This episode of "On The Case" illustrates two important things for any US murder or serious crime investigation: the importance of keeping an open mind, and the utter uselessness of polygraphs.
In December 2004, Johnia Berry was stabbed to death in the apartment she shared with a fellow (male) student. It was Jason Aymami who raised the alarm; he had apparently been the victim of a knife attack too. Johnia died in hospital shortly, and suspicion fell on Aymami – who had not been in a relationship with Johnia who had in fact been engaged.
Aymami was an obvious suspect, and in that connection he was asked – asked indeed – to take a polygraph. He agreed to this, and was promptly told he had failed. The police would probably have continued to pressurise him into confessing had not forensic evidence emerged that did indeed place an unknown third party at the scene, the man with whom Aymami said he had fought.
The first suspect who made a confession of sorts (I was there but it was someone else) turned out to be a dead end, even though he appears to have known details of the apartment.
It would be some time before the real killer was identified. Taylor Lee Olson was arrested in September 2007. DNA evidence put him at the crime scene, but he committed suicide before he could stand trial. He was a petty thief who said he had entered the apartment looking for car keys.
The programme makers speak to the victim's mother and her family, but although he appears in archive footage, one person who is missing is Jayson Aymami. One can speculate as to why. Curiously or maybe not so curiously, when he was cleared by forensics, it was discovered that the polygraph had been misread and that he had indeed passed the test. Yeah, sure. The truth is these machines are at best a clever psychological ploy and at worst junk, which is why they are not permitted in most jurisdictions.