reporter: but the killer left something of his own behind, something detectives didn t notice. until the coroner moved ellen s body. it appeared to be a homemade device used to strangle the victim. it was cut off portions of what appeared to be a broom, a mob handle. and a piece of wire. i m going between the two? yes. so there was some planning involved? a great deal of planning. it s a homemade garage. ago rots? detective gary hilton had not seen one of those since he served in vietnam. and certainly not at the crime scene. but now he understood why lynn s neck was cut so deeply. did he actually put it around her neck? yes. reporter: overkill, and that would be an understatement. now for what was most
that weapon, the homemade wire and wood garrote, had been a mute resident in the evidence locker for a long, long time. wallace couldn t stop looking at it. as if it could talk. the whole goal of these cases, right, is trying to see what s hiding in plain sight. so the killer s garr ro gar made with wooden dowels connected by a thin piece of wire. a double strand. wait, double? why would you double it? apparently, you recognize this is so thin, it is probably going to break if it is by itself. why not use thicker wire? that makes sense to me, you re using something that s available to you. it s not ideal, but you happen to have it on hand. i ll just settle for it. same with the handles, like the killer cut pieces from a household broom. we could see forensically blue specks of paint, almost sanded off but not completely. this is something you re making from available materials.
that gave us the idea. wow, maybe there s available materials or junk that s still lying around. let s take a look and see. doug bradford moved out of that house years earlier, but his elderly mother still lived there. is it possible that some of the simple building materials you would use to build a garrote might still be tucked away in an old drawer, in the garage? worth a look. wallace and his partner ran the idea by. could we find the same wire and dowelling? 2007, they served the warrant. but really? by then, nearly three decades had passed. so what in the world would they find in this little house in costa mesa? coming up, something old? what are the odds of anyone keeping it that long? it looked old.
wallace now went to his own workshop and started tinkering. made a garrote, then another, and another, to under the mindset of the killer and the materials he used. he examined the wire very closely. then he looked again at the pictures doug s mother painted, and the wire doug used to hang them. and both wires were the same type, something called grade number 1 8-strand braided wire. that s the wire used in the garrote, and that s the wire doug s mom was using to hang his paintings. exciting discovery. well, maybe. but like the dowels, it could also be pure coincidence. how to tell? as i thought about it, i said, wow, i wonder how rare that wire really is. i went down to the local hardware store.
i said, let s see if i can find picture hanging wire. i found some, but not that. i called everywhere. i called the manufacturers, do you sell a thinner wire? very uncommon? very uncommon. so uncommon, of all the picture hanging wire sold, this particular wire only accounts for 1% to 6% of sales. it s that rare. yet, that s what is being used to build the garrote, and that happens to also be what doug had access to because of his mom s painting. not like dna, of course, but what they call a class match. was it enough along with everything else to get lewin to take the case to course? i got done with the work on the wire, went to work on the alibi, with the work on the garrote, i felt we had a fileable case. i brought it to john. now, at this point, a more conservative prosecutor might have told him forget it, but lewin likes tough circumstantial cases. he said yes and took the case to his boss at the district