document examiner gail heath compared the handwriting on the note to jonathan binney s handwriting samples. in this particular case, we were looking at hand printing. and hand printing can also be extremely identifiable back to an individual. most individuals when they first learn to write do learn to write from something called copy book style, which is printed letters within a textbook. there were a number of clear similarities. the lowercase g, especially at the end of words, was unusually open. the lowercase f was almost always tilted at an angle to the rest of the letters in the word. in examining the question to the known, i pretty much was able to account for each and every pen movement and pen characteristic that i saw in the question. gail heath concluded that jonathan binney most likely wrote this note. on the nine-point scale, this was at the first position, a
and turned to the note found at the murder scene. although the signature was illegible, the name at the top of the note was clear, melanie binney. since the note was addressed to my wife, melanie, investigators checked marriage records and identified the woman s husband as 26-year-old jonathan binney. the binneys lived just three miles away from the southerns home. allen southern said they didn t know the binneys. they re not any more neighbors than people who live a mile apart in manhattan are neighbors. investigators needed to know whether this might have been a murder-for-hire, with jonathan binney as the shooter. the cell phone records, and trust me, we checked, looking to see whether allen southern had called jonathan binney, no not an scintilla of connection, other than both were members of
for the rape of his infant daughter. he was sentenced to death. what is most troubling about jonathan binney s case is that he picked a total stranger. and that s what the jury and others and even judy s family members have such a hard time with. it ranks among the strangest and most senseless of crimes. despite the unusual nature of the crime and the lack of witnesses, science proved that jonathan binney murdered judy southern, despite having no connection to her whatsoever. they could prove without a doubt that yes, he was there. so, the science that s out there today is more than anybody can actually knows until you re going through it, because you never think about it, but you re way happy that it s there. you re glad that they do have that knowledge. we were genuinely concerned that we had too much evidence,
she and binney stumbled upon each other. as she tried to run, he fired two shots. one missed. the second hit her in the abdomen. [ gunshots ] binney got on his moped and fled through the fields. judy used her cell phone to call her husband, who arrived a short time later and rushed her to the hospital. since she saw the suicide note, she knew the perpetrator s name. she gave me a name of somebody barry? she died later in the hospital. apparently, he felt like that he was not going to go to prison as a child molester. he decided that he was going to be a murderer. and from what i understand, he was supposedly going to be a mass murderer. me and my son just didn t come home at the right time. jonathan binney was convicted of judy southern s murder and
and it scared him into murder. he didn t want to go to prison as a child molester, because he said he would be somebody s bitch in prison, that he wanted to go as a murderer. binney said he didn t know the southern family and that allen had nothing to do with the murder. based on the forensic evidence and his confession, binney chose the southerns home at random while driving down the street on his moped. he entered the empty home through an unlocked window, then cut the phone lines. since his intent was murder, he would have killed whoever came home, and he had no way of knowing whether it would be allen, judy, or their 5-year-old child. while waiting, the evidence shows he had some lunch, went through the family s personal belongings, and even took a shower. judy came home at 3:30 from her