Cold Case Files: COLDEST CASES - ONE HOUR MARATHON | A&E

foreign 25 year old school teacher Irene Garza gets ready to leave her parents house for confession it was Holy Saturday before Easter Irene was very pious church was extremely important to her one of her last phone calls and I spoke with Irene the last thing she said was I've got a call to see if they're still having confessions because it's kind of late Irene borrows her parents car to make the 12 block drive to her family's Church in McAllen Texas we were all listening to music when one of the cousins walked in and you knew instantly by his face that something was wrong he asked that all the music be turned off and told us that Irene was missing all of us go to the church together her car is still parked there what happened Irene was observed by many witnesses at the Sacred Heart Catholic Church they saw her walk from her car into the church they saw her standing in line in the confessional after eight that evening no one sees Irene again Irene was the first Mexican-American twirler in the McAllen High School band never had any before she became sort of iconic in college with her beauty and her charm and her likability graduated from college she became a teacher in a Mexican-American neighborhood with kids that really needed help the canvas the entire area of McAllen people actually volunteered to help they had people out on Horseback they had people looking they found a shoe that had been thrown in a field that had mud you get that funny feeling in the pit of your stomach that that's just not right it doesn't feel right another day goes by they find her purse in a field along that same route where they found one of her shoes they took the purse over to Irene's house where her parents and family members identified the Thursday after Easter McAllen Police receive a call that a woman's body has been found floating in the Second Street Canal she was lying in a canal for four days in the mud you saw her body and how muddy and dirty it was she's missing her shoes and underwear the cause of death was asphyxiation without strangulation perhaps the most significant finding was there was no water in the lungs so we knew that she had been killed prior to being dumped in the canal the autopsy seemed to indicate that she had been sexually assaulted so they were looking for a male suspect they actually drained the portion of the canal where she was dumped to see if they could find a murder weapon and what they found was a Kodak slide viewer where you could put a single slide in it and project that image on the wall they publish in the paper if anybody has any information about this slide viewer please contact us they received a phone call from John fight who was a new I guess you can call rookie priests at the Sacred Heart Church John fight tells the Macallan PD this slide viewer belongs to me mother fight says Irene met him in the rectory for a private confession a little after 7 pm then after he confessed her he walks her out the door and she goes back across to the church where she went in and last thing he saw was Irene putting it on her veil fight's story raises eyebrows but he has an alibi he does the high mass at midnight on Holy Saturday he does Mass on Easter Sunday as well since father fight is a trusted priest in a religious community investigative interest in him quickly fades for months investigators interviewed a hundred different Witnesses and suspects took their statements many of them were subjected to polygraph tests there didn't seem to be any other suspects to the murder the case went cold my Dad tried to pursue it but what do you pursue when every person in a law enforcement position wanted to go away in the early 2000s I made the decision to pursue Irene's case with my cousin Noami in 1960. her father was a deputy sheriff and he was part of the team that was investigating Irene's murder he felt like he knew who had killed her and he was taken off the case by the sheriff Vickers at that time and it just was unbelievable front and center for me was the question was there DNA evidence so we could process that wasn't available back then that we might be able to do today and unfortunately as we went forward we did not get anywhere uh with it before I started working the case George sailor was the Cold Case Detective George Sadler received a letter from a former Monk and that monk had told him about this priest that killed a young hispanic girl on Easter according to Bill tashney John fight placed Irene in the basement of the rectory there at the Sacred Heart Church that's where Irene was locked while he went and heard the rest of the confessions he had her gagged and bound with a long electrical cord of the Kodak slide viewer fight asked the head priest father O'Brien if he could borrow the parish vehicle to go to the Pastoral house in San Juan he took Irene to the Pastoral house while the other priests were still busy with confessional she put her in a bathtub and also covered her with a uh plastic plastic covering when he left this place the things he heard last was I can't breathe I can't breathe according to Dale teshity flight said that after midnight mass he returned to the Pastoral house he raped Irene then lorded her limp body into the church car 42 years after the original investigation Texas Ranger Rudy Jaramillo looks at Father John fights Alibi with fresh eyes when they first took him in for questioning investigators discovered scratches on his hands John fight was trying to stay two steps ahead of everybody he told the authorities that he goes by Whataburger and starts driving aimlessly but in reality that was really when he was getting rid of her evidence the purse and the shoes and also the body of Irene that's when he placed her in the canal after a second look at John fight's original Alibi arabio can see right through it and he's shocked to learn what the original investigators knew he did not pass one of them I mean he just kept on feeding the polygrass John Reed believed strongly that John fight was involved in the murder of Irene Garza three weeks prior to iringo and missing a young lady had been attacked at a Catholic Church in Edinburg Texas which is about six miles away America Guerra had gone to church to pray between classes as she entered the church a man came up behind her and with a cloth placed it over her mouth and tried to suffocate her she bit his finger hard enough that he released her and she got away investigators are kind of working that case when two weeks later Irene's body is found and they start seeing that there may be a correlation between the two cases it wasn't until they showed her photographs that America identified John fight John fight pleads no contest to aggravated assault of America Guerra and is fined 500 dollars prior to him pleading guilty the church had sent some officials down and they had made a decision that fight would be sent off to a monastery and that the punishment would be far greater than what he would receive through the justice system included in that was an understanding that the Irene Garza case would not be pursued so there's a reason why the case went cold during the whole investigation I had a sense that the Catholic Church knew that John fight had committed to murder he was covering up to protect the church but then again we couldn't prove anything my cousin of noemi's father he knew I think a lot of people knew that there had to be collusion to suppress this case we tried to pursue it but law enforcement was part of the cabal with a team of investigators building a case against John fight Irene's Family punched them to a key witness a man whose silence in 1960 only made them more suspicious of what he knew the head priest at the time of Irene Garza's murder Father Joseph O'Brien father O'Brien did anybody tell you fight committed to murder he told this information came from John fight himself is that what you're saying yes okay he tricked Jan fight into telling me that he had killed my new cars I said how can I help you if I don't know what happened and then he said he Bounder and Gagner and she died of asphyxiation confident in the strength of his case Michael Garza issues an arrest warrant for John fight in 2020 only two years into his life sentence John fight dies at Huntsville prison there was a sense of complete closure when he passed you know the case was over with and done and you know would never come back foreign just after sunset on a warm summer evening four-year-old Heidi Jones is about to drift off to sleep when her 24 year old single mother Loretta cracks open the bedroom door that night my mom came to my bedroom and she told me don't come out and I believe that if I heard any sound or anything that night I've I did what my mom told me to do and I didn't go out in the morning I looked out of my Keyhole before going into my front room when I opened the door I saw something lying on the floor my next vivid memory is I am out on the front porch and my next door neighbor is out there digging for worms he says Heidi come here I have to show you something and I says I can't I think my mommy's dead when police arrived they saw Loretta half clothed laying on the floor deceased there was blood on the couch there was blood on the floor there was blood everywhere Loretta had been sexually assaulted and she was stabbed twice in the chest and 17 times in her back and her throat was attempted to be cut the investigation didn't reveal any forced entry any real signs of tremendous struggle there wasn't tipped over Furniture there wasn't broken windows the door jamb wasn't broken the police at the time did take quite a bit of forensic info fingerprints blood samples carpet fibers and some couch fibers as well it was just such a shock because I felt like nothing bad would ever happen to my family with her grandparents now at her side detectives asked Heidi what she saw and heard the night before I know that I have something trapped in my brain of something that happened that night [Music] I believe it was too traumatic for me to remember I don't believe my mom screamed or cried that night if I had heard my mom scream in the Next Room I probably would have came out of the room to see what was going on so I believe my mom was my hero that night by protecting me the four-year-old's memory is murky except for one very important detail I remember telling my grandma what I could possibly remember I said Tom did it Tom killed my mom during the investigation Heidi's grandma was jotting down everything Heidi was saying at that time and there was a an entry on this notepad on the morning that the body was discovered Heidi told her grandmother it was Tom that killed my mom they had a first name just Tom no last name no description that's all little Heidi can remember about the man who killed her mother I know that I knew Tom Tom was a person that came around um my mom our house quite a bit because as a four-year-old I knew his name on August 1st a tip is called into the Sheriff's Office the caller suggests deputies look into a local railroad worker named Tom egley I knew that Loretta had dated Tom egley one time on a blind date I thought she didn't like him and she didn't want anything to do with this guy but Heidi was always right to the same story every time you know Tom killed my mom he just seemed like he was the perfect suspect at the time of this murder Tom was living in a motel in helper Utah he was living with his girlfriend who was eight months pregnant [Music] detectives pick up Tom and take him to the Sheriff's Office for questioning Tom egley explained to the police on the night of the homicide he hitched a ride with a couple of younger teens he'd been dropped off in price at a little local fast food joint he said he grabbed a burger and uh sit down on the curb and ate it egley insists that while in price he did not attack Laurie or even visit Loretta Tom says he wound up at a bar called the highway Rendezvous on Springland Road probably 11 11 30 at night investigators set out to corroborate egley's story look at the highway Rendezvous the owner of the bar she said that Tom did come in that night kind of skittish nervous Tom had red Speckles on his shirt and he said he had been painting red paint must have got on him the cops met up with Tom at his apartment and he allowed them in to let them search his room they did take a pair of Levi's that Tom said he was wearing that night and a shirt detectives bagged the clothing and collect hair blood and fingerprint samples from ugly so the fibers that they discovered on Tom's clothing did match the fibers that were found to be similar to those on Loretta Jones's rug investigators feel that they had enough probable cause to arrest Tom and that is what they did during this preliminary hearing prosecutors did bring up the witnesses for Tom being in town that day seeing him at the bar the prosecutors said the fiber evidence that the FBI produced out of their lab was similar in nature to the rug that Loretta had in her home but Tom was known to have been in her home before the case is thin there's almost no physical evidence and no reliable Witnesses the judge ruled there was not enough evidence to bind him over the trial so Tom igley was released Tom egley just happened to be a guy at the wrong place at the wrong time walking around [Music] shortly after I ran a newspaper article for more information in this case because I was hoping the public could be my case File so I get a call from this gal who said that she had info for me on my case she said have I ever seen that Loretta wrote the killer's name in blood and I said how would you know this anyway I mean you weren't allowed in the crime scene and she says yeah I was she says I was living with Heidi's grandmother at the time going to school and the day after this happened Heidi's grandfather asked her and one of Heidi's aunts to go to the house the police let us go into the home long enough to get clothes and a few things for Heidi so they went into the living room and she says I saw it right there with my own eyes didn't write the whole name she only got the T and the O out we pulled the photo up blew it up and there was definite T and an o Written in Blood wow that is that is that is heavy duty stuff so I get goosebumps right now thinking about that Loretta was trying to tell the story yourself and help us out and it looks like the last thing she did on this Earth was write the letter O and she couldn't get the m in there for Tom Lisa Carter knew Tom personally so she had almost a daily contact with him and wow then I started thinking we can use an undercover agent here I went to Tom with the idea that I was going to betray my husband I'm sick if I was here I'm done so I explained to Tom egley that my husband had been in training in Utah and I let him know that during that training that Tom was the topic of the class and that he was known as a suspect in the murder of Loretta Jones I said I've known Tom 20 plus years instead Tom's kind of in a bad spot and I said what do they have said that they still have the swabs from the night of the killing that the people from the autopsy took well I don't know how they can have DNA Lisa spends two more days gaining egley's trust and then she strikes gold he said he just was in the neighborhood and he knocked on the door he said that Loretta Jones let him in okay and the door closed and then what what would you think happened if you had to guess what would you think happened I was turned down for sex okay and that made you feel how like and when she come back I've stabbed her it totally blew me away they never changed his voice and I think that's what got me it was just like as if I was telling you about Sunday dinner he acknowledged that she wasn't dead that she was moaning and I said well did you have sex with her and he said yeah of course I had sex with her he said it was consensual and I said Tom you stabbed her how is that consensual and he said she she didn't tell me no and it took me a while before I was able to process what I just heard I don't believe there's any remorse to Tom at all I don't believe he even cares so you remember having sex with her in Manuel I lost it I cut her throat and I left that just blew me away I could not react I didn't know what to say I know a good admission when you hear one and I had it I had a lawfully obtained admission to murder uh Tom stood up and the judge asked him if he had anything to say and the only thing he had to say is uh I'm sorry I killed her and I'm surprised you're doing something about it after 46 years and you know our family's sitting there in the courtroom like really what do you mean after 46 years it doesn't matter if it was 46 minutes 46 days 46 years the fact of the matter is you killed our sister for somebody like that not to show any remorse it was just mind-boggling on a lazy Summer Afternoon a Love Struck couple drive into the woods of rural Washington looking for the perfect Hideaway a secluded spot to carry out their secret Romance but they find is horror they came across a log that was across the road when they got out of the vehicle to move the log they saw the body line approximately 15 feet beyond that log she was on her back she was wearing a pair of bikini style underwear wear wearing a pair of knee-length socks a pair of boots and nothing else her blue jeans and clothing had been kind of strewn about she had a wound to the right side of her head and she's breathing but she's not saying anything the man sits her in the passenger seat of his little two-seater sports car and the woman held her head up to keep her airway open when they got to the hospital it appeared that she was still alive but by the time they were able to start examining her she was deceased I didn't have any ID on her no purse no driver's license no identification card so they didn't know who they had earlier that afternoon before this Grim Discovery 40 year old Jody Loomis had jumped on her bike headed for the stable and a ride on her horse Saudi it was a beautiful day back in 1972 I'm 12. I took off down the road to meet my girlfriend Jody decided she was going to go to Saudi and be back before dark and she pedaled off I was on my way home when I got a page there was a suspicious death at Stevens Memorial a duty nurse he directed me back to a locked room where the body was that was a troubling sight to have her laying there with just shoes and her glasses were a skew on her face and she had a bullet hole in her head we could see that there was dirt and leaves were stuffed in her underwear her boots would have been put on after the underwear was pulled back up I observed what appeared to be seminal fluid in the crotch of the underwear it was obviously some kind of a sexually motivated homicide she was able to put her panties back on she put her right shoe on but she was apparently tying her left shoe when the killer shot her in the head Jody's killer is still out there and people fear he might struck again that fear turns to panic when other young women begin to vanish an individual was abducting young women off the streets it wasn't any particular profile other than there were women and they were young and they were pretty there was a serial killer killing College age girls in the Pacific Northwest the individual that police believed responsible for that was a guy named Ted Bundy the similarities between Jody's case and the Bundy murders were that she was the right age group College age and probably the right hairstyle a lot of them had their hair parted down the center Jody parted her hair down the center people in Snohomish fear this notorious killer had struck again yet investigators realized that Jody's murder doesn't match up with Ted Bundy's MO Ted Bundy would put his arm in a sling or carry a crutch or do something as a ruse to get a college student to help him they had been seen getting into a vehicle willingly with somebody well this isn't the same thing she was riding a bicycle they were bludgeoned in Jody's case she was shot it just didn't fit right investigators eliminate Ted Bundy leaving them with no solid suspects in Tony's murder the case of the young woman who went out on a bike ride and never came back goes as cold as the Winter Winds that blowed down from Canada as time progressed there were no more leads and there was nothing there was just silence for years and years and years and then decades I really felt that nobody cared [Music] Jody's murder and other unsulld cases get a fresh look from a new investigative unit so everyone realized that there is real need to have a designated team of detectives doing cold cases Jody's case fit the criteria that the Cold Case team is looking at it was a homicide sexually motivated homicide and he could tell she was a completely innocent victim one of the best tools that we had as a Cold Case detective was DNA Jody's case intact spermatozoa had been taken from the vaginal swabs at autopsy so everything that they would need appear to be present in this case we knew that we could go get these vaginal swabs the slides that had been sent to the hospital and we were going to get a DNA profile and upload it to CODIS and solve this case right away Justice for Jody hangs on a DNA sample from her crime scene evidence but investigators again hit a major obstacle then we found out that there was no DNA evidence anywhere that we couldn't find it all were missing you know we were just flabbergasted it was just devastating when we realized that those things had been lost so investigators search for another sample but we had Jody's shirt her bra jeans and both of her boots I sent all those items to the state patrol crime lab to see if they could find any DNA evidence that might have been missed or left on another article of clothing I got a phone call from the forensic Analyst at the state patrol crime lab telling me that he found a spot of DNA evidence on Jody loomis's left boot we were so excited about it that we drove to the crime lab and went back to his workstation and he showed us the slide and I counted 25 spermatozoa on it and it was like yeah we we actually do have what we need to solve this case it was wonderful you now have a DNA profile and if you can't match that up with anybody you don't have anybody to pursue no suspect no one being handcuffed no one being charged and no hope of that occurring anytime in the near future I didn't know if I'd ever see the face of who murdered my sister ten long years not much to hold on to that all changes with one forensic advance detective Scharf became aware of a new use of Technology called forensic genealogy using a suspect's DNA a genetic genealogist searches for partial matches in public DNA databases those partial matches lead to a family tree someone in that tree could end up being an exact match the DNA information was sent to a genetic genealogist and actually she spent 58 hours over a three-day period to come up with a son of jacquetta and Albert Miller jaquetta and Albert Miller had six Sons and one daughter so now law enforcement had six males that one of them was likely the donor of that DNA one had sexual criminal history and that was Terence Miller a couple of years after Jody's murder he was arrested for statutory rape and child molestation but he got a deferred prosecution for going through counseling so Terry didn't go to prison so now that we knew that he was a sex offender we started following Terence Miller around they've got to get a known sample of DNA from the suspect surreptitiously so you're not alerting him and then compare that to the original DNA sample the only way this groundbreaking technology pays off is if undercover officers could get a sample of Terence Miller's DNA we asked them to follow Terry around until they could get anything that touched his lips because we wanted to saliva sample that's your best evidence to test for DNA so they followed him to a casino they watched him buy a cup of coffee and then discard that company in a garbage can seconds after that coffee cup was thrown in the garbage detectives secured it put it into a plastic bag they brought me the cup I booked it into evidence and took it to the crime lab and crossed my fingers [Music] just over a week later the crime lab contacted Sharp it was a match to Jody loomis's case so at that point we finally identified a killer after what 46 years it was it was a real High Point Miller was ultimately charged with one count of first-degree murder so premeditated murder when Mr Miller was in jail he made a number of phone calls to his wife every phone call is recorded he had made comments to the effect that you know I'm going to jail they've got me they got the DNA the accused Killer's trial finally begins Monday morning I was at my desk and about 9 30 we received a phone call from Patrol they were at the Miller House Terence Miller had apparently committed suicide that morning we were told the jury had not been informed that they were continuing to deliberate then they came back a little bit later on and said all right everybody to the courtroom and the jury announces that he's guilty oh thank goodness [Music] there was no justice when that trigger was pulled I wanted him to go to prison because I pretty much knew what was going to happen to him in prison and it was not going to be pretty I wanted them to see him be handcuffed and led from the courtroom he took that from them [Music] the Oregon State Police received a call of a what they called a walk away from Fairview Training Center it was a mental health facility when the state police responded they learned that it was Janie Landers an 18 year old female with developmental disabilities that had walked away from the facility Cheney was 18 years old she didn't look 18. Janie was about five foot one I think somewhere around 90 pounds dripping wet and the developmental age of about an eight-year-old staff members tell police that 18 year old Janie has been missing for several hours [Music] detectives start gathering information they interviewed her teacher first and they found out that Janie was last seen in her classroom and that bill Graf her counselor he had come in and spoken with her while she was in class for a short while and a short time later she stormed out of the classroom and the teacher said that she saw Janie walking from the classroom towards koser cottage which was the housing unit where she lived foreign but Janie didn't arrive at koser Cottage where she was supposed to and then they listed her as AWOL talking about it up until end of shift and we hadn't heard any word other than no I haven't found her yet Janie was last seen right before two o'clock P.M I worked at Fairview for approximately three and a half years I was a psychiatric aide the day that Janie disappeared it was just as normal as could be when I turned a corner close to the main driveway that I went up every day I saw this girl and I recognized her as a resident I did not know her name but I had seen her on campus I see a car that's parked on the shoulder and a Gentleman walking in front of my car I thought I don't recognize him this is kind of fishy why would that man be out of his car what is he even doing getting close to her and I thought should I pick her up or should I not I wanted to but there were strict rules against it so I quickly went up to my Cottage and called security security went down and checked they didn't find anyone witness information came into play and they started figuring out that that was most likely Janie detectives get a description of the individual that Janie was talking to he was wearing t-shirt and jeans he was maybe 35 40. he had a big pot belly five eight or five ten he needed a haircut it was kind of Shaggy she also gave her information about the vehicle it was a gold color sedan four-door now we have more of a possibility of an abduction like she didn't just walk away she was talking to somebody Fairview had hundreds of employees and there was no restricted access to the facility so it could have literally been anyone [Music] a landowner was checking his field and the perimeter of his property and discovered the body of a young female discarded at the edge of a farm field right off the highway you they had one missing person they knew that this was probably Janie when she's first discovered she's lying face down in the bushes and as they roll her she's got an arm kind of up by her face there was a lot of blood coming from some stab wounds on her neck area the victim is 18 year old Janie Landers there wasn't a lot of evidence Through Blood there there was no signs of a struggle it was pretty clear that the body was just dumped in the bushes she had been stabbed somewhere else and she had fought for her life detectives canvassed the area and talked to the homeowners in the immediate vicinity but they didn't find anything when my dad got the call about Janie he had distress in his voice and then he tells us Janie's body was found looked like she had been murdered I didn't want to believe that they found her dumped somewhere in the autopsy one of the things that was determined was that her stomach contents were consistent with what was served at the noon meal at Fairview on March 9th that information would suggest that she was killed shortly after she was last seen in 1979 when we won a broadcast information to the public we are going through the newspaper primarily the Statesman Journal was where we would generate leads and tips from Leona was descriptive of enough that it gave detectives confidence to try to call in a sketch artist newspaper articles about Janie being missing and the sketch of the suspect was put in the paper two women that worked at the food cart on Fairview saw the article in the paper and the sketch of the man last seen talking to Janie recognized him as a man that they had served at the food cart the day she went missing on March 9. we don't know who he was but we know that he at least came and he he had lunch there we didn't have a lot of other information to go on Choice hangs Her Last Hope of solving Janie's murder on the promise of new technology I've talked to detective Hinkle and a couple other officers I knew just from my own studies and watching TV that the technology was better in 2015 than it was in 1979. they had the ability to test her clothing to see if anything was there you know was their ability to match DNA I ended up collecting four isolated blood stains from Janie Lander's shirt to send to DNA that I thought might be transfers from the perpetrator if the perpetrator had picked her up and had say a cut on his finger hand and he had grabbed her and maybe put her over his shoulder that would be a location where his hand would naturally go to her back nine months after Janie's shirt is submitted for testing the results come back I got a call from Jen telling me that there was rakotus hit and the suspect was Gerald Dunlap so I wanted to know who the hell is Gerald Dunlap [Music] his DNA profile was in codus because he was sentenced and was in Oregon State Prison at some point Gerald Dunlap is a convicted sex offender first arrested in the 1960s Gerald Dunlap was 79 years for the rate of a very young female victim in 1961 in the state of Tennessee he was paroled however in 1973. he was only there for 12 years I was able to track down a photograph taken of Gerald Dunlap in Tennessee when he was paroled and that photograph matched the forensic sketch very closely so that confirmed that we were on the right track after he's released from a Tennessee prison Dunlap is hired to work at Fairview training facility Dunlap worked in laundry payroll records from Fairview show that he was employed and working during the month of March in 1979. when we interviewed the co-workers and supervisors in laundry they all said that they worked a day shift and every single person had a break at 2PM that's the point where Janie went missing one of the supervisors I interviewed in laundry said that he ended up having to fire Gerald because he had padded a female patient that worked in laundry on the butt so that was another red flag in addition to his prior rape offense from the 60s and then the sexual assault case in the early 90s where he sexually assaulted his step-granddaughter that case ended him up in Oregon State Prison [Music] we're dealing with was a serial rapist somebody who preyed upon young women foreign system failed by letting him out the justice system gave him a free card to go and harm another person and eventually murder my sister when we got the photograph of him we did a double-blind photo lineup with the witnesses that were still alive and they both picked dunlap's photo out of that lineup when detective hengel came to my home he said I have some pictures here that I'd like you to go through see if you can identify anyone I look through them this is the man that I saw there and he says yeah we got him Janie's family finally knows who the Killer is but Justice comes too late Dunlap died in prison in 2002 one moment I'm feeling elated yes we have a match of DNA but yet he's deceased so right away I'm thinking we don't even get to take him to court find him guilty of what he did to Janie I was disappointed that Gerald Dunlap was dead I want 12 jurors to come in and I want them to say that Gerald Dunlap is guilty of this crime foreign workers were working in an almond Orchard approximately a mile from Highway 99 they came across a dead female she was found curled up in a somewhat fetal position and they called the sheriff's office in Curtin County who responded when the homicide detectives arrived on scene they examined the young lady they noticed that some of the facial features LED them to believe that she may be Native American the victim was about 35 years of age fully dressed in a pink top blue jeans and white very clean sneakers the front of her top was completely saturated in blood I had never seen a victim that was stabbed that many times this was not an accident the suspect meant to kill our victim in examining the scene the detectives saw that there were tire tracks but there was no other footprints so the investigators theorized that the young lady was killed elsewhere this comedy referred to as a body dump she had no identification she had no jewelry she had no purse when you don't know the name of a victim a completely unidentified Jane Doe you're not sure where to look for Witnesses it's very difficult trying to track those leads down [Music] at the coroner's office the corner stated that it appeared the victim had been raped swabs were taken of the semen for collection as evidence foreign she also had two tattoos these were the most prevalent identifying marks that she had on her she had one tattoo that was a rose above it said mother and below it said I love you and then she had a second tattoo that was a heart that had the name Shirley in it above it said love you and below that said Seattle janitors at Westlake High School received the call of a mannequin lying in the parking lot they got closer and realized it was a young woman partially disrobed obvious stab wounds in her upper body her shoes were tossed up on the hillside bloody drag marks were seen in the parking lot she had been brought there in a car and Drug up on the hillside where she was found a second woman has been found dead murdered the same way as the Jane Doe victim in Kern County she had on a light-colored top that was soaked in blood it was very evident that she had put up a fight she had defensive wounds on her arms and her hands she had been raped she had no identification she had no jewelry until she's identified this victim will be referred to as Jane Doe Ventura thank you when they did the autopsy they learned that she had been stabbed approximately 29 times in 2011 I had retired from the Sheriff's Department and was in the process of being rehired by the District Attorney's Cold Case unit almost immediately investigator Steve Rhodes takes over the Ventura Jane Doe Cold Case DNA evidence that had been collected in 1980 from the rape kit and from the victim's clothing was submitted to CODIS for analysis using the newer DNA techniques the Department of Justice informed us that there was a CODIS match they got a DNA hit on the rape kit from Django Ventura finally after more than 30 years we had a match for a suspect that DNA match was to a convicted felon named Wilson choice Wilson is locked away behind bars in the state prison serving a life sentence or a string of sexual assaults and they also learned that there was a previous CODIS hit for Wilson shoest to a Jane Doe in Kern County we called the Kern County Sheriff's department and learned that Wilson chewest is a white male who was born and raised in Louisiana he was kicked out of the army due to drug abuse and settled in Los Angeles it turned out Wilson shoest was a serial rapist he was arrested in 77 for the kidnapping and rape of a young woman who he had left for dead for that crime he was sentenced to two years in State Prison so in June of 1980 Wilson shoes gets paroled and he moves up to Kings County he's only out for approximately three months truest was in the area right around the time of the Jane Doe murders DNA shows that chewist had sex with both victims investigators know that doesn't necessarily make him a killer even with his record of sexual assault you've never had sex with her I don't know her so there's no way your DNA is going to be in this girl's clothing no in this case the LIE is as good as the truth I asked him if he would voluntarily give us his DNA sample and he allowed us to collect a DNA sample [Music] but Rhodes doesn't want to take any chances he's looking for more evidence Steve Rhodes called Kern County Sheriff's Department he gets their case File and he notes that Kern County detectives did interview Wilson in 2008. during his interview Wilson mentions that he's living with a family called the bells for approximately one month during the time period when the two victims were found murdered Steve realized that Kern County detectives had never actually tried to track down the Bell family I started scouring phone books on the internet and ultimately landed on a small town in Oklahoma I called the Oklahoma Police Department in this small town for Oklahoma detective heads to the address Rhodes provides the detective knocks on the door and says do you remember a subject named Wilson shoes it's 33 years later and her eyes light up and she's like have I got a story for you I got very excited so shortly after our phone conversation my partner and I met with Mrs Bell and her youngest son Scott Scott says is it because of that woman he killed in Bakersfield God told us that to West had said he had picked up some broad in a bar took her out to the country and killed her she was told Scott that he then dumped her body in the middle of nowhere it all came together this has to be Jane Doe Kern at his hearing surest pleads not guilty in July 2018 38 years after the killings chuest is found guilty of the murders of the Ventura and Kern County chained toes he was sentenced to two consecutive terms of life without the possibility parole but we still wanted to know the identity of these victims we decided to do something I've never done four cents we went to Wilson to see if he would tell us and he told me that he picked up Jane Doe Kern County at a bar in Hanford he didn't know who she was I asked him where he got jained over Ventura County from and he told me he found her hitchhiking in Visalia I felt it was important to find out who these women were and I'm sure there's some family out there that are wondering where did she go I want to answer that question 2020 February I was at a woman's conference I just for once thought okay I'm gonna share and I said my auntie Shirley's been missing since 19 79 a few days later one of the women emailed her she said look on Facebook and there was that picture that I seen the one that they call Becky Ochoa and I'm like oh my God and I said I know it's her I know it is her and then when I seen the tattoos I couldn't believe it a person from Jane Doe project asked me to upload my DNA she said it's her [Music] I cried I I laughed I mean it was just crazy uh a lot of emotions yeah when I heard that we had identified surely I felt so good for Violet but we're still trying to identify Jane Doe of Ventura County with the DNA dough project we have traced her family line out of Guatemala and into New Mexico and it's starting to look like she might have ties to the Los Angeles area I believe we're very close to finding out who she is to give back her name it just ends a pledge that I had made to all my victims I'm going to do my best to seek Justice for you and that's my service to my community foreign [Music]

Channel: A&E

Views: 2,454,728

Keywords: a&e, aetv, a&e tv, ae, a&e television, a&e shows, a and e, a+e, a&e full episodes, Cold Case Files, marathon, cold cases, true crime, cold case, cold case detective, missing persons, investigative journalism, true crime stories, cold cases solved, true story, unsolved mystery, decades old cold cases, cold case files, cold case files clips, true crime show, crime docs, unsolved crimes, watch cold case files, cold cases solved 2023, cold cases files

Id: DrAlaRHl8TE

Length: 61min 40sec (3700 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 03 2023