On Friday, Murray's hands sifted through dishes of it as cameras filmed him telling the story of a beer baron kidnapped and murdered 47 years ago.
It was dirt, he noted, that helped solve the murder of Adolph Coors III.
The cameras were filming for Medstar, a Pennsylvania film production company documenting the grisly story of Coors' death for an upcoming episode of Court TV's “Forensic Files,” a series that unearths and examines old crimes to show how they were solved.
On Friday, cameramen and Medstar's producer recorded Murray relating the tale in the Science Complex on campus.
In this case, it was a few clumps of dirt stuck under the fender of a burned-out, early 1950s yellow Mercury that led to the arrest and conviction of Joe Corbett Jr., who surely didn't count on geology being his undoing.
Murray was not directly involved with the case, but was well acquainted with the FBI agent who was. In the 1960s, he was the head of the geology department at Rutgers University when he met special agent Richard Flach, who related his story of helping collar a murderer with dirt evidence.
“It was an extremely high-visibility case,” said Murray. “We talked a lot about how he did it. So that was my first introduction to him.”
Since then, Murray has written three books on forensic geology, and has used Flach's story in every one of them, including his layman's book of 2004, “Evidence from the Earth: Forensic Geology and Criminal Investigation.” Flach, who died in 1998, was a major figure in the then-young science of forensic geology, Murray said.
“He obviously was very proud of this case, and enjoyed talking about it,” said Murray. “And he should be.”
In 1960, Joseph Corbett Jr., an escaped felon and Fulbright scholar using the alias Robert Osborne, wanted to get rich. So for two years, he stalked Adolph Coors III, heir to the Coors Brewing empire, scheming a plan to kidnap him for a hefty ransom.
In February, Corbett met the 44-year-old Coors on a bridge not far from the family's property in Morrison, Colo., pretending to be a stranded motorist. Coors stopped to help, and was shot after struggling with Corbett in Corbett's attempt to kidnap him.
Corbett stuffed the body in the trunk of his Mercury, later tossing it in a garbage dump near Sedalia, Colo. The body would not be found for seven months.
“When they found Coors' vehicle abandoned on the bridge, they figured something must have happened to him,” said Christine Stewart, producer of the upcoming episode, which she titled “Bitter Brew.” “There were two hats below the bridge, and one of them belonged to Coors. They knew that whatever happened must have happened at this location.”
Corbett then headed east, driving cross-country to New Jersey, where he set fire to his car to destroy the evidence.
But he forgot to scrape the dirt off the fender.
“The evidence collectors from the Newark office of the FBI realized they had a sequence of samples, so they collected them very carefully and transported them to Washington,” said Murray. “Dick Flach was assigned to examine them.”
The layers in those samples were a map of Corbett's travels. Comparison soil samples collected from Colorado and New Jersey matched the dirt under the fender, providing prosecutors with an exact route and timeline of Corbett's drive - where the murder took place, where the body was dumped, where the car was burned.
Though it wasn't the only evidence against him - the ransom notes matched a typewriter Corbett had bought, and there were eyewitnesses who saw his car in Colorado - the dirt evidence was instrumental in convincing a jury of his guilt and handing him a life sentence. He was apprehended in October 1960 in Vancouver, British Columbia. (Corbett was released in 1978, and as of 2000 was living in Denver).
Murray uses the case to tout his science, both in his books and his lectures to law enforcement and scientific groups, a job he continues doing in his retirement.
“The truth is I have spent 30 years primarily promoting the science,” said Murray, who worked and taught at UM from 1977-1996. “I do a case if it's interesting, but mostly I've spent my time shilling the science, and encouraging people to be aware of it and to use it. At the time I got it going, most crime labs were using a method that was just plain lousy.”
Murray has been involved with around 30 cases during his career, from the murderous to the mundane. And though DNA has stolen the big headlines in the past 20 years and forensic geology gets a rare appearance in court, he's seen a lot of justice thanks to his own efforts.
“I've sat in a lot of anterooms and had someone come out and say, ‘He pleaded,' ” he said with a smile.
Stewart, who has been involved in dozens of episodes of “Forensic Files,” was struck by the Coors story after reading about it in one of Murray's own textbooks.
“The Coors name really jumped out at us,” she said. “A lot of people know the story, but don't know all that was involved in solving it.”
The episode is tentatively set to air on Court TV in the fall.
Reporter Jamie Kelly can be reached at 523-5254 or at jkelly@missoulian.com
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