Forensic Files - Season 8, Episode 37 - Traces of Truth - Full Episode | Forensic Files

a popular high school gym teacher mysteriously left town without saying goodbye to anyone
he later sent letters to explain why but a closer forensic look at those letters and the microscopic piece of
tissue gave investigators an entirely different explanation for where he went and why
[Music] [Applause] [Music] west yellowstone montana is primarily a resort town only 1 000 residents live
here year round but in season the beauty of the national forest lands and yellowstone national
park are the main draw west yellowstone is basically the gateway to yellowstone national park
there's a million plus visitors that come through here every year so it's a service oriented town
rini and brad brisbane owned a restaurant in town brad also worked as a gym teacher at the
local high school brad was fun loving enjoyed life he loved to play practical jokes on people
brad was a very loyal honest trustworthy friend who would do anything including giving
you the shirt off his back to help you friday november 9 1990 started like most days
until brad got a telephone call at work and left class unexpectedly i actually met him in the hall he had
his jacket on he was getting ready to leave i asked him where he was going he just
said to help out a friend and they had brought in a substitute from pe class he said he'd see me at
dinner later on that night brad said he was going to belgrade about 90 miles away to pick up his friend
larry moore who needed a ride it was odd i mean he doesn't leave the you know his teacher's job for very
much so yeah it was odd what made it even more bizarre brad never returned home that's when
we knew something i mean we knew something was already wrong because brad hadn't come home and that wasn't his
nature that wasn't the way brad brisbane was when police interviewed larry moore
he said he met brad at the diner as planned but he said brad was depressed and inebriated
brad told larry that he was tired of life tired of his wife tired of the restaurant was going to leave borrowed
some money from him left the restaurant [Music] moore said brad left the diner got into a red car with washington
plates and drove off moore said the driver was a woman and that he didn't recognize her
fred's car was still in the diners parking lot and there were no signs of foul play
he loved his family there was no problem and there was never any any indication that there was anything in his mind
remotely related to leaving his family i knew that they didn't know our family the dynamics of the family and
and just to hear people saying well you know maybe he did just run off they didn't
know him the brisbane and more families had been friends for years larry's wife shelley worked with brad
shelley coached the girls high school basketball team and brad coached the boys investigators heard rumors that brad and
shelly were having an affair i don't believe so we talked to rini she didn't think there was an affair we
talked to shelley and she denied one the only other person that could really say was missing
coincidentally shelley and larry moore separated just two days before brad disappeared
shelley said her alleged affair with brad was a figment of larry's imagination i truly believe he thought we were
having an affair she actually pointed to larry as as possibly having done something to brad because of
some of the domestic violence against her and the fact that he had accused her of having an affair with brett
a few weeks after brad's disappearance a letter from brad arrived at police headquarters
he said he was alive and well and living in washington state but after seeing the letter
police weren't too sure the last known person to see brad brisman alive was his friend larry moore
police started their investigation by carefully examining larry moore's truck he allowed me to search the pickup and
it was immaculate when i went around to the camper i noticed that he was patching holes in it with a putty knife
inside the camper investigators found bullet holes in the floor and in the liner underneath
[Music] they also found a bullet fragment from a 357 magnum pistol larry told police he once tried shooting
a mouse in the camper while on a hunting trip [Music] but something caught the eye of
investigators a small piece of what appeared to be tissue on a window curtain about the
size of a quarter there's no way to describe it other than it looked like a piece of
of chicken skin or something like that being unsure what it might be he took that
the entire curtain with the the tissue on it and we got it sent up to the missoula
state crime lab an octalony test identified the tissue as human and the striations meant
it was muscle but that doesn't show you that the person's dead we can all deposit muscle tissue and
still be very much alive but before police could question larry moore about this forensic discovery a
letter arrived postmarked from spokane washington it was from brad brisbane in it he apologized for creating what he
called a real strain on everyone involved i've decided to start a new life for myself i had to make a clean break from
everyone and everything to make this work it just seemed to be the only way out for me
fortunately i have a wonderful woman to help me a few days later larry moore received a
similar letter in this one brad wanted to make sure his wife rini was taken care of
all personal property we own i want her to have everything i'm starting a new life with a new
person but investigators noticed a slight problem the name of brad's wife rini was misspelled
the letter to the sheriff had congratulated him to his appointment and the sheriff is an elected position so
they were huge mistakes they were they were just huge red flags investigators tested the letters with
ninhydrin a chemical solution that reacts with the amino acids in fingerprints after it was applied
the documents were dried thoroughly scientists found numerous fingerprints on the two documents but none match brad
brisbane they weren't larry moore's fingerprints either [Music] next the letters were analyzed by a
forensic document examiner both letters were typed with the same typewriter the paper was inexpensive the
kind often used in high schools the type showed no defects making it difficult to identify the typewriter
used to create them and only the signature was handwritten the signature itself is a full cursive
signature it is full of tremor it looks labored and it looks slow and it does not look like it is the the
product of habitual movement could be disease could be drugs could even be stress
and you get that tremor when somebody sits down and tries to duplicate the handwriting of another
person experts compared this question signature to several documents brad signed shortly
before his disappearance the handwriting sample i saw for brad brisbane was a greeting card
and he wrote a short note at the bottom and signed bread his handwriting was done all in uppercase
capitals it was printed in essence all the printed capitals were connected it was sort of
printed capitals and cursive mixed together it's a very high level spirited handwriting very bold handwriting
fast fluid very very much from the hip but the question signature was quite different
the uppercase b in the name brad was actually constructed in three pieces there is a a
break it has the up and down spine on the left side of the letter but between the top
and the bottom of the letter there's a break interesting at the break is in a place
where you would naturally stop if you wanted to look to see how you were doing and continue writing
[Music] police suspected larry moore may have written the letters but it was difficult
to tell since the question signature wasn't actually handwriting this is a drawing of somebody's
signature it's not handwriting at all and it's very difficult sometimes to actually
determine who it was that made the drawing although document examiners were unable
to tell conclusively who signed the letter they were certain it wasn't brad brisbane
i knew that the letter was completely false there's absolutely no way that my father would
just up and leave investigators still had no idea where brad brisbane was or what may have
happened to him [Music] police now knew that the letters mailed from spokane washington
weren't written by brad brisbane they strongly suspected larry moore may have been involved in
brad's disappearance on the step of moore's camper police noticed what looked like blood
spatter under a microscope scientists found it was more than just blood it was tissue
[Music] this was identified as human and the sample had both small granular cells and larger purkinja cells
this meant only one thing this was muscle but they wanted a second opinion so they sent this tissue to a fella
named mark colin who's a neuropathologist in ohio he looked at it and said yeah it's mammal and it's it's
cerebellum it's the brain stem the cerebellum sits at the base of the brain and is primarily responsible for memory
and motor movement since the cerebellum controls the heart muscle no human can survive without it
a ballistics expert compared the location of the brain tissue in the camper with the bullet holes
using a two-point laser he marked the center of the bullet hole and then followed the bullet's path
it showed that the shooter was firing from a standing position clearly a few people shoot holding the
gun up over their head and if you realize that a body was interposed in between that
we've only got a few feet to deal with so it can't be a standing man for example
it could be a collapsed man or a person nearly down on the floor next ballistic experts examined the
bullet fragment found in the floor of the camper and discovered what is called soft damage
it deforms in a very different way than it would if it hit wood concrete drywall
metal and it slows down the longer the path through a victim or tissue or a tissue similar
the more velocity is lost to find out whose brain tissue was in the camper investigators sent the sample for dna
testing but they didn't have the body to compare it to we can help you to determine whether
this tissue is from the missing person by comparing the dna from the tissue to the family members and the children
and the mother of the person who's missing children get half of their dna from the
mother and half from the father by taking a dna sample from brad's wife his four children and his mother
scientists could isolate brad's dna profile through a process of elimination for this
scientists used an rflp test at the time the most sophisticated dna test available
whose ever tissue sample that was was completely consistent with being the father of both sets of children
and consistent with being the son of the mother of the missing person next scientists tested the tiny fragment of
brain tissue it was too small for rflp testing since it was about the size of a pinhead
so scientists amplified it using pcr a process that duplicates a small sample to make it large enough to
test the pcr dna tests revealed that the brain tissue in larry moore's camper was brad brisbane's
i knew it was going to be a match the official confirmation that the blood matched was huge it made
never felt anything like that before with this discovery the medical examiner ruled brad
brisbane's death a homicide larry moore was arrested and charged with murder but prosecutors knew their case would be
difficult to prove without a body [Music] prosecutors believe that the motive for
brad brisbane's murder was jealousy larry moore suspected brad was having an affair with his wife
[Music] moore admitted he called brad at work to ask for a ride the forensic evidence suggests the two
met at the diner and moore somehow lured brad into the back of his camper [Music]
once inside brad was ambushed i'll show you in a second can you give me those pliers down
there brad was on the floor when moore shot from a standing position numerous times
one shot hit brad's shoulder leaving a piece of muscle another struck brad in the head
no one heard the shots because it was a busy truck stop with lots of traffic authorities had no way to tell
where moore took the body he knows it he's got equipment in west yellowstone he owned an excavating
company so he had backhoes that kind of thing so he could get rid of a body pretty easy
prosecutors believe more steam cleaned the camper and removed the carpet to hide the forensic evidence
but the bullet holes and the tiny specks of muscle and brain tissue convinced medical experts
that brad was dead all prosecutors had to do was convince a jury of that as a prosecutor clearly you want to make
damn sure that this is the right guy and there has been a murder i can't think of anything
worse than being in a position of finding out you've convicted the wrong person larry moore denied killing brad brisbane
and pleaded not guilty prosecutors argued that larry moore killed brad brisbane in a jealous rage
convinced brad was sleeping with his wife shelley to throw investigators off the trail
moore forged brad's name on several letters the forensic evidence convinced the jurors of two things
one that brad brisbane was dead and two that larry moore was his killer we the jury find the defendant guilty of
the offense [Applause] moore was sentenced to 60 years in prison it was the first murder case in montana
to be tried without a body and it was also the first time in the state that dna was used in a criminal
case just two years after his conviction larry moore made headlines again he was charged with conspiring to build
a bomb in prison to avoid federal charges moore agreed to lead authorities to brad brisbane's body
moore directed officials to a campground where he hid the 357 magnum pistol he used in the murder
it was found at the base of a tree in one of the campgrounds in galen canyon moore also led police to a gravel pit a
few miles outside of west yellowstone where they unearthed brad's body he didn't tell us anything about the
homicide when we did find brad's body larry did turn a little pale and go and sit in a vehicle
but he never did tell us the real reason or the story behind how it actually happened
a forensic examination of brad's body confirmed what forensic scientists had told the jury in court two years earlier
the determined cause of death was multiple gunshot wounds to the head and upper thoractic region in other
words the chest area or the back even though more led police to the body and the murder weapon
he never confessed until now [Music] in an exclusive letter to the producers of this program
he admitted his guilt i am guilty as charged and am thankful that the truth finally came out with the
help from modern technology i have learned that tell me the truth is the only answer
his words bring little comfort to the brisbane family i think the hardest part has been the
kids it's not right to have to grow up without a father i would love to be in the same room with
her anymore and ask him why and get a straight honest answer about why he killed my dad
because i think he owes it i think that's the least he could do to this family as a teenager i was
completely correct your world even if not someone doing that each forensic test was a piece of the
mosaic and when put together showed clearly what occurred during brad brisbane's last moments
alive without it we couldn't we couldn't approve that brad was even dead he would
still be a missing person [Music] [Music] you

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#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

Brad Brisbane's mysterious disappearance leads to a murder investigation, revealing shocking forensic evidence against Larry Moore, who is ultimately convicted.

Key points

The Mysterious Disappearance of Brad Brisbane. A beloved gym teacher vanishes without a trace, leaving behind a web of questions.
Forensic Evidence Uncovers Dark Secrets. Investigators find human tissue linked to the case, revealing a chilling truth.
A Shocking Confession. Larry Moore, the prime suspect, admits his guilt in a letter years later.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I have learned that tell me the truth is the only answer.

20:23WatchDec 16, 2021

Tension

80/ 100High tension

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