Forensic Files - Season 6, Episode 27 - Cats, Flies & Snapshots - Full Episode | Forensic Files

in 1989 near the pocono mountains in pennsylvania nineteen-year-old lori awker left for
work she was never heard from again [Music] it was nasa technology a fly and the family cat
that helped solve her disappearance in a most unusual way [Music] [Applause] [Music]
[Applause] the susquehanna valley in central pennsylvania is a quiet agricultural
area lori orca grew up here not far from the mighty susquehanna river lori was a very sweet girl she was a
typical 19 year old she had a lot of goals and aspirations for her future as far as becoming a veterinarian and had a
great deal of interest in animals just out of high school lori married robert orker he was almost 10 years
older and worked in a warehouse not long afterwards the couple had a son matthew
lori took a job at a local pet store to earn extra money she shared her love of animals with her
son matthew at every opportunity when she wasn't working she'd come in to show him he'd particularly like kittens
and she'd bring him in to show him the kittens and he liked watching the fish playing with the puppies
but she was a good mother although lori and robert loved their child problems between the two began to
surface the couple argued and friends say they were unable to resolve their differences
just 18 months after they were married lori and robert separated laurie and the baby moved in with her
parents robert moved in with his and had visitation rights she wasn't happy with him because he was
had a very controlling type nature about him she had to answer all his questions
before she could go anywhere he used physical discipline whenever he got upset with
matt and that's what upset lori while separated laurie dated occasionally but only casually
on may 24 1989 while matthew was at robert's house lori prepared for her usual four to nine shift at the pet
store [Music] after packing a snack laurie left for work but she never arrived lori's supervisor called looking for her
and i asked them if lori had left for work and and her father said that she had and and i said well has she called
or anything because she she's not here at the store yet and she was scheduled to start
about a half an hour ago he said no he said but this makes me very worried he said
she left on time laurie's father drove the route that she usually took to work he thought she
might have had car trouble along the way he eventually found laurie's car in the
parking lot near the pet shop where she usually parked nothing seemed to be out of place
laurie's purse and keys were not in the car the disappearance frightened people the
thought that some young woman could go to a mall a very busy mall in broad daylight and suddenly disappear
presumably being abducted really shot a shock wave of fear throughout that rather conservative small
area police canvassed the area and questioned employees and shoppers in the mall but
no one saw anything suspicious almost from the start police suspected laurie's estranged
husband robert may have had something to do with her disappearance but robert said he hadn't seen laurie at
all that day and he had an alibi he said he was babysitting their son went shopping and then went to two scheduled
appointments mr elka told me that on the day of lorianne's disappearance that he had been over to wise markets to
get a disability claim form and he took that form to an office in louisburg an orthopedic surgeon
and from there he went to the bloomsburg sears mall and priced the dishwasher for his mother
police are now asking for the public's help for the next three weeks police family members friends and
volunteers continued the search with no success on june 12th a woman jogging a few miles from the
mall spotted something in an area known as claudi's dump it was little more than a skeleton
investigators wondered whether this was the body of laurie orcar and looked to forensic science for some
way to tell the body was markedly decomposed in that only in the extremities was there any
flesh left there was no skin and no organs internally that to work with investigators needed to identify
the skeleton found in the dump a few miles from the pet store and they also wanted to know the cause
of death to find out they brought in forensic pathologist dr isidor mahalikas from the size of the skull he knew the
body was female the cut marks on the bones and the holes in the clothing helped him to determine
the cause of death the presence of cuts which corresponded to perforations in the
sweater is consistent with stab wounds with movement and with homicide dr mahalikas concluded that this woman
had been stabbed in the chest and back at least seven times possibly as many as eleven
but he wasn't able to make an identification from the remains for that dr mahalicas asked forensic odontologist
dr dennis ayson to make a dental comparison without the benefit of forensic dentistry when you have a victim such as
lariaka's in the loriaki case there are no fingerprints that you can use the body is unrecognizable because of the
disintegration of tissues very often the only thing that does remain is the dental evidence that we
can compare to before death records and and establish a positive identification after comparing the teeth of the victim
to lori's dental records and x-rays dr aysan made a positive identification the victim had nine teeth restored with
dental materials those teeth as it turned out were the same teeth that loriaka had restored the same nine
teeth the same type of material in each tooth the same location of materials or restorations in each tooth that matched
up with lariaka no murder weapon was found at the scene investigators now wanted to know when
laurie died time of death is usually determined in one of three ways first by the body
temperature useless in this case given the length of time the body was outside another way is to examine stomach
contents but the body was too badly decomposed the third way is to analyze any insect
activity forensic entomologist dr k chung kim studied the larvae found on the body
an entomologist is an expert in the study of insects what this body had was a large number of
different kind of beetles and then a very late stage of maggots within minutes of death
blow flies can detect the smell of decomposition even from miles away dr kim calculated that the larvae
deposited by the flies had been on the body for 19 days which meant they were on the body the day laurie
disappeared in an incredible stroke of luck police learned that an automated teller
machine near the entrance to the mall was equipped with a surveillance camera which took pictures every 10 seconds
the camera was aimed in the direction of laurie's car at first glance the images looked
unimportant they showed a man making a bank transaction but in the background out of focus there
appeared to be an automobile near laurie's car with an unidentified person standing nearby
deeper into the parking lot was a scene that was captured on this video the scene was a little blurry i would liken
it to like a an alfred hitchcock kind of movie the images looked promising but were not
clear enough for any kind of analysis so prosecutors asked both the pennsylvania state police laboratory and
the fbi for help but neither one could improve the photographs with nowhere else to turn
the fbi suggested they asked nasa for help nasa had been using sophisticated digital photo enhancement technology to
improve images from space nasa referred the case to research scientist alan teigen of the ballistic
missile defense organization teigen used a technique similar to the one used to determine the cause of the
challenger explosion in 1986 digitization is the process of taking the normal video signal
that you would get out of your vcr at home and turning it into a computer image file
when the images are put into the computer they are broken down into thousands of
pixels each of these pixels are converted into a number representing how bright that dot is in this
particular case the data is black and white video so that the pixel represents simply
different shades between total black and full white digital enhancement can also remove
blurring in an image and special filters can eliminate some of the grain once complete you can see how this
process significantly improved the images prosecutors hoped that these enhanced photographs would tell the story of lori
orker's disappearance the digitally enhanced surveillance photos of the parking lot where laurie
awkward disappeared showed laurie's car in its parking spot standing behind it was a person in the
same clothing laurie wore that day the film was in black and white on that particular scene we knew that
lori had been wearing a windbreaker that day had been wearing jeans and had carried a white purse
she was a medium build she had short brown hair that person that we see in the picture there fits that description
precisely the next picture taken 10 seconds later shows another automobile diagonally in
front of lorry with the passenger side door open you can see that laurie is bent over
looking into the car the final picture shows lori's car still in its parking spot
but lori is gone the car lori was standing next to is leaving the parking lot the person we've described as lori ocker
cannot be seen and we know circumstantially that she never made it into the door
so that we believe was the depiction of her abduction an automobile expert identified the
getaway car as a chevrolet celebrity although laurie's estranged husband robert didn't own a chevrolet celebrity
his parents did robert's parents told police that robert had borrowed their car on the day laurie
disappeared they said they sold the car a week after robert returned it [Music] police tracked it through three
different car dealerships it transferred hands within the used car industry a few times and was ultimately
purchased the first consumer the purchase that was a retired state police officer
the police officer bought the vehicle for his stepdaughter who hadn't yet reached driving age
so it had been sitting in a garage a lucky break for investigators it still maintained its integrity
by the time we got to it we were able to access the vehicle test it scientifically for prints for
trace evidence investigators searched the car but could find no traces of blood anywhere inside
we did have some neighbors observe robert ocker scrupulously cleaning that car the day after lori
disappeared but in the trunk of the car they found a clue a tiny strand of hair under a microscope
the hair did not appear to be human on the left is a human hair on the right the hair from robert's trunk
under an electron microscope magnified thousands of times the outer pattern of the hair was more
box-like than human hair similar to the steps on a ladder the blue specks are dust particles
after looking through numerous species of hair scientists discovered it was a cat hair
investigators compared that hair to a cat hair from laurie's parents cat and found
they were microscopically similar this was significant since the cat belonged to laurie's parents
robert didn't have access to this cat and the cat never resided with robert and laurie when they lived together
what was also significant robert's parents didn't own a cat and laurie had never been in robert's
parents car before her disappearance investigators believed that this cat hair was proof that laurie had been
in the trunk of robert's car robert docker knew his parents were going to be trading that vehicle in
within a matter of days and in my opinion that's why he used that vehicle and not his own
to abduct laurie with this evidence in hand police arrested robert awker for the murder of
his estranged wife when i arrested robert locker he said to me you've got to be kidding
what the worst part of it to me other than the fact that she died was when we were told that he had thrown
her body in a dump there's no reason for someone like lori to wind up at a dope prosecutors believe the surveillance
photograph supported their theory that robert abducted laurie in the mall parking lot
to convince a jury prosecutors needed to prove that the automobile in the pictures was the
chevrolet owned by robert walker's parents so they reconstructed the crime they placed the chevrolet robert was driving
in the mall parking lot and took photographs from the same position height and at the same
millimeter as the surveillance camera but this time the background was in focus at the top is the original surveillance
picture of lori's alleged abduction at the bottom is the recreation photograph the vehicles in both pictures look
identical [Music] and prosecutors discovered a possible motive for the murder money
ocker had taken out an insurance policy on laurie and on his son listing himself
as the beneficiary he had taken that policy out after they separated and robert and laurie had been engaged
in a custody dispute over their son another possible motive a background check of robert awker
revealed that he had a troubled past robert ocker had been in trouble most of his life as a juvenile up to his
adulthood shortly after he married laurie robert was convicted for driving under the
influence of alcohol and served a brief stint in prison while there robert ordered a book that
described in detail how to commit a murder and get away with it the title of the book will not be
revealed in this program for obvious reasons police officials blocked the delivery of
this order [Music] prosecutors believe that on may 24 1989 as laurie drove into the mall parking
lot robert was there waiting what are you doing here i need you to come with me right away
when robert drove up and opened the door he may have used some type of excuse to
get laurie inside possibly that their son was sick and he needed her help prosecutors admit they don't know where
the murder took place the forensic evidence doesn't say all they know is that laurie was in
robert's trunk sometime that day and was stabbed numerous times in the chest and
back before her body was left at the dump when robert later cleaned the trunk he couldn't see
the almost microscopic evidence that laurie left behind the cat hair which had stuck to laurie's
clothing was transferred again onto the carpet of robert's trunk it was an ironic twist given laurie's
lifelong love of animals i remember lori as being a very nice person just all around nice she was nice to
animals she was nice to people and she loved her son absolutely loved her son robert awker was found guilty of first
degree murder and kidnapping and was sentenced to death on appeal the sentence was reduced to
life in prison without parole [Music] nasa's help was an important forensic breakthrough since it was one of the
first times a crime scene photo had undergone digital video enhancement the enhancement of the video from the
atm machine was something brand new something that had never been done before this is a case that set a trend
for prosecutors certainly throughout pennsylvania i think there was an awakening
a scientific awakening on the part of police on the part of prosecutors they realized suddenly that there were
other tools at their disposal that perhaps they hadn't considered before and ironically those tools have now
become somewhat routine [Music] [Music] so [Music] you

When 19-year-old Lori Auker left her Pennsylvania home for work and never arrived, it took space-age technology, cat hairs and insects to pinpoint the image of the woman's abductor.

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

Lori Acker's 1989 disappearance was solved using NASA's video enhancement technology, leading to her estranged husband's conviction for murder.

Key points

Lori Awker's Mysterious Disappearance. In 1989, Lori Awker vanished without a trace, sparking fear in her community.
Forensic Breakthrough in Lori's Case. NASA's digital enhancement technology played a crucial role in solving Lori's disappearance.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

There's no reason for someone like Lori to wind up at a dump.

Detective reflecting on Lori's tragic fate.

16:51WatchNov 24, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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