when investigators searched drew planten s apartment, they found several pieces of mail addressed to a woman in lansing, michigan, rebecca huismann. the postmark was six years old. a background check revealed that rebecca huismann was murdered in lansing, michigan, six years earlier and the case had never been solved. coincidentally, planten was a student at michigan state university at the time, which was just a few miles from lansing. rebecca huismann was working as a topless dancer at the time of her murder. it was something she had not planned on but she needed the money. she was a very beautiful young woman and trying to make some extra money so she and her
caliber handgun, please let me know. he says we got two. i said keep em. planten s two .45 caliber guns were test fired. analysts were especially interested in the marks on the shell casings. imperfections from the firing pin are imprinted on the shell casing when the gun is fired. and the imperfections on each firing pin are unique to each gun made. when the shell casing was compared to the shell casing from drew planten s gun, the results were unmistakable. some very well define parallel linear marks that were on the surfaces of all the tests and on the evidence cartridge that was found in michigan.
the bathroom with him. he flushed all of his napkins. for dessert, planten ordered banana pudding, which he ate with a fork. finally, he picked up his fork and took two bites of banana pudding and took a napkin and wiped the fork for 20 minutes. and left the fork. of course, our investigators took that fork. they performed the analysis. i got a mixture of dna sampling, meaning there was one strong profile and one weak profile on there as well. apparently, the restaurant hadn t properly cleaned the fork. the strong profile was from an unidentified female. the weaker one, from a male, was compared to dna from stephanie s rape kit. the one weak profile on the fork was very similar to the profile that was found on the vaginal swabs from stephanie bennett.
they also compared the lands and grooves on the test bullet compared to those of the fatal bullet. those also matched. my opinion is it s that gun and only that gun that could have fired it. by this time, planten was already in custody in north carolina and things weren t going well. at his court appearance, he refused to walk and had to be strapped to a gurney. when he was wheeled into court for his first appearance, he did not open his eyes. and i believe in drew planten s world, as long as his eyes were closed and he didn t see it, it may not have happened. but no one will know for certain all the details in either murder. shortly before he was to go on trial for murder in north carolina, drew planten suffocated himself with a plastic bag in prison. i was disappointed that we weren t able to have a trial, that we weren t able to sit in
of agricultural. very reclusive individual. we went and interviewed people. he was very much to himself. very few friends. when police spoke with planten at his workplace, he claimed he never before heard the name stephanie bennett. wasn t many people within a 50-mile radius that was not familiar with the case. planten refused to go the police station so officers made an appointment to meet him at his apartment the next day. we told him we would see him at 5:00 and drew planten started shaking uncontrollably, like he was freezing cold. it was so bad, i looked back at him and said, are you okay? he said, i m fine. at that meeting, planten denied any involvement in stephanie s murder and refused to provide a dna sample. we always said maybe when that first person tells us no, that will be our man. but police had no evidence against planten and he bore no resemblance to the composite