Forensic Files - Season 9, Episode 2 - Hunter or Hunted? - Full Episode | Forensic Files

NARRATOR: On the last day of hunting season, a young woman was killed while walking her dogs in the woods.
Police assumed it was an accident. But a handwriting analysis, a ballistic test,
and an unusual physics experiment led investigators to ask the question-- just what was the hunter's target?
[theme music] The upper peninsula of Michigan is 16,000 square miles of sparsely populated woodland.
It's quiet, and usually safe. DAVE DISTEL: I would think if someone had a bicycle stolen,
it would make the front page of the newspaper. NARRATOR: Here, residents have more trouble
with hunters than with criminals. [gunshot] HULDAH MOILANEN: My daughter-in-law was hanging
clothes one day, and bullets were just whizzing by her as she was hanging clothes.
And it wasn't even deer season. NARRATOR: On the last day of deer hunting in 1992,
Judy Blake Moilanen went for a walk in the woods with her five dogs. [dog barking]
Eventually, the dogs returned home, but Judy did not. Judy's mother and a neighbor went looking for her
and found her on one of the trails in the woods. MALE VOICE (ON POLICE RADIO): 7-0-7-0-5.
We have a [inaudible] at the end of Cherry Lane off of M-38. [sirens] NARRATOR: Judy was dead from a gunshot wound to the chest.
It appeared to be an accident. HULDAH MOILANEN: Somebody called me. They told me about it, and well, my-- my stomach
just sunk to the floor. Felt like it. I said, oh my god, no. NARRATOR: Bullets from high-powered rifles
can often travel three miles or more. -And every now and then, one comes down in the wrong place.
NARRATOR: Neighbors said they heard a rifle shot just after 2:00 PM. The investigation was hindered because the bullet that killed
Judy could not be found in the brush. DAN CASTLE: There wasn't any bullet. I did find an older bullet, and that was underground
and it was slightly corroded, and that was turned over. But it was determined that it was probably
not the projectile they were looking for. NARRATOR: But they did find evidence of where it hit after killing Judy.
DAVE DISTEL: I think they noted, that particular night, there was a blaze mark or a scar that a bullet
might have made on a nearby tree. NARRATOR: Judy had been married to her husband Bruce for 14
years, and they had a three-year-old daughter. Bruce worked as an insurance adjuster,
and he said he had an alibi for the day of the accident. DET. BOB BALL: Well, he came up with somewhere around 28
different individuals that he thought might be able to produce alibi for him on that day,
starting at about 8 o'clock in the morning and going all the way till 6:00, 6:30 at night.
NARRATOR: Bruce was angry that his wife wasn't more careful. DET. BOB BALL: And he was more or less critical of his wife
for not wearing orange that day when she went in the woods. To me, I thought this was-- this was way out of character
for this type of a situation. NARRATOR: Bruce made several more unusual statements
about his wife, and investigators were starting to wonder whether Judy's death was really an accident.
Within days of Judy Moilanen's funeral, several friends noticed that her husband was behaving strangely.
One said he made sexual advances towards her. LEE ANNE WYSOCKI JESSUP: Asking me
if I wanted to live with him. And asking me if we could be more than just friends, and those types of things.
It was like, my god, your wife hasn't even been dead for a couple weeks, and he's saying these things, you know?
NARRATOR: And there was another bizarre incident. After the funeral, Bruce gave some of Judy's clothing
to another friend, Gayle Lampinen. And among the clothes was a letter. BETH PACZESNY: It's addressed to her,
and its allegedly from the victim, Judy Moilanen, signed "Judes," which was Judy's very personal nickname.
And Judy did not know Gayle very well. She only had met her in passing like once or twice.
-When I read the letter, I stood in the kitchen and I think the my first thoughts were, what the heck
is this? BETH PACZESNY: And it basically said, I'm having problems in my marriage.
Bruce and I are growing apart. He's got his things, I've got mine. Please help him find somebody else, one of those things.
And for me, the kicker was the PS line, which was, but he's great in the sack. GAYLE LAMPINEN: And just thought it was bizarre
that she would be writing something like this. NARRATOR: Gayle told police Bruce behaved inappropriately
towards her in the months leading up to Judy's death. DET. BOB BALL: Bruce really turned up the heat,
and he was becoming a stalker, is what it boils down to. GAYLE LAMPINEN: Well, he started coming over here and calling
the telephone a lot, and invite us to go skiing and do different things. And we wouldn't go with him.
-We were finding out that there may be a little bit more to Bruce Moilanen than what his family knew about.
NARRATOR: To see if the letter was authentic, police took it to a forensic document examiner.
JAMES STEGGALL: And I was asked to compare that to known handwriting samples of Judy Moilanen.
NARRATOR: Steggall noted that the handwriting was slow and deliberate. JAMES STEGGALL: Well, that's an indication
that the document could be a forgery. Someone's attempting to either disguise their writing,
or simulate the writing of another individual. NARRATOR: There were several characteristics
inconsistent with Judy's known handwriting samples. JAMES STEGGALL: In the known handwriting sample of Judy,
the end part of the T is a round bowl. Of course, it almost looks like a B. And over in the questioned sample,
there is a complete separation between the T and the H. There isn't that bowl formation,
and it has a very short T crossing. -It lacked all of her individual habits-- the way she formed her letters, the way she connected
her letters, the ending strokes, the crossing of the T's, the directions of strokes.
NARRATOR: The letter was a forgery. When someone writes on a piece of paper, it leaves indentations on the page underneath, which
will hold more of an electrical charge than the other paper fibers. So Steggall placed a thin piece of plastic Mylar
over the letter, then used an electric wand to create an electrostatic charge. JAMES STEGGALL: So then we take a toner
and sprinkle over the top of the Mylar surface. And those areas that have the greatest charge
will draw that black powder, or toner, to that area, and develops an image. NARRATOR: This revealed and someone
practiced writing an earlier version of this letter on the page above this one, which is common in forgeries.
Steggall compared the letter to Bruce's known handwriting samples and concluded he had written the letter.
DAVE DISTEL: To think that some guy would be so bold as to write this and attribute it to his wife
after she'd been killed in a hunting accident. GAYLE LAMPINEN: I didn't think about it, because the person
that I knew, I didn't think he was capable of doing something like that. NARRATOR: And investigators discovered something else.
Just one year earlier, Judy was hit on the head by a large chimney block that accidentally slid off the roof
while Bruce was on the roof repairing it. DET. BOB BALL: And that accident darn near took Judy's life.
She was lucky that she survived it. NARRATOR: Another time, a fire broke out at the Moilanens'
home while Judy was home alone sleeping. Fortunately, she woke up in time to call the fire department.
[sirens blaring] JAMES STEGGALL: But she kept that quiet. She only told, I think, one-- one or two people about that.
-It was just weird. And again, weird doesn't equal guilty, but it certainly lays the foundation
for murder and motive. NARRATOR: And Judy had over $300,000 worth of life insurance when she died.
-In 1992, here in the UP, that's a lot of money. NARRATOR: Bruce also told Gayle about the insurance money
in what she described as his clumsy attempts to seduce her. GAYLE LAMPINEN: A lot of times, he would try to tell me that he
was going to be financially wealthy, to the point that he could quit his job and just work with his animals.
-It didn't take us long to know something just wasn't right. This wasn't just an accident.
NARRATOR: That may have been the understatement of the year. LEE ANNE WYSOCKI JESSUP: She
about other people and would do anything for you, if she could. NARRATOR: When 35-year-old Judy Moilanen was killed in a freak
hunting accident, her husband Bruce had an alibi for the entire day. But police found a witness who reported seeing Bruce
out hunting that day alone, which contradicted his alibi. DET. BOB BALL: He had people that he claimed
saw him around 2:30, 2:15 in the afternoon. But when you get right down to interviewing these people,
some of them couldn't even substantiate that they saw him. BETH PACZESNY: He could not cover a time when
he was in the woods, and there was no witnesses that could say where he was at that time.
NARRATOR: To determine whether this was an accident or murder, police needed to find the fatal bullet.
It was still somewhere in the woods, but police couldn't find it. Investigators found what looked like a scrape mark on a tree,
about 40 feet away from where they found Judy's body. Scientists applied sodium rhodizonate, a chemical which
turns purple in the presence of lead. The mark tested positive, indicating it was struck by a bullet.
For weeks, Dan Castle tried to find the bullet with his metal detector, but each time came up empty.
DAN CASTLE: Well, I knew the bullet was out there. It just-- I was searching in the wrong area.
And it was kind of getting to me. I knew that the weather was going to change, that we were supposed to get a lot of cold weather and snow.
NARRATOR: Finally, he decided to try a novel experiment, using a slingshot to recreate the trajectory of the bullet.
He knew where Judy was standing when hit and where the bullet had hit the tree, so he fired marbles at the tree from the same trajectory
angle of the fatal bullet. DAN CASTLE: So I tried to hit it near the same location
as the bullet did, and I heard them ricocheting off the branches and leaves and so forth in the woods.
RAY KENNY: One of the marbles that struck the tree ricocheted almost at a right angle, somewhere, as I recall,
80, 85 feet away from the tree. NARRATOR: And when Castle looked around that area,
he found the bullet. DAN CASTLE: It was just a fluke. I didn't know if I was kind of at wits' end.
RAY KENNY: To me, this was remarkable, to have him think of this, to what test could you do out
in the woods to try to determine where a bullet might go after it struck a tree?
NARRATOR: Ray Kenny, a firearms examiner with the Michigan State Police, analyzed it to see if this was
the bullet that killed Judy Moilanen. The copper jacket was damaged, which wasn't unusual.
But he found some important evidence trapped inside. RAY KENNY: I pried back the mushroom area of the bullet
and collected all this material. There was woody fibrous material. NARRATOR: Forensic scientists finally had something.
It was the same wood and moss found on the tree with the scrape mark. And there was more evidence in the bullet.
-There was some other little, like, fibers, and there was a very tiny pink fiber that I could see.
NARRATOR: The pink cotton fiber was microscopically similar to the shirt Judy was wearing.
They also found a black fiber and a feather fragment in the bullet. CONNIE SWANDER: The black fiber was similar to the black fibers
of the jacket, and the feather fragment was similar to the down feathers that were found in the lining of the victim's jacket.
NARRATOR: There was no doubt that this was the bullet that killed Judy Moilanen.
It was a .30 caliber round. -That was an incredible break in the case. And that's one thing they didn't tell
Moilanen they had for a long, long time. He had no clue that they-- they had the bullet.
NARRATOR: Investigators researched all of the rifles that could have fired this round and identified
four possible manufacturers. Bruce Moilanen denied owning any of these rifles. But in the couple's financial records
were loan papers of a recent bank loan. And Bruce's gun collection was listed as collateral.
BETH PACZESNY: We found an asset list in which listed a gun he failed to disclose to us, a 30-06
Savage 110, a rifle with a scope. And that was consistent with one of the weapons
that could have shot that bullet. So that right there was key to us. DET. BOB BALL: Bruce was hunting, but he wasn't hunting deer.
BETH PACZESNY: He was hunting for his wife. NARRATOR: Prosecutors believe Bruce Moilanen
tried once before to kill his wife. A year earlier, while Bruce was on his roof making chimney
repairs, a cement block mysteriously fell, hitting Judy on the head. Judy survived the incident.
And they also believe Bruce started the suspicious house fire as another attempt on Judy's life.
DET. BOB BALL: It's really mind-boggling that this guy could do something like that, with his wife
and his infant daughter sleeping in the house. [gunshot] NARRATOR: Prosecutors say Bruce waited until hunting season
for his next attempt, and he hid in the woods, waiting for Judy to walk the dogs.
[gunshot] The bullet went through Judy's down vest, her red cotton shirt, then hit a tree and ricocheted into the woods.
Even as an experienced hunter, Bruce probably never imagined that someone with a slingshot
would find the bullet in the dirt, snow, and leaves. Since investigators couldn't find the murder weapon
in Bruce's home, they believe he disposed of it somewhere before heading home. With Judy dead, and $300,000 coming from her life insurance
policies, Bruce continued to pursue Gayle Lampinen, even though she was married and had shown no interest.
Bruce decided to write her a letter, and to make it look like Judy had written it before she died.
He added the unusual postscript telling Gayle about his sexual prowess. The electrostatic analysis shows that Bruce wrote an earlier
version of the letter, possibly as practice to mimic Judy's handwriting. But it didn't fool the forensic document examiner.
JAMES STEGGALL: It's not possible to simulate someone else's handwriting 100%. You can interject some other handwriting habits,
but some of your own are going to appear. DET. BOB BALL: I feel his real motive was-- was Gayle Lampinen.
Bruce felt that if he could get rid of Judy, that he was going to be able to sweep Gayle off her feet and go off,
and they were going to be happily together forever. NARRATOR: During a police interview,
they confronted Bruce with the forensic evidence. DET. BOB BALL: A letter purportedly written--
NARRATOR: They made it clear that Gayle Lampinen wanted nothing to do with him. And that she knew from the start that the letter was a forgery.
-I killed her. NARRATOR: At that point, Bruce confessed. -Cops introduced the fact that Gayle Lampinen had been working
with them, and I think that-- it was an emotional crusher for him. And I think that-- that broke him down.
GAYLE LAMPINEN: We had no interest. We had no interest in doing things with him.
We had our own life, and we just thought the more we would ignore him, he'd go away.
But he didn't go away. NARRATOR: Bruce said he threw the rifle in a nearby river,
although police couldn't find it. Bruce was able to correct a mistake in the medical examiner's report.
DET. BOB BALL: Bruce informed me that we were wrong in part of our evidence, that we thought Judy had been shot
in the left side, when in fact she had been shot in the right side of her chest, exiting out of the left side.
-I felt that that was a key to his confession, because he was telling us something that only the person who was there,
doing the shooting, could know. NARRATOR: He also revealed his motive. BETH PACZESNY: What's everybody's motive for murder?
I think it comes down to money, you know, greed. He had $320,000 worth of life insurance on his wife.
DET. BOB BALL: He said that Judy was a tyrant at work and she was a tyrant at home.
He said she was a bad cook and he ended up doing most of the cooking. He told us that he didn't want to go through a divorce,
because Judy would get half of everything, he didn't want to give up his assets.
And that was-- that was Bruce's downfall. He was cheap. NARRATOR: Bruce Moilanen was arrested
and charged with premeditated murder. Despite his confession, he pleaded not guilty at the trial.
BETH PACZESNY: He made an excuse for the confession. And basically it was-- it was, you know,
psychologically coerced, he was tired. PROSECUTOR: And you will hear how he took that gun
and he scoped her in and he pulled the trigger that caused a bullet to kill Judy Moilanen instantly.
NARRATOR: Prosecutors showed the jury this police recreation of the cinder block incident.
Bruce claimed he accidentally knocked the cinder block off the roof with his foot.
The recreation showed this was impossible, that it required a deliberate push. But the forensic evidence was more than enough.
Bruce Moilanen was found guilty and was sentenced to life in prison. BETH PACZESNY: Everything just fit together, and again,
in a very sad situation for a family. But at least we were able to give them closure and a sense
of justice, and I hope that they have that today. -I feel the forensic evidence was extremely important.
I don't think we would have had enough information to break Bruce down without that type of evidence.
-I think that he just thought he was so much smarter than these-- these, quote, "back woods," unquote,
cops could possibly be. These guys couldn't be that smart. Turned out they were just a whole lot smarter than he was.
[theme music]

A woman is killed while walking her dogs in the woods. Since she has no enemies and her husband has an alibi, police assume it's a hunting accident — until they find a strange letter, allegedly written by the woman before her 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

Judy Moilanen was murdered by her husband Bruce, who was later convicted after a detailed investigation revealed his lies and a forged letter.

Key points

The Mysterious Death of Judy Moilanen. Judy Moilanen was shot while walking her dogs, initially thought to be an accident.
Unusual Behavior After Tragedy. Judy's husband Bruce exhibited strange behavior following her death, raising suspicions.
The Forged Letter. A letter purportedly from Judy revealed marital issues, but was later proven a forgery.
The Bullet's Discovery. A unique experiment led to the discovery of the bullet that killed Judy.
Bruce's Confession. Confronted with evidence, Bruce confessed to killing Judy, revealing his motive.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Oh my god, no.

Huldah Moilanen's reaction to her daughter-in-law's death.

2:12WatchJan 1, 2022

Tension

85/ 100High tension

More from Forensic Files

Solve the Crime

Read a real case one clue at a time, then see how your call held up against the investigators.