:In Colorado, the mysterious abduction of a young mother ends up a brutal homicide. There are few clues and fewer suspects. Now, investigators must try to build their case out of redwood. In rural Minnesota, 4 minutes of grainy surveillance video is the only link to a missing girl’s whereabouts. Authorities struggled to put this crucial clue into focus and turn a short length of tape into a life sentence.

Anytime, anywhere, people disappear, kidnapped from their daily routines. Predators always leave clues behind. But chasing them takes time, hampering investigators attempts to solve these fatal abductions. Have a good time. In this episode, some of the names have been changed. Natalie and Matthew Mirabal, their family and friends, spent a fun-filled evening on September 25th, 1999.

At approximately 8:00 p.m., they returned to their home in Longmont, a suburb of Boulder, Colorado. They thought the evening was over, but their troubles were just beginning. Later that night, Longmont police received a call from Matthew Mirabal, reporting his wife missing. He said Natalie went to the grocery store for groceries 3 hours earlier and hadn’t returned.

That’s the last time I saw her. That’s the last time I talked to her. There’s a car. Because Matthew couldn’t leave the baby and Natalie took the car, he asked his friends to go to the store to look for her. But they found only her vehicle. No sign of Natalie. She never went into the store. Though 3 hours is not a long time to go missing, authorities were concerned and a police officer was dispatched to the scene.

The officer met the Mirabball’s friends in the parking lot. A cursory look inside and in the trunk revealed nothing suspicious. Thought it’d be best to call you right away. Thing looks okay here. Nothing. The only thing out of place was a freshl looking scratch on the side of the car. Were these here before? Did you notice? They found no clue to Natalie’s whereabouts.

Police impounded the vehicle for closer inspection. Investigator Steve Slawson of the Longmont Police Department and Detective Steve Ainsworth of the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office spoke with Matthew Mirabal who went to the police station to file a missing person’s report. We’re doing everything we can to uh to follow.

He told police that he and Natalie along with their infant daughter and Natalie’s brother returned to the apartment around 11:30. No. Natalie remembered she needed to buy diapers and left for the supermarket. Her brother had already gone to bed and Matthew fell asleep waiting for her. She left it about 11.

When he woke up 3 hours later, she still hadn’t returned. The more police learned, the more concerned they grew about her fate. She was, you know, belonged to her church group. She had a baby. Her younger brother lived in the house with them. There was nothing to indicate that she would just run off and leave.

We had to treat it as a possible abduction. I had patrol officers canvasing the the neighborhood looking or listening for anything unusual. The St. Rain River runs through town and so I had patrol dogs working up and down the banks trying to get all the bases down for a genuine missing person’s case. She wasn’t the first young woman to disappear from a supermarket parking lot.

In recent months, several women in the area had been accosted or abducted and raped on their way to their cars. The crimes remained unsolved. Former prosecutor Trip Demuse looked for a connection. We also had reports of suspicious males in the grocery store parking lot and and we had had reports at other grocery store parking lots of similar suspicious males.

So, you have to look at every possible um suspect in any given case and chase any lead down. It’s going to, you know, it’s going to lead you to ultimately to the guilty party. The morning after her disappearance, Natalie’s friends were busy putting up posters all over Longmont. They hoped somebody had seen her. It turned out that someone had.

Yeah, that’s kind of 12 miles away, a couple hiking made a shocking discovery. Oh, look. At first, they couldn’t believe what they were seeing. The female victim was not only dead, she’d been decapitated. 536, I’m arrival 8/10 of a mile up above Buckingham. Detective Steve Ainsworth went to the scene.

He joined other area investigators who had already cordoned off a wide area surrounding the victim. Your uniform officer, I think it’s Eric. The authorities divided their duties to gather as much information from the crime scene as possible. The first assignment to identify the victim. It looks like the woman that was missing from Longmont.

This clothing is the same. The physical description is the same. The appearance is the same. She has a mark on her ankle which is described as a a Z-shaped mark by her husband. And it it appears that she does have that mark. Her head was found several feet away. The pattern of blood under the body suggested Natalie was cut after her death.

Investigators believed she was killed elsewhere and her body dumped here. It looks like she was probably decapitated right there where she was found or or close by to where she was found. There’s a there’s a good deal of rage and a good deal of violence associated with this. Anything lying in the surrounding area was photographed and collected.

But despite the best efforts of the police, it didn’t amount to much. There’s not a lot of evidence down there. There’s the body. Um, and there’s not a lot of blood around the area. There’s also no immediate evidence of any sort of struggle down here. But this early in the investigation, nothing could be overlooked.

Even a broken segment of redwood board could be a clue. According to Boulder County Detective Tony Matthews, it was very clean and fresh and not weathered. It appeared to have been recently broken. Um there was no dirt on it. There was no um dust, anything like that.

So again, at the time didn’t have any idea if it really mean anything, but it was just out of place there and it was close to the body. So, it was collected only after all the potential clues were documented and collected was the victim removed from the scene for her autopsy. At a car turnaround area, forensic technicians poured plaster casts of several tire treadmarks pressed into the dirt and hoped that some of them might pay off later.

As the crime scene was being processed, a woman found a purse on a nearby road. Inside was Natalie Mirabal’s identification, her wallet, and some cash. Detectives now knew the reason for her murder was not robbery. You and John could do a camp. Investigators formed a task force to chase all leads.

They feared that Natalie Mirabal might be the most recent victim of a serial killer. There were transients that were being beheaded in the lower downtown Denver area, which is only about uh 30 minutes away. Decapitations as a general rule are not that common. And so the fact that we had a decapitation here and we had a and we had decapitations um occurring down in Denver was something that I talked to Steve Ainsworth about investigating wounds either on Detective Ainsworth went to Denver

looking for parallels between the cases and compared the killer’s mo to the other grizzly slayings. I interviewed the lieutenant of the person’s unit at Denver Police Department. We went over my case, went over his cases, and there were uh no similarities whatsoever. No similarities meant no leads. The only facts they were sure of came from the victim herself.

Unlike the other victims, the autopsy determined she had been struck on the head and strangled prior to her decapitation. And the victims of similar recent abductions were sexually assaulted. Natalie was not in Colorado. Thumbprints were collected from all licensed drivers. This enabled investigators to identify absolutely that the victim was Natalie Mirabal.

Matthew. Once the body was positively IDed, Natalie’s family was informed of her murder. When I first met Natalie’s mother that night in Selma Vasquez, we notified her that her daughter had been found and she she was dead. We didn’t tell her what had happened or anything like that, but obviously she was extremely upset.

Well, who did this to her? What? Investigators next set out to determine whether she was a random victim or murdered by someone she knew. The interviews with her family members revealed Natalie had a happy life and no enemies. back to us. Her mother and Selma Vasquez remembers her daughter.

She was the sunshine for everyone. You could be in a dark room, gloomy, and Natalie would just make that day so happy and so sunny and she brought she brought joy into everybody’s life. For Detective Ainsworth, it was at that moment the case became personal. apologies. And I told her before I left that night, I told her in Selma, I promise you I will find out who did this to Natalie.

For Natalie’s mother and in the name of justice, investigators vowed not to rest until they found the killer. When Natalie Mirabal’s decapitated body was found in the mountains, investigators faced two possible scenarios. She was the random victim of a stranger or her killer was someone she knew.

Because most victims know their killers, Natalie’s husband, Matthew Mirabal, agreed to allow investigators to search their apartment for anything connecting her to her murderer. According to former prosecutor Trip Demute, spouses and family members are always the first suspects investigators try to eliminate.

One of the rules that you follow in criminal investigations is that you start with very small circles and you work out from there. So, a husband is always an initial suspect. Something fell on. During his interview, they noticed a fresh bandage on his thumb. Something fell on it. Matthew explained he’d cut himself on his job as a house painter.

He cooperated with police, letting them photograph the small wound. At this point, investigators checked out anything even slightly out of the ordinary. Detective Ainsworth and his team would have the chance to sort through it all later to determine what might be relevant. Rod, I might need you to use your flash.

Their investigation progressed to Natalie’s car impounded from the supermarket parking lot. All right, we got some plant material. The front floor was littered with leaves and twigs. Get a sample of these items on the floor. Forensic technicians collected all the plant material. Wedged between the seat and the console, almost hidden from view, was a pair of brown cloth work gloves.

Detective Tony Matthews questioned the kind of work they’d been used for. Could see blood on them and started looking at them more closely and there was a cut, a very small cut in the area of the left thumb. All of the potential evidence was sent to the lab. The leaf debris from the car was sent to the University of Colorado where they were analyzed by botist Jane Bach.

Almost anywhere a car travels, it picks up bits of leaves, twigs, and seeds. In this case, the plant fragments left behind were considered possible evidence, as well as clues to the murder’s location. If you look on the floor mats, under the floor mats and those wells that are where the windshield wipers are and under the fenders and in the grooves on tires, all of those places uh have plant fragments.

In Colorado, different plants grow in different regions. The plants in the high mountains are not the same as the ones that grow at lower altitude. After we examined these plant fragments, it was obvious that the car had been up one of the canyons around Boulder. I couldn’t say exactly what canyon, and it was not characteristic of a vegetation found uh even in landscaping around homes on the plains.

Bach’s findings placed Natalie’s car at one of the nearby canyons. Agent Scott Pratt of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation attempted to narrow it down to the vicinity of the crime scene by examining the car’s tires that were sent to the lab. He compared the tread impressions from the canyon against the tires from Natalie’s car.

He traced the pattern of the casts onto an acetate overlay. Then he put the overlay against the tires he wished to compare. In this way, he determined whether the model, size, and pattern of the tire matched. These details, called class characteristics, are a good start. But thousands of tires with identical class characteristics roll out of factories every day.

It is only when a tire hits the road that the individual characteristics that make each tire unique are detectable. As we’re driving down rocky roads, we may have the rocks take chips out of the tires or something may put a slice in the tire. Um, they may hit curbs that do damage to the tire. So, there’s different things that we look at where we can literally nail it down to that’s the only tire that could have made that impression.

Investigators usually count themselves lucky to collect one or two impressions of individual characteristics. In this case, Pratt considered himself more fortunate than most. What was interesting is that I had four different tire impressions that I was looking at. As I did my examination, I came to the conclusion that this particular vehicle could have made three of them.

Through his efforts, Pratt could confidently say Natalie’s car had been to the canyon where her body was found and then inexplicably returned to the store parking lot. If I would have matched only one tire, uh that would have been a lot broader conclusion. But where you have three different tire designs on a vehicle and all three are present at the scene, that makes it a lot more substantial of a conclusion.

Detective Matthews and his colleagues now needed to find out why Natalie’s car had been returned to the parking lot. Give me a light. The idea that the killer would take her, go somewhere, come back and leave the car where he took it from really didn’t make much sense. And so that was one of the big things that we just thought just doesn’t make sense.

And let’s let’s see how we can show what really happened. That would be a challenge. Not only did the crime lack logic, it had no motive. and not one suspect. The biggest challenges we had was, you know, we were trying to prove a negative in a lot of ways. Um, you know, they’re trying to say that an unknown stranger came and did this and basically that’s saying the whole world is a suspect.

In a case like this, the job is not to find suspects, but to eliminate them. Detective Ainsworth continued scrutinizing the victim’s husband, Matthew Mirabal. Okay, guys. Matthew gave authorities permission to search the Mirabal house. Anything you can find on a missing person. Nothing seemed particularly noteworthy or suspicious until they found a recently executed life insurance policy.

It provided a quarter of a million dollars to Matthew Mirabal in the event of his wife’s death. The policy wasn’t so unusual, except detectives found it in a briefcase stashed beneath the living room sofa. Police believed they found the first clue to Natalie’s murder, a potential motive. Natalie Mirabal was dead and Colorado investigators tried to eliminate her husband Matthew from the suspect’s list until they hit a snag.

A $250,000 life insurance policy on Natalie issued only a few months earlier seemed generous and a little too timely. Detective Steve Ainsworth found out something else about the policy. Matthew had purchased it in secret. He had paid with a money order from uh a nearby grocery store when he would write $2.79 checks or $1.50 checks.

He write wrote checks for everything, but he went to this grocery store and took the trouble of getting a money order for this particular life insurance policy rather than writing a check that his wife would have seen. Green chair over there. The insurance provided a potential motive and it steered the investigation toward Matthew Mirabal.

Just wanted to ask you some some questions here. First of all, he tried to get a million dollars on her. He told the agent that if anything ever happened to my wife, I want to be able to stay home and take care of my baby, which is kind of unusual. Also, the amount that he was asking for in that she didn’t have an income because she was a stay-at-home mom.

He didn’t have an income anywhere near that kind of money. And so when it was dropped down to $250,000 and he just immediately accepted it without argument or anything, that was a little suspicious. Also, no problem. Thank you. Detective Ainsworth went to the painting company where he worked to ask him some questions, but Mirabal and the other workers were out on jobs.

Ainssworth took the opportunity to look around. He was careful to limit his search to outdoor public areas. He never went inside. Not knowing what exactly he was searching for, he checked the trash cans. He noticed a plastic shopping bag. I pulled it out and I looked in it and there was this flashlight packaging with the flashlight gone, the batteries gone.

There is also a cardboard tab for a pair of uh cotton jersey gloves. And why I took it, I I can’t tell you. It’s just I don’t know if it didn’t go with the rest of the trash or why, but so I took it. The items were sent to the crime lab where technicians raised a fingerprint from the plastic bag. The police didn’t have Matthew Mirabal’s fingerprints on file to compare it against.

They needed to collect more evidence. That looks like the same. They impounded his truck where Detective Tony Matthews found a more significant clue, one that might link Mirabal to the crime scene. In the back of his truck was a piece of redwood. And this piece of redwood is um very similar in appearance to the piece from the scene.

I thought at the time, I wonder if this matches that brokenoff piece of redwood. The wood and other items were tagged and collected. There’s another piece of Though the redwood was similar to the piece found at the crime scene, the two sections did not fit together, suggesting that a third piece was still out there waiting to be found.

Other clues also needed to be pursued. After seeing the flashlight packaging, one of the detectives remembered a similar flashlight he saw during the search of Mirabal’s home. Take a look at them. See what we got here. They returned to the Mirabal house to collect it. Thank you very much. I’m done.

Swabs of the flashlight tested positive for human blood and its DNA was analyzed. Other investigators continued to comb the crime scene in ever widening circles. They looked for the knife used to decapitate the victim or any other obvious clue. It paid off. What they found was another shattered section of redwood.

It was about an 8 in piece. And I looked at it and it had the knot on one end which I could tell this is going to match the other one. The three segments, two from the crime scene, one from Mirabal’s truck, went to the crime lab for comparison. The case was literally beginning to come together. Sure enough, you could just put them together like three pieces of a puzzle.

Though investigators couldn’t build a solid case from broken lumber, the match further implicated Matthew Mirabal in the murder of his wife, Natalie. That looks good. Joe Clayton of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation examined the gloves found in Natalie’s car. His expertise is corology, the study of blood and bodily fluids.

Swabs revealed the stains were human blood. But that wasn’t all. One of those had an obvious cut along one of the seams in the thumb area. By turning the glove inside out, I noticed there was blood on the inside. The blood on the outside did not look like it had soaked through. It was not that thick of a stain.

So, I not only collected blood from the outside, I collected blood from the seam on the inside. The samples from both sides of the glove were analyzed for DNA. The DNA on the outside was consistent with Natalie Mirabballs. The DNA on the inside was not. Investigators concluded it belonged to her killer. Detectives knew Mirabball had a similar cut on his finger.

And now they believed the slashed bloody glove had put the solution to the crime within their reach. Matthew Mirabal was brought in for DNA testing and fingerprinting. Mr. Mirabel, I really appreciate you coming down here. The conclusive results came back from the lab. The blood on the inside of the glove was Matthew Mirabballs.

His DNA was also found on the flashlight along with DNA consistent with Natalie’s. The prints lifted from the plastic bag found at his workplace also belonged to him. Detective Ainsworth concluded he purchased the flashlight and the gloves for the sole purpose of murdering his wife. And that indicates that this isn’t a heat of passion thing where he just got angry and it was a substantial heat of passion where he just killed her on a spur of the moment kind of a thing.

This indicated that he had planned it for a day or two. Investigators theorized that shortly after arriving home from the street fair, Matthew and Natalie Mirabal and their infant daughter left on an errand. Matthew managed to get Natalie to an unknown location. where he killed her with the redwood board, hoping to collect the insurance money.

After taking her body to the canyon and decapitating her, he drove to the supermarket, left her car there, and walked home with the baby. By decapitating her, Mirabal believed he’d throw suspicion off of himself, hoping police would think Natalie’s murder was linked to the other beheadings in the area. He was wrong.

During the course of the investigation and the prosecution, you get to know the victim’s family very well. Um, we got to know all of Natalie’s extended family and got very close to them. And so by the end of the investigation, it’s not just the injustice that you’re trying to correct, but it’s an entire family that you’re trying to support and work for.

And you don’t want to let them down. Everybody, everybody that was involved in that case did such a great job. It was amazing. Now I realize sometimes people put the system down, but they don’t realize how hard it is and how much work it is, you know, and people say the system doesn’t work. The system works for his crime.

Matthew Mirabal was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Natalie Mirabal’s grim fate was known within hours of her disappearance. In other abductions, the victim’s fate remains an agonizing mystery. The outlying areas of Duth, Minnesota are a haven for fishermen and hunters. In 1999, one hunter prayed on young women.

In the early hours of May 27th, the Carlton County police dispatcher received a call. A clerk was missing from a secluded convenience store. No one, including her family, had heard from her since the previous evening. Police arrived and spoke to the owner who discovered the store unattended. Just need you to see if there’s any.

He told police the clerk, Katie Pooyer, was very responsible and would never leave the store even for a minute. We don’t know yet. Cash was still in the register. It doesn’t appear there’s a robbery. Whatever happened here didn’t involve robbery. Moose Lake and Carlton County officers checked the area outside the store, but found nothing suspicious or out of place.

And absolutely no sign of Katie. The store was equipped with surveillance cameras. Whatever happened was likely captured on tape. The police notified the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. The bureau helps rural police departments solve serious crimes. Yeah. The agents were eager to view the tapes.

Okay. Now, has their parents been talked to? They discovered the images were fuzzy, but the implications were clear. He’s got both hands on. 19-year-old Katie Puyer had been abducted. You mentioned something about his shoulders. I got in Carlton County, Minnesota. Store security footage gave authorities a clue to the fate of Katie Pooyer.

As the grainy scene played out over four horrifying minutes, it provided BCA Special Agent Phil Wagner with an extraordinary but inadequate perspective on the crime. It gave us a rare piece of evidence. We were actually able to see the crime in progress. It told us where this crime happened. It told us when it happened.

Uh, it showed clearly the victim. The only thing it didn’t tell us was who did it. Whoever he was, investigators needed to find him right away. A young woman’s life likely depended on it. But Sheriff David Sibo had only the barest description to go on. The surveillance tape that we looked at told us that we were dealing with a white male, an approximate age range, an approximate height range, and also a method of how he went about abducting Katie Puyer.

The kidnapper’s face remained indistinct. The situation frustrated investigators. Here was photographic evidence of a crime in progress foiled by the limitations of the video cameras. And the motive for the crime was equally unclear. Authorities knew they had to launch a widescale search and they had to do it now.

We know that the clock is running on any victim that’s taken as far as their safety goes. The Minnesota National Guard joined the Carlton County Police Department, the Moose Lake Sheriff’s Office, and throngs of volunteers in the search for Katie Pyer. Every everybody loves Katie. Police spoke to the victim’s mother to see if perhaps Katie mentioned being stalked or followed or if she was having trouble with anyone.

Her mother couldn’t think of any problems her daughter might have had. In fact, it was a happy time. Katie had just moved in with her fiance and was excited about her new apartment. She had many friends and was working her way through college. Oh, thank you. She was also considering becoming a police officer.

Thank you. You’re welcome. Cuz now you’ve got a cook in your arm. She has many. Mrs. Puyer urged the police to find her daughter. We will do that. Okay, ma’am. Good night. They assured her they would do everything in their power to bring Katie home. In the days that followed, hundreds of law enforcement personnel and volunteers were brought in to aid in the search.

But as the search went on, investigators hopes of finding Katie alive were dwindling. Then a canvas of the shops near the convenience store uncovered a potential witness. Yes. A clerk at a sandwich shop recalled seeing a man shortly before the abduction who acted strangely. She said he was staring at her and appeared to be lurking in the parking lot.

The clerk kept her eye on him and was concerned enough to jot a partial license number from his black truck. BCA special agent Terry Smith. As we canvased the area, one of the common themes that we heard over and over was about a person with a black truck. We had a description that seemed to fit from a number of different people.

And uh sometimes they were a little bit vague in what it was about him, but they all were troubled by the way he looked at women or the way that he seemed to behave. From witness descriptions, investigators managed to put together a rough sketch. The information gathered from the witnesses suggested that Katie was in the hands of a sexual predator.

Well, what happened to the other six cases to the other? Authorities held a press conference to enlist the public’s help. evidence. I believe if Katie was still in the area, perhaps someone had seen her or would recognize the sketch of her kidnapper. I do not want to discuss some. While the drawing circulated, Carlton County Sheriff David Sibo followed up on the black truck seen the night of the abduction.

We had received information of the partial license plate and we entered that into the computer along with a description of the vehicle and from that generated about 2,000 registered owners of vehicles in Minnesota. The 2,000 names was a daunting list of potential suspects. No lead was left unchecked. The sheriff’s office alerted officers to be on the lookout for any vehicles matching the truck’s description and tags.

Police made contact with everyone who had a similar license plate number. Donald Pence was on that list. Pence wasn’t home. Hello, ma’am. How you doing? I’m all sort of His wife acknowledged they owned a truck, but it was gray, not black. When asked about her husband’s whereabouts on the evening of May 26th, she said he’d been fishing at their lake property, but had returned home around 8:00 p.m.

He remained there for the rest of the night. Like many of their leads, this one went nowhere. The top is head out. Authorities returned to the tape, seeking some overlooked clue. They took it to video analyst Lance Parth to see if he could clear up the image. Parth wasn’t optimistic. When somebody contacts us and says, you know, I’d like you to look at a surveillance tape instantly.

You know, there’s problems because the quality of the cameras number one are very usually they’re inexpensive because the surveillance systems that are put into these convenience stores are not necessarily put in to catch criminals. They’re basically to monitor their facility to keep the employees honest. So, you know, the quality of the video is usually going to be poor.

With little to work with, Parth did his best to enhance the video. Finessing the images from that camera, they determined the suspect wore a New York baseball jersey. And there was some conversation about the number. Was it number 22? Was it number 23? And without being able to say 100% it was number 23, after looking at the tape and and enhancing the contrast, we determined that the number 23 was more likely than the number 22.

Come here. This new bit of information needed to be public. I’m Paul. Authorities appealed to Minnesota Twins player Paul Moler to make a public service announcement. A young woman from Moose Lake, Minnesota. She’s been missing since May 26th, 1999 at 11:30. They hoped his onair plea might reach sports fans who recognized the suspicious character with this type of jersey.

This model of jersey is welcome. Carlton County police were inundated with calls. The public service announcement brought in over 1,800 new leads. Some of the callers even reported to have seen Katie, but none of the leads led to Katie, and hope she was still alive faded. As authorities narrowed down the leads, one man, a convicted sex offender named Samuel Becker, resembled the sketch.

Becker denied any involvement or knowledge of Katie Puyer’s abduction. Investigators noticed the large tattoo on his forearm and needed to find out whether the suspect on the videotape had similar markings. He agreed to cooperate with authorities and allow himself to be taped by the store’s security cameras.

When still photographs from both tapes were evaluated, authorities noticed tattoos on Becker’s arm were clearly visible. Arm right here. What do you see? Katie’s kidnapper had no visible tattoos. Samuel Becker was not their man. BCA Special Agent Terry Smith and his team hit many dead ends as they eliminated suspects.

There were several people who became strong suspects for a period of time in the case. Sometimes they started out looking uh very very good for the crime and then we would either be able to establish that they couldn’t have done it or uh it didn’t look like they had done it and somebody else would become the preeminent suspect.

A man phoned authorities to say his coworker Donald Turner wore a blue and white number 23 baseball jersey. He used to wear his hair long but recently cut it short. Turner also drove a black truck. A check on Donald Turner revealed police already knew him, but by a more familiar name, Donald Pence. They had interviewed his wife early in the investigation.

They needed to find Pence and they needed to find him fast. Is that Donald? Investigators quickly tracked him down, never letting him out of their sight. They rushed to secure search warrants for his home and lake property. Let me make a note. The investigation now focused entirely on Donald Pence.

Donald Pence was now under roundthe-clock surveillance. Police believed he was the one responsible for the abduction of 19-year-old Katie Pyer from a convenience store in Moose Lake, Minnesota. Armed with the search warrants, detectives returned to Pence’s house. No one was home, but in the garage, they found a black truck.

Its license plate matched the partial description given by the sandwich shop clerk. Police had the vehicle towed to the BCA crime lab. A forensic examination with a lumalite looked for traces of blood. None was found inside or outside the truck, but it was evident that it had been recently and thoroughly cleaned.

A clean black truck isn’t necessarily [clears throat] suspicious, but police wondered why his wife said it was gray. Next, investigators searched Pence’s lakeside property. eventually focusing on the fire pit where they screened the cold ashes. And that’s when they found a tooth along with fragments of bone.

Yep. Oh yeah. They carefully collected the frail remains. at Hamlin University in Minnesota. Anthropologist Susan Thirstston Meister delicately sorted the fragments. Her first assignment to determine if they were animal or human. There are two ways of determining the difference between human bones and animal bones.

Uh the first is using your naked eye and just looking at the shape and the contours um and the texture of the bone and where the muscle attachment areas are. Uh the second way is to look at the microscopic structures. In humans, the microscopic structures very chaotically organized. They impinge on one another.

They bump up against one another. And in animals, non-human animals, they are arranged in parallel rows. The bones had come from a human. And from the pattern of chips and cracks on the surface, she determined the victim was incinerated shortly after death. After piecing together the larger bones, she had more information to share about the victim.

I was able to determine that the individual was female, um, of slight stature and build, and also that she was between the ages of 19 and 24 years of age. The bones revealed key clues. The victim resembled Katie Puyer. But a fundamental question lingered. Were these actually Katie’s remains? The focus shifted to the tooth retrieved from the fire pit.

The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension sent it to forensic odontologist Thomas Rumre for analysis. The tooth was tested for DNA. However, the tooth was so badly burned that any uh DNA evidence had been destroyed by the intense heat of the fire. Dr. Rumrich needed to find another way to match this tooth with the victim.

From its shape and by reconstructing some of the jaw fragments, he determined the position of the moler in the victim’s mouth. By coincidence, Katie Puyer had had the filling of that tooth replaced 2 weeks before her abduction. The burned tooth’s filling had melted out during the fire. Because filling materials vary, Dr.

Rumrich had the remains analyzed because we had discovered that there was some evidence of uh metal fragments in the burned remains. We had those analyzed by the uh metallurgical folks at the BCA to determine if any of the components of that uh metal fragment corresponded with what we commonly use in filling material today.

Most silver fillings are made of a combination of metals called amalgam. Katie’s dentist had also used a new dental adhesive to help the amalgam stay in the tooth. Analyzing the tooth from the fire pit, BCA forensic scientist Donald Meander made a compelling discovery, traces of that same adhesive.

Since this is a new product, one would not expect to see it. The product had only been on the market for 6 months. And in fact, the dentist was using a sample that had been supplied to her at a a dental show. So, it’s quite unique. Investigators had gathered ample evidence against Donald Pence. The dental adhesive gave them enough to pick him up.

Authorities moved in for the arrest. Driver, hands out the window. Step out of the car now. Stay there. Don’t move. Confronted with the evidence, Pence confessed. I put her on the but later he recanted his story and denied any knowledge of Katie Pyer. Yeah, it was to no avail. The forensic evidence against him was overwhelming.

You recall taking the girl? Authorities believe Pence waited until Katie was alone in the store. Somehow he lured her away from the register, got her to the back of the shop, and overpowered her. Then he led her out of the store and ultimately to her death. He disposed of her body in the fire pit at his lakeside property, but he failed to dispose of it completely.

Donald Pence was sentenced to life without parole. More than any other kind of case, solving an abduction is truly a race against time. And even though the clock sometimes runs out, the race to justice continues to the end.

How Police Solved Two Chilling Abductions With Unlikely Clues – HT

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