The House on Murder Mountain
Mr. SCOTT CANNON: Looks like she's not afraid to kill people.
MANKIEWICZ: What really happened up on that hill?
(House on hill; mobile home)
MATTHIAS: As the years go by, fills me with this rage.
(Photo of Graves; photo of Kinser and Suzan)
MANKIEWICZ: The House on Murder Mountain.
(Title graphic)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Profile: The House on Murder Mountain; Scott Cannon, convicted
of triple homicide, set free after new details emerge about case
THE HOUSE ON MURDER MOUNTAIN
ANN CURRY: Good evening and welcome to DATELINE. I'm Ann Curry. Many of us
remember that spooky place in the neighborhood when we were kids, where we
were too scared to go. But there is a place that even adults are spooked by
because it has been the scene of one tragedy after another. The question is
why. Here's Josh Mankiewicz.
JOSH MANKIEWICZ reporting: High in the rolling hills of central
Oregon, within sight of the state capital, where the landscape is lined with
endless acres of vineyards and miles of Christmas tree farms, sits an estate.
(Forest; city in distance; road through country; vineyards; Christmas tree
farm; house on hill in distance)
Mr. THOMAS OSBORNE: I know what evil is. I've seen evil. That place is
evil.
MANKIEWICZ: It's a place where many lives have ended in
mysterious ways, and what happened here in the space of 30 minutes more than a
decade ago is still unknown.
(Trees passing; house on hill; photos of hill and environs)
VICKIE: There's got to be somebody out there that knows something...
KATHY: Mm-hmm.
VICKIE: ...that could take that doubt away.
MANKIEWICZ: The story begins in the fall of 1998, just below that
big house on the hill. A young man had just moved into this mobile home.
Twenty-six-year-old Jason Kinser had been hired to be the property's
caretaker. Kinser's sisters, Vickie and Kathy:
(Country road; mobile home and house on the hill; photo of Jason Kinser;
Vickie and Kathy)
VICKIE: Jason, he was the tow-headed kid that everybody loved.
I mean, he always was smiling.
(Photos of Kinser)
KATHY: Made you laugh. Biggest smile.
MANKIEWICZ: And living there with Jason Kinser? His fiancee,
Suzan Osborne, who was saving money to attend a school to care for tigers and
other large jungle cats. Suzan's father, Thomas Osborne:
(Mobile home; photo of Kinser and Suzan Osborne; photos of Suzan, Kinser and
Suzan, and Suzan and Thomas Osborne)
Mr. OSBORNE: She was going to take care of the house, I guess. And he was
going to do odd jobs.
MANKIEWICZ: You liked him? You approved of him?
Mr. OSBORNE: Jason was like a son. Everybody liked Jason.
MANKIEWICZ: But on the afternoon of November 23rd, 1998,
Osborne's phone rang. On the other end was a woman who he would later learn
was the owner of that big house on the hill, a woman named Bimla Boyd.
(Thomas on deck; house on hill; photo of Bimla Boyd)
Mr. OSBORNE: Bimla Boyd was screaming, 'They're dead.'
(Phone off hook)
Mr. OSBORNE: 'Somebody shot them.'
MANKIEWICZ: Did you know who Bimla Boyd was at that point?
Mr. OSBORNE: Not at all, no.
MANKIEWICZ: How'd she have your phone number?
Mr. OSBORNE: I don't know. It was about two hours later, a detective came
to the house and told us that—what had happened.
MANKIEWICZ: What that woman, the estate owner, had said was sadly
true. Inside the mobile home, Jason Kinser lay dead on his kitchen floor,
under the trailer the bodies of Suzan Osborne and of a friend, 25-year-old
Celesta Graves. Investigators believe Kinser was killed first and that the
women were then chased, cornered and executed, their killer working
methodically to make sure he or she did not leave witnesses behind.
(Trees at sunset passing; photo of Boyd; crime scene photos; photo of Celesta
Graves; mobile home)
VICKIE: I always think about those two girls underneath that trailer.
And that's just wrong. And I think about my brother laying on the
floor, thinking through his mind, 'Gosh, did I deserve this?' You know, what
was he thinking. 'How could I have let it come to this?'
(Photo of Graves; crime scene photo; photo of Kinser and Suzan; mobile home)
VICKIE: They didn't deserve that. They didn't deserve that.
Mr. OSBORNE: Even today, you know, I can still see my wife sitting across
the table and just—she's completely unglued.
MANKIEWICZ: What did you think had happened out there?
Mr. OSBORNE: Somebody went nuts and killed three kids. Why? Don't know.
MANKIEWICZ: Investigators for the Polk County Sheriff's Office
had little to go on: a few spent shell casings near the bodies; but no homicide
weapon or weapons, believed to be .22 caliber pistols; and no witnesses beyond
the estate owner, Bimla Boyd. She told detectives that at about 3:45 that
afternoon she'd looked out her window and seen smoke coming from the mobile
home below. When she'd driven down the hill, she said, she'd put out a fire
inside the trailer, a fire apparently set near the wood stove to consume the
evidence of the killings. She found the bodies, and at 3:57 PM, she called
911.
(Crime scene photos; photo of shell casings; photos of house and mobile home;
photo of Boyd; exiting door; mobile home; moving down hill; mobile home; crime
scene photo with fire overlaid; clock; phone off hook)
MANKIEWICZ: Despite the lack of evidence, investigators soon discovered
information they thought might help identify the killer. Jason Kinser, the
kid with the smile who was loved by everyone, turned out to be a small time
drug dealer with, police said, plans of making it to the big time. He had two
previous drug convictions and a new arrest just weeks before the homicide. More
importantly, Kinser had been involved in a number of drug deals that went
wrong, leading, police said, to threats against Jason Kinser's life.
Mr. ERIC MASON: There were people who told Jason at the time, 'This is
dangerous.'
MANKIEWICZ: At the time of the homicides, Eric Mason was an
investigative reporter for a TV station in Portland.
(Photos of Eric Mason and others)
MANKIEWICZ: Three people were killed that day.
Mr. MASON: Right.
MANKIEWICZ: But police thought at the time that Jason Kinser was the primary
victim; the two women were killed because they were witnesses.
Mr. MASON: That's right. So I think when you start running through this
list of names—Bushwhacker, Duct Tape Mike, Nazi Red.
MANKIEWICZ: These are all drug dealers who were angry at Jason Kinser?
Mr. MASON: These were all people with stated motive to kill Jason Kinser,
and you have to ask yourself if one of those threats someone made good on.
MANKIEWICZ: And at least one more of the victims had recently
faced drug charges. Celesta Graves had been arrested for possession and then
released from jail just days before her homicide. Her sister Jennifer:
(Crime scene photos; photo of Graves; flashing police lights; mobile home)
JENNIFER: She was a loving, caring person with a good soul.
MANKIEWICZ: What was she up to when you last talked to her?
JENNIFER: Hanging out with the wrong people. Doing the wrong things.
MANKIEWICZ: For Suzan Osborne's family, as well, the fact that
drugs may have played a role in her homicide is part of a much larger mystery.
(Mobile home; photos of Kinser and Suzan)
MANKIEWICZ: And your daughter never mentioned anything to do with drugs or
anybody even being angry at Jason, or Jason having any enemies.
Mr. OSBORNE: She told Irene one time while they were in—sitting in the
kitchen, was talking, which they did quite often, that she was scared, OK? I
don't know why. And now, she might have told her mom why, but she never told
me.
MANKIEWICZ: Although an arrest would soon come, it would also be
clear to the families and to that reporter that there was evil yet to be
revealed here on Murder Mountain.
(Police vehicle; crime scene; aerial view of mobile home; trees passing; house
on hill)
MANKIEWICZ: And secrets revealed about the mysterious landlord of
Murder Mountain.
(Mobile home; photo of Boyd; porch; mobile home)
Mr. MASON: She was the person who told police, 'There isn't anybody that
comes and goes off the property that I don't know about.'
MANKIEWICZ: But was she telling the truth?
(Photos of mobile home and house; door)
(Announcements)
MANKIEWICZ: On a 30-acre Oregon estate in November 1998 the
bodies of three homicide victims—Celesta Graves, Suzan Osborne and Jason
Kinser—were found in and underneath this mobile home. Stories of drug
dealing and death threats swirled around the scene. Detectives believed Jason
to be the target. Suzan and Celesta were simply heart-rending collateral
damage. Suzan's father, Tom Osborne:
(House on hill; mobile home; trees at sunset; crime scene photos; photos of
Graves, Suzan and Kinser; crime scene photos; ambulance; mobile home; photos
of Graves, Kinser and Suzan; Thomas on deck)
Mr. OSBORNE: Why? Why does something like this happen? How can you take
three lives—for what? What could make you so mad, so upset to take three
lives of young people like that? No.
MANKIEWICZ: And then, just a little more than 24 hours after the
bodies were found, Polk County sheriff's investigators thought they had an
answer, and they would make an arrest. The suspect, 32-year-old Scott Cannon,
a plumber who on the day of the homicides was at the trailer providing an
estimate for repairs, the father of one young son with another on the way.
But he was also a pot and meth user, and his motive, investigators believed,
was a drug deal that went sideways.
(Aerial view of mobile home; police vehicle; photo of Scott Cannon; van;
trailer interior; photo of Cannon; mobile home; marijuana joint; baggies full
of substances; photo of Cannon; mobile home)
Mr. MASON: They had a guy who was on drugs. He was in the meth world.
MANKIEWICZ: Former investigative reporter Eric Mason:
(Mason)
Mr. MASON: He looked like a good suspect. He knew drug dealers.
He liked weapons. And when police showed up and started looking
around his garage, what was in his garage looked pretty good to them.
(Photo of Cannon; crime scene photos; photos of weapons)
MANKIEWICZ: What police found was an extensive gun collection.
No homicide weapon, but hundreds of rounds of bullets, and these: homemade
silencers. It was circumstantial, but it was enough. Scott Cannon was
charged with three homicides. If convicted, facing the death penalty. When his
trial began here at the Polk County, Oregon, courthouse in January of 2000,
the heart of the prosecution's case was the theory that Scott Cannon was the
only person at the scene who could have committed the crime. Two witnesses
who it turns out were making a drug delivery that day testified that as they
arrived shortly after 3:30 PM, Cannon met them outside the mobile home and
acted strangely, discouraged the two from going outside and then followed them
off the property in his van.
(Photos of weapons; Cannon in court; courthouse; empty courtroom; Cannon's mug
shot; crime scene photos; road; mobile home; photo of Cannon; van)
MANKIEWICZ: Then the prosecution's star witness sealed the deal.
Remember the estate owner, Bimla Boyd? She said that right after Cannon's van
left, she saw smoke coming from the trailer. She'd gone down, put out the
fire, discovered Jason Kinser's body, and then at 3:57, dialed 911.
(Empty courtroom; house on hill; photo of Boyd; van; mobile home seen from
house; crime scene photo with fire overlaid; clock; phone off hook)
Mr. MASON: She was the person who told police, 'There isn't anybody that
comes and goes off the property that I don't know about.'
So when she sees the van, she tells police, and that eventually
led to Scott Cannon.
(Photo of van; crime scene photos; photo of Cannon)
MANKIEWICZ: And finally, prosecutors had high-caliber science
linking Cannon to the homicides. It steamed as foolproof as DNA. An expert in
an obscure methodology called comparative bullet lead analysis told jurors
that bullets found in Scott Cannon's garage were chemically indistinguishable
from lead in the slugs found in the homicide victims. The chance that they
didn't match was one in 64 million.
(Cannon in court; newspaper article; gun being fired; "reactor on" sign;
reactor; readouts; photo of weapons; crime scene photos; bullet casings)
Mr. MASON: The bullet lead analysis showed the match of the lead found at
the scene with the lead found at his house in a box.
MANKIEWICZ: Case closed.
Mr. MASON: Absolutely.
MANKIEWICZ: Scott Cannon was in disbelief. No homicide weapon, no
eyewitnesses, but there he was, a self-described recreational drug user on
trial for his life. When it came time for his defense, Cannon simply said
that all the people in the mobile home had been alive when he finished his
work that day. He described the Hispanic looking man who he said had been at
the trailer and who might have been the real killer. The prosecution's case
was almost entirely circumstantial, but before Cannon knew it, the jury was
back with word on his fate.
What'd you think when you heard the word guilty?
Mr. OSBORNE: I was satisfied. I felt that justice had been done.
MANKIEWICZ: Scott Cannon avoided the death penalty. What he got
was life in prison without parole.
(Newspaper articles)
VICKIE: I've always felt that for those three kids, the person that had
committed the homicides was at least suffering—not as much as they did, but at
least suffering enough by being kept away from his family and his life.
KATHY: Mm-hmm.
MANKIEWICZ: There was no doubt jurors believed Scott Cannon was a
merciless killer. But what remained a mystery was his motive. Prosecutors
never offered any real explanation for the crime, and the families were left
to wonder.
(Empty juror seats; Cannon in court; Cannon leaving court)
MANKIEWICZ: Is it hard to not really understand what happened?
VICKIE: That's probably the hardest part. It's like, you can send your son
off to war and he gets killed in war, and you know why.
KATHY: Mm-hmm.
VICKIE: You can drive down the road, and a drunk driver can kill your child,
and you know why. But for these three kids, they just—they weren't doing
anything. And it was—for what?
MANKIEWICZ: The trial was over, the case closed. But the story
wasn't over. It would soon become clear that those three deaths on this
property were just the beginning as the killing continued on Murder Mountain.
(Prison exterior; trees passing; house on hill; photos of Graves, Kinser and
Suzan by other photos; house on hill; mobile home)
MANKIEWICZ: And this time the killer was Bimla Boyd, the estate
owner, and a key witness against Scott Cannon.
(Mobile home; photo of Boyd; mobile home; Boyd behind bars; Cannon behind
bars)
MANKIEWICZ: What do you know about Bimla Boyd you didn't know at your trial?
Mr. SCOTT CANNON: It looks like she's not afraid to kill people.
MANKIEWICZ: When DATELINE continues.
(Dateline graphic)
(Announcements)
MANKIEWICZ: Nearly four years after the homicides on this mountain
outside Salem, Oregon, Scott Cannon was serving three consecutive sentences of
life without parole at the state penitentiary when, again, gunfire erupted on
this property and another man lay dead. The victim? Again, a caretaker who
lived in that very same trailer where the three were gunned down below that
big house on the hill. The suspect? This time the estate owner herself,
Bimla Boyd.
(House on hill; signs; mug shots of Cannon; penitentiary exterior; house on
hill; mobile home; photo of Dan Spencer; house and mobile home; photo of Boyd)
Mr. MASON: (Newscast) What do all these deaths have in common? Well, the
owner, Bimla Boyd.
MANKIEWICZ: That local investigative reporter, Eric Mason, was
now covering a new homicide case, the case of Bimla Boyd.
(Mason on television)
Mr. MASON: All of a sudden at 5909 Orchard Heights Road, the same address,
there's this shooting.
Unidentified Man #1: (In court) That's correct, Your Honor. It's my
understanding she has been arraigned.
MANKIEWICZ: Bimla Boyd had gone from witness in one homicide to
suspect in another.
(Boyd in court; photos of Boyd)
Unidentified Man #2: (In court) We will continue to...(unintelligible).
Man #1: (In court) Thank you.
MANKIEWICZ: Who was Bimla Boyd? And what was the story behind
this latest killing on the estate? The reporter began digging. Here's what
he found. Bimla Boyd was then 46 years old, born in Fiji, a single mother of
three who'd come to America two decades before, a devout Jehovah's Witness who
was three times divorced. After the homicides in 1998, Boyd hired a new
caretaker, Dan Spencer. He'd moved into the same mobile home where the
killings had occurred. Family members say Boyd and Spencer soon became more
than friends. But Boyd, family and neighbors say, threatened Spencer who he
said he wanted to leave. Here's what one neighbor had to say.
(Boyd in court; house on hill; Mason driving; photo of Boyd; trees passing in
sunlight; sun setting on different landscapes; photos of Boyd; photo of Boyd
by photo of Spencer; crime scene photos; photo of Boyd by photo of Spencer;
mobile home)
Unidentified Woman: She had told Dan before that he'd never leave that hill
alive.
MANKIEWICZ: And Dan Spencer did not. Bimla Boyd admitted
shooting Spencer, but claimed she'd caught him sexually abusing her teenage
daughter. In the end, Boyd cut a deal, pleading guilty to manslaughter, and
agreeing to serve nearly seven years in prison.
(Road in wilderness; house on hill; empty courtroom)
MANKIEWICZ: And in a prison just 10 miles away from the scene of
the homicides, the news of Bimla Boyd's conviction was more than surprising.
(Prison exterior; Boyd in court)
Mr. CANNON: My celly came down there and said, 'Hey, man, you're on the
news.' And I said, you know, what's up? And he said, 'Well, that gal that
testified against you killed somebody.'
MANKIEWICZ: This is Scott Cannon. You can imagine his surprise
when he heard the news that the woman who'd been the star witness against him
was now a convicted killer herself.
(Josh Mankiewicz interviewing Cannon)
MANKIEWICZ: What do you now know about Bimla Boyd that you didn't know at
your trial?
Mr. CANNON: Looks like she's not afraid to kill people.
MANKIEWICZ: But would the latest death on what became known as
Murder Mountain make any difference in Cannon's case? When we met him in
April 2009, he'd been behind bars for more than a decade, losing every appeal
he had ever filed, and he was still claiming that he did not kill Jason
Kinser, Suzan Osborne and Celesta Graves.
(House on hill; mobile home; Cannon in cell; photo of Suzan and Kinser; photo
of Graves; penitentiary)
MANKIEWICZ: What do you most want people to know?
Mr. CANNON: Wrong guy is in prison.
MANKIEWICZ: Are you a killer?
Mr. CANNON: I'm not a killer.
MANKIEWICZ: It's hard to say that, isn't it?
Mr. CANNON: It's easy to say I'm not a killer. It's hard to be asked it
over and over and over.
MANKIEWICZ: And while Cannon had been languishing in the state
pen, his family had stood by him. His girlfriend Sarah, the mother of his two
children:
(Cannon returning to cell; photo of Cannon, Sarah, Matthias and boy)
MANKIEWICZ: Scott says he told you to move on.
SARAH: Yeah. I don't want to move on. I want Scott. I want him home.
MANKIEWICZ: Son Matthias was nearly nine when he saw his father
arrested at gunpoint.
(Sarah and Matthias)
MATTHIAS: As the years go by, you know, it feels me with this rage that, you
know, penetrates nearly every single, you know, factor of my life. There's an
injustice that happened here.
MANKIEWICZ: Scott Cannon's version of the events of that deadly day has never
changed. He said that when he went out to the trailer to make some estimates
on plumbing repairs, he saw that unidentified Hispanic-looking man inside the
trailer and heard him arguing with another man, presumably Jason Kinser.
Cannon says he told one of the women what repairs were needed, and then he
says Suzan Osborne said the words the words that still haunt him.
Mr. CANNON: Suzan came out and said, 'Maybe you'd better go.' I have no
doubt in my mind she saved my life.
MANKIEWICZ: When you left the trailer, was everyone there still alive?
Mr. CANNON: To the best of my knowledge they were, sure. Hadn't heard
shots, hadn't—you know, could still hear bumping and thumping on the inside,
raising of voices. It sounded like two men.
MANKIEWICZ: So, Cannon says, he turned to leave the mobile home.
The time? Shortly after 3:30 PM, he says, about the time those two men were
making a drug delivery arrived. Remember, they testified that Cannon met them
outside the trailer, acting strangely, discouraged them from going inside, and
then followed them off the property in his van.
(Mobile home; photo of Cannon; dirt road; photo of Cannon; mobile home; van)
MANKIEWICZ: The implication being the reason you didn't want them to go
inside was that you'd already killed everyone in the trailer.
Mr. CANNON: That seems to be the state's theory, yeah. I basically gave
them their alibi. I said they left before I did, and that alone puts them in
the clear.
MANKIEWICZ: Cannon did that, he says, because he thought there
was trouble inside, not because he was trying to hide something. But if
neither Scott Cannon nor the drug delivery men committed the homicides, then who
did? The arrest and conviction of Bimla Boyd raised suspicions with that
local investigative reporter. After all, if Boyd could kill a man in cold
blood, was she really the reliable witness she had seemed to be when she took
the stand against Scott Cannon?
(Photo of Cannon; crime scene photos; photo of Boyd; Mason on newscast; photo
of Boyd next to photo of Spencer; empty courtroom)
MANKIEWICZ: At trial she seemed to be just a witness who was telling the
truth, doing her duty.
Mr. MASON: I think if everyone in 2000 could have had a crystal ball and
said, you know, later on Bimla Boyd is going to take an SKS assault rifle and
shoot the next person that lived in the trailer, I think there might have been
a different level of trust in her testimony, certainly.
MANKIEWICZ: But the reporter was about to take on a new role and
uncover new evidence about Bimla Boyd on the day of the homicides, and maybe
even learn the identity of that mystery man from inside the mobile home.
(Mason)
MANKIEWICZ: A young man who seemed to know a lot about what
happened in that trailer.
(Photo of man; mobile home; photo of Kinser and Suzan; photo of Graves)
Mr. MASON: He told his girlfriend, 'You should have seen the look on those
girls' faces when they were shot.'
MANKIEWICZ: Suggesting pretty clearly that he was there?
Mr. MASON: Absolutely.
MANKIEWICZ: When The House on Murder Mountain continues.
(Title graphic)
(Announcements)
Mr. MASON: (Newscast) What do all these deaths have in common? Well, the
owner, Bimla Boyd.
MANKIEWICZ: In 2005 Eric Mason left TV news for a new line of
work. The investigative reporter became a private investigator. And in 2008
the newly minted private eye walked into the Oregon State Penitentiary where,
at the visitor's desk, he recognized an inmate named Scott Cannon.
(Mason; penitentiary exterior; photo of Cannon)
Mr. MASON: He said, you know, 'I tried to find you. I've been—I've been
looking for you. I knew you were a good investigator. Would you take on my
case?' And I said, 'Absolutely.' Not—I didn't hesitate at all.
MANKIEWICZ: You covered this story as a journalist?
Mr. MASON: Correct.
MANKIEWICZ: And now you're investigating it as a private eye?
Mr. MASON: Mm-hmm.
MANKIEWICZ: Is Scott Cannon a killer?
Mr. MASON: I don't think so. I have confidence that Scott Cannon did not do
this crime.
MANKIEWICZ: Mason joined forces with Mark Geiger, an attorney in
charge of Cannon's appeal.
(Mark Geiger in court)
Mr. MARK GEIGER: I think when you look at the evidence, it becomes almost
one of those cases in which you can't imagine how he could have done it
because there's so many other people who could have done it.
MANKIEWICZ: And yet he was charged and convicted.
Mr. GEIGER: That's correct.
MANKIEWICZ: Because, what, the state has some vendetta against him?
Mr. GEIGER: It appears to me that they locked onto Mr. Cannon and they just
wouldn't let go, and they just ignored other evidence that was just very
overwhelming pointing to a whole cast of other characters.
MANKIEWICZ: But if Scott Cannon didn't kill the three victims,
then who did? That unknown Hispanic-looking man whom Cannon claimed was
inside the mobile home? Estate owner turned convicted killer Bimla Boyd? Or
someone else?
(Mobile home; Boyd in court; mobile home)
Mr. MASON: (Newscast) And no one would listen.
MANKIEWICZ: First, Mason, the reporter turned private eye,
revisited the scene of the homicide. He found this woman. She lives at the
bottom of the road leading to the house on the hill.
(Mason on news; Mason; Irene Morrow; dirt road)
Ms. IRENE MORROW: We were standing at the bottom of the hill down here.
MANKIEWICZ: Irene Morrow told the private eye that on the day of
the homicides in 1998 Bimla Boyd did not stay on the property the entire
afternoon as Boyd had told detectives. At one point she drove down the
driveway in such a hurry that she almost ran over Morrow's husband, who had
gone out to get the mail.
(Morrow; house on hill; photo of Boyd; crime scene photo; mailboxes)
Ms. MORROW: When she saw us, she was visibly shaken. I mean, she didn't
expect to see anybody. And she took off real fast. I mean, real fast. I was
standing right here when she came home, and it was almost as fast.
MANKIEWICZ: The time? The witness says about 3:55 PM. Now,
remember, just two minutes later Bimla Boyd was on the phone to 911 reporting
the homicides at 3:57 PM.
(Water beading on windshield; clock; phone off hook; house on hill; clock)
MANKIEWICZ: What do you think Bimla Boyd was doing when Irene Morrow saw her
leave the property before 4:00 and then come back before she made that 911
call?
Mr. MASON: I don't know, but I think it certainly would have impeached her
testimony about the events of that day. And had you been able to impeach
Bimla Boyd in 1998, Scott Cannon I don't think would be sitting in prison
right now.
MANKIEWICZ: And there's one more thing that doesn't add up. Bimla Boyd told
the 911 operator that when she found Jason Kinser, he was alive and gasping
for air. The problem with that is that the autopsy found Kinser lived less
than a minute after being shot, so Bimla Boyd almost certainly had to be
present when that fatal shot was fired.
Mr. GEIGER: She either saw it or she took part in the shooting, because you
can't be there that close there too and not see something.
MANKIEWICZ: And Boyd apparently did see something. The evidence?
This letter obtained by DATELINE in Bimla Boyd's own handwriting, according to
her own family and a handwriting expert, written five years after the homicides.
The letter reads, , quote, "I was an eyewitness to a triple homicide at
gunpoint, a drug deal went wrong, and I happened to be the only one to witness
the whole ordeal," end quote.
(Photo of Boyd; handwritten letter by crime scene photos)
MANKIEWICZ: To Cannon's defense team, Bimla Boyd, a convicted
killer herself, should now be viewed as a viable suspect in these three
homicides as well. But she was not the only one, because as they began trying
to identify the Hispanic-looking man whom Cannon had always claimed was at the
mobile home the day of the homicides, look what they found in the dusty court
file: a photo array, or a throwdown, as it's called, made by Polk County
detectives in the hours after the homicide, like a police lineup with photos.
In it, only dark-haired Hispanic-looking men. Mason, the reporter turned
private eye, took the photo array to prison and showed it to convicted killer
Scott Cannon.
(Boyd in court; photos of Graves, Kinser and Suzan; Boyd in court; mobile
home; photo of Tom McMahon; Mason; Cannon and Mason)
Mr. MASON: Ten years after this crime, I walk into the Oregon State
Penitentiary, and I said, 'If the person that was there at the trailer that
day that you saw is in this throwdown, I want you to point at him.' And he
pointed at Tom McMahon without hesitation.
MANKIEWICZ: Thomas McMahon isn't actually Hispanic, but you can
see how someone might mistake him. At the time he was well-known in the drug
world and he knew homicide victim Jason Kinser. Did that unidentified
Hispanic-looking man finally have a name?
(Photo of McMahon; photo of Kinser by photo of McMahon; mobile home)
Mr. CANNON: It clicked, yeah.
MANKIEWICZ: You told police in 1998 that there was a Hispanic guy in the
trailer when you got there?
Mr. CANNON: Yeah.
MANKIEWICZ: You didn't see a picture of McMahon until 2009?
Mr. CANNON: Yep.
MANKIEWICZ: And that was the guy?
MANKIEWICZ: Yeah.
MANKIEWICZ: But how had Polk County sheriff's detectives known to
put Tom McMahon's picture in a photo array to begin with? It turns out that
when homicide victim Jason Kinser had been arrested for selling methamphetamines
six weeks before he was killed, guess who was arrested along with him? Tom
McMahon. The PI also learned about a phone call McMahon made right after the
murders.
(Sheriff's vehicle; photo of McMahon; photo of Suzan and Kinser; photo of
Kinser next to photo of McMahon; Mason on phone; crime scene photos)
Mr. MASON: He called his girlfriend in the hours after this shooting and
told her details that no one else could have known. He told his girlfriend,
'You should have seen the look on those girls' faces when they were shot.'
MANKIEWICZ: Suggesting pretty clearly that he was there.
Mr. MASON: Absolutely.
MANKIEWICZ: A story backed up by this affidavit from the
girlfriend, who said at the time of the homicides, McMahon's "behavior became
increasingly erratic and paranoid," and by a one-time cell mate, who says
McMahon told him he'd shot the three "execution style." That cell mate told
Polk County investigators about McMahon's admission, and they wrote this
report in 1999 before Scott Cannon ever went to trial.
(Affidavits; photo of McMahon; police report; photo of Cannon)
Mr. GEIGER: That report was never discovered to the defense team, which is a
huge constitutional issue.
MANKIEWICZ: But police heard about it?
Mr. GEIGER: Yeah, that—we got it from a police report.
MANKIEWICZ: It's hard to believe that police would not disclose someone else
essentially admitting to the shootings.
Mr. GEIGER: It is.
MANKIEWICZ: But for some mysterious reason, Tom McMahon was never
pursued further as a homicide suspect or called as a witness at Cannon's trial.
DATELINE tried to find out why, but the Polk County sheriff and district
attorney declined to answer any of our questions regarding McMahon.
(Mobile home; photo of McMahon; empty courtroom; sheriff's office exterior)
Mr. MASON: No one can prove why Tom McMahon ended up just sort of falling
off the end of the earth there.
MANKIEWICZ: But police knew about him?
Mr. MASON: Absolutely.
MANKIEWICZ: With new suspects, new witnesses, new evidence and
information, Scott Cannon was about to get an extraordinary chance for a new
trial for the freedom that he says should belong to him.
(Sheriff's vehicle; photo of McMahon, Boyd; handwritten letter; Cannon in
jail)
MANKIEWICZ: Coming up, would Scott Cannon get that chance? Not
everyone thought he should.
(Cannon in court; cell door opening; Thomas on porch; Cannon in cell)
MANKIEWICZ: You think the right man's in jail?
Mr. OSBORNE: Yeah.
MANKIEWICZ: When DATELINE continues.
(Dateline graphic)
(Announcements)
MANKIEWICZ: The Marion County Courthouse, Salem, Oregon, summer
2009. Scott Cannon, in prison for nearly 11 years for a triple homicide, had a
court date, a hearing on all the points raised in his appeal, a hearing that
could end with him getting a new trial or being sent back to prison for life.
(Penitentiary exterior; Cannon in court; Geiger in court; Cannon in court)
MANKIEWICZ: You think you'll ever get out of here?
Mr. CANNON: I'm confident I'm going to get out of here. I really am. Too
many things have happened to go my way at this point to slow it up.
MANKIEWICZ: You think Scott Cannon's going to walk out of prison a free man
like this is some kind of movie?
Mr. GEIGER: I do. I don't even think we're going to have a trial. I think
this case is that good.
MANKIEWICZ: But Cannon's son Matthias, who'd grown from a boy of
nine who witnessed his father's arrest into a teenager filled with rage,
wasn't so sure.
(Matthias and child; Matthias and Sarah; Matthias)
MATTHIAS: You get kind of jaded to things, I guess, after a while, you know.
I'll believe it when I see it, but that sounds good. You know, just cautious
optimism, I guess.
MANKIEWICZ: Family members of the three homicide victims were in
disbelief that they would soon find themselves back in a courtroom more than a
decade after the killings which they thought had been solved.
(Photo of Graves; photo of Suzan and Jason; photo of Thomas and Suzan; mobile
home; Cannon in court)
MANKIEWICZ: You think the right man's in jail?
Mr. OSBORNE: Yeah, but apparently there's people who don't think that way.
So it's a wait and see thing.
MANKIEWICZ: You don't believe it?
Mr. OSBORNE: No.
MANKIEWICZ: But Cannon's defense team believed they had the
evidence. They'd found new witnesses pointing to new suspects. There were
now serious questions about the story told by the key prosecution witness
Bimla Boyd, who was later convicted of manslaughter for gunning down and
killing another man on that very same property. And then there was what
prosecutors had called the scientific evidence, proving, they said, that Scott
Cannon was the killer.
(Geiger in court; Morrow; house on hill; photo of Boyd; Boyd in jail; photo of
Spencer; mobile home; crime scene photo; mobile home; photo of Cannon)
MANKIEWICZ: Remember, the jury in Cannon's trial heard from an expert in
comparative bullet lead analysis. The expert testified that the chances of
the bullets in Cannon's garage containing the same lead as the bullets found
in the victims' bodies was one in 64 million. As good as DNA, or so it seemed
back then. The problem now is that comparative bullet lead analysis has been
completely discredited by none other than the FBI.
Mr. GEIGER: The FBI declared that they were not going to use comparative
bullet lead analysis anymore because it's bad evidence—junk science,
essentially.
MANKIEWICZ: Suddenly the weight of evidence in the case was
shifting in favor of Scott Cannon's innocence. And just before Cannon's
hearing was scheduled to be held, Oregon's attorney general threw in the
towel, agreeing that Cannon deserved a new trial. Scott Cannon's attorney and
investigator delivered the news and the paperwork to Cannon at the
penitentiary. But while the defense team celebrated, what the victims'
families had feared was now coming true.
(Crime scene photos; Cannon in cell; penitentiary exterior; courthouse;
newspaper article; photo of Mason and Cannon; photo of Cannon; photo of Mason,
Cannon and Geiger; Mankiewicz talking to Kathy and Vickie)
KATHY: Just totally screwed up. You rely on the justice and cops and all
that, and what went wrong here? On one hand I want to feel, you know, happy
for Scott because if he's not supposed to be in there, he's not supposed to be
in there. But we've got 11 years now. We've got to start all over, and we
don't know if anybody's going to help us.
VICKIE: We're the families, and we care about what happened. Is anybody else
going to care now?
MANKIEWICZ: Oregon's attorney general declined DATELINE's request
for an on-camera interview about the decision. And on September 1st, 2009, a
judge signed the order vacating Scott Cannon's conviction. He was not yet
free. Prosecutors were still convinced he was a triple homicideer. They
intended to take him back to trial. But the Scott Cannon story had one more
giant twist that was still to come.
(Penitentiary exterior; court document; penitentiary sign; photo of Cannon;
courthouse)
MANKIEWICZ: Coming up, the families of the victims get a phone
call they'll never forget.
(Photos of Kinser and others; court envelope)
JENNIFER: Made me sick, truly made me sick.
MANKIEWICZ: When The House on Murder Mountain continues.
(Title graphic)
(Announcements)
MANKIEWICZ: In September 2009 Scott Cannon left the Oregon State
Penitentiary. He traveled less than 20 miles, across the Willamette River to
the small town of Dallas, Oregon, where nearly a decade before he'd been
tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole. But when he
returned to a courtroom, it was clear that authorities in Polk County were
intent on trying him once again on those three homicide counts. It appeared
Cannon could sit in the county jail for months, maybe years, waiting for that
new trial. But the defense wondered: So much had changed over the past
decade, what evidence could prosecutors even use at trial this time?
(Penitentiary exterior; trees passing; Dallas welcome sign; Cannon in courts;
newspaper articles; evidence box)
Mr. GEIGER: Right.
Mr. MASON: I just don't think you have anything that links Scott Cannon to
the scene anymore.
MANKIEWICZ: After all, the comparative bullet lead analysis the
jury had found so compelling in the first trial was no longer considered
reliable. The prosecution's chief witness, Bimla Boyd, was now a convicted
killer herself, which could make her less credible to a jury. And the defense
had turned up new witnesses pointing to plausible new suspects, like Tom
McMahon, the suspected drug dealing partner of homicide victim Jason Kinser.
McMahon's picture had turned up in a police photo array just hours after the
murder, and at least two witnesses now said McMahon had admitted to the
killings.
(Crime scene photos; photo of Boyd; Boyd in court; Mason driving; photo of
McMahon by photo of Kinser; mobile home)
Mr. MASON: So Mark and I go in front of the district attorney of Polk
County, and for a couple of hours make the case that they shouldn't prosecute
Scott Cannon over again. The problem is, he hadn't been there when this
prosecution happened. All he knew was that this was back on his plate.
MANKIEWICZ: Did you think they had something else that you didn't know about?
Mr. GEIGER: We turned over every rock, so we couldn't imagine what it would
be, but, yeah, you do start to think, man, is there something that we don't
know about? Did we miss something?
MANKIEWICZ: But it turns out it wasn't the defense that had
missed something. As prosecutors announced they were reviewing boxes of
physical evidence left over from the first trial, there was a bombshell
waiting to hit the headlines. In December 2009, just three months after
Cannon's new trial was ordered, the victims' families received phone calls
from prosecutors, calls they will not forget.
(Crime scene photos; evidence box; crime scene photos; trees passing; Polk
County Jail; photo of Kinser and others)
KATHY: It hits you as a blow. It was like, oh, no. Now where do we go from
here?
JENNIFER: Made me sick. It truly made me sick.
MANKIEWICZ: What sickened the families and caught nearly everyone by surprise
was this: Prosecutors had discovered that key exhibits were gone. Vital
physical evidence had been lost or maybe even destroyed, perhaps as far back
as 2005. Exactly why, like so much else in this case, remains a mystery. But
there's no mystery about this. Without that new evidence, there could be no
new trial.
And just before Christmas 2009, more than 11 years after Scott
Cannon's arrest, would come a scene that few outside his family and staunchest
supporters thought they would ever witness.
(Matthias, Mason, Geiger and others waiting outside jail; Cannon exiting jail)
Mr. GEIGER: Look at you!
Mr. CANNON: Look at you.
MANKIEWICZ: Scott Cannon was a free man.
(Cannon hugging Matthias)
Unidentified Man #3: Congratulations.
MATTHIAS: This summer's been crazy.
Man #3: What does this feel like, to be free?
Mr. CANNON: Man, it's pretty good.
MATTHIAS: Yeah.
MANKIEWICZ: Waiting there, his son Matthias, who'd seen his
father arrested at gunpoint, and who was now, at age 20, a man himself.
(Cannon and Matthias outside jail)
MATTHIAS: This is going to be a new experience.
MANKIEWICZ: And the defense attorney, and that reporter turned
private eye, who, in Cannon's mind, had made all the difference.
(Geiger hugging Cannon; Mason hugging Cannon)
Mr. CANNON: I knew you'd do it, man. Let's go home.
Mr. MASON: All right. Car's this way.
Mr. CANNON: After you've had your whole life taken away from
you, to have it dropped back in your lap is, I mean, it's wow. You know,
it's—I don't want to be cliche, but, you know, you stop and you smell the
flowers, and they smell real good.
(Cannon and Matthias heading away from jail)
MATTHIAS: The cup's half full.
Mr. CANNON: The cup is definitely half full. It's overflowing.
MANKIEWICZ: You're a remarkably forgiving guy.
Mr. CANNON: I was—I was angry and I was hateful for a long time. And that
just—I think that's what made my hair gray and the wrinkles. And it
physically eats you up inside to be that way.
MATTHIAS: Yeah.
Mr. CANNON: Why waste time on that?
MANKIEWICZ: You seem like you're in a much better place than the last time we
talked.
MATTHIAS: I'm getting there, yeah. Like the whole reality of it, you know,
hasn't quite sunk in for whatever reason, you know. I'm on Dream Street, you
know?
MANKIEWICZ: You know, the headline on the story put forward by prosecutors is
'guilty man gets away with homicide because we accidentally lost the evidence.'
Mr. CANNON: That's a—that's a nice spin they're putting on it, but the
reality is, you know, my conviction was overturned based upon faulty evidence
and prosecutorial misconduct. I had to actually have my conviction overturned
before I ever got to the point where they could say, 'Oops, we lost our
evidence.'
MANKIEWICZ: But you can only imagine the emotions on the other
side, the families of the victims.
(Photo of Graves; photo of Kinser and Suzan; photo of Thomas and Suzan)
Mr. OSBORNE: I'm sorry. Something's wrong there. Something's definitely
wrong. The attorney general, where is he? Why isn't he investigating this?
MANKIEWICZ: I don't have the answer to that because the attorney general
wouldn't talk to us.
Mr. OSBORNE: That's why I say it. There's no answers. None whatsoever.
MANKIEWICZ: You know that no matter how this goes, that right now somebody's
getting away with homicide.
Mr. OSBORNE: Yep. Had to be somebody that was on that mountain.
MANKIEWICZ: So the story ends with many wondering, what now?
Polk County authorities, who refused our requests for interviews, say the
triple homicide is once again an open investigation. The office of Oregon's
attorney general to this day asserts that Cannon is the killer.
(House on hill; Cannon and Matthias leaving prison; Cannon in car)
Unidentified Man #4: (In court) The defendant is still the main and the only
suspect in the homicides of these three people.
MANKIEWICZ: Bimla Boyd is out of prison and on parole in Oregon
after serving nearly seven years for manslaughter. She did not respond to our
repeated requests for interviews. Neither did Tom McMahon, now serving 10
years in a Texas prison after pleading guilty to multiple drug charges. Scott
Cannon is now 43 years old and living outside a prison cell with his family
for the first time since 1998. The same system that put him in a cage has now
set him free.
(Boyd in court; photos of McMahon; jail cells; cell door closing; Cannon and
Matthias)
Mr. CANNON: Had a life, had it taken away, and had it given back. It's just
indescribable.
CURRY: And Scott Cannon is pursuing a lawsuit against Polk County and the
state of Oregon for wrongful imprisonment. Both the county and the state are
seeking to have the lawsuit dismissed.
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