much of his time he spent on a lathe. this was suspicious since metal fragments were found on both stephanie dittrick s body as well as arlene jensen s. with a search warrant, investigators found metal shavings on ackley s jeans, in his car and in his workplace. when tested with energy dispersive x-ray spectronomy, scientists discovered that the shavings from gary ackley were the same as those found on both murder victims. but ackley s lawyer said this proved nothing. they claimed it shouldn t be surprising the metal shavings were the same because ackley knew both victims and could have transferred those particles weeks earlier. so investigators turned to the beige fibers found on the jacket near his mother-in-law s body. it was an infrared photospectrometer which identifies this polymer fiber as
why he killed his childhood friend, stephanie. that it s given me time toabout reflect on some of life seen biggest questions. like, if you could save hundreds on car insurance by making one simple call, why wouldn t you make that call? see, the only thing i can think of is that you can t get any. bars. ah, that s better. it s a beautiful view. i wonder if i can see mt. rushmore from here. geico. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance.
of his car, creating the fiber cross-transfer. ackley dumped her body a mile away in a field near the railroad tracks unaware he left more metal shavings there. he also left another calling card. an empty pack of his favorite brand of cigarettes, the same brand he left in his mother-in-law s bathroom. but what was the motive for stephanie dittrick s murder? by all accounts gary ackley had a big mouth. prosecutors think in a moment of weakness, ackley told stephanie that he killed arlene. prosecutors found a witness who saw ackley and stephanie camping together on the fourth of july weekend. prosecutors believe ackley killed his childhood friend in order to silence her, burying her body in a shallow grave.
yeah, there wasn t a whole lot of movement with the jacket. if you re sitting in the rear seat of a car and you never move, that s where the transfer would be. finally, in the national park near where stephanie dittrick s body was found, investigators discovered remnants of a campfire. some of stephanie s personal items were strewn in the grass along with a plastic shopping bag. there was a shopping bag from a local grocery store and once it was submitted to the washington state patrol crime laboratory, what we found was a very clear latent fingerprint left by none other than gary ackley. the fingerprint, along with the metal fragments and fibers, clearly tied gary ackley to both crime scenes. prosecutors knew why ackley killed his mother-in-law arlene. what they couldn t figure out is
we were still thinking she was going to come back. even when i was printing the flyers, i remember still thinking she was going to come back from some camping trip that she was having so much fun she just didn t want to come home for. investigators were stunned to discover tiny metal fragments on stephanie s body, like the ones found in the arlene jensen case. the first natural thing you have come up in your brain is, oh, these two people are connected. at 100 times magnification the fragments looked identical. but were they? to find out, analysts turned to a process known as energy dispersive x-ray spectrometry. the samples were bombarded with electrons. this created x-ray frequencies which were then charted and compared. each element has a set of characteristic x-rays. iron is different from chromium and chromium is different from aluminum. the fragment samples contained steel and brass.