Forensic Files

00:03 Ernestine Perea was found dead in her bedroom of a single gunshot wound. 00:10 The gun was by her side. 00:13 After examining the forensic evidence, her death was ruled a homicide. 00:20 But could that same evidence be interpreted differently? 00:25 One man's life hung in the balance. 00:41 In 1979, Martin Frias entered the United States illegally from Mexico looking for work. 00:50 More opportunity to raise your family, better way to educate your kids, a better life. 00:59 Frias landed a job at a local marble processing plant in the rural town of Wheatland, Wyoming. 01:08 Two years later, he met 24-year-old Ernestine Perea, a divorcee with a young daughter. 01:15 They had two children of their own, a boy and a girl. 01:21 Ernestine and Martin decided to live together and rented a mobile home on the edge of town. 01:27 But they also fought mostly over insignificant matters, says Martin. 01:34 On July 5, 1984, Ernestine spent the entire day out with her children and didn't arrive home until 10.30 that night. 01:45 Martin put the children to bed while Ernestine went to sleep in the couple's bedroom. 01:53 That night, Frias slept on the sofa bed in the living room. 01:58 Around 1 o'clock in the morning, Frias was awakened by one of the children crying. 02:05 She was like saying, Mommy, Mommy, get up. 02:08 Turn the light on. And that's when I saw she was laying in the rug right there on the floor. 02:14 She had the gun next to her. 02:18 Ernestine was dead from a gunshot wound. 02:22 I see blood in her stomach. And when I was walking out with rain, I saw also blood splattered on the wall. 02:29 So I called for an ambulance and called the police. 02:34 There was no evidence of a break-in. 02:36 There was no evidence of anybody else being out at the trailer other than two small children, I believe a four-year-old and a baby. 02:44 When questioned at the scene, Frias lied, saying he wasn't home when Ernestine was shot. 02:52 Frias may have had reason to lie. 02:57 Police records showed that the sheriff had been called to his home several times for domestic disturbances. 03:04 On a number of occasions, Ernestine said that Martin had hit her. 03:10 A forensic analysis revealed that Frias' fingerprints were all over the rifle, and there was more evidence, even more damning. 03:21 The End 03:34 When Ernestine Perea was found dead of a gunshot wound, her common law husband, Martin Frias, denied he was home when the shooting occurred. 03:44 But he later changed his story and admitted he was home that night. 03:49 Investigators discovered that Ernestine was with some male friends earlier on the day she died. 03:56 She had been wrestling in the grass. She'd been drinking with these friends. 04:03 and also that Martin Frias had evidently ridden by the park at that time and very possibly may have seen them. 04:13 Frias said Ernestine had come home drunk. Tests proved this correct. Her blood alcohol level was 0.26, two and a half times the legal limit. 04:25 He also said they weren't getting along and had stopped sleeping together. 04:32 He told investigators he was sleeping on the couch at the other end of the hallway in the trailer. And at some time during the night, about the time when it's believed that the gun went off, he said he heard what he thought to be a twig breaking at night. And he heard that, and then he went back to sleep. 04:49 Frias said Ernestine committed suicide. 04:54 Next to Ernestine's body was a high-powered .300 Magnum hunting rifle which belonged to Frias. 05:01 His fingerprints were on the rifle. Ernestine's fingerprint was found on the scope. 05:09 Her pants were ripped near the zipper, and the button had been pulled off, indicating some sort of struggle. 05:16 Ernestine had a large wound in her abdomen and a much smaller wound in her back. 05:24 Since exit wounds are generally larger than entrance wounds, the coroner was certain that Ernestine had been shot in the back. 05:32 The bullet had entered through a wound which was a little less than half inch in size, had struck the vertebrae, had gone through the body, and had come out through the abdomen on the front side. 05:45 Also supporting the homicide theory was the evidence on Ernestine's blouse. 05:51 On the inside of the shirt, there were copious amounts of, of course, blood and tissue, but I also found bone fragments and lead fragments from the bullet as it was disintegrating, passing through the body. 06:06 Proof, Dr. Stone says, that Ernestine was shot from behind. 06:12 The autopsy results found the same thing. 06:16 And there was no gunshot residue on the front of the blouse, which would have been present had she committed suicide. 06:24 They did not find any evidence of that in the front or the back of the blouse. 06:31 And that indicated that the weapon was at least some 30 inches to 3 feet away, according to their findings. 06:42 Frias denied he murdered his wife and pointed to the fact that his right arm was broken and he wasn't able to maneuver the rifle himself. 06:51 Nevertheless, Ernestine's death was ruled a homicide. 06:58 Based on the forensic evidence, prosecutors believe that Frias and Ernestine fought when she arrived home. 07:07 A violent tug from the rear ripped her pants, causing the bruises on her abdomen. 07:13 As Ernestine was getting up from the floor, prosecutors say Frias shot her in the back. 07:20 Blood spurted out of her stomach and struck the wall in front of her. 07:25 As she fell to the floor, her body twisted in reaction to the shot, and she landed on her back. 07:33 Prosecutors say Frias left the rifle on the ground to make it appear the death was a suicide. 07:39 They didn't believe Frias' cast would have hindered his ability to fire the weapon. 07:46 Martin Frias was charged with his wife's murder. 07:51 Since he couldn't afford an attorney, the court appointed one for him. 07:56 At the time, the state public defender's office used the state crime lab, the very same lab used by the prosecution. 08:06 They had already ruled Ernestine's death was a homicide. 08:11 Frias' attorney tried to come up with an alternative explanation for Ernestine's death, but he couldn't. 08:18 We felt bad about how the trial was going to go. I remember a public defender investigator named Walt Carroll and I talking before the trial started about what a grim prospect it looked like for Martine. 08:34 And they were right. 08:38 The jury convicted Frias of second-degree murder and sentenced him to 25 to 35 years in prison. 08:48 But the story doesn't end there. 09:07 After the murder conviction of Martin Frias, his attorney, Robert Moxley, started gathering information to file an appeal. 09:16 Meanwhile, Moxley started to have misgivings about the competency of the state's pathologist who had performed the autopsy. 09:24 The pathologist in this case was not qualified to do forensic cases. 09:29 And that's probably being charitable. 09:32 So he asked Dr. Robert Lance, an independent gunshot residue expert, to test Ernestine's blouse. 09:40 I've used a much more sophisticated, much more modern technology called scanning electron microscopy with X-ray emission. And what this does is it provides much better sensitivity for gunshot residue. What this told me was the gunshot residue had come from the front very clearly and had followed the bullet right on through her abdomen and come out the back. 10:05 This contradicted tests done by the state crime lab, which found no evidence of gunshot residue anywhere on the blouse. 10:15 Suddenly, Frias' story that Ernestine had committed suicide didn't seem so far-fetched. 10:24 After two years in prison, Wyoming's Supreme Court granted Frias a new trial. 10:33 But the defense had their work cut out for them. 10:38 Prosecutors ordered Ernestine's body exhumed for a second autopsy. The chief medical examiner for Houston, Texas, Dr. Charles Petty, performed this one. 10:50 The results of the second autopsy were the same as the first. The bullet entered Ernestine's back and came out through her stomach. 11:00 I think that the evidence showed at that time, and still does in my mind today, that Martin Frias shot and murdered Ernestine Perea. 11:13 But the defense introduced some new evidence in the second trial, that Ernestine was suicidal and that slash marks on her wrists proved she had tried to kill herself numerous times before. 11:30 I was able to document between the different stories and the medical records somewhere between five and maybe a dozen prior suicide attempts or suicide gestures. 11:43 And Moxley attacked the heart of the prosecution's case. The first point was Frias' contention that he didn't hear the gunshot from the living room. 11:54 Acoustics expert Dr. Harry Holleen provided an explanation. 12:02 Holleen conducted a test using the body of a dead horse covered with a fabric similar to Ernestine's blouse with a 300 magnum rifle similar to Frias' rifle. 12:15 The first shot, three feet away from the horse, was very loud. 12:22 When the gun was fired in the open, we got dB readings of somewhere between 110 and 120 dB, and it sounded like gunfire. 12:35 But when the muzzle was placed against the skin and material, it sounded very different. 12:43 The gunshot doesn't sound like gunfire. It sounds like someone kicking the side of a building or kicking a piece of furniture. And the energy level is quite low. 12:55 The sound was similar to what Frias described on the night of his wife's death. 13:02 Judy Bunker, a blood spatter expert, analyzed the blood evidence on the wall, only 18 inches from the floor. 13:11 She says it clearly shows Ernestine was sitting on the floor with the rifle to her stomach when the shot was fired. 13:20 The bullet fragments in the wall, their location, along with the blood spatter location across the wall, and given the location of her wounds, would indicate that she was either kneeling or seated when the shot was fired. 13:41 And she found no blood spatter evidence to suggest, as prosecutors contended, that Ernestine was shot in the back, then twisted in the air while falling to the floor. 13:54 I learned from Judith Bunker that if somebody gets shot and spins around, that, you know, they spew vital fluids around. 14:02 But there was no blood spatter on the floor, walls, or the bed from the twisting motion the prosecution says occurred. 14:12 The defense theory was clearly suicide. 14:15 But Ernestine held the muzzle of the rifle to her stomach with one hand, then leaned over and pushed the trigger with the other. 14:25 But prosecution experts said there was a problem with that theory. 14:30 Had this weapon been used in contact with the body at the time of discharge, that I would have expected that there would have been blood and or tissue on the muzzle of the weapon, and there was none. 14:46 Dr. Vincent DeMaio, an expert in high velocity gunshot wounds, testified for the defense. 14:53 The absence of blood on the weapon means absolutely nothing. 14:58 Maybe half the times with handguns, you don't find blood on the muzzle. It's a little more common in shotguns, we'll say. But don't forget, with rifles, and in this situation, you had clothing in between. 15:15 Dr. DeMaio also believes that the autopsy photos clearly show that Ernestine was shot in the stomach. 15:23 When you discharge a gun, out the muzzle of the gun comes a flame. That's about 14 to 1500 degrees. 15:31 And out comes gas, and out comes soot, carbon, from burning gunpowder. 15:38 If you put the muzzle of the gun against the body, then you're going to have this soot, and the flame burns, and then the effects of gas. If you look at the wound in the abdomen, there's soot and there's flame burns. That means the muzzle was in contact with the body at the time of discharge. Therefore, this has to be the entrance. 16:05 And Dr. DeMaio says the gas discharge from the rifle temporarily inflated Ernestine's abdomen with enough force that it ripped her jeans, contrary to the prosecution's claim that they were torn during a fight. 16:21 Lastly, prosecution experts testified as they did in the first trial that they found no gunshot residue on the blouse, supporting their claim that Ernestine was at least three feet away when the gun was fired. 16:38 The defense presented their new scanning electron microscope evidence of gunpowder residue on the blouse. 16:46 And with that, the defense rested their case. 16:52 In a moment, the verdict. 17:10 In Martin Frias' second murder trial, there were two very different theories presented to the jury. 17:21 The prosecution theory was that Martin Frias shot Ernestine in the back as she was getting up from the floor after a fight. 17:30 After the shot, Ernestine twisted as she fell to the floor, which explains why she was found on her back. 17:39 The defense maintained that Ernestine was sitting on the floor. The rifle was upside down. She used one hand to hold the muzzle against her stomach and the other to push the trigger. 17:55 During deliberations, the jury wanted to see if a woman Ernestine's size could accomplish what the defense said happened. 18:03 There was a small woman on the second jury. They took the gun into the jury room, and she sat down on the floor and replicated my theory. 18:13 And she told me later that her finger had touched that scope on that rifle exactly where Ernestine's fingerprint had been. Same alignment. 18:25 After two and a half hours, the jury had a verdict, not guilty. 18:33 I don't question the wisdom of the jury. 18:37 I can see where they may not have been sure who had the accurate opinion, who had the accurate theory. 18:45 And there's no question in the criminal justice system, as it should be, that if there's a tie or even anything close to a tie, that You know, it's beyond a reasonable doubt. 18:57 And I think the jury didn't acquit Martin Frias because they felt he was innocent. 19:02 But I believe that they acquitted him because, you know, they could not find that he was guilty beyond any reasonable doubt. 19:09 I was so happy that I kind of feel like crying at the same time. 19:17 Martin Frias now lives in Southern California. 19:21 He is now an American citizen and has tried to get custody of his children, but they remain with Ernestine's mother in Wyoming. 19:31 I'm married. I got a good job. I got a little girl. You know, we enjoy life. 19:39 The forensic experts who assisted Robert Moxley in the second trial did so without remuneration. 19:47 The forensic community rallied around me in this case to make sure that I got the help I needed, to find the expertise I needed. And there were just all kinds of people out there committed to making sure that justice got done in this case. 20:05 American justice, it does work. It's better than our time.