Grateful Patient
Appearances
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
This is a guy that spent his life as a heart surgeon. He was always in control. In this separation, he had lost control of Miriam and of his finances.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
You don't just go out and arrest somebody because you think they did it. You have to build a case. You have to build it piece by piece, step by step. Sometimes it takes days. Sometimes it takes years. And you have to be patient. You've got to wait.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
Why didn't he leave at 5 o'clock? If you're going to make a trip for several hours with a five-year-old, travel in daylight. He says the roads were bad. That's just not true. The storm that occurred, occurred the day before. Okay, let's go.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
What's wrong with his account is the fact that he was murdering his wife during that time period.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
Dr. Illis, because of his position, it would have been easy for him to get access to narcotics or any kind of drug that could be used to put a five-year-old to sleep.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
He had drill presses. He had saws. He had grinding material. He had all the types of woodworking equipment that would have been necessary to construct this particular silencer.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
All we knew was they looked similar to the stuff from the silencer.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
It was a book entitled, They Write Their Own Sentences, the FBI Handwriting Analysis Book.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
This anonymous letter shows up. It says, I shot Miriam. I made it look like Dr. Illis did it. It's postmarked four days after Dr. Illis finds out what we took from his house. It's a huge coincidence.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
It says in there, if you're going to write an anonymous letter, it should be done in pencil. Unlike ink, you can't track pencil. And you write in block printing, so it can't be tied to your other type of writing.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
He puts in there he has advanced degrees, he's fluent in many different languages, that he's going to be leaving the area soon. And lo and behold, who does this describe? This describes Dr. Illes' partner, Dr. Zama. You're smiling.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
Dr. Zama had an ironclad alibi, had absolutely no motive, and in fact was an extremely good friend of Miriam's.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
The DNA sample from the cigarette doesn't match the hair in the silencer. None of the hairs in the silencer match each other. And the hair in the anonymous letter comes from somebody else. So we've got five sources of people that supposedly were involved in this crime, and none of them are Dr. Ellis. It led us to the conclusion that there was clearly a planting of evidence.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
When we went back to the silencer that had been left at the scene, when you slide the silencer over this gun, it not only fits, it locks on. There's no doubt this is the murder weapon.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
The question for us all along was, did Dr. Illis ever receive a Savage Model 23D?
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
Dr. Illis was a hunter all his life, and it was a very good shot.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
A photo of a very young Joe Kowalski holding a groundhog in one hand, a bolt action rifle in the other hand.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
When I saw that photograph, I knew that we definitely had the right guy.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
This killer chose to discard the murder weapon in the shoes a quarter mile from the route that Dr. Illis says he took south that night. It's a huge coincidence, huge piece of evidence here.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
There were a lot of statements that were made by Miriam to people around her that Dr. Illes had threatened her life on several occasions.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
Is there one thing in this case that says he did it? No, there's not one thing. There's hundreds of things that said he did it.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
When we found out that he wrote a book titled Heart Shot Murder of the Doctor's Wife, we were amazed.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
The bullet ripped through the heart of the heart surgeon's wife.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
He thought he got away with the perfect crime, and this was almost his way to put in our face that, hey, you couldn't get me, and I'm even going to write a book about it. It's a confession. It's a confession. The killer felt an almost orgasmic catharsis. After all, to him, killing was better than sex.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
You know, Dr. Ellis was a brilliant guy, there's no doubt about it. He's smarter than me, he's probably smarter than any of the individual police officers. But he's not smarter than all of us together.
48 Hours
Heartbreak in Williamsport
It's my belief that the killer didn't know she was on the phone and was one of the fatal mistakes in this case on the killer's behalf.