Beyond Reasonable Doubt (2017–…): Season 1, Episode 3 - Left for Dead - full transcript

I thought this was gonna be an easy case.

I was totally wrong.

She was thrown in a trash can, and left for dead,

naked like a piece of trash.

He was a very violent sexual predator.

He targeted victims

that he knew would not be credible.

He had sexual assaults dating back to 1983,

yet no one ever filed a case on him.

It was a matter of time before he brutally attacks

another female victim and kills her.



DNA and CODIS played

a very important role in this case.

Suddenly we had physical evidence

that placed someone there.

We didn't want this to be

another case that he gets away with.

I have what I call "big brother syndrome."

It's like you're picking on someone

that can't defend themselves,

and that's just to me not right.

Maybe that's one of the reasons I went into law enforcement.

I started with Santa Ana Police Department

like in 19... I believe it was '82.

I wanted to be a detective, like anybody in their career,



and I was asked to do sex crimes.

So that's how my career got started.

I worked sex crimes for about 12 years.

This case is one of the most

interesting cases I've ever worked.

I'd like to call it my career case.

I was supervising

the sexual assault unit.

During that era,

we were probably experiencing well over

a hundred sexual assaults a month.

At that time,

there was a problem with what we call "circuit girls"

that travel across the country for prostitution.

Unfortunately,

it appears to be a high level of crime

where these prostitutes are victimized,

and a lot of crimes aren't reported

because they have fear that, y'know,

they'll be arrested because of what they're doing,

or they're not reported because they feel ashamed,

or they feel that, y'know,

law enforcement won't believe 'em.

My experience is 30 percent of the people

don't believe a prostitute can be raped.

They act like it's just a business deal gone bad.

My first contact with this case was basically a police report

that arrives on my desk.

My sergeant assigns a case,

I started reading it.

I saw the photographs...

She was thrown in a trash can, left for dead,

naked like a piece of trash.

And that caught my attention.

That's not a normal business deal gone bad.

I believe a local preacher

was walking by that night,

and heard her crying,

helps her out of the trash dumpster.

The police are called,

and an investigation is started from there.

She's taken to the hospital

and they do a sexual assault kit on her,

where they'll swab her body

and they're gonna take a DNA test.

Any semen that's found,

hairs that are left behind,

any biological evidence we can find

is done at the hospital off of her.

In forensic science,

we work off of something they call "Locard's Principle,"

or "the Principle of Exchange."

And that means that when people

come into contact with each other,

there's very likely

some exchange of some fiber,

a hair or body fluid.

And our job as forensic scientists

is to make sure we collect

any of those fibers or hairs or fluids

that have been exchanged

because we're trying to place people at a scene,

or we're trying to place people together,

or we're trying to exclude people

from being at the scene or being together.

I got this case about a week after it occurred.

I call the victim... We'll call her Jane...

She comes in, and we sit down,

and we have a talk.

I read the original police report,

but I wanna hear what happened to her...

Y'know, her words.

She told me that she was walking the street,

and she decided to make some money.

A gentleman in a black Cadillac drove up.

He seemed like a routine John.

And she says, "You want to do something in the car?"

and he says, "Yeah."

She gets in the car

they start negotiating a price

and acts that she'll perform on him.

She likes to go to a hotel.

So as they're driving down the road,

she's saying, "This hotel over here,

a hotel over there,"

and he starts goin' an opposite direction.

They pull into a parking lot

and it's an industrial area,

dark, blacked out.

And he says, "We're gonna do these certain acts,"

and she says, "No, I don't do 'em."

He goes, "I'll give you more money,"

She says, "I just don't do 'em. We're done here..."

500 bucks.

Let me out of this car!

Why is this locked?

What do you think of that?

And he grabs her by the throat,

crushes her.

He's choking her so hard she can't talk.

She passes out.

The next thing she knows, she's in the back seat.

He's on top of her,

and she's like, "I can't do this,"

and he goes, "You will,"

and he forces this on her,

takes off her clothes,

and he's performing every sexual act you can imagine on her

against her will.

For some people,

rape is an act of power.

Most of the research on it,

which is a little counter- intuitive to people

who think it's about sexual gratification,

supports the view

that the primary issue on the mind of the rapist

is one about asserting control over their victim.

And that's what gives them gratification

more than the sexual act itself.

She told me when it was over,

he says, "If you would've just done what I asked,

we wouldn't be in this situation here."

And he goes, "But now I can't let you go."

So he starts choking her, choking her, choking her.

She can't breathe, her head's about to explode,

and that's the last thing she remembers.

When pressure is applied to the neck,

the brain suffers from lack of oxygen

because of that impeded blood flow.

That lack of oxygen will put someone in a sleep state.

Then that assailant may think that

that victim is dead,

but they're not.

In the mind of the suspect,

he honestly thought he'd killed her.

So it was basically working a homicide case,

if you will,

but this victim actually came to and survived.

She described him as about six foot tall.

What she remembered that really helped this case

was it was a black Cadillac.

She described it perfectly,

that it was immaculate,

it was so clean.

She gave us a plate number that was--

I thought this was gonna be an easy case.

She gave us a plate number with four numbers

at the end of the plate:

8-1-7-7.

She memorized those numbers before she got into the car.

So I mean she did everything

you could really ask for of a victim.

I start the investigation.

We put the word on the street with the prostitutes,

say, "Hey, we're looking for this guy in a black Cadillac.

He's raping you girls. Give us a phone call."

Also I do a flyer of a black Cadillac.

We were stopping every black Cadillac on Harbour Boulevard,

sending out state-wide Bolos.

I'm also going to other law enforcement agencies, okay,

for similar type of cases and similar type of vehicles.

So I thought this was gonna be an easy case.

Just gotta find me a black Cadillac

with those numbers and we'll go from there.

We knew we had DNA evidence,

so I thought this was gonna be an easy case.

I was totally wrong.

Santa Ana, it's two different cities.

During the day,

it's city hub.

During the night,

it's a high gang populated area

and certain areas are known for its prostitution.

It's a kind of an unwritten triangle

between Arizona,

San Diego and Santa Ana

where the girls would

work their trade in each cities

until it got a little too hot,

they were wanted for prostitution,

and they'd to move on, and it was a triangle.

At some points there'd be 80 girls

lined up on Harbour Boulevard.

When dealing with sexual assault cases

involving the prostitution community,

the solvability rate was minimal.

A lot of these victims

were circuit victims that travel.

It would be challenging to even locate 'em

to do any follow-up investigative work.

If you solved, y'know,

one or two out of a hundred cases,

you were doing great.

There's only two sexual assault detectives

working all the sexual assaults in the City of Santa Ana.

So you can imagine the case load for these detectives

was pretty significant.

Jane was a veteran prostitute.

I believe she started at 16.

She normally works in Las Vegas

where she makes 500 dollars an hour

and she came out to see the circuit.

She knew the risk of the business,

but she was basically telling me

she'd been raped and left for dead,

and she wanted something done.

In her opinion, he had done this before.

A description's put out for the vehicle,

which was a shiny black Cadillac

with the last four numbers possibly being 8177.

We databased everything we could find

and could not come up with a Cadillac

with those last four numbers.

And then one morning I come in,

and they said, "The patrol officer arrested your suspect."

I couldn't be happier, right?

I start reading the report,

and what happened was

patrol was working Harbour Boulevard very hard.

We were having a couple rapes in that area--

Jane's, and several of others.

They pull up on a car. It's a Cadillac.

But in that Cadillac,

the driver is having sex with a transvestite.

Both of them are arrested for lewd conduct in public,

which is a crime in Santa Ana.

The driver matches the description

of another rape case--

not Jane's, a prostitute rape--

and she's actually working that night,

so they bring her over.

And she says, "Yes,

the driver of that Cadillac is the guy who raped me."

Another officer steps in and goes, "Hey,

I worked a case four months ago.

Jane's case and this guy

kind of matches the description."

They call up Jane,

and Jane comes to the station

and ID's the same guy...

...And so they arrested him for Jane's case.

During that arrest,

the guy submitted to a DNA test

but would not talk under Miranda.

The crime that perhaps DNA

has had the most impact on is sexual assaults

and helping us solve rapes.

When I was younger in the 1970s

victims often had to

testify and identify the suspect in court.

With the advent of DNA

suddenly we brought to those victims

a really powerful tool

that actually linked an individual

to that sexual assault.

Suddenly we had physical evidence

that placed someone there.

DNA profiles are basically

a series of numbers.

If the series of numbers matches,

there's no exclusions,

they all line up with one another,

then we do call that a match.

When we talk about a matching DNA profile,

we have to understand that

we're not looking at the entire DNA molecule.

Typically in the United States,

we're looking at 16 specific areas

that differ between individuals.

The probability of selecting another person

that would have that exact same profile

is generally one in several hundred trillion

or possibly in the quadrillions.

They submit the case to

the District Attorney's office

and the District Attorney decides to file.

We have his DNA,

but we have yet to have it tested and come back yet.

That takes time.

So I decide to look at the car

because if this thing's immaculate

then really we got the guy,

we're really moving here.

Soon as I saw the car sitting there

it gave me a bad vibe.

It was trashed.

And when I opened the car door on the passenger side,

there was food wrappers weeks old

all over the floor, all over the back seat...

It gave me a bad vibe.

However, we have positive IDs by two victims.

We go to court.

The female victim from the first rape is there

and Jane is there in court,

and they are gonna testify as to what happened to them.

For a victim to go on the stand,

as a victim of rape, it's humiliating.

I mean, it is the toughest thing probably,

besides the actual event,

they're ever gonna do in their life.

So Jane gets on the stand...

Then the defence attorney starts hammering her,

going over what happened in the car.

Jane says, "He put his left hand on my throat,

started choking me."

He would say, "A second ago you said it was his right hand,"

and a few minutes later, he's hammering her again about,

"You're making 25,000 dollars a month,

you're this, you're nothing but a prostitute..."

She stands up,

screams "I can't take this anymore,"

runs right down the courtroom, right past me,

out the doors of the courtroom, down the hall,

and I guess she's leaving the court building.

I am on my feet, chasing her as fast as I can.

She's crying, very emotional.

She goes, "I'm not testifying."

And I go, "No, if this is the guy that did it,

"we can't let this happen to anybody else.

You're like a hero on this case."

So she goes back into the courtroom.

Jane tells the rest of her story.

A judge says, "Yes,

there's enough probable cause to hold him over for a trial."

Three days later the DNA comes back from him,

and it's not our suspect.

Those charges are immediately dropped.

I'm often asked why victims of crimes

don't correctly remember what's happened to them,

if a person has been sexually assaulted.

The short answer is

the very hormones that help us fight, or run away,

or to defend ourselves under an attack

are hormones that are highly damaging

to parts of our brain

that are involved in forming memory.

Let me out of this-- Why is this locked?

Let me out!

So the majority of people

under extraordinary stress

do not have an accurate memory of what's happened to them.

After I told Jane this is not the guy,

she leaves town

and I have no idea where she went.

We've submitted all the evidence

that we can to the lab.

The DNA is in the system and we've got no hits.

This case now has gone cold.

DNA analysis was

a huge boon to forensic biology.

However,

it had certain problems that still existed prior.

And that is, if you didn't have a suspect,

it didn't solve the case.

In the first days of DNA testing,

if we had a profile

and the detectives did not have a suspect,

we couldn't do anything with that profile.

We couldn't compare it to anything else.

Perhaps we could compare it to other cases

if they were within our laboratory.

But if a case was happening in another state,

or another city,

we wouldn't know about it necessarily.

So that is one of the reasons

why the CODIS system,

or the Combined DNA Index System,

came about.

It involved legislation

from every state in America

to build this CODIS system.

CODIS,

as a database of information,

keeps all of these DNA profiles

and it compares them constantly against each other.

If one crime were committed in one state,

and another crime were committed in another state,

CODIS can link those two cases

just simply by identifying

a common DNA profile

that was in both cases.

It doesn't have to be by geography.

It could also be by time.

If two crimes were committed in the same area

but separated by days,

weeks, months, or even years,

CODIS can still identify that common DNA profile

between those two cases.

Five years goes by...

I receive a phone call from CODIS,

and basically CODIS told me

the DNA in Jane's case

matches the DNA in a case in Washington.

"You want more information, contact Washington."

And he gives me a phone number.

When CODIS gave me the information,

I don't even know what file they are talking about.

It's just a bunch of numbers.

I pull the case and realize, oh, yeah,

y'know, it's been five years.

Yeah, I remember this case...

Yeah, and I didn't solve it, which I take personal.

Tom was the type of detective

that once he, y'know, had a lead,

he would follow up on it, and follow up.

He would leave no stone unturned.

And I knew if I assigned it to Tom,

it would get done to the best of his ability.

He wholeheartedly agreed,

"Yes, assign the case to me. I'll take it."

So I call the State of Washington

and I get ahold of the detective

and say, "Hey, I just got a call from CODIS."

He goes, "I dunno what case you're talking about.

I never received a call."

I go, "Lemme tell you what happened in my case.

This girl Jane was choked to death, practically,

sodomized, raped,

and left for dead."

He thinks about it for a couple of minutes

and says, "That sounds like a case

I just worked about six months ago."

I go, "What?" and he gives me the description

of a girl who was in a bar with some of her girlfriends,

and she needed a ride home, and she didn't have her phone.

One of her girlfriends told her, "A friend of mine, Lee,

will give you a ride home if you want.

He's giving me one. You can catch a ride with us."

She gets a ride home with this guy.

He accidentally drives past her address,

dumps off her friend...

...and then he continues,

opposite direction of her house.

And she even says, "Hey, I live back that way."

He says, "I gotta make a phone call.

"Can't find reception.

"Maybe if we drive further into the woods,

we'll get better reception."

He stops the car,

and the victim says, before she even knows what happened,

he is on top of her, choking her,

dragging her out of the car.

Says, "You're gonna do what I say."

Throws her in the back,

rapes, sodomizes her, chokes her...

And then when he's done, he takes her home.

He tells her, "Hey, I'm a very important person

at this airline manufacturer where I work

and if you go to the police and tell them,

it's gonna be your word against mine,

and they're not gonna believe you because you drink."

She still goes and files a police report.

They take the victim to the hospital

and a rape examination is performed on her,

and that's where Washington

receive their DNA sample.

She made an accusation of a name,

and his name was Lee Chandler.

They bring in Lee Chandler to the police station

to be interviewed.

Once at the police station,

the detective in Port Angeles reads him his rights

and he immediately says, "Well, what do you have on me?"

Soon as he's told, "You're here under a rape investigation,"

he says, "I'm not talking without my lawyer."

"I'm heading back," basically, "to California tomorrow."

A case is submitted to the District Attorney over there.

The District Attorney over in Washington

felt there wasn't enough evidence yet

to charge Lee Chandler with a crime.

But right then and there,

I knew I'm on this.

I mean, it's like, okay, now it's leg work.

I'm gonna find out whether

Lee Chandler was my suspect or not.

When I'm talking to the detective in Washington,

he says, "Lee Chandler works for a major airline manufacturer

and we think he's possibly like a Vice President."

And then he says,

"Lee Chandler lives by you."

And I'm like, "Well, California's big.

Whereabouts?"

He says, "In the city of Westminster."

I'm like, that's really close.

I would say if I lived in Westminster

and wanted to pick up a hooker,

I'd drive to Santa Ana, Harbour Boulevard.

That's how close he lived.

I mean, it was like right next door.

I get the police reports

and I also get the drivers license number of Lee Chandler.

I start running records on him.

He had sexual assaults

dating back as far as I could find,

1983,

yet no one ever filed a case on him.

To me, he was a predator,

from what I was reading,

and very controlling.

He was a brutal rapist.

Every victim, every report that I found,

violence.

He targeted victims that

he knew would not be credible,

victims that he knew

that maybe the police wouldn't believe--

for example, prostitutes,

victims that might've been under the influence.

So a very calculating person,

and very deviant.

And those people are dangerous.

At this point,

we still don't know if we have the right person.

But even if we have the right person,

how do we prove that he owned a black Cadillac?

So many years have gone by,

and what are the odds of him driving the same car?

So we coordinated a surveillance team,

get out to the location where he lives,

and we're out early in the morning watching the home.

And we're sittin' there,

and we're watchin', and we're watchin'.

About a half hour later,

a gentleman comes out to pick up a newspaper in the driveway.

He picks up the newspaper and he looks left and right

and surveys the street.

We're hiding out in the car

just barely peeking over the dash.

We don't even know if that's Lee Chandler.

It looks like the guy on the driver's licence,

but we were too far away.

About half hour later

the garage door powers open,

and to my surprise and joy,

a black Cadillac backs out.

That's him!

I can't even describe the scene.

I am jumping up and down, my head's hitting the roof,

and I'm going, "That's him, that's that guy!"

You don't wanna hear the words.

My partner is pushing my head down,

going, "You don't wanna to be seen,

and I'm like, "That's him!"

I pop back up, he pushed me back down.

"That's him!"

He took off for work.

I'm going, "Get the plate, get the plate, get the plate!"

It's a personal California plate.

"Jet Bizz," okay?

"J.E.T. B.I.Z.Z."

But as you're watching the car drive down the road,

the licence frame bounces,

and you could see where Jane made her mistake.

The eight is a "B,"

the "I" is a one.

The "Z..."

When the plate goes up,

it covers the "Z" and looks like a seven.

"8-1-7-7."

And it was like, wow,

I mean right there, it was, wow.

I'm like, oh, he's high up in this airline company

and he really thinks a lot of himself

and he got a personal plate that says, "JET BIZZ."

Jet Business is, y'know, "I'm 'JET BIZZ.'"

And I'm like, oh, that's perfect.

Ever since that moment,

this case was called "JET BIZZ."

Whenever it's a rape type case,

it ends up being the victim's testimony

against the suspect's testimony.

It ends up being very limited evidence.

The defense is, "Well, it was consensual," y'know.

"This what she wanted," and that type of thing.

So these cases are very, very difficult to prove.

If someone's of a particular stature

like Lee being in the aerospace industry

and being in a high position,

with a little bit of clout,

money, attorney, or what-have-you,

there was a history there where he had gotten away with this.

So we wanted to proceed very, very carefully.

I didn't want to tip him off,

but I need to prove

this biological evidence from Jane is him.

So we wanted to get a sample of his DNA.

There are three main ways

that we collect DNA.

You can ask a person to volunteer to give a sample.

That would be a tip off, of course,

that this person was under investigation.

You can get a court order,

get a warrant to collect

a person's known DNA profile.

The third way would be to

surreptitiously collect a sample.

The investigators can follow the individual around

and wait for them to discard something.

We wanna be able to get as much evidence as possible

before we make that initial contact with a suspect.

So we know he's a habitual smoker.

We know that, y'know, from a discarded cigarette,

you can get very valuable DNA.

At the time in California,

you were allowed to do this.

We put a tracker, a vehicle tracker, on his car

so we would be able to follow him.

Every time his car moved, we followed it.

He, for like five straight days,

went to work and straight home.

I believe it was on a Saturday.

I was not at work,

My team that was following him...

He took off for work, and as he's driving to work,

he throws a cigarette butt out the window on the freeway...

And the team shut down the entire freeway.

We stopped the freeway

to pick up that cigarette butt,

put it into a paper bag,

and bring it back to the station

and have it tested.

That's when I used my DNA friends in forensics

to say, "This one I need fast."

As I'm waitin' for the DNA to come back,

I gotta find my victim...

Because you've heard the saying, "No victim, no crime,"

and it's been five years.

The phone number that I had does not work.

And you would think,

with all the police databases and all that we have,

it wouldn't be hard.

Could not find her.

Anything I ran, I could not find her.

I started calling all these people...

I get ahold of a lady,

and I just had a feeling that she knew her.

And I'm like, "Look..."

At the time, I didn't know it was her mom.

I said, "If you do know her,

"mention my name

"and tell her that she was a victim of a crime

and I'd like to talk to her."

Within five minutes the phone rang,

and it was her.

First I go, "Do you remember the case

where you were a victim of a sexual assault?"

She goes, "I will never forget it."

Now, this is a girl who's been

involved in the sex trade her entire life,

and she tells me she'll never forget this incident.

And I go, "Well, I'm thinking that we're about to

"make an arrest on the case.

"I can't tell you who.

"However, this is gonna be based on biological evidence

"versus eye witness evidence.

But you're gonna need to come to court and everything."

And she goes, "Well, I have a warrant for prostitution.

I'm not coming back to California if I have a warrant."

I go, "Well you need to come back

"and be a victim on the stand for me,

and for other victims like you."

I'm trying to get all my ducks in order here

so that when I make the arrest I have my victim on board.

But she just didn't wanna come back and go to jail.

So we were working out arrangements that where--

There's a law that you cannot be forced to

come back to a state to testify and then be arrested.

And I myself, I'm like, "It's a 10,000 dollar warrant.

Dismiss in the interest of justice," y'know?

It's a prostitution warrant,

y'know, an over-grown traffic ticket."

But we hadn't worked that all out yet.

I go, "We work out a way to get rid of that warrant,

and you come back and testify, will you do it?"

Finally she said yes, she will come back to California...

This is before we had his DNA confirmed.

Today's DNA technology allows us

to get DNA profiles from things that you can't even see.

Tiny, minute amounts of blood...

Skin cells that are being deposited on a surface...

These are the sorts of things that we enjoy today.

In the early '90s,

around 1992, 1993,

this process known as the polymerase chain reaction,

or PCR, came around.

And PCR is this incredible technology

that allows us to amplify

small parts of the DNA.

So we kind of target...

We don't look at the entire DNA molecule.

We just target small bits of it,

amplify those until we have enough to then type them.

Suddenly we could start looking at

types of evidence we could never look at before:

cigarette butts,

stamps that people licked,

soda straws that people drank from.

Y'know, suddenly we could get access to

very small stains

and get very powerful information from it.

I get contacted by the sheriff's crime lab

and told that the DNA from the cigarette

matches Jane's sexual assault kit

and also the sexual assault kit

taken in Washington.

It didn't come back to Lee Chandler,

but because we eye-witnessed him throwing it out,

we're saying that's Lee Chandler.

However, I would not go to trial just on that, alright?

I would want what I'd call a fresh sample, a clean sample.

Right now we got enough to say

that's the guy that raped her, alright?

So I get an arrest warrant

for attempted murder,

kidnapping, rape, sodomy.

Also I get a new warrant for his DNA.

It was an exciting point

'cause we had put so much time into this.

The next phase of the operation goes into play.

We've got the search warrant and an arrest warrant,

and the plan was to arrest him

early in the morning at his home.

We don't want this to turn into a pursuit,

or anything where someone's gonna be endangered.

We team up, and we go out at seven o'clock in the morning.

All our plain cars park in front of his house.

Come in real quick,

go up to the door, knock on the door...

Lee Chandler comes to the door.

I'm wearing a police vest at that time,

so it's obvious who I am.

He's very shocked and confused.

"Chandler, you're under arrest for attempt murder,

kidnapping, rape, sodomy."

And he turns and says, "Whoa, whoa, whoa!

"We took care of this in Washington.

We've already taken care of this."

Day I put the handcuffs on him--

That was my biggest satisfaction.

He was a very violent sexual predator.

And in our Santa Ana case,

he actually left the woman naked in a dumpster,

and he probably thought she was dead.

So by saying that, y'know,

at least made it believable it was a matter of time before,

y'know, maybe he brutally attacks another female victim

and kills her.

At the station,

this is gonna be a big interview,

because I've done my research

on all the interviews he's ever been involved in,

all the police reports I could find.

He has controlled every interview

that I could find him being involved in,

controlling everything.

And I'm like, this guy is not gonna control me.

So my interview is gonna be at in house,

and he's not gonna control me.

I need a confession.

I wanna just finish this thing completely.

I want a confession.

...charges against you of rape, assault...

I read him his Miranda rights.

He says, "I'm gonna invoke my rights.

I'm not gonna talk."

I won't be speaking without an attorney.

I think I made that clear.

I said, "Well, thank you very much,"

stood up, opened the door,

basically, "Takin' him down to booking!"

And I hear, "Hey, hey, hey! I got some questions."

I go, "In order to do that,

I'm gonna have to read your rights again."

He goes, "Alright, read 'em again."

So I read him his rights again.

He said he understood his rights.

I said, "Now, with your rights in mind,

I'd like to ask you some questions."

Taking over the control in an interview

can sometimes be a strategy

we find that good liars do

when they're being questioned by the police.

They try and actively engage them.

We find that distracts them

from paying attention to the specifics of the story.

So he says, "Well, what do you wanna ask me?"

I say, "Let's start off with

have you ever been arrested before?"

He says, "Cut the crap.

You know what I've been arrested for."

And this kind of, to me, tells me this guy,

y'know, he knows the game.

And he goes, "I wanna see the charges."

I made a mistake there by-- I showed him the warrant.

It had the date.

I could tell right now he recognized the date.

And I go, "I wanna talk to you about

"a case that happened five years ago,

a rape and attempt murder of a prostitute..."

And he says, "I'm not talking."

We didn't want this to be

another case that he gets away with.

We wanted, y'know, justice for our victim.

So we proceeded carefully.

We knew that we needed confirmation DNA.

So I said, "Okay, I have a warrant for your DNA."

He says, "Well, you're not getting that.

I'm not gonna give it to you."

And I say, "Well, this is what's kind of

"cool about this warrant.

"It's a judge ordering me to take your DNA.

"The only choice you have is whether you wanna do

a swab in the mouth or a blood test."

And he says, "I want my lawyer."

"You can't have a lawyer on this part of it.

This is a judge's order, and it's gonna happen."

And he freely gave up his blood.

'Cause we wanted to make sure that cigarette on the freeway

wasn't just the trillion and one chance

that the guy that raped both these people

were driving down the freeway

and threw out a cigarette and we picked up the wrong one.

We go for his preliminary hearing.

It's the first court day after his arrest.

Judge orders a million dollar bail.

So we're booking him,

I believe it's on a Friday,

and he should not see

a bail hearing until Monday.

So we're thinking, we're under the assumption,

that he's gonna be spending the weekend in jail.

Monday morning,

I'm going to my usual breakfast spot,

and as I'm driving down the road,

I get a call from Deputy DA Robert Mesmen.

And he says, "Jet Bizz killed himself."

And I'm like, "Hold it.

"I need to pull the car over, okay?

What're you talkin' about?"

I go, "He's still in jail."

He goes, "No, Jet Bizz is dead."

Apparently on Friday night he was able to make bail,

and he was released on Friday night.

And that's why he was out of jail.

And over the weekend

he went to his father's grave

in Inglewood, California,

knelt down beside it,

drank some alcohol,

and took his father's gun

and placed it to his head and killed himself.

For some people,

that element of maintaining

control and power in one's life

will include taking their own life

once they feel they're going to be caught.

They refuse to submit to

the authority of law or the court

and they're gonna retain control and kill themselves

to be in charge of their own destiny.

I know the victim wants,

y'know, justice to be served,

so it's kinda disappointing.

But at the same time,

there's a little bit of a sense of relief that,

y'know, it just confirms what we knew.

It confirms that,

although he might have denied any involvement in these cases,

y'know...

no one commits suicide if you're innocent.

I re-contact Jane,

and I say, "Jane, about your case...

"The guy's name was Lee Chandler.

"He's the guy that raped you.

"There's no question about it, this is the guy.

Last night, he killed himself."

She actually gulps and kind of starts to cry

and then says, "Thank you."

And that's the last time I've ever talked to her.

CODIS is a tool that solved the case for me

and gave closure to Jane.

Honestly, without that CODIS hit,

we would've never made an arrest on that case, y'know,

'cause that was that critical piece of evidence

that pointed us in the right direction

in regards to a potential suspect.