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To examine diane maxwell's clothing. >> if we could do the dna for the sexual assault and to get that and put it into the database, because now all the offenders as they go to prison they're taking dna samples. and we're getting a lot of cold hits on the dna database. >> but diane's clothing was gone. to their shock and dismay, it had been thrown away. >> over a period of years, i guess folks in the property room just had to make room for new property coming in. >> next, ramsey tried to interview the only witness to the crime, willy bell. >> we tracked him out to an address in california. and ...

A single mother of a 4-year-old son. >> well, i will tell you that it was the most devastating thing i'd ever experienced. my first reaction was denial, that there's no way that, you know, diane could be dead. >> in a search for evidence, police scoured the wooden shack. among the debris, they found a rumpled pink blanket and a man's gray suit coat. >> it had been used as a storeroom for a service station. and everything imaginable was in there from service manuals to old oil cans. >> the only witness was the homeless man, willy bell. >> and that the only physical description was it was a desc...

Police also questioned the people who loitered in the downtown area. >> they were looking for a black male. they knew that from willy bell told them it was a black male raping diane. >> they got a few leads but they didn't pan out. nothing pointed to the person that actually committed the offense. >> since the fatal wound was made with surgical precision, police also focused on health care workers as possible suspects. >> they just started dragging everyone, all the black males downtown and had them fingerprinted. and they were doing some things that would not be accepted today. >> i thought t...

T-shift, the next day went back over it, and was successful in getting i would say 12 or 15 identifiable latent prints, very good prints. and many of them looked fresh. >> the prints, three partial fingerprints and a partial palm print, did not match those of the witness, willy bell, and he was eliminated as a suspect. in 1969, before computers, someone had to literally compare a print visually to all the ones in the houston crime files. and there were millions of prints. >> let's just say houston had 500,000 prints. well, if you think everybody has ten fingers, that's 5 million prints. now, i...

Virtually empty. diane worked for the southwestern bell company, and her shift started at 1:00 p.m. but she never made it inside the building. a half hour later, a homeless man saw someone walking away from an old shack next to the parking lot. >> he walked back to the shack and walked very close to him and got a good look at him and went on to the shack. and he found this young girl lying on her back with her hands tide behind her back. and he asked her if she had been assaulted. she said yes. >> she asked him to untie her. and he said no. but he agreed he would go call the police. >> tragica...