Forensic Files - Season 7, Episode 7 - Purr-fect Match - Full Episode | Forensic Files

a young woman vanished from her home on an island in rural canada thousands of police army and local
residents spent months searching for her this is the story of how one tiny white
hair solved the mystery of her disappearance while adding a new chapter to the history of forensic science
[Music] [Music] bye [Music] prince edward island canada's smallest province a 2100 square
mile vacation destination in the summer cold and desolate in the winter [Music] father elwa arsenau has ministered to
the islanders for almost 30 years we're not used to big violent things going on because people are very much
down toward and everybody knows everyone because we're a small community there's
not a very large population on the island you know on october 7 1994 a woman called police to report
an abandoned car in a field near her house the license plates were missing and when police looked inside
they saw what looked to be a crime scene there were blood stains small specks of
blood on the windshield on the inside of the windshield on the side windows of the vehicle inside
these dots indicate the location of blood inside the car forensic scientists identified the blood
as medium impact blood spatter the type caused when someone is hit with an object like a fist
the serial number of the vehicle identified the owner as a local woman 32 year old shirley duguay
shirley was a stay-at-home mother of five children the oldest fifteen the youngest eight-year-old twins
shirley and her children were living in this home now abandoned in the small town of richmond
her father melvin had been watching the children since shirley disappeared four days earlier
well we found it very odd that no one had reported her missing initially and of course it
raised some suspicion with us shirley duggay had been known in the past to take off for a couple of days and not
tell anyone where she had gone and then returned police suspected it was shirley's blood
in the car [Music] the pillow she sat on while driving was found nearby soaked in blood
she was a very small diminutive person 4 feet 9 inches tall less than 100 pounds
so very very frail looking individual [Music] other than that we didn't know too much
about her to identify the blood scientists needed a blood sample from shirley's father melvin for dna testing
since shirley would get half of her dna from each parent scientists found that the blood in the
car contained 50 percent of melvin dugay's genetic markers meaning the blood was shirley's
while examining the blood forensic scientists found something else blood that did not come from shirley du
gaye was this the blood of another victim or possibly the blood of a killer [Music]
after shirley duguay's car was found abandoned and spattered with blood the royal canadian mounted police began one
of the largest searches in the history of prince edward island they checked hundreds of square miles
and every waterway in the area we used psychics we use hypnosis anything that we could put our hands on
or could think of we used some of the revelations were very unusual psychics have even told us that she was
buried near water or pine trees shallow grave but where you know you just you just don't know
where to start [Music] about a half mile away from shirley's car police found a shovel with two long
black hairs attached when scientists compared that hair to hair taken from shirley duguay's
hairbrush they were microscopically similar the search for shirley's body lasted for
weeks then investigators came upon a possible clue 15 miles from shirley's car police found
a plastic bag with a pair of sneakers and the blood-stained leather jacket inside
the blood on the leather jacket matched shirley duguay's dna profile but the jacket was a man's size much too
big to belong to shirley when police asked melvin duguay who might have wanted to harm his daughter
his response was startling i would have killed him i would have killed that guy he was
talking about shirley's estranged husband doug beamish a demolition worker who had been separated from shirley for
the past 18 months i think i would have did a good deed if i had shot him killed him
because she'd be alive today i'd be in jail but she'd be alive during the couple's on-again off-again
15-year relationship police learned that bemish had physically abused shirley every woman that lives with an abusive
husband or boyfriend or whatever and end up murdered react in the same way people advise them to
not go with them or live with them but for some reason they do having any issues or problems
during police questioning beemish denied any involvement in shirley's disappearance where were you on october
the 3rd then investigators asked him what size shoes he wore the same size as the sneakers found with
the bloody leather jacket [Music] now police wanted to know if doug beamish had worn these shoes
so they turned to a forensic podiatrist dr keith bettles everyone wears shoes differently
mostly because of the variations in size shape and mechanics of their feet each individual has a unique way of
walking this ultimately is transmitted to the sole of the feet which again is transmitted to the inner
sole of the shoe and again onto the outside of the shoe as to where the walking to the wear on
that individual's shoe with a warrant police cast beamish's feet by placing them in styrofoam molds then poured
plaster of paris inside [Music] once hardened the molds can be compared to the wear patterns in a pair of shoes
this computer-generated image shows how these wear patterns are created the different colors indicate the amount
of pressure made by each part of the foot as it touches the inside of the shoe the feet create marks called pressure
points and are unique to each person mr beamish's toe was hyper flexed that means it just turned up a little bit at
the end the nails would be chaffing away and rubbing at the inner lining of the shoe
and beamish's feet were pronated meaning they turned inward when dr bettles cut open the sneakers he
found wear patterns caused by pronated feet and chafing marks in the top of the shoe like those caused by hyperflex toes
after i'd done the examination of the sneakers i was quite satisfied that these shoes
had been worn at the time by mr beamish but doug beamish denied the sneakers were his
he also denied owning the leather jacket found with the shoes inside the jacket investigators discovered even more
evidence 20 brittle white hairs under a microscope the hairs did not appear to be human
human hairs have thin medullas the cord that runs through the center of the hair
these hairs had thick medullas meaning they were animal hairs but what animal constable roger savoy thought he had an
answer he remembered something from his interview with doug beamish it was the type of observation we make
hundreds of times each day but usually forget almost there savoy recalled that he saw a cat in doug
beamish's home but it wasn't just any cat it was a pure white one a cat beamish called
snowball savoy also recalled that the cat rubbed up against his leg during his visit
leaving a number of white hairs on his trousers hairs that looked identical to the ones
found in the bloody leather jacket investigators now wondered whether there was any way to prove scientifically
whether the cat hairs on the leather jacket belong to snowball 33 year old shirley duguay was still
missing but a leather jacket stained with her blood was found 15 miles from her abandoned car police believe the leather
jacket was the key to her disappearance the person involved in shirley's death was likely wearing that jacket because
it was not shirley's jacket so we had to put the jacket on somebody we had to prove that jacket
belonged to someone [Music] inside the jacket were several brittle white hairs which were suspected to be
from doug beamish's cat if we could prove that it was this particular cat's hair
then we would be able to say well this belonged to mr beamish the the jacket and the job was to find someone that
would do this this type of testing savoy made hundreds of telephone calls and found to his surprise
that forensic testing on cat hair had never been done before anywhere in the world
for us but he was fortunate enough to come across dr stephen o'brien a geneticist at the national cancer
institute in the united states who had spent decades studying hereditary illness in cats
the constable said to me on the phone dr o'brien i've looked all over the country
in fact all over the world for an expert in cat dna technology because i would like very much
to know whether or not the hairs that were in the lining of the jacket which are tied to the scene of the crime
because the jacket was covered with the victim's blood are those hairs from snowball
dr o'brien asked canadian police for a blood sample from mr beamish's cat but this was more difficult than expected
snowball wasn't at all cooperative it took approximately half an hour from chasing the cat from under the beds to
every room in the house until it was almost like the cat knew that we were taking him in
roger savoy told me he went down to the house and read out the rights the cat's rights to the parents
and i said to roger what did the cat say and he said meow there's an old saying with the rcmp we
always get our man but this case we had to go to say we always get our cat after finally capturing the cat snowball
was taken to a local veterinarian's office for the necessary blood sample [Music]
dr jane bond drew the blood as two canadian officers stood by to take custody of the sample in order to
preserve the chain of evidence snowballs blood and cat hairs taken from the leather jacket were delivered in
person to dr o'brien and his team [Music] one of the hairs contained a root which
was cut into pieces and put into a buffer solution which dissolved everything except the dna
it was then amplified or photocopied so scientists had enough for their tests [Music]
the dna profile of the hair found in the leather jacket was then compared to the
dna from snowball's blood we got a very clear match between the genotype of each of the markers in the
hair to each of the same markers in snowball in the only way that that could have happened is that they came from the
same cat but prince edward island is isolated and there are thousands of cats there
was it possible because of inbreeding isolation or just plain feline promiscuity
that another cat on the island had the same genetic profile as snowball if so the dna match would be useless
you need to know that some other cat on prince edward island couldn't have contributed that
that hair what if 25 percent of the cats on prince edward island had the same dna
profile or 10 percent or even 100 cats so that's the next question you have to ask what is the
frequency of that profile blood samples were taken from 20 cats on prince edward island and sent to dr
o'brien and his team the dna profiles of these 20 cats showed a rich genetic diversity
the chance that the cat hair found on the leather jacket belonged to a cat other than snowball was estimated to be
one in 70 million this was the break canadian investigators had been hoping for [Music]
and then after seven months of searching a fisherman found the last piece of evidence
[Music] 28 weeks into shirley duguay's disappearance a fisherman along canada's armoire river saw a pile of brush on the
riverbank that looked out of place as he moved the brush away he saw what appeared to be
a human body it was a very shallow grave dug just deep enough to cover the body the person
was a very tiny person we knew shirley dugay was less than five feet tall less than 100 pounds
obviously we were we expected it was surely due gain i was alone by myself and it started to
snow it was a freak snow storm because and i recall all i had on was a rain jacket and i felt bad because the body
was partly uncovered so i took my rain jacket which was all i had to keep warm and put it on top of the grave to keep
the snow off her ironically shirley's body was buried in a spot nearly identical to what the police
psychic predicted near the water under pine trees it was just lucky that they found her
when they did because the police told me that within two or three weeks more and
they would have had a hard time to identify her because the ground was thawing out and
[Music] they knew that there was very little hope of finding her alive and when they
found her they were very um they were very relieved in the sense that they knew at least that they could
uh have a service for her and pray and get together and it they could sort of bring
a closure to it at the autopsy the cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma
just as the blood spatter in her car suggested shirley's nose was broken and her jaw broken in three places
one of her front teeth was found embedded in her lung doug beamish was arrested and charged
with murder scientists discovered that it was his blood mixed with shirley's inside her abandoned car
but what was his motive police discovered beamish had written shirley a letter threatening to kill her
before he'd allow her to get custody of their children the whole letter was written in blood
it was just one page mind you but it was written in blood although beamish denied owning the
leather jacket stain with shirley's blood police found this photograph taken the day before shirley's disappearance
in it he is wearing a jacket identical to the one found at the crime scene well actually he has no defense at all
except to say i didn't do it but i think if you interviewed all the prisoners in the prisons in canada
they'd all say i didn't do it that's pretty well they've always got someone else to blame
on you know criminals do that they always blame someone else for their problems you they will certainly you never see a
criminal going card and say i did it judge after going to great lengths to cover up
the crime beamish never realized that petting his cat before the murder would be his downfall
one in three criminals have cats and maybe one in four have a dog so when you go to the scene of the crime
and if there's a trace of dna there it's like leaving your your name your rank and social security
number which can be can be used and failing to have the individuals if they leave their pets uh parts there that can
implicate them too this is what happened with mr beamish his pet cat implicated him
doug beamish was tried and convicted of shirley duguay's murder and sentenced to
18 years in prison the case is among the most celebrated in forensic history because it is the first
time that animal dna was used to convict the murderer since then we've received calls from
after the investigation from all over the world literally i received calls from japan asking us how
this worked how did the animal dna work i mean i was actually surprised once the
snowball case became well known among the forensic community i would say about once every two weeks i
would receive a phone call from a police department that was investigating a crime where a
animal hair had been left behind and they were asking us to help them t.s eliot penned these lines in his old
possum's book of practical cats you now have learned enough to see that cats are much like you and me
we've learned that applies to their dna too and doug beamish now wishes that this wasn't true
[Music] [Music] you

An examination of the first time animal DNA was used to solve a criminal case. When the body of Douglas Beamish's estranged wife Shirley Duguay was discovered, authorities linked 20 cat hairs found on her jacket to a cat owned by Beamish's parents.

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

Shirley Duguay's disappearance was solved using animal DNA, implicating her estranged husband Doug Beamish in her murder.

Key points

The Disappearance of Shirley Duguay. A young mother vanishes, leading to a massive search effort.
A Key Piece of Evidence. A bloody leather jacket raises questions about the estranged husband.
The Breakthrough in Forensic Science. Animal DNA helps solve a murder case for the first time.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This is the story of how one tiny white hair solved the mystery.

0:22WatchDec 10, 2021

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