Forensic Files Got it Wrong – PART 1: Bloody Footprints

Murder Porn: Crime shows that depict real events, usually homicides. Especially popular with middle-aged married people.

For the record, I was into Murder Porn way before I was middle-aged and married. In the genre of Murder Porn, Forensic Files is the gold standard. It has dramatic reenactments,  the haunting voice of Peter Thomas and, obviously, an emphasis on forensic science.

By watching all 400+ episodes multiple times I have learned that:

• The more hysterical a 911 caller is, the more likely they committed the crime
• If a woman is murdered, it was probably her husband
• The criminal justice system is filled with dead-eyed white guys wearing bad toupees (see below)*

Most episodes have done a good job convincing me that the correct person was convicted. There are three episodes, however, which left me feeling like they got the wrong guy.

This is one of those episodes.

“Purebread Murder” – Season 14, Episode 1

Synopsis: A young woman is brutally murdered. Her neighbor, Carloss Robinson, is convicted because he left bloody footprints and fingerprints at the scene – plus a footprint embedded in a hamburger bun (hence the punny title).

Robinson claims he entered the victim’s apartment, discovered her body in the bathtub, and then fled the scene. He says that he didn’t call the police because he is black and was afraid he would be framed for her murder.

According to the National Registry of Exonerations, “black people are 7 times more likely than white people to be wrongly convicted of murder”.

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Let’s walk through the evidence:

Semen: Robinson’s semen was found inside the victim.

Robinson lived next door to the victim and claims to have had consensual sex her just prior to her murder. He says he had to make a quick exit when he “heard a sound at the door and a man’s voice”.

The prosecution claims that there was no evidence that anyone besides Robinson was in the victim’s apartment when she was murdered. However, semen from another man was found inside the victim. This could corroborate Robinson’s version of the story – especially if the semen belonged to her abusive ex-boyfriend. Unfortunately we will never know who the other man was because the prosecution did not test the semen.

Blood: Robinson had some of the victim’s blood on his shirt. He also left behind footprints and fingerprints in the victim’s blood. 

After returning to his apartment Robinson could hear loud banging sounds (the attack, presumably) coming from next door. He says he went back over to check on the victim, discovered her dead body in the bathtub, and fled the scene.

Bloody spot: The shirt Robinson was wearing the night of the murder had “several small spots of blood” that were tested for DNA. One of the spots was his, and one was the victim’s.

The victim’s throat was slashed, which would have produced a powerful stream of arterial spray (think Lady Stark at the red wedding). Therefore, the killer’s clothes would have been saturated in the victim’s blood. The fact that Robinson’s shirt only had a tiny spot of blood on it supports his claim that he discovered her body postmortem. 

Bloody Handprint: Robinson left behind his palm and fingerprints in the victim’s blood. Whenever you have a suspect’s fingerprint in the victim’s blood, this is like gold for the prosecution. But, it doesn’t always indicate guilt; sometimes it indicates contamination of a crime scene.

This crime scene photograph (above) shows a palm print with blood dripping down the side of the tub. You can see the blood drips down past the water line, which means the print was left by someone after at least some of the water had drained out of the tub and the bloody residue had time to dry. 

So, again, the evidence seems to support Robinson’s version of events.

Hamburger Bun Footprint: Robinson’s footprint was discovered embedded in a hamburger bun 

In the prosecution’s version of events, Robinson murdered the victim, emptied out a bag of hamburger buns (which he used store his murder weapon) and then left his footprint on the bun while fleeing the scene. The prosecution claims that, had Robinson entered the apartment after the murder, the buns would have dried out too much for him to leave a clear footprint. Sounds like shaky logic and… did anyone actually test this theory?

Bloody Footprints: Robinson’s bloody footprints were found in the victim’s apartment.

According to the prosecution, Robinson soaked the victim’s body in the tub to erase DNA evidence, stashed his murder weapon in a bag so it would not drip blood on the floor, and then carelessly tracked bloody footprints all over the place.

If the killer showed signs that he cleaned up the crime scene, and Robinson left behind bloody footprints and fingerprints, doesn’t this suggest that Robinson and the killer are two different people?

In conclusion, I think Robinson was wrongly convicted because he happened to contaminate the scene of the crime. What’s more, I think that the forensic evidence used to convict Robinson does not implicate him and actually corroborates his version of what happened.

Robinson has been in jail since 2000. In 2017 a judge denied Robinson’s request to have the other man’s semen tested.