Sands of Crime

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Up next, my wife heard a really awful scream from her apartment complex.

A college co-ed goes missing, and police suspect it's foul play.

It was pretty brazen.

Could have been a peeping tom, could have been a car burglar.

A witness thinks he sees the victim's car, but doesn't get a good look at the driver.

This guy kept looking at him in that rearview mirror.

He would look at people on the side of the street and wonder, I wonder if that could be Julie's killer.

For eight years, the mystery goes unsolved until a pair of shoes and a cell phone call give new life to a very cold case.

This did not strike me as a run-of-the-mill murder.

For 21-year-old Julie Buskin, A bachelor's degree in dance from the University of Oklahoma was the culmination of a lifelong dream.

Julie always knew she wanted to be a ballet dancer from the time she went to a recital of her friends in first grade.

Her goal was to teach children, possibly even special ed children, and have a dance studio.

Julie completed all of the courses for her bachelor's degree by Christmas, so her parents drove from Arkansas to help Julie move her belongings home.

When they got to her apartment, Julie wasn't there, and neither neither was her car.

A police officer came to me and asked if we were the bus kins.

Yes, and he said, you need to contact the OU Police Department.

Your daughter's missing.

And Mary Jean said, you know, something's bad wrong.

Police learned that Julie took her girlfriend to the airport around 4 o'clock that morning and told her friend she was going back to her apartment.

And that was the last that Julie was seen by any of her friends or family.

Around 5:30, someone in Julie's apartment building called police.

Number number one.

Yes, we were just sleeping, and my wife heard a really strange, like really awful scream from our parking lot of our apartment complex.

Do you see anything outside?

No, I'm kind of afraid to go outside, actually.

One of the neighbors heard a male voice say, Shut up, get in the car.

Several of the neighbors heard a woman scream.

One of the neighbors heard a car leaving the scene.

I believe the scream that was reported to the Norman Police Department at that time in the morning probably was the scream of Julie Buskin.

I have no way of proving that, but I believe it to be so.

12 hours after she disappeared, Julie Buskin's body was found on the bank of a lake about 15 miles from her apartment.

She was in the water from about the waist up.

Her hands were tied behind her back, tied with a pair of shoelaces.

She had been shot once, execution style.

The gunshot wound to the back of her head was very obvious.

It was a contact wound, meaning the pistol's barrel was in actual contact with her scalp.

And there were signs of sexual assault.

And the evidence would certainly indicate that her pants had been pulled down at some point in time.

Then I got mad as hell, and I went outside

and I cussed at God

and I got just mad.

You feel very helpless.

There's just nothing you can do.

Nothing.

And nothing was going to help.

Police hoped that evidence at the scene would lead them to Julie's killer.

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Julie Buskin had many friends at the university.

Police interviewed as many as possible to see if anyone could provide useful information.

Julie had lots of friend boys, but they weren't boyfriends.

And

that was, she just wasn't, I don't think, ready for that.

I don't think she had time for it, first of all, right at that point.

I wasn't over any boyfriend troubles that she'd had.

I wasn't aware of any bad breakups or anything like that.

Police found Julie's apartment in perfect order.

There were no signs of a struggle.

They found Julie's car in an apartment complex just one block away.

It was a little eerie knowing that that vehicle had been sitting right across the street at another complex, probably since whoever had used it had dropped it off.

Red sand on the floor of her car looked like the sand from the banks of the lake where her body was discovered.

That struck me as bizarre that whoever had abducted her had then brought the vehicle back.

Why?

If you commit a crime like this,

you want to get rid of the car, obviously, but you don't want to take a chance of returning almost to the, literally to the scene of the abduction.

There was no blood inside the car and no obvious signs of a struggle.

Investigators could find no foreign hairs, fibers, or prints.

We knew immediately that the cell phone was missing and several things out of her ring.

Julie had on an opal ring and the girls knew she had that on and it was missing.

Julie's cell phone records indicated someone had used her phone after her death.

There was a call for the weather forecast and one to a number not in service at the time.

At the lake, Investigators discovered possible evidence in the sand near Julie's body.

There were two sets of prints that went down to the lake.

Only one set returned.

One set appeared to match Julie's shoes.

The other didn't.

That set, we believe, belonged to the person that killed Julie Buskin.

A strong wind had blown sand into the shoe prints, obscuring some of the tread pattern.

Even so, analysts found an identifiable pattern consistent with a size 9 men's Nike running shoe.

From the photograph that we sent the Nike Corporation, they were able to identify the specific shoe.

It was a Nike Air II running shoe.

About 20 feet from the body, investigators found a crumpled pink leotard with the initials JB on the label.

It was Julie's.

It had material on it that turned out to be seminal fluid.

The leotard was sent for DNA testing.

An autopsy confirmed Julie was shot to death with a single.22 caliber bullet.

Ballistics experts were able to determine that it had been fired from a distinctive gun.

The projectile had 16 lands and grooves with a right-hand twist.

And that's a little bit uncommon.

It allowed me to narrow the number of firearm brands down to just a handful of possibilities.

Research showed only six companies made.22 caliber handguns with this combination of LANs and grooves.

Despite the leads and a $70,000 reward, there were no significant breaks in the case.

You began to believe this sort of break in the case was never going to happen.

There was a great fear with law enforcement that if this crime were not solved, if this person were not taken off the street, that there would be other homicides that we would be investigating.

But a month later, after seeing a picture of Julie Buskin's car on the news, a man called police to say he might have seen her killer.

On the morning of Julie's murder, he saw a car like hers pull out in front of him and they almost collided.

This was near the lake where Julie was killed.

It made him mad.

He stayed right on the little red car that was speeding quite rapidly.

He got a little road rage going.

He followed the red car for about five miles.

He's watching him through the rearview mirror.

He was that astute to realize that something's not right here.

And so he kept watching because the guy kept looking at him, kept looking at him in that rearview mirror.

The witness wanted to describe the individual, but wasn't sure he could.

When you view this person in your mind,

What's the first thing that pops up?

Is it the hairstyle?

Is it the body structure?

Forensic artist Harvey Pratt showed the witness examples of each facial feature trying to get a reaction.

He didn't realize he actually was a witness to something until someone tweaks his memory, his recall.

That's what I refer to as a disassociated witness.

Slowly, a portrait emerged of a young man, possibly a college student, possibly Hispanic, with long black hair and a muscular build.

I remember being very excited when that profile came out.

Of course, I'm pretty literal of a person, and so I expected that looks just like the guy, and they're going to have him in no time because now they know what he looks like.

Or

did they?

A witness was able to describe the man he saw driving Julie Buskin's car on the morning of her murder.

The composite sketch was broadcast repeatedly by the local media in Oklahoma.

When you believe it's a stranger as opposed to an acquaintance, it certainly broadens the investigation.

And rather than a few suspects, you're now looking at hundreds of thousands of suspects.

But no one recognized him.

And the case eventually went cold.

Then, four and a half years after the murder, police received a letter from a female inmate at the Oklahoma County Jail.

She said, an old acquaintance, 23-year-old Dennis Sturmer, might have murdered Julie Buskin.

Sturmer, a construction worker, had no criminal record, but at the time of the murder, he lived only four blocks from Julie's apartment.

And he bore a resemblance to the composite sketch.

Police tracked him down.

He refused to answer questions and he wouldn't provide his DNA sample.

So police had to get a court order to collect his DNA.

After almost five years, it looked as if the case might finally be solved.

His DNA profile was very, very close to the sample that was taken off the leotards and off the underwear that she was wearing at the time.

But unfortunately, being very, very close is not a match.

And unless it's an exact match, they're excluded.

So Mr.

Sturmer was excluded as a suspect in the case.

But Sturmer's profile was so similar, it opened up a whole new avenue of potential suspects.

The chemist at the time felt so strongly that the DNA was so close that it was their opinion that it could possibly be a relative of this individual, which caused law enforcement to look at any relatives that this person might have, which they did.

Sturmer's only immediate living male relative was his brother, and his DNA didn't match.

Again, the case went cold.

I think as years went on and we didn't have an answer, we had pretty well accepted the fact that we might not live long enough to know who did this to our daughter.

Investigators also performed a DNA dragnet.

They asked every male Julie knew from school and all males in her neighborhood with a criminal record to voluntarily provide a DNA sample.

Virtually everyone that she came in contact with became a suspect.

Everyone who was asked complied.

More than 200 people were tested in one of the largest DNA dragnets in U.S.

history.

But no one matched.

After 200-plus DNA tests with no match,

you began to get pessimistic about whether this case is ever going to be solved.

Then, six years after Julie's murder, a man named Anthony Sanchez was arrested for the rape of his former girlfriend.

As with all alleged sex offenders, Sanchez provided his DNA sample for testing.

While that was underway, investigators noticed some curious facts about Sanchez's background.

First, at the time of Julie Buskin's murder, he lived only one mile away from Julie Buskin's apartment.

When police tracked down his former associates,

One of them, an old girlfriend, showed police her diary for the month Julie was murdered.

There is an entry in, I believe it's October of 1996, where she wrote,

Anthony bought me a new set of Nike shoes, and he bought the same style but boys.

Sanchez wore a size 9 shoe.

This was proof.

Sanchez owned a pair of sneakers the same brand and size as the shoe impressions found next next to Julie's body.

And there was one more clue.

Someone, presumably the killer, used Julie's cell phone after her murder.

The number dialed was one digit off from the phone number of a girl Sanchez was dating at the time.

Was it possible?

that Sanchez tried to call the girl's number from memory, but got one digit wrong?

That was pretty good circumstantial evidence even without the DNA.

Finally, Sanchez's girlfriend told police he had an unusual habit.

They had received information from one of Sanchez's girlfriends that he and his father liked to fire 22

caliber firearms into the wall at their

duplex.

Sort of an odd father-and-son type bonding.

Since Julie was murdered with a.22-caliber weapon, investigators got a warrant and used portable x-ray machines to check the walls of the duplex where Sanchez lived with his girlfriend.

When that turned up, nothing.

They tore down the walls.

Again,

nothing.

After the police had run roughshod over the apartment and created an absolute mess in there, the landlord went back in and started cleaning it up.

He had somewhat a shop vac.

He cleaned up, and as he was emptying out the bag, what falls out but a bullet?

A.22 caliber bullet.

A ballistics test showed the bullet was consistent with the highly distinctive one retrieved during Julie's autopsy.

Finally, when tested, Anthony Sanchez's DNA was compared to the biological sample from Julie's Leotard.

The results were no surprise.

The morning that the police called and told us they had a match.

To be honest, it's still kind of foggy.

Obviously, we were excited.

We weren't sure at this point if that day would ever come.

When his DNA matched the biological material from the crime scene, Anthony Sanchez was arrested and charged with the murder of Julie Buskin.

Sanchez was 18 years old at the time of the crime and lived only one mile from Julie's apartment.

Prosecutors said Sanchez was an accomplished thief.

and was stealing Christmas presents from parked cars on the night of the crime.

And that's when he saw Julie Buskin when she returned from driving her friend to the airport.

Investigators said Sanchez abducted Julie at gunpoint, forced her back into the car, and made her drive 15 miles to the lake.

There,

he sexually assaulted her and shot her, execution style.

Sanchez left his DNA, his size 9 shoe impressions in the sand, and afterwards tracked sand into Julie's car.

As Sanchez left the area, he cut off another driver who got a good enough look at his face to describe him to police.

Sanchez used Julie's cell phone to call his girlfriend.

He misdialed one number.

Had he called the right number, he most likely would have been caught within days.

Nevertheless, the scientific evidence eventually caught up with him.

They said the DNA that was left at the crime scene is what's going to convict this guy.

Anthony Sanchez was tried and convicted of Julie Buskin's murder and sentenced to death.

This was a senseless killing by a cold-blooded killer that had no respect for human life whatsoever.

That's evil.

That's just evil.

Often in the face of senseless violence, the only hope for the family is justice.

Increasingly, science helps provide it.

In cases like this where there's absolutely no witnesses except the perpetrator and your victim who's now deceased, There's no way these could be solved without forensics.

How do you account for a crime like this?

For what?

There's no money.

This is not a crime of passion.

Why?

Why do this?

There's only one man who can answer that question, and he's on death row in Oklahoma.

I think that Julie's more at peace.

And that may be somebody may think I'm a little crazy, but I do believe that Julie is at peace because she knows we're at peace.

And I believe that with all my heart.