Forensic Files - Season 7, Episode 17 - Chief Evidence - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[Music] in 1996 seattle police faced an unusual challenge a severely wounded dog
witnessed the murder of his two owners could the dog identify the killers and if so
how [Music] [Music] december 9 1996 seattle washington it was going to be a special day for 22
year old raquel rivera she was starting a new job as a receptionist in a downtown office
i seen her the night before and she was really excited about it she was a little sick but she wasn't worried
about she was going to make it to work or not she was really excited raquel shared this house in seattle's
south park section with her longtime boyfriend jay johnson the two had been together since high
school and were talking about getting married i loved jay he was a great guy he i i loved him
he was very good to my daughter you know they were good for each other just after dawn
neighbors heard gunshots coming from the couple's home probably about four or five shots and
then a break and then maybe about six more shots when police arrived they found the front door off its hinges the
windows had been shattered by bullets inside were two bodies the only thing we have right now is that
we found two people in the house a male and a female both shot raquel rivera's mother who lived only a
block away got the phone call every parent dreads when i got there there was police and everybody they wouldn't let
me in the apartment and i said it's got to be raquel the bodies were positively identified
as raquel and jay the couple's dog chief a six-month-old labrador mix was also shot
i poked my head around the corner saw that the dog was up against the door he was
obviously in pain he was growling there were blood traces all over the door where he had smeared blood against
that wall i said let's get everybody out get animal control in here and get the dog out this particular casewood raid is
probably the most severely injured dog that we've ever seen from a gunshot just by virtue the face that it received
such a full-on frontal bullet right through the the front of the nose unfortunately despite undergoing
emergency surgery the dog died an autopsy was performed it revealed the dog had been shot twice
a non-fatal shot in the shoulder and the bullet through his muzzle you could liken it to running face first
into the front end of a truck bumper on that in terms of this given what we could see in terms of the the bullet
trauma that that did to the front of his muzzle in his face the evidence told homicide investigators
that the killer was searching for something cabinets have been gone through doors have been opened
the bed was tossed around so clearly the perpetrators wanted to find something not just eliminate the
lives and witnesses therein but they were after something there was no finesse to this
it was a blitz style attack they're in they shoot they shoot the dog they shoot the
owners of the dog mr johnson was shot several times in the legs which is indicative of
someone trying to extract information before the coroner would later describe the
murders as execution-style killings the entire community was asking who would have killed this young couple who
had no known enemies the only clues to the merger of jay johnson and raquel rivera were a smeared
footprint at the couple's front door and some nine millimeter shell casings blood spatter was on the walls floor and
on the inside of the door police discovered that a fifteen-year-old boy living across the
street in an apartment building had seen the shooting this person described them as samoan
males dressed in black very large men and one wearing a bandanna the boy said the two men kicked open the
front door shocked the dog and then moved into the house the witness could no longer see them but
he heard the firing he saw the dog he heard two shots and he heard the barking and then he heard the
dogs yelping and the dogs screams the boy said the men left minutes later and drove away in a red camaro driven by
a third samoan man [Music] police suspected the men were members of a local gang
madpack there's a large samoan community in seattle are law abiding hard-working
people but with every group you've got a criminal element and the madpack made up a large portion of their
criminal element they were a gang in the the sort of worst sense of the word just three days earlier in seattle's
chinatown there had been a similar shooting the victim johnny pake survived the attack
that being a samoan male sitting in a red car a very large samoan mail shell casings from the chinatown
shooting were compared to those taken from jay and raquel's apartment they matched
police now scoured the city looking for any samoans driving a red camaro amazingly
they didn't have to look far on the afternoon following jay and raquel's murder police noticed a red
camaro slowly driving past the murder scene driving back to the crime scene and checking things out is not an uncommon
thing for a suspect to do it's the old return to the scene of the crime cliche and it happens
the driver of the red camaro was charles nico a known member of the madpack gang
although nico denied any involvement in the shooting the 15 year old eyewitness identified
him as the driver of the getaway vehicle when threatened with the death penalty nico finally told police what happened
he said the motive was drugs the madpack gang members heard that jay and raquel had cocaine in their house
and they decided to steal it but after breaking in the couple said they had no cocaine and
then the men started shooting [Music] nico identified the shooters as twenty-two-year-old kenneth leia luala
whose street name was sabo claus and 24 year old george tu ilofano whose street name was scooby
both were high-ranking members of the mad pack i already knew who they were because you
know they ran around south park they were always they were bullies they were always beating everybody up
both men denied any involvement in the shooting and said they had alibis a search of their apartment did not
produce the nine-millimeter murder weapon the smeared footprint on the front door
could not be matched to either suspect and eight red stains found on the right sleeve of sabo claw's jacket was sent
for dna testing but it wasn't the victim's blood they get a result that is not human
based because the genotype does not come back to genes associated with a human being at all
they then are scratching their heads heads with hey what's going on here in fact investigators weren't sure what
it was with no forensic evidence to tie the suspects to the crime seattle police feared a conviction
might be impossible [Music] as jay johnson and raquel rivera were laid to rest side by side in a seattle
cemetery their families demanded justice to decipher exactly what happened at the
crime scene investigator o'keefe needed to distinguish between the dog's blood spatter and that of jay and raquel
i requested through my sergeant cindy tallman that an officer followed the dog to the
vet and draw blood from the dog immediately my thinking at the time was to differentiate between the human blood at
the scene and the dog blood the blood spatter and bullet casings in the apartment and the eyewitness account
of the 15 year old boy who lived across the street gave police a rough idea of what had happened
after the intruders kicked open the door dog was shot in the shoulder then the men went into the bedroom
where they shot raquel [Applause] they took jay into an adjoining room and shot him in the leg while demanding
the couple's cocaine one of the men left to shoot raquel once more and when jay said the couple never had
any drugs they killed him [Music] despite his shoulder wound chief again tried to protect his owners and ran into
the bedroom to attack the killers [Music] but why wasn't the victim's blood on the
suspect's clothes investigators say both jay and raquel were shot from a distance and were also
wearing clothes pajamas and t-shirts which absorbed the blood spatter but with chief
there was nothing to absorb the blood it was short-haired and had not long hairs around the muzzle or face
or neck area so any kind of a serious wound causing a lot of blood is obviously going to spill or spray or go
off it's not going to cling to the coat because there's such a short smooth coat
it's going to roll right off chief was very close to kenneth when he was shot and we know
also that chief was shot in the muzzle area now police discovered the possible key
to the mysterious red stains on the right sleeve of sabo claws jacket detective o'keefe and myself decided to
see if we're dealing with a non-human source namely a dog so with that we needed to
seek out laboratories that do dna testing with non-humans and through some research
we came upon a lab in davis california headed by dr joy halvorson dr joy halverson is an expert in
investigating the parentage of world class show dogs championship caliber show dogs can be
worth thousands of dollars and where there's money there's often corruption dishonest breeders engage in a practice
known as litter loading where pups from inferior dogs are mixed in with pups from champion dogs and sold at inflated
prices knowledgeable buyers now analyze the dna profiles of their new pups in order to
confirm their dog's championship parentage dog dna is exactly like human dna the only difference would be we use a
different set of dna markers but in terms of its chemical properties and the way it behaves with these
testing procedures it's exactly the same police suspected the red spots on sabo claw's right
sleeve came from the victim's dog chief dr halverson cut out a piece of the sleeve with the red stains on it and
analyzed it with a pcr based dna test a little piece of that fabric is taken and put into a tube and various
buffers and so on are added to it blood cells will come off the fabric into the liquid
and then the various treatments are done to extract the dna from that the results were consistent with the
blood from a dog but was the blood from the victim's dog chief dr halverson compared the dna markers
from the blood on the suspect's sleeve to the blood taken from chief during his autopsy
the result was a perfect match the blood on sabo claw's right sleeve was the blood of chief
prosecutor tim bradshaw knew he'd face a challenge from defense lawyers we were unable to find any other case a
homicide case in the country where canine based dna had been admitted into evidence
the defense lawyers not only would challenge the admissibility of the canine dna evidence they described it as
hocus pocus and boldly predicted their clients would walk free [Music] the two gang members charged with
killing jay johnson and raquel rivera were facing first-degree murder charges prosecutors not only had the teenaged
eyewitness from across the street who identified the two in a police lineup they also had dna evidence from the
victim's dog on kenneth laila ali'i's sleeve also on his sleeve were hairs they were not human
but they were compared to chief's hair and found to be consistent [Music] this wasn't as good as the dna evidence
but certainly wouldn't hurt the prosecution's case the main suspect kenneth became so disruptive he had to be
restrained in a wheelchair for the eight-week trial he taunted the judge the family members
saying he'd never get convicted every time we walk in he would just look at us and and laugh at us and
you know throw kisses at us when the girls would walk in i just i prosecutors presented their theory of
how the murders were committed based on the blood spatter evidence prosecutors believe that the suspects
kicked open jay and raquel's door and immediately were confronted by the dog chief
they shot the dog in the shoulder [Music] oh [Music] after killing both rachel and jay
chief once again tried to protect his owners chief was shot at point-blank range
the blowback blood spatter landed on ken's right sleeve when presented with the dna evidence
linking ken's jacket to the dog the judge ruled that legally the animal dna was the same as human dna
if the testing was the same then so was its value as evidence we took advantage of the fact that the
science is is no different than the human testing that's done now in in the forensic community and
there's really no there's nothing groundbreaking about it it's just a different set of dna markers developed
for dogs it was the first time animal dna was used in the united states as evidence in a criminal case
kenneth laialuala took the stand and said he had an explanation for the dog blood on his sleeve
he told the jurors that a few nights prior to the murders he was at a dance club in tacoma got into a fist fight
with another man there and that thereby explains the blood that did give me an opportunity to ask
him whether the man he was fighting with had hit him with a dog and he um really couldn't explain that
after 12 hours of deliberation the jury sentenced both men to life in prison without parole
kenneth laialuala alii laughed as the verdict was read but the last laugh was reserved for
chief the victim's courageous dog i had a few puns about her case in chief but the third victim here chief was
exceedingly important to our case and you know we're grateful to that but we're also
this will sound a little hokey but grateful to the scientific community for making a contribution to justice and
that's exactly what happened here jay and raquel had bought chief for protection little did they know that he
would someday bring their killers to justice one a piece of evidence the one victim who
could never speak ended up providing perhaps the most eloquent of testimony and that was from
the the dna profile that clearly placed defendant lealah lee at the crime scene the verdict brought small satisfaction
to raquel's mother who now makes a point of keeping a dog around the house her only child who she raised by herself
is dead for no reason leaving a great void in her life that no amount of justice
can ever fill we were so close her and i she was growing up just her and i what i learned from this case
is that if it's alive it has dna detectives can use dna in their cases in ways that we never thought of 10
years ago there is plant dna there is animal dna every domestic animal has a dna data
bank now the department of interior has a laboratory where they do dna on wild species
just from my own experience of owning animals i mean i'm sure if i looked on my clothing right now i'd find some
animal hairs and if somebody kidnapped me and put me in the trunk of their car they'd probably a few of those hairs
would end up on the trunk of their car so if if someone's being alert and thinking about these things i think
there are valuable sources of evidence and so it's a constant reminder for investigators to be vigilant in your
approach to any sort of crime scene and to be quite open-minded and imaginative about what application
you can do as far as what science is available because to a large degree science is leading the
way and we got to keep up [Music] [Music] so [Music] you

The 1996 Seattle murder of suburban couple Raquel Rivera & Jay Johnson is detailed.Evidence from the couple's dog Chief eventually ties one of the murderers to the scene. This is one of the first cases where dog DNA was used to convict.

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

A dog’s DNA helped convict the killers of its owners in a Seattle murder case.

Key points

Murder of Raquel and Jay. In December 1996, Raquel Rivera and Jay Johnson were brutally murdered in their home.
The Role of Chief. The couple's dog, Chief, was shot but played a crucial role in identifying the killers.
Groundbreaking DNA Evidence. For the first time in the U.S., canine DNA was used as evidence in a murder case.
Justice Served. After a lengthy trial, both suspects were sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I loved him. He was a great guy.

Raquel's feelings about Jay.

1:33WatchDec 10, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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