Forensic Files - Season 4, Episode 13 - Slippery Motives - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[Music] while on a business trip in 1986 ed poe spent the morning jogging near his hotel in downtown st louis
[Music] when he returned to his hotel room he discovered his wife dead in the bathtub
the medical examiner ruled the death was by drowning presumably accidental but homicide investigators weren't so
sure [Music] [Music] hmm ed post met julie thigpen when they were both students at the university of
southern mississippi in the 1960s they married in 1967 had two daughters and moved to new orleans
ed went to work in the real estate business his outgoing personality and sophisticated manner made him a
successful salesman right from the start i thought ed was a good fellow what you'd expect a real estate salesman to
be kind of relentlessly cheerful after a few years ed post became part owner of the wagner truax real estate
firm julie post also joined the company and was very successful selling over a million dollars of real estate every
year from 1982 on in june of 1986 the posts attended a real estate convention in saint louis
missouri at the omni hotel at union station on the morning of june 3rd ed post decided to go jogging before the
meeting started he said he drew his wife a bath and woke her before leaving around 7am
[Music] julie julie it's time to wake up on his way out he thanked the hotel's concierge for a suggestion she made to
the posts the day before really wonderful i'm so glad it's a wonderful place if there's anything else i can do
for you just let me know hello siri having a nice day yes i am thank you have a nice run sure head post
jog past bush stadium around the city's famous arch and returned to the hotel at 7 40. how was
your run sir it's great that's true had a great workout this morning have a nice day sir
[Music] when he entered his hotel room he said he discovered his wife lying face down and unconscious in the bathtub
after pulling her body from the water he called for an ambulance at 7 43. it looked as if julie post lost her
footing and grabbed the towel ring which pulled out of the wall at the hospital julie post was
pronounced dead she was 39 years old the autopsy revealed that death was due to drowning
ed post immediately phoned his brother who was a lawyer together they photographed the broken towel ring and
wall mount for a lawsuit against the hotel his brother told a policeman here in saint louis i'm assumed for 450 million
dollars you watch ed post was convinced that had it not been for the faulty towel ring his wife
julie might still be alive after julie post was pronounced dead an autopsy was performed in saint louis
before the body was transported to new orleans for burial the autopsy found no sign of alcohol or
drugs in her system there were no skull fractures or bleeding in the brain that would have
been present if the victim had been struck in the head before drowning in short the pathologist could find no evidence
of foul play i was certainly not convinced that it was an accident on the other hand i couldn't prove that
it was anything else on the death certificate the manner of death was undetermined
when the saint louis post dispatch reported the news of julie post's death there were some interesting reactions
dee joyce hayes was a prosecutor in the district attorney's office her husband gary was a detective in the saint louis
police department he had just read an article about a woman who was who had drowned in a bathtub at
the omni hotel and she said gary make sure you read this it doesn't sound right to me we both read
the article and looked at each other and said nah no way the hotel management found it hard to
believe that a 120 pound woman like julie post could have pulled the towel ring from the wall since the ring had
been designed to withstand more than twice that weight we went to the two adjoining rooms
and i probably weighed close to 220 pounds at the time with all my weight hung onto both towel
rings in both rooms and neither one of them gave nothing ed post told police that he and his wife
had a very good relationship but a background check of the post's finances revealed an interesting
coincidence we went to the insurance company and lo and behold i don't know 27 29 days uh prior to
julie poe's death ed had it increased her insurance like four or five hundred thousand dollars
now this is a woman who's making uh in the low to mid twenty thousand dollar a year
range and salary and he's got this six seven hundred thousand dollar life insurance policy on his wife
that's when i begin to believe maybe we have something here police also discovered that ed post
was enamored with the married woman who worked in his office her name was kim otan
on the day of julie post's funeral ed made an unusual request to kim otan kim otan had a twin sister and at the
time of the funeral of julie ed post said to kim otan maybe when this is over you can set me up with your
sister and that seemed a most inappropriate thing to be saying and particularly saying at the time that
he's alleged to have said it police were also suspicious about the way ed post told the story of finding
his wife's body the story never varied almost as if it had been rehearsed st louis police tape recorded those
conversations and then when she came over the edge of the tub uh being as wet as she was uh in the water
then at that point once i got her partially out of the tub i was not prepared for what happened next which
was she literally slid out at that point do you think that because she did hit her head on the front portion
it's the fact that ed pulse in his golden tongue glib manor came off as a as a non-caring
person that had this alibi who had everything down pat i mean he didn't change his story
one iota from the first time he told it to the second time he told it and some of the hotel employees noticed
that ed post was acting suspiciously on the morning of the accident before leaving the hotel for his morning
run ed post made sure that the concierge knew who he was thanking her for a favor
she did for him the day before i believe you're the one that told us about the botanical gardens my wife finally had a
chance to visit there yesterday it was spectacular really wonderful i'm so glad and the hotel doorman said that post
introduced himself by name before going out for his run are you enjoying your stay yes i am thank you my name is ed
post i'm going on a run this morning i'll be going about 30 minutes uh watch out for me please i sure will have a
nice run sure he made it a point to say good morning to the doorman at the hotel
say who he was and what room he was in and that he was going to go out and jog i mean like it was from the book of who
cares the doorman didn't care why would you do that but all of these incidents simply raised
suspicions homicide investigators had no hard evidence that ed post played any role in
his wife's death investigators decided to conduct more sophisticated tests on the broken towel
ring to see if a woman julie post size could have pulled it from the wall during a fall
[Music] prosecutors in saint louis were starting to wonder whether the death of julie
post in the hotel bathtub was truly an accident the autopsy did not find any evidence of
foul play so prosecutors decided to exhume julie post's remains for a second autopsy
she had been buried in a cemetery outside of new orleans the water table is so high in new
orleans that most people are buried in above ground vaults but julie post had been buried in the
ground and her body was placed in a wooden casket investigators feared that water damage
to the body would be significant when they opened the grave it was almost completely filled with water
fortunately the foot of the casket was the part that sunk her head was the only part of her body
that was not submerged in water and her head was in perfect shape the casket had collapsed and pushed down
and had pressed flattened her nose from the pressure but that was the only disfiguration from the collapsing of the
casket most of the casket collapsed had been at the foot end the pathologist who performed the second
autopsy found numerous bruises that were not noted during the first autopsy that's not unusual because some bruising
continues to develop even after death ed post's attorney said that the additional bruises proved nothing that
they could have been caused by the removing of her organs and bones for donation shortly after her death
but the pathologist found two new bruises in a critical area the only additional finding at the
autopsy was an area of bruising that was very low far down on the back of the head in
the upper neck region where in a normal autopsy i usually don't take the scalp down quite that far
i'm looking at these bruises and as far as i'm concerned it's from a thumb and a hand
if you're holding somebody under water you got to hold them by the base of the neck if you're they're going
next prosecutors turned their attention to the metal towel ring found inside the
tub next to julie post's body the towel ring was attached to metal studs inside the wall with one and a
half inch screws the ring and wall mount had been designed and manufactured to withstand hundreds of pounds of force
prosecutors hired bolter kelsey an accident reconstructionist to attempt to recreate the accident
kelsey conducted his experiments at the hotel omni in a room with an identical towel ring
attached to the wall in the same way as the towel ring in ed and julie post's room
and for the test kelsey used a woman who was the same height and weight as julie post
kelsey asked the model to simulate a fall by grabbing onto the towel ring with all of her weight nothing happened
then she was asked to wrench the ring back and forth again nothing happened what we found was that
doing some calculations based on what information we had on the ultimate strength of the ring
that we could not remove it or a person couldn't remove it at that size unless she fell about 64
feet and grabbed the towel ring as she went by and of course the hotel room has an
eight-foot ceiling so there's no way that that could happen finally as a last resort kelsey asked
the model to use both hands to remove the towel ring in any way she could after considerable effort
the ring came off concept the julie post somehow grabbed this towel ring during a fall
and pulled it off the wall was impossible it could not physically have happened that way
next prosecutors sent an identical towel ring and wall mount to dr william wines
a professor of mechanical engineering at the university of nebraska in lincoln dr
wines was asked to determine how much force was required to remove the towel ring from the wall attachment
those tests revealed that it took between 480 and 500 pounds of force to remove it from the wall
it was also obvious very early on the testing that those types of modes of force application straight pulls pulls
down clearly didn't match the evidence the the deformed towering the failed tolerance didn't look anything like the
towering in question here the base plate had damage underneath the stem and on the left side the towel ring
itself also had been damaged dr wines performed 23 different tests to reproduce the damage found on the base
plate and towel ring all without success but on test number 24 dr wines produced
something very close that test indicated that the towel ring was removed from outside the bathtub
our conclusion was that it was taken off the wall by someone with considerable strength
and it was uh you know the type of action where one would grab it and pull outside the tub
and it was if you look at the location of it it would be consistent for instance with
someone like putting their foot on the edge of the tub and grabbing the towel ring and then pulling it off out out
toward the outside of the tub prosecutors now had scientific proof that julie post's death was no accident
in 1986 new orleans was going through its worst economic downturn since the great depression
many local businesses were affected and real estate was just one more casualty ed post was 10 owner of the wagner truax
real estate business and was responsible for 10 of the losses which in 1985 and 86 were substantial
and the post's marriage was going through a downturn of its own friends said that ed and julie fought
frequently fights which were sometimes physical and kim otan who worked with the posts
said that ed post had made advances towards her in the months before julie's death
i think that ed fell in love with kim otan just him being a free man wouldn't get kim
he had to be a free man with lots of money [Music] to compete with her husband and
he hatched his plan prosecutors believe that plan was in motion one month before julie's death
when ed post increased his wife's life insurance on june 3rd 1986 before going out for his morning run
prosecutors believe that post drowned his wife in the hotel bathtub afterwards he pulled the towel ring from the wall
not only to corroborate his cover story that julie fell while holding onto the towel ring but also for the money the
potential settlement from the hotel in a civil lawsuit after the murder post made sure to speak with both the
hotel concierge and doorman to cement his alibi yes i am thank you my name is ed post i'm going to be going on a run
this morning thank you the whole business with the towering which is really what killed him
not literally but figuratively you know he had to go pull that off the wall he had to go pull that off the wall so
that he could set up a lawsuit against the omni hotel and get more money the greedy s.o.b
three years after julie post's death ed post went on trial for first degree murder
ed post pleaded not guilty and took the stand in his own defense ed's demeanor on the stand i think could best be
described as follows he was very well dressed he was very articulate spoke at a very sophisticated level
including his use of the language spoke i think far differently than the jurors were accustomed to speaking
or hearing uh he did not speak with a southern accent at all although he was from new
orleans and he came across as ed often came across as condescending and i think that
those things did not play well and the scientific experts provided powerful testimony that julie post was
not capable of removing the towel ring during a fall it took the jury less than a day to
reach its verdict ed post was found guilty of first degree murder and was sentenced to life in
prison without possibility of parole ed post and his attorneys appealed the conviction
and in a plea bargain post agreed to plead guilty to second-degree murder and confessed to the murder of his wife in
exchange for a 30-year prison sentence that included the possibility of parole if he doesn't take the towering off
he gets away with it it's just an accidental drowning i mean at how it happened almost everybody
classified it as undetermined or accidental but for that ed posted beyond his merry way he
probably sued the army got a couple million dollars and had seven hundred thousand life
insurance wouldn't know who he was in my opinion the most important thing in the trial
was the science it was the tile ring when you when you can show that it was wretched back and forth back and forth
until it until it broke or until it came loose that convicted him if he would have left that out of there
he might be a free man today [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Edward Post drew a bath for his wife before going for a run. He returned to find her not breathing. She died before emergency response arrived. Police considered her death accidental until a motive surfaced.

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

Ed Post was convicted of murdering his wife Julie, whose suspicious drowning led to a complex investigation and trial.

Key points

Tragic Discovery. Ed Post returns to find his wife Julie dead in the bathtub, ruled an accidental drowning.
Suspicion Arises. Investigators question the circumstances of Julie's death, suspecting foul play despite initial findings.
Insurance Increase. Just weeks before her death, Ed Post increased Julie's life insurance significantly, raising eyebrows.
Trial and Conviction. Ed Post is found guilty of first-degree murder after compelling evidence emerges against him.
Plea Bargain. Post pleads guilty to second-degree murder, confessing to the crime in exchange for a lighter sentence.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I thought Ed was a good fellow.

Describing Ed Post's initial impression as a real estate salesman.

1:28WatchNov 4, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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