["People Get Ready We're Moving On" playing]
[vocalizing]
* Everybody feel the beat *
* Clap your hands Stamp your feet *
* As we're moving on *
* Everybody feel the beat *
* Clap your hands Stamp your feet *
* As we're moving on *
* Ain't got no time... *
* Let's get together Everybody *
[ominous sound]
[door creaking]
[Charles Bosworth] Wood River was a, uh, small, residential community.
Very, uh, safe neighborhoods.
Uh, it was a great place to live and raise a family.
We were only 30 minutes from St. Louis.
So, we had kinda, the best of both worlds.
Just a lot of hard working people.
[Charles] It was a great place, uh, for young families
and the fact that Mark and Karla had picked out a house
uh, right in the middle of Wood River
uh, to move into as their first place together,
I think is a great indication of the kind of town that Wood River was.
They both grew up in Wood River
and wanted to stay right in the middle of it.
Back in 1978, it was very shocking
that people moved in together before they would marry.
It just wasn't done.
But she was a different generation.
[Charles] Karla Brown grew up as a very independent, uh, free spirit.
She knew how to take care of herself
and she was a very strong personality
because she had grown up in the shadow of her two older sisters.
Karla was striking.
Very sharp blonde hair, very lovely face.
She was very friendly, very warm
and she was the kind of young woman
that every guy would notice when she walked in the room.
[Don Weber] Karla was 22 years old.
She was going to college.
She did some waitressing
at the International House of Pancakes.
And she was totally in love with Mark.
[Terry Judson] I had liked Mark from the beginning.
He was a little older than Karla
and had been in the Service.
He was an apprentice at the time
for construction and so on
but he was, uh, he was a good guy.
[Charles] There was just a reluctance, I think, by Mark, to settle down.
Very young man, uh, with a very active social life.
And it took him a while to decide that he was beyond all of that
and that he was ready to settle down with Karla.
[crows cawing]
[music playing]
[Charles] They decided to buy the house together
and the buying the house was, uh, more of a commitment on Mark's part
uh, to get married, as Karla had been pushing, uh, for some time.
[Donna] I think at that time,
when they decided to move in together,
she was happier than she'd ever been.
She just was thrilled.
Uh, she wanted to get married and she wanted to marry Mark.
And things were finally falling into place.
[music ends]
Mark, he was working on some kind of construction job
and he left for that.
[music playing]
[telephone ringing]
[music continues]
[telephone ringing]
[speaking indistinctly]
You'll never believe, this house is so beautiful.
I know. I can't believe. We're right in the heart of town, too.
Where we grew up. It's so nice.
You have to come over. We have all of that. [laughs]
And Mark over, all of that. [laughs]
And Mark has just been so crazy about moving.
[indistinct conversation]
[loud knocking at door]
[hanging up telephone]
[knocking at door]
[bell tolling]
[ominous sound]
[Charles] Mark and his friend, Tom, came home from work, later that afternoon.
Mark wanted Tom to see the house.
And Mark sees that the door is unlocked,
which is a little irritating to him
because he wanted it to be a little more secure than that.
[music playing]
Mark calls for Karla and doesn't get any answer.
Karla.
They move through the house.
And Mark assumes that Karla's in the basement.
Karla.
But he certainly wasn't expecting to see
what he found when he went down the stairway.
[intense music playing]
[Don] He saw the seat cushions on the couch moved
uh, like there was a struggle.
He saw the TV trays on the floor.
He saw the blood.
Called out for Karla again.
[shouts] Karla!
And then, she was about four feet inside
with her hands tied behind her
and her head and waist dumped in a 25-gallon can of water.
[Charles] Mark pulls her out of the bucket of water
and his friend called 911
and asked for the police and an ambulance.
When the police arrive, Mark is hysterical.
He's crying, he's screaming Karla's name.
[indistinct chatter]
Mark tells the police he has found Karla's body in the basement.
His friend is trying to help give information to the police.
The Wood River police
immediately called, uh, for a crime scene technician
from the Illinois State Police to come in.
And he did the preliminary investigation of the crime scene.
Taking photos, looking for evidence.
Um, preserving the case.
Preserving the evidence, uh, around the body.
[Don] I was an assistant State Attorney at the time of the crime.
So I went over to the crime scene and I actually
went down to the basement where I could see it for myself.
[radio chatter]
It was a very, very strange,
almost like a refrigerator, cold scene,
where you knew that this young girl had died there.
But there was more than that. There was sort of a...
A feeling around in that basement that was really evil what happened.
[indistinct chatter over radio]
[Charles] There was no sign of a break-in.
Uh, the locks weren't broken. There was not a broken window.
All of the evidence suggested there had been a struggle that had begun on the sofa.
[intense music playing]
The condition of Karla's body certainly indicated
that she had resisted and been overpowered.
There is two men's socks tied in a knot around her neck.
Her hands are tied behind her back
with, uh, white electrical wire.
She's naked from the waist down.
The cause of death was ruled strangulation.
The socks around her neck were so tight,
uh, that they had to be cut off.
So, it was, uh, a very strange crime scene.
And it was just getting started.
We were actually in Cedar Rapids, Iowa
when we got a phone call from a friend.
And, uh, told us the news of Karla being murdered.
[Terry] It was just staggering to us
and that's... We were there, in the middle of nowhere.
You know, it was a six hour drive
and... It was just...
you know, terrible trying to find out anything.
I mean, this was a time and era when
there weren't cellphones or anything.
It was just devastating.
It was very emotional, you know.
All you know is that she was killed.
We didn't really know how, what, when or why.
[Donna] We drove down to St. Louis.
Worst probably 24 hours, of my life.
We would stop on the side of the road at a gas station
to a pay phone,
and call and try to get some answers about what was going on.
Then, I remember finally reaching Connie on... My older sister, on the phone
and all she could say was, "Donna, it's worse than you can imagine. Get home."
[Charles] There's, uh, a saying that you look at the in-laws
before you look at the outlaws.
And this was a perfect case of that.
Police immediately looked at Mark as a potential suspect.
You've got, uh, a young man who is the one who finds Karla's body
uh, reports to the police in spite his hysterical situation,
when the police arrive.
Uh, they knew that they had to look at Mark as perhaps the number one suspect.
But Mark had an absolutely iron-clad alibi. He was at work.
He was 20 miles or so away from the house.
So, he was on the job all day, never left.
Was never out of his co-workers' sight.
And there's no way he could have been at the house
at the time Karla was murdered.
So, the police began to interview the neighbors.
This occurred during broad daylight.
Uh, so they're going to neighbors asking them
if they saw anything, if they heard anything.
The house beside Karla and Mark's house was owned by Dwayne Conway.
Young man. And he told the police
that he and a friend of his had sat on the porch most of the afternoon.
Drank and probably smoked a little pot.
But they both said that they were unaware
of anything happening to Karla, uh, until the police arrived.
While the police are checking with neighbors and everybody,
they find a woman who actually used to live in the house
that Mark and Karla had just moved into.
She was driving by, uh, with her grandson in the car.
Young boy. Six or seven years old.
[Eric Moses] Grandmother was taking me to the dentist.
She said, "Oh, let's pull into your old driveway.
You can see your old house."
'Cause we lived there just nine months earlier.
So, we drove past the house
and we saw Karla Brown and another man arguing.
I maybe saw them for five seconds.
[Charles] They got a very quick look at...
Good sized man, long hair and probably a beard.
They didn't get a real good look at his face, but they see, uh, a profile.
That was the last time anybody could report seeing Karla alive.
[Eric] I probably didn't truly understand how big of a deal
until probably years and years down the road.
I guess the thing that sticks out to me is that
the odds of us pulling in the driveway,
I mean, we really go to the dentist once a year.
I mean, [laughs] it's a very long shot
that we would have seen those two on the day that she was murdered.
[telephone ringing]
[Charles] The police also learned fairly quickly
-that Karla had been on the telephone - [telephone ringing]
with one of her best friends, in the middle of the day.
And they were chatting.
- Karla was telling her about the progress -[knocking at door]
in moving into the house.
And while they were chatting, Karla said...
Someone's here. I gotta go.
And that was the last time that her friend would ever talk to her.
[music playing]
[Patrick Gauen] There were other people who made phone calls
-to Karla that day -[knocking at door]
after that time frame, that were never answered.
And they put the time of death
about six hours earlier from the discovery of the body
which was about 5:30 in the afternoon
so she was killed, uh, around noon time.
[door unlocks and creaks]
[Charles] Because Wood River was such a small town
and a fairly tight-knit community,
they knew that anyone who was in Karla's circle of friends,
might be considered as a suspect.
The first guy they looked at was a local tough named Jack Myers.
Jack knew Karla very well.
Uh, they were social acquaintances
and it was well-known in their circle of friends
that, uh, Jack had made advances to Karla any number of times.
But Karla had always rejected his advances.
[Donna] Karla was very, very popular
but she sometimes got attention she was not comfortable with.
She had a picture published of her in a bikini
taken at their beach area there and it was gorgeous.
I mean, she was beautiful in it, this beautiful blonde hair.
And a figure to die for.
She was really a knockout
and, uh, she got a few phone calls that she didn't appreciate.
But, uh, you know, when you're that good looking,
you know, those things, I guess, happen.
But it was kinda scary.
[Charles] Even Karla's closest friends
thought that Jack Myers was probably the lead suspect.
There had been a few incidents of violence with women.
But Jack passed a polygraph.
The police also looked at Karla's former stepfather, Joe Sheppard.
Joe Sheppard was, uh, was known to the police.
He did not have a sterling record in Wood River.
He had been married to Karla's mother for a short time.
I guess my take was
everybody's guilty till we find out something separate
or something different.
And I know we gotta look at the closest people to you.
I was in college when mom got married, uh, we called him Papa Joe.
And that didn't end up being a good relationship.
I was really happy for mother when she got rid of him.
He was a very mean man.
And, yeah, we certainly considered him a suspect.
Some of Karla's friends said that they had always been uncomfortable around him
and, in fact, one of her friends said that he had made
uh, a sexual advance toward her
when she was spending the night with Karla one night.
But it wasn't long before they ruled him out as a potential suspect.
There was absolutely no evidence linking him to the murder.
The problem for the investigation by the police
was that there was almost an endless list of potential suspects.
[birds chirping]
[Donna] I wanted everybody ruled out.
I wanted them to be thorough.
Uh, and if that meant, asking Terry questions,
asking Mark, that's their job.
I could see nothing in the family,
nothing with Mark.
I certainly couldn't believe Mark had anything to do with it.
I remember, a couple of days later,
Mark asked if would go into the house with him.
He wanted to get some things he had there.
I drove him down there.
I didn't want him to, you know, be there by himself.
You could tell he was just still in shock.
And, you know, I'm pretty nervous about it too,
because it's kind of a scary thing.
Walking down the steps, it was just kinda...
As you go down there, it's just a feeling of dread.
I didn't wanna be there.
It was a very, very cold feeling.
Very scary feeling.
You know, scary feeling.
[footsteps approaching]
[siren wailing]
[Charles] As the police continue their investigation,
uh, two of the people that they were very interested in,
were Dwayne Conway, the neighbor,
uh, who lived right next door to Mark and Karla's house.
And his friend, who was named John Prante.
The police were very suspicious of them
because the front porch on Dwayne's house is a matter of feet
from, uh, Karla and, uh, Mark's house.
And if there had been some violent struggle inside,
there's no way that, uh, two people sitting on Dwayne's front porch
wouldn't have heard something.
So, they asked them to come into the police department
to give their statement
and, uh, take a polygraph.
They both agreed.
John Prante passed the polygraph
and indicated that he knew nothing about Karla's murder.
And was ruled truthful by the examiner.
But Dwayne Conway was so upset and rattled
uh, during his polygraph,
that the examiner said that he just was unable to offer an opinion
on whether he was being truthful or not.
As the weeks passed,
the police experienced a tremendous amount of pressure from the public
and from Karla's family,
to make some kind of progress in this investigation.
Karla's family was absolutely shocked
that the police could not identify,
uh, at least a prime suspect, a lead suspect in the case,
let alone, make an arrest.
[Donna] The Wood River Police Department,
they were in over their head.
They were good for getting cats out of a tree.
Things like that, but, they didn't solve murders.
And we were very frustrated that it didn't seem like they were asking for help.
We felt like there were probably agencies out of there
that could have provided a lot of assistance.
But, I think Wood River police wanted to solve this case.
They wanted to go on record as being
you know, the ones who found out who killed Karla Brown.
The community was very upset because this murder occurred
amid what they... Everybody found out,
was a series of break-ins and assaults.
[Patrick] Around the time of Karla Brown's death,
there had been other sex crimes in that area.
There was, in fact, a serial rapist, operating there.
Uh, after her death,
the police chief of Wood River resigned
uh, under criticism that he had hidden from the public
reports of 14 sexual assaults, attempted rapes or rapes.
[Charles] And while the police were investigating Karla's murder,
there's another break-in,
not far away, a matter of a few blocks away from Karla and Mark's house.
A man breaks into a house
and sexually molests the woman who lives there.
Police were able to make an arrest
after the woman called to report
that she'd been assaulted by someone who broke into her house.
His name was Tony Garza.
He admits that he's responsible for some break-ins and sexual assaults
that have occurred but he says,
"Look, I certainly didn't murder Karla."
But Tony Garza was a general fit
of the description that, uh, the woman and her grandson
of the man they had seen in the driveway talking to Karla.
And then police got statements from two of the guys who were cellmates with Garza.
And, uh, in these two cases, uh, both of them claim that Tony Garza had confessed
to them that he had killed Karla.
[birds chirping]
[Charles] While the police were investigating Tony Garza for the murder of Karla Brown,
they had incriminating statements by cellies
saying that Tony Garza had told them that he had killed Karla.
However, the description he made of the crime
uh, was nowhere close to what the police knew
uh, were the facts of the case.
And they realized that, uh, that the statements,
probably were based on press reports
uh, rather than based on, uh, statements by the person who actually killed her.
So, at first what they thought might be a break in the case,
turned out to not be true.
[siren wailing]
At this point, people in Wood River were frightened.
There had been a murder of an innocent young woman in the basement of her home.
In broad daylight.
And then, a series of sexual assaults and break-ins.
People felt that they were no longer safe in their homes.
Sales of door locks and firearms had rocketed in the Wood River area.
And the police were under an incredible amount of pressure and criticism.
[indistinct chatter over radio]
[Terry] We appreciate that, you know, small town police
fortunately, they're not accustomed
to handling murder cases.
And that's a good thing,
until you have a murder case.
[Donna] Yeah, we would come back to Wood River every two months.
We'd be down at the police station to see
you know, what was kinda going on
and to kinda give 'em a little nudge, like,
you know, is there anything else you can do?
We didn't want the case to grow cold.
[trolley wheels rolling]
[Charles] Despite the best efforts of the Wood River police,
the case really doesn't advance.
The leads are few and far between.
The murder of Karla Brown becomes a cold case.
A little more than two years after Karla's murder,
there is an election and a new States Attorney is chosen for Madison County.
Don Weber.
[Don] The first day in office,
the first thing I did was I went down the hallway
and I got the, what I could, of the Karla Brown case
and I put it on my desk and I said,
"We're gonna solve this case."
[Patrick] Don Weber and I went to high school together.
I remember, he told me about reopening
the Karla Brown case
and said that
he'd never forgotten about her murder because
her picture looked so much like a girl
that he and I had gone to high school with.
[Charles] Don had made a vow to himself and to Karla Brown
that he would not rest until the case was solved.
[Don] After I read the file, I wanted to form a task force.
Wood River, very well-intentioned, very sincere.
Really wanted to solve the case.
They had been given a couple of years, they couldn't do it.
And it was time to assemble people
who had more resources and more expertise.
[woman reporter] The Madison County States Attorney, Don Weber,
has been obsessed with Karla's unsolved murder.
[Don] Everyone was a suspect.
And no one was a suspect.
And that's the trouble with investigations like this
is you have a hundred suspects,
but no one to really focus on.
So, we started analyzing the evidence very carefully.
One of the primary investigators in the case had an opportunity
to attend a presentation by John Douglas from the FBI
who was developing the psychological profiling ability of the FBI.
He was interviewing serial killers around the country.
Ted Bundy and those kind of serial killers
and building the ability to analyze the evidence, analyze the crime scene
and from that, extrapolate the kind of person
that would commit that kind of crime.
And, uh, Douglas agreed to look at the Karla Brown case
and see if there was anything that he could offer
the, uh, investigators, that they might have missed,
in the preliminary investigation.
And he gave them, uh, perhaps the most incredible analysis
of the crime scene, uh, that left them absolutely stunned.
[Don] He looked at the crime scene photos he asked one question,
"Was she feisty or was she docile?"
Well, answer was, "She was feisty."
He looked at it for a little while
and then he started in with this uncanny
psychological profile of the killer.
He says, "Here's what we got.
He's a white male between the ages of 25 and 30.
He was living or visiting within one or two houses of the victim at the time.
He was in the Navy.
He had some kind of electrical, practical experience
He was a loser with women.
He stayed around the area for about a month and he left the area."
And then, a real interesting one at the end, he said,
"He was driving a beat-up car, red or orange.
Probably a Volkswagen."
[Terry] The John Douglas stuff was...
I mean, it's the sort of thing they make movies of.
It's kind of scary, you know, that they can do that.
Douglas told us what we needed to do.
We needed to hype this in the media as much as we could.
He said, "This killer is complacent.
He thinks he got away with it.
And you have to make him nervous."
He said, "If you do this right,
the killer will eventually call you on the phone.
Because he's so obsessed with knowing what's going on with the investigation.
He will call you, but when he does,
he will try to disguise it by saying something like,
'I'm a witness, but I don't wanna be a suspect.'"
[Charles] A few weeks later, one of the crime scene investigators
meets with a forensic expert
who is pioneering a way of investigating crime scenes using a computer
to enhance the photographs from crime scene investigations.
The investigator asked him if he'd be willing to look at the photos
from the Karla Brown case using this new computer enhancement technique.
He notices bite marks on Karla Brown's neck and collarbone
that had not been discovered by the police
or the forensic experts during the autopsy, the original autopsy.
Investigators believed that those bite marks might help
at least narrow the field of suspects.
As far as I'm concerned, from what I can see
and from other cases and other convictions,
bite marks are as dependable as finger prints.
[Charles] Douglas suggests that it would be a good idea to exhume the body
because the skin would retain the bite marks even after this period
uh, after the body had been buried.
[Don] We really had to do the exhumation
because we didn't have good pictures of the bite marks.
[Donna] On the exhumation, I don't know if they had to, but they did come to us.
They kinda asked our permission.
We all sat down and talked and said, you know, we need to do
anything we can to help with this investigation
and, uh, so we... I think we did have to sign off on it.
[female reporter] Weber is looking for one conclusive piece of evidence.
Bite marks.
Weber says, whoever killed Karla,
left a bite mark on her lower neck.
Tomorrow, a national expert will examine Karla's body,
hoping to match the bite mark with the dental records of the killer.
[Patrick] It was a beautiful, blue sky, sunny day.
I remember when they opened the concrete vault,
it hissed.
Which sounds kind of macabre, but it was a good sign.
Because it suggested that the vault had held, that it was air tight.
And that that might portend the better condition of the body in the casket.
[Charles] The investigators re-examined Karla's body.
The pathologist said that Karla had drowned.
Uh, which was a switch from the strangulation verdict that had come out before.
Armed with some of the new evidence,
including the fact that, uh, Douglas believed that
the killer would have been somebody who was comfortable in the neighborhood.
They decided to go back and renew their look
at, uh, the two people who had been right next door
uh, at the time of this crime, that was Dwayne Conway and John Prante.
John Prante had passed the polygraph in 1978
but Dwayne Conway did not.
So, police brought Dwayne Conway back into the police station
for a renewed investigation
by one of the expert interrogators by the State Police.
Conway was very nervous, very upset
but adamant that he had done nothing wrong.
[Don] And while we were with Conway, there's a phone call.
[telephone ringing]
It was John Prante.
And he said,
"I was a witness to this, but I don't want to be considered a suspect."
[Charles] When Dwayne Conway was in the police station,
they were literally talking about the case
in Weber's office, when John Prante called,
and said,
"I'd be happy to provide any information
that I can, because I was next door.
I just don't wanna be a suspect."
...thing of that nature, but I'm just curious.
When Prante called, it just confirmed
everything that Douglas said that was gonna happen
in the psychological profile that he gave us.
I mean, it was incredible. We were all mystified by it.
[hangs up]
[Charles] When the police renewed their investigation of Prante,
one of the things that they wanted to find out
was what kind of car was he driving at the time of the crime.
Well, John Prante was driving an old, beat-up, red Volkswagen "Squareback",
at the time of the crime
that fit the description that John Douglas had given
as the kind of car that the killer would likely drive.
The police knew that with the new bite mark evidence,
that the way to either rule in or rule out a suspect,
was to have an impression of their teeth.
So, they took impressions from Dwayne Conway
and from John Prante.
So that they could have their forensic odontologist expert
review the teeth and see if they fit the pattern
of the bite mark that had been discovered on Karla's collarbone.
They took the cast of the teeth to their expert in New York.
And he looked at the cast of John Prante's teeth,
made some measurements,
compared it to the photo and the marks
and said, "This is your guy."
That gave the police the evidence they needed to arrest John Prante.
Once Prante had been arrested,
some witnesses came forward who told stories
of Prante talking about the crime.
And reviewing facts about the crime scene
that nobody could know unless they were at the crime scene.
He knew about the barrel of water.
He knew about the hands tied behind her back.
Prante knew more than he should have.
[Don] There were a number of his friends
who talked about how Prante could not accept rejection from women.
And that's the same thing Douglas told us.
And that one of his friends said,
"I've never seen anyone
become as depressed and agitated,
as he did, when he was rejected by women."
[Donna] John Douglas did that complete profile
on the murderer of Karla Brown.
And it amazingly fit John Prante.
When he was the one arrested,
you know, you look back and, uh,
it was really amazing.
John Douglas' profile was right on.
[Charles] Weber's theory was that Prante had gone over to talk to Karla
in hopes of a sexual encounter.
Then she had rejected him.
* Everybody feel the beat *
* Clap your hands... *
And that their argument may have started outside
but it proceeded down into the basement
where there was a physical confrontation.
And that the violence got out of control and, uh, cost Karla her life.
* Everybody feel the beat *
* Clap your hands Stamp your feet *
* As we're moving on *
[ominous sound]
[screams]
I think he thought she was already dead when he put her in the water.
[metal barrel being dragged]
[ominous sound]
The really bad part, to me, about the crime scene is staging it.
Putting her in the barrel of water
and what Douglas told us about that is,
when you see water, a toilet, a bathtub, a tub of water like this,
that always means the crime scene has been staged.
The killer is trying to make the crime
look different from the way it really happened.
And, I think he did in this case.
And Karla had her hands tied behind her with electrical cord.
And that's where Douglas got the part about
uh, he had some kind of electronic background
because this guy used electrical cord.
Not rope or twine or anything else.
And, uh, he used what Douglas later identified somehow, magically,
as a Navy knot.
He knew that's a kind of knot you use in the Navy.
And from that, he concluded that the killer must have been in the Navy.
And that's where he got that part of the profile.
If you see a picture of Prante around the time of the crime,
he's got a baseball hat on, he's got a three-day old beard.
He hadn't had a haircut in like, three weeks.
I mean, he was just... Didn't look very well at all.
But then, two years later,
he was showing up with a great haircut.
Nice looking guy, carrying a briefcase.
Very professional, just like Douglas said he would
because he'd gotten away with the murder of the century.
[Patrick] The bite mark was a major key to the attention this case got.
Is this going to be the opening
of a new frontier of forensic science?
When I say that, I like to point out
that it sort of was, but one that collapsed upon itself later.
Now, bite mark evidence has been pretty much relegated
uh, to the scrap heap.
I don't think any courts are taking bite mark evidence seriously anymore at all.
But in the case of the Karla Brown murder,
the bite mark evidence did not appear to have made
a great impression on the jury.
Jurors said that they had just
pretty much disregarded it because of all the other evidence in the case.
[Donna] I think it just shocked the whole community so much when Karla was killed.
She seemed so innocent, so vibrant.
So much alive that it just
uh, really scared everybody and made everybody think
about their own mortality and their own families.
It's now been 45 years.
We know the lives Karla touched
in her first 23 years, was many.
And you stop and think of, you know,
what she could have done in the next 45 years and in the future.
It's...it's just a shame that the world is gonna miss that.
And that we as a family,
have missed watching her grow up.
We had a resolution. Probably not the one I wanted,
but we had a resolution.
Uh, he was convicted.
All the suspects that we had,
they were all cleared when we came up with the right guy.
Uh, the family was relieved.
The community settled down.
And it's a relatively peaceful community now where
people don't even know
that that's the house where it happened.