of both women, then superimposed slides of the skull over the photographs. the skull did not match the woman from georgia, but it did match the photo of bun chee nyhuis perfectly. face is at an angle. she is clowning around, making a face. we find the jaw line is within the chin. the top is within the top of the head. the cheek is within. the eyes are in the orbits. the nasal opening corresponds to the nose, and the teeth match up very nicely to the jaw line here. in spite of the fact that it is a very difficult angle to approximate and expression to approximate, we felt this was a very good match. now armed with a positive scientific identification, police turned their attention to richard nyhuis. they suspected that he knew more about his wife s disappearance than he was telling them. her friends indicated they had a very volatile
relationship, that they argued quite a bit. and police also learned of a disturbing coincidence, that richard nyhuis was a boy scout leader and often camped at the boy scout ranch where police discovered bunchee s grave. i turned to my partner and we looked at each other. we just couldn t believe it. that s when we knew we had to formulate a game plan and we would have probably just one shot at him. it all started fitting together at that point. all the pieces start coming into place. when police confronted richard nyhuis with the forensic evidence, he confessed, although he gave conflicting accounts of what actually happened. he said bun chee fell during a scuffle and hit her head accidentally, but admitted suffocating his wife. was bleeding real bad. there was blood all over the place and she was yelling. so i put my hands over her mouth
husband richard and had returned home to her native thailand. when police questioned richard, he did not believe that the skull found at the boy scout ranch 100 miles away from his home was that of his wife. richard said she told him she missed her family in thailand and she wanted to divorce him. he said he personally drove her to the st. louis airport five years earlier to take her flight to thailand. he said that was the last time he and his children saw her. and they never heard from her again. and neighbors confirmed that she had, in fact, spoken of returning to thailand. i knew she told me she had gotten her passport. she had gotten her citizenship and her passport. so it wouldn t have surprised me, you know, if she had done that. she mentioned to me, you know, she s not happy.
and her nose and suffocated her. in light of the confession, forensic pathologist dr. mary case examined the skull. she studied the small wound on the back of the skull and concluded that it was not the result of an accident, but rather, the result of blunt trauma to the head. this is a very limited area. it s pushed inward. and we tend to see this kind of depressed skull fracture when you strike the head with something that has very forceful impact over a very small striking surface. a hammer would be a good example of something that could do that. it is a tool. it is meant to strike. and all of the force is directed on to a very small striking surface. based on the forensic evidence and parts of nyhuis confession, prosecutors believe that richard and bun chee argued one night in the basement of their home. we re not moving! we ve been through this before! we are not moving!
three and five minutes to suffocate an individual. after a minute or two, the person would only be unconscious. it was entirely possible that nyhuis put his wife into the freezer while she was still alive. richard nyhuis was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 50 years. it was great forensic science, and of course that s how it s supposed to work. you get a button, you get a hair, and i admire that. i think it is wonderful. it took all the different scientific and forensic people to make this thing happen. any one piece of which could have stopped the investigation. one of the unique things about the case was actually having the remains to do the trial, and bunchee nyhuis actually came alive in her own trial.