upside down. chairs turned upside down. anything in a drawer was tipped out and filled onto the floor. when the police got there they discovered this was more than a robbery. clifford was lying across the bed with some kind of a cord and was obviously deceased. it was later determined he had been shot in the head twice. near by police found a pillow with two bullet holes. whoever committed the crime probably collected those casings to hide the evidence or to throw the investigation off track. the search team found al alma murke s body in the second bedroom. there was a sliding panel in this connection.
as we slid it back one could see there was a body paced in this closet. he told me that my mother, they found her in a wardrobe with a telephone cord tired around her neck and strangled. alma s jewelry and cliff s handguns were apparently stolen during the attack. investigators found two foreign fingerprints inside the home one at the back door, the other on a sowing tray in the living room. in a search for suspects, a neighbor told police that he saw two men lurking around the murke s home a few days earlier. he kept an on on them until he lost visual contact with them because of trees on struskting his view. that was the last he saw of them. the murke s had no known enemies and no one saw or heard anything unusual around the time of the
altered the rifling marks of the gun barrel but it wasn t enough to fool a forensic scientist with his new found ability to see inside the barrel. something inside me says hold onto the bullets. you will find the firearm. low and behold it happened. way down the line almost ten years later but time was on our side i guess, in that matter. robert cowen was convicted of two counts of first degree murder and was sentenced to death. when you look at what he did to this elderly couple who he had no reason to kiss. he could have taken everything they had and tied them up and left them. he didn t have to shoot them and shove mrs. murke in a closet and let her die. i couldn t find anything nice about this man. i couldn t find any reason in
he was later convicted of manslaughter for killing his father-in-law. he served only two years in prison for that crime before he was released on parole. prosecutors believe robert cowen was one of the men seen near the murke s home by the neighbor. based on the forensic evidence, prosecutors say robert cowen and accomplice broke into the murke s home through the back door. cliff murke probably went for his gun to defend himself and robert cowen grabbed the pistol and turned it on cliff. the men bound his wife alma, locked her in the closet and left her to die. robert cowen left his fingerprints on a tray found in the living room and by the back door as he left. the cowen s pawned some of alma murke s jewelry and then sold the gun to a drug dealer who
murder. that was good circumstantial evidence however, it still did not place them inside the crime scene. but there was one more piece of evidence about to be uncovered that would point the finger at who killed clifford and alma murke. [ female announcer ] there s a gap out there. that s keeping you from the healthcare you deserve. at humana, we believe if healthcare changes, if it becomes simpler. if frustration and paperwork decrease. if grandparents get to live at home instead of in a home. the gap begins to close. so let s simplify things. let s close the gap between people and care.