint in the trunk
so that was good that was useful dale bradley drove a red 1974 camaro at the time of brian's murder
the mission now was to find it i spent a lot of hours searching for that car they went up in an airplane and
searched high and low for that car through a lot of investigation found that the car had been sold
unfortunately two years after brian's murder the new owner sold the car for scrap metal
that car was scrapped i mean it's just in little cubes it's been melted down but an examination of the case file
revealed a surprise 14 years earlier an alert detective had taken paint samples from dale's car
we just took them it's hard to say why you know just we just took them and because there wasn't really much else to
to take those paint samples just sat in our evidence room for years bill schneck took paint samples from the
boot and the car and placed them on slides with an immersion liquid this eliminated any air trapped between
the sample and the slide using a polarizing light microscope magnified up to a thousand times
schneck saw the paint was a lead chromate paint i wanted to go back and find out how
unusual is a lead chromate paint and i contacted the national institute of science and technology and received a
paint chip known standard from the 74 camaro using a scanning electron microscope
schneck now did a three-way comparison he examined paint from the boot from the car
and from the file sample of a 1974 camaro all were identical paint on the boot came from that
particular car or another car having those exact same properties composition and with this evidence dale bradley was
arrested and charged with brian roof's murder it was shocking that anybody could do something so horrific
let alone somebody that claimed to be a good friend prosecutors believe dale either knew or strongly suspected
brian roof was having an affair with his wife christy and was afraid she was going to leave him
i think that he was so angry that christy and brian betrayed him that he was going to make
them pay the forensic evidence suggests dale's plan was to eliminate the person he
perceived to be his competition since he knew brian's hours and when there would be the least amount of
traffic he knew exactly when to strike dale probably forced brian into the trunk at gunpoint
brian tried to kick his way out of the trunk during the 30 minute drive when a piece of the paint became embedded in
his boot [Music] when dale got to the burial spot prosecutors think he ordered brian to
remove his boots so he couldn't run away he then forced him over to a shallow grave which prosecutors think he dug
earlier that day then shot him with a 22 caliber pistol the murder weapon was never recovered
it was so typical of dale's personality to be a coward enough to shoot somebody in the back and not face him
when he was going to take his life the paint and circumstantial evidence were difficult for dale bradley to
refute he agreed to plead guilty to second-degree manslaughter and kidnapping and was sentenced to 40 years
in prison what bradley didn't realize was that brian's boot held an important piece of
evidence that told a story this cold case was solved because of that paint chip it makes me want to go out and look at
every single case and examine every piece of evidence to see if there's something that i can do with it it
motivates me to solve other cases dale bradley remains a suspect in the murder of his second wife
it's ironic in a way that brian roof's desperate efforts in the trunk of dale's car resulted in the
capture of his own killer just one little thing that's all it takes in this case it turned out to be
the paint samples coupled with all the the the uh circumstantial evidence in this case and
the physical evidence that you have that's was just the clincher in this case even today though there's a lot of
detectives that are just focusing so much on dna they're forgetting all the other avenues that could be approached
with trace evidence such as pain examination i hope it sends a loud message that
there is forensics out there that people who are willing to continue to look at these cases that
you're not going to get away with murder and that that the more they try to cover up some
of their tracks the more cracks they leave you

A security guard disappeared from his post without a trace; his remains were found a year later in a remote camp site.

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

Brian Roof's disappearance and murder were solved through a crucial paint chip linked to his killer, Dale Bradley, amid a tangled affair and investigation.

Key points

The Mysterious Disappearance of Brian Roof. A married security guard vanishes without a trace, leading to a complex investigation.
A Shocking Revelation. Brian's wife discovers he was having an affair, complicating the investigation.
The Paint Chip That Solved a Murder. Forensic evidence from a paint chip on Brian's boot leads to the arrest of his killer.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I thought that somehow he had gotten in the middle of something illegal.

Reflecting on Brian's disappearance and the circumstances surrounding it.

10:52WatchJan 28, 2022

Tension

85/ 100High tension

More from Forensic Files

Solve the Crime

Read a real case one clue at a time, then see how your call held up against the investigators.