Forensic Files - Season 9, Episode 5 - News at 11 - Full Episode | Forensic Files

people on television and in movies attract attention everywhere they go but not all of the attention is welcome
tragically a television reporter in michigan was killed outside her home after she received numerous threatening
letters a document examiner a criminal profiler and the police dog all found evidence
pointing to the same suspect but the most persuasive evidence came from the dog [Music]
[Music] diane newton king found everything she was looking for in battle creek michigan
we must do all in our power to support our men and women now fighting in the middle east knowing that she was a news
reporter for the local television station at a nice home was married and had two beautiful children
diane newton king was the kind of woman when she walked into a room eyes turned to look at her not only because the way
she looked with her attractive native american looks but she was a type of woman who always had a smile on her face
was very animated and people's eyes were just naturally drawn toward her three and a half years in a japanese
prisoner of war camp diane had a reputation as a tough aggressive reporter she would push
i mean to get a story she would push and sometimes maybe she'd push hard although diane caught the viewer's
attention it wasn't always in the way she wanted she started receiving harassing phone
calls and letters from an obsessed fan it was a man who identified himself as a person who wanted to get an industry and
wanted to go to lunch with her and wanted to meet her and he began pestering her sometimes calling as much
as once a day station executives hired an additional security guard and screened
all of diane's calls diane's husband brad a former policeman took precautions of his own
they put in security lights automatic lights that would come on when someone would come into the yard the sister gave
them a doberman pinscher that was used as a watchdog but the harassment continued
including this letter sent to her home the words created by letters cut from magazine said
you should have gone to lunch with me that's when things begin to get very scary
is when they found the first letter in her mailbox because before no one knew where she lived
diane gave the letter to local police i have never found one case where a stranger
cut letters out and put it on a sheet of paper you see it on tv you see it in the movies but you don't
see that in real life a few weeks later someone broke into the king's home while
the family was away but nothing was stolen these bizarre incidents culminated in
tragedy one saturday afternoon in 1991. diane's husband brad came home and found diane lying in the driveway
dead of an apparent gunshot wound to the chest their two children were still inside the
car alive but frightened the police were concerned that they may have been partially responsible
one of the detectives called that night to the murder scene his first reaction was oh my god we've screwed up
he was worried that the letter had languished on his desk for a couple of months and he hadn't really done any
serious investigation on it there were several clues in that letter but not the kind police expected
[Music] diane king's murder was front-page news in the small town of battle creek
[Music] investigators hoped to find some clues during the autopsy and it revealed
something telling diane king had been shot not once but twice with a 22 caliber rifle the angle
of the shot to the chest was slightly downward that is as it passed from front to back it passed slightly
downward indicating that the weapon was slightly above her when fired the second shot followed a completely
different trajectory the second one was most unusual this wound entered just above the pubic bone and passed
very sharply upward that is it passed through some of the intestines through the left lung and i recovered that
bullet next to the left collarbone apparently the killer fired once from above and
then he moved closer and lower before he fired again he or she would have to be either kneeling or perhaps prone on the
ground holding the weapon essentially parallel or almost parallel to the ground at the crime scene
investigators identified the possible location of the shooter in the hay loft of the barn next to the
driveway was a single 22-caliber shell casing i kind of said goosebumps up my back to
know that we were that close perhaps to whoever had committed this crime and we were standing right in the same place
that he had stood probably within the hour with police personnel helping to recreate the crime
investigators used a laser to confirm this was the sniper's nest we knew what the angle of the trajectory
in the body was from the autopsy and we tried to determine if that was consistent with having been shot from
the loft of the barn and by directing the laser beam from the loft to where the victim stood
we were able to see that that angle was consistent next michigan state trooper gary lyle
and his tracking dog travis tried to pick up the killer scent the shell casing of any weapon
ejects to the right was fired so i moved to the left side of the shell casing and travis indicated that he had a track
at that point and we started from that point [Music] dogs can track someone by his scent
which is unique a combination of dead skin cells that fall plus perspiration the adrenaline flows their heart pumps
faster they sweat they get excited it's a whole different odor than a person that's uh say confused
or a person that's lost travis followed the scent from the sniper's nest in the barn across a small
foot bridge over a creek and then took a sharp left turn travis brought the track up to here this
is where travis got really excited here they found the exposed end of a 22-caliber remington scoremaster 511
rifle that had been jammed into the mud in the water nearby were seven spent shell cartridges
everybody was pretty excited because they knew that probably wasn't the murder weapon because there'd be no
other reason for anyone else to stick something like that into a creek bed at that particular time
at the crime lab ballistic experts test-fired the rifle giving them its fingerprint
a unique mark on the bottom of each shell created by the rifle's firing pin the fire cartridge case that was
recovered from the loft of the barn and the seven cartridge cases from the creek were identified as all having been
extracted by the firearm in question but it was impossible to match the bullets to the rifle
and the reason for that was the condition of the bullets they were damaged from impacting with a with a target the body
in this case and it made it difficult to make any positive determination back at the crime scene
travis wasn't yet finished with his investigation after finding the rifle and the shell
casings he jumped the stream and picked up the killer scent once again it's just
amazing what the dog's sense ability is and you just wonder how in the world they can do this and find things that
they find travis followed the scent into the woods out into the street then surprisingly
back to the crime scene [Music] if travis was correct the killer was one of the bystanders
watching as police conducted their investigation shortly after diane king's funeral her
mother gave police an important piece of information about the murder something brad king failed to mention the original
plan was that diane was going to leave her two children with her mother and then come back to be with brad that
weekend so the two of them had some time together alone but on february 9th and apparently because one of the children
wasn't feeling too well diane decided to take the kids with her and make the two-hour trip back to marshall michigan
we have a victim who gets out of her car we don't have any evidence that would suggest that she was afraid of anything
she did not take any kind of defensive action and we have an offender who not only is
comfortable in the crime scene he's also comfortable walking up to the victim and
shooting her again brad king was a part-time college professor teaching criminology and he
didn't have a solid alibi brad told investigators he was out walking in the woods behind his home and
showed investigators where he'd been but travis the police dog identified this same area as the
killer's getaway route it showed that he would hadn't seen anybody come his way and run down to the
track where the dog took and he would have seen anybody commit that crime coming from the barn
and of course that was never brought up brad denied owning a 22-caliber rifle however in his home were 22-caliber
bullets similar but not identical to the brand used in the murder there was also a cleaning rod for a
22-caliber rifle we had the two cleaning ladies come forward who claimed to have seen
a similar rifle on the bar in the basement of a townhouse that the kings rented here in
the city of battle creek i can recall seeing it every time we was there it was a
22 rifle police found another inconsistency in the case of the attempted burglary of
the king's home a few weeks before the murder as everybody knows who watches any kind of television show that if
you're breaking in to a house the glass should be on the inside in this case the glass was on the
outside so whoever broke it had to be inside at the time that the window was broken
next investigators turned their attention to the threatening letter mailed to diane's home
statistically only one percent of all threatening letters have cut out pieces one of the most telling aspects of this
crime and that was one where the letters were cut out of a magazine and pasted onto a blank sheet of paper
i have in my career never seen a letter like that where it wasn't somebody emotionally close to the victim
a perpetrator uses cut out letters when the victim would be able to identify his
handwriting unfortunately by the time the letter was sent to the fbi for analysis there was
no hope of finding any fingerprints the anonymous note had been processed by the originating
agency with a powder and in my opinion that's not the correct process to use and it's very difficult
once it's been processed with a powder to do any other chemical process on the document
i had the office of brad king at western michigan university searched with a search warrant an item
seized i wanted scissors razor blades tape paste anything paper anything that we might be able to link through
forensic science to bradford king we were unable to do that in terms of motive police found evidence
of spousal abuse sexual affairs and dianne's overall dissatisfaction with her husband's lifestyle
she came in one morning and she she was crying and she had bruises she showed me the bruises and this was right
around christmas time and she said that her and brad had been in a fight brad's a very different individual i
think he can have people like him real quick and also have him turned off real quick
just by his mood and friends say diane wanted brad to get a full-time job well brad had the perfect setup he was
working part-time as an instructor at western michigan university i think she was pushing that issue so much that he
feared that he was not going to be able to continue his lifestyle he had at the university
his wife was responsible for taking care of the kids and getting the money and i
think she was angry at him because he wasn't carrying his load he was known to order him around
and to yell at him and i think it just reached a a a crisis point with him and he lashed out at her in this very
passive aggressive manner by murdering her brad's alleged sexual affairs were with
students from the college where he taught he was not faithful to his wife he had
an affair with a student in one of his classes in an affair with another woman that he had met in battle creek he was
known to be trying to procure women girlfriends sometimes at the fraternity house
that he used to hang out at uh with younger fraternity members it was not a picture of fidelity by any
stretch of the magical nation one year after his wife's death bradford king was arrested and charged with
murder the prosecutor and investigators in this case were worried that because the
suspect was a former police officer and a criminal injustice instructor at a major university was going to spring
something on them that was playing some kind of mind game with them kind of a forensic cat and mouse game
and sure enough a new piece of evidence surfaced threatening the prosecutor's case
[Applause] [Music] just as bradford king was about to go on trial for the murder of his wife diane
prosecutors were dealt a serious setback a man moving into the king's neighborhood said he found a remington
511 scoremaster rifle in his attic it was virtually identical to the alleged murder weapon
the second rifle was sent to the forensic lab for testing the ballistic tests on the second gun
showed that the shell casing found in the loft could have not possibly come from the gun
the second gun that was accumulated by police prosecutors believe brad planted this rifle in a vacant home
nearby to create reasonable doubt in the jury's mind and that it was brad who made the
threatening calls sent the threatening letter and staged the burglary making the mistake of breaking the window from
the inside rather than the outside on the day of the murder diane planned to take the children to
their grandparents house to spend the night while she was gone brad test-fired his rifle to align the
site and carefully collected the empty shell casings [Music] later when diane came home
brad was waiting in the loft [Music] his second shot was at close range after he left the barn
a clear sign of hatred and anger [Music] then brad realized the children were in
the car not knowing one of them was sick since he couldn't leave his small children in the cold for very long he
needed to change plans so he quickly disposed of the rifle near the creek through the empty shells in
the water then went back to the house to call police but brad left one shell casing behind in
the loft and this shell casing tied his rifle to the murder and he was unaware that a police dog would track his scent
from the sniper's nest to the creek into the woods then full circle back to his house
i think he had that foreknowledge that this was sort of a small town police operation and being the criminal
injustice criminal justice instructor and the type of individual he was that i felt that he thought that he could
outwit them many believe the children foiled his plan to establish a solid alibi
i don't believe he anticipated the children would be there i think it's likely that he would have
gone someplace else and had somebody else find his wife that would give him an alibi
diane told friend shortly before her death that she suspected brad was behind the threatening calls and letters
and she said i just think it's brett and she said i i don't know what i'm going to do yet
the defense presented only seven witnesses arguing that the case against brad was circumstantial
no one will get understand and say brad king had a gun that day brad king held the gun that day he pulled a trigger
that day nobody i was confident in my own mind that brad king was guilty i just didn't know if i could convince
12 people of that the jury felt the forensic evidence was just as revealing if not more
brad king was sentenced to life in prison without parole when i'm looking at evidence firearms
evidence or other types of evidence and i can make an identification a positive identification that is helpful
to the investigation it's a good feeling when that can be done all of the forensic science fit together
and pointed in the direction of brad king being the murderer of his wife you may assume
or may suspect that that a particular person was involved but without those sciences to tie them together for you
you have no case i don't think we touch what a dog's nose can do every day i see them do things that
would just you just stand back and say how could [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Applause]
[Music] you

A talented television news anchor was shot to death outside her home; it appeared to be a crime of passion, perpetrated by an obsessed fan.

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

Diane Newton King was murdered, and her husband Brad was convicted based on forensic evidence and police dog tracking.

Key points

Diane Newton King: A Tragic Story. Diane Newton King, a beloved reporter, was tragically murdered after receiving threatening letters.
The Shocking Discovery. Diane was found dead in her driveway, leading to a tense investigation.
The Evidence Unfolds. Investigators found a unique bullet trajectory that revealed critical details about the murder.
Brad King Charged with Murder. Bradford King was arrested a year after Diane's death, raising questions about his alibi.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Not all of the attention is welcome.

0:10WatchJan 1, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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