Forensic Files - Season 4, Episode 2 - The Killing Room - Full Episode | Forensic Files

before scott was a ladies man and while it wasn't unusual for him to be seeing a number of women at the same
time his date on this night raised more than a few eyebrows hey everybody this is my lady
sometime during the party scott became ill so sick he was unable to drive home a few days later
scott dunn disappeared and was never seen again [Music] so 24 year old scott dunn was a fun loving
young man who enjoyed life to the fullest scott lived in lubbock texas settling there after serving in the u.s military
he worked for mgm electronics in a job he loved installing custom sound systems in automobiles
[Music] the last time friend saw scott was on may 13 1991 at a party after work [Music]
scott was a prankster and decided to add a little excitement to the festivities [Music]
his date that night wasn't a she at all she was really a he a transvestite before the night was through scott's
friends eventually found out and weren't amused later while still at the party scott
became ill he was so sick he couldn't drive home and stayed overnight on the sofa
the next day his live-in girlfriend lisha hamilton drove over to pick him up he looked like crap he couldn't hardly
walk i mean you could tell he'd been in bed all day he wasn't showered he wasn't
clean clothes on all awkwardly couldn't get dressed by himself after spending another full day in bed
scott told lisha he finally felt well enough to return to work i woke up that morning he was in bed
with me by then um asked him how he felt i asked him did he need a ride to work because he didn't
have his cars there he said no his friend was coming for him and just asked me to get him a glass of
water and some sinus medicine which i did brought it to him and then i left when i came home
he was gone when scott's friend stopped by the apartment to pick him up there was no answer
no one ever would answer so um just never heard from him two days later lisa called scott's
father in pennsylvania to see if he had heard from scott and it's a young woman's voice and
she goes into i don't know if i'm talking to who i'm talking to but i assume you're scott's father because i
found the telephone number on the telephone bill and i said well that's right i'm scott's father but who
are you she said well i've been living with scott for a couple of months now and
sometimes we've been together for some time and i said well i don't know really know
who you are jim dunn filed a missing persons report with the lubbock police department what was he wearing last we
saw him police wondered whether scott dunn's personal life held some clues to his disappearance
when scott dunn disappeared from lubbock texas without a trace his friends told police this was out of character the way
scott was he would he would have called at least and said hey guys you know look
i'm out here in mexico hanging out partying is something scott's live-in girlfriend lisa hamilton
told police that when she returned from work scott was gone she also said that a
large piece of carpet was missing from under the sofa when police searched the bedroom
they discovered that another piece of carpet in the bedroom had also been removed and replaced with the carpet
from under the sofa along the edge were some rust-colored stains the staining along the edge of that
patch in the original carpet was very evident to anybody that's been doing this for any length of time it was blood
when the carpet patch was lifted police noticed it was held together with duct tape on the underpadding was another
large stain which also appeared to be blood in one spot it had soaked through a hole in the padding to the cement
floor underneath and it looked as if someone had washed blood from the baseboard
to find out investigators used a chemical called luminol which can detect areas where
blood has been cleaned up with water and detergents the luminol revealed a scene
of horrific violence you can actually see the pattern you can see where blood had been
and my initial reaction was that something had occurred in that apartment it was stark
somebody had very obviously tried to clean the whole thing up and had done a fairly good job of it i just knew that
he was dead i felt very confident that he was was dead it was probably the longest day of my life and it was the
most devastating thing that ever happened to me but who would want to kill scott dunn
and why dunn had a previous arrest and conviction for possession of cocaine but the theory that this was somehow drug
related was inconsistent with the crime scene if it was a drug hit they probably would
have left the person there wanting everybody in the world to see so that nobody else would cross them
and this this crime scene was covered up and the only reason it was covered up was because it was trying to be hidden
police also discovered scott dunn was leading a secret life while living with lisha hamilton he
continued to date numerous other women he was wild he played the field he had in my opinion he had a history of of
using women for his own purposes in fact he was engaged to be married to a young
lady in the metroplex while he was living with alicia hamilton lisha hamilton learned about scott's
engagement just one month earlier he's calling his fiancee [Music] yeah i'll be sure to tell you called
and i think at the point where that telephone call came is when alicia realized she had been had by scott
and alicia herself was a user and when it became apparent to her that she in this
situation was not the user but was in fact the uz she became enraged but was that sufficient motive for lisha
hamilton to murder scott dunn and if so where was the body alicia hamilton continued to call jim
dunn from texas keeping him informed of the investigation into scott's disappearance
but she asked for something in return she wanted scott's yellow sports car jim dunn
taped those telephone conversations you just seem to want the car and i have promised you the car
when this is all over but you don't seem to want to wait actually i don't i don't i don't need it
it is the want right now okay the only thing i want is this car that's the only thing i've wanted from
the start that's the only thing i want now a background check by lubbock police revealed that lisha hamilton
had a past arrest in new mexico for embezzlement but if lisha was involved in scott's
disappearance why had she helped police by pointing out the missing carpet in their apartment
lisa told scott's father that she thought a man named tim smith had something to do with scott's
disappearance tim smith was a guy that lived in the apartment near alicia he had been brought up in a very strict
very religious environment my theory was that this was the first real contact he'd ever had with a
worldly woman and that he became enamored with her and the way she made him feel and he
just fed him fell head over heels in love with her police discovered that smith did not
show up for work on the day scott dunn disappeared tim smith police department when police visited tim smith's
apartment to ask a few questions they noticed he was packing to move we're investigating the disappearance of
scott dunn whatever i can do to help mind if we take a look around sure go ahead
[Music] when they walked back into the living room they noticed that something that
had been sitting on the bookshelf disappeared where's the roll of tape what table
the duct tape was there on the shelf i don't know what you're talking about but behind some books on another shelf
police found what they were looking for the duct tape that was on the shelf just
a few minutes earlier that was a stroke of luck but it's also good investigative work i mean how many
times you walk into a place where a guy is moving and see a roller duct tape and
think nothing of it the duct tape was sent to the forensic laboratory for analysis
the tape in smith's apartment looked very similar to the tape on the carpet patch in dunn's apartment
the samples were analyzed using infraspectral photometry where infrared light is passed through the duct tape
and the detector will determine how much wavelength of light is being absorbed at different
wavelengths the results are then printed out in a chart in the case of roger scott dunn
the duct tape we separated out into its components the fibers that run long in the duct
tape the backing of the duct tape and the adhesive of the duct tape as you can see
the infrared spectrum from the roll of duct tape found at the suspect's house and the duct tape found at the seam are
consistent in the fibers component the backing component and the adhesive component
and the roll of tape held even more clues on the side of the roll were green nylon
fibers tri-lobal or triangular in shape they were the same size and shape and made of the same polymers and dyed the
same color as the carpet in scott dunn's bedroom i feel confident that the fibers on the
side of the duct tape came from the apartment and that the duct tape underneath the carpet came
from the roll of duct tape but without a body authorities were hesitant to conclude
homicide a lot of it had to do with the body we had no body and the district attorney's office at that
time was very apprehensive to try to take something to trial where you had no no corpus delictis what they say
a full year passed and jim dunn decided to take matters into his own hands he heard about a
group of international forensic experts who meet several times a year in philadelphia to study unsolved murders
the group of 82 members is called the vidoc society named after eugene francoise vidak an 18th century french
detective considered to be the father of modern criminal investigation one of the co-founders of the vedoc
society richard walter agreed to listen to mr dunn's story well after about an hour and a half of
me presenting showing pictures and listening to some tape recordings and things i had he looked me straight in
the eye and said jim aren't you tired of being the grieving father and he looked at me and he said i
thought i was supposed to be and i said no you're supposed to be god damn mad let's go after that [ __ ]
richard walter was convinced that lisha hamilton held the key to scott dunn's disappearance
walter sent the crime scene photos to dr richard shepherd a forensic pathologist
at scotland yard in london after reviewing the information dr shepard concluded that scott dunn had
been murdered in the corner of his bedroom the result of multiple blunt trauma injuries
but at the time under texas law without a body there was no homicide armed with dr shepard's forensic
analysis richard walter pleaded the case to the district attorney arguing that they had a body part he said what part
of the body is that i said blood's connective tissue he said he looked give me a long look
and he said all right you got her murder prosecutors brought in their own blood spatter expert tom bevel to confirm the
findings of dr shepard according to bevel the blood spatter pattern on the walls
indicated three distinct lines of cast off blood from a weapon for example if we had three cast off
stains that were going in three directions that would be consistent with three blows plus the one
to create the blood in the first place so in this case we'd say there was a minimum of four blows that was delivered
to find out how much blood scott dunn lost during the assault bevel conducted a blood saturation test
by pouring human blood onto a test piece of carpet bevel created the same size stain found in the bedroom in this case
266 square inches it took just under two units of blood to create the stain and soak through to the
padding underneath if you take that in consideration with all the other physical evidence there
such as the blood cleanup cutting out of the carpet the blood spatter the cast off that's to the wall and also to the
ceiling along with that blood volume uh it certainly is a high suspicion that somebody in fact is dead
[Music] authorities were now convinced that scott dunn had been murdered in his bedroom
lubbock police suspected that both lisa hamilton and tim smith were somehow involved in scott dunn's murder but they
had no evidence linking lisha to the crime and the only link to smith was the duct tape
until richard walter discovered something that was previously overlooked walter learned that several strands of
unidentified hair had been found on the duct tape in scott dunn's bedroom he suggested the hair be sent for
forensic analysis at the fbi lab in washington dc the hair from the duct tape underneath the carpet
was compared to hair samples from lisha hamilton and tim smith no scott dunn hairs were found on that
tape but both the hairs of lisha hamilton and tim smith were found on that duct tape holding it in which means
when that duct tape was put down and that patch put in place they were there five and a half years after scott dunn's
disappearance lisha hamilton and tim smith were arrested and charged with murder
prosecutors believe that lisia's motive was revenge that she was angry when she learned that scott was engaged to
another woman she's hard as rocks bright aggressive works smart um but has his insatiable appetite for
power control crushing people she dismisses you you don't dismiss her alicia hamilton was the absolute
instigator ringleader and she was the wicked witch of the west who contrived developed lead and covered up this whole
thing prosecutors believe that scott dunn was murdered in the early morning hours of
may 16 1991. he was asleep in the bedroom and struck at least four times with a blunt object
about two units of scott's blood was lost in the attack [Music] as scott's body was removed from the
apartment his blood was transferred onto the bedroom doorknob the location of the body is still
unknown [Music] the cover-up failed because the water and detergents could not remove the
hemoglobin components of the blood which later fluoresced when sprayed with the chemical luminol
a piece of carpet from under the sofa in the living room was used to patch the blood-stained carpet in the bedroom
the duct tape used to patch the carpet together contained strands of hair consistent with hair samples from both
lisa hamilton and tim smith and the side of the duct tape picked up some stray carpet fibers
the roll was later found in tim smith's apartment lisha hamilton and tim smith were tried
separately and both were convicted of murder lisa hamilton was sentenced to 20 years
tim smith received a 10-year probation the jury i think believed that perhaps he had a great deal to do with disposing
of the body but they didn't believe he was actually there when the murder took place and i think for that reason they
recommended the judge imposed probation instead of sentencing him to a term in the
penitentiary which would be carried out although the body of scott dunn has never been found
a headstone waits and the father still mourns i'm just hopeful that at some point
somebody will talk and that we can recover his remains and still we can have a decent burial and a decent
ceremony that we can put him to rest and i'd feel totally absolved at that point that i'd done
everything i could do if i could ever reach that point i haven't quite reached that yet and i still crosses my mind
what else i can do but at this point i'm going to let it go and hope that somebody
the good lord or somebody will give us some direction i'll know what that actually means in my life at some point
[Music] [Applause] [Music] you

When Scott Dunn goes missing, police spray his bedroom with Luminol and uncover a scene of horrific violence. Now investigators face a daunting task: proving that Scott Dunn had been murdered without a body, a witness or a murder weapon.

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

Scott Dunn disappeared in 1991; Lisha Hamilton and Tim Smith were later convicted of his murder without a body found.

Key points

The Disappearance of Scott Dunn. Scott Dunn, a fun-loving young man, mysteriously vanished after a party in 1991.
The Shocking Revelation. Scott's date at the party was a transvestite, shocking his friends.
The Crime Scene Investigation. Police discovered blood and evidence of a violent struggle in Scott's apartment.
The Arrests. Five and a half years later, Lisha Hamilton and Tim Smith were arrested for murder.
A Father's Hope. Despite the tragedy, a father holds onto hope for his son's remains.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I just knew that he was dead.

A police investigator's gut feeling about Scott's fate.

6:09WatchNov 4, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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