Forensic Files - Season 9, Episode 1 - Road Rage - Full Episode | Forensic Files

NARRATOR: A young woman died under suspicious circumstances, and there were no witnesses and very new leads.
But investigators hoped the tiny red fiber, some paper towels, and the tire could solve the mystery.
[theme music] NARRATOR: Interstate 97 runs along the eastern side of the Cascade Mountains in the Pacific Northwest.
-Highway 97 is very well traveled and truck traffic is unbelievable, but it's a major state highway.
NARRATOR: Early one June morning, a man driving along the interstate in Oregon spotted
something on the side of the road. When he stopped to investigate, he discovered it was a sleeping bag.
-He went back to check it out to see if it was any good. It was a decent sleeping bag so he
threw it in the back of his truck. NARRATOR: But later that day, he took a closer look at it.
Inside, he found a pair of women's sneakers and a purse. Both were covered in blood.
-The first thing I thought was we had a female dead body somewhere on 97. I mean, women don't leave their purse and sleeping bags.
NARRATOR: There was no money inside the purse, but there was a driver's license.
It belonged to a 20-year-old woman named Carrie Love, who lived in a small town near Seattle
about 400 miles from where the sleeping bag was found. Carrie's mother told police that her daughter left home
a few days earlier to visit her father in Los Angeles. -She told me that she was going to be staying with her father
down there. And she was really looking forward to that, because it been a while since she had seen him.
-We walked for miles up 97, on both sides, just walking parallel to the road to see if we could find anything that was discovered.
NARRATOR: But they found nothing. Then Cooper remembered that there was an isolated truck
stop about 15 miles from where the sleeping bag had been discarded. -It's out of the way.
It's dark, black, pitch black out there at night. And if that's the case in this scenario,
that's what I would have done. I would have dumped her there. -There was a drag mark in the gravel where it appeared
that something had been drug through the gravel parking area. NARRATOR: And that's where they found Carrie Love's body
buried beneath a mound of gravel. Nearby, investigators found sheets of green paper towels
with pieces of duct tape attached to the ends. -When I held this up to my face, I
could see the nose and the chin, because whoever was wearing this had expired all this mucus and liquid into the paper,
and then it dries. -We wanted to make sure anything that we had was preserved for the forensic aspect of this later on.
Blood, obviously, has to be preserved. Fingerprints have to be preserved. So when you start realizing you're dealing with a homicide,
then everything is ratcheted up 100% in terms of making sure you take care of things.
NARRATOR: Investigators were certain that something at the crime scene would lead them to the killer.
All they had to do was find it. -This young woman's dead. She should be dead. Now it's my life's job to make sure this person is
punished for it. NARRATOR: Carrie Love's body was discovered in the hunting area
of one of the most prolific serial killers in American history. -The first thing that flipped through my mind
was had the Green River Killer to a hold of her. NARRATOR: More than 40 women had been killed in the area.
And the Green River Killer had never been apprehended. Before police removed Carrie Love's body
from the gravel pit, forensic scientist were careful to collect as much evidence as possible.
-We did recover trace evidence from the body later that we might have lost If we'd just drug her out.
There was a fuzz ball of fibers was adhering to her abdomen. And there was 12 or 14 different kinds of fibers.
NARRATOR: Investigators hope that Carrie's autopsy wouldn't tell them what happened during her last moments alive.
-The autopsy lasted, I think, a little over nine hours. And that was because, in doing what we had to do,
we set the pattern and the tone, and the group of guys that work with this, are the best you can get.
NARRATOR: Under Carrie's fingernails were several red cotton fibers, an indication
that she had fought her attacker. Petechial hemorrhages in Carrie's eyes indicated she had been asphyxiated.
There were also two deep stab wounds to her chest. And on our left arm and chest, investigators
discovered what was perhaps the most telling piece of evidence. These were contusions that brought blood
up to the surface of the skin. The pattern looked to some like tire impressions.
-This came from the side of the tire being pressed down on her arm, but it was a very geometric pattern.
I mean, you could see it. It was square and then there'd be a rounded part, and then a square part.
It just spoke to me that said, that's part of a tire. NARRATOR: The paper towels found near Carrie's body
were a common brand, nothing unusual, but forensic scientist Mike Howard did find something distinctive.
You could just hold the towel up to the light, and there were the little holes along,
and they were random, along one edge. NARRATOR: Each brand has a unique pattern, which
is produced by large rollers in the manufacturing process. -This roller will start to wear, and when it does,
sometimes it will actually punch clear through the paper towel and leave holes. In this particular case, the paper towels
did have a blemish in it where the roller had been punching through and leaving random holes in the towels.
I went around to various stores. I probably bought about 100 rolls of towels. None of them had the little holes in like that did.
NARRATOR: Investigators learned that Carrie Love worked as a dispatcher for a small trucking company
called Northern Star. The owner of the company was a man named, Jesse Pratt. -When I first saw his picture, I thought
he was the reject from Hell's Angels. It was my first impression. He added this bushy permed long hair, and scruffy-looking,
just a real scary type person. NARRATOR: Pratt told police that he offered Carrie
a ride to Los Angeles in his truck, but Carrie declined. She wanted to take an airplane instead.
-Carrie decided, according to Jesse, that she wasn't going to drive to LA, she now wanted him
to drop her off at Sea-Tac airport in Seattle. NARRATOR: But none of the flight manifests
showed Carrie Love on board. -Obviously, being in this business, you knew that was a crappy story,
but he had to make up something. NARRATOR: A background check revealed Pratt had been married
four times and had a history of violence towards women. All of his ex-wives claimed he had beaten them.
Even worse, in 1981 Pratt was sentenced to 10 years for kidnapping one of his girlfriends,
but was released after serving only 10 months in prison. -He served time in Walla Walla prison.
Unfortunately, he was let out way earlier than he should have been let out. NARRATOR: Some of his past girlfriends
told investigators Pratt had been involved in prostitution. -Every girlfriend he had, he tried to make a hooker out of.
It was just a matter of time and, frankly, I'm stunned that there aren't more victims out there.
Jesse Pratt is the most pathological, destructive criminal that's come through here, and we've had several.
NARRATOR: When police looked inside Pratt's truck, at first they found little of value.
-It was obvious the truck had been cleaned up. It was too clean. There weren't even hardly fingerprints in that truck.
NARRATOR: So forensic scientists would have to look elsewhere, because evidence is often in the most unlikely spot.
Jesse Pratt acknowledged that Carrie Love worked for him as an administrative assistant while Pratt hauled
freight with this 18-wheel truck. Pratt said he offered Carrie a ride to Los Angeles
to visit her father, but Carrie refused. And he said he dropped her off at the Seattle airport
and drove to Los Angeles alone. -When we examined the truck, there were two rolls of paper towels in the truck, one of which
was opened. And it just happened to be Bounty brand. NARRATOR: It was the same brand and color
of paper towels used in Carrie's asphyxiation. -I stripped some of the green die out and did an analysis
of the dye so the dyes were the same. I ran them on an instrument called an X-ray fluorescence
spectrometer to look for the metal elements that were present, even though there weren't a lot.
NARRATOR: What are metals doing in paper? When the wood is made into pulp, the excess fibers
are removed with sulfur, some of which remains in the paper. And sodium from the wood remains in the paper end product, too.
In a process known as ashing, Howard burned each sample to ash. A neutral chemical compound was added,
then placed in the fluorescence spectrometer where the metals fluoresce as the X-rays pass through.
Both samples had identical amounts of sulfur, sodium, potassium, and other trace metals.
-They had the same metallic components in the towels, so we were able to link those towels from the dump scene
back directly to the towels in the truck. NARRATOR: The roll of towels in the truck also
had the same puncture marks from the manufacturing rollers as the towels at the crime scene.
Next, forensic scientists compared the red cotton fibers underneath carries fingernails to a red cotton t-shirt
Pratt was wearing when police questioned him. They were microscopically similar,
made from the same materials and the same dyes. -That fingernail raked the article of clothing.
It could've been done in passion. It could've been in hatred. It could have been in fighting.
NARRATOR: The fibers from the discarded sleeping bag were also discovered in the sleeping area of Pratt's truck.
-So we now had a fiber link with multiple fibers to link Carrie Love both with the sleeper compartment
and with the trunk, and with the sleeping bag at the dump scene. NARRATOR: Among Pratt's business papers,
Cooper found an interesting lead. A gas receipt for the day before Carrie's body was discovered.
-For diesel fuel in Redd's Gasoline Station. NARRATOR: So Cooper called Redd's Gas Station
to see if they could remember Jesse Pratt. -And he says, yeah, that driver had a full beard and a big pot belly.
And I'm sitting there, I'm starting to breathe hard, because I can't believe what he's recalling.
And I says is there anything else? He says, yeah, that young good looking little girl that was with him.
NARRATOR: When faced with this eyewitness testimony and forensic evidence, Pratt quickly changed his story.
He now admitted that Carrie had been in the sleeper compartment of his truck, because the two had consensual sex,
but said Carrie had stolen some money from him during the trip. -So he was angry at her.
They had some fights over it, but then after they got up on Highway 58, he just couldn't take it anymore,
and he boot her out of the truck at night, and said find your own way. Now to me, that was the stupidest story
you could've made up, because if I'd had been on a jury, I'd have convicted of murder just for that.
-Jesse could look at me, smile, carry on a conversation, and I knew from his demeanor and his tone of voice,
he was flat out lying. Or creating whatever he wanted me to believe. NARRATOR: But investigators wanted to do one more test.
They wanted an expert to examine the tires on Pratt's truck. Could they hold the key to the death of Carrie Love?
Investigators knew that Carrie Love's killer had driven over her body after she was dead.
There was a tire pattern across her chest, and a strange burn pattern across her left forearm that
appeared to be caused by friction. The mark resembled the pattern found on the side of a truck tire.
-It wasn't the flat portion of the tire that was burned into her. It was the side of the tire.
NARRATOR: To see of one of Jesse Pratt's tires had caused these injuries, investigators
called Peter McDonald, the premier tire evidence expert in the country. -They had heard about my expertise
and thought this might be useful. NARRATOR: The first thing McDonald had to do was to take impressions of every tire on Jesse Pratt's truck.
He knew just by looking at the tires that all 18 tires had recently been retreaded.
And for some unexplained reason, all the tread patterns were different. The tire mark across Carrie Love's body
appeared to resemble the right rear tire on Pratt's truck. The question now was whether the side pattern on that tire
could be matched to the burn mark on Carrie Love's left forearm. When a tire is retreaded, a new sheet of rubber tracking
is glued onto the tires' core, and is then spliced together. McDonald was most interested in that splice
where the retread was glued together on the outside of the tire. He laid paper over the side of the tire,
and pushed it down to lift the impression. The side pattern on the tire was a short bar
followed by a rounded square. But at the point where the retread was spliced together,
the bar was shorter than anywhere else on the tire. -The one particular bar that I focused my attention to
was unique. And that only would occur where there's a splice of the retread. NARRATOR: Back in his lab, McDonald cut out the pattern,
mounted it on a rubber stamp, then applied ink. He pressed it on his left forearm.
The pattern was identical to the pattern burned into Carrie Love's arm, and identical to the side pattern on the tire
from Jesse Pratt's truck. Both patterns had the same shortened bar at the spot where
the retread was spliced together. -That same short bar showed up on Carrie Love's arm.
If it hadn't been for these unique features, I couldn't have made a positive identification.
NARRATOR: On that same tire, McDonald noticed a serial number XZA9219 on the new retread.
He traced that number back to the company that treaded the tire. The manager revealed the tire was retreaded
just two months before Carrie's death. And he also revealed who had paid for the work.
-The check that was written for $278 for a retread, and it was signed by the victim, Carrie Love.
-It's been shown by the number of women that he has hurt in the past before Carrie
that he can't be in society. And he needs to be held accountable for what he has done.
NARRATOR: Prosecutors believe Carrie accepted Pratt's offer of a ride to Los Angeles.
Along the way, Pratt demanded sex. Carrie refused, and there was a confrontation.
The forensic evidence suggests that Pratt covered her nose and mouth with the paper towels and stabbed her to death.
But in the struggle, Carrie grabbed Pratt's shirt, and those red cotton fibres help tie Pratt to the crime.
In a final act of vengeance, Pratt drove over her with his truck. He later hid the body underneath the gravel at the truck stop,
and discarded Carrie's sleeping bag and personal items along the side of the highway.
Every piece of forensic evidence pointed towards Jesse Pratt. The red cotton fibers underneath Carrie's fingernails
with the same as those from Pratt's shirt. The paper towels held over Carrie's mouth
were from the open roll in Pratt's truck. And the tire impression on Carrie's arm that matched
the tire on Pratt's truck all told the same story. -I thought we had a pretty strong forensic case.
NARRATOR: Jesse Pratt was tried and convicted of aggravated murder and was sentenced to death.
-I never felt it was open and shut, because juries, you don't know what juries are talking about back there.
You don't know. One person could take over the jury and just ruin all the work that the attorneys have done.
-I don't think Jesse Pratt would ever have dreamt that his own tire tracks would help convict him of murder.
-The weapon that he used to maim and mutilate her, and do horrible things to her head, to have that bite him in the back,
so to speak, was just incredible. -I've been here 18 years, and this is by far the best,
most well investigated case that I've ever seen. -The whole process was just amazing.
In my next lifetime I want to be a forensic scientist.

The investigation of a discarded sleeping bag, containing bloody sneakers and a purse, leads police to the body of a young woman. A mark found on the victim's body would enable police to track the killer, Jesse Pratt.

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

Forensic evidence links Jesse Pratt to the murder of Carrie Love, leading to his conviction for aggravated murder.

Key points

Forensic Breakthrough. Unique tire patterns link the suspect to the crime scene, revealing a shocking connection.
Mysterious Discovery. A man finds a bloodied sleeping bag on the roadside, leading to a chilling investigation.
Conviction of Jesse Pratt. Jesse Pratt is convicted of aggravated murder, thanks to crucial forensic evidence.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Women don't leave their purse and sleeping bags.

Investigator's realization about the crime scene.

1:42WatchJan 1, 2022

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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