[music playing] NARRATOR: In the midst of
a promising dance career, Tracy Jo Shine suddenly
dropped out of school and shortly afterward
disappeared. 12 years later, debris
from an old refrigerator would warm up what had
become a very cold case. [theme music] Tracy Jo Shine grew
up in Houston, Texas. She was a good student, a
Girl Scout, and played sports. But her real interest,
her passion was dance. [dramatic music] At the age of 13, she
auditioned and was accepted at the
prestigious High School for Performing Arts in Houston. It was a dream come true. And while away at
school, Tracy Jo began to experiment with drugs. That's when she started
having the problems. She started meeting
the wrong people and started getting
involved in taking drugs. And I, at that time, just
really didn't understand it, or didn't know what to do. NARRATOR: She started
skipping classes. Her grades began to slip. And she became
romantically involved with 31-year-old Michael
Neal, who had recently been released from prison. VIRGINIA SHINE: The
first time I had met him and she had brought him
over to my apartment, he seemed to be polite enough
and seemed to be nice enough. NARRATOR: Eventually, Tracy
Jo abandoned her dreams of a career in dance,
dropped out of school, and, at the age of 18,
moved in with her boyfriend, Michael, and his mother. Tracy Jo's mother didn't
know what to do next. VIRGINIA SHINE: Tracy
was not the Tracy she was before she did the drugs. Tracy had become someone else
that was controlled by drugs. And I just kept
praying that, you know, she'd just live through this
and get out of all of it. And then we could have our
lives together again and go on. NARRATOR: Michael
Neal had recently been implicated in
a racially-motivated drive-by shooting. Detective Marcel Dionne went
to Neal's home to question him. Neal wasn't home,
but Tracy Jo was. How long have you known him? Tracy had just taken a shot. The syringe was still there on
the couch right there with her. At first, you couldn't
make heads or tails out of anything she was saying. NARRATOR: So he arrested
Tracy Jo for using drugs. She'd been arrested
two other times, I believe, for the--
for a drug problem. She said she had tried to stop. I had attempted
to see if there was some way that I could get Tracy
committed to a drug program. And I was finding
that there was waiting lists at different places. And there really wasn't a
whole lot I could do, since she wasn't a child anymore. NARRATOR: At police
headquarters, Tracy Jo offered to make a deal. She said her boyfriend, Michael,
was the one who committed the drive-by shooting. And she agreed to
testify against him in return for a lighter
sentence for her drug charge. Detective Dionne
agreed to the deal. Early the next
morning, Michael Neal walked into police
headquarters and put up the bail for Tracy Jo. She was never seen again. DETECTIVE DIONNE: Nobody
had seen or heard from her. So at that point,
you start calling her friends and start
calling anybody that she'd been associated with. Well, nobody had seen her. And nobody had heard from her. NARRATOR: Marcel Dionne
discovered that Michael Neal was a member of the
Aryan Brotherhood, a violent white
supremacist group. This explained Neal's
alleged involvement in the drive-by
shooting which occurred in a black neighborhood. When Dionne asked Michael Neal
about Tracy Jo's whereabouts, he said that Tracy Jo left
home shortly after her arrest and that he hadn't
seen her since. Dionne wasn't so sure. The day after Tracy
Jo Shine was released from prison on drug charges,
she visited her mother to borrow some money. Although Tracy Jo had always
stayed in touch with her mother and brother, that visit was the
last time her family saw her. Tracy Jo had simply
dropped out of sight. Something was the matter. I, for some reason, just
felt something was wrong. NARRATOR: Virginia
contacted Tracy Jo's boyfriend, Michael Neal. I called over there to find out
about Tracy, because I hadn't heard from her in
a couple of weeks and to see what was happening. And they told me she
wasn't there anymore. NARRATOR: When Michael
Neal wasn't forthcoming, Virginia had no other
choice but to file a missing person's report. Detective Marcel
Dionne immediately suspected foul play. Then a few weeks
later, Dionne received an anonymous telephone call. Yes, I'd like to
report a murder that I-- DETECTIVE DIONNE: She was
telling me about this girl that was apparently killed
by her boyfriend, stuffed in a refrigerator,
and taken out to a car lot. NARRATOR: The informant
eventually revealed the identity of the dead girl. It was Tracy Jo Shine. The informant also said
that the refrigerator used to store Tracy
Jo's body was still at the used car lot
owned by Michael Neal and his brother, Robert. Armed with a search warrant,
detectives went to the car lot, found the refrigerator, but
discovered it had recently been cleaned with bleach. DETECTIVE DIONNE: We took
the refrigerator apart. We collected a piece of human
tissue from the freezer unit. And it had some hair
follicles on it. NARRATOR: Forensic
scientists attempted an RFLP DNA enzyme
analysis on that tissue, but were unsuccessful. The hair was compared
visually to hair taken from Tracy Jo's hairbrush. But that comparison
was inconclusive. With no other leads,
Detective Dionne spent the next few months
looking all over Houston anywhere he suspected a
body might have been buried. DETECTIVE DIONNE: I
took a lot of heat. Everybody thought I was crazy
because I was digging up half of Harris County. I was draining ponds. We used horses. We used four-wheelers. I was given the
nickname of "Digger," because every time I
received a phone call, I was digging someone. NARRATOR: But none of
the leads were fruitful. DETECTIVE DIONNE:
I knew that she had to be out there somewhere. I just wouldn't give up. NARRATOR: Dionne also questioned
Michael Neal's mother, Barbara, at her consignment shop. There, Dionne noticed
something suspicious. In the display case
was some women's jewelry which was
identical to jewelry owned by Tracy Jo Shine. I just couldn't believe the
way they had taken Tracy Jo's jewelry and placed
it in a glass case at the business they
were running and selling it over the counter. NARRATOR: Barbara
McAllister told police that after Tracy Jo
moved out of her home, she simply took the jewelry
Tracy Jo left behind and was trying to sell it. Although it may have
been in poor taste, it still didn't prove foul play. But with nowhere else to turn,
the investigation faltered. Dionne had no choice but
to attend to other cases. DETECTIVE DIONNE: I
ordered all the evidence, plus the refrigerator,
stored in our property room. And basically, just about
every year, almost to the day, they would call me-- I want to
get rid of the refrigerator. And I kept telling them,
no, this is an open case. I'm still working it. NARRATOR: Michael Neal
was later arrested for another shooting
incident and was convicted. He was sentenced
to life in prison. His brother, Robert
Neal, was arrested on a methamphetamine charge. He, too, was convicted
and sent to prison. Despite their convictions,
the Neal brothers continued to insist
they knew nothing about Tracy Jo's disappearance. It would take another 10
years before a cold case unit took a fresh look
at the disappearance of Tracy Jo Shine. Nothing was heard from Tracy
Jo Shine for over a decade. And police could find no
solid evidence of what might have happened to her. During those years, there had
been no credit card activity, no applications for
driver's licenses, no history of
employment, nothing. Tracy Jo's ex-boyfriend, Michael
Neal, and his brother, Robert, were serving time
in prison for crimes unrelated to her disappearance. Then, in 1999, the Harris
County Sheriff's Department formed a new cold case unit
headed by Detective Roger Wedgeworth and Harry Fikaris. The Tracy Jo Shine case
was one of the first to cross their desk. Tracy's like a
lot of young girls. If you look at her
upbringing, she was a Girl Scout, very
much loved by her mother, just a normal kid who goes
up, goes to high school, goes to proms and everything. And she got mixed up in drugs. And of course, one of the
worst mistakes of her life was meeting our suspect in
this case, Michael Neal. NARRATOR: As a first step, they
decided to retest the tissue sample found in Michael
Neal's refrigerator with the new, more
sophisticated PCR DNA test. But after more than
12 years, the sample was too badly degraded. Then there was another setback. The hair found with the tissue
sample could not be located. But Fikaris and
Wedgeworth were astonished to learn that the refrigerator
was still in the Sheriff's Department property room. In a long shot,
investigators decided to take a look at the
refrigerator one more time. We opened it up. And it looked fairly clean. But we knew that it had
been laid down on its back. And we thought if there
was any kind of body fluids or any kind of evidence, it may
have drained into the wiring harness on the backside of it. NARRATOR: Forensic scientists
swabbed every square inch of the refrigerator, and
this time included the wiring and harness areas for
any biological material that might be present. There are so many nooks and
crannies in a refrigerator, or any other machine like that,
that if body fluid, things like that, is going
to seep through, it would be impossible,
probably, to clean it all. NARRATOR: The swabs were
sent to the forensic lab. I was skeptical that
we would find anything of any value in the refrigerator
simply because of the amount of time that it had been stored
and the fact that, like so many other evidence
storage areas, the environment was not ideal
for preserving the evidence. NARRATOR: When Watson
looked closer at the swabs, he discovered what appeared
to be a piece of human skin. Watson tested that skin
sample using a PCR DNA test. PCR testing essentially
takes minute traces of DNA, then amplifies or makes
enough copies of it so that it can be analyzed. The analysis was
long and arduous and, unfortunately,
was unsuccessful. After months of frustration,
Watson heard about a new test the FBI laboratory had
been experimenting with, a test using mitochondrial DNA. Traditional DNA testing uses
DNA from the cell's nucleus. Mitochondrial DNA is taken from
the mitochondria, which exists outside the cell's nucleus. It's not as precise as
traditional DNA testing, but in some cases, it's
all scientists can get. And this time, Watson
was successful. The next step was to find
a known sample of Tracy Jo Shine's DNA for comparison. Bill Watson took letters
written by Tracy Jo over a decade earlier
to see if her DNA could be identified in the
saliva from the envelope flaps. But the DNA from the saliva
was too badly degraded. Mitochondrial DNA is passed
from generation to generation maternally, meaning that
Tracy Jo's mitochondrial DNA profile would be
identical to her mother's. Even though we didn't
have a sample from Tracy Jo to compare to the tissue that
was inside the refrigerator, we did have her mother. And we were able to get
a mitochondrial profile from her mother. NARRATOR: When the mitochondrial
DNA from the refrigerator was compared to Virginia
Shine, it matched. The biological
material most likely was that of Tracy Jo Shine. Had Tracy Jo's DNA
been discovered on the handle of
the refrigerator, that might not
have been unusual. But skin found on the
wiring on the back harness was a completely
different matter. It's a wonderful,
wonderful feeling. It's a-- you know, you finally
felt like all that hard work is finally coming together. But even whenever
we got that, we knew that this guy would
never do the right thing and step up to the plate
and tell the truth. NARRATOR: With this
discovery, Michael Neal was charged with murder. His brother, Robert,
hoping to gain an early release from prison
for his drug conviction, offered to make a deal. After all these years
that he'd spent in prison, I guess he finally
realized he would never be getting out of prison,
unless he did something. We know you have something
to tell us, Robert. DETECTIVE FIKARIS: And we
sat down, worked out a deal. And he gave us his
honest testimony, which we felt, mostly,
was honest testimony, and told us what he
knew about the case. NARRATOR: Robert not only
revealed his brother's involvement in the murder, he
also implicated his mother, his sister, and himself. Robert Neal told police that
his brother, Michael, feared Tracy Jo Shine would
testify against him for the drive-by shooting
in exchange for a lighter sentence for her drug arrest. So when Michael went to
bail Tracy Jo out of jail, he did so to eliminate
a potential witness. The most important thing
that Robert told us was he actually showed us how
Michael Neal killed her. And Robert made this motion like
this, like a choking motion. So we knew that
she'd been strangled. NARRATOR: Robert said Michael
killed Tracy Jo in his bedroom and left her body
there for three days. The smell of
decomposition prompted Michael's mother to look
into the couple's bedroom, where she saw the body. She goes into the bedroom. She sees that she's
turning purple. I mean, that's a
clue right there that something is not right. NARRATOR: Neal's
mother never reported Tracy Jo's death to police. After the body was
removed, Robert said his mother and sister
cleaned the bedroom and burned incense to remove the odor. Robert admitted helping
Michael transport the refrigerator with the
body inside to the used car lot the brothers owned. Robert told us that
he never saw the body. He said his brother
just told him, help him move the refrigerator. Basically, don't ask
me any questions, and I won't tell you anything. We'll just move this
refrigerator out to the car lot. He said, I can assume that
Tracy Jo Shine was in there, but I never saw her in there,
I never saw her in there. NARRATOR: Robert said he sat
outside while Michael placed the body in a 55-gallon drum. Where Michael later took
the barrel is unknown. But Michael Neal didn't
realize that tissue invisible to the naked eye
would lead to his downfall over a dozen years later. Michael made a lot of
mistakes at the very beginning by leaving the body in
there for several days, by his mother finding
out that Tracy was dead. Instead of immediately
disposing of the body, it allowed us to get evidence
out of the refrigerator. The fact is science
always progresses, always moves forward. And as it has, we've been able
to develop the type of testing that could let us test those
smaller and smaller samples and match it up. So his biggest mistake was in
thinking he'd get away with it. NARRATOR: Although
prosecutors had no body, Michael Neal was convicted
of Tracy Jo Shine's murder and was sentenced to an
additional 45 years in prison. He won't be eligible
for parole until 2017, when he'll be 60 years old. Michael Neal can look
you straight in the eye. And there's no doubt in my
mind that he could catch you, he could shoot you, he
could do anything humanly possible to you--
it would not change his impression in any way. NARRATOR: His brother,
Robert, is still serving time for his earlier
conviction for manufacturing methamphetamine. Michael's mother, Barbara,
denied any knowledge of the murder, saying
she thought Tracy Jo had died of a drug overdose. Neither Barbara nor
her daughter, Jeanie, were ever prosecuted for
their alleged involvement in concealing evidence
or abuse of a corpse, since the statute of limitations
for those crimes had expired. Virginia Shine
says she will never stop looking for her
daughter's grave, even though Michael
Neal stubbornly refuses to say where it is. The sad part of it is is if
he's just trying to just keep on being the one in control,
is that he won't let us know where she really is So that I
could have some kind of peace there. Because it's-- I
mean, it's not going to be any worse for him to tell
me, to tell us the real truth. And-- and so I can't ever
forgive him for that. NARRATOR: Marcel
Dionne's insistence on preserving the refrigerator
for all those years provided the crucial
forensic evidence necessary for a conviction. I just couldn't believe it. To me, it was just a
huge weight off my back. I've never been so happy
over anything in my life. The amount of effort that
went into the sample processing on the front end was as much
as you would put in any case, any very difficult case. I mean, it was just--
on a scale of 1 to 10, I would say it was an 8 or a 9. [theme music]
