Forensic Files - Season 8, Episode 3 - Paintball - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[Music] she was home alone making the dress she planned to wear on her friday night date
but she had an uninvited visitor it took 24 years before forensic science could identify the individual who was
there that fateful night [Music] [Music] it was 1962 president john f kennedy was leading the
country at the height of the cold war the world anxiously watched as the united states confronted the soviet
union over suspected missile sites in cuba all ships of any kind bound to cuba where they found the contained cargos of
offensive weapons be turned back racial tensions in the united states weren't as easily deflected
desegregation of southern schools pit blacks against whites leaders like martin luther king jr
articulated a message of hope and reason i have a dream that someday this nation will rise up
hundreds of miles away in the small town of hanford california racial tension and the arms race were
less important than tending to business and making ends meet it was a small community everybody knew
everybody else it was all first name basis even all the races were all friendly the miller family provided an important
service to the community they managed the water that was supplied to area farms very neat family hard worker
christian people so the millers were quite well known the canal was located behind their home
and someone from the miller family was always there to make sure the water system worked properly
[Music] on march 21 1962 fifteen-year-old marlene was the one to stay home while her parents left for a night out
marlene planned to finish sewing a new dress for an upcoming date her parents returned home around 10 p.m
the television set was blaring [Music] a screen was missing from the bedroom window and there was no sign of their
daughter deputy sheriff o.r mcfarlane was one of the first to arrive on the scene
it was obvious that we had a problem she was in fact missing and there was some foul play somewhere
[Music] police found tire tracks on the dirt road near the home and there was other
evidence there was a set of boot tracks leading out onto elder avenue from the dirt lane
there was a set of barefoot tracks leading back into the lane and which got in and out of the car that was
parked there nearby police discovered a pair of mismatched workman's gloves and a belt
robert goode was the first journalist on the scene covering the story for the fresno b newspaper
once there he found more than a story started walking down the bank of ways i walked 150 feet down the bank and there
she was marlene was floating face down in the reservoir behind the family home marlene's brother walt was searching the
area in a police helicopter and as we flew over the home [Music] [Applause] [Music]
the autopsy revealed marlene had been stabbed in the chest although the wound was not fatal there was water in her
lungs so the cause of death was drowning marlene's wrists were tied behind her back with a knot used by most area dairy
farmers it had this little knot in it it was something you could do very quickly
and keep the cow from kicking him there were no signs of sexual assault but bruises on the body suggested
marlene bravely fought her attacker in a search for witnesses one of marlene's high school classmates
told police he saw a strange car near marlene's house around the time of her murder
he said it was awkward type blue fenders he liked the paint on the car black on the hood and black on the top and black
clear down the trunk high school kid that kind of you know 53 plymouth looked pretty good to him
police had tire impressions at the crime scene and a description of the car now all they had to do
was find it a witness saw a 1953 black and turquoise plymouth parked near marlene miller's
home on the night of her murder within hours police found it i remember hanford police department
came up with a car of that description parked in front of the royal hotel in downtown hanford on 7th street
when deputy sheriff mcfarlane peered inside the rear window he saw what would later become a crucial
piece of evidence i could see a pair of boots back there one was sitting flat and the other was
on its side and with a flashlight i could see the the tread looked to me like the same
tread that was out there in tome lane the car was registered to booker t hillary jr a local dairy worker who had
recently been released from prison for a previous rape conviction one of his co-workers told police that
he saw hillary driving towards marlene miller's home after work on the night of her murder
and hillary's employer identified the gloves found at the crime scene as the ones hillary wore
the tires on hillary's car and the boots found in the back seat were similar to the tire and boot
impressions in the soft mud near the crime scene but that doesn't mean that he killed her
even though the gloves were pitched out down the road where the car track said that looked like his went
so everything was circumstantial there was no real evidence to put him in the home
booker hillary denied any involvement in marlene's murder [Music] hillary said he drove by the miller's
home every day since he worked at the dairy farm just down the road he said his tire and shoe impressions in
the area meant nothing booker hillary was arrested tried and convicted of marlene miller's murder
he was sentenced to death [Music] once in prison hillary took full advantage of the appellate process and
petitioned to have his conviction overturned it was discouraging especially for the
family that had to constantly relive this nightmare every time this case would come up
each time we go through this process i keep thinking that maybe this is the last process
that they will have to endure and they just keep coming and coming frustrating sometimes a criminal justice
system to a police officer is frustrating all right every appeal hillary filed was
unsuccessful but in the united states supreme court ruled the death penalty was cruel and unusual
punishment as a result the sentences of everyone on death row including booker hillary were commuted
to life in prison the supreme court reversed their decision two years later but the
commuted death sentences couldn't be reinstated booker hillary's legal maneuvering
continued he appealed his conviction once again this time claiming that blacks had been
excluded from the grand jury that indicted him in 1983 a judge granted that appeal and ordered
hillary either to be retried or released what is disturbing about it is that this
was in 1983 the conviction occurred in 1962 and anyone can review the transcripts of
the grand jury hearing and determine that you know no matter what race you are you will find probable cause
robert moline was the prosecutor in booker hillary's retrial i knew that i had to find out exactly
what proof i needed because i obviously had to retry this case and i had to retry it 24 years after the first
conviction the physical evidence still existed but 21 of the original witnesses were
now dead larry orth was the chief investigator for the kings county da's office all the
people were dead and to sit and have to read hundreds of pages of testimony from 1962
65 1970 into into a record of a present-day trial can almost put you to sleep so investigators took the physical
evidence and looked at it again this time with some new forensic techniques not previously available
and found a surprise [Music] it had been 24 years since booker t hillary was first convicted of marlene
miller's murder a conviction later overturned on appeal criminalist gary courtner examined the
physical evidence from the first trial he started with the boots found in booker hillary's car on the night of the
murder the boots had been modified the soles were the originals from the wellington boot company
but the original white heel had been replaced with the black one he did this to keep his shoes from
wearing out as fast and in doing that he made an almost an individual shoe out of it
because of the two different components courtner compared hillary's boots to the
shoe impression found near marlene miller's home they had the same soul the same custom
heel and the same five individual cut marks in the heel next courtney compared the tires from
hillary's car to the tire impressions found on the dirt road near the miller's home
we were looking for cuts or rocks or anything that had been in the tires and in this case we were very
lucky because there was a manufacturer's defect that was picked up and there were
three cuts in the tires very close to that this placed booker hillary in the vicinity of the crime scene
but not inside the home larry orth found something important while reading through the transcripts
from the first trial on the night of the murder 24 years earlier an alert detective asked marlene's
mother to vacuum the carpet in the living room where her daughter was abducted [Music]
at that time investigators found some unusual microscopic particles in that trace
evidence but they didn't know what they were he said they didn't have the technology
to do other than just to compare him as far as shape size and that was it the football shaped particles found in
the vacuum cleaner bag still existed in the evidence file and were sent for analysis to an independent forensic lab
in chicago skip palanek was the forensic microscopist assigned to the case having done microscopy since i was eight
years old i had seen particles like this before and i knew what kinds of physical
phenomena produced this under magnification of 300 times palink recognized the particles
as paint the kind sprayed from an aerosol can throughout the particles were cotton
fibers this explained why the paint particles were round when paint is sprayed from an aerosol
can the round particles flatten when they hit a surface like wood when the paint dries it creates a
film-like covering but if the spray paint hits a fiber it reacts differently if these spheres dry around nothing they
just retain that shape as their spheres however if they come in contact with a fiber
then what happens is capillary forces cause the the ends of the sphere which starts out like this to
draw where they come in contact with the fiber scientists performed an electron probe
microanalysis to identify the elements in the paint every element that's in there has its
own x-rays that come off there are different wavelengths and we collect these different x-rays at the different
wavelengths or different energies and from their energy or their wavelength we can tell what elements are present in
the sample the components were titanium lead and iron an infrared micro spectrophotometer
which looks more like a computer than a microscope determined the paint's molecular composition
the results are charted on a graph and scientists learned that the paint was an oil-based alkyd with a prussian
blue pigment investigators now wanted to know where these mysterious microscopic blue paint
particles came from and they also needed to know how they got onto marlene miller's
living room carpet 24 years earlier as prosecutors prepared to retry booker t hillary for the murder of marlene
miller they discovered new forensic evidence microscopic paint particles in the victim's home encased in cotton
but in 1962 at the time of the original trial the technology to identify these particles didn't exist
but where did these paintballs come from for answers investigators looked once more inside booker hillary's 1953
plymouth automobile surprisingly it was still in police custody after all those years
in the forensic lab scientists noticed that the ceiling of the passenger compartment was lined with
a cotton material and the material had been painted with the blue spray paint and pulling some of the headliner off
and examining it under the microscope i realized that there were millions of these things that had been
manufactured by him and spraying the headliner and um and they were still there it was kind of like they were
there for someone to find and i was lucky enough to be the one that found them scientists vacuumed the inside of
hillary's car and analyzed the trace evidence they found thousands of paint particles
identical in color shape and chemical makeup to those found in marlene miller's home
at the end of all this analysis what we have are first of all green paint spheres the paint is alkyd enamel
it's the same in both questioned and known it has the same color when you crush up little bits under the
microscope they show the same kinds of crystal filler crystalline fillers that are inside
the elemental composition is identical the infrared spectrum from the molecular composition is identical they both use
prussian blue we couldn't say that you know it came from the same spray can we're just
saying how did they get there they're so unusual in shape why are they in both places
investigators suspected that booker hillary spray painted the interior roof of his car
as he did the round paint particles attached to the cotton fibers and remained cylindrical as they dried
driving around town when hillary hit a bump in the road the microscopic particle shed
landing on his clothing and in his hair these paintballs just followed him around like a
virus and he didn't know they were there prosecutors believe that when hillary entered marlene's home on the night of
her murder those microscopic paint particles dropped onto the miller's living room floor
he uh became literally a walking trace evidence factory this evidence placed booker hillary
inside marlene's home we had everything else outside and a tenth of a mile away but
the paintballs put him in the house that's how important they are in 1986 based on this new forensic
evidence booker t hillary was tried and convicted once again for the murder of fifteen-year-old marlene miller
he was sentenced to the maximum penalty allowed 25 years to life although the judge made it clear
that he would have imposed the death penalty if he had been permitted by law to do so
ironically it was booker hillary himself who handed investigators the forensic evidence used
to convict him [Music] local authorities had tried to sell his car shortly after his first conviction
in the 1960s but hillary wouldn't allow it he in turn filed a motion in federal court suing the county to stop him from
getting rid of the car he dismissed the case and we decided not to sell it and thank you mr hillary
when i looked up that day in the garage and having seen that spray headliner was
just indescribable i said this is it had he have not saved the car for us i would have never known where these
particles came from today booker hillary is 71 years old he was denied parole at his most recent
hearing in january 2003. booker hillary is where he belongs he should have been in the gas chamber before this but
for whatever reason he the system didn't take his life but he is where he belongs he does not belong
back out of society investigators credit the foresight of the late art thomas the king's county
chief criminal deputy who in 1962 insisted that marlene's mother vacuumed the living room floor where the
abduction took place he kept that trace evidence in police custody that was the key to it and i know art
knew that was the key to putting him in the house back then he was an investigator and he was a damn good cop
[Music] we can do what some people think can only be done in works of fiction we are i
believe that sort of the living embodiment of sherlock holmes and dr thorndyk and some of these kinds of
people and that we can take this little speck of evidence and literally make it speak
[Music] [Music] you

In 1962, the people of the small town of Hanford, California lost their sense of peace when one of their own, 15-year-old Marlene Miller, was murdered.

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 Marlene Miller's murder and the forensic evidence that led to Booker T. Hillary's conviction after 24 years.

Key points

The Unsolved Mystery of Marlene Miller. Fifteen-year-old Marlene Miller goes missing, leading to a complex investigation.
The Role of Forensic Evidence. New forensic techniques reveal crucial evidence linking Booker Hillary to the crime.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I have a dream that someday this nation will rise up.

Martin Luther King Jr.'s iconic speech.

1:40WatchDec 16, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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