Forensic Files - Season 8, Episode 29 - Smoke in Your Eyes - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[Music] a suspicious fire swept through an apartment killing two young women the
cause of the fire and the identity of the victims were unclear but a closer look at the fire scene
revealed something hidden in the ashes could gas chromatography a burned pair of eyeglasses and a half-smoked
cigarette solved the case [Music] [Music] on a spring night in march of 1999 firefighters in iowa city rushed to an
apartment building engulfed in flames near the university of iowa campus when they arrived they had fire blowing
out windows and doors of the apartment building immediately had the opportunity and the necessity to
initiate an aggressive fire attack [Music] just inside the entrance firefighters
found what appeared to be a body then in the back bedroom another gruesome discovery
they were unable to see and so i had to use the just feeling their way around the apartment and
checking on the bed they found the second victim a driver's license found next to one of
the bodies belonged to 29 year old laura watson dalton a paramedic who had come to iowa city to
visit her cousin she had really loved the town and it was st patrick's day and that was one of her
favorite holidays and i think because it's a college town sort of a great party atmosphere for st patrick's day
she decided to go there and visit friends the second victim matched the description of a woman who had been
reported missing she was 27 year old maria lainer an environmental scientist who was in town
on a business trip and was staying at a nearby hotel we was hoping and praying it wasn't her
but back of our minds we kind of knew it was they had found her blazer in a parking ramp and it hadn't
been it had been driven for a while the apartment was rented to three college students who claimed they were
out of town on the night of the fire the men said they gave no one permission to stay there
and they also denied knowing either laura watson or maria laner at the morgue the medical examiner found
evidence that the women were dead before the fire started there was no soot in the lungs of either
victim therefore we were able to conclude scientifically that they expired prior
to the fire it was evident they had both been killed by blunt force trauma to the head
inside the apartment investigators found a barbell that contained blood and human hair leading
to speculation that this was the murder weapon they also found a gasoline container
you might find gasoline cans stored of course in garage or utility closets but to find a gasoline can in a hallway of
an apartment i think that's that would be rather odd investigators believed that the fire may
have been intentionally set and that clues to the killer's identity could be waiting at the crime scene
hidden in the smoldering ashes and they also wondered why these two women were in an apartment
rented by men they'd never even met the lack of soot and smoke in the victim's lungs revealed that the two
women were killed before the fire started and when the medical examiner compared
the amount of tissue damage between the two victims he discovered something astonishing
the two victims were killed on different days it is clear that aura died in the late
hours on wednesday or the early morning hours on thursday and remained in that apartment where she died
and then maria died late thursday night or early friday morning in the same apartment
laura watson's friends told police that they last saw her in a local bar on wednesday night two nights before the
fire laura was talking to a man sitting beside her and someone that you've had a
conversation with that's been kind of interesting asks you if you'd like to you know go to another party or or go to
another bar lots of people have done that and and it's a situation where most of us don't
think that we're going to place ourselves in peril witnesses said laura left with the man
around midnight he was described as tall in his twenties with unkept brown hair and glasses
investigators discovered the same thing happened to maria laner on the following
night the owner of a different bar said he saw maria leaving his establishment with a
man matching the same description she didn't have as good as judgment as she would have if she wasn't drinking
maybe he said hey there's a party over at this place you want to come with me i don't think she ever did it before i
think this is one time and it wasn't and it was the wrong time since the victims had been murdered on
two different nights the killer apparently had free access to the apartment and could come and go as
he pleased but the college students who rented it said they had no idea who the killer was
after the last embers were out the iowa department of criminal investigations examined the scene for
clues investigators noticed a hole in the outside wall of the apartment and there
was a gas container found just inside the front door to see if an accelerant had been used
investigators placed some of the debris in an air-tight container and sent it to
the lab for analysis criminalists placed an activated charcoal strip into the can overnight
then washed it with the carbon disulfide the vials were placed in a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer for
analysis it will separate it out based on the physical properties and chemical properties of the components of what
ignitable liquid may be in that sample and everything flows through the instrument at a different rate and it'll
actually separate out those and you'll see the individual components of each component of the ignitable liquid
the results were clear gasoline had been used to start the fire apparently the gasoline vapors ignited
causing the explosion that blew through the outside wall investigators also discovered a
matchbook in the debris the gasoline had to be ignited by something and so when the fire marshal
collected a matchbook in or around that fire scene that was really a fresh matchbook with only one match missing
the fire had destroyed any prints that might have been on the matchbook steve duffy looked through all of the
photos taken at the fire scene searching for items that may have been overlooked
in one of the photographs he noticed something that looked like a pair of eyeglasses
when he returned to the apartment they were still there they were very obviously prescription
eyeglasses and i hoped that i could [Music] go back through those prescriptions to
find the owners none of the tenants or victims owned the glasses [Music] duffy also found a cigarette butt still
very much intact this cigarette had been smoked had not been put out had not been
stomped out on the floor in other words it was still burning when it hit the carpet
investigators suspected that the perpetrator lit a cigarette then started to pour the gasoline throughout the
apartment at some point his cigarette probably ignited the gases he received a burn on his nose
he either swatted at his face and knocked his glasses off or he the glasses fell off his face
and the cigarette flew out of his mouth now investigators were looking for a tall unkept man who smoked cigarettes
and possibly had a burned face he may also have been missing his eyeglasses one week after a fire gutted their
apartment the three college students who rented it were allowed to return there were items stolen from the
apartment that included a vcr or two and some other electronic equipment investigators checked local pawn shops
to see if someone had sold the stolen goods and they got their first break a pawn shop owner recalled buying these
items from a young man just a few days earlier in iowa anyone selling to a pawn shop must show
some form of identification with an address the man who sold the items was john memmer
a 23 year old drifter known around town as a partier john memmer was very adept at
inviting himself to those after hours parties because of that he was a person who could con his way into
staying over at any number of apartments and sleeping on their couch or what have
you one of the apartment tenants said he knew memr and had let him sleep overnight a few weeks earlier
he didn't have a lot of friends he didn't have a job he wasn't enrolled as a student
he was sleeping where he could he was very transient and yes that made it more difficult to find him mr memmer
basically made his living by being a thief police finally caught up with memr who
was on probation at the time for a forgery conviction when he was questioned investigators noticed he had a burn
injury on his nose memr admitted he had been in the apartment while the tenants were away
and also confessed to stealing their stereo and television set but he denied killing the women or setting
the fire he said there was another drifter sleeping in the apartment that week too
[Music] police wanted to see if they could tie memor to the evidence immediately after the fire explosion he
did not have eyeglasses and during the following week he acquired another pair of glasses
using a machine called a lensometer an optometrist determined the degree of curvature or diopters of the lenses
the strength of the lenses matched the prescription memory had been given by his eye doctor in john mimer's situation
he needed his eyeglasses to see he would not leave his eyeglasses laying around so to find his eyeglasses
at the scene of a double homicide and arson was significant police needed more proof
they looked once again at the cigarette butt the one investigator suspected had inadvertently ignited the fire
was it possible this cigarette butt contained the killer's dna scientists removed the wrapper from the
lip end of the cigarette then separated any cells present in the paper the biological sample was then
reproduced to create a larger sample for analysis then compared to a dna sample taken from
memor while in custody it was a match statistically the the chances of the dna and the cigarette butt coming from
anyone but mr memor are too small to consider but memr admitted being in the apartment
which could account for him leaving his glasses and the cigarette butt police needed
more proof investigators then examined laura dalton's leather jacket found in the
apartment somebody came up and said you know while we have this jacket why don't you go
ahead and look at the jacket maybe there's a print on a button a snap or something
criminalist bessman checked the jacket under a high intensity light no prints were found
then he placed the jacket in a special cabinet with a small container of cyanoacrylate a compound found in super
glue the compound was heated and the fumes circulated around the jacket for about
10 minutes the cyanoacrylate has made kind of a little fibrous network over those fumes
and we can look at it it makes the ridges stand out white instead of the black like you'd see on a fingerprint
card to his surprise bessman found a partial image of a foot impression the print was dyed to fluoresce under
forensic lighting bessman compared that print to the souls on the shoes confiscated from john
memmer when he was taken into custody both prints were the same size and make there had to have been a contaminant on
the shoe or something on the coat that the shoe removed when it made contact with it so it was
rather unusual to develop a footwear impression this way and there was something else on the shoe
a tiny piece of evidence that would tell investigators exactly what happened to laura dalton
and maria laner [Music] investigators found one last piece of evidence linking john
memmer to the murders of laura watson dalton and maria laner it was a tiny piece of material on
memr's shoes on the side of the sole about the size of a pinhead kind of a reddish brown
stain that i believe might have been blood the stain was lifted using sterile water
then tested using dna analysis the dna from the blood on the shoe matched the dna sample from maria laner
it just made it just more sad because you kind of knew what he had to do to get blood out of his shoes
that was critical it showed that john memmer had been in contact with maria laner
even though he denied it and that at some point he was with maria laner when she was bleeding
john memmer was charged with first degree murder we had other forensic evidence the jacket the
footwear analysis the eyeglasses but it was the dna analysis that found maria's blood on
memory shoe that was the final straw that let us go forward prosecutors believe john memmer broke
into the apartment when he knew the tenants were out of town how he lured laura dalton to the
apartment on wednesday evening isn't clear but prosecutors believe member may have
made a sexual advance which was rejected [Music] in a rage memor killed laura with a blow to the
head on thursday night memor probably lured maria laner to the apartment the same way
and when she too rejected him he killed her as well on friday after stealing the television
and stereo memr decided to destroy all possible evidence that he had been there he lit a single match for a cigarette
then set about the process of pouring gasoline throughout the apartment but he made a mistake
the gasoline caused fumes to build in the small apartment and his cigarette caused the explosion
it knocked his glasses off burned his nose and the cigarette butt and matches went flying
that was probably john memmer's downfall was just smoking the cigarette because he left behind
valuable evidence and nearly killed himself a waste he's a waste of human being soulless um
i don't think probably ever contributed anything and as a probably has spent all of his
life using people in and taking at the trial it wasn't just the forensic evidence
that made an impression on the jury member was sporting a new tattoo as he sat at the defense table
in the gang world a tattoo of a teardrop signifies you've murdered someone in this case that was significant
because john member did not want one teardrop at the corner of his eye but he wanted
to [Music] talk about not very smart going to the trial with those on his eyes and
the jury can see it easily when i questioned him about that at trial he claimed they were for two
friends of his that had died in an automobile accident but i think that was pretty powerful
damning evidence in truth in the aggregate it was a small piece of circumstantial evidence but
it was an interesting addition to the totality of the case john memmer was convicted of two counts
of first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison maria laner's family says
it's ironic that science helped find her killer she was a biology major she loved
science so knowing that the blood on the shoe and all the other forensic evidence was what put him away
i'm sure she would would have thought that was pretty cool there is no such thing as a perfect
crime there's always evidence left it's there for the people who look this was where the evidence led and it pointed to
mr mimmer he received two life sentences john memmer will obviously serve one of
his life sentences here on this earth if i was john memor i would be worrying about where i'm going to spend that
second life sentence it may be a lot hotter there than the fire that he started [Music]
[Music] you

A suspicious fire swept through an apartment killing two young women. The cause of the fire and the identity of the victims were unclear. But a closer look at the fire scene revealed something hidden in the ashes.

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

The episode details the 1999 Iowa City fire that killed two women and the forensic investigation that led to John Memmer's conviction.

Key points

Tragic Fire Claims Two Lives. A suspicious fire in Iowa City kills two women, Laura Watson and Maria Laner, leaving investigators puzzled.
Investigation Uncovers Gruesome Details. Firefighters discover two bodies in the apartment, leading to a deeper investigation into the fire's cause.
DNA Evidence Links Suspect to Crime. John Memmer is arrested after DNA from a cigarette butt matches his, linking him to the murders.
Memmer's Downfall: A Cigarette Mistake. The act of smoking a cigarette leads to crucial evidence being left behind, sealing Memmer's fate.
Conviction and Sentencing. John Memmer is convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I think this is one time and it wasn’t.

6:31WatchDec 16, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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