Stranger in the Night

Stranger in the Night refers to episode 11 of the Season 13 of the television series Forensic Files which was broadcast for the first time on December 19, 2008.

Plot summary
In 1991, Dorothy Donovan was murdered in her Dover, Delaware home and police are sceptical when her son Charles Holden stated that she was murdered by a hitchhiker he had picked up.

On The night of the encounter Charles got a little ways down the rode and told the man he had to get out. The man didn’t want to get out and wanted the ride the full way. The man then grabbed a screw driver laying around the truck and told Charles to give him his truck and all his money. Charles managed to ditch the guy when he sped off as the stranger was going for the door.

Charles purposely drove the opposite way of the house that he shared with his mother to try to shake the stranger off. When Charles pulled up near his house he seen the stranger lurking around outside it. Charles drove down the street to use a pay phone and call the police. The police showed up and noticed that the back window had been smashed in and there was blood visible. When they went upstairs they found that 70 year old Dorothy Donovan (Charles Mother) dead. Dorothy was twice widowed and a grandmother of 7. She had been stabbed in the face, arm, and chest. Nothing had been stolen. Their suspicions were heightened when he refused to take a polygraph test and they turned to forensic science. Would the blood and fingerprint evidence at the crime scene support Charles' story or prove his guilt? In November of 2005 DNA at the scene of Dorothy Donovan’s murder was linked by CODIS to a man named Gilbert Cannon, a 41 year old man from Delmar, Maryland. Cannon was living in Delaware at the time of Donovan’s murder. In 1997 he served time in jail for robbery and drug charges prior to his release his DNA was collected.

Links

https://unsolvedmysteries.fandom.com/wiki/Dorothy_Donovan

https://www.criminallyoverloaded.com/2020/08/31/gilbert-cannon/