Forensic Files - Season 9, Episode 20 - Muddy Waters - Full Episode | Forensic Files

even though hunters wear bright orange vests and hats accidents still happen the problem is trying to figure out
which shootings are accidents and which are not [Music] in colorado investigators used forensic
metallurgy a piece of string and geology to see whether one man's death was an accident or murder
[Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] each year thousands of big game hunters
flocked to the ancampagre national park in western colorado elk deer bear mountain lion
up in that area so it's it's kind of a pretty area very remote on the second day of hunting season in
1995 doug kyle was relaxing in his camp when he heard a woman screaming she said she found her husband lying on
the ground near their camp he had been shot in the chest [Applause] i could tell that you know he was
deceased and i looked at her and told her i said ma'am i'm sorry i said but he he's gone
the victim was 48 year old bruce dodson his wife janiece said she went looking for him when he didn't return to their
camp right after this happened i was being told anyway that it was a hunting accident
[Music] he's a man walking upright through grass four inches tall he's got a hunter orange cap on he's
carrying a rifle the only thing that could have happened in this world would have been a one in a
million chance of somebody a canyon over shooting at an animal and a stray bullet hitting
him bruce's body was sent to the medical examiner dr tom canfield for an autopsy
bruce worked for me he was a medical technologist in the delta hospital and i knew him very well both on a
professional and a personal level the autopsy results were startling bruce hadn't been shot once
but three times well i was able to determine one that they were distant ranged gunshot wounds
that is they were fired from a significant distance one shot was a superficial wound that
went through his hunting vest and grazed his back the wound that went through his vest but did not cause
significant damage to him probably was the first shot i believe he then took the vest off to
see what had happened he would have turned in that direction and probably yelled out of fear hey i'm
not a deer you know i'm not an elk hey i'm over here yelling you know don't shoot
bruce was shot a second time while waving his vest in the air it entered his chest and exited under his right arm
mr dawson may have tried to crawl away when the last shot was fired the third and fatal shot entered his
back in an upward trajectory and was found in bruce's lung it was badly deformed but by its size
identified as a 243 caliber round the only landmark we really had to go on was the base design
janiece dodson had been hunting on this trip too but this bullet did not come from her
rifle or bruce's so it couldn't have been bruce's rifle that killed him couldn't have been
denise's rifle that killed bruce dodson but dr canfield was convinced the shooting was no accident
i was able to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt and with reasonable medical certainty that bruce died from
multiple gunshot wounds and it was clearly a homicide the autopsy revealed bruce dodson had been hit with three
shots we didn't know if maybe we had some maniac in the woods with a rifle just randomly shooting someone
investigators found a clue in a fence post near bruce's body it was a fresh bullet hole
so they used a string to perform a trajectory analysis we began where the victim was located
at the approximate height of the wounds and went back to the fence post [Music] and then continued
to string that back toward the area that the shot was fired in a clump of bushes 80 yards in front
of the fence post investigators found a 308 caliber shell casing to find the bullet that went through
bruce's chest investigators searched the area in the straight line path beyond where bruce
was standing [Music] with the metal detector miraculously they found a 308 caliber
round at the end of that string was the bullet i mean it was a stroke of luck stroke a lock
this raised the possibility that there were two shooters since a 308 caliber round passed through
bruce's body and the 243 caliber round killed him none of that forensic evidence added up the analysis of the
bullet in bruce's body didn't match any of the evidence that we had picked up at
the scene so far neither bruce nor his wife janiece owned a rifle capable of firing either caliber
round a look into the victim's background revealed that bruce dodson and janiece
had been married for only three months bruce said that janiece wanted to go on this hunting trip he
didn't really want to go but to make her happy he he agreed to go family members were appalled at the way
janice behaved after bruce's death she threw everything that my brother owned away
had his dog put to sleep sold his horse took his name off the mailbox like the next day
even more alarming was the fact that janiece's ex-husband j.c lee was camping less than a mile
away from bruce and janiece at the time of the murder he was camped three quarters of a mile
from the datsun camp where john bruce dotson was murdered so he was quite suspicious to us and we thought at
that point hey we need to look into this guy when interviewed lee said he owned a 308
caliber rifle that was stolen from his camp the night before bruce was killed so that was really suspicious to us is
uh you know the fact that all of a sudden you know this man says i had a 308 rifle stolen from my camp
while i was up there but i didn't know it was stolen until i got back to my apartment in utah
lee reported that some of his nosler brand 308 caliber ammunition was also stolen the same brand as the shell
casing found at the crime scene so a lot of things started pointing towards this guy j.c lee
jc lee and janiece had divorced because lee started dating a friend of their daughters
we thought that j.c lee may have been jealous of janiece recently marrying bruce dodson maybe he wanted to get back
at janiece we couldn't link jc lee to the datsun murder scene and we couldn't link janiece dotson
to the ex-husband's camp three quarters of a mile away also suspicious janiece had purchased three life
insurance policies on bruce shortly before his death she stood to gain almost 500 000 so
it's a lot of motive and after the funeral junice's behavior was bizarre to say the least
one of his last requests was to be cremated and to have his ashes scattered in leadville colorado janiece had taken
bruce's ashes and as they approached leadville she dumped him on the side of the road
and janiece told investigators she was going to her cousin's home in east texas to grieve
but investigators discovered she was doing no such thing we did a financial investigation on her
and we found that several times janice dodson's atm card was used in lake charles louisiana at a casino
players club so we're thinking well how can she be in east texas grieving and her atm cards being used in
louisiana at a gambling casino and even more bizarre not long after bruce was killed
janiece married husband number three bart hall bart hall nice guy he said i felt so strong for janiece and
for her welfare that after we got married i took out a hundred thousand dollar life insurance
policy on myself just to make sure if something happened to me she was well taken care of with
that dave says you don't hunt do you [Music] denise dodson denied any involvement in
her husband bruce's murder so did her ex-husband j.c lee who had an alibi his girlfriend and a co-worker confirmed
he was hunting with them at the time of the murder investigators searched the fields and
forests neared the crime scene for the 308 caliber rifle used in the murder but found nothing we even cut down
vegetation in the area sagebrush cleared a large area and looked visually as well as with
metal detectors they were hindered in their search because the area is covered in snow for
almost half the year for the next three summers bill booth his partner dave martinez and
others camped in the uncompagre national park and looked for the 308 rifle on one of their trips booth and martinez
took along a member of necro search international an organization of volunteers who use new technologies to
find missing people and in this case missing weapons they were searching for the rifle in a
pond near jc lee's campsite and it was at that time that we were at the pond near the ex-husband's camp
when an individual from necrosearch international identified the lining of this pond stock pond to be bent night
clay and he said boy that's very unusual to have bent night clay in the middle of the young compadre
national forest in a stock pond and this jogged their memory they remembered that janiece dodson's
clothes had been covered in mud on the day of her husband's murder janiece's muddy clothing had been kept
in evidence for the past three years [Music] jacqueline battle scraped some of the
mud from the clothing and ground it to a fine powder battle sifted and weighed the samples
and then examined them under a polarizing microscope the mud from janiece's clothing
contained bentonite bentonite is a clay-like material comprised of minerals of aluminum
silicates magnesium and iron oxides ranchers would add bentonite as a sealant so that the
water would be retained in the watering hole versus seeping through into the ground
the bentonite on genesis clothing was identical to the sample from the pond behind her ex-husband's camp
battles examined mud samples from other ponds in the national park but none matched the mud from genesis clothing
so out of the samples that were submitted from the three ponds and the bog that night might not be common but
in this case it was unique in that it was in only one of the ponds that matched back up to the
soil that was recovered from her boots we were ecstatic because we're now able to show that she
was lying and we're now now able to show her in an area where the murder weapon was
stolen to investigators this was proof that janiece had stolen her ex-husband's gun possibly in an
attempt to frame him we were able to put janiece dawson at her ex-husband's camp
we couldn't put the ex-husband at her camp perhaps janiece killed two birds with one stone jc lee
and john bruce dodson we have no way of knowing what she had planned for jc lee personally i feel that
jc lee was going to be the fall guy a patsy for janiece investigators still had one question to
answer they knew a 308 caliber round went through bruce's body but a 243 caliber
round was found in his lung where did this 243 caliber round come from this case is more twists and turns than
a snake and it was just one thing after another three years after bruce dodson's murder
investigators still didn't know why a 243 caliber round was found in his lung when it appeared that a 308 caliber
rifle was used in the murder while reading a gun and ammunition magazine bill booth discovered the answer
he saw an ad for the nostler brand 308 caliber bullet it showed a picture of the small inner
core of the bullet which looks surprisingly similar to the bullet found in bruce dodson's lung
when i looked at the photograph of the cutaway and remembering the core that we had removed from bruce
dodson's lawn it was the same very similar the projectile that entered the body was the bullet core
passing through an intervening object very likely would have stripped off the copper jacket
and only the core would have proceeded from that area he has an epiphany i think he said that's it he got up and
went down to a sporting goods store and bought some of those bullets went home took one out cut it open in his garage
and that's got to be it most lead bullets are made from recycled car batteries which have numerous trace
elements a forensic metallurgist at the fbi analyzed the lead inner core of the bullet from bruce dodson's body using
plasma atomic emission spectroscopy it was compared to the 308 caliber round found at the scene
so she tested for a certain number of i think six or eight trace elements and when you compare them
there was a match which meant both bullets were from the same batch the odds of a bullet from the same batch being in
the victim and being in the hillside of not being fired at the same sequence of shots the odds against that were just
astounding prosecutors believe janiece dodson planned her husband's murder almost from
the day they got married and she chose a campsite just a short distance away from where she knew her
ex-husband had camped every year for the past 20 years at some point prosecutors say janiece quietly made her
way over to her ex-husband's campsite wading through the mud in the pond so she wouldn't be seen
while her ex-husband was away she stole his remington 308 caliber rifle and ammunition
but she never realized that the mud on her boots and coveralls could tie her to the robbery
the next day janiece went hunting alone and her husband was the prey she hid in the bushes waiting for bruce
to walk by and then she fired the first shot only grazed him in a panic bruce took off his vest and
waved to the shooter the second shot entered his chest and came out under his right arm and he fell
to the ground the third shot struck the fence post shearing off the outer core before it
hit and killed him janiece inadvertently left one of the 308 shell casings behind
she got rid of the rifle somewhere in the colorado wilderness before calling for help
where she disposed of it remains a mystery if the suspect would have been a better
shot and mr dodson would have been killed with a single shot it's possible that this would never been investigated as a
homicide we wouldn't have been looking for bullet fragments we wouldn't have been looking for mud
analysis prosecutors believe the motive was greed i believe she married him with the
intent to beef up his finances and kill him that's about as cold-blooded as you can
get so she would have got revenge she would have got rid of bruce dodson obtained approximately five hundred
thousand dollars in worth and also uh put pin the wrap on jc lee to get even with him for leaving with
her daughter's girlfriend i think it was a excellent plan that didn't work five years after the death of her
husband janiece dodson went on trial for his murder we had forensic firearms evidence
forensic metallurgists this case was built on forensics the jury deliberated for three and a
half days then found janiece dodson guilty of first degree murder she was sentenced to life in prison
without the possibility of parole when the verdict came in in the courtroom my legs turned a rubber
and all i can do today is and i never got a chance i wanted to thank the jury for all the
work they did investigators and the forensic experts who worked on the case janice dodson was one step away from
committing the perfect crime denise probably never thought that where she walked
and picked up soil on her boots and her clothing might have played a key part in convicting her
bruce was never far from our thoughts during this whole investigation and i think he got some justice
it wasn't for forensics i could tell you right now jenny stockson would be walking the street she assassinated
bruce dodson he didn't have a chance i wouldn't even call her a black widow i would call her just a greedy assassin
[Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

A Colorado hunter who'd been shot three times was the victim of a well planned crime. Investigators suspected two weapons and two killers. But analysis of the forensic evidence pointed them in a different direction--one much closer to home.

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 woman is convicted of murdering her husband during a hunting trip, aided by forensic evidence linking her to the crime.

Key points

The Mysterious Death of Bruce Dodson. Bruce Dodson was shot three times during a hunting trip, leading to a complex investigation.
Janiece's Alarming Behavior. Janiece Dodson's actions after her husband's death raised suspicions among investigators.
Forensic Breakthrough. Forensic evidence linked Janiece to the crime scene, revealing her guilt.
The Trial of Janiece Dodson. Janiece Dodson was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

He’s a man walking upright through grass four inches tall.

Describing the victim's appearance during the incident.

2:07WatchJan 1, 2022

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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