Hey everybody welcome back to cold case murder mysteries. I'm your host Ryan Kraus

pulling back the curtain on the criminal mind once again as we travel to New Town Square, Pennsylvania to examine the January 26, 1996 murder of U.S. Olympic wrestler Dave the Hammer Schultz.

The 36 year old athlete died from gunshot wounds inflicted by John DuPont, a wealthy

yet eccentric and ultimately disturbed man whose burgeoning psychosis

led him to believe he was involved in a love triangle

with two of his employees and needed to eliminate his competition, among other things.

Now going all the way back to the beginning of this tale, we find an interesting

irony embedded in the disparity between how it starts and how it culminates.

The DuPont family, one of the wealthiest in the United States, is known for many products

across the chemical and automotive industries such as

Teflon, nylon, and Kevlar, but they got their start with this product.

Gunpowder, also known as black powder, gunpowder is the earliest known chemical explosive created by humans.

Its earliest incarnations are believed to have originated with the Chinese as far back as the 9th century and by the 10th century

they instituted the use of metal or bamboo fire lances which projected shrapnel and

flames.

By the 13th century, gunpowder was being regularly utilized as an explosive in battle.

And within a hundred years thereafter, battlefields in Europe featured something called cannons, which of course shot large

cannonballs, which were often solid iron. Soon enough, those cannon balls were made hollow and subsequently filled with gunpowder,

which allowed them to be then known as shells, similar to what we use in modern cannons or

artillery. But the need for a handheld portable version of such a thing arose in the

midst of all this innovation and so we ended up with handguns. And a larger handgun such as something

like a 357 Magnum is often affectionately referred to as a hand cannon due to its power.

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