narrator: in the 20 yearsfollowing an unsolved murder, lives changed, and sodid forensic technology. in time, a high-poweredmicroscope and dna profiling revealed a clue noone had seen before. [theme music] narrator: les's grocerystore was an important part of the community in the smalltown of superior, wisconsin. members of the gran familyhad worked there for years. -les's grocery datedback to the '60s.
my mother, my grandmother,myself-- we all worked there at different times. we lived right next door to it. it was a typicalsmall grocery store. narrator: in the 1980s,51-year-old lynnea gran worked in the store. at the time, she wasthe divorced mother of four children. over the years, thestore had its share
of robberies, but no violence. all of that changedon august 9, 1986. lynnea's 17-year-old son,rodger, was at the county fair until 2:00 am. when he got home, hismother wasn't there. -it was so late aftertheir closing time that he went from thehouse, walked directly over to the grocery store,looked through the front door which had a glass windowyou could see through.
and almost immediately, saw hismother laying face down just inside the frontdoor of the store. narrator: whenpolice arrived, they found lynnea gran dead,lying in a pool of blood. there were massive injuriesto her head and to her face. -nothing was missingfrom the cash register. nothing was missingfrom her purse. there didn't appear tobe any sexual motivation. there was no clothingissues or body issues
that could bedetermined in terms of a sexual assaultinvestigation. so it was just a murder withnothing else to go with it. -but there's also the potentialthat someone came to the store with the intent ofrobbing the store, but got scared off, possibly bya passerby or another customer. narrator: accordingto the family, lynnea had no known enemies. -superior is a small town.
and a brutal murderlike that doesn't happen like it doesin new york city. and i don't think theyhave a lot of experience dealing with that type of thing. narrator: some thoughtthe county fair may have had somethingto do with it. -there usually isa slight increase in crime around thetime of the fair. you will find higherincidence of, you know,
petty thefts, thosekinds of crimes. it seemed to me it wouldbe a natural thought, perhaps somebody fromthe fair had killed her. narrator: with so fewclues and no witnesses, investigators hadlittle to go on. but they did find onetantalizing piece of evidence. -when officersentered the store, they also saw whatappeared to be footprints on some of the tiles.
narrator: would these shoeprints lead them to the killer? lynnea gran hada difficult life. she was a divorcedmother of four children, largely raising them on her own. and she worked hard toprovide for their upbringing. but her childrenremember another side. -one of my favoritememories of my mom comes from way back when iwas about eight years old. she had gotten all gussied up,and had her makeup on, and came
out of the houseto get in the car. and i had left a plasticgun laying in the grass. i picked it up andswung it towards her. and it splashed her, and messedup her make up and her hair. and my heart sank. i thought for sure iwas in deep doo-doo. instead, she came after me,tackled me in the wet grass, grabbed the garden hose,and laughed and giggled. and we were both soaked.
and so what could have beena really bad situation, she turned into fun. narrator: for boththe family and police, lynnea's brutal murder wasdifficult to understand. -it was dramatic, substantial,horrible, gruesome, whatever term youwould put with it. the medical examinerestimated somewhere in the range of 15 to30 blows to the head. it was clearly done insome kind of fit of rage.
narrator: randomkillers rarely spend that much time andeffort killing someone. in fact, that kindof violence usually indicates a relationship betweenthe victim and the killer. -i think there is actually anopinion that it could have been someone close to the victim,such as a family member. some kind of really emotionaldispute or something. -they initially consideredeveryone a suspect. and they even questionedmy older brother
of his whereabouts, and couldhe verify his whereabouts. narrator: lynnea granhad four children. 17-year-old rodger, whofound his mother's body, was the only onestill living at home. lynnea's threeother children all had alibis for thenight of the murder. so investigators turnedto lynnea's ex-husband. -being that she wentthrough a bitter divorce with her husbandjerome, he was looked
at as a potentialsuspect in this case. narrator: but jerome granwas 800 miles away in ohio on the night of the murder, analibi corroborated by others. originally, police hopedthe bloody foot impressions at the scene would leadthem to the killer. but they were fromrodger's shoes. -she was in a pool of blood. would not have been uncommon tofind those footprints in blood in the store matchingrodger's shoes.
narrator: rodgeralso had an alibi for the night ofhis mother's murder. he was at the county fair withhis friends until 2:00 am. and his friendscorroborated his alibi. -all he couldremember is that he was with friends at the fair. they'd been drinkingand using drugs. and he didn'tremember anything else other than finding her body.
narrator: although rodgeradmitted he was drinking and using drugs on the nightof his mother's murder, no one in the familybelieved rodger had anything to do with it. -it was ludicrous. i'd known rodger his whole life. i mean, rodger was not violent. he was a typical17-year-old boy. he wanted to think he was thetoughest kid on the block.
but he was not a fighter. narrator: investigatorssearched lynnea's home next door and found what lookedlike the murder weapon-- a wood-handled clawhammer in a drawer next to the kitchen sink. -the pathologist noted that thewounds had this circular shape, and gave an opinion that it wassimilar to the head of a claw hammer. narrator: unfortunately, thehammer yielded few clues.
-but the state crimelab reported back that there was no bloodlocated on the hammer. narrator: police also examinedthe clothing rodger was wearing when hefound this mother. on it was his mother's blood. -rodger had told us thathe had found this mother. that he, in fact, hadknelt down next to her and cradled her head. had made some attemptto revive her.
so the simple fact that herblood was on his clothing really did not give us awhole lot of information. narrator: three months passed. then, 180 miles away inthe town of eau claire, wisconsin, 19-year-oldsteve hanson was arrested forbeating a man to death. -steve hansoncommitted the murder with a hammer, which wasa possible instrument that was used to murder lynnea gran.
-the officers thought that stevehanson had to be connected, or at least had to belooked at as seriously connected, withwhatever had happened. i mean, how common is it forhammerhead blows to the head murders within the samegeographical areas? narrator: then policelearned something else-- that steve hanson and rodgergran knew one another. they both had thesame group of friends, and allegedly hadused drugs together.
was it possible that the twohad a disagreement, possibly involving drugs, andthe murder was revenge? police were investigatingtwo brutal murders in wisconsin, bothcommitted with a hammer. 19-year-old steve hanson wasarrested for the murder in eau claire, andeventually confessed. he denied having anythingto do with lynnea gran's murder 180 milesaway in superior. he also said he had analibi, which checked out.
-while he knew rodger gran, andwhile he had-- still had ties to the community, he wasliving in eau claire, and could not havebeen in superior at time of lynnea gran's murder. narrator: with no suspectsand no apparent motive, the case went cold. -it was frustrating, personally. the gran homicide wasprobably the worst homicide i've ever seen.
it bothered me that we werenot able to successfully bring this case to conclusion. narrator: 20 years passeduntil march of 2004, when police captainchad la lor was assigned to head anew cold case unit. the first casethat caught his eye was the lynnea grancase-- a murder that took place when hewas still in high school. -investigators atthe time weren't sure
which way to go withthe investigation. we had rodger granthere stating that he had found this mother dead. that he had been thereearlier in the evening and she was fine. we had no other eye witnesses. it was really a tough casebased on a lack of witnesses, and a lack of conclusiveforensic evidence in the case. narrator: special agentjohn christophersen
was also assigned to the case. -captain la lorand i looked at all of the evidence thatwas kept from 1986. and we subsequently transportedthe evidence to the crime laboratory in madison, andmet with analyst ken olson. -back in 1986 whenthis homicide occurred, we were just starting,as a laboratory, to do blood stainpattern analysis and interpretationat crime scenes.
we weren't doing bloodstain pattern interpretation on clothing untilthe early 1990s. narrator: one ofthe first things olson did was toexamine the claw hammer found in the victim's kitchen. the 1986 analysisdidn't find anything. but with newhigh-powered microscopes, olson found minuteamounts of what appeared to be blood in thehammer's grooves and edges.
even if this stain hadbeen identified in 1986, it would have been toosmall for dna testing. by 2004, that wasno longer the case. -because of dna, you don't evenhave to see the sample anymore. narrator: the stain wasidentified as human blood. and dna testinggave investigators their first hard evidence. -once the dna wastested on the hammer, and it came backto be lynnea's dna,
that hammer became aprobable murder weapon. that was a majorbreakthrough in the case. and now we havethe murder weapon. it was a hammer. it was found in the lynneagran, rodger gran home. narrator: next, investigatorsexamined a denim jacket confiscated fromrodger gran's bedroom on the night of the murder,even though he wasn't wearing it when police arrivedat the scene.
on the right sleeve, olsonfound tiny mist-list droplets of blood, high-velocityimpact spatter, which is very different froma blood drop or smear. -if you have somebody thathas impact stains that are small enough,that are consistent with high-energy impactstains, that person was either deliveringthe blows or standing nearby when theperson was beaten. narrator: inside the jacket,there was more blood.
it looked like a contactor smear pattern. -i think what theinvestigators thought, and what the crime lab presumed,was that the murder weapon was bloody, and was placedin the jacket pocket to be removed from the scene. the shoes i examined, i foundtwo small one millimeter and less in diameterblood stains on the shoes thatwere consistent with a high-energyimpact spatter.
narrator: the dna of theblood on rodger's jacket and shoes was his mother's. -a person with thiskind of evidence had to have been at the scene,or involved, or very close to the scene whenthe crime occurred. narrator: policeconfronted rodger gran with this new evidence. a lot of time hadpassed since 1986. rodger was now a father himselfwith two teenage children.
-the impact spatter on the bluejean jacket and the blue jeans are consistent with rodger grandelivering the blows to lynnea gran at the time shewas bludgeoned to death. -hm. that's kind of astrong statement. -you would think that somebodywho's been falsely accused of viciouslymurdering their mother would have adamantlyrefuted that statement. maybe even becoming loud,yell at us, or leave.
rodger didn't do that. narrator: investigatorsasked him again, what happened on the nightof his mother's murder? this time, he said he hadan argument with his mother around 10:00 pm, before heleft for the county fair. he said he asked for money. -when you go tocheck on your mom, do you remember yourmom being all right? -when i left?
-i mean, she wasn'thurt at that time? -to us, that was a hugebreak in the interview. here's a guy that claimedhis mother was fine and he found herdead hours later. yet, that indicated that he knewsomething was wrong with her. narrator: and alsofor the first time, police had a possible motive. rodger told themhis mother refused to give him anymoney that night.
but he continued todeny he killed her. new dna testing andadvances in forensic science revealed whathappened on the night of lynnea gran's murder20 years earlier. prosecutors believelynnea's son rodger was drinking with friendsand also doing drugs. rodger admitted he went tothe store around 10:00 pm and asked his mother for moneyto go to the county fair. prosecutors think lynnearefused, probably because she
knew he was usingdrugs and alcohol. and she also told him hecouldn't drive the family car. they argued. rodger lost control, grabbeda hammer from a toolbox, and struck hismother repeatedly. the force createdhigh-impact blood spatter on rodger's denimjacket, particularly on the right sleeveand on his shoes. he locked the front door,went back to his home,
and washed the hammer,removed his jacket, then met his friendsat the county fair. when rodger returnedhome, around 2:00 am, he called 911 to report findinghis mother's body in the store. -rodger was notin his right mind. he was not in controlof his faculties. he was an irrational,frustrated, messed up kid underthe influence. and in his rightmind, he would never
consider harming ourmother or anyone. narrator: it took 20years for forensic science to develop to the point wherethe microscopic particles on rodger's jacket, shoes, andhammer could be identified. during those years,rodger gran's life was one of drug abuse,dysfunction, and divorce. -he was in and outof-- i couldn't even begin to count how manydifferent times he was in and out of psych wards,detox centers, rehab.
-rodger gran livedin superior for 18, 19 years before hewas ever arrested for his mother's murder. at any time, he could've leftand probably escaped justice. i don't believe he wasever running from the law. i believe he was always runningfrom having killed his mother. narrator: faced with theevidence and the possibility of putting his family througha trial, rodger gran confessed. he pleaded guilty to a chargeof second degree murder,
and was sentenced to15 years in prison. -the case stands out fromso many perspectives. and again, the satisfactionof seeing the good police work at the time that got put on theback burner that was reopened with a new look,with new technology, new forensic evidence. just the sense of justiceis really overwhelming. -there's an old saying, justicedelayed is justice denied. but i don't thinkthat's entirely true.
and i think thefamily of rodger gran would say that that'snot necessarily true. it took 19 years for themto find out the truth. but at least nowthey know the truth because the sciencehas assisted in that. -it gives you renewed hopethat cases that have remained unsolved for numerousyears do have the potential to be solved. and the bad guy is stillsomeplace out there,
knowing full wellthat the police now have today's technology, andwe may be knocking on your door tomorrow.