The Magic Bullet | S1 E2 | Forensic Files | FULL EPISODE

0:04 NARRATOR: At the Dallas Pistol & Revolver Club in 1991, Trey Cooley, a young spectator was watching a shooting competition seated behind an air gun range. He was struck and killed by a stray bullet. [woman screaming] This is how ballistics, lasers, and forensic animation solved the riddle of the magic bullet. [theme music]

1:02 14-year-old Trey Cooley. Look at him and you see the all-American boy. Trey attended Boles Junior High School in Arlington, Texas, near Dallas. He played cello in the school orchestra, played baseball, and was a Boy Scout. BUTCH COOLEY: At that age, as a kid, he has the whole world opened to him. He could have done anything he wanted to do. NARRATOR: Most of all, he enjoyed spending time with his family Trey and his father, Butch, were best friends. BUTCH COOLEY: We did everything together. NARRATOR: September 29th, 1991, Butch Cooley woke early that Saturday morning then went to wake Trey. The two shared a passion for shooting. Butch was judging a competition. He gave Trey a choice--

1:49 to sleep in or tag along. Trey chose to go with his father. BUTCH COOLEY: Trey started shooting when he was seven. He enjoyed it. Shot his first deer when he was eight. He wanted to be a pistol competitor. And he was pretty good at it. NARRATOR: At the Dallas Pistol & Revolver Club, Trey volunteered to help out by running results from judges to the official scorer. In between assignments, he sat in the air gun building to get out of the hot Texas sun.

2:35 He sat just inside the door near two women who were working as scorers. But behind people shooting air pistols, nothing more than pellet and BB guns. Then a blood-curdling scream. [woman screaming] Trey Cooley slumped to the floor, blood flowing from his temple. His baseball cap had a tiny but tell-tale hole. But Cooley was outside the building, just a few yards from his son when he heard the screaming. Although Butch Cooley spent 21 years as a state trooper and was trained to handle emergencies, no training could prepare him for what he saw next. BUTCH COOLEY: When I got there, I saw that he'd been shot. I checked his pulse. I knew it wasn't good.

3:21 TONI COOLEY: Butch walked in and I asked him, what are you doing home? And I said, oh, where is Trey? And then he came in and he told me. He said, there's been an accident. And I was thinking, you know, well, he's cut his foot, cut his hand, or broke his arm, you know. And I said, well, that's OK. He'll be OK. NARRATOR: Trey was rushed by ambulance to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. TONI COOLEY: He was just lying there. He was breathing, or the machine was breathing for him. His little hands were still warm. And it just looked like he was asleep. NARRATOR: Six hours later, Trey died.

4:08 TONI COOLEY: I just wanted to tell him that I was very, very proud of him. I loved him dearly. BUTCH COOLEY: My only son, my best friend, my fishing buddy, my hunting partner, just a void. NARRATOR: Trey Cooley was seated in the club's designated safety area. It was an accident that shouldn't have happened. Detective Tom Pease and crime investigator David Taylor had a tough job-- to figure out where the bullet that killed Trey Cooley came from, and to determine if the shooting was accidental or intentional.

4:55 Butch Cooley spent two decades as a state trooper. Was it possible the shooting had something to do with an enemy he possibly made during his tenure? Or had the bullet come from outside-- from one of the outdoor shooting ranges, or possibly the nearby railroad tracks where kids had a history of taking shots at the air gun building. SGT. DAVID TAYLOR: The biggest problem with this range or this scene was the size of it. It wasn't contained inside a house, inside an apartment, it was outside and it covered several hundred feet. NARRATOR: The bullet removed from Trey's skull would provide some answers and raise new questions. The bullet was small, about half an inch long, but lethal. Larry Fletcher is the firearms expert who conducted

5:40 the ballistics examination. LARRY FLETCHER: The bullet was not that damaged. The bullet was in rather remarkable condition. NARRATOR: This is a 45-caliber bullet after striking a cement wall. It is badly mangled, especially when compared to the bullet that killed Trey Cooley. That lack of damage could be telling, except for one thing, this was not a typical 45-caliber bullet. LARRY FLETCHER: This particular bullet is a hand-loaded or hand-made bullet. It's not a commercial-made bullet in which they can add other materials to the lead and make it much harder. It can withstand a lot of damage upon impact. NARRATOR: Who makes and uses these types of bullets?

6:27 But Cooley knew. BUTCH COOLEY: Competitive shooters like to load their own ammunition. Probably the reason being cost savings. NARRATOR: Most of the competitive shooters on the outside ranges that day were using hand-made bullets, so there was little doubt that the bullet came from somewhere here rather than from kids on the railroad tracks. Police collected the weapons and ammunition samples from the shooters in the competition. When Larry Fletcher examined the bullets used that day on the outside ranges, he noticed something else. LARRY FLETCHER: The powder charge which increased the velocity of this particular type of bullet. NARRATOR: Basically, the shooters used bullets with more gunpowder.

7:13 More gunpowder means these bullets traveled farther and faster than a regular 45-caliber bullet. [gun shots] Fletcher's next task was to match the bullet that killed Trey to one of about a dozen guns. Each of the guns from the shooting competition were test-fired and compared to the bullet taken from Trey Cooley's skull. Fletcher had trouble getting an exact match because the extra gunpowder created extremely high temperatures during the firing of the gun, actually melting some of the distinguishing marks. But Fletcher noticed a red wax on the bullet that killed Trey. All shooters use a lubricating wax but only one of the guns

7:59 used a red wax. Larry Fletcher found the gun that fired the fatal shot. LARRY FLETCHER: At that point, I was pretty much convinced. NARRATOR: A pistol competitor named Dan Smith was using that gun on the day of the competition. And he was firing on this outdoor range, just behind the air gun building. But Smith told police he couldn't have fired the fatal shot. LARRY FLETCHER: He felt that all his shots had made the target. There were no errant rounds. NARRATOR: But something just didn't add up to Butch Cooley. He spent his entire life around guns and won awards for marksmanship and gun safety. He knew shooting ranges are supposed to be safe. Accidents aren't supposed to happen.

8:46 It just didn't make sense. Police were satisfied that Trey Cooley's death was an accident. The ballistics report said the fatal bullet came from a gun fired from an outdoor range during the competition. But how? The owner of the gun said he didn't miss a shot and the range was designed to contain any errant bullet. First, there is a barrier between the air gun building and the firing range. It's called a berm. It's a small mountain of dirt, about 12 feet high. The berm sits right behind the targets in the event a shooter misses either to the left or right. Directly above the targets are a series of wooden planks fastened end-to-end and side-by-side.

9:35 These are called baffles and are designed to catch bullets fired a little high of the target before they leave the range. Then there are two additional sets of baffles. One just a few yards in front of the firing line, and another called an eyebrow, directly over the firing line. Ken Buster is a safety management consultant with years of experience as a shooter and with a special expertise in firing ranges. KEN BUSTER: Between the eyebrow, the baffles, and the height of the berm, the vast majority of any stray bullet would be stopped. BUTCH COOLEY: Safety should be the number one priority in everybody's mind anytime that you participate in marksmanship as a sport.

10:22 Something was wrong. NARRATOR: Butch Cooley began a personal crusade to learn the truth. He needed to know how a bullet could bypass the ranger's safety features and kill his only son. Butch hired attorney Mike Schmidt to find out where or if the safety system had failed. Schmidt put together an investigative team. Steve Irwin was the first member. As an accident reconstructionist, his job was to create an exact, computerized, three-dimensional scale model of the air gun building and the firing ranges. Using laser technology, precision measuring devices, and sophisticated computer programs, Irwin would also uncovered the path of the bullet.

11:08 STEVE IRWIN: You wind up starting at, unfortunately, the young boy get shot and then working your way backwards. NARRATOR: Police had already identified some important clues. The outside wall of the air gun building was riddled with bullet holes from all angles. Irwin needed to know exactly which one was the culprit. Police also found bullet holes inside the building-- in a sheetrock stripped to protect the lighting fixture and in a wall that separated the indoor range from a storage shed. There was also a fresh gouge in an ordinary ceiling tile. Irwin's laser survey equipment traced the bullets path from where Trey was sitting through all those points-- from Trey, through the sheetrock strip, off the ceiling tile,

11:58 and through the back wall. It seemed unlikely, but it matched the evidence. STEVE IRWIN: It was roughly a straight line. But I couldn't see from the interior wall to the exterior wall. And it wasn't until we got it back to the office and got it mapped that it formed this remarkably straight line. NARRATOR: A straight line that led directly to one of the bullet holes in the aluminum siding, then down to the shooting range behind the air gun building. It led to the range where Dan Smith was shooting, but oddly enough, not to the firing line. The laser pinpointed a path that landed 10 yards in front of the firing line. When Ken Buster was brought into the investigation,

12:43 he immediately inspected the firing range to see if there was any way a bullet could get past all of the ranger's safety features. Buster delivered a scathing report. KEN BUSTER: At the time and now, I still think that was the worst range that I have ever seen. NARRATOR: He found dozens of potentially deadly safety flaws. KEN BUSTER: The berm separating the back range from the front range was not the standard height, which is possibly 20 feet. NARRATOR: The berm behind the air gun building was only 12 feet high. The baffles were far below standard. The wooden planks should have had a steel or concrete backing. And look closely at the planks themselves. They had separated, leaving big gaps.

13:30 A bullet could easily pass through. KEN BUSTER: In this case, the baffle might well has not been there and served no purpose at all. NARRATOR: And Buster was appalled by the bullet holes in the back of the building. KEN BUSTER: Several of these holes had been plugged. That means, to me, as a safety person, as a range person, as a longtime shooter, that they knew that bullets were getting out of that range and they accepted that fact and continued to shoot. NARRATOR: The laser analysis projected the bullet path to the middle of the outdoor range, well in front of the firing line. How could this be? It was due to a monumental blunder. During the competition, shooters were required to fire from several distances.

14:15 First, from the firing line at 25 yards. Then they move forward to 20 yards. And finally, to 15 yards. The laser study showed that the fatal bullet was fired from the 15 yard line. The architectural model shows the problem clearly. By firing from the 15-yard line, shooters had to move in front of the eyebrow and the first set of protective baffles. And Irwin's computer also showed another frightening reality. From the 15-yard line, you could see the back of the air gun building. KEN BUSTER: If you can see it, you can shoot it. And any projectile that might leave the range in that area

15:03 was going to hit that building. The laser showed the bullet flew under the last baffle, over the berm, and into the building. It involved a bizarre trajectory. It meant that the shooter missed the target high and to the left by more than 5 feet, a terrible miss. How could a trained marksman miss a target by that much from only 15 yards away? Part of that answer was found in the gun itself. Close examination revealed it had been modified. SGT. DAVID TAYLOR: It's like taking a standard car, making it a hot rod. NARRATOR: Some competitive shooters filed down parts of the gun to make it easier to pull the trigger quickly. SGT. DAVID TAYLOR: They've got it set to where they go off so easily, where they

15:51 fire two rounds instead of one. It feeds so fast. NARRATOR: The result is called doubling, which sometimes occurs as the gun recoils. A recoil is the backward force created by the explosion pushing the gun up in the air. Each type of gun recoils differently. KEN BUSTER: A 45 creates a recoil up and to the left. NARRATOR: Kirk Parks had the task of producing the computerized proof, a fact-based animation of what happened. His firm specializes in forensic animation. Parks videotaped hundreds of 45-caliber pistol shots using the same type pistol and ammunition. He used this footage to create an exact computerized reproduction of the recoil

16:39 for the animation. KIRK PARKS: We shot the video from the top of the weapon, and we shot it from the side, and we shot it from the front. NARRATOR: Next, Parks created wireframe models of a competitive shooter in action, and then animated Irwin's laser studies of the firing range and the bullet path to complete the picture. KIRK PARKS: It produced the exact results necessary to generate the bullet path that was surveyed-- up and to the left. I can't say for sure that the gun doubled, but all of the evidence seems to indicate that it did and it fired during the uncontrollable recoil. NARRATOR: This forensic animation was able to show what happened to Trey Cooley on the morning of September 29th, 1991. But the animation showed that the bullet

17:26 took a remarkable journey-- one which almost defied belief. When Trey Cooley entered the Dallas Pistol & Revolver Club on September 29th, 1991, the range was a tragedy just waiting to strike. Outside on the firing range, behind the air gun building, Dan Smith, one of the last competitors of the day, steps up to the 15-yard line. This moves him in front of two sets of safety baffles. Using a modified gun, Smith takes aim and squeezes the trigger. [gun shots] In a fraction of a second, another shot is fired during the recoil phase of the original shot. It happens so quickly.

18:12 The shooter doesn't know it left the gun. The bullet misses the target high and to the left. Traveling upwards, it passes underneath the last set of protective baffles and just 3 inches over the berm. It's speeding at 1,200 feet per second. The bullet blasts through the aluminum siding, goes through a storage room, misses a broom and some pipes by less than an inch, and then breaks through a second wall, entering the air gun range. Then the bullet does something unbelievable. It strikes an ordinary ceiling tile. And for some unknown reason, it doesn't blast straight through into the roof. Instead, it skids along the tile for 7 inches

18:59 before mysteriously changing direction, making a 10-degree turn and begins a downward path. It slows to about 900 feet per second, penetrates a plaster wall, and enters Trey Cooley's head. [ominous music] [gun shots] [ominous music] The Cooley family filed a negligence suit

19:46 against the gun club and individuals involved with the competition. The judge who presided over the civil case was impressed with the visual and computerized evidence. HON. BILL RHEA: I've been on the bench six and 1/2 years and I would say that's in the top two or three or four in terms of just the professionalism and the effectiveness of the demonstrative evidence brought into court. NARRATOR: The Cooley's attorney says the forensic animation and model explain this tragedy in a way nothing else could. MIKE SCHMIDT: I could not have possibly gotten the result that I got on behalf of the Cooley family without them. NARRATOR: The animation also helped Butch Cooley understand

20:32 what had happened to his son. But there is still little peace for Trey's dad. BUTCH COOLEY: What's peace? It is taking one day at a time. NARRATOR: Change just one thing and Trey Cooley might be alive today-- the range. KEN BUSTER: It wouldn't have happened because I would not have allowed that competition to occur on that particular range. NARRATOR: The gun. SGT. DAVID TAYLOR: They may not even be aware that it's double firing or slam firing on them. They may think it's properly functioning. NARRATOR: The bullet. LARRY FLETCHER: If it had been a softer bullet, they may not have ricocheted as much, would not have had the velocity.

21:19 NARRATOR: Or if the shooter had been standing at the proper firing line, the shot would have hit the baffle or flown over the building. But why did this fatal bullet changed direction as it hit the soft ceiling tile instead of blasting straight through as it did with the hard walls? SGT. DAVID TAYLOR: Bullets can do incredible things, things they're not expected to do. NARRATOR: These thoughts haunt Butch Cooley. No explanation can ease the pain felt by a father who woke his son early one September morning. BUTCH COOLEY: I should have let him sleep. [music playing]