Forensic Files Season 8, Episode 10 - Dinner and a Movie - Full Episode | Forensic Files

an affluent young woman was found dead in her home while her husband was off on a sailing trip
[Music] police uncovered allegations of sex parties and white swapping but it was an old movie an overheard
telephone call and an air conditioner that cracked the case [Music] [Music] [Music]
ed and ellen sherman lived in niantic connecticut for the entire 16 years of their marriage
ed taught business at a local community college and was a member of mensah an organization for people with
exceptionally high iqs ellen was five and a half months pregnant and worked in the family
publishing business ellen sherman was a sweetheart everybody that met ellen just adored her she had a
smile and a friendly uh hello for everyone on a friday night in august of 1985 ed left for a week-long sailing trip
with four friends they are always fun and we always have a great time and that's great sailing from maine down we
stop at the vineyard nantucket and what have you boys night out type thing on sunday afternoon two days into the
trip ed called his pregnant wife to make sure she was okay [Music] after numerous calls went unanswered ed
contacted len frederickson a good friend of the couple and asked him to check on
ellen i got over there when it was just starting to get dark and i could hear the air conditioner running
in the house the lights were on and the inside and the outside i checked all the
doors they were locked it was locked up which was very strange because they always left the house open i used to kid
ellen about you're going to come home some night there'll be nothing left in your house
no one answered the door so fredrickson entered the home through an unlocked window
inside was the family dog he called for ellen but there was no answer upstairs he opened the bedroom door
and found ellen's lifeless body on the bed i had no idea what had happened i i didn't think that she'd been murdered
and why would i think that anybody would murder this wonderful person it appeared
at first glance as if she were the subject of a sexual assault and her night clothing was on the floor and her
underwear and the bedding red ligature marks around ellen's neck indicated strangulation
the medical examiner determined that the murder occurred sometime saturday night
or early sunday morning based on rigor mortis the temporary stiffening of the body after death
the lines on her fingernails were evidence they had been bent backwards could be because during the
strangulation victim try to keep themselves free meanwhile trying to struggle with the
perpetrator may scratch the farm police found no signs of forced entry and no valuables were missing which
ruled out robbery using a ship to shore radio a policeman gave ed sherman the bad news
he talked to him for a while which i wasn't listening to but he eventually did hand me the microphone and
said wayne take this it's the police they said ellen's been killed detective mike malczyk soon learned that
the sherman's lives were far from ordinary it was a lifestyle of deception sex and intrigue
[Music] the medical examiner estimated that ellen sherman was murdered sometime over
the weekend while her husband was sailing in the atlantic ocean with friends ed sherman told investigators that he
last spoke with his wife on friday night from his friend's house they said that mr sherman did get on the
phone and he's telling his wife go to the bank to make this deposit all these different things
and ed sherman was unusually candid about their sex life [Applause] of it up until
relatively recently and the girlfriend had a child and it was his child the woman was ed's co-worker
nancy prescott she was very different than ellen in fact ellen used to refer to her as
ed's valley girl she was blonde and very different looking ed wanted an open marriage he encouraged
ellen to have affairs and ed sherman's lifestyle was unusual in other ways i remember being at a
new year's eve party at their house i believe it was 1984. they had several couples there and i
guess they were going to swap partners i was with a young lady and ed asked me if
i was interested in what i asked the young lady that i was with if she was interested and i just said
we'll leave and we did so ed was really the one that was pushing that type of situation
allen did not want that in her life i was totally unaware of and would not have guessed it
since there were no signs of forced entry police suspected ellen may have known her killer
fran uh downstairs to upstairs everything in proper order no sign of a ransack or violent struggles
if a boring intruder usually we see some sign of struggle dr henry lee at the time the director of
connecticut's crime lab was called in to assist investigators dr lee examined photos of the ligature
marks on ellen sherman's neck and found a faint pattern and this pattern is a zigzag
pattern which so unique initially we don't know where they come from lee compared this to the clothing found
at the scene including the torn panties subsequently when we start scratching the panty you can see
this this pattern the space star opening up and shows identical pattern as what left on the neck
but other evidence showed that ellen was strangled with bare hands not the panties
the autopsy revealed the cricoid cartilage in the neck had been fractured something which cannot be accomplished
during ligature strangulation [Music] dr lee believes the killer wrapped the panties around her neck afterwards in
order to stage the crime scene to make it look like a sex crime on the bed sheet under ultraviolet light
was biological evidence investigators hoped would identify the killer extremely unusual is the bashi we found
close to 150 to 200 individual siemens stand that's a lot of siemens there this biological evidence was too badly
degraded for dna testing which meant the material had been there for quite some time and had survived laundering
while searching for suspects police discovered that ed's mistress nancy prescott may have been angry with
ed and ellen ed had recently agreed to end the affair to save his marriage when ellen got pregnant she said i want
you to stay home and be a father to this baby and be there when it's born and give up the
girlfriend so they they talked it out and ed said that he was willing to give up his
girlfriend and he would be a father and a husband to ellen was angry because i had to make a decision
and so i told nancy can't handle anyone did she get this why why why why why detectives asked ed to take a polygraph
test he agreed the results were inconclusive and nancy prescott had an alibi for the
day of the murder the trail of the killer was starting to turn cold mike malcheck had promised ellen's
mother rose that he would stay on the case and that they would find out who did this to her daughter
then malchik got lucky he learned there was a movie that featured a murder identical to ellen
sherman's would this film lead police to the killer [Music] initially police didn't consider ed
sherman a suspect in his wife's murder since he was on a sailboat in the atlantic ocean the day she died
this case is in the middle of the ocean have perfect galloping a forward weakness
time of the days become very important in many homicide investigations because that
result time of the days you can impeach a witness statement or suspect statement
or collaborate with the suspect statement however time of the death is a difficult area
rigor mortis is one way to estimate the time of death this is what a body looks like when
rigor mortis occurs a stiffening of the entire body that lasts between 12 and 24 hours after
death when ellen's body was discovered it was in the final stages of rigor mortis and
becoming more pliable [Music] in looking through the investigator's report dr lee discovered an important clue
it was something len frederickson said when he found ellen's body it was like a it was like open freezer almost
the air conditioner was going full blast the person later described it as being extremely
cold in the room colder than a normal person would have their air conditioner on
a freezing cold room will slow decomposition and the progress of rigor mortis this meant that ellen sherman's murder
could have occurred earlier than originally estimated here it's clear the time of the days is definite not
sunday although we don't know exactly ours every indicator pointed out is friday sometime
if ellen was murdered on friday night then ed sherman would have had plenty of time to commit the crime
police also learned the sherman was wearing long pants and a long sleeve shirt on the sailing trip in august and
looking back on it we were all in shorts and t-shirts and he had long pants on and a turtleneck
i never saw him on the boat with short sleeves on since ellen's fingernails had been
damaged police suspected that ed might have been hiding scratch marks ed vigorously denied this and insisted
his wife was alive when he left he said he even spoke to her from his friend's home by telephone in front of witnesses
if true ed couldn't have been the killer but ed wasn't the only one listening in to that
conversation his friend's daughter was too she picked up and was getting ready to make a call i
guess he said well i heard mr sherman talking on the phone and she said well i was on
the other end it was just ringing and ringing and i heard him saying i love you too and there was nobody there
and they said why didn't you hang up and she said well i thought it was very unusual because he was talking to a ring
phone it's five minutes after he leaves his house he fakes a phone call his wife
i mean that's hard to explain little did he know that uh you know some nine-year-old girl was
gonna bring him down he wasn't as smart as he thought he was and there was another interesting
development a witness told police that she had run into it on the morning of his sailing
trip during the conversation ed recommended she watch a movie he particularly enjoyed called
blackout in the film a man kills his wife and children puts the bodies inside the house then
manipulates the crime scene in order to fool forensic scientists and mask the true time of death
richard woodmark who plays a detective comes out to the press and says the time of death is going to be very
difficult to determine because the bodies were put in a cold room with the air conditioner turned all the way up
the medical examiner estimates they were dead for at least three days [Music] the air conditioning system in the house
was turned on apparently to slow the decomposition of the body was it possible that ed did the same
thing friends say he displayed a morbid fascination about details of his wife's murder
he asked me once he asked me 10 times do you know if they've determined the time
of death he was very interested in that he also asked me one time if i knew how a body
decomposed i thought that was a very strange question i said no truth is absolutely stranger than
fiction i mean there are so many things that happen in real life that there's no need to make
anything up i mean it's awful police and prosecutors alike wondered what motivated ed sherman to kill his
wife despite the apparent reconciliation friends say ellen decided she wanted a divorce
since ellen was the majority owner of the family business she allegedly told ed that she would leave him with almost
nothing and ellen said he can have his girlfriend and his and his sailboat and that's it
so i said to her i said are you sure this is what you want to do she says i can't live like this anymore she says
he's never going to be a husband and a father to our children he's always going to have this double life
prosecutors believe that ed sherman carefully planned his wife's murder the couple had a light dinner and then
while ellen was changing her clothes in the bedroom prosecutors say ed strangled her to death
[Applause] [Music] the forensic evidence shows that ellen was dead before ed wrapped the panties around her
neck to make the murder appear to be a sex crime inspired by the movie blackout he set the air conditioner to its
coldest setting closed the door and left for the sailing trip around 7pm later that night to cement his alibi
he staged the call to his wife in front of his friends not knowing his friend's daughter was listening in
german called len fredrickson from the sailboat on sunday evening asking him to check on his wife hoping the cold
temperature of the bedroom would mask the true time of death just like the movie
it fooled forensic scientists but only for a while [Music] of course witness play an important
factor the first person discovered the body filled the temperature call the young lady listen on the phone
of course no he's lying by signs we feel the gap shows something it's impossible
the time of the day sunday is impossible then we show what's more probable by friday
then we show the weapon and the motive he almost got away very close detective malachi
arrested ed sherman for murder he knew that i knew that he was the one that had murdered his wife
and when he saw me he looked at me and i just walked in i was the first one in and he looked over
and i said ed it's time and he turned white he started to sweat and he knew it was time
and the forensic evidence mattered most to jurors during deliberations they asked to hear
again the testimony of dr lee and the medical examiner particularly on the time of death
one of the jurors said that it boiled down to the to the fact that they figured he had the time and the and the
the opportunity and the motive six years after his wife's death the jury found ed sherman guilty
of first degree murder and he was sentenced to 50 years in prison while ed sherman never admitted guilt
he did show some remorse he said she deserved a better lifestyle and he apologized for leading such an
indulgent lifestyle and then he said i do not know who killed ellen after spending only three
years in prison ed sherman died of a heart attack at the age of 52. he was a very bright individual high iq
and like to make people know that he was smarter than you that's the way he made
me feel and i've heard the same from other people ed thought he could have whatever ed
wanted he's got to be an awful cold person to be able to do that that's a hands-on
crime and she's pregnant with his own child and it is a son so he's a cold calculating person
doesn't deserve any sympathy from anybody but sherman was not smarter than the detectives and scientists who
investigated the case in all my years of doing this i've never seen a case where a body was placed in
an air-conditioned room and it was turned up to the maximum degree to apparently throw off the time of
death this case demonstrates how important the teamwork to taxes witness scientists
work together did not give up [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Time of death becomes pivotal after a pregnant woman is found murdered in her air-conditioned bedroom. A striking similarity between her death and an HBO movie gives examiners the clues they need to thaw out the alibi of a cold-blooded killer.

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.

#truecrime #forensicfiles #fullepisodes Click here to watch full episodes from Forensic Files - Season 8: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gAB0hcY3Z0&list=PLC4mqmKvz1IbdnLKfCt8--pOV0xEpMIP5 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

Ellen Sherman was murdered by her husband Ed, who staged the scene to cover his crime.

Key points

The Mysterious Death of Ellen Sherman. Ellen Sherman was found dead in her home while her husband was sailing. The investigation reveals a tangled web of deception and intrigue.
The Shocking Revelation. Detectives discover that Ed's lifestyle and his affair with Nancy Prescott may have led to Ellen's murder.
The Alibi That Almost Worked. Ed Sherman crafted an elaborate alibi for the time of his wife's murder, but inconsistencies began to unravel his story.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I had no idea what had happened.

Len Frederickson's reaction upon finding Ellen's body.

2:48WatchDec 16, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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