The Magic Bullet | S1 E2 | Forensic Files | FULL EPISODE | Forensic Files

at the Dallas pistol and revolver Club in 1991 Trey kulie a young spectator was watching a shooting competition seated
behind an air gun range he was struck and killed by a stray [Music] bullet this is how ballistics lasers and
forensic animation solved the riddle of the Magic Bullet [Music] [Music] 14-year-old Trey kulie look at him and
you see the All-American boy Trey attended B's Junior High School in Arlington Texas near Dallas he played
cello in the school Orchestra played baseball and was a Boy Scout at that age every kid has a whole
world open to he could have done anything he wanted to do most of all he enjoyed spending time with his family
Trey and and his father Butch were best friends we did everything together September 29th
1991 Butch kulie woke early that Saturday morning then went to wake Trey the two shared a passion for shooting
Butch was judging a competition he gave Trey a choice to sleep in or tag along Trey chose to go with his
father Trey started shooting when he was seven he enjoyed it shot his first deer when
he was eight he wanted to be a pistol competitor and he was pretty good at it at the Dallas pistol and revolver
Club Trey volunteered to help out by running results from judges to the official scorer
in between assignments he sat in the air gun building to get out of the hot Texas
sun he sat just inside the door near two women who were working as scorers but behind people shooting air pistols
nothing more than pellet and BB guns then a blood curdling scream Trey coie slumped to the floor
blood flowing from his Temple his baseball cap had a tiny but Telltale hole Butch kie was outside the building
just a few yards from his son when he heard the screaming although Butch Ki spent 21 years as a state trooper and
was trained to handle emergencies no training could prepare him for what he saw next when I got there I saw that he'd
been shot I checked his pulse I knew it wasn't good Butch walked in and I asked him what are you doing
home and I said well where is Trey and then he came came in and he told me he said um there's been an
accident and um I was thinking you know well he's cut his foot or cut his hand or broke his arm you know and I said
well that's okay he's he'll be okay Trey was rushed by ambulance to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas he was just
lying there um he was breathing or the machine was breathing for him his little hands were still warm
and he just looked like he was asleep 6 hours later Trey died I just wanted to tell him that I
was very very proud of him and I loved him dearly my only son my best friend my fishing
buddy my hunting partner just a void Trey kulie was seated in the club's designated safety area it was an
accident that shouldn't have happened Detective Tom peas and crime investigator David Taylor had a tough
job to figure out where the bullet that killed try kulie came from and to determine if the shooting was accidental
or intentional Butch kie spent two decades as a state trooper was it possible the shooting had something to
do with an enemy he possibly made during his tenure or had the bullet come from outside from one of the outdoor shooting
ranges or possibly the nearby railroad tracks where kids had a history of taking shots at the air gun building uh
the biggest problem with this range or this seam was the size of it it wasn't contained inside a house inside an
apartment it was outside and it covered several hundred fet the bullet removed from Trey's skull would provide some
answers and raise new questions the bullet was small about half an inch long but lethal Larry Fletcher is the
Firearms expert who conducted the ballistics examination the bullet was not that damaged uh the bullet was uh in
rather remarkable condition this is a 45 caliber bullet after striking a cement wall it is badly mangled especially when
compared to the bullet that killed Trey kulie that la lack of damage could be telling except for one thing this was
not a typical 45 caliber bullet this particular bullet is a hand loaded or handmade bullet it's not a commercial
made bullet in which they can add other materials to the lead and make it much harder uh it can withstand a lot of
damage upon impact who makes and uses these types of bullets but kie knew compared Shooters like
to to load their own ammunition primary reason being uh the cost savings most of the
competitive Shooters on the outside ranges that day were using handmade bullets so there was little doubt that
the bullet came from somewhere here rather than from kids on the railroad tracks police collected the weapons and
ammunition samples from the shooters in the competition when Larry Fletcher examined the bullets used that day on
the outside ranges he noticed something else the powder charge uh which uh increased the velocity of this
particular type of bullet basically the shooters used bullets with more gunpowder more gunpowder means these
bullets travel farther and faster than a regular 45 caliber bullet Fletcher's next task was to match
the bullet that killed Trey to one of about a dozen guns each of the guns from the shooting competition were test fired
and compared to the bullet taken from Trey kully's skull Fletcher had trouble getting an exact match because the extra
gunpowder created extremely high temperatures during the firing of the gun actually melting some of the
distinguishing marks but Fletcher noticed a red wax on the bullet that killed Trey all Shooters use a
lubricating wax but only one of the guns guns used a red wax Larry Fletcher found the gun that
fired the Fatal shot at that point I was pretty much convinced a pistol competitor named Dan Smith was using
that gun on the day of the competition and he was firing on this outdoor range just behind the air gun building but
Smith told police he couldn't have fired the Fatal shot he felt that all his shots had made the Target that there
were no erant round but something just didn't add up to Butch kulie he spent his entire life
around guns and won awards for Marksmanship and gun safety he knew shooting ranges are supposed to be safe
accidents aren't supposed to happen it just didn't make sense police were satisfied that Trey
kou's death was an accident the ballistics report said the Fatal bullet came from a gun fired from an outdoor
range during the competition but how the owner of the gun said he didn't miss a shot and the range was designed to
contain any errant bullet first there's a barrier between the air gun building and the firing
range it's called a burm it's a small mountain of dirt about 12 ft High the burm sits right behind the Targets in
the event a shooter misses either to the left or right directly above the targets
are a series of wooden planks fastened end to end and side by side these are called baffles and are designed to catch
bullets fired a little high of the target before they leave the range then there are two additional sets
of baffles one just a few yards in front of the firing line and another called an
eyebrow directly over the firing line Ken Buster is a Safety Management Consultant with with years of experience
as a shooter and with a special expertise in firing ranges between the eyebrow the baffles and the height of
the burm the vast majority of any stray bullet would be stopped safety is should
be the number one priority in everybody's mind anytime that you that you participate in Marksmanship as a
sport something was wrong there Butch kie began a personal crusade to learn the truth he needed to know how a bullet
could bypass the Rangers safety features and kill his only son Butch hired attorney Mike Schmidt to find out where
or if the safety system had failed Schmidt put together an investigative team Steve Irwin was the first member as
an Accident Reconstructionist his job was to create an exact computerized three-dimensional scale model of the air
gun building and the firing ranges using Laser Technology Precision measuring devices and sophisticated
computer programs Irwin would also uncovered the path of the bullet you wind up starting at unfortunately the
the young boy getting shot and then working Your Way backwards police had already identified some important Clues
the outside wall of the air gun building was riddled with bullet holes from all angles Irwin needed to know exactly
which one was the culprit police also found bullet holes inside the building in a sheetrock strip to
protect a lighting fixture and in a wall that separated the indoor range from a storage shed there was also a fresh
gouge in an ordinary ceiling tile Irwin's laser survey equipment traced the bullet's path from where Trey was
sitting through all those points from tray through the sheetrock strip off the ceiling tile and through the back wall
wall it seemed unlikely but it matched the evidence was roughly a straight line but I couldn't see from the interior
wall to the exterior wall and it it wasn't until we got it back to the office and got it mapped that that it
formed this remarkably straight line a straight line that led directly to one of the bullet holes in the aluminum
siding then down to the shooting range behind the air gun building it led to the range where Dan Smith was shooting
but oddly enough not to the firing line the laser pinpointed a path that landed 10 yard in front of the firing line when
Ken Buster was brought into the investigation he immediately inspected the firing range to see if there was any
way a bullet could get past all of the range's safety features Buster delivered a scathing report at the time and now I
still think that was the worst range that I have ever seen he found dozens of potentially deadly safety flaws the burm
separating the back range from the Front Range was not the standard height which
is supposed to be 20 ft the burm behind the air gun building was only 12 ft High
the baffles Were Far Below standard the wooden planks should have had a steel or
concrete backing and look closely at the planks themselves they had separated leaving
big gaps a bullet could easily pass through in this case the baffles might well has not have been there and served
no purpose at all and Buster was appalled by the bullet holes in the back of the building several of these holes
had been plugged that means to me as a safety person as a range person as a longtime shooter that they knew that
bullets were getting out of that range and they accepted that fact and continued to shoot the laser analysis
projected the bullet path to the middle of the outdoor range well in front of the firing line how could this be it was
due to a Monumental blunder during the competition shooters were required to fire from several
distances first from the firing line at 25 yd then they moved forward to 20 yard
and finally to 15 yards the laser study showed that the fat bullet was fired from the 15 yd line the architectural
model shows the problem clearly by firing from the 15 yd line Shooters had to move in front of the eyebrow and the
first set of protective baffles and Irwin's computer also showed another frightening reality from the 15yd line
you could see the back of the air gun building if you can see it you can shoot it and any projectile
that might leave the range in that area was going to hit that building the laser showed
the bullet flew under the last baffle over the burm and into the building it involved a bizarre
trajectory it meant that the shooter missed the Target high and to the left by more than 5 ft a terrible miss how
could a trained Marksman miss a Target by that much from only 15 y Away part of that answer was found in the gun itself
close examination revealed it had been modified it's like taking a standard car making a hot rod some competitive
Shooters file down parts of the gun to make it easier to pull the trigger quickly they've uh got it set to where
they go off so easily with they fire two rounds instead of one it feed so fast the result is called doubling which
sometimes occurs as the gun Rec coils a recoil is the backward Force created by the explosion pushing the gun up in the
air each type of gun recoils differently the 45 creates a recoil up and to the left Kirk Parks had the task of
producing the computerized proof a fact-based animation of what happened his firm specializes in forensic
animation Parks videotaped hundreds of 45 caliber pist pistol shots using the same type pistol and ammunition he used
this footage to create an exact computerized reproduction of The Recoil for the animation we shot the video from
the top of the weapon and we shot it from the side and we shot it from the front next Parks created wireframe
models of a competitive shooter in action and then animated Irwin's laser studies of the firing range and the
bullet path to complete the picture It produced the exact results necessary to generate the bullet path that was
surveyed up and to the left I can't say for sure that the gun doubled but all of
the evidence seems to indicate that it did and it fired during the uncontrollable
recoil this forensic animation was able to show what happened to Trey kulie on the morning of September 29th
1991 but the animation showed that the bullet took a remarkable Journey one which almost defied
belief when Trey [ __ ] entered the Dallas pistol and revolver Club on September 29th
1991 the range was a tragedy just waiting to strike outside on the firing range behind the air gun building Dan
Smith one of the last competitors of the day steps up to the 15 yd Line This moves him in front of two sets of safety
baffles using a modified gun smith takes aim and squeezes the trigger in a fraction of a
second another shot is fired during The Recoil phase of the original shot it happens so quickly the shooter doesn't
know it left the gun the bullet misses the Target high and to the left traveling upwards it passes underneath
the last set of protective baffles and just 3 in over the burm it's speeding at 12200 ft per second the bullet blasts
through the aluminum siding goes through a storage room misses a broom and some pipes by less than an inch and then
breaks through a second wall entering the air gun range then the bullet does something
unbelievable it strikes an ordinary ceiling tile and for some unknown reason it doesn't blast straight through into
the roof instead it skids along the tile for 7 in before mysteriously changing direction making a 10° turn and begins a
downward path it slows to about 900 ft per second penetrates a plaster wall and enters Trey CO's head
[Music] [Music] the kolie family filed a negligent suit against the gun club and individuals
involved with the competition the judge who presided over the civil case was impressed with the visual and
computerized evidence I've been on the bench 6 half years and I would say that's in the the top uh two or three or
four uh in terms of just the the professionalism and the effectiveness of of the uh demonstrative evidence brought
into court the kou's attorney says the forensic animation and model explained this tragedy in a way nothing else could
I could not have possibly gotten the result that I got on behalf of the coie family without
the animation also helped Butch kulie understand what had happened to his son but there is still little piece for
Trey's Dad what's peace he just take it a day at a time change just one thing and Trey [ __ ]
might be alive today the range it wouldn't have happened because I would not have allowed that competition to
occur on that particular range the gun they may not even be aware that it's double firing or slam firing on them
they may think it's properly functioning the bullet if it had been a softer bullet they may not have ricocheted as
much would not have had the velocity or if the shooter had been standing at the proper Firing Line the shot would have
hit the baffle or flown over the building but wide did this fatal bullet change direction as it hit the soft
ceiling tile instead of blasting straight through as it did with the hard walls buis can do incredible things
things they're not expected to do these thoughts haunt but Ki no explanation can
ease the pain felt by a father who woke his son early one September morning no I
want to go should let him sleep [Music] a [Music] a [Music]

A boy is mysteriously shot in his father's gun club.

Brief Summary

A boy is killed by a stray bullet during a shooting competition, leading to an investigation of safety failures at the range.

Key points

The Tragic Accident. 14-year-old Trey Kulie was killed by a stray bullet during a shooting competition.
A Father's Grief. Butch Kulie describes the moment he found his son after the shooting.
Investigating the Bullet's Path. Detectives and forensic experts work to trace the bullet that killed Trey.
Safety Failures Revealed. A safety consultant uncovers major flaws in the shooting range's design.
Forensic Animation in Court. The animation helped explain the tragedy in a way nothing else could.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I just wanted to tell him that I was very proud of him.

Butch Kulie reflecting on his son Trey after the tragedy.

4:10WatchFeb 28, 2025

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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