Ep 10. Primal Instinct

Lt. Joe Kenda is back with another fascinating episode of Homicide Hunter season 8 titled Primal Instinct. In this episode, Kenda takes us deep into the world of a dark and disturbing murder case that testifies to how primal human instincts can drive a person to commit heinous crimes.

The case in question took place in Colorado Springs in 1994 when Kenda was notified that a dead body had been found in an alley. The corpse was that of 27-year-old Joseph Elder, who had been beaten and strangled to death. The witness accounts provided Kenda with an initial idea of the perpetrator.

Kenda came to know that Elder was last seen in a bar with a man who had dark curly hair, a goatee, and an earring in his right ear. Kenda gathered more evidence and concluded that it was the man who left the bar with Elder who was responsible for the murder. However, finding the man with no name, no address, and not even a nickname was proving to be a daunting task.

Kenda turned up the heat on the case by trying to connect the dots using every lead that he could find. At one point in his investigation, Kenda felt confident that he had found the killer when he was led to the cul-de-sac by two principles of primate behavior: territoriality and aggression. He observed a car that matched the description of the car Elder had gotten into that night parked in a garage near the alley.

Kenda and his team approached the house and knocked on the door, but no one answered. When they went around the back, they noticed a man sitting in a hot tub, and from a distance, they could see that it was the same man who had left the bar with Joseph Elder. Kenda approached him and asked him to get out of the tub, but the man refused to comply unless he could speak to his lawyer first. Kenda understood the difficulty of the situation as Colorado law allowed hot tubs to be considered as saunas and thus covered by privacy laws.

Kenda's investigation took a twist when he found out that the killer had moved to a different city and was now working as a contractor. Kenda and his team managed to track him down, arrest him, and bring him to trial. The killer had made some interesting claims at trial, including that he had killed Elder out of self-defense. Kenda and his team, however, were not deterred by such claims and punched holes in his story in a way that only they could do.

The episode, Primal Instinct, goes on to depict the twists and turns of the murder investigation, Kenda's thorough detective work, and the remarkable teamwork that went on behind the scenes to gather the evidence needed to bring the killer to justice. As Kenda himself says, the killer managed to take a valuable life, but at the end of the day, justice was served with great effort.

Homicide Hunter season 8 episode 10 is a must-watch for all fans of true crime dramas. It showcases the brilliance of Lt. Joe Kenda's detective work, the thorough investigation by his team, and the cold-bloodedness of a killer who thought that his primal instincts would never lead him to be caught. The episode showcases how Kenda and his colleagues brought a killer to justice through sheer determination and perseverance. This episode is a riveting account of one of Lt. Joe Kenda's most challenging and rewarding cases.