Forensic Files - Season 8, Episode 5 - Shadow of a Doubt - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[Music] an unknown assailant walked into a retail store and fired three shots killing the owner
police had suspects but all had alibis forensic scientists found more than a crime perpetrated in broad daylight
hidden in the shadows was a killer [Music] [Applause] [Music] autumn is a particularly pretty time in
spring grove pennsylvania [Music] landscape photographers and local artists usually found their way here to
the gray fox gallery the owner jennifer myers was a well-known picture framer just a wonderful woman a wonderful
mother a wonderful wife and a good friend to a lot of people managing a retail shop isn't easy
one year earlier jennifer was robbed in the store at gunpoint since then her husband steve stopped in
every afternoon on his way home from work at the local factory most afternoon visits were uneventful
but october 20th 1997 was different my wife's been shot shot gray fox gallery in spring grove hurry
okay sir listen to me okay do you know who shot her no i don't okay we're out on her body is she shot in her face okay
is she breathing sir is she breathing when police arrived jennifer was dead on the floor behind
the counter she had been shot three times several workers nearby said they heard
popping noises a few hours earlier around 1pm no one thought they were gunfire several witnesses saw a man with long
black hair running from the shopping center sometime around 1pm this was someone that went in there
with the sole intent to kill the victim there was no struggle a fight didn't precipitate this homicide a robbery
didn't precipitate this no money was missing from the cash register or jennifer's purse
when something like this happens people feel as though their world has somewhat been changed and their sense of security
is gone because if something like this can happen in spring grove pennsylvania it can happen anywhere
this brazen attack in a busy retail area at midday told police that the killer was willing to risk everything to kill
jennifer myers it's somebody who definitely wanted her dead that had a problem with her
and excluding robbery as being a motive that's what you have to start looking at
who wanted jennifer myers dead a ballistic examination identified the murder weapon as either a 357 or a 38
caliber revolver in pennsylvania there's a database as far as registered handguns so we began
to look at that and we found that stephen myers did have a 357 that he owned steve myers willingly turned over the
pistol for forensic analysis but he didn't resemble the man seen running near the shop earlier in the day
[Music] witnesses said they heard popping sounds which police suspected were gunfire near
the gray fox picture frame shop around one o'clock in the afternoon approximately two hours later steve
myers discovered his wife jennifer shot to death on the floor of the store another witness saw a man running from
the area wearing light blue jeans and a blue plaid flannel shirt we believe that the shooter
came in the store used a blitz style tackle on her walking right towards her firing the first shot
and striking her in the shoulder area and then firing a second shot striking her in the abdomen the last shot was to
the face ballistic experts examined the bullet fragments recovered from the victim and
concluded the killer used a 38 or 357 caliber revolver the victim's husband steve owned a 357
revolver when the bullets from the crime scene were compared to those test-fired from
steve myers revolver analysts concluded they were not a match police also confirmed
that steve myers was at work when the murder took place he didn't need an alibi but as far as
him uh being at work uh that just was one more piece that fit in that he was not involved in his
killing whatsoever police had another promising lead jennifer's murder took place just one
day before she was scheduled to testify against 40-year-old kevin dowling the man jennifer claimed had robbed her
at gunpoint a year earlier okay well now we have perhaps a motive for someone to want
to have this woman dead so that she was incapable of testifying kevin dowling had the opportunity to
commit the murder since he was free on bail that day however when questioned by police dowling said he had an alibi
he was fishing on a boat in muddy run lake a story confirmed by his wife mrs dowling was very cooperative she
truly believed that her husband was not involved in this homicide whatsoever and
therefore was very helpful in improving her husband's innocence dowling also had evidence to support his
alibi he said he made a home video of his fishing trip that day his wife willingly turned the video over
to police as i said here we are lake because i wanted to help prove him innocent that he did not do this
so i was more than happy to help them and it was sort of like a slap in the face for them ha ha he did not do it if
this is truly tape of him fishing it's an airtight alibi i want to secure it as evidence
so that there's no further questions the first thing police noticed was that the videotape was recorded with
the date and time of day the footage was shot pretty quiet nice and peaceful out here
the tape showed dowling fishing in the middle of the lake from 10 46 in the morning until 4 pm on the day of
jennifer meyer's murder muddy run lake was a 45 minute drive away from jennifer's store
dowling also had store receipts for fish bait food and the boat rental but something about the videotape looked
odd he's trying to get something on tape of him fishing but this is clearly not someone who's interested in
catching any of the fish kevin dowling's family confirmed the tape was made on october 20th the day of
the murder in fact that evening when he came home and my girls were home and after dinner
we all sat around and watched the tape with them together on the tape kevin spoke to his children about his
impending robbery trial he also expressed his hope that if convicted the children would not misbehave while he
was imprisoned i gotta face what's ahead i mean i'm not responsible for what happened but
no one seems to want to help me and i don't know what to do my main concern is what's going to
happen to mommy and all you kids he's accounting for almost everything he did that day
which in itself began to struck me he's striking me it's kind of odd that he has these receipts and
the day seemed too perfect as far as using the word alibi police wondered if dowling had somehow
doctored the videotape and if he had could forensic science prove it kevin dowling insisted he did not kill
jennifer myers despite the fact that she was scheduled to testify against him in
an upcoming robbery trial dowling also had an alibi claiming he was fishing at the time of
the murder and he offered this time and date stand videotape as evidence there's some big fish on this fish
finder just wish i knew how to get them to hit the tape contains scenes shot from 10 in
the morning until after 4 pm jennifer's murder took place around 1pm and her store was only 45 minutes away
from the lake dowling's videotape gave him an airtight alibi but police were still suspicious
although dowling shot scenes throughout the day the entire running time of the tape was
only 12 minutes he talked several times in the tape about catching fish yet you never saw any fish on a tape
which again struck me odd that if you're catching fish you'd want to show them on
your videotape something else about the tape bothered maori kevin dowling repeatedly glanced at his
wrist watch which struck me kind of odd if he was on a casual day of fishing why he was so
concerned about the time of day in some parts of the tape dowling's watch faced the camera
investigators isolated and enlarged clips of the watch the timepiece was too blurry to read
mowry asked scientists at the federal bureau of investigation to try digital enhancement
but the tape quality was too poor for the process to work determining the time when dowling shot
the video was critical since police were well aware that the time and date stamp
can be manipulated the sun was out periodically throughout the tape and was casting very good shadowing by
determining shadowing positioning can we work backwards and calculate the time of day
using the sun it's positioned in the sky detectives posed the question to nasa scientists at the goddard space flight
center in greenbelt maryland surprisingly nasa identified a local astrophysicist
to help them the guy that could probably do this was right in her own backyard and that would be dr robert boyle at
dickinson college dr robert boyle is an associate professor of physics and astronomy
when he first saw the tape he wasn't optimistic my heart just dropped because this was
clearly not going to be a cut and dried case of oh there's shadows you use them like sundials you can tell the time
because here was a picture where the camera was on a moving boat as the earth rotates
the position of the sun changes creating different shadows when using the sun to tell time
two characteristics are observed the sun's height overhead or altitude and its direction along the horizon or
azimuth the north point being zero degrees azimuth the east point being 90 degrees
uh south point being 180 degrees the west point 270 degrees boyle said he needed more than just the videotape to
conduct a study he needed specific scientific information he would need some measurements of the boat he would
need the measurements of kevin dowling he would need the measurements of the hat
that kevin had wore in the video but the most crucial piece of information dr boyle needed was the
magnetic north compass heading of the boat when the video tape was shot to find out
police took the same boat onto muddy run lake and identified its exact location by
matching the landscape shown on the tape then they identified the heading of the
boat with a compass out of the eight frames that professor boyle had given us we believed that we
had matched seven of the frames and we used a degree of plus or minus five degrees as far as
our degree of inaccuracy next using an artist's model a light bulb and the protractor dr boyle
calculated the sun's azimuth or direction based on the shadows the model represented kevin dowling
the light bulb the sun dr boyle adjusted the light to produce the same shadows that were in the video
the protractor identified the sun's position based on the angle between the model and the light
i essentially measure the angle between the direction of the the camera and the direction of the sun which is being
mimicked by a light bulb dr boyle used the voyager 2 computer program which identified the sun's exact
position in 15-minute increments on the day of the murder when he compared the exact position of
the sun to the shadows on the video dr boyle discovered that the times stamped on some of the scenes
were bogus late afternoon time stamps could very well have been correct there was a whole
bunch of times in the middle that just were inconsistent with the astronomical data
for example in this scene the background analysis shows the dowling is facing north
it stamped 11 24 in the morning but you can see that the sun is clearly positioned to dowling's left
which is west at 11 24 the sun would be in the east dr boyle estimates this scene was shot
closer to 3pm kevin dowling now had the opportunity to commit this crime because he was not on
muddy run lake at one o'clock in the afternoon and he also had a motive but prosecutors needed more than shadows
on videotape to get a murder conviction [Music] when police confronted kevin dowling
with the scientific evidence that his time and date stamp videotape was a forgery
dowling confessed not to jennifer meyer's murder but to deception he now said that after a few hours of
fishing he went to a nearby strip club and altered the times on the videotape so that his wife wouldn't find out
i don't need to point out the the strangeness of that theory first of all why did you videotape yourself at all
why didn't you just say i decided i didn't want to videotape myself and of course his wife would have never been
the wiser and the videotape revealed something else dowling was wearing clothes similar to
the man witnesses saw running from jennifer meyer's store i did not want to believe
that my husband the father of my children could do something like this to another human being
police found the clothes dowling was wearing on the fishing trip in his home they sent them to aj skip schwabel an
internationally recognized expert in forensic gunshot residue when a pistol is fired the firing pin
ignites the elements in the projectile which then turns into gas the gases solidify into tiny particles
which are then deposited on the hands clothing and the immediate proximity of the discharge
[Music] to test clothing for gunshot residue schwabel first used an adhesive to extract any microscopic particles
the particles were placed in a scanning electron microscope which subjected them to extreme
magnification and provided an elemental analysis [Music] an electron beam bombarded the sample
causing the elements within to emit characteristic x-rays the characteristic x-rays show up on the
video screen as peaks or pulses at different energy levels each energy level is assigned an element
tests revealed gunshot residue on the left side of each of kevin dowling's garments
this was significant since dowling was left-handed we found that every item had to some extent some gunshot residue
present prosecutors say kevin dowling carefully planned to eliminate jennifer myers to
prevent her from testifying against him in his robbery trial on the day of the murder
dowling went fishing on muddy run lake and used his video camera till 11 45. we'll be back in a little while
he then went ashore hid the boat in some bushes and made the 45-minute trip into
town wearing a wig as a disguise dowling entered jennifer's store around 1pm and fired three shots
the gunpowder residue embedded deep into his shirt fibers invisible to the naked
eye but perfectly clear to forensic scientists [Music] dowling was back in his boat on the lake
sometime around 2 p.m when he reset the time on his video camera to 11 24 he never realized that he was a human
sundial his videotape told the story of deceit not innocence i would like to kick his ass
he has no remorse at all then you wonder how sick this man really is when he has no remorse over what he's
done and that is very scary despite the forensic evidence kevin dowling insisted he was innocent but he
was convicted of first degree murder and was sentenced to death by lethal injection
his wife joanne says she knew nothing of her husband's secret life and considers the death sentence
too lenient i truly hate kevin dowling for everything he stands for the person he
is what he did to people i hate him more than i can even explain well you can't ever forget the
the infamous fishing tape because how ridiculous is it to think that he would get away with something like that
i mean there's technology today that's going to determine that this tape has been doctored
it's one thing to have a motive to kill it's another thing to actually prove that someone did it
and the forensics were able to give us the proof necessary considering they never found the murder
weapon it's amazing what they can do nowadays and without it a lot of people would go free
it's ironic of course we often talk about criminals hiding in the shadows don't we
and in this case the shadows were actually revealing [Music] [Music] [Music] you

A woman is shot to death in her store just one day before she is to testify against the man accused of robbing her. The robber becomes the prime suspect, but he has a solid alibi: a time-stamped videotape of his activities on the day of the murder.

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

Jennifer Myers was murdered; Kevin Dowling was convicted after forensic evidence disproved his fishing alibi.

Key points

The Brazen Daylight Murder. In broad daylight, a killer enters a store and shoots the owner, Jennifer Myers.
The Alibi That Wasn't. Kevin Dowling claims he was fishing during the murder, but evidence suggests otherwise.
Forensic Breakthrough. Forensic evidence reveals gunshot residue on Dowling's clothing, linking him to the crime.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

My wife's been shot!

A frantic call to emergency services after the shooting.

1:53WatchDec 16, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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