Forensic Files (1996–…): Season 7, Episode 33 - Scratching the Surface - full transcript

in 2002 a letter arrived at the st.

Louis post-dispatch newspaper from a man

claiming to be a serial killer the

letter included a map with an X marking

the spot where he left one of his

victims but the map told forensic

scientists a lot more than just the

location of a body it was their key to

finding the killer

just across the river from st. Louis

Missouri is a town called East st. Louis



in Illinois where prostitutes sell their

wares often to finance their drug

addictions

thirty-four-year-old ELISA green Wade

was one of those caught in a hopeless

cycle it's rough when you see somebody

that you care about and you feel

helpless in April of 2001 ELISA Green

Wade's body was discovered in Washington

Park Illinois where she had been

strangled and there were ligature marks

on her wrists and ankles a tire

impression was found near her body which

was photographed for analysis it was



identified as a bridgestone potenza tire

just days later police find three more

bodies all known prostitutes the victims

were just displayed they were laid out

were right in the open right off the

side of roadways but on one of the

victims police found some evidence there

was no drag marks on the body but there

was a large tire impression on penny

James Lake this tire impression was from

a goodrich advantage tire different than

the tire impression found at the earlier

crime scene

over the next five months three more

bodies were found dumped along the

streets of East st. Louis

rape test kits from two of the victims

yielded biological samples which were

sent for testing

the st. Louis Police Department was

convinced that the same individual

committed all the murders since the

crimes were committed in the same manner

the victims were positioned there was

obvious disregard for any type of

secrecy any type of cover-up anything

like that it wasn't obvious these were

secondary locations six months after the

first murder the crime stopped time went

on and no more bodies appeared we

figured either three things the subject

was in custody he died or moved out of

the area st. Louis police called the FBI

for further assistance

Special Agent Melanie Jimenez was

assigned to the case trying to compile

the information so that I could get a

package together to send to our

Behavioral Sciences Unit at Quantico

I wanted the profilers there to take a

look at it and try to give us a profile

of who they thought this person was Bob

Morgan was the behavioral profiler

working on this case he knew immediately

that these murders would be difficult to

solve there's no connection other than a

business if you will transaction between

the customer and the prostitute and that

anonymity gives them that blanket to

just go in and come out most crime is

between the races so if I'm if you have

a black victim most of the time you have

a black offender

for three months the killer wasn't heard

from but inexplicably the murders

started again over the next five months

three more bodies were found dumped

along the streets of East st. Louis

Verona Thompson ebon Cruz and Brenda

Beasley the death toll was now at ten

Bill Smith covered this story for the

st. Louis post-dispatch newspaper one of

his stories profiled Teresa Wilson one

of the victims of the serial killer what

I think I ended up doing was humanizing

this woman who in a way had kind of

dehumanized her own life by getting

involved in prostitution and drug

activities and it wasn't long before

Smith got a piece of fan mail it was a

letter from the killer

five days after bill Smith's article on

slain prostitute Teresa Wilson appeared

in the newspaper he received an

anonymous letter and had a very unusual

return address I noticed also that the

postage stamp in the upper right hand

corner was upside down I started to read

it and I thought it was a joke I thought

it was somebody basically just yanking

my chain dear bill nice sob story about

Teresa Wilson write one about Greene

wait write a good one and I'll tell you

where many others are to prove I'm real

here's directions to number 17 search in

a 50-yard radius from the X put the

story in the sunday paper like the last

I think he got aggravated and I think he

wanted to somehow show us that these in

fact were not human beings that we were

dealing with and that he had some kind

of a right to do what he was doing the

letter referenced 17 murders although

police only knew of 10 the return

address included the words I thraldom a

bondage website along with the letter

was a map of a remote area along Highway

67 which was marked with an X Smith

turned the letter over to the

authorities there's a lot of taunting in

a letter like that he's very proud of

himself he feels that he's smarter than

everybody else because he can send this

letter and he can get credit for what he

did that was the first thing that came

in my mind is that he's looking for

attention when police searched the area

described in the map they discovered the

remains of another victim

now there was no doubt the letter came

from the killer but who wrote the letter

and where did it come from

the return address at New York but the

postmark revealed the letter was mailed

in st. Louis both the letter and the map

were printed from a computer the map had

been cropped to remove any copyright

notices from the map company it had to

take a lot of time he does not want to

expose himself by going to a public

library a Kinkos or wherever else you

can get access to a computer this is

something you're going to do at home

that you can print out now that he

printed it on the same kind of paper

that the letter was on this man is an

intelligence agent with the Illinois

State Police deal to the sensitive

nature of his job we cannot reveal his

identity it was his job to perform the

tedious process of finding the owner or

copyright holder of that map he compared

the map to every cd-rom and internet

site that provides maps and directions

after hours of searching he found the

map used by the killer it was on an

Expedia said that Microsoft provided the

maps for use on their site the map was

proprietary meaning that Expedia was the

only site which offered that map and no

one else the FBI wanted to know the

identity of everyone who had accessed

the st. Louis map between the day the

newspaper article appeared May 19th and

the postmark of the letter which was May

21st it gave us a four to five day

window of opportunity to see when that

map had been accessed over the Internet

when served with the subpoena Microsoft

analyzed their computer download records

and discovered that only one computer

had downloaded that map during that four

day period and the size of the

downloaded map was identical to the map

sent to the newspaper but investigators

needed to know the location of the

computer

Microsoft couldn't identify the

individual by name only by what is

called an IP number so investigators

performed what they call an IP reversal

process the same technique used to find

child pornographers the IP address which

is four sets of numbers separated by

periods identifies a particular

computer's location on the Internet

computers linked to a network through a

fixed connection typically have a

permanent IP address while computers

that access the Internet with a dial-up

service are assigned an IP address for

each session

to find the location of this particular

IP user the FBI turned the WorldCom

which provides the dial-up connection

from computer to server WorldCom's

investigation revealed that the map was

downloaded at 736 p.m. Central Time

on May 20th from the Expedia site

through the MSN online service the map

was downloaded by someone using the

screen named Maury Travis it did appear

to be an individual's actual name

however I knew that that didn't

necessarily mean it was his true

identity the home was in Ferguson a

quiet middle-class suburb just outside

of st. Louis it was owned by a 55 year

old woman who had no prior criminal

record investigators suspected the

homeowner wasn't a killer but who had

access to her computer

a forensic computer search discovered

that the map sent to the local newspaper

revealing the location of a murder

victim had been downloaded by a computer

in this home investigators decided to

have a look inside I knocked I said FBI

we have a search warrant I announced at

least three times eventually a man and

the woman answered the door it was Matt

he was in a pair of boxer shorts the

first thing out of his mouth was it's

seven o'clock in the morning you're

right it's Ellen o'clock in the morning

we're serving a federal search warrant

okay why are you here and our response

was you know why we're here

dropped his head he said yeah I know why

you're here inside police found a

computer women's wigs and shoes a stun

gun and a collection of homemade

videotapes the basement was spattered

with blood the ceiling

walls doors and carpet even the

furniture the man identified himself as

36 year old Maury Travis a restaurant

worker who had served time for a string

of armed robberies his mother owned the

home but didn't live there

the woman was Travis's longtime

girlfriend who told police she had never

been in the basement of the house she

didn't have any idea what was going on

in that house and he didn't want her to

know next to the desk was a file cabinet

we were broke into that cabinet and

found a knapsack and there in a knapsack

was we refer to it as working bag and

there was duct tape ligatures straps

good to tie victims up Cohoes type

stocking that he used as gloves

forensic scientists gathered samples of

the blood in the basement for analysis

it was a mixture from six different

individuals no one ever seen any

activity or anything around that house

and so it's just very scary you think

your neighborhood is really safe and you

don't know who your next-door neighbor

is investigators found several drafts of

the letter sent to the newspaper on his

computer's hard drive

they also found two cars at the house

on one of the cars was a Goodrich

advantage tire that matched the tire

impression left on Betty James leg a

tire on the other car was a bridgestone

potenza which matched the tire

impression near a Lisa Greene Wade's

body

Travis was taken to st. Louis Police

Department headquarters he did not talk

about crimes and actually we didn't ask

him about any of the crimes our concern

was attempting to get him to cooperate

with us to take us to more victims he

claimed in his letter that there were 17

victims our concern of course was to

find the rest of the victims

I have never interviewed anybody like

that his entire world circled around him

he was in control he wanted to be the

focus of everything and had no remorse

no nothing he was the only way can say

he is a monster

he is just pure evil during questioning

he asked for a soda later on when we

went to another interview room I had the

soda can taken to the lab Mary that car

swab the area near the opening for

epithelial cells in Travis's saliva

which could be used for DNA testing

when Travis's DNA profile was compared

to the biological material found on two

of the murder victims Yvonne Cruz and

Brenda Beasley Travis's DNA matched

eventually Travis asked police how they

found him

we told him well there was a computer

inquiry made over the internet and he

cussed a couple times and had some nice

words to say about the internet and then

he cussed again about his computer and

he was very very upset I don't think he

realized what he had done once he did

that and it dawned on him it hit him

like a ton of bricks during questioning

Travis refused to reveal the locations

of any of his other victims before

police could question him again there

was another murder which would end

the investigation forever

On June 7 2002 Morrie Troy Travis was

charged with kidnapping and murder the

homemade videotapes discovered in

Travis's home showed Travis socializing

with various women but one videotape

contained

horrendous images the likes of which

police had never seen before

there's even an actual murder I mean he

witness him actually killing one of

these people what was going on inside

his head why he did what he did that's

how I look at it trying to figure out

what makes a person do this

investigators also found plans in

Travis's home to expand his basement

dungeon he was planning on building a

two cell holding tank in his basement it

ordered more handcuffs and leg shackles

through the internet

he was even getting bids on expanding

his basement to put the secret dungeon

in God knows how far this was gone

based on the computers forensic evidence

investigators believe that Travis

enjoyed reading the articles about his

crimes in the newspaper police will say

that these men would vicariously through

the media sometimes after their crimes

are committed so they can take the

newspaper article or they can take the

TV show or whatever it might be and and

they can relive their crime and get a

kind of a high from from that also and

on the night of May 20th

Travis typed his letter to journalist

Bill Smith

site looking for a map he could use to

show authorities where they could find

one of his victims

after downloading the map he carefully

cropped the copyright notices from

around the map thinking this would

eliminate the possibility of tracing it

but he was wrong the map was as good as

a fingerprint

in this case a computer fingerprint

Maury Travis was taken to prison to

await trial he was placed under a

24-hour suicide watch where guards check

on him every 15 minutes he didn't want

to go back to the penitentiary he made

that very clear to us I'm not going back

to the penitentiary and you're not going

to give me the needle for whatever

reason guards skipped to back to back

checks it was all the time Travis needed

to hang himself in his cell without ever

admitting guilt or leading police to the

bodies of his other victims this is

where he was found

hey they had left him literally slip

right through their fingers to say that

I was angry to say the people in the

newsroom were angry about it and the

community was angry about it is really

an understatement I think people I think

people were furious and the families of

those women should have been furious

that absolutely no way should have ever

been allowed to him mr. Travis hung

himself he took all the answers with him

we have a million questions I think it's

amazing that it's such an incredible

tool that through analyzing the computer

we were able to catch someone that was

committing crimes like this

they had anybody said hey the guy's

going to send you a map and for the

investigators to be able to backtrack to

him never thought that my wildest dreams

it's almost like him saying okay here's

a map and this is how you find me x

marks the spot how many times does that

really happen it doesn't