11x42 - Message in a Bottle

[bunniefuu]

[music playing]

NARRATOR: A m*rder in Australia had everyone

baffled, especially police.

But in a bizarre twist, a device in the victim's body

recorded vital information that made forensic history.

[theme music]

Tasmania is a tiny island off the coast of Australia

considered to be one of the most unspoiled

and remote spots in the world.

In the city of Lefroy, for example, there are

only a handful of residents.

STEPHEN HORTLE: The people that live in Lefroy are sort

of people that, I think, just want to be

left alone to some degree.

They are not employed, most of them.

I would guess there are probably , at the most

would probably live in Lefroy.

And that includes small children.

[dramatic music]

NARRATOR: Early on the morning of October , ,

Ivan Jones went to his cousin's house to ask for a ride.

While his cousin got dressed, Jones took his dog for a walk

and found one of the neighbors dead.

The victim was identified as -year-old

David Crawford, a retired veteran

of the Royal Australian Navy.

MIKE STODDART: The way that Mr. Crawford was dressed

was a clear indication that he had been in bed.

He was wearing pajamas, and had been awoken at night,

and had left the house to see whatever confrontation

it was that awoke him.

NARRATOR: Forensic pathologist Dr. Robert Kelsall

went to the crime scene and tried to determine

when Crawford was k*lled.

ROBERT KELSALL: The time of death is actually quite tricky.

But at the time, I measured the body temperature

and measured the ambient temperature.

NARRATOR: Dr. Kelsall estimated the m*rder took place sometime

between : and : in the morning

when the body was discovered.

But there was no way to tell anything more conclusive.

ROBERT KELSALL: This window was quite difficult to work out,

mainly because of the vagaries that

determine the time of death from the body temperature.

NARRATOR: Neighbors told police they heard

dogs barking just before dawn.

But that wasn't unusual.

STEPHEN HORTLE: With the wildlife around the town,

it may be that it was kangaroos that spooked the dogs.

Or it may have been the dogs smelled a person.

NARRATOR: Police found no signs of forced entry.

But Crawford's wallet was missing from his bedroom.

There were no signs of a struggle

inside the house and no foreign fingerprints, either.

In the front yard, investigators found

what looked like a bloodstain.

They waited for nightfall then sprayed the area with luminol.

Seconds later, a clear, unmistakable image appeared.

MARK WRIGHT: And you see this axe had appear

at night with the luminol.

Yes, it was pretty amazing.

NARRATOR: The image was so clear investigators could determine

what type of axe it was.

DEBORAH MCHOUL: A particular type of axe

called a Canadian axe, where the head goes down

and forms the bottom edge as a point.

And then there's quite a definite arc

of the bottom of the head.

And you could see that quite clearly in the luminol.

It was amazing.

NARRATOR: With only a few dozen people in town,

the k*ller was probably someone Crawford knew.

MIKE STODDART: Really, I mean, every able-bodied

man who could swing an axe-- or a woman

who could swing an axe--

in the town could have been a suspect at some stage.

[music playing]

NARRATOR: David Crawford's death was a blow

to everyone in Lefroy, Tasmania who knew him

to be a kind and generous man.

He helped people out in the township

of Lefroy, the elderly people.

He used to take them out, and about,

and shopping, and to doctors, and things like that.

But he wasn't one that it had parties

or have heaps of people.

And he was quite happy with himself

going to see his grandchildren.

He was quite happy doing things like that.

That was his life.

[music playing]

NARRATOR: The bloodstain discovered

on David Crawford's lawn was unmistakably

the outline of an axe.

The forensic pathologist believed that an axe was

most likely the m*rder w*apon.

DNA testing revealed the blood was Crawford's.

The axe, however, was gone.

STEPHEN HORTLE: Obviously, a little town like Lefroy

would have a few axes around.

But if we were able to find the axe with blood on it,

match it up, then we're well on the way

to getting a conviction.

NARRATOR: As a former mining town,

Lefroy was riddled with mine shafts, many of which

were under water.

They were perfect places to hide a m*rder w*apon.

This is an actual police video of those searches.

MARK WRIGHT: And there's a lot of shafts.

And we used underwater cameras in some fairly derelict

old shafts.

And we drained a substantial dam on the township and just

with the hope of locating the axe.

But again, we had no luck, no joy with those.

Searches

NARRATOR: With Crawford's wallet missing,

police assumed the motive was robbery.

Historically, Tasmania has had very little crime.

But many retirees kept a lot of cash on hand.

BERYL WOOD: the people, especially elderly people,

put money in their homes.

And that rumor-- if you live in a small town,

that rumor soon gets around that, yeah,

such and such has a lot of money they're

keeping under the mattress, or in a jar, or something.

And this goes on.

NARRATOR: Then police learned of another

interesting coincidence.

[dramatic music playing]

The man who found Crawford's body, -year-old Ivan Jones,

reported seeing a suspicious man casing the neighborhood.

MIKE STODDART: Jones had claimed-- he had told Mr.

Crawford that someone was stalking him,

that someone had been seen by Jones

with a torch around the house on an evening before--

or several evenings before the m*rder.

NARRATOR: Jones told police what he initially told Crawford,

that he did not recognize the man

lurking in the neighborhood.

On a hunch, investigators ask Jones where he was at the time

of Crawford's m*rder.

Jones said he was home with his sister and her boyfriend.

MIKE STODDART: His alibi was that he was

asleep in his sister's house.

He was asserting that he had been

asleep between the hours of o'clock

and :, which covered the period of the m*rder.

NARRATOR: Jones's sister confirmed his alibi

and said, as far as she knew, he never left the house.

Next, police interviewed Jones's cousin,

Darcy McClain, who found Crawford's body along

with Jones.

McClain said he was asleep in his home

around the time of the m*rder.

But since he lived alone, there was no way to corroborate it.

Then Darcy gave police two very useful pieces of information.

First, he claimed that someone had

stolen an axe from his home.

Second, he said that his cousin, Ivan Jones,

behaved suspiciously on the morning

of David Crawford's m*rder.

MARK WRIGHT: From Darcy McClain, we

were led to believe that it was unusual for Ivan Jones

to go to his house at : in the morning and ask for a lift

to his parents' place.

I understand he had never asked Darcy

McClain to do that before.

So yes, it was unusual in that respect.

NARRATOR: But Ivan Jones had an alibi.

Darcy McClain didn't.

[dramatic music playing]

David Crawford's autopsy took place

in the Royal Hobart Hospital the day

after his body was discovered.

The cause of death was blunt force trauma

to the head, most likely caused by an axe or similar implement.

Crawford had been a healthy -year-old man,

except for some heart trouble.

ROBERT KELSALL: He had a condition called

cardiomyopathy, which simply means that he had some-- he had

heart disease of unknown cause.

NARRATOR: Then Dr. Kelsall made a discovery

that would change the course of the investigation.

He found that Crawford had a heart pacemaker

implanted in his chest.

HARRY MOND: A pacemaker is a way of stimulating the heart.

[heart b*ating]

It delivers anything from about to volts

into the heart to make it pace, that is contract.

I was vaguely aware that pacemakers have

a recording unit inside them.

NARRATOR: If so, Crawford's pacemaker might reveal

the exact time of his m*rder.

Unfortunately, pacemakers hold information

for only a short time before it's recorded over.

The autopsy took place almost hours after the m*rder,

which meant the pacemaker memory might have already been erased.

ROBERT KELSALL: We knew that we didn't

have a great deal of time, that we were running out of time.

I recall being a little bit nervous,

a little bit worried that we might get a reading.

NARRATOR: The hospital's pacemaker specialist

quickly scanned it to gather the pacemaker data

and load it onto a computer.

In an unbelievable turn of events,

this particular pacemaker had something very few pacemakers

had at the time, a computer chip that had

what's called an event memory.

HARRY MOND: This is unique to this product and is, in fact--

was hardly ever used.

And by sheer chance, the pacemaker technician involved

recognized that, if there was going to be any information,

it would have been on the event record.

NARRATOR: The software produced a detailed graph

that yielded a spectacular array of information.

HARRY MOND: The interesting part that we can work out

is we could tell exactly when the patient awoke,

when the patient went outside and was being assaulted,

and finally, when the patient had d*ed.

In between that time, there was a period

when the patient was unconscious and bleeding to death.

And at that point, the pacemaker went back its dormant state.

[dramatic music playing]

NARRATOR: The event record showed

that David Crawford went to sleep shortly after o'clock.

[heart b*ating]

At :, he woke up.

At :, his heart was b*ating well over beats per minute,

which is when he was att*cked.

The confrontation was over at :.

And David Crawford lay bleeding until his heart stopped

pumping at exactly : AM.

Scientists retrieved this information with only hours

to spare.

HARRY MOND: It was about to be wiped.

Within an hour or maybe two hours,

that information would disappear.

NARRATOR: And investigators discovered why Crawford

would have gotten out of bed.

Crawford's neighbor, who lived across the street,

was in the hospital and had asked

Crawford to keep an eye on his house until he was released.

BERYL WOOD: Everyone knew that he would be in hospital.

The neighbor was presumed to have money in his house,

as well.

MARK WRIGHT: According to his son, he was that sort of person

that, if he heard a noise, he would get

up and investigate the noise.

NARRATOR: All police had to do now was find out,

who didn't have an alibi for : that morning?

HARRY MOND: It reminded me of a quote of Eleanor Roosevelt, who

said that many people will walk in and out of your life,

but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.

In this case, we left a pacemaker.

[music playing]

NARRATOR: Thanks to Dr. Robert Kelsall and his quick response

to the readings on the pacemaker found during David Crawford's

autopsy, investigators now knew the exact time of Crawford's

death, : in the morning.

HARRY MOND: Having these timelines,

we have the perfect witness.

There's no way that, in court, could be discredited.

[dramatic music playing]

NARRATOR: Ivan Jones and Darcy McClain,

the two cousins who found Crawford's body,

were the prime suspects.

But if one of them did it, he made a colossal blunder.

Had he waited just a couple of hours

longer before calling police, Crawford's pacemaker

memory would have been erased.

ROBERT KELSALL: Had he lain there for any length of time

longer than he did without being discovered,

then we would have lost the time in the pacemaker.

NARRATOR: But who was the k*ller?

Darcy McClain said he was sleeping at :

on the night of the m*rder.

He lived alone so there was no way to corroborate his alibi.

He also claimed that an axe was missing from his home.

A search of his house revealed nothing.

Ivan Jones said he was asleep in his sister's home

until he woke up at : AM.

But Jones's sister provided a slightly different timeline.

[dramatic music playing]

She said she last saw Ivan at : AM

when he asked her for a cigarette

and then not again until : AM when

she heard him in the shower.

So no one could confirm his alibi between : and : AM.

And police believed that Ivan's :

AM shower was no coincidence.

MIKE STODDART: A man who's been involved in a violent m*rder,

I would also expect there to be blood on his body.

And of course, the investigation found

that he had a shower, almost a bath, by : o'clock,

and that his clothes had been washed,

and that bleach had been used in the washing machine

where he washed his clothing.

NARRATOR: In a search of Ivan's home,

investigators found a possible link to the m*rder.

One of our detectives located a torch in a hole

in the foundation of that residence.

It was very clean.

It was not covered in dust.

So it certainly hadn't been there

for any great length of time.

To put a flashlight under the house is just something that--

way out of the ordinary-- not something anybody

would do, unless they had something to hide.

NARRATOR: There were no fingerprints on the flashlight

so forensic analyst, Debbie McHoul,

looked for possible DNA evidence.

DEBORAH MCHOUL: I didn't find any obvious bloodstains.

I took a swab from the outer surface of the torch.

I removed the batteries and swabbed those, as well.

NARRATOR: And she made sure to swab the one place that's

easy to overlook, the area underneath the on/off switch,

hoping to find dead skin cells.

DEBORAH MCHOUL: Well, DNA can get onto an object

just by handling it.

Then by swabbing the item, we can often obtain a DNA profile.

NARRATOR: Amazingly, there were enough skin

cells to develop a DNA profile.

The skin cells in the crevices of the on/off switch were not

Ivan Jones's or Darcy McLain's.

They were the skin cells of the m*rder victim, David Crawford,

proving it was his flashlight.

STEPHEN HORTLE: Mr. Jones, who I don't think

was a person of high intelligence-- first of all,

he committed a gruesome m*rder.

That's bad enough.

But then to keep the touch with the DNA at his home

just shows the mindset of a person.

NARRATOR: Investigators believe that Jones planned

to burglarize the empty house across the street

from David Crawford.

[dramatic music playing]

To break in, Jones stole the axe from Darcy McClain's home.

But when he got to the house, a neighborhood dog

started barking and woke David Crawford.

[dogs barking]

He got up and grabbed his flashlight to investigate.

Crawford saw Jones.

[dramatic music playing]

And that's when Jones att*cked.

Crawford lay bleeding from his wounds, yet was still alive.

Jones dropped the axe, went into Crawford's home,

and stole his wallet.

Then he picked up the axe and Crawford's flashlight and fled.

David Crawford's heart stopped b*ating at the : AM.

Jones disposed of the axe and Crawford's wallet

but for some reason kept the flashlight.

To establish an alibi, Jones made

sure his sister and her boyfriend

heard him taking a shower around : AM.

In an attempt to further shore up his alibi,

Jones went to his cousin's house at : that morning.

And he arranged to find Crawford's body with his cousin

there as a witness, hoping the discovery would

eliminate him as a suspect.

But Jones didn't know about the pacemaker.

Had he waited to call police just a little while longer,

the pacemaker's memory would have been

lost long before the autopsy.

HARRY MOND: He had an excellent alibi.

It is possible that, in a court of law,

he might have been found not guilty in that there

was insufficient evidence.

This was the absolute perfect evidence to put away this man.

NARRATOR: This case marked the first time in the world

that data from a pacemaker was used in a m*rder trial.

In October of , Ivan Jones was convicted of m*rder

and sentenced to years in prison.

The pacemaker was a silent witness,

but it told the jury all they needed to know.

MIKE STODDART: I'll carry it with me

for the rest of my career.

And I encourage other investigators

to give that consideration to pacemakers.

Because time of death is not known.

You never know what you'll get out

of the data from a pacemaker.

These things were never heard of years ago

in solving crimes like this.

And I think it's marvelous that something like that technology

and that was able do that.

It seems very ironic that this man had a pacemaker,

which actually outlived him.

Because it was designed to keep him alive, of course--

but nevertheless, acted as a real witness

to what's happened, an external machine, if you like,

which saw what was happening when nobody else did.

[theme music]