when you have gunshot residue in a location and in a quantity that is absolutely consistent with her firing a semiautomatic weapon, one of the possibilities is that she fired a gun. you can t discount that. the deeper moffat and taliaferro got into the case, the more it seemed to them heidy s fatal wound was self-inflicted. they believe the head wound, a contact wound, ruled out homicide. a contact gunshot wound to the right temple are the most common site of self-inflicted gunshot wound that there were. moffat and taliaferro decided to take their findings to the m.e. hoping to sway his ruling on the manner of death once again just as police did prior to conrad s arrest. we gave him a bunch of information, then he, on his own, with his investigator, went to the home to look at it. and the result was just what they d asked for. heidy truman s manner of death,
but one detail in particular kept gnawing at her. it had to do with the diagrams used by the state depicting the area where heidy s body was found. i remember thinking, well, that s strange. that s that couldn t be right. post-verdict, colette shared her concerns with conrad s new attorneys, mark moffat and ann taliaferro. they decided to visit the truman home to see for themselves if the state s diagrams were accurate. we later made that same trip with moffat who showed us what they discovered. this is the area in question, and it s pretty small. it is. it s really small. we immediately started measuring, and we knew right away that there was a big problem with their diagrams and the measurements. the problem? all those measurements were off. instead of 139 inches, somebody took the figure 139 and interpreted it to be 13.9 feet.
33 inches became 3.3 feet. and on and on and on. according to moffat, those flawed measurements, which were used in court, made the house appear much bigger than it was. they used the theme of distance to argue that mr. truman was lying about where he said his wife was when he heard what turned out to be this fatal shot. at trial, the prosecution argued, to believe conrad, you d have to believe heidy shot herself in the bathroom and then walked 12 feet before falling to the floor. and, according to the medical examiner, that was impossible. he testified heidy s head wound was so severe that she could have at most walked a step or two. this issue of distance was this big issue. now for ann taliaferro, just seeing the house and how small it was was proof enough that the prosecution s argument didn t
conrad, you d have to believe heidy shot herself in the bathroom and then walked 12 feet before falling to the floor. and, according to the medical examiner, that was impossible. he testified heidy s head wound was so severe that she could have at most walked a step or two. this issue of distance was this big issue. reporter: now for ann taliaferro, just seeing the house and how small it was was proof enough that the prosecution s argument didn t hold up. when you walk in the house, there s no way that there s even 12 feet there. reporter: what s more, according to the defense team, conrad never told the police heidy shot herself in the bathroom. instead he told them he had no idea where she was when he heard the shot. tell me your theory of what happened here. we believe that heidy truman shot herself in this very area, and we believe that she fell right in the area directly in front of me on the ground, and that s the very area where she
conrad s hands were negative for residue, but there was a question as to whether conrad had washed his hands before they were tested. so those results were meaningless. that s probably why they didn t test in first place. reporter: as for heidy s swabs, there was no residue on her left hand. but there was on her right hand. and significantly, heidy was right-handed. when you have gunshot residue in a location and in a quantity that is absolutely consistent with her firing a semiautomatic weapon, one of the possibilities is that she fired a gun. you can t discount that. reporter: the deeper moffat and taliaferro got into the case, the more it seemed to them heidy s fatal wound was self-inflicted. they believe the head wound, a contact wound, ruled out homicide. a contact gunshot wound to the right temple are the most common site of self-inflicted gunshot wound that there were. reporter: moffat and