Forensic Files — Season 3, Episode 10 — Crime Seen (In HD) | Forensic Files

[music playing] NARRATOR: In 1984, a young couple got lost searching for a campsite in Virginia's Blue
Ridge Parkway. They decided to spend the night sleeping in their car. They were awakened by a white male in his mid 30s at 3:00 AM.
MAN: Step out of the vehicle. NARRATOR: What the couple saw that night, their eyewitness description of the assailant,
was all that police had to go on. [music playing] When the 19-year-old woman and her 22-year-old fiance
were rousted from sleep, they assumed the man was a policeman. MAN: Move to the rear of the vehicle, please.
NARRATOR: Blinded by his flashlight, and concerned that they had broken the law,
they handed over their car keys as ordered. Suddenly, the man produced a gun and told the fiancee
to run into the woods. He threatened to kill him if he didn't obey. MAN: Move! NARRATOR: The young woman, now terrified for her life,
was forced at gunpoint into the man's vehicle. MAN: Open the door. Open it! Get in the back.
Keep your head down. Don't look at me. NARRATOR: He drove her to a secluded campsite
about a half hour away. MAN: That's far enough. On your knees. NARRATOR: And over the next two hours,
repeatedly raped and sodomized her. Why are you doing this to me? [music playing]
NARRATOR: Although the assailant had threatened to kill her, he left her on a deserted stretch of road
and told her how to get back to her car. She was traumatized, but alive. Is there anything that you remember about this guy?
His appearance? His demeanor? NARRATOR: The victim said that the rapist wore camouflage
pants, had a large cross around his neck, and during the assault, chain-smoked, drank whiskey,
and babbled incessantly about Lieutenant Koleki and their experiences together in Vietnam.
MAN: --leki. Koleki. [inaudible] war hell for all of us. NARRATOR: The victim and her fiancee
helped a police sketch artist prepared this composite drawing of the assailant. Police all across Virginia searched
for a man who fit the description, but the search turned up nothing, and police feared that the Blue Ridge rapist
would never be identified. Four months passed, and in nearby Roanoke, Virginia, there was another sexual assault.
The victim said her attacker looked a lot like one of her neighbors, Edward Honaker.
Honaker had an alibi for the rape in Roanoke and was quickly eliminated as a suspect.
But investigators noticed a striking resemblance between Edward Honaker and the composite drawing
of the Blue Ridge rapist. Honaker owned an automobile similar to the one driven by the Blue Ridge rapist.
It had no back seat and had rust damage on the body, consistent with the description
given by the victim. The car he was driving, one of those big Broncos, was identified by the victim as-- as a car
driven by the rapist. He had a mustache, so did the rapist. He was about the same size, height, weight as the rapist.
The case seemed to point directly at him. NARRATOR: Police prepared a photographic lineup
of six individuals to show the victim and her fiancee. They both identified Edward Honaker as the rapist.
Cam-- camoflague. NARRATOR: The rape victim and her fiance both identified Edward Honaker as the rapist from the photographic lineup,
honaker was a 34-year-old welder with a dishonorable discharge from the military and a past history of burglary,
he had recently been hospitalized for depression because his wife had left him, taking their three children.
When Honaker was questioned about the rape in the Blue Ridge Parkway four months earlier,
he didn't immediately offer an alibi. Later, he said he was asleep in his mother's home in Montvale,
78 miles away. Honaker owned an automobile similar to the assailant's, and from his home, police recovered clothes and jewelry
similar to those worn by the Blue Ridge rapist on the night of the attack. She described the assailant as having worn fatigues.
Fatigues were recovered at his home. She described him as having a cross about his neck.
A cross was uncovered. She also said that he had told her when this assault was over
that he was going back to the Roanoke area, and honaker was living in and about the Roanoke area.
NARRATOR: The final step was to compare the hair found on the victim's shorts with Edward Honaker's hair.
The expert there stated that they were very likely to match. And that was very strong evidence against him as well.
Last thing I told my mother was, don't worry about it. I'll probably be home tomorrow evening or the next day.
I thought I would go to a line up or something, and-- and the lady, the victim, would say, no, this isn't the guy.
NARRATOR: But something else happened when Edward Honaker faced his accuser for the first time
in court. PHILLIP PAYNE: He was identified in a crowded courtroom at the preliminary hearing by the fiance and the victim.
They both identified him in the courtroom. Picked him out. Not seat-- not standing in an orange suit up front,
but mixed in among the rest of the spectators in the courtroom. MAN: Get out of here.
NARRATOR: Honaker's defense lawyer noted that Honaker was right-handed, and the assailant
held the gun in his left hand. The assailant ranted about his experiences in Vietnam,
but Honaker was never in Vietnam. The defense also presented evidence that Honaker had a vasectomy, which
meant he could not have produced the sperm found on the vaginal swab. But the prosecution said the victim and her fiancee
had consensual sex a few days before the rape. The sperm could have belonged to the fiance.
For the jury, it was an easy decision. The most damaging piece of evidence came when the victim took the stand.
Henry Connor was the jury foreman. She looked right at the defendant, looked him in the eye, so to speak,
and said, that is the man who raped me. And we had no reason to doubt her because she
was very, very sure. I had a lot of animosity toward her and her boyfriend. I just-- I couldn't understand why
they had done this to me, why they had chosen me for this. And I just-- I-- I don't know.
I just-- I had a lot of hatred for-- for both of them. NARRATOR: Edward Honaker was found guilty of rape, sodomy,
and aggravated sexual battery and was sentenced to three life terms plus 34 years.
The judge stated that Honaker's hair found on the victim had sealed his fate. While Honaker was in prison, he continued
to proclaim his innocence. Months went by, then years. Over time, Honaker's attention turned
from proving his innocence to simple survival. EDWARD HONAKER: You can't show fear in prison.
If you do, you'll be preyed upon. There are some of the world's best predators locked up in a prison cell, and they
will take advantage of you. They can-- they will spot it, I think someone said once, quicker than a lion can spot a limp.
NARRATOR: Over the next five years, Honaker sent letters to journalists, lawyers,
and criminal advocates all across the country, pleading his case to anyone who would listen.
No one responded. Honaker never gave up hope, but was out of ideas. Until one day, on television, he watched
the trial of Timothy Spencer, the so-called Southside Strangler. I had watched that trial.
And I told a friend of mine at the prison, Floyd, I said, Floyd, this is my-- this is my salvation.
This is the answer that God has given me through all of my prayers is this DNA. NARRATOR: But Honaker wasn't sure
if the vaginal swab from his rape case had been preserved, and if it had, could it still be tested after all those years?
Five years after Edward Honaker was convicted of a rape he said he didn't commit, one of his letters
made its way to Kate Germond of Centurion Ministries, an organization that works on behalf
of the wrongfully convicted. Centurion Ministries receives thousands of letters from convicted criminals every year,
but there were a number of things about Honaker's case that caught Germond's attention.
KATE GERMOND: Eyewitness testimony in our country is considered by most people to be the most
profound proof of truth. That's the man that did this to me. We all assume-- I think, through the years, we've
come to believe that our mind is like a videotape, that it just accurately records whatever
we see, whatever we hear, whatever we come in contact with. The reality is, what our memory is actually recording is, yes,
what's going on in the moment, but it's also mixed into that is memories, dreams,
some little distraction. It's just a huge variety pack. So our memories are actually not accurate at all.
NARRATOR: When the victim chose Honaker's picture from the photo lineup, Honaker was the only one standing
in front of a white background. The other suspects were all photographed in front
of the standard height scale. Research has shown that if one item in the array of photographs is uniquely different,
such as the background, it is more likely to be chosen. Furthermore, police lineup should include faces that
have an equal chance of being selected, faces similar to one another. Honaker's photo was the only one of six
that remotely resembled the description given by the victim. The mug shot spread that was shown
to both the victim and her boyfriend, in my opinion, is one of the most tainted mug shot spreads I've ever seen.
NARRATOR: Centurion Ministries asked the state of Virginia to release the forensic evidence used to convict Honaker,
and they asked hair expert, Dr. Peter DeForest, to analyze the hair found on the victim's
shorts, which the state of Virginia said matched Edward Honaker's hair. PETER DEFOREST: I compared the unknown hair taken
from the victim with a known sample of Mr. Honaker, and assuming that the known sample was representative
of Mr. Honaker's range of variation, I would have eliminated Mr. as was the donor
of that hair from the victim. NARRATOR: And forensic scientists agree. There is no such thing as a hair match.
You cannot match hair. There is no such thing as a hair match. The most that you can ever say about hair
testimony, hair evidence, is that it is similar or dissimilar, that it'd consistent or not consistent.
That's it. NARRATOR: And their investigation uncovered something else. We also learned that the victim
had been to a hypnotist to have her memory hypnotically refreshed. The hypnotist notes in a letter to the prosecutor
that the victim was brought to him because she could not recall the face of her assailant.
NARRATOR: Hypnotically enhanced recollections are inadmissible as evidence in most states,
including Virginia. The victim's identification of Honaker should not have been presented to the jury.
But when the victim pointed to Ed Honaker in the courtroom, it practically ensured his conviction.
The victim was very, very convincing and very, very credible. And I think she, beyond all shadow of a doubt, made
the difference in the jury's-- I know, in my own case. And there was-- I don't think there was ever any real doubt in the minds
of the jurors about about the guilt of Mr. Honaker at the time. NARRATOR: Barry Scheck was convinced that DNA testing
would prove Honaker's claims of innocence, but prosecutors and Honaker's his new defense team
were in for another surprise when the victim changed her story once again. By the time Centurion Ministries completed their investigation
of Edward Honaker's case, he had spent almost nine years in prison for a crime he said he didn't commit.
Centurion Ministries gained access to the vaginal swab taken from the victim on the night she was raped
and sent it to Dr. Edward Blake at Forensic Science Associates near Oakland, California.
They also sent along a sample of Edward Honaker's blood. Centurion ministries paid for the DNA testing,
which was approximately $5,000. Dr. Blake needed to identify all of the genetic markers
on the swab and then determine whether Edward Honaker could have provided any of the markers present.
Dr. Blake performed a DNA test called polymerase chain reaction, or PCR. It's a test used when the sample is small
or has been degraded over time. PCR is ideally suited to what you might consider
historical investigations. That is, investigations that are maybe more than five years old.
NARRATOR: Dr. Blake assumed that a cotton swab contained cells from three individuals, the victim,
her fiancee, and the rapist. After Dr. Blake analyzed the DNA from the swab, he did not believe that Edward Honaker was the rapist.
The conclusions that could be reached from the analysis of the vaginal swab alone was that the sperm could not
originate from Edward Honaker. NARRATOR: But Governor George Allen wasn't so sure.
He asked the Virginia State Crime Lab to conduct their own analysis, and they found something in the test
they hadn't expected. We were not as absolute in the conclusion that Forensic Science Associates originally came to.
We felt that there were some other scenarios that might possibly explain the results.
NARRATOR: The Virginia Crime Lab noticed some genetic material they could not identify or fully explain.
It was a 3, 4 genetic marker found in the sperm fraction of the PCR test. The mixture of all of the DNA profiles
and the similarities presented by the combinations of the genetic materials meant that Honaker could
not be eliminated as the contributor of the 3, 4 genetic marker. Faced with competing scientific opinions,
Governor Allen asked police to go back over the investigation one more time. As governor, you want to make sure
that you have all the evidence and have it investigated, talk to the witness, look at the evidence,
run whatever tests can be done on the evidence so that I have the full story. NARRATOR: When investigators reinterviewed the victim
and told her that DNA testing of her vaginal swab revealed some inconsistencies, she
made a surprising confession. After the rape, she married her fiance, but they had since divorced.
She admitted that at the time of the rape, she was sexually involved with another man in addition
to her fiance. It raised the question about whether or not the sperm taken from the victim's vagina
had any relevance to the sexual assault on her. That's how Ed Honaker gets brought back into the suit.
NARRATOR: When DNA testing is done in rape cases, all of the consensual sexual partners have to be identified.
What we have to account for and understand is that in taking samples like this, one has to account for prior consensual sexual intercourse.
And, therefore, one has to account for the DNA types of those individuals. NARRATOR: Sheriffs located the second boyfriend,
took his DNA sample, and scientists performed a more sophisticated DNA test called a polymarker
test, which types five genes at once instead of just one or two. The polymarker DNA test showed conclusively
that Edward Honaker was not the contributor of the 3, 4 genetic marker. Edward Honaker was innocent.
In October of 1994, governor Allen called Honaker in prison and told him he was a free man.
He said, I feel that that jury made a mistake. He said, as of this moment, you are a free man.
What he said after that, I have no idea. NARRATOR: After 10 years in prison, Edward Honaker walked out of the Nottaway Correctional Facility
into the arms of his family and friends. He had missed the last 10 years of his children's lives.
It was a gross miscarriage of justice. The evidence of his innocence was just overwhelming.
You'd have to be a complete fool to miss it. There are many, many limitations on the testimony of eyewitnesses,
particularly in situations where-- where there's a great deal of not only physical trauma,
but emotional trauma. That's not a place for people to make careful, critical observations.
I always knew deep in my heart that I would one day get out of prison a free man.
Not only if-- not only get out of prison, but proven that I did not commit that damn crime.
I always knew that. [music playing]

Edward Honaker was convicted of rape, sodomy and aggravated sexual battery. He was sentenced to three life terms in prison, but he steadfastly maintained his innocence. After years in prison, he finally found someone who believed him. Now in HD.

Brief Summary

Edward Honaker was wrongfully convicted of rape; DNA evidence later proved his innocence after ten years in prison.

Key points

The Night of Terror. A couple is awakened by a man who turns out to be their assailant.
Identifying the Rapist. The victim and her fiancé identify Edward Honaker as the rapist from a lineup.
DNA Testing Reveals Innocence. DNA testing ultimately proves Edward Honaker's innocence after years in prison.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It was a gross miscarriage of justice.

Narrator summarizes the injustice faced by Honaker.

20:22WatchOct 3, 2025

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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