Forensic Files - Season 7, Episode 36 - All Charged Up - Full Episode | Forensic Files

the victim's body was removed from the apartment and taken to the Philadelphia police were searching for a sexual
predator who had climbed to the upper floors of buildings to attack his victims Geographic profilers predicted
that the perpetrator lived or worked near his victims but when identical crimes occurred 1700 M away in Colorado
investigators either had a perpetrator with a very long commute or they had to rethink their assumptions
[Music] [Music] writtenhouse Square in Philadelphia Pennsylvania on sunny days the park is
filled with sunbathers and joggers many are students at the nearby University of
Pennsylvania in 1998 Shannon sheber lived just a few blocks from the square she was 23 and a graduate student at the
UN University's prestigious Wharton School of Business she was pursuing a PhD program in insurance but always uh
interested in a challenge she was also simultaneously pursuing a a degree in in finance to her parents Vicky and Sil
sheeper Shannon was all they could have hoped for in a daughter Shannon was a very happy person she was inquisitive
she wanted to learn about everything always a bundle of energy thousand and questions every time you went somewhere
she had to know how did this happen or what made that do it that way she was extremely bright uh she was competitive
in her writing she wrode because she wanted to win ribbons uh but she had an extremely
caring side about her also she had a more diverse group of friends I think than almost anybody I've ever
known Shannon excelled at everything she did her senior year in high school she was was president of the student body
when another president came by to announce he was running for reelection when attending undergraduate
school at Duke University she was president of the freshman class and co- captain of The Equestrian Team she
graduated in three years with a triple Major in math in economics and in Philosophy from there Shannon moved to
Philadelphia to attend graduate school she rented a second floor apartment near writtenhouse Square because the area was
considered safe on the night of May 7th 1998 Shannon spent the evening at home the next day Shannon didn't meet
her friends as planned so they went to Shannon's apartment and forced open her door Shannon's friend broke the news to
the sheepers and she just told me I we needed to get there right away and um that something bad had happen happened I
said Sam you have to tell me I have to know she told us that she were there she had run a bath there was a
paper so we knew that she was studying the killer had somehow managed to climb up to a second floor balcony
and enter through a sliding glass door there was evidence of a struggle books had been knocked off the shelves
on one side of her bed she was strangled and sexually assaulted her camera necklace and Pen were
stolen blood presumably that of the killer was found on the bed the wall and on the outside balcony we assumed that
he was either bitten or somehow he got cut the blood on the balcony railing was proof he had left this way
police knew the perpetrator was experienced in gaining entrance to Upper Floor Apartments but they would need
more information than that to find [Music] him Shannon sheber was a brilliant student with a bright future that ended
tragically on May 7th 1998 when she was robbed and murdered in her Philadelphia apartment there had been no Witnesses
and none of the police leads revealed anything of value after investigating for 8 months police were at a
standstill the first break in the case came from an unlikely source and then that's looking from her an anonymous
informant called the Philadelphia inquiring newspaper to leak some confidential and highly embarrassing
information about the Shannon sheber murder investigation to the press this person said it's a shame
about Shannon sheber um because the department has blown off two earlier cases that were part of this pattern and
we picked it up earlier maybe we could have headed this off I'm virtually certain it was a senior police
officer investigative reporters from the newspaper dug a little deeper uncovering
evidence that the police covered up several earlier rape cases in order for the city's crime statistics to look
better than they really were Philadelphia police had a long-standing practice of deep sixing sexual assault
complaints of at least 20 years it wouldn't be coded as a true crime it was just taken off the books
entirely two of those crimes were rape cases never reported that happened a year before Shannon Shea's murder with
the same Mo all of the victims were young females who lived alone and had no boyfriends or
animals our reporting showed that typically it was the most powerless victims who were subjected to this
treatment homeless women africanamerican women you know women who had no clout to
protest one of these earlier victims got a brief look at her as salant a police sketch artist put
together this composite he was described as a tall slender light complected male well groomed in his mid
20s there was a task force created there were undercover police plane closed policemen brought in the composite was
circulated we knew we were dealing with someone very agile very thin probably very very athletic we had checked the
basically all the athletic clubs in the City and surrounding area in July of 1999 Bo and perie turned to FBI
profilers for help based on knowledge gained from prior offenders the profilers believed that
the rapist was familiar with the neighborhood comfortable being out late at night and had probably been involved
in other peeping Tom or vois activities in the past 15 months after Shannon sher's
murder the center city rapist claimed his sixth victim this time he removed 14 SC cruise from a set of burglar bars to
gain access to a ground floor apartment we were horribly saddened and we talked to the parents of the of the young woman
who was attacked and they called us they reached out to us and and we chatted at
some length with both the father and the mother but it gave us hope at the same time we were devastated that now there
was a chance that someday the guy who caught Shannon would be in prison and that was always very important to
us after the sixth attack Detective Bole and perie took another step Bole had seen an episode of Forensic Files on
court TV about a series of sexual assaults in Louisiana solved with Geographic profiling so Bo contacted Kim rosmo the
investigator who appeared in that episode we know as a basic principle that offenders commit the crimes close
to home we also know they do it in areas that they're comfortable with their comfort
zone osmo surveyed Philadelphia's Center City by helicopter and on foot then he entered Shannon's address and those of
the five other victims into his Geographic profiling program and then the computer system generates for us
after a number of calculations up to a million what's called a Jeopardy surface a Jeopardy surface is a
three-dimensional probability surface showing us the most likely location of offender
residence orange represents the areas where the center city rapist is most likely to live or
work the police flooded those areas with sketches of the rapist but ultimately it
didn't matter the center city rapist and now murderer never struck again at least
not in Philadelphia [Music] shortly after the center city rapist claimed his sixth victim in Philadelphia
the crimes mysteriously stopped police had a number of theories the perpetrator struck only
during the spring and summer when the summer of 2000 came and went without an incident police feared he had fled
Philadelphia and might never be caught investigators suspected the perpetrator was a college student who
lived in Philadelphia during the summer but went to school out of town what they didn't know was 1700 M
away in Fort Collins Colorado there was a similar rapist committing crimes in the exact same way the suspect was
entering by removing screens and climbing in through the windows and then once inside the suspect was taking
control of the victim while the victim was sleeping the attacker struck five times during
the Spring and Summer of 2001 he pulled pillowcases over his victim's heads and assaulted
them during the fifth attack he made a mistake he had entered the victim's apartment by way of a second floor
balcony crime lab supervisor Jeff saboda took a portion of the balcony railing back to his lab and sprayed it with
ninhydrin a chemical used to uncover fingerprints on porous surfaces the ninhydrin reacts with skin oil causing
fingerprint ridges to turn purple an hour later he got the results three perfect Prince put his palms here placed
his left hand leaving his left thumb print in left ring and left little finger and then jumped over Fort Collins
mailed photographs of the prince along with the description of the attacks to police departments all across the
country asking for assistance the letter caught the attention of a police clerk in
Philadelphia she thought of the center city rapist which was he was called at the time and she contacted the Special
Victims Unit uh detective lur detective lur then contacted the Fort Collins Police Department
when DNA from the rape test kits in Colorado were compared to blood found in Shannon Shea's apartment the DNA
matched when they called back to say that they had in fact done a comparison and that the samples match um it was
overwhelming I think there was this this amazing sense of hope that that now this
guy was going to be caught but why did the rapist leave Philadelphia for Colorado and how would
police catch him to find out investigators needed to identify everyone who lived in Philadelphia
during that crime spree who were later in Colorado during the crimes there every person that would have this the
two cities in common we would want to talk to them computer crime expert Lieutenant Ed Monahan asked a college
friend Bill news to help with the search we can do that we can finish 's happened
to work for Lexus Nexus an information retrieval service containing more than 30,000 public
databases not all of the search parameters will be revealed in this program a lot of it was Geographic and
and I really don't want to go into any further than that they called through credit bureau
records and found 319 males who had been making Financial transactions in Philadelphia and then did the same in
Fort Collins Colorado they further narrowed the search by looking for males between the
ages of 20 and 30 years old who had been living in or around the areas of the Philadelphia attacks zip Cod is a short
and easy way of identifying a geographic area Monahan got the list down to 83 names which he immediately sent to
police in Colorado those names were added to a list of more than 800 suspects the
Colorado Police gathered before they all could be checked there was a seventh assault police needed to work quickly
before there was an [Music] e by now police knew that the center city rapist in Philadelphia was now in
Colorado committing similar crimes there there had been a total of one murder and
12 sexual assaults five in Philadelphia seven more in Fort Collins Colorado in September
2001 Colorado police were methodically investigating potential suspects and running DNA tests when they received
this letter I'm sorry but I can't let you catch me yet not in Colorado I don't even like it here I'm not a fan of cold
weather I don't even like going up to Fort Collins anymore you guys are everywhere
I admit I want to get caught I don't like what I do it keeps me at a distance from people and I can't talk to anyone
it gets lonely the letter contained details of the crimes only the perpetrator could have
known but it didn't contain any DNA or fingerprints ultimately detective Cochran concluded that the rapist was
trying to Sidetrack the investigation we allowed the suspect to lead us in a different direction because
of this letter um that ultimately we might miss somebody Colorado Police had received
more than a thousand tips one call was from a woman who said she had dated a man who resembled the
police sketch the man's name was Troy Graves a name that appeared on the list of suspects generated by Philadelphia
police computer experts Graves had worked for a bank in Philadelphia not far from the victim's
homes after the last attack in Philadelphia Graves joined the Air Force and was sent to Fort Warren in
Colorado Graves lived in Fort Collins just a short distance from the Colorado crime
scenes the investigator was told by the girlfriend that Troy like to take walks late at night that he trouble sleeping
that uh there might have been a prior sexual sexual abuse history Graves had once been reprimanded
for peeping into a woman's room on the Air Force Base and he was thin and athletic physically capable of climbing
up to Second Story Windows detective Neil heisen contacted Troy Graves and asked him to come in for
an interview he was very well spoken very polite um so I was a little taken aback by that
but he did look and match the physical features heum asked the usual questions that had been asked of hundreds of other
suspects I asked him if he would be willing to take a polygraph exam again this was something I could use to
exclude him and he was definite on his answer to that he told me not right now he then asked Graves if he would
agree to be fingerprinted and his response was that felt weird to him nevertheless Graves was taken to the
police fingerprint expert who ran a complete set of prints paying close attention to the little finger ring
finger and thumb on the left hand once Miss fton had rolled his fingerprints um I could tell by her
reaction when she rolled him that she knew Troy Graves fingerprints matched the prince from the fifth victim in
Colorado and when Grave's blood was analyzed his DNA matched the blood left the Channon sher's
apartment Troy Graves multi City Rampage was over police and prosecutors believed
that Grave's motive was sexual assault but Shannon sheber fought back somehow cutting or biting Graves which produced
the blood on her bed and walls Shannon was the only victim murdered when confronted with the
forensic evidence Graves confessed he later plad guilty and was convicted at his sentencing hearing in
Colorado several of his victims got a chance to confront their attacker I hate you Troy graes with
every ounce of my being I hate you how dare you ever think you could violate someone the way you did me and now you
are going to pay your future holds not only a complete absence of freedom but nights of getting raped and toyed with
in ways that even someone as sick as you can't imagine yet Troy Graves was sentenced to life in
prison I had given up hope a long time ago they'd ever find him I really did I really did but um it was good not to
have any more victims and that's a personal very personal feeling as a mother of a victim
definitely Shannon's parents keep her room as it was when she was alive filled with her Championship ribbons her books
her photos of family and friends we were extremely close and to think of somebody who was so alive and
so part of you uh who's now gone so suddenly it's it's just horrendous the hunt for Shannon's killer
was a classic needle in the hyack investigation its solution solid detective work behavioral and
geographical profiling and computer forensics here's the locations of the offenses the bank the graves worked at
the location of his girlfriend's home his first residence the assaults all took place
along routes that Graves would have traveled from his two rented Apartments to his girlfriend's home and to
work these crimes are usually of the more serious nature and any Edge that you can give to help the investigators
great we like to think of geographic profiling as just one more tool in their toolkit I think it's important to
realize that no profile can solve a crime you need physical evidence and witness or a confession to do that and
it's going to be the detective in charge that solves it we just play a a small support role but to the degree that we
can assist in helping them Focus or understand the crime or prioritizing suspects then you feel very good
computers don't commit crimes and computers don't solve crimes detectives solve crimes and even in this instance I
think it's a really great example of effective work and Technology powers of of the DNA evidence
today and the specialist that you can go to from the geographical profiler to the
FBI profiler to the use of the computers it's changed how we do our job how we do
an investigation forensic science is is where it's at today [Music] [Music] w [Music]
[Music]

Brief Summary

The episode details Shannon Sheber's murder and the investigation leading to Troy Graves' capture through DNA evidence and geographic profiling.

Key points

The Tragic Murder of Shannon Sheber. Shannon Sheber, a promising student, was tragically murdered in her Philadelphia apartment.
The Breakthrough in the Case. An anonymous informant revealed police cover-ups that led to new leads in Shannon's murder.
The Capture of Troy Graves. DNA evidence linked Troy Graves to the murders, leading to his arrest and conviction.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Shannon was a brilliant student with a bright future.

Describing Shannon's potential and tragic fate.

4:56WatchSep 16, 2024

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.