Forensic Files - Season 8, Episode 7 - Once Bitten - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[Music] this man ray krohn was known throughout arizona as the snaggletooth killer
an unusual bite mark on a murdered woman resulted in his conviction and death sentence
a forensic expert told the jury that he was 100 certain that it was crohn who bit the victim he knew he was wrong but
he had already committed and his comment to me was i'm in too deep [Music] [Music]
[Music] the cbs lounge is one of many neighborhood bars in downtown phoenix arizona
[Music] hank arredondo owned the cbs lounge kim and kona managed it for him in the bar business you have to have a
nice personality you have to be honest and all those qualities kim had on december 29 1991
kim closed the bar at the usual time shortly after 1 am as was his custom hank called to make
sure there hadn't been any problems kim answered i asked her i said is everything okay do you have any problems
and she said no she said hank i know you're tired go to sleep rest i'll take care of it
when hank arrived the next day to open up he noticed the door was ajar i know my bartender didn't leave the
door open i know i didn't so something's wrong he first checked the safe but none of the bar's money was missing
he went to the kitchen no one was there then he checked the men's room i can close my eyes
and still see that that scene i saw her laying in the bathroom her eyes fixed dead
i can still remember that to this day i probably will the rest of my life but the girl was beautiful even in death
[Music] the evidence suggests the killer grabbed the knife from the kitchen forced kim
into the men's room and stabbed her to death [Applause] he placed the knife in a trash can
under the liner on his way out he left a shoe print on the freshly cleaned kitchen floor
forensic experts identified the print as a converse brand sneaker size nine and a
half hairs were found on kim and kona's body they were black and not hers it appeared that the killer had bitten
through kim's tank top leaving a bite impression on her skin two drinks were sitting on the bar
apparently poured after closing time forensic scientists found kim's fingerprints on one glass
the other had prints not clear enough for identification working theory then became she must have
known who the person was it allowed them into the bar against company policy but
nonetheless and thereafter was killed by that person robbery didn't appear to be the motive
there was no money missing from kim's purse but inside her purse police found an address book with the
name and telephone number of one of the bar's regular customers a postman named ray krohn
he was not not well liked you know he was just uppity or something there was something different about him that
people that didn't sit well with people some of the bars employees told police that kim had expressed a romantic
interest in crone if the bite mark the shoe impression and the hairs could be tied to him
police were sure they had their killer [Music] during kim and kona's autopsy forensic
photographers took numerous photographs of the bite wound on her upper chest [Music]
the photograph showed the killer had a distinctive bite pattern his left front tooth pointed outward
beyond the line of his other front kim's address book contained the name and telephone number of a man named ray
krohn someone she had often spoken with at the bar kim and kona had told several friends
that she was interested in rey that she liked him you know that she thought maybe something could happen
and those friends in turn relayed that to detectives ray krohn was 35 years old an air force
veteran with no prior criminal record several bar employees told police that kim had a date with crone planned for
the night of her murder when police talked to kim's friends the last person that they expected kim and
kona to meet that night was ray crone to he was supposed to meet her to help close up the bar
when questioned ray krohn said the two were just acquaintances he denied there was any romantic relationship
she was always a nice congenial person and very friendly and outgoing and so you know
i i uh liked her personality i liked you know her bubbliness and things like that
there wasn't a relationship and crone denied that he had plans to meet kim at the bar as her friends claimed
he also had an alibi he shared a house with the co-worker who said crone was home the night of the
murder but as police questioned crone they noticed that his left front tooth protruded slightly in a way that looks
similar to the bite wound found on kim's chest after looking at the bite marks on
kim and kona's body detectives pretty readily jumped to the conclusion that his teeth matched kim and kona the bite
marks found on her body krone willingly agreed to provide an impression of his teeth by biting into a
piece of styrofoam which is commonly used since it's soft but still stable forensic odontologists examined a series
of bite impressions from men who knew kim and kona they found only one in which the left
front tooth was clearly extended just like the bite mark on the body it was ray krones
i hear you know brakes squealing doors slamming i look over and here's a police van unloading with officers all armed
guns pointing at me telling me to freeze i was throwing the ground handcuffed and
taken off and i was charged with murder kidnapping sexual assault that was the day of my arrest new year's eve of 1991.
crone maintained he was innocent but he had no explanation for why his bite impression looked like the wound on kim
and kona it was a a very frustrating aggravating belittling uh um [Music] situation where you're just saying why
what why why won't somebody listen why would somebody take a minute and look at this intelligently responsibly you're
going to see that there is a definite problem here but the bite wound wasn't the only evidence against crone
[Music] the perpetrator left his saliva on kim's clothing dna tests of that saliva sample were
inconclusive but test revealed the perpetrator had type o blood the same blood type as ray
krohn he was arrested and charged with murder at his trial prosecutors believed the
bite impression evidence was the most convincing they hired a nationally known bite mark expert from las vegas nevada
to testify that it was a 100 percent perfect match better than a fingerprint that expert was dr raymond rawson a
forensic odontologist and also a senator in the nevada state legislature at the trial
dr rawson used this video in which photographs of the bite wound from kim and kona's body were superimposed on ray
krohn's bite impressions [Music] based on that evidence ray krohn was convicted the first degree
murder and was sentenced to death i didn't care if i was going to be in prison for something i didn't do it you
might as well kill me i mean what was life my whole life everything i worked for everything i stood for 35 year old
man was gone the press called crone the snaggletooth killer that judge believed the bite marks were
a form of torture um and because of that he sentenced him to death but if crone was innocent as he claimed
how could a nationally known forensic odontologist be wrong ray krohn had spent three years on death
row for the murder of 35 year old bar manager kim and kona during that time he formed his own
opinions about the bite impression evidence used to convict him i mean you basically could take a sharp
object stick it in skin a couple places and have somebody say oh yeah that's a bite mark and uh and it matches him and
you could get if you showed it to enough people you'd have you know somebody saying it yeah it's a match
that's junk all death penalty cases in arizona are automatically appealed to the state
supreme court and fortunately for crone this bite marked videotape made by the prosecution provided grounds for an
appeal the court ruled that the defense team wasn't given enough time to review the
tape before the trial for crohn's retrial his family asked chris plourde to represent him
lord specializes in difficult forensic cases i heard the story you know that ray
krohn's on death row as a result of a bite mark i didn't know whether other evidence
supported his conviction or not i was originally kind of skeptical because i hear these stories all the time forensic
experts hired by plourde discovered that the hairs found on kim's body were [ __ ] hairs meaning they were from
someone of asian or native american descent [Music] they also discovered that ray krohn wore
size ten and a half shoes the shoe impression found on the kitchen floor of the bar was a size nine and a
half the defense brought in dr skip sperber a past president of the american academy
of forensic odontologists to look at the bite-wound evidence that more than anything else convicted crone in his
first trial what dr sperber told them came as a shock he said he'd seen this evidence before
it had been sent to him before the first trial a good friend of mine john piacus in
phoenix arizona called me and he asked me to look at this particular case the people versus crone when i first viewed
that case thought there were too many inconsistencies for that to be a positive comparison between the teeth of
ray crone the suspect and the victim's wounds dr sperber told his colleague working
for the arizona prosecutors that this evidence was exceptionally weak we say on a range of one to ten
with ten being very good i would have rated this around three or four on the low side
here is a bite mark considered on the high end of the scale a nine or a ten all of the teeth have made clear marks
and the relationships between the teeth can easily be seen the bite wound on kim and kona had very
few distinct markings dr sperber took the cast of ray krohn's teeth and using a low-tech but time-tested
method made a styrofoam impression and then traced the teeth patterns onto a transparency
he then placed the transparency over the top of the photo of the bite mark on kim and
kona's body although the left front tooth in both marks was jutting forward ray krohn does not have any separation
between his front teeth the bite mark on the victim's body shows an obvious separation between those
teeth for dr sperber the results were clear if it's a good bite it will really jump
out at you and you will see immediately similarities in the crohn case there were no similarities so this was the key
evidence and and to get the initial report back that a bite mark expert said it's not me it was like oh wow you know
something something good can happen in the second trial dr raymond rawson the same bite mark expert from the first
trial repeated his testimony he said there was no doubt the bite mark was from ray krohn
a team of defense experts disagreed i could positively exclude ray krohn as being the biter i wasn't the only one
there were three other forensic dentists that are all board certified highly qualified guys
and they excluded them but the jury disagreed they sided with the prosecution's expert
and found ray krohn guilty again what does it take what is this uh beyond reasonable doubt
what is this innocent until proven guilty it don't exist in in in the just system the one that i've seen it did not
exist for me we knew that there was another person in that bathroom at the time of death there were unknown
fingerprints that came back to somebody uh there was a person who had shoes that
were inconsistent with the defendant the hairs were inconsistent with the defendant you know the fbi
uh forensic people testified that these hairs were not mr crohn's they were not the victims to me logic and common sense
told me it wasn't mr cronin committed this crime and the jury found the opposite result when i heard the verdict
in the second trial i really couldn't believe his total disbelief it was an absolute dog and pony show the likes of
which i've never seen before ray krohn tried to reconcile himself to a life behind bars
but then he got help from an unlikely source the very system he had grown to despise
[Music] ray krohn languished in prison for a crime that some of the country's top forensic
experts said he didn't commit just before krone's second trial dr richard suveron one of his defense
experts sat next to the prosecution's forensic expert dr rawson at a scientific conference
his comment to me was i'm in too deep he knew he was wrong but he had already committed and if that isn't a scary
thing uh i don't know what is and i hated to see him get sucked in on something like this and told him you
know get out of this deal just say i don't want to do it anymore or i've changed my
opinion or there's i've listened to everybody else and you know i've rethought my position anybody can make a
mistake i mean we're not none of us are above making mistakes but he said i mean too deep
and that was the end of that conversation through a spokesperson dr rossen denies
that the conversation described by dr seuveron ever took place it wasn't until 2001 that a new law
offered crohn's some hope arizona one of the first states in the united states passed a
new bill for post-conviction dna testing which allows convicted offenders access
to evidence and post-conviction dna testing if they contend that they were innocent
so crohn's defense team asked the state of arizona to test every piece of kim and kona's clothing for dna the saliva
on kim's blouse had already been tested and the results were inconclusive but her genes had small blood stains
the prosecution believed the blood was chemenconas the genes were sent to the state crime
lab for a new dna test that analyzes 13 different genetic markers the test yielded
unanticipated results the blood on the genes wasn't kim and kona's and it wasn't ray krohns
but whose was it to find out forensic scientists entered this new dna evidence into a national dna database
with genetic profiles of more than a million convicts from across the country profile after profile was checked and
cross-referenced and the database came up with a match to this man a 35-year-old native american kenneth
phillips who was currently in prison for child molestation at the time of kim ancona's murder
kenneth phillips lived just 600 yards away from the cbs lounge he lived right behind the bar
and his nationality was an american indian which which was consistent with some of the other dna results we had in
the hairs it was found at the scene the crime when interviewed by police phillips made a startling admission
he said on the morning after kim's murder he woke from an alcoholic blackout to find his hands
covered with blood then he saw news of the murder on tv his fingerprints were among the unknown
fingerprints found in the bathroom where the murder took place [Music] his shoe size
matched the print from the kitchen floor and his bite impression had the same left front tooth protruding from the
rest of his teeth for ray kron the ordeal was over after serving ten years and four months
for a crime he didn't commit he walked out of prison a free man i'd spent over 10 years in prison
i would never forget that day i got out in fact i commemorated it so i won't ever forget it
[Music] forensic odontologists say that the problem with the crohn case was that dr
rawson told jurors bite marks could match like fingerprints but that is rarely possible
the best that a forensic dentist can give is reasonable certainty and that means that that's the highest level we
give there is always a remote possibility that there's someone else that has teeth similar that
could have left the pattern ray krohn is trying to resume his life experts say the lesson of his case is
that bite marks are rarely definitive and should only be used to exclude not include suspects
above all they say bite mark analysis is more opinion than fact and that this should always be made
clear to jurors what was allowed in mr crone's case was bad science scientific explanations
given by people who were unscientific in their methods interpretation of a bite mark is what
convicted me nothing scientific not the fingerprints that didn't match me not the they even had footprints that they
couldn't match the shoes the hair not the not the uh the dna none of that stuff they used an interpretation of a
bite mark to convict me that has no place in the courtroom any more than perjury has a place in the courtroom we
shouldn't allow witnesses that lie no matter what they say whether it's regarding a scientific issue or any
other issue and in this case it was clear that some of the scientific experts were actually misrepresenting
their data and the scientific validity of what they were talking about [Music] [Music]
[Music] you

At a murder scene, investigators find a shoe-print, several foreign hairs, and unknown fingerprints. But they believe the most telling piece of evidence is the bite mark on the victim's chest.

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

Ray Krohn was wrongfully convicted of murder based on flawed bite mark evidence, later exonerated by DNA testing linking another suspect to the crime.

Key points

The Snaggletooth Killer. Ray Krohn was convicted of murder based on bite mark evidence, leading to his death sentence.
The Crime Scene Discovery. Hank Arredondo discovers the shocking murder of bartender Kim Ancona in the CBS Lounge.
DNA Evidence Exonerates. New DNA testing reveals blood not belonging to Kim Ancona or Ray Krohn, leading to a breakthrough.
A Startling Admission. Kenneth Phillips admits to waking up with blood on his hands after Kim's murder.
The Bite Mark Controversy. Experts reveal that bite mark analysis is often unreliable and should not be used to convict.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I'm in too deep.

A forensic expert's admission about a wrongful conviction.

0:29WatchDec 16, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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