13x18 - Church Dis-service

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Up next, a young woman
has car trouble and disappears.

- A gentleman in a van pulled
up and offered his assistance.

Eyewitnesses give differing

accounts of what happened.

It is frustrating when witnesses

tell us variations
that don't add.

A microscopic
clue underneath the girl's

fingernails and a bite
mark provide needed clues.

But were they enough?

This could have been prevented.

My sister could be
here with me right now.

- I've got to know my destiny,

you've got to know your destiny!

Come on, come to me!

Hallelujah!

The Faith Tabernacle Church

is an institution in
Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

There are about 1,000 members,
among them the Dacosta family.

- Church for us was not only
a place to go to worship

and serve God, but it
was actually a place

to go and socialize,
see your friends.

The Dacosta
daughters, Rochelle and Dawnia,

attended church three
or four times a week.

And they usually went together.

But one December
night, Dania decided

to go alone since her
sister had homework to do.

That was the last time the
family saw Dawnia alive.

My mom knocked on the door,

asked me if my sister is home.

She's not home.

I started thinking, oh my God.

Something's wrong.

Dawnia's family drove all

over the area looking for her.

- I didn't find her.

When I went to the
church, I didn't find her.

Then on my way back
I found her car.

She was not in her car.

They found Dawnia's
car two miles from home

on the shoulder of
a major highway.

I had a dream,
and I knew something was wrong.

The car was out of gas.

There was
a prior incident with the car

where she actually
ran out of gas before.

So that could have
been the same problem.

- We discovered that
they always carried

a gas can in the
back of her trunk.

That gas can was missing.

Witnesses at a nearby
gas station a half mile away

said, they saw someone who
matched Dawnia's description.

- She did come to the
Texaco gas station,

and used her credit
card to purchase gas.

She purchased over a
dollar's worth of gas

to fill the gas can, to go
put gas back in her vehicle.

And witnesses said
that Dawnia wasn't alone.

- A
- gentleman in a van

pulled up and offered
his assistance to Dawnia.

According to the
witnesses, this gentleman

told Dawnia that he
would be able to take

her back to her car
and help her out.

Witnesses were able to
describe the driver to police,

who created a composite drawing.

Both witnesses
said that the male driver was

a black man in his 40s, late 30s
early 40s, very well dressed,

very articulate,
very well spoken.

Unfortunately, the witnesses

disagreed about the
color of the vehicle.

One said it was
teal blue, the other

indicated it was burgundy.

Both witnesses
confident in their answers,

both steadfast.

As to the color, it could be
either one, could be burgundy,

could be teal.

The gas station's
surveillance cameras

were no help.

The van was apparently
outside of camera range.

One of the witnesses remembered
seeing the word "hope"

painted on the side of the van.

You just
don't come up with a word.

Even though the colors were
different form each description

that was recalled
by the witnesses,

the word "hope," in my mind,
was going to be on that van

somewhere.

Police decided not to release

this detail to the media.

But the van was the only
clue investigators had.

Normally, having two witnesses
to a possible kidnapping

would be a good thing
for investigators,

but not in Dawnia
Dacosta's case.

Both witnesses saw
the same thing,

but each gave a
different description

of the van in which Dawnia
was last seen alive.

They described the
van in various ways regarding

the colors, in
regarding the signage

that was on the side of the van.

- I can't pick my witnesses.

I have to work with what I have.

Since one of the witnesses

said the word "hope" was
on the side of the van,

detectives Kaminsky and Bukata
contacted every organization

in the area with the
word "hope" in its name.

There were more
than 100 of them.

- I called everybody, I
called the rest of my family.

We started printing
flyers with her picture.

We started handing them
out to people all over.

Then, three days
after Dawnia disappeared,

a worker at an industrial
park 20 miles away

found Dawnia's body
near a dumpster.

The female was wrapped

in sheets, as well
as a shower curtain.

And her head was
covered with a bag.

The news was on TV.

And I remember them
coming on and said,

there was a body
discovered in Oakland Park.

And then my sister's face
popped up on the screen.

And I was like, oh no.

I said, I hope
that's not her body.

I hope that's not her body.

I was in the room,
and I looked among the people

and I saw all
these police coming

and a chaplain,
another chaplain.

And I saw them coming.
I said, oh my God.

Oh my God, that's Dawnia.

And they came in and told me.

Dawnia was nude and had

brown carpet fibers on her body.

The medical examiner
estimated Dawnia was m*rder*d

just hours after she disappeared

- The state of the decomposition
was around 36 hours.

This was our best estimate.

Investigators
noticed a tire impression

on the sheet covering
Dawnia's body.

- To have her just
wrapped up in sheets

and tossed out like a piece of
garbage was really troubling.

- There were some
debris-laden tire tracks

across the pavement, and it
also went across the leg portion

of the decedent, where she
had been wrapped in the sheet.

And it was actually on
the surface of the sheet.

The sheet was a
dark brown, rusty color, which

made it difficult to
obtain a clear image

of the tire impression.

- The impression was faint black
rubber on top of that material.

And in order to get the
best contrast out of that,

we use various light sources to
try and reduce the actual color

of the sheet, while
bringing up the contrast

of the actual impression,
which was black.

The images were photographed

in both black and
white and in color.

Analyst Mark Suchomel was able
to get an image of the tread.

Unfortunately, it
wasn't large enough

to figure out the make
and model of the tire.

Investigators also
used super glue

fuming to look for fingerprints
on the plastic bags

and shower curtain that
encased Dawnia's body.

They found six partial
prints and two full prints.

These were submitted

to our latent
fingerprint people.

There was a search done in our
automated fingerprint system,

and came up no matches.

The medical examiner
discovered that Dawnia had been

sexually assaulted and tortured.

There were more than three
dozen star-shaped wounds

on her chest.

Those injuries
in the area of the chest

were superficial.

In other words, they
didn't penetrate the chest

or didn't enter
the body cavities,

and did not contribute to death.

- It's as if the k*ller was
on top of the young lady

and just stabbing her
to cause her pain.

The cause of death was a blow

to her skull with the same
star-shaped instrument.

- The s*ab wound to
the skull actually

went through her skull, as if
was the final coup de grace,

which took her life.

Near the fatal woman was

an odd horseshoe-shaped bruise.

No one could tell
what caused it.

What did she do to
deserve such a horrible death?

The k*ller left a
bite mark on Dawnia's right arm.

Doctor Stephen Rifkin
photographed it,

and discovered some
unusual characteristics.

- He had spaces between
his upper front teeth,

and several spaces
between several

of his lower front teeth.

Investigators also
found foreign skin cells

underneath Dawnia's fingernails.

Day by day, investigators
were getting closer.

Eight days after Dawnia
Dacosta's m*rder,

detectives got a tip.

Someone just two blocks
from Dawnia's home

drove a burgundy van that
belonged to the Church of God.

I recieved a phone
call that there was a few men

up in Deerfield Beach that
utilized a burgundy church van.

They lived just to the
north of the gas station.

I went up to their house.

We ended up surveilling them.

Detectives Kaminsky and Bukata

watched as four men got
into the van and took off.

The detectives pulled them
over for a look around.

Inside the van they found
a floral print dress

which matched the description
of the dress Dawnia

was wearing when she
was last seen alive.

Naturally, investigators
confiscated the van.

And Mark Suchomel
compared the van's tires

to the tire impressions
found near Dawnia's body.

They did not match.

Daphne Bowe said that dress
I had wasn't her daughter's.

So the van in question that we
had stopped was not the van.

None of the
men had criminal records.

And all willingly
provided a DNA sample.

And we were
able to exclude all four

of the individuals that were
originally submitted as being

the possible contributor
to that foreign DNA

that we had detected.

The men were released,
and the case went cold.

At that point, I think we all

thought that Bukata
and Kaminsky were going

to be looking for a
needle in a haystack.

Then, four months
after Dawnia's m*rder,

detectives on duty
saw yet another van

that caught their eye.

And as I'm looking at the van,

I'm starting to realize that
the color was a teal color.

And then I looked
a little further,

I saw the word "hope"
on the side of the van.

- We both looked at at each other
and said, no, it couldn't be.

Because we were
looking for what we

believed to be a burgundy van.

The van was parked
in front of the Generation

Hope Daycare in Fort Lauderdale.

The day care was affiliated
with a local church,

but not Dawnia's church.

The van was obviously teal.

It wasn't burgundy.

However, the word
"hope," H-O-P-E,

the letters themselves
were burgundy in color.

Detectives were
greeted by the pastor.

He said he wasn't driving the
van on the night of Dawnia's

m*rder, but he was pretty
sure he knew who was.

The pastor was a
meticulous man, and he

kept detailed logs
with dates and times.

- He began to look through his
logs in the date in question,

when Dawnia was missing
and subsequently m*rder*d.

During that time
period, we learned

that Lucious Boyd was
the one who had the van.

Lucious Boyd was the
maintenance man at the daycare

center, and had been using
van to run errands the day

before Dawnia disappeared.

But according to the
pastor's records,

Boyd didn't return the van
until several days later.

Since the van wasn't needed,
it didn't raise any alarms.

When officers looked
inside the van,

they saw a purple
laundry bag, like the one

found with Dawnia's body.

Church officials also
noted that a box of tools

usually kept in the
van was missing.

A reciprocating saw was missing,

a torque screwdriver
was missing,

there was also a
garment bag that

was used to turn in dirty
laundry to the cleaners,

those items were missing.


lived just two blocks away

from the gas station where
Dawnia was last seen.

Boyd denied any involvement,
but had no alibi for the time

Dawnia went missing.

And he was no
stranger to police.

Over the last decade, he'd
been charged seven times

for violent offenses,
ranging from r*pe to m*rder,

but was acquitted in every case.

- I did not do this,
what they talked about.

I did not do this here.

Boyd had also been a suspect

in no less than 10
unsolved murders.

- He just wasn't ever
convicted of any crime he did.

And police worried
that unless they found

solid evidence, he
might go free again.

Lucious Boyd was
the prime suspect

in Dawnia Dacosta's m*rder.

Apparently, his employer,
the day care center,

knew of his arrests
for violent crimes,

but assumed his
innocence since he

had always been
acquitted in court.

When police questioned Boyd's
live-in girlfriend, Geneva

Lewis, she was more
than cooperative.

She said she was out
of town, visiting

her family, when
the crime occurred.

So police asked her if any of
their bed sheets were missing.

She looked through
her closet and told me

when she came back out
that she was missing

a yellow sheet
and a brown sheet.

These were the same colors

as the sheets that wrapped
Dawnia Dacosta's body.

And there was other potential
evidence in the apartment.

- While I was talking with her,
I looked into the bedroom.

And I noticed that the
carpet was brown in color.

Dawnia's body had
been covered in brown fibers.

Crime scene technicians
now scoured the apartment.

In the bedroom, underneath the
bed, they found blood stains.

The carpet was
saturated with blood.

A fiber analysis showed

the brown fibers
on Dawnia's body

had come from the carpet
in Boyd's apartment.

The fingerprints on the plastic
bags that encased Dawnia's body

didn't match Lucious
Boyd, but they

did match Boyd's
girlfriend and their son.

- It links him, in some way,
to association with the body

that he claimed he had
never had any contact with.

The tire
impressions on the sheet found

with Dawnia's body
matched one of the tires

on the day care van.

But without a m*rder
w*apon, prosecutors

needed to determine, how
Dawnia had been k*lled.

The church pastor
told investigators

the make and model
of the reciprocating

saw missing from the van.

Criminalist Allen Greenspan
placed an identical saw

over a scale photograph of the
strange horseshoe-shaped wound

on Dawnia's forehead.

He was attempting to determine
if the base of the saw,

known as the foot, could
have made the mark.

- Class characteristics, or the
general appearance of the foot,

was consistent with the mark.

The wounds on
Dawnia's chest were star-shaped.

One of the tools
missing from the van

was a torque driver,
essentially a screwdriver

with a star-shaped head.

An identical torque driver
was overlaid on scale photos

of the chest wounds, and the
patterns lined up perfectly.

- And you think of that
crime as a big puzzle.

Here's two pieces of the
puzzle that kind of fit in.

Casts were made of Boyd's teeth,

and his bite pattern was
consistent with the mark

on Dawnia's arm.

Within
reasonable dental certainty,

we were able to conclude that we
would expect teeth like Lucious

Boyd's to have made the
marks on the victim.

And DNA testing proved
it was Dawnia's blood in Boyd's

apartment, and
Boyd's DNA was found

under Dawnia's fingernails.

- His profile, that I
was able to develop,

matched to the foreign
DNA that I had already

detected on the thigh
swabs and on the mixtures

under the fingernails.

Prosecutors believe
Dawnia trusted the man offering

to give her a ride because
he was well dressed,

and apparently,
affiliated with a church.

Once she accepted
his offer for a ride,

the evidence shows he
grabbed the reciprocating saw

and struck her in
the head, creating

the odd horseshoe-shaped bruise.

He then took Dawnia
back to his apartment

because his live-in girlfriend
was away that night.

Once there, he sexually
assaulted Dawnia, tortured her,

and k*lled her with
a blow to the head.

He wrapped her body with
sheets from his apartment,

and placed it in
a plastic bag that

had his girlfriend's
fingerprints on it.

He dumped the body in
an industrial park,

and then drove over it,
leaving behind the tire

impression later
matched to the van.

The evidence conclusively

proved that Lucious Boyd was the
only person in the world that

was responsible for the
death of Dawnia Dacosta.

- The only consolation
I can get from this,

is that my sister
was a gift to us.

God gave her as a gift.

After a while, after so many
years, he took her back.

In January of 2002, Lucious Boyd

was convicted of Dawnia
Dacosta's m*rder.

He was sentenced to death.

Investigators believe Boyd
k*lled at least two other women

who mysteriously
disappeared after he'd

been in contact with them.

I just hope
that before Lucius Boyd gets

ex*cuted, he's man enough to
tell law enforcement to tell

me, to tell anybody, where the
bodies of these missing girls

are.

Family members want to know.

And now,
police and the community

are grateful that Boyd
is finally behind bars.

- Physical evidence
doesn't lie, people do.

People like Lucious
Boyd can come up

with any story
they want, any lie,

but Lucious Boyd will never be
a match for physical evidence.

- Forensics, in this
case, is critical.

This is what set everything
else from his criminal history

in the past, where
he was not getting

convicted to a conviction.

- We were able to pick up all
these individual, little pieces

of evidence that, on their
own, may not be that important,

but when you combine
them all together,

it leads us back
to this individual.

And it locks him in.