Forensic Files - Season 9, Episode 14 - Over a Barrel - Full Episode | Forensic Files

california police had several suspects in the robbery and murder of a retired couple
unfortunately the forensic evidence was inconclusive ten years later a determined forensic scientist with
materials used by dentists found evidence that had previously been overlooked and in so doing
made scientific history [Music] bakersfield california known for its oil fields wide open
spaces and an aggressive crime investigation unit officials post pictures of their most
wanted criminals on the town's website but they needed every trick they could think of to solve the case of clifford
and alma merk a retired couple who lived on the city's south side they love to sit out on the front porch
and they had big trees out in front and it was shady in the summertime and they would just sit out there and
just it was so peaceful one saturday morning the murk's son robert stopped by his parents home for a
visit he immediately noticed something was wrong he found a door open at the back of the
house and entered and immediately detected a foul odor and i backed out of the house and
told my wife i said something's wrong here go across the street and call the sheriff's department
jim christopherson was one of the first to arrive at the scene the entire residence was ransacked
everything turned upside down chairs turned upside down anything that was in a drawer was tipped
out and spilled out onto the floor when they got to the couple's bedroom police discovered
this was more than a robbery clifford merc used to be lying across a bed with his hands and feet bound with some
sort of a cord and he was obviously deceased it was later determined he had been shot
in the head twice nearby police found a pillow with two bullet holes the pillow had been used to muffle the
sound of the gunshots but there were no spent shell casings in the home so whoever committed the crime
probably collected those casings to uh to hide the evidence or to throw the investigation off track
the search team found alma merck's body in the second bedroom there was a sliding panel in this
location and as we slid back one could see that there was a body placed in this closet he told me that my
mother they found her in a wardrobe with a telephone cord tied around her neck and strangled
i just i i thought this can't be happening it's [Music] it's like a dream i'm gonna wake up and
and she's gonna be fine but it wasn't a dream it was it was real alma's jewelry and cliff's handguns were
apparently stolen during the attack investigators found two foreign fingerprints inside the home one at the
back door the other on a sewing tray in the living room in a search for suspects a neighbor told
police that he saw two men lurking around the murk's home just a few days earlier
he kept an eye on them until he finally lost visual contact with them because of
some trees obstructing his view that was the last you saw of them the mercs had no known enemies and no
one else in the neighborhood saw or heard anything unusual around the time of the murders
investigators hoped that either the fingerprints or some other forensic evidence at the scene
would lead them to the killer at cliff merck's autopsy the medical examiner recovered two
25-caliber bullets from his skull coincidentally one of cliff's 25-caliber pistols was stolen during the robbery
investigators wondered whether cliff had been murdered with his own gun we had been evaluating every 25 caliber
automatic seized in the area as it came in to see if the ballistics would match the 25 caliber bullets that
were removed from the skull of clifford merc two months later investigators found cliff merk's gun
it was in the possession of a man whom we'll call dan jones at the time he was arrested on a drug charge
it was easily identifiable since cliff's initials had been carved into the handle
that was cliff he had his name on practically everything that he owned he'd take a
some kind of an etcher and etch these initials on it you know it's just for identification
jones denied any involvement in the murder and said he bought the gun from an acquaintance robert cowan
a man well known to law enforcement he had no occupation and he supported himself by
stealing robbing houses stealing from people outside of restaurants and that type
thing he had a long record of robberies and use of of narcotics robert cowan also had a partner in crime
his brother gerald the brothers were involved in criminal activity a lot of small time stuff
public drunk a lot of narcotics usage some assaults forensic scientists tested cliff's gun
to see if it was the one used in his murder [Music] the gun was test-fired into a tub of
water as bullets go through the barrel the lens and grooves which make the bullets
spin leave marks on the outside of the bullet they will design the barrel to have a
certain direction of twist a certain number of land in grooves a certain measurement for those landing grooves so
those are intentionally put in by the manufacturer surprisingly when the bullets from
cliff's gun were compared to the bullets from cliff's autopsy they did not match
at that point we basically eliminated that weapon and says we don't believe that's it
investigators checked all of the local pawn shops and discovered that the cowan brothers had pawned some of alma merck's
jewelry with a search warrant police found several other items belonging to the mercs in the cowan's possession
he had a wallet he had two social security checks which he was trying to sell he had all
types of jewelry but investigators did not find a 25 caliber pistol like the one used in the
murder investigators then compared the cowan's fingerprints and those of the drug
dealer with the fingerprints found inside the merc's home they were astonished to learn
that none of them matched [Music] the cowan brothers looked similar to the men seen walking near the murk's home
before the murder but the neighbor couldn't make a positive identification all investigators had against the cowan
brothers and dan jones was possession of stolen property it just got to a certain point where
there was no fresh information coming in and there was still a lack of physical evidence tying the cows to the crime
scene we would talk and he would say the same thing we still think it's the same
people but we don't have the proof i never lost hope i just knew in my heart that the police would do their job and
and find the people that did this to mother and cliff i just never gave up hope i just knew that that that they
would do it investigators confiscated every 25 caliber pistol they could find hoping
that one of them would match the murder weapon i'm going to just see every 25 caliber
semi-automatic pistol seized by law enforcement in current county coming across my desk i maintained those
bullets in my secured work area i never returned them to the sheriff's property room knowing that i would one day get
that firearm but eventually there were other crimes to solve other evidence to process
and the murder of cliff and dalma merk move quietly into the unsolved file ten years later
jim christopherson was promoted to homicide detective but he never forgot the murder of cliff
and alma mirk the case had always bothered me mainly because of the circumstances the way
they were murdered and just knowing that that there was that element out there still walking the
streets that hopefully hadn't done more killings but after a decade the trail of the killer had turned cold
christopherson knew he needed forensic evidence to have any chance of solving the case
ten years after clifford and alma merck's murder investigators in bakersfield california
were no closer to making an arrest we don't know who it was or if they're somewhere in the neighborhood still it's
really scary very scary to think that they're still out there they're not caught and i tell you the
truth i really didn't think they were ever going to get caught shortly after jim christopherson was
promoted to homicide detective he reopened the case looking for any possible evidence that might have been
overlooked when i opened up the case it was very enlightening first off i had no
idea that the initial investigators had done so much work on it they had talked to literally hundreds of
people and interviewed hundreds of people and had obtained a lot of good information
cliff merck's 25 caliber handgun stolen during the robbery was recovered a few months later but ballistic tests
revealed it was not the murder weapon in searching through the files christopherson discovered that there
were several other men present on the night the cowan brothers sold cliff merc's gun to the drug dealer
when christopherson re-interviewed them now ten years later one of the men present recalled an
interesting detail he recalled hearing the cowan brothers tell the drug dealer that the gun they
were selling had been used in a crime once this drug person took possession of the gun that he put a screwdriver down
the end of the barrel and reamed it out in effect changing the rifling of the gun
with this information greg laskowski took a second look down the barrel of cliff merc's gun
and saw evidence of what the informant was talking about the land impressions at the very muzzle or
the crown of the barrel had appeared to been altered it wasn't obvious at first and because
it's an old gun but there was just something about the crown and the land impressions at that muzzle
that were just different from the remainder of the impressions farther down the barrel
since only the end of the barrel had been altered leskowski needed to find some way to
examine just the portion of the barrel that was unaltered no one in the forensic establishment
could help him i contacted a number of known experts about what i was planning to do and how to do
it and they all wished me good luck and so you know i helped i had to you know i was working on my own at that
time but leskowski remembered using a dental casting material called microsill in a
case where he needed to see tool marks in a piece of metal so he decided to try some of that by
putting it down the barrel of the gun it consists of two parts a silicone rubber base
and then a catalyst or hardener and one basically it comes in two tubes so one then squeezes a certain amount of
the rubber material out and then a corresponding amount of hardener out you mix the two together
and in this particular case we injected the cast into the barrel and let it harden
it took 15 minutes for the micro sill to solidify inside the gun when it hardened
laskowski slowly removed the cast from the barrel it literally does not adhere to the
substance that it's casting it just records its surface detail it's like an egg on a teflon
frying pan one can see that one achieves a very true representation of the interior of
the barrel plus the fine detail he cut away the portion of the barrel imprint destroyed by the screwdriver
and then compared the remainder of the cast to the bullets that killed cliff merk
in an incredible turn of events they were an exact match this proved that clifford murk's own gun
was used in his murder and that the cowan brothers had been in possession of the gun
before it had been altered even with this discovery it still wasn't enough to prove murder
that was good circumstantial evidence however it still did not place them inside the crime scene
but there was one more piece of evidence about to be uncovered that would point the finger at who
killed clifford and alma merk for the first time in the history of forensic science a cast made of the
inside of a gun was used to identify a murder weapon the pistol used to kill cliff merc had
been sold to a drug dealer by robert and gerald cowan but for some reason the cowan's fingerprints did not match those
found at the crime scene the person who attempted the comparison was unable to make a match
and he he failed to have another examiner verify his conclusions this was a breach of protocol
the standard operating procedure in all crime labs requires a fingerprint examiner to have someone verify his or
her conclusions so the fingerprints were resubmitted for analysis and this time the results were
verified by a supervisor the fingerprints found in the merck's home matched robert cowan
[Music] it goes without saying that i was highly irritated and embarrassed for the
department initially on the latent evidence being misread i i tend to believe that was
probably a training issue this was simply a situation where the original examiner was in over his
head and and couldn't handle it armed with the fingerprint evidence and the ballistic test results robert cowan
was arrested and charged with two counts of first degree murder took him back to the office and i showed
him where his fingerprints were definitely found inside of that house and asked him to explain that
and he just shook his head and he just kept his mouth shut and he stayed silent and
said he couldn't explain it gerald cowan was also arrested for the murders but he was later released
because there was no forensic evidence linking him to the crime scene gerald cowan was later convicted of
manslaughter for killing his father-in-law he served only two years in prison for
that crime before he was released on parole prosecutors believe robert cowan was one of the men seen
near the murk's home by the neighbor based on the forensic evidence prosecutors say robert cowan and an
accomplice broke into the murk's home through the back door cliff merc probably went for his gun to
defend himself and robert cowan grabbed the pistol and turned it on cliff [Music]
the men bound his wife alma locked her in the closet and left her to die [Music]
robert cowan left his fingerprints on a tray found in the living room and by the
back door as he left the cowans pawned some of alma merck's jewelry then sold the gun to a drug
dealer who altered the rifling marks of the gun barrel but it wasn't enough to fool a forensic scientist with his
newfound ability to see inside the barrel something inside me says hold onto these
bullets you're going to find the firearm and lo and behold it happened way down the line almost 10 years later
but time was on our side i guess in that matter robert cowan was convicted of two counts
of first-degree murder and was sentenced to death when you look at what he did to this
elderly couple who he had no reason to kill he could have taken everything they had and tied them up and left them he
didn't have to shoot them he didn't have to shove mrs merck in a closet and close
the door on her and let her suffer and die i couldn't find anything good about this
man i couldn't find anything nice about him i couldn't find any reason in the world why i felt he should even be
walking on the earth and breathing air i'm glad they convicted him i'm glad he's where he is
and i think that he deserves everything that he's getting for what he did to my mother
if they would let me i would throw the switch or whatever it takes to do the merck case took 10 years to solve
and required both perseverance and ingenuity the result was not only a conviction
but a new forensic test now used around the world when investigators suspect there has been tampering inside a gun
barrel this is where forensic science works is it always borrows or steals from its
neighboring sciences or methodologies and it takes those and uses it in a practical
manner i could not have won the case i could not have gotten the death penalty without forensic science
i've had a long career and it was one of the highlights of my career [Music] [Music]
[Applause] [Music] you

California police had several suspects in the robbery and brutal murder of an elderly couple. Ten years later, a determined forensic scientist used material from a dentist's office to uncover ballistic evidence which had been overlooked.

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 decade-long investigation leads to the conviction of Robert Cowan for the murders of Clifford and Alma Merck through innovative forensic techniques.

Key points

The Murk's Tragic Discovery. A son finds his parents murdered in their home, leading to a chilling investigation.
Forensic Breakthrough. A determined scientist discovers new evidence that changes the course of the investigation.
Justice Served After a Decade. After ten years, the murderer is convicted, showcasing the power of forensic science.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I just thought this can’t be happening.

A son discovers his parents' bodies.

3:32WatchJan 1, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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