Forensic Files - Season 6, Episode 9 - Soft Touch - Full Episode | Forensic Files

in 1990 the killer of a 22 year old girl left an almost indistinguishable mark in a blood stain
at the crime scene but a new computer forensic technology found distinguishing characteristics in
the smear evidence that would lead directly to the perpetrator [Music] [Applause]
[Music] [Applause] [Music] richmond virginia is a city steeped in history as the former capital of the confederacy
richmond keeps close ties to its past and a watchful eye on the future [Music] with six colleges and universities
thousands of young people move here each fall to go to school 22 year old dawn bruce had attended
virginia commonwealth university dawn was a musician she joined the vcu win symphony after she was accepted
through auditions that's what kept her there for as long as she was there but dawn was anxious to
find out what was out in the real world and how she could do and what she could do
after college dawn worked as a phone operator by day and a waitress by night despite the long hours she enjoyed the
freedom of living on her own dawn was a fun-loving kind of person thought she could do anything and
everything and and didn't care what other people said about her trying to to do things that weren't
the norm on december 19 1990 dawn's mother went to her daughter's apartment since she hadn't heard from
her in a few days she found dawn in a pool of blood the medical examiner found evidence she
had been raped sodomized and stabbed in the heart the knife was was rammed in her heart
and the subject held dawn down until she bled to death which from what i understand could have been
eight to ten minutes or longer and she was defiled as in the process of this uh i don't know how much vile violence
is needed but that's only my opinion i think it was a very very bad case first impression i had was what a
horrible horrible crime and and what somebody had done to really an innocent young lady who
who absolutely didn't deserve what happened to her in any sense of the word it was a young 22 year old female who
was working minding her own business had a future ahead of her had had children ahead of her marriage
everything that we all enjoy and she was brutally attacked while she was sleeping
investigators discovered that the killer entered the apartment through a window which had been pried open
but there was no evidence of burglary nothing had been disturbed or broken they found no foreign fingerprints
inside the apartment when i left there i i didn't have very good feelings at all because
i think everything that i carried out there out of the scene was in one large bag and that consisted mostly of the
items on the bed the bed sheets and the pullers and the blankets and so forth dawn bruce was last seen at tommy's
restaurant two nights earlier where she worked the night shift as a waitress dawn met many people through her job
which only added to the large pool of potential suspects investigators tom tiller and jim dorton
interviewed dawn's neighbors in the apartment complex several neighbors were suspicious right
from the start a subject who lived directly beside victim was on active parole and he was
on parole for burglary and attempted rape while armed with a knife so uh immediately we felt that he was a
good suspect there was very little evidence and there's one of these cases that when you
left there that you just thought well this is going to be a hard one to to clear because of the lack of evidence
[Music] with no murder weapon no witnesses and few leads it was going to be a difficult
investigation [Music] she wanted to be a firefighter and she had passed her firefighter one
and two and was volunteering as a firefighter so don was was just a happy person
don wanted as much out of life as she could get into every minute of it she at some point in time would have had
a family wanted children but that was not to be shortly after the rape and murder of 22
year old dawn bruce john alderman was assigned to prosecute the case when you get a crime like this
that really violates a person you get a sense of indignation that that's impossible to escape
a sense of indignation that someone being used and abused like that investigators began focusing their
attention on the few bits of physical evidence they had forensic experts discovered that the
fatal injury was a single stab wound in the heart in the forensics lab scientists found two linear impressions
on the pillowcase that were consistent with the blade of a knife the serrated edges appeared to be those
of a hunting knife also on the pillowcase they found what appeared to be a partial fingerprint in dawn's blood
but the fabric was textured which made any kind of fingerprint analysis impossible
the print was almost invisible even to a trained eye the ridge detail was very faint and we had to really
study it because as we studied it under magnification you enlarged the fabric weave which
had a tendency to totally eradicate the rich detail so at that point in time i did not have a
whole lot of hope for that fingerprint there was rich detail on the print but in my opinion at the time i didn't think
it was very much i knew if that's all that we would ever have and it could not be
enhanced in any way then we wouldn't have much of a case unless we got a lot more evidence coming in that we didn't
think we would get traces of semen also were found at the scene serology tests indicated the killer had
type a blood this eliminated dawn's boyfriend as well as dawn's neighbor who was on parole for
rape and burglary dawn had another neighbor robert knight who had some prior arrest for drug
possession robert knight had made comments to the victim as she was outside washing her car or
going to and from her automobile to her apartment this subject would make comments to her in a
sexual suggestive nature and he became a suspect robert knight had type a blood consistent with the semen sample from
the crime scene but he had an alibi for the night of the murder he said he was with his girlfriend at
the time and the fingerprint on the pillowcase did not appear to match the fingerprints
on file for robert knight we tried traditional photography everything that we knew at that point in
time also to develop some contrast between the ridges and the fabric but basically those techniques were not
satisfactory at that point in time we couldn't get it to a point where we felt like we had an identifiable print
scientists tried various chemical processes to improve the print on the pillowcase
but every time they enhanced it they also enhanced the threads of the pillowcase
investigators were no closer to identifying the print on the pillowcase than they were the day after the murder
the fingerprint was something that we knew we had clearly was observed it clearly was seen
but no one knew what to do with it because it was in a medium in blood on a medium on a pillow case
against a pattern of the pillow case that made it unreadable and if there was some way to make that
print readable it could take on as vibrant a forensic persuader as dna evidence and maybe some
more then investigators got a break every year we have a late and print conference which encompasses all the
late and print examiners in virginia it's a training seminar basically and the imaging people there one of the
vendors brought their imaging system there i was highly skeptical of it had never seen it used in a
forensic case but since we had nothing else other than this very faint print on fabric we thought it was worth a try
the new system was called image enhancement technology image enhancement uses a computer to
identify patterns like those woven into the pillowcase once the pattern was identified it was
subtracted from the image leaving only the ridge patterns of the fingerprint behind
after 10 hours of testing the fabric pattern was subtracted and what began to emerge
was a partial thumbprint of the killer [Music] investigators knew that they had to
identify the fingerprint on the pillowcase in order to solve dawn bruce's murder
the primary suspect in this case was one of dawn's neighbors robert knight who had a history of drug abuse
knight said he had an alibi that he was with his girlfriend on the night of the murder
but his girlfriend said knight wasn't with her for the entire evening the evidence indicated the crime
occurred about between three and four roughly that saturday morning he claimed to be with his girlfriend all night but
his girlfriend said no he was not with me for about that period of time between three and four
the fingerprints on file for robert knight did not have enough ridge detail to determine if they matched the print
on the pillowcase knight voluntarily gave a second set of prints but again there was not enough
ridge detail to make a comparison each time that we would would show our presence around him he got a little bit
more uh stand standoffish and not as cooperative and accused of accused us of harassing him and
he just he's changed entirely his personality and his uh willingness to help he he did not want
us to come around anymore now the prosecution was in a difficult position if they could not identify the
fingerprint as nights the defense attorney would use that against the prosecution at a trial
the defense attorneys would have said whose fingerprint is it we don't know we'll never know and that fingerprint is
a killer and it's not his fingerprint or it can't be proved to be his fingerprint
so in our line of work you really need to answer all the questions and if you don't
the defense attorney asked those questions at closing arguments but prosecutors gambled they arrested
knight for dawn's murder pinning their hopes on the new fingerprint technology and the
scientists ability to match knight's fingerprints after night's arrest norm tiller kept a close eye on the
technique police used to fingerprint him making certain that each finger was carefully rolled from nail to nail for
the clearest set of prints possible as soon as i saw a good suitable roll print i took that straight back to my office
and began that examination but tiller did not rush to judgment he took his time after one month of
analysis and retesting norm tiller found what he was looking for the print on the pillowcase
was a left thumb print matched the outside of robert knight's left thumb i spent additional time doing comparison
work and just analyzing the print from every angle so to speak before we actually affected the identification and
even then i had another examiner go behind me and take a look at everything that i had done to make sure
there were no errors made in the process but there was one more hurdle the image
enhancement technology was so new it had never been accepted as evidence in court
i was concerned at that point in time that the evidence may not be accepted within the scientific community
as a good science this was the first time that anybody had used it take it into court
into a courtroom where it was going to be actually challenged and it was going to be fought
a hearing was held to determine whether forensic evidence from this new fingerprinting technology should be
admitted the defense argued that it was hocus-pocus technology which manipulated
and changed the image of the fingerprint pam ringer was the expert who testified
for the prosecution explaining that the human eye can distinguish between 16 and
32 shades of grey but a computer can distinguish 256 shades ringer said the image enhancement
technology simply eliminated the fabric patterns then made the dark areas of the
fingerprint darker and the light areas between the ridges lighter if somebody as dumb as i am can
understand this when i got done with her over the course of a day and doing some studying afterwards
i think the explanation becomes one that anyone can understand this imaging enhancing doesn't change the
the data at all what we had was a photograph of the fingerprint and pam ringer said i went ahead and did it
that day on march the 27th i could do it again today i can show you i can replicate it
100 times if i need to she did it in stages she took the the first the pattern out then she took the weave out
and as you watch it you can see the print didn't change the print didn't move the lines of of the lands and
grooves of the the print didn't change at all and i think that graphically was the best persuader for for judge culp in
the case the judge was convinced he did not believe that the computer enhancements altered
the bloody fingerprint a legal precedent had been set but prosecutors wanted more than the
fingerprint before heading to trial [Music] robert douglas knight was charged with
the capital murder of 22 year old dawn bruce but police still didn't have the murder
weapon a faint fingerprint left on a flimsy pillowcase would be considered firm evidence in court
and prosecutors soon had a lead on the murder weapon six months after the murder
a maintenance man working in night's old apartment discovered something behind an
access panel in knight's old bedroom i don't know what possessed him to do that i think there was a plumbing
problem that caused him to take it off when he did he looked in and found a hunting knife in a sheath
in the forensics lab scientists performed a simple test to determine if this was the weapon used in
the murder using photographic overlays the pattern of the knife was compared to the knife
impressions found on dawn bruce's pillowcase they matched the final piece of evidence was the dna
testing of the semen found at the crime scene it matched the dna profile of robert
knight [Music] prosecutors believe that dawn bruce arrived home from work around 1am and
went right to bed [Music] sometime around four o'clock robert knight went to the front window
of dawn's apartment pried it open and crept upstairs [Music] he stabbed dawn in the heart
then sexually assaulted her as she bled to death but knight made mistakes he wiped the knife on the pillowcase
leaving the impression of the murder weapon later matched to the knife found in knight's apartment
he also left the partial bloody fingerprint on the pillowcase matched with the latest in computer technology
facing an overwhelming amount of physical evidence and in an effort to avoid the death penalty
robert douglas knight pled guilty he was sentenced to four life terms in prison i'm very disappointed that
robert knight didn't get the death penalty i think he deserved the death penalty i think the forensic science
played a major part in solving the case um some cases are solved just by by pure
interviewing without any evidence and they are solved but i think this is one of those cases that would not have been
solved had it not been for the uh forensic evidence that was that was at the scene
when we arrested knight we had a bare circumstantial case that's all we had and it went to being the absolutely
strongest forensic case i've ever prosecuted in 24 years the only thing that stands out with me personally is
that i i believe robert knight deserved and should have received the death penalty
i don't believe he deserves to be breathing eating sleeping laughing whatever emotions he
may experience i know one of these days he'll probably be walking the street again
but it will be a long time and even though justice was served i think he was deserving of the death penalty
i told my other daughter one day when we were talking about life and about her plans
for family when she said that she didn't think she was going to have children because she didn't know that
she could go through what i had gone through and i told her if i knew ahead of time
that dawn was going to be murdered i would still have had dawn because she brought such joy
to us as her family not to ever not have children for fear of loss because life is not a guarantee
[Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

In 1992, 22-year-old Dawn Bruce is brutally murdered in her Virginia apartment. Investigators notice a blood smear on a pillow case that appears to have been made by one of the killer's fingers.

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

Forensic technology helped solve the murder of Dawn Bruce, leading to Robert Knight's conviction.

Key points

The Brutal Crime of Dawn Bruce. Dawn Bruce, a 22-year-old musician, was brutally murdered in her apartment.
Robert Knight's Arrest. Robert Knight, a neighbor with a troubled past, becomes the primary suspect.
Breakthrough in Forensic Technology. New fingerprint enhancement technology reveals a partial thumbprint of the killer.
The Murder Weapon Found. A maintenance worker discovers a hunting knife linked to the murder.
Knight's Guilty Plea. Facing overwhelming evidence, Robert Knight pleads guilty to murder.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I think he deserved the death penalty.

Prosecutor's opinion on the killer's sentence.

20:14WatchNov 18, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

More from Forensic Files

Solve the Crime

Read a real case one clue at a time, then see how your call held up against the investigators.