Forensic Files - Season 4, Episode 8 - Body of Evidence - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[Music] on june 21st 1978 22 year old carla brown was found brutally murdered in the basement of her
home [Music] it looked as if the killer had committed the perfect crime [Music] and police could find very little
evidence but years later investigators noticed something on a crime scene photograph
that had previously been overlooked the killer had left behind a clue [Music] twenty-two-year-old carla brown and her
fiance a man we'll call mark hart had recently purchased a home together in wood river illinois
although the couple had a rocky past friends and family saw this as the beginning of a new phase in their
relationship carla brown was a beautiful little girl grew up into a beautiful young woman was
very popular in her hometown in the wood river area i had taken some college classes had been a high school
cheerleader was one of those girls that everybody knew girls liked her guys liked her
she was just one of those people that was special and everybody recognized that on june 21st carla brown took the day
off from work to unpack yes the house was great and spoke to one of her friends on the telephone maybe we
can have you over for dinner they had talked for a few minutes in fact we even talked about getting together later on
that afternoon wait a second i just heard something in the door and carla interrupted the conversation and said
listen i'll have to call you back i'll see you later there's somebody at the door
and that was the last that our friend ever talked to around 5 30 that afternoon carla's fiance and his friends stopped
by the house after work when they walked into the basement they saw a horrible sight
carla was lying face down in a bucket of water she had her hands tied behind her there
was evidence of struggle a death struggle in the basement and a very strong suggestion of a sexual rape
but investigators were confused about some of the things they saw there were two men's socks tied around
carla's neck they were tied neatly inconsistent with what you would expect to see in a life and death struggle
the white electrical cord used to tie the victim's hands was not tight enough to effectively restrain an individual
during an assault there was too much length of cord behind her to where her hands could come
up in front of her it would seem like to me that she would have access to the attacker
given that much freedom with the length of rope that was tied between the two wrists
she was found wearing a sweater her fiance said she would never wear in the summer
the top button was fastened another inconsistency with a life-and-death struggle
the socks around carla's neck were from inside the home the mate to one was found in her
fiance's dresser the other was under the sofa in the adjacent room under the sofa was a puddle of water
tinted with blood the sofa cushions were also wet and there were blood drops on the floor near the sofa
in the rafters was a coffee carafe from the kitchen to homicide investigators it looked as
if the coffee carafe had been used to rinse blood from the sofa cushions the attack occurred near the sofa and
the body was later moved into an adjacent room and placed into the barrel of water
the crime scene staging told investigators that the perpetrator spent a great deal of time inside the house
after the murder but who knew that carla brown was home and alone on the day of the murder
and who would have felt free to spend so much time in the home cleaning up and staging the scene
police began their investigation with a close look at carla brown's fiancee the autopsy report on carla brown
indicated death by strangulation although she was found nude from the waist down there were no signs of sexual
assault investigators were convinced that the killer spent a great deal of time in the house after the murder
staging the crime scene i didn't know mark very well although they had dated for a
number of years off and on and there were times in their relationship that it wasn't great
but she seemed to always be crazy about him anyway police also questioned two neighbors who
had been sitting in the yard next door on the day carla and her fiance were moving in
hey carla carla brown i'm john prante we went to school together remember me hi how are you
[Music] both men had alibis as to where they were on the day of the murder and they
both willingly took lie detector tests and passed with no other leads police asked the fbi
for a psychological profile of the killer and turned to fbi behavioral analyst john douglas
in my research we began to break down crimes by disorganize and organize disorganized means extremely
sloppy carelessness on the part of the offender the crime could be very very impulsive organized means that there's a
high degree high level of criminal sophistication on the part of the subject to douglas this crime scene was
disorganized an indication that the killer was inexperienced and probably had never killed before
he came to the home with no intention of committing murder but did so after some
sort of confrontation or rejection since he spent so much time inside the home douglas believed that he was familiar
with the victim and her routine and might be living in the neighborhood or very close by
douglas said the killer was an unmarried white male in his mid to late twenties high school educated with a sloppy
appearance the use of electrical cord to tie the victim's hands indicated the killer had
taken shop classes or had vocational training douglas also told investigators that
they may have already interviewed the murderer and that he was capable of passing a polygraph test
and then it got kind of spooky i mean i was sitting there and i wasn't sure i was believing what he was saying after a
certain point he started talking about how this individual would react and what kind of vehicle he'd be driving
and he started talking about a volkswagen there was a high probability this guy would be a volt
driving a volkswagen and that would be red or orange in color this led investigators to focus once
again on the two men sitting next door on the day carla brown and her fiance were moving in
but investigators needed more than just a psychological profile they needed hard evidence
crime scene technician alva bush remained deeply troubled by the carla brown murder for one thing he and his
colleagues could not determine what caused the wounds on carla brown's face and chin
the first real break in the case occurred when bush attended a seminar on image enhancement at the university of
new mexico dr homer campbell taught that seminar he worked for the state of new mexico as a
medical investigator dr campbell was demonstrating a photographic technique that uses cameras
monitors and computers to show details of crime scene photographs that cannot otherwise be seen
this was a technique that had been used for several years both by engineers in non-destructive testing of materials and
also by archaeologists looking at aerial photographs to find ancient ruins after the seminar bush told dr campbell
about the carla brown case and i said doc do i have a case for you and i told them about the carla brown
case and that we were never able to identify what type instrument hadn't damaged her face i
asked him to please send me the photographs that they had of the deceased person
and also to send me an autopsy report dr campbell used his image enhancement equipment to look more closely at the
crime scene photos of carla brown the system not only improves the contrast of the photographs that can
also create what appear to be three-dimensional views adding depth to the image when dr campbell was through
he knew what caused the injuries to carla brown's face he tells me that maybe the
tv tray may have been the instrument that she was hitting ahead with this tv tray was lying on the floor within three
foot of the victim where she had probably been on the couch but i had missed it the tray tables were still in storage
untouched in the two years since the murder in an extraordinary piece of luck dr campbell found microscopic traces of
blood and hair still present on the tray table and what dr campbell said next was even
more revealing he says what about the bite mark and i i said buy it mark why by mark what are
you talking about when we looked at the photograph and went ahead and enhanced it and magnified
it present on the shoulder was a bite injury on the shoulder and by looking at that bite injury you could actually pick
out individual teeth all the way across i trade that for five eyewitnesses anytime so eyewitnesses can make
mistakes things like fingerprints don't and it was my understanding that bite marks
properly preserved with an identified defendant could give you the defendant as good as a
fingerprint the killer had left behind a clue all investigators needed now was a suspect
[Music] two years after the brutal murder of 22 year old carla brown investigators got the break they needed
when a photographic enhancement revealed a bite mark on carla's shoulder police now turned
to the two men sitting in the yard next door when carla brown moved into her new
home both matched the fbi's behavioral profile of the killer police checked their alibis again
although both had passed the polygraph tests police discovered that john prante had spoken about the murder to others
john prandty had mentioned to his friends that he had seen her body that day that he looked over the
shoulder of some policemen while they were investigating in the basement and he described the condition of her body
and he even mentioned that she had bite marks on her neck and collarbone the police were the only ones inside the
house after carla brown's body was found and that was a shock to us as police officers because there's no
way that he could have known that unless he put the bite mark there also the information about the location
of the body the way the body was found the only way that that would have been known is either to have been there on
the investigation or to put the body there yourself because we never release that
information to the public or to the media since the bite marks were overlooked during the original autopsy
investigators wanted to make sure nothing else was missed so carla brown's body was exhumed for a
second autopsy this time it was performed by dr mary case the chief medical examiner for st
louis county in the original autopsy there was the ligature strangulation and the body was examined and for some
reason the head was not examined and so i opened the cranial cavity and there was bruising
in the scalp somebody struck her on the head and question is whether or not for example this blow would cause loss of
consciousness dr case thought that carla brown may have been alive when she was placed in
the barrel of water because when she was found there was foam around her mouth because she was in water and she was
producing that foam i feel like there may be some component of drowning that she was still
even though she'd been strangled that she was still maybe to a minimal degree breathing because i believe that she may
have breathed in some water during the autopsy more photographs were taken of the suspected bite wounds which
were sent to the new york state police forensic unit for an independent evaluation
prosecutors wanted to make sure that the mark on carla brown's neck was in fact a
bite wound in my opinion the pattern injury on carla brown's neck had all the characteristics that a bite mark would
have dr levine was asked to compare the bite wound to three different dental casts
prosecutors sent along for analysis dr levine had no idea to whom the casts belonged
after making wax impressions of the models dr levine concluded that two of the models were not consistent with the bite
wound i took the third model and examined all the individual characteristics that those teeth would have caused
compared those characteristics with the characteristics on the clarified photograph of carla brown's neck
that i had and came to the opinion that only that model was consistent with having caused that pattern injury
or that bite mark he measured the teeth he went back to the photograph he turned them different ways he held
him up in the air finally he laid the dental impressions on the table and he pointed to him and he said
that's your man model number three belonged to john prante interestingly prandi also matched john
douglas's psychological profile he was in his late twenties had a history of troubled relationships with
women he attended industrial art school and had a sloppy unkempt appearance franti spent a great deal of time in the
neighborhood often visiting his friend who lived next door to carla brown and just as john douglas had predicted
tranti had passed an earlier polygraph test the most unusual aspect of douglas's
profile was the prediction that pranty would be driving a red volkswagen where that came from
only john could say but in fact did turn out that the individual did have a volkswagen
prosecutors believe that when carla brown's fiancee left for work john prante walked over and knocked on
the door maybe we can have you over for dinner carla was talking on the telephone
hello wait a second i just heard something in the door let me call you back [Music]
what do you want need some help moving in i want you to leave come on why don't we
talk a little i want you to leave now there was some kind of argument or struggle possibly after she had rejected
tranti's sexual advances he forced her into the basement and hit her with a tray table
at some point he bitter on the shoulder and strangled her afterwards he staged the scene to make
it appear to be a sexual assault but when he changed her clothes he made the mistake of fastening the top button
the first clue that the scene had been staged he tied her hands with electrical cord
wrapped the socks around her neck [Applause] and placed her into the water while she
was unconscious but still alive pranty tried to remove the bloodstains on the sofa with water he carried from
the kitchen in the coffee carafe which he left in the rafters above the sofa the clothes carla was wearing that day
were never found pranty may have taken them as a trophy in july of 1983 john prandty was tried and convicted of
first degree murder and was sentenced to 75 years in the state penitentiary after five long years
carla brown's family finally had some closure i would like to tell him that he he took away a very wonderful
person um who had a lot to offer and a and a family who cared very much about carla
and that it was very very selfish of him to to not consider another person's life
as as something as something that can just be thrown away on a particular day he got caught
because the techniques of investigation in law enforcement completely overpowered him
he got away with the crime because he was lucky he got caught because law enforcement changed his luck
don weber along with journalist charles bosworth chronicled the many ups and downs of this case in a best-selling
book silent witness carla's family was so intrigued by the bite mark evidence that
she embroidered a little tapestry that she presented to don weber as a token of her
appreciation and it offers the slogan that don had used that you can lie through your teeth
but your teeth don't lie and around the border is the pattern of rectangle space rectangle space triangle
which is the bite mark pattern that don had proved had been made by john prante [Music]
[Applause] [Music] you

Mark Fair left for work and his fiancée, Karla Brown, stayed home. Later, he found her dead. During the autopsy, bite marks on her body were re-examined and forensic odontology identified the killer.

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

The murder of Carla Brown led to John Prante's conviction through bite mark evidence and psychological profiling.

Key points

The Perfect Crime. Carla Brown was found brutally murdered, leading investigators to believe it was the perfect crime.
Breakthrough in the Case. Years later, a photographic enhancement revealed a crucial bite mark on Carla's shoulder.
John Prante's Conviction. John Prante was tried and convicted of first-degree murder, sentenced to 75 years in prison.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

He took away a very wonderful person.

A family member reflecting on Carla's loss.

19:36WatchNov 4, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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