11x16 - Grave Danger

[bunniefuu]

A young man died
in a mysterious car crash.

But was it an accident?

Forensic science uncovered
what really caused that crash.

And the truth devastated
three different families.

Just before
dawn in central Texas,

a motorist saw a car
on fire off the side

of the road down an embankment.

By the time
firefighters got there,

there was very little left.

- I've never seen a car
or a vehicle burned that

badly before, where the wheels
were melted to the rocks.

In the rubble
investigators found the remains

of the driver burned
beyond recognition.

- We needed to
identify the body that

was in the vehicle, which
wasn't much of a body.

The car was a 1999
Chevy Cavalier registered

to Molly and Clay
Daniels, a young couple

with two small children who
lived in nearby Leander, Texas.

Police discovered that
Molly Daniels was home

with their children at
the time of the accident.

- She had called me
relatively early

that morning hysterical
because Clayton wasn't home,

and she had to get to
work, and he had the car.

And she didn't
know where he was.

Through his personal effects,

family members
identified the remains

as those of Clay Daniels.

- They found the remains
of some tennis shoes

that Clay's family members
identified as Clay's shoes.

They found a Harley Davidson
pin that had gone on a hat that

Clay used to wear, and
a silver necklace that

they identified as being Clay's.

- I figured that Clayton
had been drinking,

was at a party somewhere or just
driving fast and lost control.

Clay Daniels, an
unemployed automobile mechanic,

was just 24 years old.

Surprisingly, not everyone
was sorry he was dead.

- Absolutely, he's the loser.

I've always felt that he was
not the best material for her.

And I wondered about
being Daddy material,

but it was her choice to make.

Others expressed the
same sentiments at his funeral.

- The memorial that was a
very interesting thing,

because there was
just so much there.

His best friend
got up and spoke,

and he actually told people
that Clay was an.

- No, he wasn't very well liked.

He seemed like,
sort of, a loafer

and a lay about
and a sex offender.

So, I mean, what good
could you say about him?

Clay was not a model citizen.

He had recently been convicted
for the sexual as*ault

of his seven-year-old
cousin and was sentenced

to 30 days in prison
and 10 years probation.

The crash occurred
just three days

before he was to start
serving his time.

- This car fire was
June the 18th of 2004.

Clay was supposed to be
going to jail that Monday

the 21st of 2004.

And so they thought
the timing of that

was a little bit suspicious.

And police had
another angle to pursue.

The parents of the
sexual as*ault victim

were angry that Clay was
sentenced to only 30 days

in prison.

- The sexual as*ault
victim's father

made comments prior
to this accident

that he wanted Clay to go away.

So we were thinking
maybe the father

of the victim made Clay go away.

Nevertheless,
the community reached out

to Molly Daniels, a
widow at the age of 21

who had two young
children to support

on an office
receptionist's salary.

- Oh my gosh, she had
people sending her money,

people she did not
know sent her money.

People would, her
coworkers would

put groceries in the house.

They would do everything.

They bent over
backwards for her.

- She got this discount baby
sitter in the neighborhood

because she put up signs,
I'm the poor, grieving widow,

and I need help with childcare.

But that generosity
ended when less than a month

after Clay died
Molly told friends

that she had a new boyfriend
and that she was the beneficiary

of Clay's $100,000
life insurance policy.

Her own mother
even turned on her.

- Absolutely, she was
raised better than this.

There were days that
I just kicked myself.

What did I do wrong?
Where did I go wrong?

Clay Daniels' family
identified his burned remains

by some of his personal
items found in the car.

There was very little that
remained from the fire.

- There was only 14 pounds of
body mass that was remaining.

And we didn't have a head,
didn't have hands or fingers

or toes, nothing to fingerprint.

But the medical
examiner wanted to be sure,

so he extracted the bone marrow
from Clay Daniels' hip bone

hoping that enough
of his mitochondria

survived the fire
for DNA testing.

Since mitochondrial DNA
is passed maternally,

scientists would try to compare
it to the mitochondrial DNA

profiles of Clay's mother Lori.

But testing would
take up to six months.

- It's not like on
CSI on TV at all.

So it doesn't happen
within the span of an hour.

In the meantime, investigators

noticed some inconsistencies
at the accident scene.

The lack of skid
marks on the road

indicated that Clay took
no corrective action

before the crash.

The speed limit was


and the car was
barely moving when

it went down the embankment.

- There was no momentum
coming off the cliff.

It looked as if somebody
had just pushed it off

or just drove off the cliff
at a slow rate of speed.

Because all the rocks,
the trees on the way

down were disturbed in a
path that the vehicle took.

And the car's
gas t*nk was intact.

This raised questions about
the source of the fire.

- My instincts told
me that this was not

an accident that
somebody was k*lled.

And I stayed with
that feeling, that's

why I told the sergeant that
I was calling the experts in.

That expert was arson
investigator Janine Mather.

The first thing she noticed
was that the entire driver's

seat had been consumed by fire.

- Normal vehicle fires
with a body inside there

usually is body fluids
and remains on the seat.

And in this case, there
was no body fluids

located in the vehicle and
no remains on the seat.

Mather then
checked all possible sources

for a fire, the fuel
lines, the ignition

switch, the starter,
the battery.

Everything was intact.

- I looked at the vehicle
inside and out and underneath

and ruled out all accidental
causes of ignition.

Crime scene
investigators gathered the fire

debris and placed it
in sealed canisters.

At the lab, they inserted
activated charcoal strips

and then heated the cans.

The strips were then put it into
a solvent and tested with gas

chromatograph mass spectrometry.

This revealed the
fire was started

with large amounts of
charcoal lighter fluid.

- When the results
came back that it

was positive for
charcoal starter fluid,

I knew that we had an arson,
an intentionally set fire.

And just as investigators

heard this news they
learned something else.

Molly Daniels' sister Melissa
had been visiting Molly when

she experienced one
of the most bizarre

incidents she had
ever encountered.

- Melissa had gone in to get
a Q-Tip out of the bathroom,

turned around and
looked and there

was a guy laying in
the floor of the closet

but his head was
up in the corner

and she couldn't see
anything from the waist down.

And he was wearing boxers.

And she went out to
Molly and she goes,

there's a man asleep
in your closet.

She goes, no there's not.

But when Molly
looked in her closet she

didn't see anyone there.

- But things started getting
kind of weird after that.

Needless to say, investigators

found the incident suspicious
and now wondered whether Molly

was somehow involved in
her husband's m*rder.

Five months after the car
crash the Sheriff's department

in Burnett County, Texas finally
got the results of the DNA test

on the remains found in the car.

The DNA revealed
that the remains

were not those of Clay Daniels.

- When DNA came back and
wasn't Clayton, we were like,

where's Clayton?

And who is this person
that was in the vehicle?

To find the
answers, investigators

put Clay's grieving wife Molly
under surveillance for days.

Her routine was perfectly
normal until she

met her new boyfriend
Jake Gregg for lunch.

- She got into that man's
car and then the two of them

went off to Taco Bell.

Investigators
decided to go inside

to get a better look at
Molly's new boyfriend.

When Captain Paul Nelson
walked by their table

he noticed that Jake Gregg bore
a striking resemblance to Clay

Daniels although his
hair color was different.

- He looked identical.

If he could have crawled
into that burrito

he probably would have.

But the man
insisted he was Jake Gregg

and produced a
Texas identification

card to prove it.

But Captain Nelson didn't buy
it and placed him under arrest.

During police
questioning he finally

admitted he was Clay Daniels.

- Clay's brilliant disguise
consisted of nothing

more than dying his hair black.

And other than that he hadn't
changed his appearance at all.

- Clay had several motives
for staging his death.

He did not want to go
to jail for 30 days,

and he did not want to be
a registered sex offender,

and he had a $100,000
life insurance policy.

Molly insisted she
knew nothing about Clay faking

his own death until he came
home one day about a month

after the fire and told
her what he had done.

- She just tried to portray it
like she didn't know that he

was alive until he just
called her out of the blue

about a month later and
said, hey baby, I'm alive.

- I find that very
hard to believe.

If my husband came
back from the dead,

I'd be asking a lot of
questions, and I'd be very mad.

Clay admitted
it was he who was sleeping

in the closet when
Molly's sister saw him.

He said Molly spoke loud
enough that it woke him up,

and he was able to
get out of the closet

before his
sister-in-law returned.

- See?
There's no one here.

- I know that there was.

Clay said he planned
to start a new life with Molly

and the children after the
$100,000 life insurance payment

arrived.

- They were going
to go to Mexico,

and he was going to have
plastic surgery done on his face

and have dental surgery
done so he'd have teeth.

- And Molly was going to
have a tummy tuck too.

Apparently, a little bonus
of the plan, I guess,

they'd get so much money
from the insurance.

Clay Daniels refused to identify

the body burned in the car fire.

- Clay never, never
divulged any information

to us to help our investigation.

Did they m*rder somebody?

Did they find a
dead homeless man?

What did they do?
How do they do this?

However, Clay was more than

happy to talk to
his fellow inmates.

- I guess, they're
sitting up late at night,

you know, sh**ting the breeze
and Clay had told his cell mate

that he had actually dug up
a corpse from a graveyard

and that's what they had put
in the car and set it on fire.

Investigators searched
Pebble Mound Cemetery, the one

closest to the site
of the car fire.

They knew from experience
that criminals don't like

to travel far with
a corpse in the car.

Sure enough, they
found a grave close

to the front gate that looked
as if it had been tampered with.

- I could tell that the grave
was disturbed by the crevices

and the holes that was left,
the marker had been moved,

the flowers had been moved.

And I knew by looking
at the other grave sites

that that was not normal.

The headstone bore
the name Charlotte Davis.

She died six months before the
car crash at the age of 81.

Their suspicions were confirmed
when they exhumed Charlotte's

casket and discovered
it was empty.

Investigators now wanted
to know whether Molly

Daniels was involved.

And if so, they needed
evidence to prove it.

Clay Daniels confessed to
starting the arson fire

and defrauding the
insurance company

of $100,000 in life insurance.

His wife Molly denied
any involvement,

but investigators
didn't believe her.

- When Molly first
talked to the police

and told them that ridiculous
story that she didn't know

that Clay was still alive
until a month later,

she was sticking by that
story for quite some time.

And apparently that's what she'd
been telling her lawyer too.

Investigators
examined Molly's work computer,

but they weren't optimistic.

By this time, six months had
passed since the car crash.

- Depending on how often
the computer is used,

there's a possibility that some
of the evidence that we would

have recovered ordinarily
would be overwritten.

But investigators
got a huge break.

Molly's computer had been
invaded by a keystroke virus

right before the
staged accident.

- What the worm actually did
was it recorded every letter,

every window she opened, every
email, just any kind of thing

that she's typing in the
computer it recorded.

And into a text
file and saved it.

Computer forensic
experts did a word search

to identify what
kind of information

Molly had been looking
for on the internet.

- We were finding words like
unidentifiable body, forensics

on a body, burned body, burned
car, gasoline fire, 1,500

degrees Fahrenheit,
just words like that.

This proved that
Molly not only knew about Clay's

plans but was actively involved.

- That was the happiest
day of my life

when we got that
computer forensics exam.

It was just, I mean, there was
no way she could deny that she

had been involved from
day one of the planning

when we saw that computer
forensic evidence.

- What does surprise me is that
she was too stupid to do this.

She was so stupid that
she did this kind of thing

and didn't think
about the consequences

and didn't think about the
possibility of getting caught.

Police obtained a search warrant

from Molly's house and found
even more forensic evidence.

- During the search
warrant of their residence

we found in the
kitchen two containers

of charcoal starter fluid.

Both of them were
tested and one was

consistent with what was
found in the vehicle.

Prosecutors
believe that Clay and Molly

planned this crime for months.

They looked in the obituaries
to identify a grave to rob,

ideally someone
elderly who didn't have

many family members
visiting her grave.

They chose 81-year-old
Charlotte Davis.

Six months after her death,
they dug up her body,

drove to the ravine, and
set fire to their car

with Charlotte's body inside.

Clay threw some of his
personal items in the fire

so that could be used
for identification.

But the DNA testing proved
the body wasn't Clay Daniels.

And gas chromatography found
remnants of the lighter fluid.

When confronted with
all this evidence,

Molly Daniels finally confessed.

- She said that they watched a
lot of Law and Order and CSI.

And they got the idea to
do this from those shows.

And I asked her, do you all
not watch the end of the shows,

because usually the
criminals get caught?

And she just laughed.

Molly Daniels pleaded
guilty to insurance fraud

and hindering her
husband's apprehension.

She was sentenced to


- You do the crime,
you do the time.

Clay Daniels plead
guilty to insurance fraud,

arson, and desecration
of a corpse.

He was sentenced to 30 years
in prison plus an additional 20

years for the sexual
as*ault charge.

The body of Charlotte
Davis was reinterred.

The people carrying her
casket were the ones

who put Clay and
Molly behind bars.

Texas investigators say
it is among the most

bizarre cases they've ever seen.

They were also appalled by
the deception Molly and Clay

perpetrated on
their own children.

- To tell a little boy who's
four almost five years old

that the man that he has known
his whole life as his father

is not his daddy.

When he runs to him and hugs
him and says, hey daddy,

I love you to have the man
say, oh, I'm not your daddy.

I'm Mommy's new boyfriend Jake.

And to have Molly tell
them that over and over,

no, no, that's not Daddy.

That's Jake.

You can't even imagine what
that would do to a child's mind.

- You just hope
that their children

get the proper mental
care the next couple years

and get raised well
by their grandparents.

Because otherwise, you're
going to have another one,

another Clayton Daniels
on our hands in 15 years.

Without the
science, investigators

were convinced that
Clayton and Molly

Daniels might have
gotten away with it.

- They thought that the fire
would destroy all evidence

and there wouldn't be enough
remains for DNA testing.

And they were almost right.

- Those scum walks
alive, I mean, they

don't deserve to
be on this planet.

But that's just my
personal opinion.

- If it hadn't have been for
everybody being on their toes

in this case,
listening to their gut,

listening to their instincts,
and then pursuing all the DNA,

the forensic investigation,
the arson investigation,

we wouldn't be
where we are today

with these two people in prison.