Forensic Files - Season 7, Episode 35 - X Marks the Spot - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[Music] in 2002 a letter arrived at the St Louis Post Dispatch newspaper from a man
claiming to be a serial killer the letter included a map with an X marking the spot where he left one of his
victims but the map told forensic scientists a lot more than just the location of a body it was their key to
finding the [Music] killer just across the river from St Louis Missouri is a town called East St
Louis in Illinois where prostitutes sell their Wares often to finance their drug
addictions 34-year-old Alisa greenwade was one of those caught in a hopeless cycle it's rough when you see somebody
that you care about and you feel helpless in April of 2001 Alisa green Wade's body was discovered in Washington
Park Illinois where she had been strangled and there were ligature marks on her wrists and
ankles a tire impression was found near her body which was photographed for analysis it was identified as a
Bridgestone Potenza Tire just Days Later police find three more bodies all known
prostitutes the victims were just displayed they were laid out right in the open right off the side of roadways
but on one of the victims police found some evidence there was no drag marks on the body but there was a large Tire
impression on Betty James Le this tire impression was from a Goodrich Advantage Tire different than
the tire impression found at the earlier crime scene over the next 5 months three more
bodies were found dumped along the streets of East St Louis rape kits from two of the victims
yielded biological samples which were sent for testing the St Louis Police dep Department was convinced that the same
individual committed all the murders since the crimes were committed in the same manner the victims were positioned
there was obvious u a disregard for any type of um secrecy any type of cover up anything like that it was an obvious
these were secondary locations 6 months after the first murder the crime stopped time went on and no more bodies
appeared we figured either three things uh the subject was in custody he died or moved out of the
area St Louis police called the FBI for further assistance special agent Melanie
gimnez was assigned to the case was trying to compile the information so that I could get a package together to
send to our Behavioral Sciences unit at quanico I wanted the profilers there to take a look at it and try to give us a
profile of who they thought this person was Bob Morton was the behavioral profiler working on this case he knew
immediately that these mergers would be difficult to solve there's no connection
other than a business if you will transaction between the customer and The Prostitute and that anonymity gives him
that blanket to just go in and come out most crime is between the races so if I'm if you have a black victim most of
the time you have a black offender for 3 months the killer wasn't heard from but
inexplicably the murgers started again over the next 5 months three more bodies were found dumped along the
streets of East St Louis Verona Thompson Ivon Cruz and Brenda Beasley the death toll was now at 10
n Bill Smith covered this story for the St Louis Post Dispatch Newspaper one of his stories profiled
Teresa Wilson one of the victims of the serial killer what I think I ended up doing was humanizing um this woman who
um in a way had had kind of dehumanized her own life by getting involved in prostitution and Drug
activities and it wasn't long before Smith got a piece of fan mail it was a letter from the
[Music] killer 5 days after Bill Smith's article on slain prostitute Teresa Wilson
appeared in the newspaper he received an anonymous letter it had a very unusual return address I noticed also that the
postage stamp in the upper right hand corner was upside down I started to read it and I thought it was a joke I thought
it was somebody basically just yanking my chain dear Bill nice sa story about Teresa Wilson write one about green Wade
write a good one and I'll tell you where many others are to prove I'm real here's
directions to number 17 search in a 50- yard radius from the X put this story in
the Sunday paper like the last I think he got aggravated and I think he wanted to somehow show us that
these in fact were not human beings that we were dealing with and that he had some kind of a right to do what he was
doing the letter referenced 17 murders although police only knew of 10 the return address included the words
ithal them a bondage website along with the letter was a map of a remote area along Highway 67 which
was marked with an X I almost didn't believe it it almost didn't seem real I mean I've been a newspaper reporter
for 20 probably almost 25 years and uh I'd never had anything quite like that happen before and I kind of forgot how
to be a newspaper reporter and uh for a few minutes didn't really know how to ask questions
turned the letter over to the authorities there's a lot of taunting in a letter like that he's very proud of
himself he feels that he's smarter than everybody else cuz he can send this letter and he can get credit for what he
did uh that was the first thing that came in my mind is that you know he's looking for
attention when police searched the area described in the map they discovered the
remains of another victim now there was no doubt the letter came from the killer
but who wrote the letter and where did it come from the return address said New York but the postmark revealed the
letter was mailed in St Louis both the letter and the map were printed from a computer the map had been
cropped to remove any copyright notices from the map company it had to take a lot of time he does not want to expose
himself by going to a public library a Kinkos or wherever or else you can get access to a computer this is something
you're going to do at home that you can print out not only that he printed it on
the same kind of paper that the letter was on WE identified that the map was probably made by an internet or cdrom
based mapping system they're very similar in appearance it wasn't like he photographed or photocopied a foldout
map if you will this man is an intelligence agent with the Illinois State Police due to the sensitive nature
of his job we cannot reveal his identity it was his job to perform the tedious process of finding the owner or
copyright holder of that map he compared the map to every CD ROM and internet site that provides maps and
directions after hours of searching he found the map used by the killer it was on an internet service called
expedia.com they're more of a travel agency than they are a map service if you will and
they keep where you travel in order to offer you goods and services at uh rental cars or them amusement park
discounts and things like that Expedia said that Microsoft provided the maps for use on their
site the map was proprietary meaning that Expedia was the only site which offered that map and no one
else the FBI wanted to know the identity of everyone who had ACC assess this St Louis map between the day the newspaper
article appeared May 19th and the postmark of the letter which was May 21st it gave us a 4 to 5 day window of
opportunity to see when that map had been accessed over the Internet when served with the subpoena
Microsoft analyzed their computer download records and discovered that only one computer had downloaded that
map during that 4-day period period and the size of the downloaded map was identical to the map sent to the
newspaper but investigators needed to know the location of the computer Microsoft couldn't identify the
individual by name only by what is called an IP number when you log into a web server you're assigned what's called
an IP number Internet Protocol number that number follows you wherever you go so investigators performed what they
call an IP reversal process the same technique used to find child pornographers the IP address which is
four sets of numbers separated by periods identifies a particular computer's location on the
internet computers linked to a network through a fixed connection typically have a permanent IP address while
computers that access the internet with a dialup service are assigned an IP address for each
session to find the location of this particular IP user the FBI turned to Worldcom which provides the dialup
connection from computer to server worldcom's investigation revealed that the map was downloaded at 7:36 p.m.
central Time on May 20th from the Expedia site through the MSN online service we then took that information
and subpoenaed MSN who told us of course go to Microsoft that's their parent very
similar to Expedia Microsoft then says but here's the person here's their how they pay their bill here's their address
here's where they dial up from the map was downloaded by someone using the screen name Mori Travis when I first
received the user name it did appear to be an individual's actual name however I
knew that that didn't NE necessarily mean it was his true identity the home was in Ferguson a quiet middle class
suburb just outside of St Lewis it was owned by a 55-year-old woman who had no prior criminal record
investigators suspected the homeowner wasn't a killer but who had access to her computer
[Music] a forensic computer search discovered that the map sent to the local newspaper
revealing the location of a murder victim had been downloaded by a computer in this
home investigators decided to have a look inside I knocked I said FBI we have a search warrant I announced at least
three times eventually a man and a woman answered the door he was mad he was in a
pair of boxer shorts the first thing out of his mouth was it's 7:00 in the morning you're right it's 7:00 in the
morning and we're serving a federal search warant okay why are you here and our response was you know why we're here he
dropped his head he said yeah I know why you're here inside police found a computer
women's wigs and shoes a stun gun and a collection of homemade videotapes the basement was spattered
with blood the ceiling walls doors and carpet even the furniture the man identified himself as
36-year-old Mor Travis a restaurant worker who had served time for a string of armed
robberies his mother owned the home but didn't live there the woman was Travis's
longtime girl girlfriend who told police she had never been in the basement of the house she didn't have any idea what
was going on in that house and he didn't want her to know next to the desk was a
file cabinet we broke into that cabinet and found a napsack in there and the napsack was we referred to it as a
working bag in there was duct tape ligatures straps that to tie victims up a hose type stocking that he used as
gloves forensic scientists gathered samples of the blood in the basement for analysis it was a mixture from six
different individuals no one ever seen any activity or anything around that house
and so it's just pretty scary you think your neighborhood is really safe and you
don't know who you're next door a neighbor is investigators found several drafts of the letter sent to the
newspaper on his computer's hard drive they also found two cars at the house on one of the cars was a Goodrich
Advantage Tire that matched the tire impression left on Betty James leg a tire on the other car was a Bridgestone
Potenza which matched the tire impression near Alisa green Wade's body Travis was taken to St Louis Police
Department headquarters he did not talk about the crimes and actually we didn't ask him
about any of the crimes our concern was attempting to get him to cooperate with us to take us to more victims he claimed
in his letter that there were 17 victims Our concern of course was to find the rest of the victims you've heard it
before but he he is just pure evil I have never interviewed anybody like that his entire
world circled around him he was in control he wanted to be the focus of everything and had no remorse no nothing
he he was the only way he can say it he he is a monster he is just pure evil during questioning he asked for a
soda later on when we went to another interview room I had the soda can taken to the
lab Mary Beth Carr swabbed the area near the opening for epithelial cells in Travis's saliva which could be used for
DNA testing when Travis's DNA profile was compared to the biological material found on two of the murder victims yvon
Cruz and Brenda Beasley Travis's DNA matched eventually Travis asked police how they found him we told him well
there was a computer inquiry made over the internet and he cussed a couple times and had some nice words to say
about the internet and then he cussed again about his computer and he was very very upset I don't think he realized
what he had done once he did that and it dawned on him it hit him like a ton of bricks during questioning Travis refused
to reveal the locations of any of his other victims before police could question him
again there was another murder which would end the investigation [Music] Forever on June 7th 2002 Mori Troy
Travis was charged with kidnapping and murder the homemade videotapes discovered in Travis's home showed
Travis socializing with various women but one videotape contained horrendous images the likes of which
police had never seen before there's even an actual murder I mean he you witness him actually killing one of
these people what was going on inside his head why he did what he did that's how I look at it trying to figure out
what what makes a person do this and I thought about her pleading and begging for her life and him stringing her to
death like they left left her with nothing but a t-shirt on and bowing her hand and
stuff so I you know it's it's it's been difficult investigators also found plans
in Travis's home to expand his basement dungeon he was planning on building a two cell holding tank in his basement he
had ordered more handcuffs and leg shackles through the internet he was even getting bids on
expanding his basement to put the secret dungeon in only God knows how far this would have
gone based on the computer's forensic evidence investigators believe that Travis enjoyed reading the articles
about his crimes in the newspaper police will say that these men live vicariously
through the media sometimes after uh their crimes are committed um so they can take the newspaper article or they
can take the TV show or whatever it might be and um and they can relive their crime and get a kind of a high
from from that also and on the night of May 20th Travis typed his letter to journalist Bill
Smith at 7:36 p.m. he visited the expedia.com site looking for a map he could use to show authorities where they
could find one of his victims after downloading the map he carefully cropped the copyright
notices from around the map thinking this would eliminate the possibility of tracing
it but he was wrong the map was as good as a fingerprint in this case a computer
fingerprint there's a lot of crime that's solved that way and a lot of it is online crime um online investigators
use this methodology all the time Mor Travis was taken into prison to await trial he was placed under a 24-hour
suicide watch where guards check on him every 15 minutes he didn't want to go back to the penitentiary he made that
very clear to us I'm not going back to the penitentiary and you're not going to give me the
needle for whatever reason guards skipped two backto back checks it was all the time Travis needed to hang
himself in his cell without ever admitting guilt or were leading police to the bodies of his other victims but
this is where he was found hanging his hands were bound behind him he had a uh washcloth in his mouth and a pillowcase
over his head they had let him literally slip right through their fingers to say that I was angry and to
say the people in The Newsroom were angry about it and that the community was angry about it is really an
understatement I think people I think people were Furious and the families of those women should have been
Furious um that absolutely no way should have ever been allowed to happen when Mr Travis hung
himself he took all the answers with him we have a million questions I think it's
amazing that it's such an incredible tool that through analyzing the computer we were able to catch someone was
committing crimes like this had anybody said hey the guy's going to send you a map and for the investigators to be able
to back track to him never thought that in my wildest dreams it it's almost like
him saying okay here's a map and this is how you find me x marks a spot how many
times does that really happen it doesn't [Music] w [Music]

Brief Summary

A serial killer's taunting letter leads investigators to Mori Travis, who ultimately dies by suicide before revealing more victims.

Key points

The Serial Killer's Letter. In 2002, a letter from a man claiming to be a serial killer arrived at a newspaper, including a map to a victim's body.
Discovery of Bodies. Over several months, multiple bodies of prostitutes were found, leading to a chilling investigation.
Mori Travis's Arrest. Mori Travis was arrested after a letter he sent led police to his home, revealing gruesome evidence.
Travis's Suicide. Mori Travis committed suicide while awaiting trial, taking many answers to his crimes with him.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It's rough when you see somebody you care about and feel helpless.

Alisa Greenwade's struggle with addiction and her tragic fate.

1:16WatchSep 16, 2024

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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