Hear No Evil | Forensic Files | S14 E2 | FULL EPISODE | Forensic Files

[Music] up next a woman goes missing an obvious possibility was an abduction police find
hints of a secret life inside the victim's computer the internet opens up a whole new super highway of suspects
and disturbing evidence in an unexpected location something that happened in that
basement they almost look like chainsaw marks scientists provide answers that no
one wanted to accept when they introduce you to the chaplain you know the news you're going to receive is not good
[Music] it was a february morning in sioux falls south dakota a routine workday for jds industries a
company that makes trophies for sports teams routine except one of their most dependable employees darlene van der
giessen didn't report to work for a second straight day on friday when she did not show up for
work her boss called her parents dean jean darlene's parents immediately drove to darlene's apartment since they had
their own key we went to her apartment and we saw our cell phone we knew something was wrong
because she she never traveled anywhere never did anything without having that cell
phone so people could get a hold of her if they needed to darlene's cell phone was especially
important to her since she was deaf deaf people rely heavily on cell phones and text messaging instant messaging
that's their lifeline with the hearing world darlene's cell phone records indicated
she hadn't used her phone for the past two days police found nothing inside the apartment to indicate foul play there
was no sign of a forced entry there was no sign of a struggle there was no overturned furniture or no broken items
in our apartment later that day a restaurant employee called police reporting an abandoned
truck in their parking lot the truck was darlene's the police were hoping that that would
be a clue as to who was with darlene on that night but no one in the pizza store remembered
seeing darlene darlene's parents told police they were concerned she had been using the
internet to meet men my reaction to her was i said oh darlene be so careful there are so many
excuse the expression weirdos out there investigators took darlene's computer to
the forensic lab where they used a piece of software called n case using n case we can run a
different type of search we can either run an internet search or an instant messaging search
email search we can look at internet history to see what what pages were visited and when
the search revealed several troubling emails darlene had received 10 days before her
disappearance the emails were threatening but it was almost it was kind of in a childish way
kind of a very poor english they were from a woman identified online as wendy smith
hello darling you are troublemaker you are ugly and stupid i hate you according to darlene's friend she didn't
know anyone by the name of wendy smith we kind of assume that they're possibly written by a deaf person my
understanding is that deaf people don't necessarily speak conversational english
like hearing people do they speak more in blocky unstructured sentences just to get
subject across having a deaf acquaintance wouldn't have been unusual since darlene too was hearing impaired
we then sent a subpoena to yahoo asking for any and all information regarding that account that was created
the computer analysis also revealed darlene met a local man online jeff flynn and the two had been dating
flynn worked as a field hand on a farm about a 90-minute drive away but when police got to his apartment he
too was missing most recently anyone had seen him was thursday but no one knew where he had
went his friends down there were saying that that was unusual for him to leave town for an extended period of
time unusual indeed in the days following darlene van der geesen's disappearance
her casual boyfriend jeff flynn was nowhere to be found when they suspected that darlene might
have just taken off uh for a weekend with this gentleman i insisted over and over this is not darlene just didn't
ring true with her personality four days later jeff returned he said he was visiting friends out of town
he was nervous most people are nervous when they speak to the police he was nervous and concerned concerned for
darlene inside the trunk of jeff's car evidence technicians found what looked like
dried blood law enforcement's antenna really went up when they saw the uh the blood in the
trunk my presumptive testing showed that it was likely blood and further testing
confirmed that it was but the detectives were interested if it was in fact human
when the police had told us they found blood in the car how do you describe your heart sinking
very very low but forensic testing quickly proved the blood was not darlene's it was deer blood
when they found out that the blood was deer blood huge relief a huge relief because then the hope came back that
possibly she was still alive somewhere meanwhile investigators were able to trace the source of the threatening
emails darlene received shortly before her disappearance when we did receive the emails that
darlene had received from wendy smith that gave us the ability to send a subpoena to yahoo to find out who may
have created that yahoo account the emails came from this home in downtown sioux falls
the occupant was a deaf woman named daphne wright daphne said that she'd met darlene
several times at the deaf apartments that she'd met her at the deaf club forty-two-year-old daphne wright had no
criminal record during police questioning wright denied any involvement i don't send many emails that could have
been a hacker that didn't i don't think i don't believe the hacker story i think
you sent the emails to her you created an account with a different name and sent her the emails on those days
telling her to stay away from the deaf apartments oh yeah yeah i did that okay you created
the name wendy smith yes i did that a background check revealed daphne wright had been involved in a
public altercation with darlene vander giesen just five days before she disappeared
darlene was having dinner with sally ford who was daphne wright's former lover they had had a kind of an argument that
the police had to be called to and she had to be escorted off the property daphne wright told the police that she
was jealous she told the police that she thought that darlene was destroying her relationship
with her lover but by all accounts darlene and sally ford were nothing more than casual
friends darlene and this woman did not have a lesbian relationship and in fact darlene
was not a lesbian darlene told friends she had patched things up with daphne right after this incident
she said oh mom she says we're friends now we're all made up and we're comfortable with each other
it's all okay now but when daphne wright was questioned about darlene's disappearance
the jealousy was still apparent we've had a lot of problems sally and i did you think sally was
cheating on you with darlene yes i thought so and sometimes she lied who lies that one
was darlene the victim of a love triangle gone wrong daphne writes whereabouts on the night
darlene disappeared could provide the answer [Applause] after sending threatening emails to
darlene van der geesen daphne wright became the prime suspect in her disappearance
police got a search warrant for daphne's house and what they found inside was troubling
i remember the smell of paint and the smell of cleaning products especially when we got down towards the basement
they look in the kitchen garbage and there's a half full bottle of chainsaw oil and they look a little further and
there's a receipt for ace hardware for a chainsaw purchase just a few days ago this was the time of year in south
dakota where chainsaws are not in huge demand but there was no chainsaw in daphne's
house or anywhere on her property downstairs the basement had been painted with blue paint
there would be a spot painted here and then a spot painted there there'd be different sizes
and things like that parts of the wall not the whole wall a three or four foot section of the
floor but not the whole floor parts of the steps but not all the steps a few feet away was a small room
that had once been used to store coal the floor was completely repainted in this blue
paint that was still tacky and soft to the touch indicating that it had been freshly painted police also noticed
seven distinct symmetrical cuts in the concrete floor several of us made a comment that they
almost look like chainsaw marks so law enforcement began their investigation by going to the ace
hardware stores in town once there investigators showed store clerks a photo lineup which included daphne's
picture one of the clerks was able to say yes i sold the chainsaw to a woman and she was deaf
that matches a description of daphne wright to a t she came in with a note that said tree
cutting machine and he took her to to the wrong section at first because he misunderstood but
then he took her to the chainsaw section she was very worried about the price and she picked out the cheapest chainsaw
available at the store once scientists got into daphne wright's basement they had no difficulty finding even more
incriminating evidence on the wooden walls of the cold storage room we were able to see on the walls there
were some very small tiny pieces of bone and what appeared to be tissue investigators collected the tissue and
bone samples for analysis and compared those samples to the dna they obtained from darlene's tooth and hair brushes
that day we were met by a couple of detectives and we were escorted upstairs and when we opened the room
when they introduce you to the chaplain and the chief of police and all the detectives are in the room
and ask you to sit down you know the news you're going to receive is not good and it wasn't
darlene's dna matched the blood and tissue found in daphne's basement she felt that
darlene was coming in between her and sally and the only way that she could take
care of it was to eliminate her from the picture [Music] but investigators still had a problem
they didn't have darlene's body a jury likes a body a jury likes a murder weapon and you just never know
you get that one skeptical juror who doesn't have doesn't see the body and there's maybe enough doubt for someone
to say not guilty in a case like that in their search police first checked the dumpsters where
daphne and her neighbors disposed of their trash by the time the officers got there the dumpsters had already been
dumped into the garbage truck and taken out to the city landfill police went to the sioux falls landfill
a 470 acre property that serviced five counties and almost a quarter of a million people it was estimated that
there was probably some two to three hundred tons of garbage had been brought out there in the days that
we had been looking for darlene it's below zero with the frigid wind chill and all the police
were volunteering out there searching they had pitchforks and picks and they were picking through the trash you know
one foot at a time for the three dozen searchers the job was difficult and frustrating it
went on for days with no guarantee the body was even in the landfill the conditions couldn't have been more
hard it was freezing it was windy it was awful and it was a massive effort to go
through the contents of the landfill looking for [Music] darlene she wanted to bring that little
that little morsel of joy into your life and every time i saw a photo i saw a smile and a big smile
three weeks after darlene vandergeesen went missing her friends family and the deaf community gathered for a
memorial service even though investigators hadn't yet found her body we knew we were going to have a
challenge ahead of us to locate her body after five days of searching at the landfill
investigators got a break they found the legs and lower torso of an adult female
they also found bloody pieces of carpet and a blood-stained sweatshirt it was a sweatshirt that had some
graphics on it of sign language so we knew right there there was a tie to the deaf community
testing proved it was darlene's blood on the sweatshirt but someone else's dna was found
inside the sweatshirt i took cuttings from the inside of the sweatshirt hoping that one of them had
transferred enough dna or enough skin cells to the inside to get a full profile and i was
fortunate and did get a profile and that matched daphne wright by being able to put
daphne right inside a sweatshirt that had darlene's vandergeesen's blood and tissue on the front of it
was extremely important the sweatshirt was a critical item in this case because it was one of the few pieces that tied
both victim and suspect together 25 miles away across the border in minnesota a highway worker found
darlene's torso and her severed head encased in plastic the medical examiner found darlene
suffered blunt force trauma to her head it had been tied cinched around her throat
with a piece of cord that was matched by one of our forensic people in pier to a spool of cord
hanging on the garage wall in the house that was occupied by daphne wright the medical examiner had two theories as
to how darlene was murdered cause of death was either this blunt force trauma the seven inch
skull fracture or suffocation from this bag being placed over her head or a combination of the two
prosecutors say daphne was convinced darlene was trying to steal her ex-girlfriend and wanted to
prevent it she asked darlene to meet her at the pizza restaurant but once there she changed her mind
and asked darlene to come to her house instead once there daphne hit darlene with a heavy object
pushed her down the stairs then tied a thick plastic bag around her head with cord from her home
she later bought a chainsaw to dismember darlene's body [Music] she left behind the sales receipt store
witnesses and plenty of forensic evidence daphne disposed of the body parts in nearby dumpsters and in a ditch
25 miles away later she tried to hide the evidence with paint but it wasn't nearly enough
there was this virtual mountain of evidence of the defendant's guilt those emails
and what the emails showed us pointed us right to daphne wright daphne's motivation was one that has
been throughout the ages in a homicide his jealousy the tragedy is that darlene had no romantic interest in
daphne's ex-girlfriend sally ford darlene was not interested in that darlene was not a lesbian person darlene
and sally did not have that kind of relationship daphne wright was charged with first-degree murder and became the first
woman in south dakota history to face a possible death sentence you want a mother to describe her
daughter's murderer a very cold-hearted i don't know how to describe her there's
just no sense to it and so the question why will more than likely never be answered
unless daphne herself will say why i would have to describe daphne right as just a cold-blooded murderer
to be able to dismember a human body with a chainsaw takes a lot of gall takes a lot of spite my opinion you
really have to dislike somebody to do that to them daphne wright was convicted but the jury
spared her life instead she'll spend the rest of her life in prison with no possibility of parole
there was maybe one or two jurors that stood their ground very firmly from the beginning that no matter what they would
not go with the death penalty one thing that just kept coming back was what do we get out of sentencing her to
the death penalty what does she get out of it what does society get out of it what do we get out of it and and really
we didn't see anything good that came from it well this is a completely senseless
murder it didn't have to happen darlene was never a threat to the relationship between sally and daphne
it taught me a lesson not to assume anything when you're talking to somebody that the person that you're sitting
across from the interview room is probably capable of doing pretty much anything
even though the evidence may not show up front this was about as textbook of a forensic case as
you could think of there was no smoking gun in this case it was all the little bits of forensic evidence that connected
the dots and it all led detectives in one direction and that was toward daphne wright
you

In 2006, Darlene VanderGiesen received threatening emails and then disappeared. Tracking the source of the emails led police to the home of Daphne Wright, where they believe a murder was committed.

Brief Summary

Darlene Van Der Geesen's disappearance leads to Daphne Wright's arrest for murder driven by jealousy and forensic evidence.

Key points

Darlene Goes Missing. A woman named Darlene van der Giessen disappears, raising concerns among her family and police.
Threatening Emails. Investigators uncover threatening emails sent to Darlene before her disappearance.
Discovery of Blood. Evidence technicians find what looks like dried blood in Jeff Flynn's car trunk.
Daphne Wright Becomes Suspect. Daphne Wright, a deaf woman, becomes the prime suspect in Darlene's disappearance.
Body Parts Found. Investigators discover Darlene's legs and torso in a landfill after extensive searching.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

You know the news you're going to receive is not good.

When investigators deliver bad news to family.

1:14WatchMar 13, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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