The Camm Family Murders: A Conversation with Investigator Gary Dunn on the Probable Cause Affidavit for the Arrest of David Camm

[00:00:00] Content Warning This episode contains discussion of the murder of children, murder in general, sexual abuse, and the sexual abuse of children. The afternoon of Thursday, September 28, 2000 was a busy one for the Camm's. As a family of four living in Indiana's Floyd County, busy was routine.

[00:00:24] Five-year-old Jill and seven-year-old Bradley or Brad were bright, active kids attending Graceland Christian School. Kimberly or Kim, who is 35, worked at Aegon Investments, an investments and insurance firm. David or Dave Camm, the 36-year-old father and husband, had previously worked as an Indiana State Trooper.

[00:00:48] He had left the state police, however, to work for his uncle Sam Lockhart's Foundation Repair Company, United Dynamics. On that day in early fall, everything seemed normal for the Camm's.

[00:00:59] Kim and David had had their struggles, though. For a time, David's infidelity had strained their marriage to the point it nearly snapped. Still, they reconciled and continued to build their lives together.

[00:01:12] In the weeks before September 28, 2000, Kim made mention to people of the sorts of things she planned to do with David, from the mundane, such as redecorating their bedroom, to the life-altering, such as having another baby together.

[00:01:26] To help deal with the hubbub of September 28, Kim's mother, Janice Wren, stepped in to help out. Jill and Brad were her only grandchildren, and she was very involved in their lives. That afternoon, Wren picked up Brad from school to take him to his allergy shot at 4 p.m.

[00:01:42] Then they went to her house for a snack and to grab his change of clothes for swim practice. Meanwhile, Kim took Jill to dance class.

[00:01:51] David rang up a client at 5.30 p.m. just to confirm that he was cleared to swing by and give her an estimate at a specific time the following day. At 5.40 p.m., Kim and Jill came by Wren's house to pick up Brad.

[00:02:05] Wren watched them drive off in Kim's Ford Bronco. Her daughter was smiling. Her grandchildren were flashing her peace signs. At 6 p.m., Brad's swim class started at the Hazelwood Junior High School.

[00:02:17] That evening, David had plans to play basketball with a group of other men at the gym in the Georgetown Community Church Family Life Center. About six of them were relatives or coworkers at United Dynamics.

[00:02:30] At 6.19 p.m., David made a call to a client in Louisville from his home in Royal Floyd County. At 6.59 p.m., Sam's brother Jeff Lockhart turned off the alarm system at the church and opened up the gym. Other men of the game said David arrived there on time.

[00:02:48] At 7 p.m. Between 7.05 and 7.10 p.m., Kim and the kids were all done with Brad's swim class. They drove out of the parking lot and headed home. Back at the church, a series of four half-hour basketball games began around 7.15 p.m.

[00:03:04] Witnesses said David played in the first two. He set out the third and then played in the fourth. At 7.50 p.m., a 13-second phone call went out from Kim's phone. At 9.22 p.m., the players re-engaged the church alarm. David had himself leaving the gym around 9.15 p.m.

[00:03:23] He made a joke to the other players that his wife would kill him for coming home so late. The church was about four or five minutes from his home. When David arrived back home, he saw the garage door was left open. Kim never left it open.

[00:03:38] Then he saw Kim's body lying on the floor of the garage. Staring at her for a moment, David wondered if she had fallen and hit her head. She looked dead. He couldn't see his children. He raced to the Bronco.

[00:03:54] Looking inside, he saw Jill was dead, still strapped in her car seat. Brad was laying over the back seat. He seemed warm to David, so he lifted his son out of the vehicle. David laying him on the garage floor and attempted CPR.

[00:04:11] He thought Brad might still be alive, but he was not. At 9.29 p.m., David ran into the house and called his former ISP post. He got post commander Andrew Lee on the phone. Get everybody out here to my house now, he said.

[00:04:30] My wife and my kids are dead. Get everybody out here to my house. The commander told him to calm down and said everything would be okay. David replied, everything's not okay. Get everybody out here. He called his heart to listen to.

[00:04:46] At first, he sounds frantic, he's yelling, but he's holding it together. After he says that everything would not be okay, his words just warp into what sounds like a scream of pure pain. The agony of losing his family in such a violent manner was only the beginning.

[00:05:01] You see, David Cameron is rather quickly accused of murdering his wife and children. He was arrested, he was convicted twice. Both trials were thrown out. In April, David Cam spent 13 years in prison. In 2013, after his third and final trial, David Cam was acquitted.

[00:05:22] The prosecution of David Cam is widely held out as one of the most blatant wrongful conviction cases in the recent history of Indiana. If you listen to the show, you know that Kevin and I tend to be skeptical of most things in true crime.

[00:05:36] When someone's arrested, we don't necessarily jump to believing strongly in their guilt, with some key exceptions. Generally, though, unless someone is caught in the act or it's a strong DNA case or there's a really good confession, we leave space in our minds about the possibility of innocence.

[00:05:51] Likewise, when true crime media or celebrities start banging on about the innocence of convicted individuals, we tend to take that with a huge grain of salt. In our minds, many, many high-profile so-called wrongful convictions are not wrongful convictions at all.

[00:06:07] They're the product of journalists and media figures wholeheartedly swallowing defense talking points. We want to provide that context for the following statement. We both believe that David Cam is innocent of the murders of his wife and children. We don't believe he killed them.

[00:06:23] We don't believe he hired anyone to kill them. We don't believe he molested his daughter, Jill. We should stress that we delved into this case in depth before coming to these conclusions. Some more caveats.

[00:06:34] In cases where the father or husband is the only survivor of a fatal attack against a family, that is notable. We very much feel that in cases like this, law enforcement has to look into the survivor. David Cam's past infidelity also warranted attention.

[00:06:51] That can be a motive for murder. That being said, the rush to conclusions in this case was unconscionable. There was no need for this investigative team to swoop in and arrest Cam so fast, or fail to reassess their findings when presented with new compelling evidence.

[00:07:11] From very early on, the investigation seemed to brook no discussion. David Cam was guilty in their minds. There could be no one else. But the evidence they touted is proving that falls apart under the slightest scrutiny.

[00:07:28] We believe that the evidence in the case points to convicted felon Charles Bonet. Bonet was from New Albany, a city in Floyd County. He had a history of stalking and attacking women. His sweatshirt was found in the Cam's garage, in other words, the crime scene.

[00:07:44] And DNA on it traced back to him and his then-girlfriend, Mala Singh Mattenly. His palm print was on Cam's vehicle. So we have a history of violence. We have evidence putting him at the scene, where he had no business being.

[00:08:01] There is no evidence whatsoever indicating that Cam arranged for Bonet to kill his family, or that he bought a so-called untraceable gun from the man. No money exchanging hands, no documented relationship, nothing.

[00:08:14] Also, when confronted on all this, Bonet's explanation was that Cam had lured Bonet out to his garage. Then he killed his family. Then he tried to frame Bonet for the crime. This is contradicted by witness accounts at the basketball game, and common sense.

[00:08:30] If you're going to go through the trouble to hire a hitman or an illicit gun dealer, then why do the murders yourself or why do them in front of the person? That doesn't make any sense. As a result of his DNA appearing at the scene,

[00:08:45] Bonet was arrested in 2005. He was convicted and sentenced to 225 years in prison. Even when confronted with this evidence, though, the prosecution in Cam's case just twisted around their theory to fit the facts. Cam and Bonet must have been a team, they said.

[00:09:02] Well, in order to better understand our justice system and how it can fail, we think it is crucial to talk about cases like this where so much went wrong. Today, we're going to speak with Gary Dunn. Gary is a former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent.

[00:09:21] After retiring from the FBI, he leveraged his years of law enforcement experience into work as a private investigator. He came aboard the defense team in the Cam case and ultimately wrote a book about what he witnessed. Their bloody lies and persecution of David Cam, Part 1.

[00:09:39] He's working on Part 2 now. Part 1 is a great book, detailed and chock-full of information on this case. We'd recommend it and we will include links to it and to Gary's website in our show notes.

[00:09:54] In this episode, Gary was kind enough to take us through the probable cause of David in Cam's case. We'll go through this point by point. Gary will provide insights and analysis on each point. Perhaps it will get us closer to understanding why the justice system failed Cam

[00:10:10] and his family to such a startling degree. My name is Anya Cain. I'm a journalist. And I'm Kevin Greenlee. I'm an attorney. And this is The Murder Sheet. We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting, interviews and deep dives into murder cases. We're The Murder Sheet.

[00:10:29] And this is The Cam Family Murders. A conversation with investigator Gary Dunn on the probable cause of David for the arrest of David Cam. This is one case where we are like, the more we read about it, the more horrified we became

[00:11:28] because it was like how did this happen? How did this happen to this person? And the answer is because of an immense amount of pride and inability to say, hey, we were wrong.

[00:11:40] And I think you find that on most of the, at least from what I understand, wrongful convictions is that prosecutors and police getting knowledge that, hey, we did something wrong here. And it really got worse than that because everything is subsequent to that very wrong after David.

[00:12:00] When anything came up, which tended to refute their story like the DNA of Charles Bonet. By God, they said, what does it mean anything? We believe these stories. This guy's an 11 times convicted violent felon. Yet you believe his story and then, and even then they didn't do anything.

[00:12:20] And it took the pomp and on the side of the car before they said, oh, he is involved. But he can aspire with David and there's absolutely no evidence. So this confirmation bias just was on steroids. We want to commend you on the work that you did for...

[00:12:37] We really, that was a great book. Yeah. So you both read it? Yeah. Can you tell us a bit about your background and how you came to be involved in the case of David Cam? Yeah, certainly. My educational background, I graduated from IU.

[00:12:53] I've definitely got a master's degree at the Paul University in Chicago. I also spent five years in the United States Navy. In 1976, I applied for and was accepted into the FBI. And I subsequently served 27 years as a special agent assigned to Miami, Florida, then Chicago,

[00:13:17] then Gary, Indiana and subsequently Southern Indiana. And that's where I concluded my 27 years. During that time for a year, I worked undercover in a major political corruption case involving both Chicago and New York, which had really remarkably successful results.

[00:13:39] In 2003, I retired from the FBI, subsequently began teaching as the program director at Ivy Tech in Palimiton as the chairman of the criminal justice department. It was an excellent job, wonderful people.

[00:13:53] It just wasn't a good fit for me enough because I didn't enjoy serving in the ranks of other students. But I missed the investigating world. So in 2004, I hung out with my private investigator, Shango, primarily thinking that it was just a work on civil cases.

[00:14:11] And then Catherine Kitty Lyall, in late 2004 approached me and said she had a kiddie since Southwestern Indiana, which was a public corruption case. She claimed, and of course, she's a defense attorney. And even though I'm an associate with defense attorneys, I never worked closely with them.

[00:14:29] But she said that her client had been falsely accused. As it turned out, he certainly had been. And I spent several weeks speaking with about 45, 50 people and the case just wasn't there. And I'm pleased to say that the gentleman who was a county chairman of one political party

[00:14:46] that Kitty and I said plenty of nasty enough evidence that charges against him were dropped as well as that they never should have been brought against him. And on the heels of that, Kitty said, well, I've got another case for you.

[00:15:00] And I said, well, okay, that be good. Even though I didn't want to work criminal cases, I thought, well, if it's out of my geographic area, I'd look at it and she said it's a case that they can.

[00:15:13] And I thought no way because I'm originally from New Albany, Indiana, for a county. And I knew the case very well, at least of the primary facts of it that a farmer in Indiana is a trooper of 10 years.

[00:15:30] He came home on September 28th of 2000 from playing basketball, raised the overhead garage door and in the garage was sitting his wife's Ford Bronco on the floor with his wife, Ken. It had been shot through the head, quite obviously dead.

[00:15:50] He then went to the car and saw that his five-year-old daughter Jill strapped in a backseat. And this is a two-door Bronco strapped in a backseat. It had also been shot through the head, obviously dead.

[00:16:06] And then he saw his son who was straddled across the back of the backseat on the driver's side, clearly trying to get away from the gunman. That's when he reached in, went through the front seat, grabbed his son and then removed him to give him CPR.

[00:16:25] Now I didn't know all of that at the time but I was aware that, of course, he came home, found his family murdered and then within three days it had been charged with their murders.

[00:16:36] And at the time I thought, you know, number one, the first one to find a family. And number two, the only surviving member of the family is probably the oldie. And that's when he was convicted in 2002 of other murders. It didn't surprise me.

[00:16:54] So as forward two and a half more years, he reaches out to me and says, hey, Stacy Juliana, who was her partner at the time, and I were successful in getting a reversal of the APM said three murder charges.

[00:17:09] And the basis of that was that the trial judge amazingly allowed the testimony of women with whom they had had affairs. The prosecutor at the time, Stan Fais, said he was going to draw the needed nexus between the affairs and the murders.

[00:17:27] And you knew you needed to do that otherwise it would have been incredibly prejudiced. That's certainly not relevant. Well, that never happened. There was never was a nexus. And in that regard, Kitty and Stacy had the case reversed.

[00:17:43] So Kitty wanted me to come aboard as their private investigator. And if I indicated I know I know way there's no way at all, primarily because I had worked throughout my career in Indiana with the FBI 18 years.

[00:17:59] I had worked very, very closely with the Indiana State Police certainly not only in the low post of Northwest Indiana, the Norwegian, but also at the Blemicom Post. And I had a great relationship.

[00:18:12] And I did not want to do anything to jeopardize that relationship and certainly not come aboard and engage in second guessing their investigation, which clearly resulted in a conviction of one of the former truthers. Now that was the approach.

[00:18:29] Kitty tried to continue to speak with me and I said, well, let me just look. And I did indeed look at the ballot decision reversal.

[00:18:43] And I was shocked with what I was told and certainly about the basis for the reversal of the tour, cheating on the part of the prosecutor. And that's what it was.

[00:18:53] It was certainly facilitated by the trial judge who, by the way, later told the defense attorney on that aspect, Mike McDaniel, wonderful guy, unfortunately to see us now.

[00:19:05] But as Mike told me, he says that the judge actually told him on the day that the reversal was announced that he said, well, Stan told me that he was going to connect the two of the affairs with the murders.

[00:19:18] And Mike says, well, what the hell do you tell you that? He says, let's clear an ex parte meeting. And he says, I wasn't present and the judge stuttered and stammered and said, well, he didn't.

[00:19:30] So already we've got a relationship between a judge and a prosecutor, which is wrong. But yet by that time, of course, Dave's already been incarcerated for well over four years. So anyway, I read the appellate decision.

[00:19:48] And when I read that Dave and Dave had come home that night after he was playing basketball at the church gym, which is three and a half miles away from their home in rural Floyd County outside of Georgetown, there were 11 other people with it.

[00:20:08] And I'm like, well, how did this happen? And so I then looked at the original probable cause at the David, which is signed by Indiana State Police Detective. And also by Stan Faith County prosecutor.

[00:20:24] And I looked at that and then what I discovered over a period of several weeks, certainly with the assistance of Kitty and Stacey and others, certainly Sam Lockhart, who was Dave's uncle and for whom Dave was working at a waterproofing business and do all that.

[00:20:45] I'm shaking my head. I think this is nothing, nothing like the cases with which I was involved with the state police. This is, it's got to be an aberration. And hopefully it was, but there was a probable cause at David. Let's have a David.

[00:21:07] If I may, I'd like to go through certain aspects of it. Absolutely. Please do. And by the way, you know, of course, Dave is now free having been exonerated 10 years ago this month in Boone County up in 11 and where the trial had been the third problem in Boone.

[00:21:24] And it's necessary for your viewers to understand this how and how this abortion of a criminal case was ever initiated.

[00:21:35] As your viewers know, a probable cause at David court and arrest may be saying evidence supporting the contention that the person named in the affidavit more likely than not committed to crime. So here we go.

[00:21:51] We'll read out the parts of the probable cause affidavit and then we're cut back to Gary for his thoughts and analysis. Remember, we'll include a sound effect to denote when we're quoting from the PCA. Affidavit.

[00:22:05] Detective Sean Clemens being duly sworn upon his oath states one, I am a detective with the Indiana State Police. Okay, wait, we're branding that.

[00:22:16] Two, on the 28th day of September 2000, I was called to David R. Cam's residence at Georgetown, Lloyd County, Indiana, where I found three people who had been shot. Kimberly Cam, Bradley Cam age seven, Jill Cam age five. Bradley and Jill, they're two young kids, two kids.

[00:22:40] And they, they did not present any kind of threat at all to the perpetrator other than what we found out later. And certainly, when I believe happened, there's a threat was that they recognized who was there and who had attacked their mother and who had shot their mother.

[00:23:02] And then unfortunately killed them. Three, the following evidence has been processed from the crime scene at the above mentioned address. A, the crime scene was manipulated by use of a high pH cleaning substance.

[00:23:17] Meaning a kind of bleach or that, that had come from an individual by the name of Rob Stites. Rob Stites was the young protege, I'm going to fell about the name of Rodding.

[00:23:31] Rodding Lert, considered by many to be premier bloodstain, pattern analyst in the United States, certainly around the world. One of his claims is that he had taught at Scotland Yard in London and it certainly had been held in high esteem.

[00:23:47] Well, Stan Faith had used England in prior investigations. And the day after the murders, Stites or rather a fake that called in Britain said, Hey, I need you here in New Albany. England says, why I'm at a meeting.

[00:24:07] He says, I can't come with my young protege Rob Stites can't. So he's sending him on out. So Rob Stites lies from Portland, Oregon, where they're located. And we look into it again, then it's picked up and taken to the crime scene.

[00:24:23] Now Rob Stites brings with him a 90 pounds of crime scene material in which to help process the crime scene because in addition to being a bloodstain analyst expert, he's also a crime scene reconstruction. That's what he was telling everybody, but we'll find out later that's not exactly accurate.

[00:24:44] First of all, he goes to the medical examiner and is taking all sorts of measurements with protractors and dowel rods through the interest nectar exit wounds and making all sorts of notes. Although his notes are quite frankly, he gets the name that's Kim.

[00:25:03] He says Kim Carr rather than Kim Tam. He didn't even get that right. But anyway, so then he goes to the crime scene. And he says, well, look at this.

[00:25:14] He spends time there and he says that among other things, the crime scene was manipulated by the use of high cleaning substance that I mean, bleach. What do you think of that? You know, first of all, I think what was the purpose of that?

[00:25:31] You know, just the fact that someone says something, okay, there's got to be a reason for that. I never understood that just in and of itself. But that's what he said.

[00:25:41] Indeed, it's not clear from this PCA how authorities came to the conclusion that bleach was used at the crime scene. In general, this document is sparse.

[00:25:52] B. The T-shirt worn by David R. Cam on the above mentioned date had high velocity blood mist which occurs in the presence of gunshot at the time of the shooting. Meaning blowback. Which occurs in the presence of gunshot. That's the presence of gunshot, actually gunshot hitting.

[00:26:12] Flash and you've got this supposedly conical blowback and that's finding and missing. And so that's what this guy says because he is a bloodstained pattern expert. C. The cleaning substance was thrown over the back deck of the above mentioned house.

[00:26:31] Also leaving a trail from the garage area along with a transfer of blood on the house.

[00:26:37] And I should have had that between the car garage at the camera's there was a covered breezeway and on the back of it led to the back of the house and the back deck.

[00:26:49] But he says the cleaning substance was thrown over the back deck leaving a trail from the garage area. He says that because he sees spots on the deck. We'll also jump ahead a bit here within the PCA.

[00:27:02] F. There is a wet mop in a bucket in the utility room of the house at the above mentioned address with the strong odor of bleach. Also let's read this portion.

[00:27:13] H. There was a flow of blood from the garage that is inconsistent with the viscosity of blood and was aided in its flow by the presence of water and cleaning substance.

[00:27:24] F. So he's trying to tie all this stuff together that there was this wet mop in the laundry room. Bleach was added to the flow of blood and then the residual is thrown over the back deck.

[00:27:37] Why if someone had shot someone, why are they going to hang around it and bleach some water to the blood flow? Well anyway so those are the allegations made by Rob Stipes and certainly in the affidavit.

[00:27:53] The portions of the PCA that we've read so far represent much of the blood evidence against CAM. We'll get to other pieces of evidence later but for clarity's sake let's just hone in on the blood evidence for now. Here's Gary.

[00:28:06] Well here's why we found out and here's what had been ascertained over there. Here's by the way Dave is arrested within three days.

[00:28:16] Three days less than 72 hours and Dave in his enabra statements to the state police and certainly to two of which were sent down with detectives making the L. N. Darrell Gibson vehemently denied ever harming his family.

[00:28:36] There was no indication, no evidence, nothing whatsoever of anything such that ever occurred. It's interesting because Detective Neal in the final interrogation prior to his arrest and making a told Dave says, What are we going to do?

[00:28:52] He says, Dave, he says this guy is world-renowned talking about Stipes. World-renowned for his expertise and he says you got high glossary blood on your shirt.

[00:29:05] Well here's what we found out is that the state police and by the way the state police lab in Evansville Indiana did not do a good job. They did a marvelous job. They did a professional job.

[00:29:21] They did an outstanding job just three people off the top of my head. Lance Gammerman who was a DNA analyst. She did a excellent job. She followed the science and by the way in the first trial she had been threatened by Stan Faye,

[00:29:37] which we find out later to testify according to what he wanted not what she had found. The other two that I found were extremely professional were John Singleton, the fingerprint analyst at Evansville and Ed Wessel who was the firearms expert.

[00:29:55] Those three were the sign of the case and of professionalism in the state police. So I don't want anyone to think that this is an indictment of the state police per se because it's certainly not. But certain individuals say absolutely it is.

[00:30:10] Much of the case against Camp relied on this blood evidence. Taking at face value the blood splatter proved the camp had shot his daughter Jill. But was that evidence and therefore the conclusions based upon it any good at all?

[00:30:27] What about that high pH cleaning substance that was supposedly used in the crime scene? Was their bleach discovered intermingled with the blood? There were scrapings taken of the garage floor. There was absolutely no cleaning substance found, no residue, nothing whatsoever. So the expert got that right.

[00:30:48] According to Gary, that wasn't the only major error in Stites' work. Remember the finding about how there must be water and cleaning substance mixed in with the blood because Stites felt the flow of the blood in the garage was inconsistent with its viscosity?

[00:31:02] And he had based that upon seeing there in the garage there was a huge pool of blood from Kim's head. Of course, the head wound is going to have a lot of blood.

[00:31:14] And there was a small can on the garage as you might imagine for drainage from the front to the back. And the blood had pooled, dark red and then something had damned it. And you could clearly see a lineal marking in the blood.

[00:31:35] And after that damning of that blood and around that, you can see where it goes from bright red to a color of like a translucent. That's like you would see in plasma, which is what it was because there was a separation of the blood,

[00:31:57] the red blood cells from the rest of the blood. And it was the natural phenomenon which happens. So this blood expert from Stites thinks that somehow or another there's been a solution added and doesn't recognize

[00:32:12] why most people, at least certainly those who are supposedly educated in blood stains would readily acknowledge. So he got that from that. That would certainly not act.

[00:32:26] Oh, and recall how the cleaning substance not actually found in the garage was also supposedly thrown over the back deck according to the PCA? Well, the stains that Stites had found turned out to be something else entirely. Stains from the garage over the back deck.

[00:32:45] Well, Dave Kahn had a high pressure cleaning business on the side and he had cleaned the deck just a few weeks before. And that was the residue of that. As a matter of fact, there was a plant on the back deck that had been moved.

[00:33:03] And once they moved once in place with the taste of all, my God, there's one of those stains under that potted plant. So how in the hell did the perpetrator get a spot under a potted plant? Of course it didn't happen.

[00:33:17] So here's this expert who's not an expert. And so he gets that from him. But Gary considers the issue of the so-called high velocity blood mist allegedly on Kamp's shirt, the biggest blunder by Stites.

[00:33:32] Keep in mind that the two kids were shot and killed in the car. The only person, the only person outside the car who was shot was Kamp.

[00:33:42] He's thinking that the mist came from Kamp Kahn's headling because he says also that the overhead door had high velocity mist on it, too. That's not yet David. But there was blowback blood on the door which was, Kamp had opened in order to pull out of the broncho.

[00:34:06] The only problem with that is that the blowback that he thought was on the door in which he had ordered to be disassembled and tested was not blowback at all. It was oil, a tiny spot of oil, a spatch of oil. So he got that from him.

[00:34:24] And then the blood that he thinks is blowback from Kamp is actually the DNA he tested. It's Jill. So he's thinking, well, how in the world did Jill's blood get on Dave's t-shirt?

[00:34:40] And of course, as he's playing basketball, like most people do, that the shirt was out and it was loose in. So one of the, and this is before I came on board, but certainly yet, Terry Laver and Bird Epstein who were two professional forensic scientists,

[00:34:58] both of whom worked at the Minnesota State Crime Lab, but had a personal business on the side, they did lots of testing experimentation. And based upon what David said, you remember I told you that he went into the backseat through the front of the two door rock go.

[00:35:16] Right. Thank you daddy son, Mike, Eddie, Mike Stoblehi. And he went in the backseat through the two bucket seats, put his left knee on the back seat and then cradle his son in his arms and then extricated him from the front.

[00:35:40] Well, when Dave put his left knee on the backseat, Jill, who had been strapped in her seatbelt and it was still upright, her body gravity caused it to fall over. And it fell over and blood in her hair was still wet.

[00:36:00] And the tiny droplets of blood from the tips of her hair had gotten on Dave's T-shirt. And it's interesting that the T-shirt, and the site says he sees, by the way, Dave's T-shirt by the time it's taken later than night of the murders.

[00:36:19] It's got a flood all over it as you might have imagined, cradleing your son from other and then and it's coming from Jill. But the pants that the shorts that Dave had on, you would think it was blowback. Then it would get on the shirt and the shorts.

[00:36:35] Well, the blowback magically stopped at the hem. And that's where it was that these eight tiny dots, there's only eight were found on the lower left front of Dave's shirt. And two were actually on the tip of the hem and four were on the hem itself.

[00:36:50] And the other four were just above it. So you got to think, well, how in the world did he blow back magically stop while it wasn't blowback? You may be wondering, how does something like this even happen? Well, there's not really one answer unfortunately in Cam's case.

[00:37:08] But Gary and his teammates would dig into Steitz and find out some pretty surprising facts. In the first trial, Mr. Steyck said that he is a professor at Portland State University and he teaches any number of branched sciences out there.

[00:37:25] He's getting his PhD in fluid dynamics, as he's saying. And in Stan Fink, the cross-feeder, he even refers to him in the first trial as a professor.

[00:37:37] The only problem with that, we find out a year after I get involved in this and at a deposition in Portland, Oregon where Rob Steitz is none of that. He had testified he also testified in 30 occasions before throughout the United States was involved in multiple homicide investigation.

[00:37:57] We find out, and this is just infuriating, we find out that he had perched himself. He had never been involved in that many homicide investigations as a crime scene reconstructionist, which he wasn't qualified to be.

[00:38:13] Which he had never offered any kind of opinion before and nor I thought he might have offered an opinion in one other bloodstained case, but certainly not testified in as many as 30 or more would she certainly claim, oh, as far as a professor.

[00:38:31] Portland State didn't even offer a PhD in fluid dynamics. My goodness. And how he had as many as 60 hours, that was a lie. The guy who was just clipping all this stuff, but yet he's the guy, he's the guy that helped start this atrocity.

[00:38:50] It's such an appalling thing and bringing this guy in to basically be a ringer and say all this stuff that turns out to be not true.

[00:38:59] Why? I mean, and maybe there's no answer to this, but in your opinion, why did Stan Faith bring this guy in to do this when as you noted there were perfectly adequate forensic examiners who could have not messed things up available through ISP?

[00:39:15] Well, I, you're asking me to get in the mask.

[00:39:19] I don't know what I can tell you that Rod Inbert, who I worked with to Stan on two or three other cases that have been quite successful and have gotten a couple convictions, including a two, I believe, on murder cases.

[00:39:34] The answer is at least I think this is true. People want quick answers. People want quick definitive answers. And sometimes those in law enforcement, you know, a good friend of mine said that law enforcement is not an exact science and it's not.

[00:39:53] But people want to believe that the answers are there instantaneously and they're not always. There was no need to arrest Dave within 72 hours. I mean, they had so many unanswered questions. They hadn't even tested, much less collected all the evidence.

[00:40:12] So that would be the answer I think I is that you've got people wanting quick answers. Now, let me if I may, and it's been it's been about Rob Stites who's not a crime scene reconstructionist who's not a bloodstained analyst, but who has a purger.

[00:40:31] It was never held accountable, by the way. On the contrary, he was only used again in the second trial as a forensic expert. I don't believe what he was. All of this is shocking. It's mind boggling. But Gary isn't finished.

[00:40:47] That's the truly hard to believe aspect of this case. Let's revisit the parts of the PCA that we haven't talked about yet. D. A witness said that between 9.15 p.m. and 9.30 p.m. she heard three distinct sounds that can be interpreted as gunshots.

[00:41:07] So what they're saying is that Dave came home after the ball game and that by inference, he was the one who fired three rounds by the way the murder weapons of 380 semi-automatic.

[00:41:22] The third three rounds wanted to the head of his wife, wanted to the head of his daughter and wanted to the body of his son. Gary also wanted to single out this aspect of the PCA.

[00:41:33] G. Witnesses playing basketball with David R. Kamm said that he left the game on or around 9 p.m. And David R. Kamm told them he was headed to his house. The above mentioned crime scene. The only problem with that is that it's a blatant fabrication. It didn't happen.

[00:41:54] The ball games were 5 on 5 folk work with one substitute. Dave was playing 5 on 5 with 9 others. And Sam didn't come into the game. By the way, Dave got there right at 7 o'clock and we know that from a married ad.

[00:42:11] Evidence is not the least of which is that his cousin Jeff Lockhart, the son of the privilegeer, he opens the locked door to the gym and disengages the alarm right at 7 o'clock, 7 p.m. And so Dave plays until 9.22. Why do we know 9.22?

[00:42:33] Well because there were eight ball players left by that time. They played another game with 4 on 4 after they didn't have enough for 5 on 5 because they were remaining other two left right at 9 o'clock. So we know they left at 9.22 because the alarm is set at that time

[00:42:52] and everybody that is in the gym at that time said Dave was one of the eight. Well, how did they come up with saying that he left the game at 9 p.m.? I had no idea because the basketball players, by the way, they weren't even interviewed in person.

[00:43:12] Some of them, they had never been interviewed in person by a state police. That's a figment of someone's imagination that Dave left at 9 o'clock and then got home at 9.15 or 9.22. And it feels really hard for me to believe that if these guys, even if they're friends with Dave

[00:43:29] or some of them are family members that all of them are lying in the same way and are colluding to that extent and they're not part of some criminal gang or something. They're just normal people. Well, as Dave said, they describe it perfectly.

[00:43:44] It's a perfect storm of criminal injustice. I mean it all came together. But let me address the 19th, 1930 person that the witness there was actually Dave's aunt who lived in the woods behind him and Kim and the family. And she never said, she heard, it sounds like gunshots.

[00:44:03] She heard three sounds like someone banging on something. And that's what had happened. She had heard after the fact, after Dave came home and found his kids and even after the place arrived, he had struck the tailgate of his pickup truck three times.

[00:44:20] We even found a witness a quarter mile away who heard those three banging. So she never said that. And when she found out that this was in the affidavit and completely misconstrued her plane and certainly she had also worked as a paramedic with the police.

[00:44:40] She knew what the hell gunshot sounds like. And she was livid. It just wasn't accurate. Of course the nine o'clock wasn't true. And then we get to perhaps the most shocking and horrifying claim within the PCA. This next part of the episode includes graphic and upsetting discussion

[00:45:00] of the possible sexual abuse of a child. Please jump ahead around five minutes if you prefer to skip. E. Jill Cam, age five had a recent tear in the vaginal area consistent with sexual intercourse. That was a blatant mischaracterization of the injuries that Jill had.

[00:45:25] She did have external injuries, a tear and the external genitivity. Certainly it wasn't consistent with sexual intercourse and it wasn't in the vagina. I mean this was so salacious and it was so wrong.

[00:45:45] And we only find out later that when the medical examiner at the conducting medical examiner saw this and she saw one ahead of the show and she did a sexual assault get on Jill as well as on Kim.

[00:46:00] But it never was anything that you could say was consistent with intercourse. But there had been trauma and one of the medical examiner said the pain that Jill would have suffered pain there so much that she would have cried

[00:46:19] or when she urinated, well let's back up your hand and find out what Jill was doing before she was riffing her. Gary feels this was included to fashion emotive. The idea that Kim killed his family because his wife had found out about him molesting their daughter.

[00:46:40] But there are problems with this. First of all, many witnesses indicated that in the weeks before the murders nothing seemed off about Kim. She did not tell anyone she wanted to leave her husband. Her behavior did not change.

[00:46:57] In fact, she talked with one person about possibly having another baby with David. Even witnesses that ended up feeling Kim was guilty of the crimes did not come up with anything particularly damning that she had said about him in recent times.

[00:47:12] Remember, when Kim was leaving her mother's house on the day of the murders she and the kid seemed in good spirits. Now some people are very private about their struggles so that's not conclusive. But it is worth noting. In addition, witnesses at the Graceland Christian School

[00:47:29] where Jill and Brad attended testified that the five-year-old was normal in her kindergarten class and in dance class after school. Again, all children are different. This is not conclusive. We're just noting it. About a week before her death, Jill's pediatrician noticed some inflammation on her genitals.

[00:47:49] That physician didn't suspect anything criminal. They attributed the issue to bubble baths or overly aggressive wiping. We should also add that at the trial some experts testified that Jill's injury happened within a day of her death and would cause her a great deal of pain, especially while urinating.

[00:48:06] So it seems odd that a five-year-old wouldn't be complaining of such a recent injury. In addition, Gary notes that the PCA's characterization of Jill's injuries is incorrect. In the book he gets even more into this.

[00:48:20] The autopsy found that Jill had received non-specific blunt trauma of the external genitalia, hymen intact. That's the exact phrasing. Also, the medical examiner found that the trauma was consistent with either molestation or straddlefall. That is far more specific than what was included in the PCA,

[00:48:40] and the PCA's use of the term vaginal area is confusing. In court, the state contended that the injury was the result of molestation and the molestation was recent within 24 hours in the murders. At trial, the testimony was a bit all over the place.

[00:48:56] During the autopsy, when Dr. Tracy Corey removed Jill's clothes, she noticed blood. Dr. Betty Spivak, a pediatrician with the Kentucky Medical Examiner's office, said that the injuries would cause pain of 7 to 8 on a scale of 1 to 10. Again, that is odd given her regular behavior at school.

[00:49:16] Dr. Philip Merck also testified that the injuries were interior, not exterior, which seems to conflict with the autopsy report. In case you're wondering if the sexual molestation occurred right before the murders, our understanding is that the prosecution contended this would have required the perpetrator

[00:49:32] to take Jill out of her car seat, undress her, molest her, then reclothe her and put her back in the car seat. That doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense. We don't really know what to make of Jill's injuries.

[00:49:43] But it seems like there very well could have been an alternate explanation other than David Kamelesting's daughter. We tend to think it's extremely likely that she may have been assaulted as part of the murders. Meanwhile, Dr. George Nichols, the retired Kentucky Medical Examiner,

[00:49:58] took the stand for the defense. WAVE described him as an angry and somewhat reluctant witness. He said he found the possibility of sexual abuse improbable, but possible. But stressed that there was no way to tell exactly when the injuries occurred.

[00:50:16] He seemed to think the other medical experts vastly overstated the prosecution's case. Dr. Nichols indicated that the injuries could have come from Jill being struck and that the lack of white blood cells near the injury indicated to him that that injury occurred closer to her death.

[00:50:35] For the sake of completion, here are the remaining points in the PCA. I. Kimberly Kam and Jill Kam were killed by gunshot wounds to the head from a certain 380 caliber firearm. J. Bradley Kam was shot in the chest, was exited in Bradley's back, eventually killing Bradley Kam.

[00:50:55] 4. The above mentioned information was gleaned from statements or reports made to me by Tracy Corey Handy, MD, Dora Hunsaker, MD, all pathologists, Robert Steitz' crime scenes reconstructionists. 5. I make these statements not as complete recital of all facts, but to establish probable cause.

[00:51:16] 6. All of which gives me probable cause to believe that David R. Kam has committed murder in Floyd County, State of Indiana. Sean Clemens, ISP. Here's Gary to take us through a quick summary of what happened in the case.

[00:51:32] And if Dave Campbell is convicted in 2002 for the murder of his wife, son, Brad and daughter of Jill, and got 65 years each, 195 years to serve in the Indiana State Prison of Michigan City. And it's the biggest bastardization of justice I have ever seen.

[00:51:53] I want to ask you because I think a lot of our listeners may be thinking when you think of a law enforcement officer, even one who's, you know, quit or retired, being accused of something so heinous. You know, the fear is thin blue line,

[00:52:07] the cops will cover up for one of their own. It almost strikes me reading between the lines here that the fact that he was a former trooper hurt him. And I guess could you talk about that or what exactly happened here?

[00:52:20] Yeah, and that's an excellent question because that's been certainly come up before. Whereas you have, so why would they do this to their own friend? And the answer is because it got sprouted out of control very quickly. The reason I believe is that on Friday afternoon,

[00:52:40] the day after the murders at the Kentucky Medical Examiner's office, the medical examiner was tracing or handing. And she says this girl may have been molested. That transpose is almost like the old telephone game. Hello, how are you? I'm going to kill you.

[00:53:02] It sounds that's stupid, but it wasn't because Tracy Corey Hendy's observation of a possible molestation. And she tells Evanistek Sam Sarkanson and it comes up possible molestation into she all had a recent hearing of the basilaria, not true. Consistent with sexual intercourse, not true.

[00:53:29] Okay, but an answer to your question at that time, and then there was a profound shift because Dave even noticed that he's out at the crime scene trying to figure out some things and are asking you put it down.

[00:53:44] And he's trying to think and he notices that his former trippers and friends are not talking to him. They're not having anything to do with him. So that's the reason I think that in their minds, they became convinced that he had molested his daughter

[00:54:03] and nobody in their right mind, if they believe that, are they going to stand by their now former friend? Of course it wasn't true and most of the police officers, most of the uniformed people, they don't know exactly what's going on.

[00:54:20] The detectives certainly should have because they had meetings and they exchanged information, but you can understand why they became a pariah very quickly and he did. It's just shocking though because it's like the jump to conclusions instead of saying, okay, there's a possibility of molestation.

[00:54:40] Let's examine if there's evidence that the father did it or if perhaps the perp who killed everyone who may not be the father did it, it blows my mind. And just the effect of having a man who lost his entire family then go down for it when obviously,

[00:54:58] I mean, the evidence does not point to him. It's such a tragic situation. You said that this is the most severe bastardization of justice that you ever saw. I mean, have you ever seen anything that comes close to this in your career? Oh no.

[00:55:14] Yeah, you know, I have a good friend. He's retired assistant chief of Levin. Tony Pope, a wonderful guy. We worked together quite closely on the couple gates. But like Tony said again, he said that people have had a skin.

[00:55:34] And he had over 30 years with the woman who placed the part. So what was your greatest fear? Was it being shot or killed? And he goes, no, this is my greatest fear was putting together a case or investigating a case where the wrong person got convicted.

[00:55:53] And I believe that to be the case with the biggest majority of people in law enforcement. They certainly don't want to see that they're the wrong person convicted. But yet, and the same vein, you know, you ask why couldn't they what can I say stop?

[00:56:10] Why didn't someone already say stop? Well, again, and by the way, this is a personification of ready firing. Yes. It wasn't. It didn't progress the way it should have. But why didn't someone, certainly at the state police say, hey, you know, we did this is not right.

[00:56:33] This is well, number one is that stand fake and assume control of the investigation. The state police, there was not one person, not the regional district investigating commander. They didn't have a investigating commander at the Salter's proposed at that time.

[00:56:52] It was vacant but not one ended up straight to come forward and said, hey, stand fake, you're the prosecutor. We're the investigators. You need to put out. They didn't do that and stand fake the same control with this investigation.

[00:57:09] Wanted to get the blood stain guy there so he could solve this case and solve it quickly. And indeed when when sites, the blood guy at that time, he's told by a stampede, hey, the suspect is the father. No way to end up.

[00:57:25] He says that one suspect is the father. So this guy's types. He's already been fed this not only by faith but by a couple others. So he believes what he's looking at is the shirt belonging to the shooter. So what's your gun of funny?

[00:57:44] It's going to find what the painting that by the way used in favor $275 an hour. He can make this stuff. But when first class in England, the only thing first class England last time I checked was making $400 an hour.

[00:58:02] Let me add also that that sites when one of the detectives on Sunday afternoon before day is a rest, one of the detectives at he's talking to sites, he goes, how sure are you that this is high velocity blowback on day to sure.

[00:58:20] And sites as well on 90% sure and the guy making the says 90% that's not good. So states calls up his mentor, Rod Inglert, and according to sites, Inglert refutes this but according to sites, he says I told him what we

[00:58:40] had and he told me, yeah, I agree you're doing a good job. So how in the hell can the premier blood stain analyst in the nation, how can he say that it's high velocity when he didn't even see the damn shirt, didn't see a picture of it.

[00:58:57] But it's only on his protege who's never by the way even attended a elementary 40 hour blood stain course. We find that out. He hasn't even gone to one of those. And what by the way, one of the evidence checks, when the state police says, well, he

[00:59:13] said I knew that guy was full of bullshit at the cramp. He said I told Sam Sargasson the it was the evidence check insurance and Salisbury folks. He said, and his cool. He said, get this son of a bitch out of here. He doesn't know what he's doing.

[00:59:29] Sargasson came back and said, stand by once the mayor, you're going to give him all of the names. Jesus. I mean, so people were actually behind the door saying, hey, I think there's something wrong here. And they were being talked over because it was

[00:59:44] like, well, stand faith was stand faith once then fate gets. Yeah. It's a and I've worked with any number of prosecutors, local and federal. And I've never seen anybody to asserted themselves in an investigation as it stand thing. But that's how this, this whole transvestite started.

[01:00:05] And absolutely it's an atrocity that should have occurred. And once people recognize they were wrong, someone should have said, stop it, stop it now. Yes. No one could or no one did. They could have. So what really happened to the Cam family?

[01:00:23] In Gary's opinion, the crime scene had some details that were bizarre and not accounted for. For instance, Kim was barefoot. Her shoes neatly left atop the Bronco. Her pants were off. Gary said the scene points to a different motive than family annihilation,

[01:00:42] which didn't make any sense at all. Except the one trip for their Shelly Romero, the only female trooper who saw this and she says that's, that's not right. Women don't wear black panties under white pants. And no one made a note of it.

[01:00:59] As a matter of fact, the possibility of a sexual attack on Kim was completely disregarded, as was any burglary of the house because there had been no forced entry. The only problem with that aspect is that the cams did not lock their doors.

[01:01:16] They lived in a real area. They locked them. And they had neighbors who were not only his grandfather but his aunt and living nearby and they were routinely accessed each other's homes. So, so they discarded burglary and they discarded sexual assault.

[01:01:35] Even though there was no, I didn't think any basis for them having done so. We later find out that those two motives were, at least in my mind, were absolutely a play with the real killer. Let's talk about the person who we

[01:01:52] mentioned earlier who we know is at the scene. Charles Bonet. We talked about him at the top of the world. Authorities, when confronted with the fact that his sweatshirt was left in the cam's garage with DNA on it, belonging to him and his girlfriend at

[01:02:07] the time, came up with the idea that he was the man cam hired to give him a gun for the murders. There was no documented evidence of this. They just needed cam to still be guilty, in my view. But let's talk a bit about his history.

[01:02:20] In Bonet's previous crimes, he would attack women. He would threaten them with firearms. He would also steal their shoes. He had an obsession with shoes and women's feet. Before we wrap up this first episode on the David Cam case, we also wish to note that another sexual predator

[01:02:36] was less directly connected to this case. And that predator has a strong connection to another case we've covered on the show. The Burger Chef Murders. We're talking about Donald Forrester. Here's Gary. Tell us about Donald Forrester. Oh, with Donnie Forrester. You know, he was one of the

[01:02:56] former inmates in the Bates case. Yes, he was. But Donnie, we first met him in 2005, the fall of 2005 in Pendleton. That's where he was incarcerated. He is, of course he's dead now, but he was one despicable person. He was. Relatively a small guy.

[01:03:19] But he was real proud of the fact that he was a person who was a person who was really proud of the fact that he didn't want, from what I understand, he didn't want his mother to think that he was a bad guy and could have

[01:03:35] murdered those four kids. But of course he got out of prison. He had been incarcerated for sexual assault, I believe, of a family member. And it got out of prison. The Murders were actually not that he got out of prison. Okay, and he actually

[01:03:57] relocated out of prison to Speedway. Exactly. Yeah, and he actually confessed now. Now he later recanted Donnie Forrester. I mean, the thing about it, he was a congenital liar. Yes. So what do you believe? The answer is though he was certainly capable of doing it.

[01:04:20] He was just completely immoral, no conscience, a typical psychopath. He was one of the three prison snitches that formed the basis of the only new evidence in the second investigation. Yeah, I mean, it's and that's what they went by. The first informants got a name of

[01:04:39] J.B. Hatton. James B. Hatton out of Bartholomew County. Who was incarcerated for over 20 years. And wouldn't you know it that J.B. Hatton was a criminal. He was a criminal. And he got three different people in Christ and confessed to him on all three. That's right.

[01:05:01] We're charged with murders. And J.B.'s story was that they told him that he had killed Kim in the car outside the garage. When just the opposite was true, she was killed outside the car in the garage. And that was the first and only case. Whatever.

[01:05:20] But that's that's a hell of a lot more that goes on down the line. Both of us tend to be skeptical of informants that may be motivated to testify because of their own trouble with the law. Tragically, in this situation, nothing Donald Forrester said even sounds bad

[01:05:38] for Kim. He described Kim as waking up from a dream crying. Forrester said when he asked what was wrong, Kim said he felt a threat to the family and his son. Brad calling out for help. Can't we imagine a man who has lost his entire family who felt

[01:05:55] he wasn't there to protect them from danger doing just that? We are glad that the third trial ultimately gave David Kampson vindication and that he has been released and can live life as a free man. We are glad that he had lawyers like Stacey Ulyana and Catherine

[01:06:13] Kitty Lyle and an investigator who has been in the office for years. But this never should have happened. It's one thing to strongly scrutinize the lone male survivor of a family massacre. That's reasonable, even prudent. But it's another to essentially disregard all evidence pointing

[01:06:34] away from that survivor and to force the facts to fit the theory rather than the other way around. One thing that Forrester testified to sticks with me. He said, I'm not going to be a victim of this situation. A parent losing their children.

[01:06:51] A person losing their spouse in such a violent and horrific manner. And then being not only accused of that crime but then locked up for 13 years based on a poorly handled investigation. That sounds like hell on earth. Put yourself in David Kamp's place. You're trapped in prison

[01:07:11] accused of killing those you have left or these photographs and the memories you sometimes drift away into. We want to sincerely thank Gary for coming on our show to talk with us about this case. We strongly recommend his book. We will include a link in our show notes.

[01:07:30] Please buy it. It's a great read and it really is such a detailed recounting of the case. Thanks so much for listening to the murder sheet. If you have a tip concerning one of our other books, please contact us at www.murdersheet.com If you have actionable information

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[01:08:12] slash murder sheet. We very much appreciate any support. Special thanks to Kevin Tyler Greenlee who composed the music for the murder sheet and who you can find on the web at kevintg.com If you're looking to talk with other listeners about a case we've covered, you can join

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