Motive and Final Conviction

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Weekends were typically busy in the Mauser household One Saturday morning in nineteen ninety five, as Kathy Mauser was leaving for work, she reminded her fourteen year old daughter, Jenna, that she was grounded for the weekend and wasn't allowed to use the telephone either. Jenna was having some behavioral issues. A lot of fourteen year olds, fifteen year olds, might have those kinds of issues when they're growing up, lots of pressures, social pressures, problems within the family She was having such trouble that the family was taking her to counseling. Kathy returned home from work around one PM And as soon as she tried to open the door, she knew something was wrong Mrs. Muser found the front door locked, which she said was unusual because usually there's somebody there. And she was expecting Jenna to be there so the front door would have been unlocked Jenna wasn't home And she hadn't left the note saying where she went They just figured she was upset and she had basically just walked away she was just with one of her friends or None of the neighbors saw Jenna leave or noticed anything suspicious Jenna's stepfather and brother arrived home several hours later They searched the neighborhood and called all her friends, but no one knew where Jenna was. Later that night, The Mausers called police to report their daughter missing The next morning, the Mausers learned that the nude body of a teenaged girl was discovered in a ditch about twenty miles outside of town The family identified Jenna's body. Morg. the reality of being murdered. rather than an accident or it didn't hit me. I didn't understand really that something like that could happen in my life It was it was hard to deal with and to It was just such an unfair act I couldn't I couldouldn't understand it for a long time The coroner identified the cause of death as strangulation There were other injuries as well. In addition to the ligature strangulation marks, she also had evidence of blunt force injury to the head. She had received a blow to the head in the left forehead area and the left temple There were no defensive wounds and no signs of sexual assault. The scalp here is brown, about fourteen inches in length Well, the soles of the feet were clean in this case and that indicates to me that she certainly was not standing up at the scene where she was found, and she certainly did not walk there. No injur. The only other findings were some unusual marks on Jenna's thigh indentations that were made after death On a living person, these fade very quickly In this case, these are postmornem pressure marks. they don't tend to fade because the Color comes as the blood leaks out of the vessels by gravity after death and it. more or less outlines the area of pressure And then it stays that way indefinitely until the body decomposes. The Mauser's telephone records yielded the first clue Despite the fact Jenna was told not to use the telephone, she called several friends that morning. Yeah, you should talk to him. Really senior Well you'll see on Monday. Around eleven thirty, Jenna's conversation with her friend ended abruptly. Hello Jenna. One of the last people that she speaks with says that the phone goes dead. Jenna doesn't call back friend pages her a couple of times. Jenna never calls back Police found Jenna's diary in her bedroom. which had an entry from the morning of her murder. yourournal. Sorry haven'titten you, but I've been pretty busy. Things have been going pretty good at school, exxcept for the fact that guys don't even know I'm alive half the time. The dii expressed a specific interest in two boys One was considerably older than Jenna, a boy she met at a local amusement park. He was a young man about eighteen or nineteen years old who was praying children That were not age appropriate. He was older than us Not not the best kind of person that you'd probably want to want to be with, but She There was something that she saw in him that attracted her to him Investigators needed to start checking alibis And there was one that almost defied belief This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it at progressive d. com For Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates, potential savings will vary, not available in all states America's turning two hundred and fifty this year. Celebrate with total wine and more. For a milestone like this, you want to make sure there's something for everyone. Total Wine has the largest selection. F great beer, wine, and spirits for every guest and every kind of celebration. 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They're even coming to the castle to collect it. Tonight, we fasted An offer you can feast on. seell your car today on Carbmana. Pick up fees, manly No The Mauser family had planned a traditional funeral service for their fourteen year old daughter, Jenna until her friend Sarah Hollander told them about a conversation the two once had about funerals. We got on the topic of funerals and she did not want her funeral to be a sad thing She doesn't like it when people are sad. She loves to make people happy us to make people laugh And so she definitely did not want her funeral to to portray something that she wasn't about So the Mauser is allowed, Sarah to help plan the funeral service, one that was closer to Jenna's wishes Doug Mauser took his stepdaughter's death particularly hard. He had raised Jenna since she was two years old and treated her like his own She truly did have a great relationship with him and loved him. and he loved her. He was very active in her life in the search for Jenna's killer Investigators looked inside the Mauser's home but found no clues Everything was basically in its place, nothing knocked over or anything to indicate that that Jenna was fighting and screaming as she went out the door This raised the possibility that Jenna left home voluntarily What the shheriff's Dpartment did was try and identify any boys she might have known or maybe if boys she might have left the house with Even though she was grounded, maybe she'd get in a car with him and drive away Police were able to identify the two boys Jenna mentioned in her diary. Both had alibis for the day of the murder So police turned their attention to the whereabouts of Jenna's family members Jenna's eighteen year old brother, Jaon had a solid alibi. The neighbors have him placed there for hour hour and a half or so. And that's the time period Re Jenna disappears Jenna's mother, Kathy was teaching an aerobics class at the local gym, so her alibi checked out too Jenna's stepfather Doug said he went to work for a few hours When police tried to verify his alibi They discovered the security cameras at Doug's office were turned off that day When he went into the lab, he's got to go through a security gate all the cars that are coming in cleared Initially, the person who was in the booth at the time said they didn't remember seeing him or his car come through. Doug Muser could give no description of the security guard And for a man who'd worked at the lab for a number of years, you would think he would know the security guards, remember them. be able to give some description. he could not. So Doug provided a second alibi that he bought lunch at a local fast food restaurant Coincidentally restestaurant security cameras weren't working either. If he didn't have bad luck, he would have no luck at all I can't really imagine You're going into places that are supposed to have video cameras And none of them record It was sort of exasperating because of snapooze, if you will, you know We didn't have any tapes. We didn't have any solid stuff to show that he was there. When police looked in Doug's car They found no blood or any evidence suggesting foul play And there was no evidence the car had recently been cleaned But underneath the car Investigators found something trapped in the undercarriage There was a significant quantity of this dried plant material, some of it very large pieces and those were removed and analyze later. but Had this plant material been there for weeks, you certainly wouldn't expect to find such large pieces of it still attached to the undercarriage Could these dried weeds tell investigators anything Jenna's murder Doug Mauser told police he was the last person to leave the house on the morning his stepdaughter went missing He claimed Jenna was cleaning her bedroom when he left. There was no physical evidence that linked him you know, like hair samples or DNA or anything like that There were no physical evidence None. There was zippo, zero, Nil nod or nothing Yet, investigators found some suspicious plant material underneath Doug's car which they sent to forensic botanist Dr. Fred Rusha. He identified the usual specimens you'd expect to find underneath the car, grass, dirt, and debris But he also found large quantities of yellow star thistle A weed I saw the yellow star thistle and then I saw the small scraps that had been taken off the body and I was able to compare that to material that had been collected from the area around the body and also from the trees that were in the overstory above the canyon where the body was found doror Rushia was looking for what botanists call diagnostic characteristics, unique aspects of the plant that differentiated from others of the same species dor Rusha discovered The star thistle under Doug Mauser's car was identical in development to the star thistle found near Jenna's body While this was significant, it wasn't enough to tie Doug Mauser to the murder Yellow Star thistle is not a rare plant. It is an extremely common plant. So in any given area especially of northern California U and at low elevations, Yellow star thistle could be there. And with the other flora under the car, it shows that he's been off road So we could have picked it up anywhere. Investigators agreed So they turn their attention the linear marks found on Jenna Thi The marks were made by a manmade object. They were clearly of a shape and appearance that would not be normally found in nature. While looking inside Doug Mauser's car Bosma thought he found what caused them the hair on the back of your neck stands up and you're goingone. This could be one of the marks on the le But he didn't tell anyone about his discovery Instead, he sent photographs of Jenna's skin marks to Gary Robertson pioneer in the field of photogrammatry to see what he thought might have caused them. Robertson wanted to identify the exact size of the marks down to the micro millimeter. So he scanned every autopsy photograph of the marks enabled him to create a three dimensional model We're extracting a measurement, say from the left photograph extracting it from the right photograph And the computer software merges that into a three dimensional measurement or a model that we can extract and do later Judging from the size and shape Robertson suspected that at least one of the marks was caused by the top part of a seatbelt buckle This was precisely what Hans Basma thought too But he wanted Robertson's independent analysis Well, normally I don't have any information So I wasn't aware of anything about the vehicle. Next, Robertson flew to Modesto, California to conduct an experiment in Doug Mauser's car He wanted to try to recreate the same skin pattern that was on Jenna's thigh He placed a live model the same height and weight as Jenna in the backseat of the vehicle over the rear seat belt buckle. It was a hatchbag. And one of the back seats was broken and was kept flat The model remained in the same position for fifteen minutes time it would have taken to drive from Jenna's house to the dump site. When the model was photographed Robertson and Bosma discovered Pause the other mark on Jenna's leg. When he placed her in there There's carpet on the back of that seatback because it lays flat so you have a nice carpeted area. The carpet bee folds over as he pulls or pushes her over that particular area And that carpet bead was what one of the indentations were on her leg just to make sure Robertson put the model's pictures into his computer and compared them to the marks on Jenna's leg was a virtual match. Interestingly The ripped carpet in the back seat of Doug's car was unusual. something you wouldn't find in other cars when he came back and said You know, it's a match. boy, we were just estatic. We finally going to be able to nail this guy. Now we got them because now we can put Jen in that card. All the pieces fit together only one way And that's showing Doug Ms are guilty of killing Channa Let' say right Excuse me. They didn't theorize I'll say that on the screen. I'd even say it in a courtroom They didn't have to any theory other than he threw the body, killed her and threw it over the side and that she was in his car because of the mark on her leg. That's all there was. Based on the forensic botany and photogrammetry. Doug Mauser was arrested. charged with his stepdaughter's murder No