Most Viewed Moments of 2022 | Cold Case Files | A&E

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 chopped 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 well 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 to 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 scenes 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 would turn down for sex okay and that made you feel hell like and when she'd 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 and then what 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 I was home with my mom and I remember my mom getting a phone call from my Aunt Joan Dave's mom he hadn't come home for supper honestly the first thought I when he didn't come home I thought oh he's in trouble he stayed out later than he should have you know and then I thought well that's not like him though she sent his older brothers out to look for him his places that he would normally look they checked everywhere Dave wasn't one for confrontation he wasn't one that liked the fight he wouldn't defend himself as quickly as he would defend others he was very affectionate always hugging his mom telling his mom he loved her and his older sister Virginia he was out every day on his bike riding around and he'd always tell his mom every time before he left the house I love you Mom I'll be back and off he'd go on his bike back on August 21st of 1985 I saw that there was numerous firemen searching the area down by the railroad tracks I checked and found out that a young boy had been missing initially I thought it was a runaway that he might have been staying at some friends houses or something like that foreign bike was found by his sister Virginia it was on the railroad tracks in the bushes Virginia was devastated when they found the bike it made the realization that you know there was definitely something wrong and we just needed to find out what it was Dave's Bike was like his right arm he wouldn't go anywhere without it he wouldn't just leave it behind Jenny took it hard and she wanted people to do things and she kind of felt I think helpless it was really frustrating that you know the police couldn't come up with anything my aunt cried just non-stop she would just come to our house I could still picture her sitting in the chair and just crying and crying as time went on days turned into weeks and then months we had no idea where he was or who he was with or if he was even okay my brothers and I walked all over Schuylkill Haven and I think we've hung these on every telephone pole put them in every grocery store every storefront window that we could possibly find and all hopes are trying to get some information there were many times I took extra walks in what would be the train yard again checking the box cars and the cabooses that were left there checking the bushes in the area I figured if anything had happened to David it would have had to have been somewhere in that area and there was no debit I was contacted to respond to an address over on Cadwell street because of something that had been found a Schuylkill Haven resident has found a skull in the woods not far from his home initially the family over on Cadwell Street I had lost a cat and they went up into the woods behind their house and when they was up there looking for the cat he found the skull I couldn't imagine why anyone would disturb the remains of someone they found call the police get them there get them to see everything intact as it was I've heard of people finding bones and going back to the house and telling the police where they're at but not collecting them and bringing them back the man who found the skull takes investigators back into the woods where there are even more bonds there was a very small opening between the trees and you could see that there were human remains laying on ground and there was clothing that was associated with it the fact that the remains had a white T-shirt and writing on it was possibly from the Republican and blue jeans that pretty much sealed the deal that it was David that had been found investigators have no Witnesses and no other physical evidence so they ask an anthropologist to examine David's bones in addition to teeth monks left by animals monge finds a fracture on the back of David's skull so what happened in the case of David Reed as something clearly hit his head and those suture lines sprung open from each other did he fall like hit his head on a rock that could have happened so the cause of death of David is listed as undetermined one individual named Kathy came forward with information about David getting into a a Blue Van supplied a registration from the van we immediately had that broadcaster across the county we were able to run numerous ways of that license plate you know a b instead of an eight and we tried to run it at various different ways to come up with a vehicle that it would match and none of it was successful foreign individual came in and introduced himself as Trooper Bob Bettner and that he had been assigned to reopen a cold case of uh David Reed when I had heard about David's case I lobbied for I wanted to be a part of it betnar focuses on the interviews police conducted when David first went missing this individual did have ties to David Reed's family specifically his sister and his older brothers he did not cooperate with the initial investigation he did not like the police because he was a drug dealer but he was also incarcerated at this time and when the police went to talk to him in jail he wanted nothing to do with them when I approached this guy he was shocked that I wanted to talk to him about the death of David Reed there were always rumors circulating about an abduction that took place that there was a van that may have abducted David and took him away from the area I'm not only given the owner of a light blue colored van but I'm given the identity of an individual that resides in Schuylkill Haven that's a nefarious individual that's sexually abusing children he fit our profile we're all excited that you know we may have saw this case in a short matter of time and they're like hey Rob he's here you know he's here to talk to you and they're thinking he wants to talk to me for this case it was crazy it was surreal but the explanation was much more innocent than that he was there for his annual Megan's Law registration when investigators dive deeper into this possible suspect's record they discovered that he was in federal prison when David went missing it was very disheartening to exclude the Megan's Law offender I remember one of my immediate supervisors even coming to me and asking are we done now are you satisfied you took a shot at it it was a good run betdar hasn't run out of steam yet we were going to put this case on TV and David Reed's sister Virginia she was going to be the face of this case we went out looking for Witnesses one of the red flags that people in the community had raised to us is that after David's disappearance Joe Geiger disappeared Joseph Geiger was not only a local small-time drug dealer but he used to grow his own marijuana plants back behind his house in fact in the wooded area where David Reed's body was found I remember hearing stories that you know Joe Geiger would be at parties telling people well if you want to murder somebody do it in school County because you can get away with it the family would tell the police that and you know I don't know if they took it seriously or or what they did but not at the time at least detectives want to question the now 40 year old Geiger he does walk into the barracks and he had told us that he had only seen David around town once and then he ends up by my house dead he barely knew him he had no alibi he had nothing and he was boxed in he knew it and he breaks Geiger tells Trooper Bednar but I was there I saw it and it was John Frye in 1985 John Fry's smaller kid he's a kid that would get in trouble drinking alcohol the story was that John Frye punched David in the face David fell backwards and he hit his head and that's what happened John Fry gives us a consistent statement with Joe Geiger only he indicates that Joe Geiger is the person that hit David Reed and not him we were given very specific facts as to how David died we wanted to take that scenario to an anthropologist to get a professional opinion because of Janet monge's work and her examination of David we were in fact able to get the cause of manner change to blunt force trauma in the manner of death to homicide now it's game on for the first time in 23 years we can make an arrest for criminal homicide and David Reed's case John Fry was a right-handed person Joe was left-handed David had a fracture on the right side of his face and we felt if two individuals were facing each other if there were going to be a fight that fracture on the right side of the face would have been more consistent with being struck by a left-handed person we got the warrant issued on August 20th and really for symbolic purposes we wanted that arrest made on that anniversary date mixed emotions come into play again because we're finally getting him arrested he's finally going to pay for what he did but then it's the you had 23 years of freedom to walk around Joe Geiger is charged with third degree murder bed Slaughter tampering with physical evidence and abuse of a corpse Geiger explained to us that he was growing marijuana plants and he had discovered that David was stealing his plants and that he was angry infuriated by this Geiger and Fry found David Near The Empty cabooses on the railroad tracks a known hangout spot for the young boy he confronted David in the train and John Fry was there and that during the confrontation he admitted to punching David and that when David fell backwards he hit his head off of a metal object after he hit David I said he started crying they panicked and they went downtown and then went back to the train car hoping he wasn't there and unfortunately David was still there he thought he was dead and rather than notifying anybody he took the coward's way out and he hit his body glad that you know and that in his plea deal but I think that a lot of it like the crying they they told me he cried a lot I think that was more because he was caught because in court he showed no remorse a judge sentences guger to no more than two years behind bars [Music] Joe took away my friend he took away my cousin if I wish he had the opportunity to grow up as I did you know it just seems so unfair and I'm so sorry that his life was cut so short it was really really foggy up Jackie was at work it was about five or six o'clock and she wasn't getting off till like nine or ten and she called the house and asked if she could pick me up when she got off work and when I went and asked my mother she said it's foggy enough there's libel to be a murderer tonight and you're not going anywhere Jackie was my very best friend to this day I'll be honest with you I feel like maybe it wouldn't have happened if my mom had let me go that night in June of 1985 Jackie Johns has just turned 20 years old and lives in the Tiny Town of Nixa a rural cattle ranching committee nestled in the Ozarks foreign she was just a typical 20 year old with a bevy of friends everyone in the area knew her and she was a friendly Charming outgoing young girl Jackie worked as a waitress in the Nixa sell Morgan Cafe it used to be attached to what we call the sale barn where they had cattle auctions and so forth it was a very casual restaurant that's where I met Jackie years before she had been a waitress there for some time a bunch of cowboys with dirt and probably cow or horse manure or whatever on their boots and we would serve them Jackie always served him with a smile all of us girls probably flirted at one point Jackie and me both I mean probably more so her Jackie would work at the cafe on her boyfriend Cody I actually worked at the sale bar he was a very quiet type guy a few years older in the process of getting a divorce but it wasn't final yet and she just fell head over heels for him oh I'll never forget that day my dad called and he says oh they found Jackie's car along the highway and I thought oh gosh that silly girl has run out of gas I thought she probably had spent the night with someone and just left her car over there because that was something she would do we she was really spontaneous about just oh I'm gonna have fun I'll just go do this I get a phone call from my friend Dana she was at the cafe and she says Jackie with you and I said no but I could hear something in her voice and I'm like why what's up and then she's like they found her car on 160 and she's not in it and I lost it I was just numb the call goes out to Christian County Sheriff Dwight McNeil who was just 33 years old and new to the job there was a blood that had spattered about the inside of the vehicle there were a pair of jeans located that had one leg turned inside out there were some women's undergarments it was clear from the volume of blood that someone had been seriously injured and or died as a result of the activity in that car as the search for Jackie continues Sheriff McNeill questions her boyfriend Cody kodu is one of the last people to see her before she arrived at the convenience store so that was extremely important to get him eliminated as a suspect as quickly as possible Cody tells police that he was home alone when Jackie went missing but has few other details to offer he's a tough guy he's a cowboy and uh ranch hand and not the kind of guy that wears his emotions on his sleeve there was no one to corroborate his Alibi but no one had anything to say about Cody he wasn't a violent type of person a jealous type of person four days after Jackie disappeared her parents get a phone call that confirms their worst fears I was actually at my mom and dad's house and the phone rang and it was one of my dad's friends they they were camping down the Lake Springfield and he called to say they found the body two fishermen had located a body floating in the Springfield Lake which was approximately four and a half miles five miles north of where a car was discovered the body was still floating with a new female but there was no question of who it was the autopsy on Jackie's body revealed that she died as a result of blunt force trauma and that she had been apparently raped there were puncture wounds that were consistent with the lugs that were on the face of the bumper Jack we were also able to recover a semen sample which was fortunate considering the length of time that she'd been in the lake four days after Jackie's body is found the family lays her to rest desperate for any kind of lead Sheriff McNeil sets up a hotline for tips on the case hoping that someone in the small town saw something suspicious that night it doesn't take long two men who were purchasing fuel on that night at the convenience store had seemed a very distinctive pickup truck backed into a bank parking lot directly across the street from the convenience store it was white over powder blue it was the 60s model Chevrolet Cheyenne and this particular truck had a custom aftermarket wheels on it the odds of there being two trucks that looked like that in Southwest Missouri at that time were very very remote Neil believes the truck belongs to Gerald Carnahan the son of a prominent Nixa businessman everyone in Nix is pretty familiar with the Carnahan family Gerald's father had been involved in a number of successful Ventures including The Foundry that was located just about a mile south of the Sale Barn Cafe Gerald Carnahan was a very clean cut professional looking fellow and came into the office for his interview as cool as he could be but professing that he would do anything he could to help the investigation he knew Jackie he admitted that in the interview from the Sale Barn Cafe and we said we have witnesses who placed Gerald's truck at the scene where Jackie was last seen he denied that and stated that he was at home carnahan's Alibi is his 19 year old stepdaughter we made contact with his stepdaughter who told us that she and Gerald had been out to dinner on that evening but it was her story that they arrived back home and Gerald never left the house again which was absolutely inconsistent with the eyewitnesses who'd seen his truck at the convenience store Carnahan also tells investigators that Jackie had briefly worked for his family's business she quit there were allegations that Gerald had hit on her while she worked there and then continued pursuing her after she left then another witness calls in about that one-of-a-kind truck and that witness turned out to be Gerald carnahan's brother if you drive straight across Highway 160 from the convenience store the road makes a sweeping curve at that time there was a large hay field on the right just west of Gerald's parents home and Jackie John's home and he saw Gerald's truck parked in that field at that intersection the brother says that Gerald asked him not to give this information to police we asked Gerald to take a polygraph examination which he agreed to do but the following day at the appointed time he failed to show up Dwight McNeil now has deep suspicions about carnahan's Alibi with no fewer than three Witnesses saying his truck was near the crime scene that night but the sheriff still has no solid proof linking Carnahan to the murder itself 's prosecutors to charge Carnahan with tampering with evidence by pressuring his stepdaughter to give him an alibi the grand jury sends cartagen to trial on the tempering charge based on the Highly Questionable Alibi he gave to police the judge throws out the charges for lack of physical evidence a young woman I think she was around 18 was walking down the street when Gerald Carnahan pulls up next to her and attempts to kidnap her and she managed to get away but he is apprehended it was really bizarre because you know if you're Gerald Carnahan you know everyone in town knows who you are and he attempts to kidnap an 18 year old in a a part of town that was not at all secluded and he wasn't even alone a friend of his was driving the car so it was really a strange situation I think there was a sense that he considered himself untouchable he was convicted of the attempted kidnapping but did not receive a lengthy sentence just a few years DNA is becoming more mainstream now and we can do a lot more than we could but because the swab had been in the water for multiple days it was a big concern that that may be for naught but we decided to do it anyway so at this point we start trying to get a search warrant to get a DNA sample from Mr Carnahan himself when we told him that we had a search warrant for his DNA and we said this is about the Jackie Johns death investigation and um I saw a small little tear right coming down the corner of his eye Sergeant Dan Nash collects the DNA Swap and rushes it by plane to the state's main crime lab in Jefferson City there was an urgency because Gerald made frequent trips to China he still had his passport he had married a woman from China so we had this great sense of we need to get it done quickly before he has a chance to leave the country I think like at 5 30 in the morning my phone rings and I remember Jason saying we got a match it's him prosecutor Daryl Moore charges Carnahan with the rape and murder of Jackie Johns the family agrees to waive the death penalty to shorten the trial in the hope that Jackie's ailing 83-year-old father will live long enough to see Justice served and then the judge read the verdict he's guilty of first-degree murder he's guilty of rape the jury sentenced him to two consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole [Music] really closure but I feel like there was Justice you know finally 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 what 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 or 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 she 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 20 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 the 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 off the streets it wasn't any profile other than there were women and they were young and they were pretty there was a serial killer killing College AIDS 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 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 just didn't fit right investigators eliminate Ted Bundy leaving them with no solid suspects in Jody's murder the case of the young woman who went out on a bike ride and never came back cause as cold as the Winter Winds that blowed down from Canada 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 unsold cases get a fresh look from a new investigative unit so everyone realized that there was 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 with Jody's case intact spermatazzo 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 and 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 for 10 long years there's 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 the 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 chiquetta 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 filed him to a casino they watched him buy a cup of coffee and then discard that cup in a garbage can s 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 sharf 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] on a frigid Monday morning outside Denver Connie large Bennett gets a disturbing phone call about her son Bruce and his wife Debra Connie's brother called her because Bruce and Debbie hadn't shown up for work that morning Bruce and Debbie worked for Bruce's uncle they were the regional Distributors of Bassett Furniture and so they tried calling several times and didn't get an answer Connie and Deborah's brother Larry had just seen the couple and their two young daughters Melissa and Vanessa the night before it was a celebration of Melissa's birthday she was uh turning eight I remember the kids laughing and playing and you know it was festive Debbie made it special Connie was worried that something had happened in the home so she raced over to the house nothing prepared her for what she was going to find inside they led me from the garage into the kitchen as I entered I looked to my right on the floor I saw the body of Bruce Bennett Bruce was struck about the head and face with a hammer and I also observed that his throat had been cut we've been entered the master bedroom and they're on the bed I saw a female that was bludgeoned to death they took me into a girl's bedroom I observed the body of Melissa Bennett seven years old Melissa was also struck with the hammer and she'd been sexually assaulted [Music] every person who set foot in this crime scene and they'd get pale they choke up it was a level of brutality that was really unheard of I was disgusted I felt very bad for her that she had gone through this [Music] the brutal attack has left three dead but there is a glimmer of hope I was advised at that time that when the fire rescue got to the scene that Vanessa who was three years old was found between the wall and the bed she was clinging to life when the firemen came in they immediately grabbed her they rushed her outside to the hospital and did everything they could to save her life can you tell me your first memory of being in the hospital I remember the sticky things on my chest the things that that check your heart rate I don't remember if I asked more than once Hey where's my parents I I would assume that I would as any child would um but I don't remember actually being told hey your parents are dead I'm pretty sure I got the picture [Music] detectives turned to the last people who saw the Bennetts alive the guests at Melissa's birthday party Bennett that would have been the mother of Bruce Bennett couldn't figure out why this had happened to her family she said the birthday party took place the evening before Tony was there and then Connie's two sons Richard and Daniel they had cake and they finally folded up around nine o'clock I wasn't there that late I don't because I was I had to travel the next day Richard told Connie make sure you tell Bruce that their garage doors open and have him close it she said she did but first for some reason didn't do it and the door was left open it was an easy Mark and I believe that's why he went in we never found the hammer that was used to commit the homicide but there was a knife next to the driveway which was in in the snow and that was used to cut uh Bruce Bennett's throat crime scene investigators are unable to pull a usable fingerprint off the knife in Melissa and Vanessa's bedroom TSI discovers another crucial piece of evidence investigators at the time found Seaman actually on the carpet that was underneath Alyssa and then we also found on a comforter that was covering her body there was also semen on that we wanted DNA done on those items if they could do it but you're talking about the mid 80s our State Crime Lab CBI said they weren't capable of doing it yet January 10 1984 is when Patricia Smith was attacked in her home in Lakewood her dresser was sexually assaulted on the floor bludgeoned around the head with a hammer [Music] Vanessa's Ed was bandaged in her face you know had multiple bandages on her face and she was being spoken to by a therapist and he was trying to ask her what had gone on I remember there was a time when I was younger and some like people were asking about what did he look like I don't remember anything once he started asking her about what had gone on she became very very agitated and did they just stopped the interview detectives hit a dead end they have no eyewitnesses and the physical evidence they have can't lead them to the Killer foreign years later the Colorado Bureau of Investigation is finally equipped to extract DNA profiles CBI found DNA which only one person out of 18 million could have deposited that DNA they said if you get this person that's the person that did your crime right there none of this DNA that came off these items coincide with anything from the family nobody in the family was involved in this murder [Music] unable to ID a suspect through DNA databases Chief Deputy D.A Kelner and Detective Connor team up with Dr Colleen Fitzpatrick a genetic genealogist she would go into open databases that had the DNA information from like 23andMe or ancestry.com and she would just start mining different areas looking for close matches to the DNA that she had detective Gunner shares the Killer's DNA profile with Dr Fitzpatrick she goes I'll be back to you in a few days and it was less than a week and she called back and told me she gave me the last name of Ewing that name had never appeared on any of the reports that I could find and then on July 10th 2018 at about 9 15 in the evening I received a call from my boss they got a CODIS hit on the Benet case I go from where and he goes some inmate out in Nevada I got a phone call from Steve Connor he says you won't believe it we know who our suspect is he's been in prison since August of 1984. I said well what's his name the individual's name was on Alex Ewing investigators for over 58 year old Alex Ewing's criminal record they discover he'd been arrested just 12 days after the minutes were murdered not long after the Bennett family murders Ewing popped up on the radar in Kingman Arizona where he allegedly bludgeoned a man with a rock he bludgeoned nearly to death two people with an ax handle he was captured in Nevada and he was ultimately convicted of that attack for attempted murder okay I'll jump right in um looking at several cases in Aurora wherein people were attacked in their homes the evidence we have leads to you direct them to you I mean this is just crazy man I think you know what I'm talking about I can tell by where you're looking to be I'm thinking about what you said I'm just like damn thing I need to talk to an attorney or somebody Ewing was charged with first-degree murder of the Bennett family Bruce Deborah and Melissa Bennett prosecutors are unable to try Ewing for the two Hammer attacks in which the victim survived because Colorado law in 1984 assigned a mere three-year time limit to file attempted murder charges we ultimately decided from the statute of limitations perspective that we couldn't go forward with these other cases prosecutors can charge you with the Lakewood murder the district attorney for the First Judicial District in Jefferson County charged with Mr Ewing has alleged that he also committed the first degree murder of Patricia Smith from just a few days earlier in 1984. [Music] Alex Ewing pleads not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder the Bennett case is first to go to trial Ewing's motivation for committing this crime was absolute bloodlust for violence when I heard count number one come back as guilty I knew the next counts would be guilty as well the jury convicts Alex Ewing on all three counts of murder the judge was particularly succinct calling it an abomination and sentenced him in Colorado to three consecutive life sentences Ewing is still awaiting trial for the murder of Patricia Smith it's nearly midnight and Sergeant John Reed is on his way to a call in Bethany Oklahoma a suburb of Oklahoma City while driving he spots something odd that the Sunshine Car Wash a white Dodge Neon was parked in the Far West Stall but no one was around it I didn't pay much more attention after finishing the call I drove by the Sunshine Car Wash again same white Dodge Neon was still on the Far West Stall now the Dodge Neon is the only vehicle left at the car wash I sent the license plate number to a headquarters the car is registered it's a 19 year old Tiffany Johnston read funds Tiffany's keys and purse in the car in the glove box he discovers the phone number for Tiffany's mother Kathy who lives 60 miles away in Anadarko Oklahoma I received a call from the Bethany Police Department wanting to know if Tiffany was with me [Music] I told him no she was supposed to meet her new husband Brian they were going to go to their little Club type disco place that they always go to at 11 o'clock at night because that was when Ron got off work you get woke up in the middle of the night you want to know if your daughter's there but you know something's not right there's no sign of Tiffany anywhere but with one call to Oklahoma State Police Everything Changes around I-40 and Gregory Road locals noticed a spot in the grass and that draw their attention to it they stopped and found a body of a white female agents took a picture of the body showed it to Ryan and Ryan identified Tiffany that car wash is fairly busy if somebody would have tried to have abducted Tiffany there would have been one hell of a fight but the scene where a car was at didn't show that the car was unlocked nothing around that scene was Disturbed that that led you to believe that there was any altercation there so the struggle that took place didn't take place there it took place in it at another stall or she knew the person and just got in the car with him and talked to them it's a case where anyone could be the suspect [Music] a medical examiner collects swabs for forensic testing but the results are inconclusive so in this case we had a dead wife now we have a living husband and oftentimes the husband is responsible for the death of the wife the medical examiner wasn't able to determine the exact time of death the last time she was seen alive there at the car wash was shortly after six o'clock and several co-workers saw Brian Johnston work he had a solid Alibi that he was at work from three to eleven the owner of the car wash called Headquarters with a tip he had seen news reports of a gentleman that was arrested on an abduction in Texas he recognized that individual is a customer of his car wash William Reese at one time resided in the Anadarko Oklahoma area he was convicted of two sexual crimes committed here in Cleveland County and he was released in 1996. two months prior to Tiffany's murder in 1997 he was involved in the abduction as Sandra Sapaugh Sandra St Paul was 19 years old and she was pregnant she was parked at a waffle house and noticed that her tires had been slashed and Reese pretending to be a good samaritan hopped up and said hey I can help you with that do you need a ride and at knife Point put her into his truck and kidnapped her they're driving down the interstate I-45 in Houston she noticed the back door is unlocked and she's able to kick out the back door jump out of the moving vehicle on the interstate roll away and and Escape Sandra was kidnapped in Texas two months before Tiffany's murder she wasn't able to ID Rhys as her abductor until three months after Tiffany was killed the owner of the car wash said he had seen Reese at the car wash several times had tried to start conversation with him and that Reese typically drove a white Dooley pickup truck agents discovered that Rhys had used a pay phone in the town of Yukon which is a little bit further west than Bethany we have William Reese in the area now but we don't have him at the car wash at the time of Tiffany's disappearance there was just no physical evidence there was no eyewitness there was nothing to corroborate that he was at the Sunshine Car Wash at that particular time I'd call the Bethany PD and harass them but they really had ran out of leads and they didn't know what to do so Tiffany's case was thrown back in Cold Case Files I received a laboratory report from the kremless a couple of the swabs that were taken by the medical examiner contained a partial male DNA profile swabs taken during the autopsy finally after 16 years give detectives a partial DNA profile of the Killer swabs also show that Tiffany was sexually assaulted the challenge with cold cases is that over time the DNA evidence has broken down or degraded So based on the portion of the swab remaining we were able to obtain a partial DNA profile and that is not enough information to enter that profile into the DNA database known as CODIS the combined DNA index system we went back and re-identified located in the obtained buccal swabs from people who Tiffany worked with many of the ex-boyfriends acquaintances even people who are at the car wash at the time that she was there we went as far as Ryan Johnston himself even though he had a solid Alibi and he cleared the polygraph we still took a buckle swab from him to compare but all of the male DNA profiles that were submitted from the people of interest at the crime scene and the husband they were all excluded from the partial profile of the rectal swab but William Reese whom the car wash owner identified and who was a very strong person of interest in the case was the only person that hadn't been eliminated in addition to the attempted abduction of Sandra's sepaw in May 1997. Reese was his suspect in a string of missing person cases that occurred within weeks of Tiffany Johnston's murder the quest to solve Tiffany Johnston's Cold Case might have led investigators to a serial killer we reached out to the Texas Rangers to obtain a buckle swab and if I'm a betting man I bet William Reese is going to be the contributor of it State investigators compare Reese's DNA the what was found at the crime scene it's a partial match William Reese and all of his paternal male relatives could not be excluded from the partial profile of the rectal swab which means that William Reese or any one of his male relatives could have contributed to that profile even though it's not a perfect match it is progress investigators need time to build their case against Reese and for once time is on their side Reese is locked away serving a 60-year sentence in Texas for kidnapping Sandra saipa we were fairly confident that William Reese was the Killer but we needed to get the confession from him the Texas Rangers tell Reese they won't ask for the death penalty if he cooperates in their open cases William reaches a point that he confessed to those other missing person cases in Texas in when they talked about Tiffany Johnson's homicide William Reese admits that he was at the car wash and that he'd abducted and killed Tiffany if only to spare his life Rhys gives investigators his version of what happened that night nearly 20 years earlier William resent that uh he and Tiffany had an altercation he had put her inside the horse trailer that was behind his white Dooley pickup and inside the horse trailer ended up raping her and she ended up being killed there but the scene where a car at didn't show that nothing around that scene was Disturbed that that led you to believe that there was any altercation there the first thought goes to my mind was that it was quick and violent and there wasn't time for any struggle or she knew the person and just got in a car with him and talked to them after admitting to killing Tiffany Rhys also says he knows exactly what happened to missing women Jessica Kane and Kelly Cox after years of delays his trial begins the jury came back with a guilty verdict William Reese was convicted of first-degree murder and kidnapping Justice was reached for Tiffany and her family knew it as well foreign 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 Janie was 18 years old but 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 told police that 18 year old Jeannie 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 but Janie didn't arrive at koser Cottage where she was supposed to and then they listed her as AWOL the staff was all talking about it up until end of shift and we hadn't heard any word other than no they 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 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 you 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 authorities knew 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 [Music] when my dad got the call about Janie he had distress in his voice I mean 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 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 talked to detective Hinkle and a couple other officers and you 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 CODIS 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 he nine 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 were 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 looked 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 them to court and 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 24 year old Lisa ziegert shows up on time as always for work at Britney's card and gift shop that night had just popped into the store again just to say hi just to catch up we are talking about her being a teacher Lisa was student teaching during the day and then she worked at Britney's at night and then we just did our tearful normal hug and kiss goodbyes and and I went home the next morning early in in my day I hadn't been at work very long I got a phone call because Lisa had not shown up to work at the school and that was highly unusual minutes later linton's phone rings again it's another of Lisa's worried co-workers my friend worked at the same card and gift shop she had come for her morning shift and the store was found open Lisa's car was in the parking lot and her belongings were still on the counter my friend knew something was not right and that's when she called the police none of it made any sense I had just been there the night before everything seemed normal Lynn came to my office and I said oh what are you doing here she said Mom lease is missing she didn't just leave she had a great rapport with kids she was drawing she's you know teaching she was happy with her boyfriend Blair she loved him and was convinced that you know someday that they would marry and have children she was just happy with her life the police officers who responded right at the beginning knew that something very bad had happened thank you Lisa's belongings were still inside the store under the counter there were no signs of a robbery still in the register today we might check video cameras and surveillance in the area but there was no such thing at the time but there were some signs that a struggle had occurred especially in the the back office area there appears to be a spot of Blood on the top of the refrigerated door they checked the alley behind they checked businesses nearby dumpsters nearby see if there was any type of evidence that might have been found there and they started talking to people from the nearby businesses trying to track down anyone who might have witnessed something but investigators didn't find anything at the scene to suggest where Lisa had gone or who might have taken her the store was crawling with policemen the detectives asked was she having trouble with anybody we were unaware of anybody having any interest in harming Lisa I kept thinking why would anyone hurt her she was such a good person why wouldn't they just let her go on Easter Sunday in Agawam Resident was walking behind his property he saw in a clearing in the woods a partially naked body of a female Agawam police were able to immediately identify that body as belonging to Lisa's eager Lisa is found about a mile away from Britney's card shop the area was definitely off the beaten path it was on a clearing on kind of a dirt road Lisa had significant injuries including at least half a dozen knife wounds and there was evidence that she had been in a fight for her life the investigation reveals through autopsy in particular that Lisa's also sexually assaulted and there were multiple deposits of forensic evidence and a lot of effort went into determining that this was a single Source male DNA profile one of the witnesses also reported to investigators that he had seen a suspicious person lurking across the street before Lisa had been taken the guy was kind of moving back and forth in a strange way and he described him as a relatively tall Slenderman wearing a dark Army style jacket I remember the night I went to visit her at the store the Thursday before she went missing there was a customer in the store and I remember him staying for a while I thought it was odd that he was hovering I remember her saying that you know he comes in sometimes to look at the Collectibles trying to you know figure out which one he wants to buy someone so I knew that the person was somebody that she had seen in the store before and I just remember him staying for a long time and wishing he would leave I did tell the police about the man in the store and his description I remember him being a tall thin dark-haired man he was wearing a black jacket Kimberly's description is a near match to the man spotted outside the gift shop the night of the murder oh investigators did look at Lisa's boyfriend that would have been a standard procedure in any investigation that had been unsolved at that point when they talked to the boyfriend he did have an alibi Blair claims he was with his mother around the time Lisa was abducted but detectives still take a long hard look at him they impounded Blair's car they had him back and forth for questioning they took DNA there were no concerns about domestic violence by all accounts it sounded like a loving relationship I remember if the Laird went out to go look for her he didn't want to stop searching Blair just didn't want to give up investigators spoke to other people who would have been with him they were able to establish an alibi that ruled him out and later obtained a DNA profile from him that also ruled him out as a suspect DNA technology hadn't Advanced to the point where we could do some of the alternative testing methods that we could do today so if somebody refused to provide a DNA sample there wasn't really much that investigators could do there is no hope the case will be solved when the state's youngest ever district attorney Anthony galoney takes office we thought that DNA phenotyping could provide some characteristics of this individual like hair color and eye color skin tone that could narrow the course of our investigation in 2016 Diego Looney's team submits the Killer's 24 year old DNA sample for analysis short time later we were provided a composite sketch of an individual well this individual was Caucasian of European descent had brown or hazel eyes dark hair moderate skin tone we now know that someone for instance with blonde hair and blue eyes was not the perpetrator someone who was of African-American descent or Asian descent was not the perpetrator so we were able to eliminate a substantial number of individuals I started looking at people who had been contacted by investigators in the past and who had refused to provide a DNA sample we went back to these people and just by explaining what we were doing a good percentage of them gave their DNA samples so at the end of that process we were able to identify 11 people and the grand jury voted to ask the court to compel these individuals to provide that sample around 6 30 I got a phone call that a woman had gone into a state police barracks in Westfield and had claimed that her boyfriend authored some documents that she provided to the Troopers they were a confessional and an apology to the ziegert family the essence of it was I took Lisa from her family and I will never forgive myself says overtly they're going to tell you that 25 years ago I kidnapped raped and murdered a young woman and it's all true that struck me like a ton of bricks he wrote in the letter that he believed that what I had was a warrant for his DNA and that was going to put him in jail for life and that either he was going to kill himself or face the music Troopers interview the woman whose boyfriend wrote the letters she described him as docile he just seemed like an average nice guy she would never in a million years suspect would be capable of doing something like this he tells police her boyfriend is 48 year old Gary Shara Gary Shara was one of the 11 names that we had taken before the grand jury Gary Sheriff first becomes known to investigators in the context of Lisa ziegert's death in March of 1993 Gary Cheryl was one of dozens if not hundreds of men whose name had come up in a similar way his ex-wife said that he was very interested in the case he would always run into the room when the news came on about this case she also said that she thought that he had purchased a music box at Britney's card shop within the days or weeks before Lisa was taken [Music] investigators speak to Gary Shara in 2002 he refused to provide his DNA voluntarily at that time in 2008 investigators again speak with Gary Shara Gary appeared to be very conscious of not providing a DNA sample either intentionally or accidentally he wouldn't touch the table wouldn't take water that was provided to him he was asked to provide a DNA sample at that time and he refused his reasoning he was afraid of cloning there was certainly nothing illegal about one's refusal to provide DNA that didn't necessarily signal something nefarious but at the end of the day there just wasn't enough there for them to move forward with him as a suspect at that time we wrote a search warrant for his house we seized a number of items that were likely to have his DNA on them one item was his toothbrush toothbrush was taken to the state police crime lab I remember very vividly awaiting the results myself and my lieutenant were in the office and on my cell phone it lit up Concord Mass and that's where the lab is we learned that the profile developed from Gary's toothbrush match the single Source male DNA profile obtained in 1992 from Lisa ziegert's killer Gary Cheryl was charged with aggravated kidnapping aggravated rape and first-degree murder cherub pleads not guilty 27 years after Lisa's murder Sheriff finally breaks his silence tell me then in your own words why we're here we're here to make change to make a change of play to guilty to murder the first degree do you understand that yes sir I do the shower the court has accepted your plea of guilty to indictment 17-600 help One charging murder in the first degree the court orders you to serve a term of life in prison without the possibility of parole Pam lives in a small house on Lincoln Street with two roommates she'd moved in just three months ago but over dinner with her father she admits she's already having second thoughts she says we're behind on a rent and she goes I'm tired of it and I want to know if it would be okay with you if I moved back home and I told her absolutely I didn't want you moving out to begin with and I said when do you want to do this she said well I'm going to come to the house on Saturday and do laundry so we finished having dinner and she left and that was the last time I saw Pam alive [Music] Pam was born June 25th 1969 at K.I Sawyer Air Force Base in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan Pamela was the oldest of the four of us Pam was very much outgoing she was part of a group of friends that liked CB radios and her handle was dark angel in June of 1988 she moves in with her best friend Shelley norgaard I said I'm I'm opposed to that you've got your own room here at home you got your own private entrance but she did anyway I was kind of upset about that be honest with you they realized they weren't able to afford the rent fully so then they had a third roommate Jeremy Anderson who had moved in with them from what I remember the three of them got along pretty well Monday came and I called the place where she works and I asked her boss I said is Pam there he goes no she didn't show up for work so at that point they called the police department I went to Pam's house with a sergeant by name of Bill Hobbs and or it was answered by Shelly norgaard so they found Pam's purse or driver's license medicine all her personal effects were still there Bill Hobbs and myself sat down at the kitchen table with Shelley and asked her if she knew anything and she said that she believed Pam had gone out partying she wasn't really worried of anything happening to her and she said that they had a joint checking account to to pay the rent and Shelley deposited her portion of it and then Pam Pitt said emptied the account and wasn't paying the rent and so she was a little upset about that Gordo's pit is in a wooded area was a place that a lot of the local kids would go to party and so this one person is sifting through some refuse and he sees a human foot sticking out there was a big pile of garbage bags abandoned Lane on top of the pile was an unknown body that had been totally consumed by fire melted into the wrist bones was what appeared to be a bracelet and you could make out just a couple of letters of dark and a couple of letters of angel on that there was a lot of trash around her and on her the injuries to her body were gruesome the sheer brutality of what happened to her was the most striking thing so we suspected that Pam had been killed and stored somewhere and then deposited on the garbage pile and burned detectives turned to Pam's housemates Shelley and Jeremy they want to know where the two were on September 16th the last day anyone saw Pam alive Jeremy's Alibi was that he was at a football game that night and that was kind of a significant event and then he hung out with a couple guys Shelley said that on the night of the 16th she got off work she went and picked up her boyfriend Ray who were you with the night of the 16th Ray Don John and Terry I don't know their last names and she said that they got done around 2 30 or so in the morning sure you didn't take Pam out to the pits I'm positive so the police focused on that talking to Ray clerks to see if Shelley was telling the truth and they corroborated what she had said detectives asked Ray to take a polygraph he agrees and passes [Music] with no new leads to fuel the investigation like the dying Embers of the fire that consumed her the case of this dark Angel's fiery demise grows cold I mean they were pretty good about periodically updating me for a while you know and then as time went on I wasn't hearing much of anything yet this case with all its strange twists I was about to take another odd turn there were some Embry-Riddle students exploring a mine out Iron Springs Road found a body in a vertical mine shaft and reported it to law enforcement body was positively identified as Ray Clerks he had been shot in the head Ray was the boyfriend of Pam's roommate Shelly norgaard to me if you think that's a coincidence there's something wrong with you you know police begin their investigation by matching tire tracks found at the mine entrance to a pickup recently Borrowed by none other than Shelley norgard Shelley was interviewed at the time of her interview in the house they found blood and at a certain point they walked up to her car and could immediately smell I think they documented it as the smell of death they found blood in the trunk of her car they ended up being you know the same type as rays detectives also find a nine millimeter Luger revolver under the front seat so they actually had some physical evidence to charge shelling despite nor guards not guilty plea the evidence is stacking up against her a ballistics analysis chose Shelley's gun is the same caliber as the weapon used to kill Ray Clerks after two years of claiming she was innocent norgaard reverses course and admits she murdered Ray clerks but I believe she killed Ray in the apartment and then Rey's body was in the trunk of that car and sat out there until Shelley was able to borrow a four-wheel drive truck go to her car remove Ray's body put it in the truck drive it up the mountain to that mine shaft your guard is sentenced to 20 years with no parole he's given credit for the two years she has already served a waiting trial her release date would be in 2011. Shelley's conviction in Rey's death now paints Shelley in a whole different light 42 year old Shelly norgaard completes her sentence there had to be something we missed so from day one that was it what did we miss what do we have that will provide us the clue we need to solve this case all penal institutions in the United States pretty much all of them record phone calls between inmates and the outside there was a series of phone calls between Shelley and her father where there was tension insofar as her dad was concerned that she was going to be arrested immediately upon leaving the jail hi hi what's going on benefit he kept making reference to that night referring to the night Pam went missing well that's what I've been thinking for 20 years but then I don't know exactly you've never told me what what actually happened I'm kind of up in the air again and she comes back I had a huge moment and then the line goes completely silent that was a giant aha moment that actually led me to go to the county attorney's office and seek an indictment foreign ER yes Sergeant yeah I tell him now okay Miss Harmon put down the seat I'd like to talk to you about 1988. am I under arrest you are under arrest for murder of family pets what we decided on as a family and I've taken a lot of criticism for this is that we would offer her a plea deal or if she confessed to the crime and gave us the details of what happened and why that she would be released on time served it was more important to get the confession and the conviction behind Shelley's name than it was for the time so we offered to plead you and surprisingly she agreed to it and so we went into court and she stood up and she said I murdered Pam Pitts [Music] Sally was up was really upset with Pam about her moving out because she couldn't afford to pay the rent on her own and she didn't have anywhere to go so Shelley was out looking for Pam and she knew that she goes to Corrido pits for parties and so when she found Pam she confronted her they got into a fight she just you know lost it she said I punched her and knocked her down and got on top of her and I just kept punching and punching and punching until she stopped breathing and then she heard voices coming and she realized Pam wasn't moving and she left that was Shelley's final story that's all we got [Music] I don't feel that what Shelly stated in her allocation was genuine she didn't have to say what happened afterwards so we're led to believe that Shelly just left Pam's body out there and that somebody else came along and burned it and you know desecrated her body I mean it doesn't add up she gave no other details and we were not allowed to ask any questions so the legal handcuffs I felt were put on us of course if it were up to me she'd be in prison for the rest of her life but we don't live in a perfect world she's a two-time convicted murderer and my advice to her husband is sleep with one eye opener foreign it started out like any other day I went to work and the kids knew that at nine o'clock they had to be in Veneta at my work we were going to stop and get their dad at his work and go to the dentist about 8 40 in the morning my son calls me and says mom the Freeman's home was on fire laureen's daughter Laura Bible spent the previous night at the Freeman's house celebrating her friend Ashley Freeman's 16th birthday on the morning of December 30th a local resident who was driving to work observed the fire at the Freeman's residence and this person stopped between 5 30 and 6 a.m and actually called in the fire with the Welch Volunteer Fire Department one of the county deputies walked into the place I worked and said Lorraine I need to talk to you so we go back to the office and his first words were do you know Ashley Freeman I said yes she's my daughter's best friend in fact Laura stayed again last night with the Freemans but the house caught on fire and my son's on his way there to help I could just tell by his demeanor that something was wrong he said Lorraine the house is totally gone I called my husband he came from work and we drove to the Freemans the fire was extremely volatile I mean most everything had just collapsed and it would just ashes and burnt debris he walked me up there and he showed me the body that was laying across the bed that was badly burnt it was very difficult to recognize they thought it was female they thought it was Kathy that was the first time for me to see a charred human body and the visual of it and the odor of it stays with you has stayed for me for 20 years now when I saw the County coroner when she come over I asked her because I knew her personally I said is that Kathy and she said I can't tell you 100 but I know that the woman has that ring on her left hand and she has more children I said that's Kathy so where where are Danny where are the two girls by 4 30 it's starting to get dark my five o'clock hit is Pitch Black code the investigators say they're 100 sure there's nothing else here so at five o'clock they released the Freeman's house scene over to the families the deadly house fire is big news in this small town rumors spread and tips pour in one tipster claims they saw Danny Freeman driving with Laura and Ashley in the car I knew Kathy more than I knew Danny Kathy was just a mom to help Bryson her two kids and doing the best she could Denny was like all the dads he went off to work but there was things about him I wish I'd known back then he had a black powder gun go off in his face and he had to have some metal plates put in and due to that sometimes when he would get mad he would go too far they made a discovery very quickly they saw the remains and realized this is Danny Freeman immediately they recontacted law enforcement and came back out to look at the scene again your heart sinks into your stomach it's something that you don't want to believe but it's right there in front of you you know you have to and then your mind immediately has to go to the girls we got to find the girls [Music] is a really bad feeling to see Danny lay in there and then not knowing where his daughter's at and her friend I found Laura's purse she had gotten her Christmas money which she took with her because she was going to take Ashley and buy whatever Ashley wanted for her birthday remains were taken to the medical examiner's office they determined that Danny and Kathy had received a wound to the back of the head that was consistent with the shotgun blast and actually recovered some shotgun pellets now we've got a whole new mystery what happened here how come we're not finding Laura and Ashley where are they I knew there's no way with the car still there and her first in the house Lord didn't leave there willingly very strong piece of evidence surfaced the insurance card was found at the scene they asked me if I knew the name that was on the card and I told him no I did not recognize that at all the owner of the vehicle lived in chautopa they interviewed her on January 3rd and she said I don't know why my insurance card was found at the scene the woman tells investigators she's not the only person who uses that car her boyfriend Phil Welch drives it too so me and Gary actually got together and decided that we were going to work the case together we got approval on that stencil and Ferrari re-interview Witnesses from the initial investigation and one name comes up over and over so there was a individual by the name of Phil Welch initially when I started reading through that case File there was a talk about an insurance card that was located at the scene and so this insurance card had a female's name on it she was interviewed early on and she had talked about her boyfriend which was Phil Welch did know the Freemans and he often drove her car case File shows that detectives had questioned Welch after that insurance card was found whenever they did talk to Phil weld he had brought up the name of David Pennington talked about David being a friend of his talked about David cooking meth David was a Kingpin and then Ronnie b six names coming up and these three ran together they were from the Chetopa area and they were known to smoke meth they were known to make meth they were known to sell meth there were some reports in regards to those people they're individuals that had actually been interviewed that said these people are involved for some reason though it seems no one followed up on those leaves my niece slicer had a friend say hey social medias have been running now you guys need to have the website so that people can send you tips so she helped monice get the website up and running and that's when we started getting tips we received a tip from someone who knew someone who heard something we were told that there were pictures of the girls bound and gagged Polaroids of them that had been taken that they were being held against their will and other things had happened rumor had it there was pictures of them and this was done to him you don't really focus on that part because if you do then you'll stop to find out whether these pictures exist stencil tracks down one of David Pennington's ex-girlfriends who was identified by the tipster I get information about a woman who actually lived with David Pennington and found out where she lived and went to interview her I said Do you ever hear them talk about anything about these missing girls and she said yes I overheard them talking about their involvement with the missing girls and that they actually insinuated that they had molested them a few months later I interviewed Phil Welch's second girlfriend at the time and when we asked about details of these pictures they were without a doubt believed that it was Laura and Ashley they said that the girls in the pictures they were bound they were gagged one of our Witnesses was able to tell us that she saw a bed spread that she knew because she dated Phil she was able to tell us then without a doubt that that was Phil's house where she saw the girls so we start looking at the three of them we find out that Phil Welch is already deceased David Pennington is deceased but Ronnie Busick we found out that he was still alive people told us that he was pure evil that he was the devil there was people that were just terrified of him stencil and Ferrari head to a Kansas jail to interview Ronnie Busick who's incarcerated on a separate charge music might be their last hope of finally solving this case you know kind of just kept it casual at first do you know a guy by the name of Phil Welch and named John community and then the more that we talked to him then it was yeah I used to hang out with him I used to cook meth with them during several interviews busy gives investigators his version of what happened on that frigid December night in 1999. so from everything that we can understand David Phil and Ronnie went out there to Danny and Kathy's house Danny is ultimately shot during this and then Kathy is shot the girls end up escaping out of another door and run to the back of the house and they're hiding once the suspects see them the suspects ended up catching them they were taken to Phil Welch's house in pitcher Oklahoma and ended up being kept there for two weeks where they were tortured they were drugged and then ultimately killed and disposed of music claims he stayed in the car while Welch and Pennington went inside the house finally with the trial looming run a music pleads guilty to his part in these awful crimes prosecutors agree to drop the original charges of first-degree murder and kidnapping if music will agree to help find the girls on August 31st 2020 a judge sentences Ronnie music to 10 years in prison and five years of probation for accessory to murder neither Laura Bible or Ashley Freeman have been found the search for them goes on she was more than just a girl that was abducted murdered tortured she was more than that real 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 Kern 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 and it's commonly 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 foreign er's office the corner stated that it appeared the victim had been raped swabs were taken of the semen for collection as evidence 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 a 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 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 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 chewest 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 shoes to a Jane Doe in Kern County foreign we called the Kern County Sheriff's Department and learned that Wilson joest 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 pus was in the area right around the time of the Jane Doe murders DNA shows that chewas 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 and Ardmore 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 says is it because of that woman he killed in Bakersfield God told us that chuest 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 she was 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 of parole but we still wanted to know the identity of these victims we decided to do something I've never done before since 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 Django 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 Women's Conference I just for once thought okay I'm gonna share and I said my auntie Shirley's been missing since nineteen seven and nine 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 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 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 [Music] thank you foreign the start of another week at Red Bank Middle School teacher Janelle Melton has something special planned for her fifth graders the students take their seats but Janelle doesn't show up school happened in session for a couple weeks and President Obama had did a speech about education she was going to bring her class to my class and we were going to play the speech inside the classroom Janelle taught social studies had a passion for history and also knew how to teach it to students to get them interested in and her enthusiasm about history it transferred to the students they loved it I knew Janelle in Trenton When We Were Young her Elementary School was across the street from my house and I used to talk a little junk to her and you know flirt with a little bit things of that nature once I graduated from college and I started working as a counselor for school-based youth service and she was also a teacher in I saw her I was like wow she looking good she was the one and I felt like I should put a ring on her hand man Janelle got married in Jamaica August 28th 2003. I was excited and stuff like I'm really married a happy home life and promoting careers it appears Janelle and Michael have a solid foundation but three years after their wedding that Foundation starts to crack she cared about me tremendously it was just like I had never met nobody that was so into me like that whatever I needed she was right there but the way I was raised later on it kind of made me feel uncomfortable because I wasn't used to that much affection that's why I filed for divorce most of the people probably thought that she wanted to divorce me but she wouldn't have never left me she told me that so we still saw each other all the time and we talked on the phone every day after school day slips away and there's still no sign of Janelle the school's secretary asks Michael to check on the missing teacher at her home in Neptune City about 20 minutes away I pull up at the house and I see the car in front of the house so I feel kind of relieved because I know she at least home so I'm thinking I'm just gonna bang on this door yell out our name tell her to get up and tell her to go to work I yelled out our name it was no answer and then I tried the door knob and the door was open and I went in and I was still yelling out her name yelling out her name and I made the quick left to go through the room and then when I walked in the room that's when I saw her on the floor when I found her she had her nightgown on and I saw a little bit of blood at the top of the nightgown and her face looked like it had makeup on it so I immediately thought that she fell when she was doing her makeup and then that's when I picked up the phone and I called 9-1-1 and I told them to hurry up and come over when they came the first person went up to her and he was like Miss Miss man man [Music] he felt the neck and then that's when he told me she was dead I talked to the secretary and I'm like crying hysterically and stuff then I told him like the guy says she's dead it was evident to the detectives involved that jonelle Melton was the victim of a brutal eating and she was tortured because of the how physical the crime scene was how brutal it was we believed it was a male more than one the kitchen dinette area had a window which I noticed immediately as a point of force entry directly under that window on one of the chairs was a footwear impression where someone came through the window and stepped on that chair throughout the house we noticed that there were no candles we know that the victim was not a smoker there were no cigarettes there were no ashtrays but at the base of that window we located a pink colored lighter and the lighter itself seemed to be out of place at first the detective started out like they was trying to get information to ask me about our relationship and then when I started answering the questions and telling them then they started getting a little like a little invasive even if they was trying to come off to me like crazy and stuff I just still was answering any questions because I knew I didn't do nothing there was no reason for Michael to ever be involved in anything like this he still had a wonderful relationship with janello although they were ex-spouses they didn't act like ex-spouses they had a really nice personal and working relationship investigators might have moved on from Michael but the media hasn't now all of this time I'm thinking that I'm being truthful and helping them like telling them everything they needed to know and then two days later when a newspaper article came out that's when I knew that something was wrong it said she was found it didn't say who found her then the last paragraph it said she was estranged from her husband and when I saw the word is strange I said whoa then it said that divorce was supposed to be final October 6th and this was like September 16th so now I'm like oh my God they trying to say I killed her forensic tests on the crime evidence are murky there's no clear-cut answer on the boot print and texts can't lift a usable fingerprint from the latex gloves in the case of the cigarette lighter dna-able evidence was recovered but they were unable to identify who the major contributor was on that item as a result I requested that we transport that evidence to the New York City medical examiner's office for additional DNA analysis foreign 's family braces for the third holiday season without her finally though there's a break texts find DNA on the lighter they were able to identify the major contributor to the DNA as Gregory Jean-Baptiste which I say that your DNA isn't seen John Baptiste denies everything and there are no Witnesses the case of the teacher who never showed up for class those as cold as the ice in the Red Bank Armory [Music] tired of being cloaked in suspicion Michael can't wait for police any longer he reaches out to a friend to help him clear his name if something happened here this information from anybody because I'm not from there so I knew he could he called this guy over and he told the guy like yo this my man's he just want to know what happened to his wife is driving him crazy we came back two days later and the guy told me what happened so information had come off the street that individuals gang members were looking to rob a drug dealer named David munch an individual who lived directly next to Janelle he said that the guy that lived next door to her had fifteen thousand dollars in the freezer and some drugs in the house and the girlfriend was running her mouth at a party and some stick up kids heard her at the party so they came to rob their house and then they went to the wrong house and then I guess they assumed that Janelle was the girlfriend the information coming into me was that these individuals Ebenezer bird Gregory Gene Baptiste and Jerry sprawling with a female committed this horrific homicide detective Scott Samus and Matthew quagliato want to question Eureka Scott the girlfriend of Ebenezer bird the video speaks for itself the video shows her cooperation how scared she is norika said that when she was at a prison visit with Ebenezer bird he had confessed to her that him Gregory Gene Baptiste Jerry spralding were involved in the murder of Janelle Melton so he says it's him and Jerry sprawling and he's with a girl do you know the girl if I showed you a picture Elizabeth Pinto was a former girlfriend of ebenezerberg and she turned out to be the key witness in this case all right Matt and I bring her to one of the Perth Amboy police departments and we go live and probably the most important interview of my life so tell me about in September early September what what happens you could see there's a little bit of fear in her eyes um she is very trembly in her voice she she's very standoffish she really doesn't want to talk about it but you know I've done before and they tell me to drop them off I dropped them all inside a location let me let's slow it down a little bit I go over with pictures of these guys who's this that's Ebenezer bird who's this Gregory Gene Baptiste who's this Jerry sprawling you know and you continue to have her ID these guys where did they tell you where they were going oh they just told me to drive they told me where to go Gregory Jean Baptiste Jerry sprolding and Ebenezer bird are charged with first degree felony murder second-degree robbery conspiracy and unlawful weapons charges all three men maintain that they are innocent and are not responsible for the murder of Janelle Melton she was a a valued member of the community and no one deserves for this to happen to them but of all people it's the fact that it happened to Janelle it's it's even it's even worse when this happened it was like it reignited me like you know like my hope like wow you mean she could get Justice throughout the trial there's contentious motions going on between the defense and the state they tried to make it look like Mike Milton did it and that clearly didn't happen based on the evidence but he's tested so many different items of evidence and went through so much forensic testing and yet still the defense says well what about this they didn't test this or they didn't do that they could have done this what if you know that type of thing so we had to counteract that DNA found on the lighter puts Gregory Sean baptistes at the scene phone records place all three men at Janelle's apartment complex on the night of the murder Ebenezer bird Gregory Jean-Baptiste and Jerry Spalding are all found guilty of first-degree murder robbery conspiracy and weapons charges once I heard the first guilty I just knew that it was going to be guilty guilty guilty guilty guilty guilty then I was just like yes I remember doing that fist bump thing like real happy like yes like it's over when I heard it I was at school I couldn't contain myself I ran into the principles of officer and I told her and we just started hugging and crying we just started hugging and crying Gregory Sean Baptiste Ebenezer bird and Jerry Spalding are all sentenced to life in prison despite their convictions all the three men still claimed to the innocent in exchange for her cooperation Elizabeth Pinto is allowed to plead guilty to conspiracy and is sentenced to probation on that day 2009 two people died not only she died but I died too because I wasn't the same person after that I miss her I guess I'll always miss her the pain and anguish has diminished but the missing her that's still right there it's right there [Music]

Channel: A&E

Views: 12,085,078

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, watch cold case files, cold case files scenes, cold case files clips, cold case files episodes, murder, homicide, unsolved murders, cold case, cold cases, unsolved homicides, unsolved crimes, dna, murderers, serial killers, death, unsolved death, cold case files episode clips, Most Viewed Moments of 2022 | Cold Case Files | A&E, most viewed moments, cold case files 2022, best of

Id: udZJUxflmFE

Length: 149min 8sec (8948 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 12 2022