Forensic Files - Season 7, Episode 38 - House Call - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[Music] a well-known doctor was brutally attacked in his home investigators discovered the telephone
traffic neared the victim's home increased substantially within seconds of the crime
those calls tracked with the sophisticated forensic computer program uncovered an international conspiracy
[Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] dr louis davidson was one of the most
respected pediatricians in st petersburg florida at 38 years old he was head of pediatric
emergency medicine at the bayfront medical center it was all about the patient the baby
the toddler the child he treated him each with utmost respect never a snide comment
and he gave a hundred percent of himself to each child and his he was so smart he was almost
scary on january 25 1994 dr davidson finished his work at the hospital and headed home
to get some sleep dr davidson's girlfriend stopped by his apartment later that day
and this is what she saw she had her own key to the apartment and she used her key to enter the apartment
and as she walked in she saw this crime scene where stuff was just spewed all over the place she walked back and found
him in the tub dr davidson was dead in the bathtub he had been beaten and apparently
drowned i knew right away that this wasn't an ordinary suicide or anything like that
this was definitely a brutal crime scene detective mike sellona was assigned to the case his identity is concealed
because he's now working undercover the master bedroom closet had obviously been gone through clothing pulled off
hangers thrown on the floor however one of the items that was still in the closet was a garment bag and the bottom
of the garment bag was 20 000 in cash meaning the motive wasn't robbery the crime scene had been staged to make
it appear to be robbery [Music] davidson's girlfriend told police that the doctor had been receiving strange
telephone calls at home over the past several weeks sometimes they'll come at three in the
morning sometimes four in the morning she says that someone calls and then hangs up looking just to see if there is
somebody home in that apartment investigators found their first piece of forensic evidence on a tile floor in the
doctor's apartment tile fours are very conducive to leaving evidence especially shoe prints
tile is flat and non-porous a perfect template for prints so technicians dusted the area
and just as they expected a shoe impression appeared next they used a gel pad and pushed the
adhesive onto the print which fixes the dust in position for later analysis it was amazing to me that
that shoe print was preserved normally that shoe print could have been destroyed in many different ways by
detectives and officers and paramedics going in and out of that resonance but some somehow that shoe print survived
the impression was sent to the fbi in washington dc to their footwear impression department
there the print was compared to the thousands of shoe impressions on file fbi experts noticed it was a size 9
sneaker and was new their comparisons revealed it was a voigt brand shoe a relatively obscure
brand but homicide investigators needed more than one shoe impression to find the killer
investigators were still processing the crime scene when news of dr davidson's death was released to the media
it was on the news and just the way he died was so horrific that it was like too hard to grasp
it was like being in some bad movie but it was real everything that people look for in a
sort of a juicy almost a soap opera style story was was there in this particular murder case
the doctor's co-workers could think of no one who would want to harm him but investigators discovered that dr
davidson was going through a divorce his wife denise a former finalist in the miss jamaica beauty pageant was asking
for custody of their eight-year-old daughter something the doctor was resisting when police told denise that her husband
had been murdered she appeared to have information that hadn't yet been released to the media
here is denise davidson asking the detectives that are telling her her husband was found murdered at his
apartment well was it a robbery now suspicious police placed denise davidson under
24-hour surveillance we're thinking that it was a pager she has called three days later
denise made an unusual trip she walks in and goes to a western union now obviously when she leaves
we walk in right behind her and determine that she's using western union and she sends
a money transfer a 1200 money transfer denise had used an alias for the transfer
pauline white the money was sent to a robert gordon in miami it's being sent by a pauline white
which is not denise davidson's name it's obvious that's a different name fictitious address
fictitious phone number but we watched her send it robert gordon was an acquaintance of
miami nightclub owner leo cisneros who also happened to be denise davidson's current boyfriend and the father of her
unborn child cisneros allegedly had ties to jamaican drug trafficking flight records indicated that leo
cisneros flew to jamaica on the day of dr davidson's murder and telephone records indicated that
denise davidson made numerous calls to robert gordon on the morning her husband was murdered
between 9 30 in the morning and 11 30 in the morning a two-hour period there are 52
telephone calls made from denise davidson's house to robert gordon's pager investigators now believed that denise
davidson knew more about her husband's murder than she admitted and they asked the court for permission
to wiretap her telephone that order was granted but it didn't reveal what investigators hoped for
[Music] hello hey baby i call the western union please unless the money is available to be
picked up you got to remember denise davidson from the beginning knew that her phones may be tapped
so she was careful with what she said and what she didn't say on the phone then police noticed an irregularity
while leo cisneros was in jamaica someone was using his cell phone in florida and those calls could be easily traced
[Music] when someone makes a cell phone call the signal goes through a series of what are
known as cell site towers before it gets to an individual's phone police can trace a cell phone call
by the identity of the towers the call uses all of this cell tower and wiretap information is then put into the asus
computer program asus stands for augmented criminal investigation support system
aces has not ever been utilized by our police department for homicide investigations
it's been utilized for numerous years by the intelligence division by the narcotics division
because they deal a lot with telephone records wire taps large amounts of volumes of people connected to one
another this computer analysis revealed an important piece of information cisneros's cell phone was used on the
morning of dr davidson's murder from outside the doctor's apartment a few hours later
calls were made from this motel near dr davidson's apartment and the calls continued while the individual headed
south along highway 60 route 95 all the way to miami the last call that day used a cell tower
a few blocks away from robert gordon's home gordon was the man denise davidson had wired twelve hundred dollars to a
few days after the murder when police visited the motel near dr davidson's apartment
they discovered robert gordon had stayed there around the time of dr davidson's murder
the maid recalls that there was something left behind in that room one of their policies at the time
was that there were items left behind by a customer they would put them in a bag
with a car that had the date and the room number they were following they put them in a storage closet
the bag contained a sweatshirt and something investigators had been looking for since the day of the murder
and guess what else we've got we've got some shoes sneakers to be exact the same size as the impression found in
the doctor's apartment [Music] investigators hoped this chance discovery would solve the murder
denise davidson had wired money to robert gordon in miami just days after her husband's murder
informants in miami told police that gordon had an associate meryl mcdonald who was with gordon in saint petersburg
around the time of dr davidson's murder during questioning both denied any involvement in the crime
they also denied owning the sweatshirt and sneakers left in their motel room technicians compared the shoe impression
found on dr davidson's tile floor with the sneakers from the motel both were size nine
both were the obscure voigt brand and both were identical in wear patterns the shoes matched gordon's shoe size
next technicians analyzed the sweatshirt and discovered a number of head hairs facial hairs and some foreign fibers
the facial and head hairs were found inside the sweatshirt not uncommon when someone is taking the garment off over
his head the hairs were unusual since they contained a chemical dye a chemical analysis of that dye matched
the dye found on the head and facial hair of the second suspect meryl mcdonald mr mcdonald made the mistake of coloring
his hair the fbi lab was able to determine that the type of color used on this strand of hair
was consistent with the type of coloring mr mcdonald uses on his hair scientists also found
blue cashmere fibers on the sweatshirt those fibers matched the victim's cashmere bathrobe
finally and most damning a dna analysis of blood found on the sweatshirt and sneakers
was that of dr davidson one more nail has been put into the coffin of these two defendants these two
men that were hired to kill that decided that money was more important than life
but investigators had no solid proof that denise davidson was involved in the murder plot
she stood to inherit more than a half million dollars from her estranged husband's life insurance policy as well
as gain full custody of their daughter during hours of police interrogation denise insisted she didn't know robert
gordon and meryl mcdonald and had nothing to do with her husband's murder denise was under police surveillance
when she went to the western union office to transfer money to robert gordon but she signed the receipt using an
alias pauline white a forensic handwriting examiner compared the pauline white signature to known
handwriting samples of denise davidson he concluded the same individual signed them both
[Music] forensic technicians tested the receipts for latent or hidden fingerprints
they stain the receipt with nanhydran a chemical solution that turns the amino acids in finger oils purple
we have a process for fingerprints and it's denise davidson's fingerprints on that piece of paper
[Music] and police found evidence that denise davidson purchased a man's gray sweatshirt and a pair of size nine
voight sneakers just before her husband's murder identical to the items found in the
motel with her husband's blood stains denise davidson not only denied any involvement in her husband's murder she
now said she had evidence to prove it how much stranger can this case get how many more twists can this case take
[Music] the forensic evidence clearly placed robert gordon and meryl mcdonald inside
dr davidson's apartment during his murder the two people that were hired to do the killing mr gordon and mr mcdonald
didn't know the doctor at all the reason they took his life was strictly for monetary reasons
but just as police were about to arrest the victim's estranged wife denise the case took an unexpected turn
denise told police that the real killer had called her home while she was away and left a threatening message on her
telephone answering machine we're not available right now so could you please just leave your name and your
telephone number [Applause] but police arrested denise anyway just as she was about to board a flight
to jamaica i approached her she sat there waiting for her flight to arrive she was very
surprised when she saw me and her first words were detective salerno what are you doing here
in october of 1995 denise went on trial for soliciting her husband's murder denise took the stand in her own defense
and told the jury about the threatening telephone call she received from the person she says was the real killer
but prosecutors were ready for her [Applause] investigators had traced that call and
discovered it had originated from the store where denise worked and denise had been under police
surveillance that day i could see in her eyes she knew what was happening and it almost looked at
that time like the air had just been taken out of her prosecutors presented the jury with this
surveillance video showing denise entering the store shortly before the threatening call was placed and leaving
just after the call was completed when the state attorney directed the question to her
as to whether that was her voice on that tape she could only answer i don't think so
she just listened to it and looked at it and really gave no explanation for who that phone call came from and why it
was made she was holding up pretty good with her lies through the first portion of her
testifying but from that point on everything was falling apart and i think the jury
saw what i saw and that was fear in the eyes of a lady who hired two men to kill her
husband prosecutors believe that denise asked her boyfriend leo cisneros to kill her
husband instead cisneros hired robert gordon and meryl mcdonald leo cesniro is the boyfriend who had no
courage he couldn't commit the crime himself so he hired the two scarecrows robert gordon and meryl mcdonald who he
said they didn't have a brain amongst them the two tracked dr davidson for days by
calling his apartment and the witness said they were at the hospital dressed like
doctors trying to get dr davidson's schedule on the day of the murder dr davidson was running two hours late
and didn't arrive home until 10 o'clock this explains why denise called robert gordon's pager 52 times between 8 and
ten o'clock that morning apparently concerned about why the murder was delayed [Music]
when gordon and mcdonald knocked on the doctor's door he answered in his bathrobe
in the scuffle dr davidson's robe fibers and blood got on mcdonald's sweatshirt the one denise
had purchased for him [Music] after drowning davidson in the bathtub gordon left his shoe imprint on the tile
floor [Music] and when mcdonald removed the sweatshirt he left evidence of his die colored head
hairs for some unknown reason gordon made the mistake of leaving the sneakers and
sweatshirt behind at his motel a motel identified through denise's telephone calls
prosecutors produced receipts showing denise had sent gordon and mcdonald a total of
thousand dollars after a two-week trial denise davidson was found guilty of solicitation for murder
she was sentenced to life in prison if i had one one-line description of denise davidson
would be she's a cold-hearted [ __ ] robert gordon and meryl mcdonald were tried and convicted of first-degree
murder they were both sentenced to death one of the more glaring ironies of the case is that dr davidson through his
alimony payments enabled his wife to hire the hitmen who ultimately killed him denise's boyfriend leo cisneros who
allegedly hired the hit man has not been captured he is believed to be in jamaica
or venezuela investigators say the mountain of forensic evidence against denise paints an unmistakable portrait of greed
and premeditation the forensic technicians in this case did an excellent job they worked on this
case tediously they were able to develop evidence that was not visible to the naked eye
and because of their dedication they were able to use this evidence in court to gain a conviction
one thing i learned from this case is if you're going to commit a crime be careful about today's technology
[Music] [Music] you

A murder investigation in Florida crosses jurisdictions from New York and Jamaica. The police rely on cell phone mapping, wiretapping and a host of forensic evidence to link a suspect to a murder.

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

Dr. Louis Davidson was murdered, revealing a conspiracy involving his estranged wife and hired killers.

Key points

Dr. Davidson's Murder. A respected pediatrician was brutally attacked in his home, leading to a complex investigation.
Denise Davidson's Suspicion. Denise Davidson's behavior raises red flags as she sends money to a suspicious acquaintance.
Trial and Conviction. Denise Davidson is found guilty of soliciting her husband's murder, sentenced to life in prison.
Forensic Breakthrough. Crucial forensic evidence links Denise Davidson to the murder of her husband.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This was definitely a brutal crime scene.

Detective Mike Sellona's first impression of the crime scene.

2:11WatchDec 10, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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