Pressed For Crime

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A brutal murder.

Lots of suspects and conflicting evidence.

But the forensics were clear on one thing: the killer knew his victim.

And that alone gave investigators a head start.

For many young women, the allure of the stage, theater, and the arts is difficult to ignore.

19-year-old Heather Stigliano thought she might have what it takes to succeed.

She liked to pose and model and be on stage, and she had a beautiful voice.

After high school, Heather planned to pursue her dreams, but put them on hold for a year as a favor to her mother.

I had just gone through a divorce, and she promised to stay with me for a year until I got my legs.

And when that year was up, she made her plans and she moved.

Her destination was Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where she had some friends.

She wanted to be in the entertainment industry.

I knew she loved singing and I think that's one of the reasons why she moved down to the Myrtle Beach area because this area has a lot of entertainment.

Heather rented a small apartment in this house near the beach and took a job as a waitress.

But Heather found it difficult to get work as a singer, and she told her mother she was discouraged.

She wanted me to come down.

She was feeling homesick, and

things were not going as well as she wanted it to go down there.

It would be the last time Susan heard her daughter's voice.

A week later, friends found Heather's body in her apartment.

She had been beaten, stabbed, and strangled to death with an electrical cord.

The crime was one of the most brutal crimes that I've seen as a prosecutor.

Next to Heather's body, investigators found broken pieces of plastic.

Small, black plastic pieces, particles found some on her body, some scattered around the room and laying next to her body, which we could not identify.

There were no signs of forced entry, but the motive appeared to be robbery.

Heather's wallet, her 35 millimeter camera, television set, and automobile were missing.

We didn't understand at that time how he got in the house or anything else.

So yeah, we were very concerned about it and we wanted to try to find him or her before

another crime could take place.

Police issued a be on the lookout call for Heather's car, a 10-year-old Chevrolet Monza with Pennsylvania license plates.

We have a system called NCIC, National Crime Information Center.

And we can enter stolen vehicles, stolen items, articles, pretty much anything, and it will go out nationwide.

At the autopsy, the medical examiner photographed and then measured the wounds on Heather's body.

There were 40 wounds in all.

I will do diagrams, photographs, and acetate tracings.

Lay a sheet of acetate over the body.

trace the injuries onto the acetate.

Those are then kept as evidence.

From the amount of decomposition, Dr.

Downs estimated Heather had been dead for about a week.

There were several stab wounds that were inflicted to her body after she died.

There were some injuries that

probably happened during the final few moments.

It was obvious that there were at least three different

methods of murder there because she had a wire that was around her neck.

The medical examiner also found a bloody shoe impression on Heather's shirt and what looked like knife wounds on her neck.

Both were indications the killer tried to subdue her.

A rape test kit found no biological evidence of sexual assault.

One of the things that you try to do as a forensic pathologist is to try to tell the story as best you can of what happened to an individual.

In a case like this, where there is a savage attack on a young girl,

you really want to try to answer those questions.

In the search for the killer, investigators found a significant clue at the crime scene.

The killer put a pillow under Heather's head, but there was no blood on the pillow.

It looked to me like it had been placed there,

not a part of the scene.

And it looked as if the killer knew her.

At the crime scene, investigators found several clues to the identity of Heather Stigliano's killer.

The evidence showed the killer tried to clean up her apartment afterwards.

There was several places there was blood found, but it was obvious that somebody had tried to wipe up a lot of the blood, a lot of smears and stuff like that.

Analysts applied a chemical called Amido Black to the bathroom and kitchen floor.

It was determined that this chemical would react to the dried blood left at the crime scene.

Evidence such as footwear impressions, those that were partially visible, and some that you couldn't see at all.

Seconds after it was applied, multiple shoe impressions appeared

from a size size 11 athletic shoe.

It was the same shoe impression found on Heather's shirt.

You know it belongs to the bad guy.

When you get evidence like that, it's been a good day.

So you feel good inside.

In a search for suspects, Investigators spoke with Heather's friends, co-workers, and acquaintances, and there were quite a few.

She was very friendly.

She'd loved to be with her friends.

She wanted to to be part of anything that had energy.

Police discovered that Heather had an ex-boyfriend, Jack Norton, who was a pilot stationed at nearby Pope Air Force Base.

Heather was having some problems and wanted to get back up with him.

We didn't know if they had gotten back up and some domestic situation going on, argument, struggle, or something like that might have happened.

Investigators asked military officials where Norton was stationed on the week of Heather's murder.

Found out that he wasn't around during the time that she would have died.

Norton had been in Saudi Arabia that week and was eliminated as a suspect.

Next, Heather's family told investigators that she had had a problem with a man at a Halloween party several days before her murder.

She claimed that an Air Force captain named Robert Dolan had sexually assaulted her at the party.

Well, she had drank a little bit more than she should have.

She did tell me that she thought that she had been raped by one of the

husbands of one of the guests there

while she was passed out.

Well, I think he had around 17 years in the Air Force and I think three kids.

And that would be a motive.

This was going to ruin his career.

There was no doubt about it.

Captain Dolan's wife, Carol, also became a suspect.

We felt that Carol had gotten word that Heather was going to the police about this, about being sexually assaulted by her husband.

And of course, that just gave us more reason to suspect Carol of either committing this homicide or her letting her husband Robert know and him committing this homicide or them together.

Heather never did report this incident to police.

When questioned, Captain Dolan and his wife cooperated fully with the investigation and provided their fingerprints for analysis.

I compared the non-ink prints to the latent prints taken from the crime scene, and none of the ink standards were identified to the latent prints of the crime scene.

We couldn't say he didn't do it, but there was nothing indicating he did do it.

Then, investigators identified a fourth suspect.

Chris Harkins was Heather's friend, who stayed in her apartment when he was in Myrtle Beach on business.

After interviewing Chris, it was found that they were just friends, that there was no sexual contact or anything like that between them.

And Harkins had an alibi.

He was in Lexington, South Carolina, 160 miles away the week of Heather's murder.

Then investigators got an unexpected call from an antique dealer 26 miles away in Pauley's Island, South Carolina.

He and his wife read about Heather's murder in the newspaper and had some information they thought might help.

They told us of a gentleman who had come down there.

He looked like he had been in some type of a scrap or a fight, and he was trying to sell a camera.

The camera was the same make and model as the one missing from Heather's apartment.

Just real suspicious acting to them the whole time.

He even got a little aggravated when they said they didn't want it.

He told them he just wanted some money.

And he had a look that scared them.

He described the man as white, mid-30s, with dark hair.

And he had the presence of mind to write down his license plate number on his coffee cup.

It was registered to Heather Stigliano, who is our victim.

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An antique dealer gave police a detailed description of the man driving Heather Stigliano's car.

From that description, a police artist created this composite sketch, which was distributed to news outlets throughout the country.

As a result, employees of a local construction company in in Myrtle Beach told police that they recognized him.

They said, well, we had a subject named James Whipple that worked here, but all of a sudden was just gone, never called in, never give us a notice.

He's been gone for about a week now, which was kind of connecting some of the timeline.

James Whipple was 38 years old and had a police record in four different states.

He had several burglaries, grand larcenies, unauthorized use of vehicle, petty larcenies, even a DUI or two with

resistant arrest.

Six days later, police found Whipple in Melbourne, Florida, driving Heather Stigliano's car.

I was on top of the world.

In one day, we came up with two bits of

information,

a suspect in a car.

But what connection, if any, did Whipple have to Heather Stigliano?

Investigators learned that Whipple knew Heather's friend, Chris Harkins, because they had worked together in the past.

But that was the only connection that Whipple had had with Heather at the time.

They

had briefly met right then, and he left with Chris.

There was no other connection between Heather and Whipple.

Inside Heather's car was a virtual treasure trove of evidence.

Found a lot more than I expected to find.

Went through a methodical process of working from the outside in on the vehicle.

Under the front seat, investigators found a bent serrated knife, a broken clothes iron, a pair of men's athletic shoes, and bloody clothing.

They sent the knife to forensic pathologist Dr.

Jamie Downs.

With the serrated knife, I looked at the separation of the tines of the serrated knife, the little points stuck out, and noted that those were at repeated intervals, very consistent repeated intervals.

Dr.

Downs then compared the size of the serrations to the knife marks on Heather's skin, and they were the same.

A group of abrasions on the side of her neck, no bigger than a half an inch, was matched back to a knife knife in the possession of the suspect in the case.

Dr.

Downs also compared the clothes iron found in Whipple's possession to Heather's wounds and concluded the iron had also been used in the crime.

Next, Steve Derrick wanted to see if the black plastic pieces from the crime scene came from this iron.

So at that point, it became a puzzle.

After everything was photographically documented, started gluing the plastic pieces back together.

After some trial and error, Derek discovered the pieces fit perfectly.

The pieces from the crime scene and the iron in the car created a link to Whipple

being at the crime scene.

Investigators also analyzed the athletic shoes found in Whipple's possession.

They were size 11, the same size as the shoe impressions found in blood at the crime scene.

Steve Derrick used standard red fingerprint powder to dust the right shoe, then made an impression on a transparency.

The size and tread pattern were the same.

More importantly, the wear patterns known as accidental characteristics were virtually identical.

The right shoe that had been taken from Whipple was the shoe to the exclusion of all others.

Derek also concluded this was the shoe which made the bloody impression on Heather's shirt.

The outsole design of Whipple's shoes matched this bloody impression on the t-shirt.

And tests showed that clothing in the car contained Heather's blood.

In his very first interview with police, James Whipple confessed.

I did it to see her fix my drugs.

I did it because of

damn crack cocaine.

You'll get your damn money.

You'll get your drugs one way or the other.

He said, I killed her, and I deserve the death penalty for doing what I did to this young lady.

James Whipple told police his addiction to crack cocaine had taken over his life and that the need for money to support his habit drove him to murder.

The victim's family and friends can't get on with their lives until justice has been served and put the laws here behind them and try to get on with their lives.

His family indicated that he had had some real problems with drugs and that he had an anger, a problem, that he had lost his wife, his marriage, his kids, and everything because of the drugs.

And they said that it was something that he could not control at all.

Whipple knew Heather Stigliano and knew she worked as a waitress and would have cash in her apartment.

He knew that she worked at a restaurant, had good tip money, usually on most nights.

Prosecutors believe Whipple went to Heather's apartment for one reason and one reason only.

Money.

He asked Heather if his friend Chris was there, which was probably a ruse to see if she was alone.

Heather said she had his telephone number and allowed him inside.

Desperate for money and high on drugs, Whipple attacked.

He struck her with the clothes iron,

which broke the plastic housing, then strangled her to death.

Whipple took her money and whatever household items he thought he could sell.

He also stole her car.

The next day, Whipple said he returned to Heather's apartment to clean up.

He wiped his fingerprints and tried to remove as much blood as he could.

But forensic tests found the shoe impressions he thought he had cleaned.

Before leaving, Whipple placed the pillow under Heather's head, a sign he knew her.

He also took the clothes iron and knife later found in his possession.

A short time later, He tried to sell Heather's camera to an antique dealer who notified authorities.

We told the jury Jim Whipple was guilty in terms of committing the offense.

He had confessed not only to police, and the judge was going to allow those confessions in because all of them were done properly, but he had talked to journalists, he had talked to detention officers, he had written letters telling everybody he'd committed this terrible crime.

Just want to say I'm sorry, not that it's going to help.

I'd also like to say that I believe in capital punishment.

That's the only thing that I deserve.

I never had a murder suspect, you know, confess like that and ask for the death penalty and say it so many times.

James Whipple was convicted of first-degree murder, but didn't get the death penalty.

Instead, he was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

This, in my mind, is the second

most horrific case that I've ever been involved in in terms of the trauma to the victim, the torture that the victim endured,

the level of violence used to commit the murder.

I deserve the punishment I get.

I feel horrible about what I've done.

I wish I could bring her back and trade legs with Academy.

The forensic analysis not only identified the perpetrator, but documented the extent of his brutality.

Forensic scientists is amazing

the evidence that they can find from a piece of hair,

you know, a little DNA or

what have you, but no, it doesn't surprise me in the least.

That really, to me, is impressive.

That's what forensics is, is answering questions that haven't even been thought of yet.

Anytime I can bring a case to a positive conclusion and provide a service to one of my fellow citizens, and I've done my job, I feel good.