Forensic Files - Season 9, Episode 10 - Head Games - Full Episode | Forensic Files

a young couple went camping in the woods but only one of them came out alive the survivor told two different versions
of what happened so it took forensic psychiatry ballistics and korean war history to
discover what really happened in the deep forests of oregon [Music] [Music] [Music]
the area surrounding majestic mount hood in oregon is a sportsman's paradise mountain streams ideal for fishing and
boating and deep forests filled with game kandra and giulio torres chose this area
for a weekend camping trip they were young giulio was 21 kandra just 16. it was pretty much love at first sight
my father wanted us to get married when i was uh 15 because he want could see that the relationship
was heating up the trip celebrated their first wedding anniversary and they brought kandra's
dog rusty along although they loved to fish they weren't catching anything so they asked one of
the other fishermen who was there for a little advice when he saw me he lit up which was not i didn't think anything of
it i was very young attractive and i was used to turning heads the fisherman tom brown told them about
a good fishing spot nearby that had recently been stocked with fish and we looked at each other and it
sounded like fun we had had no luck fishing for two days and we were ready to catch some fish
the fishing site was several miles away and by the time they got there it was dark so they set up camp to get some
rest [Music] three days later kendra went to the local sheriff's office and called her
mother with some terrible news she says julia's dead it was a terrible accident will you come and get me
kandra said that the three of them had gone fishing and later did some hunting they sighted a deer
giulio handed tom his rifle so tom could take the first shot but the rifle went off accidentally
killing giulio instantly kandra screamed her dog instinctively attacked tom and tom
shot her dog rusty in self-defense and then he panicked because he had a prior record
was known to the police and that no one would believe him [Music] so tom had no desire to explain the
incident to police and gave kandra the choice between staying with him or heading back to town
i had no way of getting down i couldn't even drive i didn't have a license i didn't know
how to drive a stick confused and in shock kandra stayed with brown but after two days they reconsidered and
decided to notify the authorities he told them that there'd been a shooting and it was an accident
and she backed up his story he then cooperated and took them to where the body was
helped them recover the rifle to prove his story tom took a lie detector test and passed
police ruled giulio's death an accident the sheriff's department was very supportive of
tom brown i think that they believed the stories and that they wanted to keep an innocent
man from being locked behind bars but a few days later kandra changed her story kandra torres originally told
investigators she had witnessed her husband's death and that it was an accidental shooting
everybody was saying it was an accident that knew anything about it no one was saying anything other than
that but kendra's mother had doubts about the story i know how she loved the dog and i know
how she loved him but it was just like it was coming out of a stereo you know being replayed or something i
don't know it wasn't like really her but when kandra went back to the home she shared with giulio
everything changed and when she went inside the apartment she fell apart she said mom and daddy don't hate me
don't hate me and i said i could never hate you and then she said she didn't know
it wasn't she didn't know if it was an accident or not that she did not seem shot
and uh and i said my god canada don't you realize that man murdered your husband
in this version kandra said she was alone making breakfast at the campsite when she heard a shot
tom brown came running from the woods kendra said she ran to see what had happened to julio
and then i heard another shot and i looked next to me and my dog was jerking he had been shot in the head and i
looked at him with total surprise and i said you shot my dog and he smiled a big smile and said i shot your husband
too at that second my life flashed before me i was 16 years old and i was gonna die
there was no one that could help me my dog that i'd had from childhood was dead my husband whom i loved
he's telling me he's dead and i'm up in the mountains with a murderer i'm next obviously whatever he wants with me
he's going to do and then he's going to kill me and i knew that i was going to die
[Music] he then took her deep into the woods after hiking for about four hours we
stopped to rest at the river and uh that was the first time that he write me kandra said brown assaulted her
repeatedly over the next several days she said the one thing she feels that saved her life
was reading aloud from the bible then will i go to the altar of god to guide my joy and my delight his heart had been
too touched and he wasn't able to kill me so he came to me instead and he started crying
and he said i didn't kill your husband on purpose it was an accident and um [Music]
the reason that i brought you up here is because i'm afraid to go back to prison
over the next several days brown told kandra repeatedly that giulio's death was an accident
and he agreed to let her go but only if she told authorities that she witnessed the shooting and that
it was an accident to see if this version was true kandra took a lie detector test
tom brown had been given a lie detector test and his actually said that he was telling the truth he knew how to pass
the lie detector test so if if i took a lie detector test then we'd at least have equal
evidence against him but she failed polygraphs do not measure truth or lie what they measure is emotion and
if you were a 16 year old girl that had been raped and marched up in the mountain and god saved you brought you
down out of that mountain you're emotional you're talking about your husband that you loved that was shot by
this murderer would you be emotional i think so with nowhere else to turn investigators looked more closely at the
physical evidence the dog's wound would tell whether he was shot frontally as tom brown claimed
or from behind which was kandra's version unfortunately the dog's body had not been autopsied and he was buried in a
mass grave for animals the bullet that killed giulio entered his cheek and passed nearly horizontally
through his upper vertebrae trajectories could vary depending on terrain and a whole
variety of other factors of how the gun was held whether the person receiving it
was standing uphill or downhill a trajectory analysis wasn't enough to tell whether the shooting was an
accident or intentional but they couldn't understand how tom brown passed his polygraph
we believed her but she'd flunked a polygraph we didn't believe him but he'd passed and so what do you do
well what are our other options so prosecutors asked a forensic psychiatrist how kandra could have
failed her polygraph and his discovery changed the course of the investigation at first kendra torres said she watched
in horror as her husband was killed in a freak hunting accident later she claimed that tom brown
murdered her husband while she was back at the campsite to find out which version was correct
forensic psychiatrist dr joseph tree levin interviewed kandra for several hours i concluded that she didn't have any
mental disorder she was under some stress because she'd had a stressful experience but that was
all but why did kandra initially vouch for tom brown the man she now says killed her husband
frankly at first i didn't know what to make about it i remembered the stories of what happened to the prisoners of war
in the korean war and where they were isolated often brutalized often for fear of their life
and after a long period of time some of them would accept the point of view of their captor
and then testify against their own country and they call it at the time brainwashing
today it's known as the stockholm syndrome named for the hostages held in a stockholm bank robbery who sympathized
with their captors even while their lives were threatened experts say this occurs to hostages when
four things happen a traumatic shock isolation indoctrination and the promise of a
reward the shooting of the dog gives a very visual and powerful demonstration of the dangerousness of
the man that was her captor that brings it home and then being uh assaulted physically pretty powerful
stuff you know it's stressful almost as you can get for kandra the cascade mountains
provided the isolation and brown indoctrinated her by repeatedly telling her that the shooting was an accident
her reward was survival escape from repeated rape and the fear she may have been responsible for her husband's
murder the reward in kandra torres case wasn't just coming out of the woods alive
the reward was that then she wouldn't feel guilty about being an instrument of her husband's death
kandra didn't just accept brown's story of an accidental shooting she actually believed it
i had nobody with me but a murderer do i really want to believe he's a murderer because believing that is terrifying
do i really want to think that my husband died so that someone could rape me and kidnap me for me denial
was the best way to survive we all tell ourselves little lies and sometimes big lies to make ourselves
feel more comfortable and certainly when our survival is at stake i mean you can change your perception of
things this made her polygraph test useless she doesn't know in her own mind what is truth and what is fiction how
can she possibly react properly to a polygraph examination it's not a piece of equipment that's
going to tell the future it's not going to tell the past unless you know what it
is can't give you information that you don't know there is a reason and a very good reason
that polygraph examinations are not admissible in courts of law with all respect to
polygraph operators and to the science of polygraphy in this incident uh tom brown passed the polygraph
and in this instance mrs torres flunked the polygraph i firmly believe that both results are
dead wrong prosecutors now accepted the idea that kandra was brainwashed but how would they prove that giulio had
been murdered she could testify to what he said she could testify about what happened to the
dog and so on but we had a crime committed without an eyewitness and this was a very very
close case ballistic experts re-examine the evidence and the level trajectory if you're handing a gun
there's a lot of weight there the chances of holding the gun to be perfectly flat
again very very unlikely because i would expect it to be upward instead of straight across
the medical examiner found no gunpowder residue around giulio taurus's entrance wound
so investigators wanted to find out the distance between giulio and the gun when
it was fired a bullet isn't the only thing that comes out of the rifle when fired
gases and gunpowder do too brown's rifle a 22 caliber savage model 99 was tested at the oregon state police
lab it was fired at a target six inches away and it left a visible pattern there were other test shots at
increasing distances [Music] so then you get to a point where you have no pattern at all it doesn't show
up at all and that was what the d.a was primarily interested in how far before you don't have anything
[Music] the rifle had to be 36 inches away from the target to leave no trace of gunpowder
this meant that brown's rifle was at least three feet away when the trigger was pulled
to have muzzled to target distance of three feet and a level entry entry and exit wound
how do you contort yourself to be able to do that when he's claiming all he was doing is
passing the gun along with this forensic evidence tom brown was arrested and charged with
murder based on the ballistic evidence prosecutors were convinced that tom brown murdered julio torres in the
oregon forest to have his 16 year old wife all to himself [Music] trying the case wouldn't be easy
since kandra told two different stories to authorities even if you believe kandra torres a
hundred she didn't see it there were still no witnesses to this incident and he cooperated all the way through
but while brown was awaiting trial in the county jail he admitted the murder to his cellmate
the basics of it was when i'm going to beat it i passed the polygraph that they wouldn't be able to get a conviction
because i wasn't emotionally stable enough to hold out in court and then when i beat it i'm going to
go after these go after her and those those two prosecutors but if they did get a conviction
it wouldn't be a big deal because he'd get seven years and parole and he'd get out and he'd kill me and he'd kill my
lawyer his cellmate turned state's evidence but prosecutors still felt they needed
the forensic evidence that evidence was important but all those kinds of evidence are
always subject to human frailties and cross-examination and credibility and bias and so forth and of course the
the powerful nature of forensic evidence is it's not subject to those things kandra torres testified in detail about
her ordeal tom brown told his version and tried to demonstrate how the alleged accident
took place he tried to hand off their rifle and it was just just for you can't you can't do
it and he stuck to his guns and i believe stuck to a lie but it was demonstrated to be that
brown was so confident that he waived the jury trial the verdict from the judge was guilty
he was sentenced to life in prison bob hamilton is retired now but he attends brown's parole hearings to make
certain he stays in prison and that kandra never has to see him again kandra is remarried as a family and a
new life she credits forensic psychiatry with helping her move beyond her horrifying
ordeal i guess the fact that somebody explained to her and explained publicly why
she had these confused stories but she wasn't nuts and there was a logical explanation for
it gave her a great deal of emotional relief but it was ballistics and the physics of
gunpowder patterns that provided conclusive evidence that tom brown was lying i thank god for forensics i think that
they solve a lot of crimes and the fact that the angle of the of the the shot and the
type of gun that was used and the powder burns were all proof that this you know that it did not happen the way
that he said it did so i was very thankful for that evidence you have five witnesses
to a crime you're probably going to get five different scenarios you do the forensic science you're going
to get one and that's it [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

A young couple decided to celebrate their first wedding anniversary with a camping trip to Mount Hood. During the trip, the husband was shot and killed, and his wife told two different versions of the events which led to his death.

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

A camping trip turns deadly when Giulio Torres is shot, leading to conflicting stories and a forensic investigation that reveals the truth.

Key points

A Camping Trip Turns Tragic. A young couple's camping trip ends in tragedy when only one survives.
Conflicting Stories. The survivor tells two different versions of the events leading to the tragedy.
Forensic Evidence Unveils Truth. Forensic evidence ultimately reveals the truth behind the fatal shooting.

Episode highlights

Forensic Evidence Unveils TruthForensic evidence ultimately reveals the truth behind the fatal shooting.“Ballistics and the physics of gunpowder patterns provided conclusive evidence.”20:18Jan 1, 2022

Episode quotes

I was 16 years old and I was gonna die.

Kandra reflects on her fear during the ordeal.

6:35WatchJan 1, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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