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NARRATOR: In 1992, two masked gunmen
broke into this home on the Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory
in Canada.
The motive was robbery.
But there was a struggle, shots were fired, leaving 54-year-old
Ward Maracle critically injured.
It took solid police investigation
and some fancy footwork to identify the perpetrators.
[theme music]
The Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory is a small community
about two hours east of Toronto, Canada.
The Territory was founded over 200 years ago,
when the Mohawk moved here from upstate New York.
The homes and landscape of the area
are no different from any other North American community,
but the sense of family among the Mohawk
is especially strong.
-It doesn't appear to be any different than anywhere else
in Canada or the US in what I would call, for lack
of better term, mainstream culture.
Like I say, the differences is in the people.
-In this community it's-- there's a lot of blood family.
But even if you're not related, you
know everybody pretty close.
So it's like being family.
Ward and Diana Maracle were respected
members of the community.
Ward's Gas Bar, the Maracle's business, a gas station
with a restaurant attached, had always
been a prosperous business.
NARRATOR: At night, they also operated
a check cashing service from their home
for people who didn't have an ATM card.
-Everybody knows Ward and Diane, the business there as well.
Have contact with them.
They're good people.
NARRATOR: At Christmas time, residents of the reserve
celebrate the holiday just like any other community.
With Santa Claus, Christmas lights, and prayer.
[church bells ring]
But in the early morning hours of December 30, 1992,
the holiday spirit of the community was shattered.
[banging on door]
MAN (MUFFLED): Ward?
Oh, Ward!
I want to talk to you.
NARRATOR: Just before dawn, two masked gunmen
broke into the Maracle's home.
MAN: Ward, we're coming to see you!
[door slams]
NARRATOR: They went upstairs, woke Ward and Diana
and demanded money.
MAN: Where's the money?
Give me the money!
NARRATOR: One was holding a .22 caliber pistol.
The other, a piece of wood.
-Just take it easy.
MAN: Just shut up and give me the money!
-Just don't hurt anybody.
NARRATOR: Ward resisted.
Shots rang out.
By the time it was over, Ward had been shot three times.
The second perpetrator took Diana downstairs.
Fearing for her life, Diana handed
over the money they had on hand.
$10,000 in cash.
And the intruders quickly fled.
[? -911, ?] Police Emergency.
WOMAN (ON PHONE): Uh, we've got a shooting down here,
on the reserve.
We will need an ambulance.
Please hurry. -OK, ma'am.
[sirens blaring]
NARRATOR: Ward Maracle was rushed to the hospital
with the bullet wound to his head.
He underwent emergency surgery.
Most wounds to the head are fatal.
Since the gunmen wore masks, all Diana
could tell police was that the assailants
made their getaway in a red car.
A few miles down the road, police
found the two masks used in the robbery.
One was a wool ski mask.
The other, a rubber Halloween mask.
Inside the Maracle's home, police
found three shell casings, which were collected for analysis.
-The caliber.
In this case, I believe they were .22 short caliber.
The fact that they are out on the ground
would indicate that, more than likely, a semiautomatic pistol,
as opposed to a revolver, was used.
NARRATOR: Since the stairs had no carpet
and with snow outside, investigators
suspected that the perpetrators' wet feet might have left latent
shoe impressions on the stairs.
The stairs were dusted with fingerprint powder.
And immediately, a clear impression of a running shoe
was evident.
Outside the house, forensic experts
found a trail of evidence in the snow, which they hoped
would lead them to the perpetrators.
During the Christmas holidays in 1992,
residents of the Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory
learned the terrible news that one of their most prominent
citizens, Ward Maracle, had been the victim
of a senseless shooting.
There is very little violent crime
in this small community of 2,600 people.
ALAN BRANT: Shock, initially, that something
of-- of this magnitude could happen
in a community such as this.
WARD MARACLE: Just take it easy.
[shots ring out]
NARRATOR: Ward Maracle was shot three
times by a .22 caliber pistol.
One of the bullets entered his head.
But he was fortunate, he survived.
But the injury would leave him permanently disabled.
Forensic scientist, Jim Eadie inspected the crime scene.
He noticed a piece of wood on the kitchen table.
Diana Maracle told police one of the perpetrators
held the wood in his hand during the robbery.
When Eadie walked outside, on the side of the house
he found a wooden sawhorse with one of the legs missing.
It appeared that the perpetrators took the leg
from the sawhorse and used it to break through the front door.
Next to the sawhorse, clearly visible in the bright December
sunshine, was a footprint in the snow.
CONSTABLE JIM EADIE: And when I looked,
I could see footprints in the area of the sawhorse.
I was certain that somebody had gone back behind the house
and got the sawhorse and ripped a leg off.
There was a potential piece a very important evidence.
NARRATOR: Jim Eadie realized he had to act quickly
before the snow melted, and before anyone
else walked through the crime scene.
His first order of business was to photograph the footprints.
These stills would be important, especially if he
was unable to make a cast of the footprint.
He then rushed to his truck and looked
for materials to make a mold.
There are a number of techniques for capturing
a footprint impression in the snow.
If you choose the wrong one, the impression
could be lost forever.
CONSTABLE JIM EADIE: Snow presents interesting problems
because, if you use conventional casting materials,
such as dental plaster, it's really very heavy.
Dental plaster hardens to stone.
And if you pour it into snow, it tends
to collapse the footprint because of the weight.
NARRATOR: Detective Eadie decided
on a technique called sulfur casting.
He took a small burner and a pot and heated the powdered sulfur.
It takes about 15 minutes before it
melts into a thick brown liquid.
It's then cooled to the point above crystallization.
As it poured into the snow, the sulfur
recrystallizes immediately and hardens,
retaining the important details needed for identification.
The impression was from a pair of Nike Air sneakers size 8.
The shoe was relatively new, with very little wear.
In the impression were some important clues
about the perpetrator, details called
accidental characteristics.
CONSTABLE JIM EADIE: And
going to be rubbing against the road
and against the sidewalk, and that
has those accidental characteristics that we're
going to be looking for-- and an accidental characteristic
is not just a little point.
Oftentimes, it's like a mini piece of art.
NARRATOR: Eadie noticed three small cuts
all in a row on the sole, as if the wearer had
stepped on a small piece of wire.
In all, Jim Eadie identified 10 accidental characteristics
in the shoe impression.
These would distinguish this particular shoe
from the thousands of other Nike Air size
8 running shoes that were in circulation.
Not surprisingly, the shoe impression in the snow
matched the shoe print on the wooden steps inside the home.
CONSTABLE JIM EADIE: We had recovered
some very good evidence.
We had shoe prints.
We had brass casings.
The difficulty is, unlike fingerprints, which
can be searched on a computer and identified,
in the case of bullet casings or shoe prints,
you need a suspect.
NARRATOR: But finding a suspect would not be easy.
The robbery and shooting of Ward Maracle on the Tyendinaga
Mohawk Reserve was widely covered
by the media in the surrounding areas.
Two days after the shooting, an anonymous telephone call
suggested police look into the whereabouts of Peter Benedict
and Frank Lanoue in the early morning hours of December 30.
Both men were 21 years old.
Both had criminal records.
Benedict lived in Cornwall, which
is about an hour's drive from the reserve.
Police had no fixed address for Lanoue.
Police went to Peter Benedict's apartment
armed with a search warrant.
Outside Benedict's apartment, police noticed a red card
similar to the one Diana Maracle identified as the getaway car.
Peter Benedict denied any involvement in the crime.
And said he didn't know where Frank Lanoue was.
Inside Benedict's apartment, police
found a .22 caliber pistol.
The same caliber used in the shooting.
They also found a number of pairs of running shoes,
but none were the Nike Air model size 8 like the impressions
found at the crime scene.
Police also found $2,500 in cash and Benedict
was wearing what looked to be a very expensive ring.
In Benedict's bedroom, police found a receipt for the ring.
It was purchased on December 31, just hours
after the robbery at the Maracle's homes.
The ring was purchased with $1,100 in cash
from a jewelry store in Ottawa. DET.
SGT. RICK MYERS: We went out to the car
and we searched the vehicle after that.
And in the trunk, I found an Aldo's shoe box.
So I'm thinking, well, Aldo shoe box, brand new running shoes,
brand ring.
I'm going to Ottawa, because there has to be a story
to be told in Ottawa and I wanted to hear the story.
NARRATOR: Once he got to the mall,
Rick Myers discovered that there were
a number of shoe stores in the mall.
He patiently visited each one, asking store employees
if they recognized Benedict or Lanoue as a recent customer.
-Do you work here?
-Yeah.
NARRATOR: The last store that he visited was a Foot Locker,
and he got a break.
-Have you seen him?
-I think he came in a couple of days ago, actually.
NARRATOR: The store clerk recognized
Peter Benedict from the mug shot.
-I think he threw away his old shoes.
NARRATOR: He said
a pair of running shoes just a few days earlier.
And he recalled that Benedict wore the new shoes out
of the store and left his old pair behind.
DET.
SGT. RICK MYERS: He just simply gave up the old ones
for garbage, and just wore his new ones home.
I asked if he would check to see if the old ones were still
around.
He told me that no, the garbage had gone out Friday.
I was insistent that he go and-- and recheck.
Because it's always good to recheck everything,
particular when you're so close in this type of investigation
to getting something that you really want.
NARRATOR: Fortunately for investigators, the trash
hadn't been removed from the back room.
And in the trash bin, the clerk found
the sneakers Benedict left behind.
DET. SGT. RICK MYERS: He did.
And sure enough, he comes back dangling the shoes
and a very nice smile on his face.
And there was an even bigger one on mine.
NARRATOR: They were size 8 Nike Air
charcoal high top basketball shoes.
But were they the ones worn to the crime scene?
When Jim Eadie analyzed the shoes from the trash bin,
he discovered the shoe had 10 accidental characteristics,
which were in the same location, the same shape and size
as those found on the shoe impression in the snow
and on the steps.
Investigators now knew that Peter
Benedict took part in the robbery.
-OK.
Here we are.
NARRATOR: But was he the shooter?
And where was Frank Lanoue? -Just shut up.
I want the money.
-Could the masks somehow identify
who pulled the trigger?
Within a week of the robbery and shooting of Ward Maracle
one the Tyendinaga Mohawk Reserve in Canada,
police had two suspects, Peter Benedict and Frank Lanoue.
Peter Benedict was already in custody.
And Frank Lanoue voluntarily came in
to police headquarters for questioning.
Both denied any involvement in the crime.
But the evidence against Peter Benedict was mounting quickly.
The shoes he left at the shoe store
were positively identified as the shoes which left the print
on the Maracle's stairway, and in the snow print
outside their home.
Next, Benedict's .22 caliber gun was tested by ballistics.
[shots ring out]
FINN NIELSEN: This pistol here is a Beretta Model 950B.
It's a semiautomatic pistol, a .22 short caliber,
which is really the short-- the smallest
caliber that's used in handguns.
It doesn't look like much, it's just a .22.
They'll kill you just as dead as the bigger calibers will.
NARRATOR: The bullets recovered from Ward Maracle
in the operating room were too badly
damaged for forensic analysis.
-.22s, when they hit bone on head shots are usually useless,
they're projectiles.
They'll break up very, very badly.
NARRATOR: So investigators used the spend shell casings found
in the Maracle's home for comparison.
Benedict's gun was test fired in the ballistics laboratory.
[shot firing]
The act of pulling a trigger causes the firing pin
to strike the primer, which ignites the powder propelling
the bullet through the barrel.
Simultaneously, the spent shell casing
is pushed back with equal force.
Just as the bullet is marked by its passage through the barrel,
so is the shell as it comes into contact with the metal surfaces
of the weapon's firing and loading mechanisms.
Firing pin impressions are as unique as a fingerprint.
The firing pin impressions on the shell casings test fired
from Benedict's gun were identical to the impressions
on the three shell casings found inside the Maracle's home.
-It's still you looking at it, and your training
and your experience that causes you to reach a conclusion.
And in this case, what I saw, and my predecessor saw, whom
I trained, indicated to us, yes, those cartridge cases
were fired in that gun and no other.
NARRATOR: The money found in Peter Benedict's apartment
had numbers written by hand on the bundles.
They matched Diana Maracle's handwriting.
Not surprisingly, inside Benedict's car on the driver's
side, were Peter Benedict's fingerprints.
But on the passenger side, were Frank Lanoue's.
The last challenge for investigators
was to discover which one of these two suspects
was the shooter.
Diana Maracle said, the gunman was wearing the wool ski mask.
The man in the rubber mask held the piece of wood.
Scientists were able to identify traces of saliva and mucus
inside the masks.
And from that, they were able to generate a DNA profile
of the individuals who wore each mask.
When police compared the DNA of Frank Lanoue and Peter
Benedict, they discovered that Peter Benedict's
DNA was inside the rubber mask.
And that Frank Lanoue's DNA was inside the wool mask.
This identified Frank Lanoue as the shooter.
When Peter Benedict and Frank Lanoue
learned about the overwhelming forensic evidence against them,
they both pleaded guilty to aggravated assault and robbery.
They were sentenced to six years in prison.
Ward Maracle eventually recovered from his injuries
after a long and difficult rehabilitation.
Published reports say he still has lingering problems
resulting from the head injury.
He and Diana still live and work on the Mohawk Reserve.
To this day, Ward and Diana Maracle
refuse to talk about what happened
in the early morning hours of December 30, 1992.
[shot rings out]
DET.
SGT. RICK MYERS: It was a great case.
It was a classic.
One of the many highlights of my career.
I enjoyed that case.
It was a very exciting day for me
when I saw those running shoes come
waltzing out from behind the back room.
-I believe that the shoe print evidence that we were
working with was very strong evidence.
And it was very strong evidence at the preliminary hearing.
And-- and I think-- I feel like I'm bragging.