Forensic Files - Season 12, Episode 5 - Quite a Spectacle - Full Episode | Forensic Files

it was one of the strangest cases in canadian history a squashed piece of fruit and a tiny
pinpoint reflection in a picture was the only evidence but was it enough to catch a killer
[Music] [Music] on june 19 1989 there was a thunderstorm in collingwood ontario but the rain didn't stop 33 year old
debbie timlock from venturing out that night she was a pretty vivacious woman that
loved to ski and i had a sailboat in the harbor she liked to sail and she liked people
debbie a single mother left her six-year-old daughter lacey at her parents home for the night
debbie and a few of her friends went to a local restaurant where they visited with each other and it was later in the
evening when debbie and her friends said goodbye to each other in the parking lot
her friend said debbie left alone and presumably went straight home at 3 25 in the morning however
she phoned police to report she had been attacked she indicated she had been assaulted i
don't believe she was in total understanding of what had occurred she was struggling to stay conscious
but by the time police arrived it was too late when i entered through the door of the
apartment i could see that there was an unclosed female body laying on her back next to the couch
beside her left arm which was outstretched was the handset of a telephone there was a great deal of
blood on the floor it was like something like this couldn't happen you know it's a small town
and why you know investigators followed the trail of blood through the hallway and found a pair of metal frame
eyeglasses and a woman's shoe both covered in blood upon entering debbie timlock's bedroom
we noticed blood on the waterbed blood on different articles of clothing and sheets as well
as a comforter that were either on the bed or on the floor there was also blood stains and some
blood spatter on a headboard of the bed investigators also found evidence of activity in the kitchen
the kitchen was disheveled it appeared the entry was through the kitchen window which was a ground level apartment there
had been some disturbing of dishes and and that type of thing that had been in the kitchen sink
outside the kitchen window was an area partially hidden behind some greenery on the ground investigators noticed
a tomato debbie timlock had a tomato on her windowsill ripening and the tomato had
likely been dragged out onto the ground when the suspect had pulled the blinds out of the window when we noticed the
tomato was quite obvious that there was a partial footwear impression on the tomato itself
they photographed the tomato then put it in debbie's refrigerator to preserve it
police found no foreign fingerprints in the apartment and there were no valuables missing
so investigators had to ask who would have wanted debbie dead that question produced a few
troubling answers [Music] at debbie timlock's autopsy the medical examiner found she had been
sexually assaulted and stabbed to death she died of a stab wound to the heart he
also found that there was a stab wound to the back which penetrated her spinal cord
the pathologist concluded that debbie was paralyzed from the waist down when she crawled to the telephone to call
police i believe when debbie is told by the ambulance help is on the way she responds thank you and i believe at
that point she died in a search for debbie's killer investigators found a possible lead
four years earlier debbie lived with a man named ron osborne who had been involved in a drug smuggling ring
1985 10 persons were investigated for attempting to smuggle drugs from united states into canada
authorities had evidence that osborne transported illegal drugs in a boat from jamaica to florida
at osborne's trial debbie reluctantly testified against him debbie testified that ron osborne had
told her that he had been on a boat for a two-month period this boat is the one that was subsequently found to have
storage compartments where the drugs had been stored osborne was in prison at the time of
debbie's murder but investigators checked to see whether any of the other defendants might have
killed her transcripts of the drug smuggling case were reviewed along with interviews of
the investigating officers to determine where all the players actually were and how the entire investigation unfolded
detectives concluded there was no connection to debbie's murder to us it made no sense that a small
player like debbie timlock would be murdered in this drug investigation because she really had very little to do
with it as a matter of routine police also interviewed debbie's ex-husband the couple had been divorced for four years
and shared custody of six-year-old lacey he was a good guy and it just happens that they don't
you know some people just don't get along together it was a reneable divorce both parties had got on with their lives
and gone in different directions and the ex-husband of debbie was alibi up he was
at home that night so investigators focused on the evidence left at the scene the pair of eyeglasses and the tomato
with the foot impression we knew right away that we had a pattern in the tomato and we knew right away
that it was a herringbone pattern when the film was developed and analyzed the flesh in the photo created
distinct shadows we could see that along with the herringbone pattern was a second pattern
or more detail than we had first been able to see which was an s shape that came through the herringbone pattern
next investigators analyzed the eyeglasses they found debbie's blood on the glasses
which told a story both of the arms were folded which to us we we believe had fallen out
of someone's pocket debbie had dragged herself to the phone from the bedroom and had actually
dragged herself over those glasses since debbie didn't wear glasses investigators assumed they belonged to
the killer the pair was inexpensive and the lenses didn't fit properly in the frame
the lens itself didn't exactly match the contour of the metal piece at the top so creating a sort of a gap in the
appearance of the lenses it was clear they'd been worn for some time and there was a size discrepancy
between the two lenses it was as if a portion of the lens had been ground off so that they just weren't the same shape
which is is highly unusual then investigators got an important lead they learned that debbie's former
next-door neighbor was 23-year-old james brown a one-time olympic hopeful brown had had some success in the sport
of wrestling and had actually been to japan where he'd hoped to further that and maybe have a shot at an olympic
spot on the team debbie told friends that brown had made advances towards her he did have a criminal record he had
been convicted of a number of fences in the past mainly for assaults thefts and breaking enters
that is why brown came on the radar screen quite rapidly he had done some time in jail but never more than three
months when questioned brown denied any involvement in debbie's murder and said he was out of town on the night of the
crime he indicated that he had been at a hotel where he was assaulted by persons
unknown and as a result of that he went to the ground and he woke up on the side
of the road several miles away brown had scratches on his face which he said came from the assault
given his size detectives were skeptical of his story he was a man some six foot three in
height large structure about 350 some pounds wide shoulders extremely wide fists
and detectives noticed something else in his mug shots from a previous arrest brown
was wearing glasses [Music] the prime suspect in debbie timlock's murder was her former next door neighbor
a convicted criminal jim brown during questioning he wasn't wearing glasses although he admitted owning a
pair for reading but claimed he lost them this gave detectives an opportunity to
tie brown to the glasses found at the murder site they removed debbie's blood from the
glasses and had an officer pose as a nurse and offer them to brown no they're not
jim smelled a rat he looked at the glasses and said they were not his it doesn't mean they're not his
it just means that we haven't got that connectivity yet police searched brown's apartment
and his car we found a pair of blue canvas running shoes on the floor of the rear right passenger side
of the vehicle we believe they were manufactured in czechoslovakia and were actually
purchased by the ontario government and were provided to inmates in the provincial system
who were doing time they also appeared to have the same distinctive tread pattern
as the print on the tomato outside debbie's window there's a specific part of a design
which i'll refer to here as either an s shape or a stylized seven that became very apparent in the photograph that
really piqued my interest but forensic investigator jerry webb had a problem he needed to know if the weight of a
350-pound man created a different kind of shoe impression on a tomato than one you'd get by copying the shoe impression
on paper or a transparency so webb designed an experiment i had a person that wore size 13 shoes
put on a bomb suit and i added weights to the bomb suit in trying to increase the weight of this person to be more
close to the weight of the suspect in this case jim brown webb sprayed water on tomatoes to
simulate the rainstorm on the night of the murder then had his 350-pound model step on each one wearing
the suspect's shoes [Music] webb discovered that the test impression on the tomato was virtually the same as
the one taken directly from the shoe and the photo taken at the crime scene i was able to take those two overlays
and put them over top of a photograph of the tomato itself and be able to illustrate that in fact that the pattern
matched up on the tomato impression although the size of brown shoe and the tread pattern was the same as the shoe
impression left at the crime scene there was no way to tell if this was the actual shoe
the impression on the tomato could have been made by the left shoe of jim brown or it could have been made by another
left shoe that had the same specific design and size since the shoes were prison issued
they were unusual although not uncommon i feel that we need much more evidence to convict the person responsible for
debbie timlock's senseless murder so they turned to the eyeglasses found at the crime scene
dr graham strong a professor of optometry at waterloo university was asked to determine whether the crime
scene glasses were the same as those worn by jim brown in a police mug shot taken several years earlier
the problem we had with the mug shots is that they really weren't a frontal mug shot
he was angled relative to the plane of the film to solve the problem dr strong mounted the glasses on a
styrofoam head and tried to approximate the angle in the mug shots we didn't get it quite right it was
compelling but it didn't rise to a level that was significant in our mind then dr strong enlarged the mug shot
photographs and noticed something important [Music] tiny white dots reflections from the photographer's
flash in brown's corneas you actually use the reflection from the front surface of the eye to make a very
standard measurement when you make a pair of glasses namely the distance between the two eyes
so that what you do is you measure the difference between the the reflection from the right eye to the left eye and
that's the interpupillary distance from medical records dr strong knew that the distance between brown's pupils was
72 millimeters so now he had a scale by which he could measure the exact size of
the frames and the lenses for comparison to the glasses from the crime scene we're getting 20 odd identical
measurements and observations related to the glasses so there's a bit of a eureka
moment when that happens bottom line was the glasses in evidence belong to the accused and in fact were
the ones that were worn in both of the mug shots that we analyzed we believe we have brown's glasses
covered with blood in debbie's apartment but if that were true why were the frames in the mug shots
gold and the frames analyzed by the expert brown after thousands of hours of police and
forensic investigation prosecutors now knew what happened in debbie timlock's apartment on the night she was murdered
it was a very warm night and the evidence shows that when debbie returned from an evening with friends
she opened the kitchen window to help cool her apartment then she went to sleep [Music]
it was a ground floor apartment the kitchen window was low the motive was unclear but the evidence shows
james brown entered debbie's apartment and knocked the tomato off the windowsill then stepped on it leaving
the impression of his prison shoes brown attacked debbie in the bedroom assaulted her stabbed her twice with a
knife and left her for dead on his way out he dropped his glasses in the hallway
debbie most likely paralyzed from the waist down from the stab wound crawled over those glasses on her way to call
police she died before she could identify her attacker but her blood on brown's glasses
did it for her i believe debbie died on the telephone knowing she had done her job
i recall the day that dr strong came to our office in barrie like it was yesterday
this was months after the initial investigation it was a piece of evidence that was
individual and it truly was a high five yahoo moment because now we were able to speak for debbie tim
lock yeah i was surprised at what they came up with so in involved it was it was so
many um little clues to uh to have it together and put together a case the final hurdle for prosecutors was to
explain why jim brown's glasses were gold in the mug shots but dark brown when shown to the jury a
decision had been made by the investigators to deliver jim brown's glasses to him at
the jail prior to doing that they wanted them cleaned of the blood that was on them
the glasses were photographed in the studio they were then cleaned of the blood and in that process of cleaning the
blood part of the laminate from the temples of the glasses was rubbed off in january of 1992
two and a half years after debbie timlock was killed james brown went on trial for murder
the trial lasted two and a half weeks and relied on the shoe print left on a tomato
and mathematical calculations from the reflection of a flash bulb the jury deliberated for six hours and
came back with a finding of first-degree murder in canada a first-degree murder conviction carries
an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years this case ranks among the most unusual
in forensic history it was unique in fact to this day and i've i've been policing now for 28 years and 20 years
in the forensic business i've never before or never again had an impression in a tomato
it was amazing how dr strong based on a grainy mug shot of not great quality was able
to determine all the nuances of these glasses and able to mathematically determine the chances of
being another pair like that in this world when i first entered into the forensics field i attended coroner's
court in toronto and there is a sign that is on their wall that says that we speak for
the dead i've made that my motto over the last 20 years recognizing that that crime scene is now
the voice for the dead [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] you

It was one of the most unusual cases in forensic history. Investigators had to find a way to solve a murder case with evidence which consisted of a squashed tomato found at the crime scene, and tiny, pinpoint reflections of light in a photograph.

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

Debbie Timlock was murdered; James Brown was convicted based on unique forensic evidence including a shoe print on a tomato.

Key points

The Strange Case of Debbie Timlock. A small-town murder case unfolds with surprising evidence and twists.
A Shocking Discovery. Debbie Timlock's autopsy reveals she was sexually assaulted and stabbed to death.
The Eyeglasses Connection. Investigators tie a pair of glasses to the prime suspect, revealing crucial evidence.
The Trial and Conviction. James Brown is found guilty of first-degree murder, receiving a life sentence.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It was one of the strangest cases in Canadian history.

0:05WatchJan 27, 2022

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