Forensic Files - Season 9, Episode 22 - Seeds for Doubt - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[Music] a car accident left one person dead and a family in mourning at first it looked like the driver's
alcohol consumption was the cause but a closer look revealed a common weed found in an uncommon place
leading investigators to wonders was it really an accident [Music] [Music] [Applause]
[Music] [Music] peter and patty walassic lived in the small town of guilford in upstate new
york guilford is a beautiful quiet community it's historic community just as a small
hamlet they have the lake is their main attraction a beautiful lake has a lot of
summer homes on it but we have a lot of hunting land for deer hunting the walasticks were well liked in
guilford peter owned one of the local bars patty worked as a nurse at a local hospital
she got a lot of joy from that gave her a great sense of worth the only trouble spot seemed to be
several citations patty received for driving while intoxicated on a scale one to ten she would be a
nine i mean her one downfall her one floor was alcoholism and that's it other than that she was
perfect she did her fair share of partying and she did have her problems but she was
big enough and a strong enough person to try to persevere from them by going to school and getting her you know degree
on april 3rd 2002 patty worked the hospital's 3 to 11 shift when she came home peter was there but
the children were not somehow that night my wife neglected or forgot to pick up our
children at the babysitter he described it as being a mistake or miscommunication obviously
when she got there she thought that mr wolasik was going to pick him up he thought she was
they got into their truck and headed for the babysitter's house along the way patty tried to throw her
cigarette out of the window the cigarette had come back into the cab of the truck
both their attention was distracted towards the window where the cigarette should have went
when they looked up there was a deer in the road paddy swerved lost control of the truck
and plunged into the lake peter said he was unable to get his wife out of the truck
i can't hold on to her a lot of days i wish i'd been a lot stronger i wish i could have got her up
to the top peter ran to a nearby home for help [Music] divers pulled paddy's body from the
bottom of the freezing cold lake and she was rushed by ambulance to the same hospital where she worked but doctors
were unable to resuscitate her i didn't want to live anymore myself i couldn't picture going on anymore in
life without her i couldn't and there's reasons you know that i like to think it was either her or god
speaking to me that you know i didn't go further with what i was planning i'm joining her
toxicology tests showed patty had a blood alcohol level of .05 which was under the legal limit
she had imbibed some alcoholic beverages and for a woman of her size probably two
or three drinks in the previous hour or two as with most fatal accidents local officials conducted an accident
investigation which raised more questions than it answered dr james terzian performed the autopsy
on thirty-five-year-old patti wolasik the day after the fatal accident she had a number of abrasions and
contusions which are scrapes and bruises on the face on the under surface of the upper lip
on the shoulder regions those were the superficial injuries she also had particular hemorrhages or
micro hemorrhages on the surfaces of her lungs these hemorrhages can result from
drowning but there was very little water in paddy's lungs one does not have to have water in the
lungs to drown and it's possible to have water in the lungs after one has been deceased and placed in water
lab tests confirmed that paddy had been drinking [Music] in his preliminary report dr terzian
identified the cause of death as probable drowning i'm left with minor cutaneous injuries
abrasions and contusions and a person pulled out of water so that's a drowning until proved otherwise
there was one other finding for some unexplained reason there were seed pods in paddy's hair and
on her clothing the pods were from a common weed called burdock they have these little hooks on them
which stick to animals or people and they travel around and then usually get dumped somewhere and so the plant
gets distributed around that way finds new waste places to grow at the accident scene
investigators found the truck took an unusual route into the water most of the lake is covered by home
fronts with garages and houses and then the area that doesn't have houses or garages or residents has has
guide rails to prevent somebody going into the league the truck veered into the lake at one of
the few places where there was an unobstructed path from the road to the lake and investigators found no traces of
deer in the area it's not one where you would generally expect to find a deer and had they
swerved for deer you would expect to see some sort of evidence of that breaking swerving skidding tires
you know anything like that there were tire impressions from paddy's truck on the shoulder of the right-hand
lane and tire impressions on the opposite side of the road in the grass accident investigator richard cobb
connected these impressions plotted the angle of the turn and then estimated the
speed of the vehicle using a standardized formula it's called the critical curve speed
formula it takes into account the grade of the road the drag factor of the roadway surface and also the
path of the vehicle meaning the arc that it turned where you can figure out a speed at
which the vehicle either would have been able to make the turn or would have lost
control making that turn v equals velocity g is for gravity which is a constant 32.2
r is for the radius of the r the curve and the greek letter mu is for the coefficient of friction or the drag
factor of the road service this formula revealed that the speed of the relasix truck was less than 30 miles
per hour considerably slower than what peter described had the truck been going faster
the interior of the truck would have been damaged the interior you would expect to see
maybe damage to the dash the knee panels from occupants knees steering wheel damage damage to either windshield or
side windows quite often unrestrained passengers will hit the rear view mirror break that off
the windshield or crack the mirror itself there wasn't any of that present in the
vehicle either and the physical evidence revealed another contradiction peter said he exited the truck through
the passenger side door but when it was brought up from the lake the passenger side door was locked
he also said patty was driving and still in the truck when he exited but her body was found
outside of the truck at the bottom of the lake inconsistent with his story the last one
he saw her she was in the driver's side of the truck in the walassic's home investigators found patty's diary
and it revealed that patty and peter were living what some would call an alternative sexual lifestyle
i just want to push you to the limit sexually i wasn't able to do that by myself
so i'd hope to bring in a different person [Music] according to the diary patty invited her friend the children's
babysitter joyce worden into their bedroom my wife joyce and i were involved in a
um three-way relationship there was actually no need for the whole world to know that my wife had this tendency that
my wife had initiated this that you know it was our private life but patty's diary indicated there were
problems i'm the one who shared my fantasy never knowing i would be the one to play
the outsider never realizing you would like her personality better than mine i honestly never thought you would go
elsewhere patty was concerned that peter and joyce were meeting behind her back peter denies it
my wife had no reason to be jealous worried or whatever with patty dead the only way she could tell her story
was through the autopsy and the forensic evidence there was one thing that troubled the
medical examiner about patio lassic's autopsy why were their seed pods in her hair and
on her clothing well i was thinking that maybe they attached themselves to her hair and
her clothing as she was pulled out of the lake by the emergency personnel so i asked the police to please go back
to the scene look at the bank where she was removed from the water and also look
underneath the water to see if there was any evidence of this plant material these burdocks at the site
but investigators found no such vegetation anywhere around the lake what lady goes out to pick up her kids
at the babysitter with burdocks in her hair it just doesn't happen investigators asked biologist julian
shepherd where burdock plants usually grow typically you find them growing in old
barnyards around old buildings abandoned lots frequently along the edges where people
haven't quite mowed but where there's some open space and they'll grow up like this
dr shepard says the plant doesn't grow in water and there were no burdock plants in the
well-tended yards along gilford lake but investigators found all sorts of wild specimens on the walassix property
he has a has a yard that was mowed the yard i would classify as not being very well kept the officers who did the
first room said you know there's a lot of burdocks around his property investigators found one burdock plant in
the couple's backyard with a broken branch and there was something foreign on this
plant strands of brown hair dna tests revealed the hair was patti walassics once we
had the anatomical findings we had to go on and correlate them with the situation and the scene findings
a closer look at the truck revealed another interesting discovery strands of paddy's hair were found in
the back bed of the truck and so was her pager the truck also held several significant clues
the front grill showed no damage whatsoever but tests conducted by the michigan state police showed that a motor vehicle
plunging into lake water at 30 miles per hour caused significant damage to the grill
and these studies showed something else [Music] a vehicle the size of a van or truck
doesn't automatically sink it took this vehicle over a minute to sink others up to four minutes
that said to us to me that the average person if they were conscious after hitting the
water should be able to escape a vehicle prior to it being submerged and the more
we pried into a story the more we found out his story didn't match the physical evidence
[Music] the lake's temperature on the night of the accident was 40 degrees medical experts said that if peter had
been fully submerged in the water he would have suffered from acute hypothermia april water in new york is not some
place you want to be in and if you are in it for an amount of time you know you're gonna you're gonna have signs of
it his body core body temperature from what i understand uh should have been a lot lower than it was when he when he
finally received medical treatment peter's body temperature at the hospital was only slightly below normal
when i saw him they didn't they weren't even running a thermometer in his mouth and on peter's shoes
with the same burdocks as those in paddy's hair and on her coat all of this information combined with
the cuts on the inside of paddy's lip and the peticule hemorrhages in her lungs led the coroner to conclude that
the cause of death was suffocation not browning and when we put all of this together it
became apparent that she was dead before she went into the lake peter wolasik denied killing his wife
and said he had evidence to prove it it's all scientific and medical based on the forensic evidence
prosecutors believe that patty wolasik was murdered by her husband peter who tried to make it look like an accident
the life insurance on paddy's life was three hundred thousand dollars money was one of the strong motives for
mr elastic murdering his wife especially evidenced by the fact that he was on the
phone less than eight hours later trying to collect the insurance proceeds prosecutors believe that peter left the
children with the babysitter so he could be alone with patti when she came home from work
peter had been home from his job at the bar for an hour according to family members it would be normal for peter to
pick the kids up and have them home at that time i'm sure that was part of his plan to make sure the kids weren't at
the house when he knew that he was going to commit the homicide after paddy had an alcoholic beverage
peter coaxed her outside then attacked her while suffocating her there was the cross transfer of paddy's
hair onto the burdock plant and the seed pods into her hair [Applause] when dragging her body to the truck
paddy's coat picked up more seed pods and they also attached to peter's shoes the forensic evidence suggests the body
was placed in the truck bed tire impressions show that peter pulled over onto the right side of the road
slowly steered the truck through the spot without a guard rail down into the lake
but he left both doors locked [Music] and patty's body was discovered outside the truck
[Music] prosecutors say peter got into the water briefly just enough to get himself wet
before running to a nearby home for help i guess one of my impressions was just how
in a way uh how stupid the case was i'm afraid i mean he made all sorts of blunders
[Music] peter velasque was arrested and charged with murder at the trial wolasic took the stand in
his own defense and he changed his story i'm here for telling a lie if i didn't lie back then i wouldn't be
sitting here today he now admitted that his original story to investigators was a lie
his new story was that patty was too intoxicated to drive and that he ordered her to pull over to the side of the road
so that he could take the wheel told her turn around take the vehicle home turned around
was still arguing arguing arguing and in a fit of rage she lost control over it and put the vehicle in the lake it's
like a road rage but there was no evidence that the truck ever turned around and why turn the truck around when your
destination the babysitter's house was just down the road he was stuck with the evidence the way
it was and his story had to match with the physical evidence that we had does it make sense absolutely not does it
defy logic absolutely and there was no evidence the truck was traveling at a high speed
any type of acceleration along the grass should have left torn up grass the grass
pulled up by the roots burned grass had the rear wheels been on the blacktop or in the loose uh gravelly
part between the blacktop and the grass you would expect to see skid marks or you know gravel thrown up
that sort of thing and we weren't able to find any of that either between the reconstruction work and the
forensic it's what really made the case because obviously his first version we were able to punch
complete holes and there was nothing left of his first version and actually a second version wasn't much better
walasik claims that the burdocks in paddy's hair were not from his backyard but from the lake
and that a scuba diver he hired found proof knowing what the scuba diver said what
he found what is in his report my scuba diver i'm believing now that the burdocks were
in the bottom of the lake and that's how they got on her the prosecution's expert said
this was impossible if it ended up in the water would deteriorate and when it becomes
wet the i guess you want to call it the stickiness to your clothing it doesn't stick like that once it's wet and
deteriorating in water the idea that the burdocks had been got from the water was just
[Music] pretty preposterous prosecutors believe that peter wanted a new life with his girlfriend sole
custody of his two children and the three hundred thousand dollars worth of life insurance
[Music] the jury deliberated for only three hours guilty peter wolasik was sentenced to 25 years
to life in prisons he continues to maintain his innocence they say you're innocent until proven
guilty no you're guilty to prove an innocent and that still hinges on how much money you
have and everybody's expecting you to prove that you didn't do it the forensic evidence in this case
turned out to be uh confession every time mr velasque opened up his mouth he said something that contradicted what
the forensic evidence told us about the state of the accident scene the state of
the truck and the state of patti wallace's body of the entire investigation the presence of the
burdocks made this case because it made us look further to see if in fact she was dead before she went into the
water or not it was critical in this case it's a small piece of evidence and it's not
even actually part of the body but it's what comes along with the body and that was key in this case
[Music] so [Applause] [Music] you

In 2002, a small community in upstate New York was devastated when Patty Wlasiuk died in a truck accident. But burdock seed pods found in her hair and on her clothes would indicate that this was no accident. It was cold-blooded murder.

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

Patty Wolasik's death was ruled a murder disguised as an accident, leading to her husband's conviction.

Key points

Tragic Accident or Murder?. A car accident claims Patty Wolasik's life, but questions arise about the true cause.
The Burdock Mystery. Seed pods found in Patty's hair raise suspicions about the circumstances of her death.
Peter's Alibi Falls Apart. Evidence contradicts Peter Wolasik's account of the accident, leading to his arrest.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

The presence of the burdocks made this case.

Forensic evidence linked to the investigation.

20:47WatchJan 1, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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