move, that s where the transfer would be. finally, in the national park near where stephanie dittrick s body was found, investigators discovered remnants of a campfire. some of stephanie s personal items were strewn in the grass along with a plastic shopping bag. there was a shopping bag from a local grocery store and once it was submitted to the washington state patrol crime laboratory, what we found was a very clear latent fingerprint left by none other than gary ackley. the fingerprint, along with the metal fragments and fibers, clearly tied gary ackley to both crime scenes. prosecutors knew why ackley killed his mother-in-law arlene. what they couldn t figure out is why he killed his childhood friend, stephanie.
she left the house they rented making statements like i m not going to put up with with this and i don t know why you re putting up with this either, to her daughter. ackley s brand of cigarettes was another interesting coincidence. when he bought cigarettes, he bought the cheapest cigarettes he could get his hands on. those were basic, b-a-s-i-c, brand cigarettes. that was the kind of cigarette butts located in the toilet of arlene jensen s house. and there was a box of basic brand dumped where arlen jensen s body was found some six weeks later. what was most telling to investigators was gary ackley s profession. gary ackley worked as a fabricator. he worked in a metal shop and much of his time he spent on a lathe. this was suspicious since metal fragments were found on both stephanie dittrick s body as well as arlene jensen s. with a search warrant, investigators found metal
oftentimes true. but i will say that one stereotype that i think gary ackley is a perfect example of is a domestically violent woman-abusing killer. prosecutors believe ackley had access to arlene s apartment key and used it to enter her home late one night after she was in bed. the autopsy results aren t clear about how he killed arlene, but the evidence suggests she was killed while in bed. metal fragments dropped from ackley s clothes on to the sheets, fragments he couldn t see. he stayed in arlene s apartment long enough to smoke two cigarettes and wash his hands. then he hid the blood-stained sheets with the comforter.
prosecutors believe ackley killed his childhood friend in order to silence her, burying her body in a shallow grave. again, leaving the tell-tale metal fragments behind. when he disposed of stephanie s personal items, he left his fingerprint on the shopping bag. i don t think there s anything i could say that would bother him because someone that can kill their girlfriend s mom and their kids grandma is untouchable emotionally. so i wouldn t even try. a year after the crimes, gary ackley was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole. despite the mountains of forensic evidence against him, arlene jensen s daughter julie refused to believe that ackley killed her mother. so after his conviction, she
the steel had the exact same combinations of iron, manganese and chromium. in the brass, copper and zinc were found in identical amounts. and all the samples had equal amounts of cerium, part of a compound used to ignite an oxyacetylene torch, a common item in machine shops. we examined all of them and could see the pattern that regardless of where they came from, they were basically the same kind of metal fragments, machining fragments. this proved that both arlene jensen and stephanie dittrick were killed by the same man. the science is starting to really catch up to the bad guys now. a serial killer was on the loose in the seattle area. he had to be stopped before he could kill again.