Forensic Files - Season 8, Episode 12 - Order Up - Full Episode | Forensic Files

the murder of a prominent businessman in colorado was particularly difficult to solve since the killers left virtually
no forensic evidence at the scene but information gathered from a small town diner an endocrinologist and the
forensic botanist took a bite out of the chief suspect's alibi [Music] [Music] [Music]
at an elevation of seven thousand feet steamboat springs colorado boasts one of the largest ski mountains in north
america lifetime resident jerry boggs found the splendor of the small town ski resort
inescapable the family business boggs hardware had been on main street for 63 years
jerry was the kind of person that everybody thought he was their best friend he was a great guy people loved
him he was kind generous you could trust him with your life on october 22 1993 boggs didn't show up
for work as he usually did jerry's brother went to his home and found him dead inside the back door
he had been shot to death nearby was a plastic bag and a bloody shovel so it appeared that he had been ambushed
someone was hitting him in the head with a shovel far enough to hit the overhead beam
boggs often kept his doors unlocked but there were no valuables missing investigators could find no foot
impressions foreign hairs or fibers we didn't have any direct evidence we didn't have any
fingerprints any dna anything that directly connected anyone to the crime scene a neighbor reported seeing two
suspicious looking men near boggs home on the day of the murder and police had another suspect
jerry bogg's ex-wife jill coyte the two got married when jill became pregnant with jerry's baby
i don't think he was in love with her i think that she tricked him and into getting married
the marriage lasted for only seven days jerry had the marriage annulled when he learned that jill hadn't gotten a
divorce from her previous husband i couldn't figure out what in the world he was doing with this woman because in
one hour i could tell that she was just off the wall absolutely the strangest person and not
at all suited for jerry after the annulment the two barely spoke and she would come to steamboat and she
would call up people that jerry knew talk about the child and how jerry had thrown them out and he was a horrible
person when questioned jill said she had an alibi for the night of jerry's murder
she said she was camping at the poodra national park 150 miles away her new boyfriend michael backus
corroborated her alibi investigators were left to wonder who killed jerry boggs and why
[Music] the autopsy revealed that jerry boggs had been beaten with a shovel and shot
three times in the chest with a 25 caliber pistol investigators closely analyzed the
shovel for clues the shovel itself was very old the wood was very porous our lab people
concluded that whoever was using it was probably wearing gloves so there were bloody hand prints on it and you could
see where fingers had been but there was no ridge detail with which to make an identification
in addition to the head injuries and bullet wounds there were some other injuries that
experts couldn't explain based on body temperature and rigor mortis methods that are crude and
sometimes inaccurate the medical examiner estimated that boggs died sometime the night before his body was
found police had two leads a neighbor reported seeing two men near bogg's home earlier in the afternoon on
the day boggs was killed bogg's ex-wife jill coit was also a suspect she and boggs had been fighting over a
100 000 loan boggs made to jill's bed and breakfast hotel during their brief marriage it was an embarrassment too you
know you live in a small town you know all these people you get married you've never been married before you get
married and all of a sudden you've you've got this can of worms to deal with that was just
so much it was just horrible for him i'm sure at times he probably just wanted to
crawl under the rug jill had an alibi for the night of the murder investigators wanted to make sure boggs
was killed at night and not earlier in the day for a better estimate of the time of
death dr doberson decided to analyze the undigested food in bog's stomach so if we could find out where he ate
and at what time he ate we could really narrow down the time of death in retracing boggs steps on the day of
the murder investigators learned the jury opened the hardware store at 10 o'clock as he
did every morning he worked for a while then walked two doors down to the shack for breakfast
there he ordered the same meal he always did eggs toast and hash brown potatoes the folks in the cafe said oh yeah
he stopped by here and had as usual to see if breakfast was bogg's last meal investigators turned to scientists at
the university of colorado we've done the same thing with wooly mammoths frozen in the ice in siberia
and alaska identified what plants they were eating david norris an endocrinologist at the
university of colorado and his colleague forensic botanist jane bock were asked to examine bog stomach contents
basically humans consume between 50 and 75 different types of plants in their diet
plants are easier to distinguish in the stomach than animal products the cell walls themselves remain intact
and they'll pass entirely through the digestive system this makes identification quite easy
it doesn't make any difference whether the material was frozen whether it was boiled
it will remain virtually indestructible dr norris placed a sample of bogg's stomach contents on a slide
under his microscope dr nara saw a jumble of irregular hexagons he recognized them as the intact cells
of either potato or apple both have nearly identical cell structures to determine which one
dr norris used potassium iodide a test for the presence of starch a drop of it is added to the material on
the slide and if starch is present it will turn black under a microscope the cells turned
black which confirmed the presence of starch the cells were from potatoes since jerry ate hash browns on the day
he was murdered the presence of potatoes seemed to indicate breakfast was his last meal
or was it in addition to the potato cells i also saw cells of onions and these are relatively easy to
identify because of the brick-like shape of the cells and the way they're put together kind of like looking at a brick
wall the short-order cook at the diner insisted he never put onions in the eggs or the hash brown potatoes
so we thought well this is um this is a worry maybe uh he did have another later meal
another meal meant that boggs was killed after dinner the prime suspect his ex-wife jill coyte
had an air-tight alibi for that night the only other suspects were the two men seen near bogg's home whom police hadn't
yet identified [Music] the mysterious murder of jerry boggs baffled police in the quiet resort town
of steamboat springs colorado investigators found evidence that boggs grew suspicious of his ex-wife after the
annulment when he caught her lying about her date of birth boggs hired his friend judy pryor lewis
a private investigator to look into jill's background and what she uncovered was shocking
she learned that jill lied about her pregnancy with jerry's baby she hadn't been pregnant at all she had a
hysterectomy years earlier she claimed to have a child and we were all telling him there is no child
it's it's all just a a ruse he he still believed it he just couldn't accept it he would come down to our
house and i would just try every thing i knew to convince him that there really was no baby
[Music] jill was a former model and beauty queen who had lied to jerry about her
background and the number of times she was married jill lunita billiat einen moore coit
brodie derosa metzger steely boggs carol had been married nearly a dozen times i don't smoke or drink i guess my
greatest sin is that i get married jill had married and divorced another man after jerry and was about to walk
down the aisle yet again to her new boyfriend michael backus and what was bogg's reaction
he started laughing we just sat and laughed he's like oh my god what wasn't so funny
was jill's third husband william coyte had been murdered 20 years earlier with the same caliber weapon that killed
jerry boggs william coyte's murder was unsolved the circumstances were very similar in
that both jerry boggs and william coyte were preparing to take her to court they were within a week of a court date
there was within a week of a court date where her character was going to be exposed
and boggs private investigator found evidence that jill falsely claimed to be pregnant in other marriages presumably
for financial purposes mr boggs i think was at the point of disclosing to the world many things
about jill coyte that she wanted to remain secret and she had taken i think very a very dramatic step to ensure that
that did not occur she'd gotten away with so many things and she was proud of it
that she's been married you know 10 or 11 times six bigamies out of that all these kids she says she's had she
hasn't and she couldn't stand it jill said she was camping in a state park on the night of boggs murder
but in order to completely eliminate her as a suspect investigators needed to be sure boggs
was killed at night and not earlier in the day bogg's murder presumably happened at
night after dinner since onions were discovered in his stomach the cooks at the shack insisted they
didn't put onions in bog's breakfast on the morning of his death one of steamboat's homicide
investigators decided to take a closer look not to be deterred he took himself down there
and stood in the kitchen and watched them making breakfast one morning the cook prepared the same breakfast
jerry boggs always ate true to his word the cook did not add onions to the hash browns he threw on the grill
but while watching the grill homicide investigators saw a flurry of activity that suddenly explained everything
every time the cook turned an omelet or scattered an order of hash browns small portions of diced onions from other
orders would get mixed in i believe he photographed the spatula that was used to flip the eggs
to grill the hash brown potatoes and the edge of the spatula is covered with bits of onion
you don't know when you're getting the food at the other end where this what's going on on the grill
breakfast had in fact been jerry boggs last meal we felt vindicated you know that we felt
very good about that because we knew they were there boggs was killed just a few hours after
breakfast jill coyte did not have an alibi for the afternoon of boggs death still
the stomach contents yielded only circumstantial evidence we didn't have any direct evidence we
didn't have any fingerprints any dna anything that directly connected anyone to the crime
scene we didn't have anything in the nature of of a confession in connection with the
case we didn't have smoking gun type of evidence armed with a search warrant police searched jill's car and found
wigs maps of mexico and a stun gun it possible it was jill coyte in disguise that the
neighbor saw walking in the vicinity of jerry's home on the afternoon of his murder
the weapon used in jerry bogg's murder a 25 caliber pistol was not found in jill
coyt's car but investigators suspected the stun gun in her trunk may have caused the unusual
marks on boggs face and neck which were noted during the autopsy stun gun injuries fall into a category
of injuries called patterned injuries which means the injuries mirror the object that caused them so in the case
of a stun gun injury you will have electrical burns mimic the distance between the
electrodes that cause them the injuries lined up identically with the distance between the electrodes
pigskin most closely resembles human skin so dr doberson applied the stun gun to a
live anesthetized pig to see if he could reproduce the round reddish marks on jerry bogg's neck and face
the marks were similar interestingly enough the animal has to be alive in order to show the characteristic
injuries which also means that jerry boggs was alive at the time that he sustained
those injuries the forensic evidence was bringing the crime into focus the witness who reported seeing two men
near jerry's home on the day of the murder said jill coyte and her boyfriend michael backus resembled the men in
height jill liked to wear disguises and had a number of disguises and eventually we even came up with a
photograph that had been taken of her sometime prior to the homicide where she was wearing
a beard and a mustache and jill's alibi disintegrated when police could find no evidence that she
had signed in and paid the admission fee to pudra national park on the day of the
murder jill coyde and michael backus were arrested and charged with first-degree
murder at the preliminary hearing it appeared even jill was impressed with the forensic evidence against her
i remember presenting all of that in front of the judge and she was there at the end i picked up all my materials
and slides and walked out next to her and she looked at me and said nice job and then
i i took that as quite a compliment and there was a surprise witness jill's son seth testified against her
right after shane bacchus had committed the murder she telephoned seth to let him know
i believe her words to him were something to the effect of it's over and it was messy
it did not appear to me that he really had participated in any meaningful way that he had been a conspirator in
connection with that it appeared to me that he had been very little more than an unwilling
person being provided information by somebody who was trying to get him to engage in activity
prosecutors believe that michael backus and jill coit in disguise entered jerry's home in the early
afternoon with the intent of murdering bogs presumably to end their financial dispute
after having his usual breakfast of eggs toast and hash browns which had been unknowingly spiked with onions
boggs left work early that day and arrived home sometime after 1 pm when he did jill and her boyfriend
were waiting boggs was ambushed at the back door first with the stun gun then with the
shovel after a suffocation attempt failed prosecutors believe it was jill who shot boggs three times with a 25
caliber pistol the two were careful not to leave incriminating evidence and their
disguises were almost foolproof but they never realized forensic science could identify
the specific items in bog's stomach which destroyed their flimsy alibi when news of the crime became public
jill's oldest son william came forward with his suspicions that his mother had also killed his father william coyte
senior some 20 years earlier she's more like a praying mantis she just devours them and she gets a
hold of them it took the jury only five hours to find jill coyte and michael backus guilty of
first degree murder i think she was more or less motivated on the money i think she thought that
would make her happy in life and look where she is so apparently money can't buy you everything huh
they were both sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole i believe that joe coyte was aware
that there are methods for determining time of death i don't think she was aware that the stomach contents
could be that telling it ultimately blew her alibi out of the water i think she was pretty clever they
were pretty clever in in wearing uh you know bringing along clothing and or plastic bags or whatever
they used to camouflage themselves from from leaving forensic evidence i mean they
there were no prints no hairs nothing and so they they were very cautious about that but
she should have been watching some of your shows [Music] [Music] [Music] you

A man is found dead in his home, and his ex-wife has a perfect alibi. To determine time of death, investigators need to know when the victim ate his last meal. An endocrinologist, a forensic botanist, and a short-order cook answer their question.

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

Jerry Boggs was murdered; his ex-wife Jill and boyfriend were arrested after forensic evidence contradicted their alibi.

Key points

The Murder of Jerry Boggs. A prominent businessman is found dead in his home, raising questions about his ex-wife's involvement.
Forensic Breakthrough. Forensic analysis of stomach contents reveals crucial evidence linking the murder to Jill Coyte.
The Shocking Alibi. Jill Coyte claims she was camping during the murder, but her alibi begins to unravel.
The Conviction. After a tense trial, both Jill Coyte and Michael Backus are found guilty of first-degree murder.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

He was kind, generous, you could trust him with your life.

Describing Jerry Boggs' character.

1:28WatchDec 16, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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