Calculated Coincidence

Calculated Coincidence refers to episode 14 of the Season 13 of the television series Forensic Files which was broadcast for the first time on February 6, 2009.

Plot summary
A young woman is found dead in her apartment. There's little evidence at the scene, leads don't pan out and the case turns cold... until police discover a link between their prime suspect and an unsolved murder committed six years earlier in different state.

Drew Edward Planten a reclusive chemical analyst for the state of North Carolina was born March 7th, 1970 in New Jersey but moved to Michigan when his parents divorced. He has been described by almost everyone who ever met him as extremely shy. He graduated from Michigan State University in 1995 with a zoology degree. He moved to Raleigh, North Carolina in 2000 to work for the Agricultural Department. On May 22nd, 2002 the body of Stephanie Bennett had been discovered in her apartment. Planten removed the screen to the window and entered the apartment while she slept. Once inside he bound her, raped her, and then killed her by strangling her with a wire or rope. Planten’s apartment was only a few hundred feet from Bennett’s.

But it still took awhile to even view Planten as a suspect. On day when a local was walking his dog 3 years later he told detectives about a peeping tom he seen in the area around that time. With the proximity of the apartments it is believed that Planten was the peeping tom and killer. The police had to find a way to secure Planten’s DNA. They did get a spoon from a restaurant he ate pudding with. But that spoon match only can back as a partial match as the dishwashers didn’t wash the spoon properly. Luckily Planten worked for the government and the detectives were allowed to swab his office for DNA.

When the police searched Planten;s home they found a bunch of pornography, a dozen firearms, handcuffs, and a lot of knives. Inside Planten’s apartment police also found a bunch of Stephanie’s personal belongings such as personal letters, bank statements, and her laundry basket. They also found a cut out clip of the newspaper article on Bennett’s death. One of the guns also matched up to a murder of a woman in Michigan in 1999 in Michigan. Victims : Stephanie Bennett. -A 23 year old IBM contractor with beautiful brown eyes and a bright smile. Stephanie was originally from Rocky Mount, Virginia. She moved to Raleigh in 2001 with her step sister and a friend. Stephanie was born April 30th, 1979.

Rebecca Huismann– Killed in the driveway of her Lansing, Michigan home in 1999. One of the guns found in Planten’s Raleigh apartment matched the bullet used in her murder. Huismann was a student at Lansing Community College and an exotic dancer who made a habit of never talking to customers of her place of work outside of it. She was 22 years old born on June 26th, 1977.

When in court for trial for the murders Planten hung is head down closed is eyes and refused to walk or move. He had to be brought into the courtroom strapped in a wheel chair. Drew Planten committed suicide in jail by hanging himself with his bed sheets. Other sources say he suffocated himself with a plastic bag. Oh well either way he can’t kill again. The only downfall to it really is he never explained why he did what he did. If he himself even knows. Planten’s mother has filed a law suit against the jail for letting her son kill himself. Pfft.

It is probably likely that Planten had other victims.

Links

 * criminallyoverloaded
 * Reanoke
 * News Observer