(soft ominous music) - My dad got the call
about Janie being missing. She was my sister. She was mentally disabled. I know Janie experienced
being locked in rooms. Fairview was not a good
place for anybody to be. She had a good heart. Now my sister was gone. Why Janie? I often wondered if the
person that murdered Janie was out there
harming someone else. This was the
beginning of my quest to try to get her case solved. (moves to soft dramatic music) (soft somber music) We grew up in Coos Bay, Oregon. It's like a logging,
fishing town, back then it was, anyway. You got your oceans and
you got your mountains and your trees and
your rivers and lakes, you know, so it is
a very pretty place. (slide clicking) There was five siblings, and, of course, my mom and dad. Carolyn was the oldest. Janie was second-born. Rachel was the third. I was fourth, and
then my brother is the youngest of the family. - [Narrator] Despite
their age difference, sisters Janie and
Joyce are inseparable. (girls giggling) - Janie and I were the closest as far as siblings go. So we were playing
with baby dolls and running around like
little toddlers would. Running, for Janie, was
something happy for her. She liked being outside. Even though she was older, we were similar because
her functioning level was the same as mine. - [Narrator] Janie is
developmentally impaired. - It was the
schools that noticed something was kind of different. It was hard for
Janie to sit still. She got upset very easily. She would throw things. Janie would also often run away, but she'd always come back. (soft ominous music) (soft suspenseful music) - The Oregon State
Police received a call of what they called a walk-away from Fairview Training Center. There 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 5'1", I think somewhere around
90 pounds dripping wet, and the developmental age of about an eight year old. - [Narrator] Staff
members tell police that 18-year-old Janie has been missing
for several hours. - 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, 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 Kozer Cottage, which was the housing
unit where she lived. But Janie didn't
arrive at Kozer 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 2:00 PM. - [Narrator] Janie's
been at Fairview for about 10 years. (soft somber music) - Janie was about seven when she went to Fairview
for the first time. I would've been
about four years old. My parents wanted
whatever would help Janie. At this time, they had
three other kids at home, and here's Janie
needing some help that they didn't
know how to give. Coos County Mental
Health determined that she did have
learning disabilities. Her IQ was low,
but they also felt that she had some kind of psychological issues going on and recommended for
her to go to Fairview for further testing. (soft ominous music) - In 1980, I started working
with a group of people who all had intellectual
disabilities to help move from
Fairview Training Center into group situations. Individuals living at
Fairview Training Center were either put their
literally by the state because they may have acted out, or people felt
they were at risk, or they just simply qualified
by having a disability. - [Narrator] Over time, the
separation from her sister wears on Joyce. - It was very emotional for me. She was who I played with, so I didn't have
that anymore. (cries) (soft music)
(girls giggling) And I would be sad all the time because I never got to see her for such a long time. I missed playing with her. And we both loved it outside. I didn't get to do
that with her anymore. It was sad. She would call me on the phone. She'd ask me for letters. She loved me writing
long letters. It was hard for my parents because they lived so far away. As time went by, my dad
would call the school about at least getting
some visit time with her or having her come home
and spend time with us. (soft somber music) He'd go up to the schools, and sometimes he'd
get to see her. And other times, he wouldn't. He'd get there, he wouldn't know that she'd been moved
to a different cottage so he'd have to
schedule another visit. The staff there at Fairview
would do assessments and they would
say she needs more of this type of training or this kind of
behavioral classes. So they would
encourage my parents to let her stay longer. - [Narrator] Eventually,
Janie becomes a permanent resident
at Fairview. - Janie eventually
became ward of the state. So the state had that
control. My parents didn't. And that was really
hard for my mom. (soft dramatic music) I had come home from school and my dad asked me and
the rest of my siblings to have a seat, that he
had something to tell us. And he proceeded to tell us about a call that he
got regarding Janie, that the school had told
him that she was missing. They felt that she
would come back after a couple of hours, 'cause she had gotten
upset earlier in the day, that everything would be okay. - [Narrator] Police search
the grounds at Fairview for several hours
and find nothing. (soft somber music) But everything changes when
a witness comes forward. There were rumors like crazy, this search for someone that walked off
from their cottage. But I was afraid this
was way more serious. (soft dramatic music) - [Narrator] As the
investigation into the disappearance of 18-year-old
Janie Landers continues, a Fairview employee offers
crucial information. - I worked at Fairview for approximately 3 1/2 years. I was a psychiatric aid. The day that Janie disappeared was just as normal as could be. I usually left home shortly
after 2:00 to go to work. My shift was 3:00 to 11:00. When I turned the 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. (soft sinister music) I thought, "I don't
recognize him. This is kind of fishy. Why would that man
be out of his car? What is he even doing
getting close to her?" And I thought, "Should I
pick her up or should I not?" I wanted to, but there were
strict rules against it. So I quickly went
up to my cottage and called security. Security went down and checked. They didn't find anyone. - Witness information
came into play, and they started figuring out that that was most likely Janie. Detectives get a description of the individual that
Janie was talking to. - He was wearing a T-shirt and jeans. He was maybe 35, 40. He had a big pot belly, about 5'8" or 5'10". He needed a haircut. It was kind of shaggy. - She also gave her
information about the vehicle. - [Leona] It was a gold-colored 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. - [Narrator] Detectives zero in on the last person at
Fairview to speak with Janie. - Bill Graf was a
person of interest. He was a counselor, somebody that had
close contact with her, had access to Janie, and that she would have
gone to or trusted. So we would wanna know what the nature of
that conversation, but also, what the nature
of their relationship was. - I met Jane probably
in 1977, 1978. I was her one-to-one therapist. Janie was like working
with a nine year old. She would like to color. She didn't really
know how to read. She was very kind and loving. She had a lot of skills. She would clean up where
she lived, an area, washed dishes, dried dishes. - Janie Landers was like a
lot of patients at Fairview where they could go live in
a less restrictive setting and practice more independence. - [Narrator] At 18 years old, Janie lived in a group home with other Fairview patients. - 3 1/2 months before
Jane was missing, she was still
living in the house next to the group home. She lived with another
lady called Cheryl. They must have gotten in
some type of altercation. The other lady was
warming up some chili. Jane grabbed the
chili off the stove and poured it over Cheryl's
head and burned her. (siren wailing)
(soft dramatic music) - This altercation wasn't
totally out of the blue for a patient like
Janie Landers. She definitely struggled with appropriate
responses to frustration. - At that time, Jane was taken
from the group home and placed back
in state hospital. She was upset. - [Narrator] Janie soon
has another setback. Her insurance plan changes after returning to the hospital. Therapy with Bill Graf
is no longer covered. - I told Jane that I couldn't
work with her anymore. I told her that I won't
be back the next day. And that's the day she took off. - She was no longer
in the group home. Bill Graf was familiar
to her. She trusted him. And now, she's kind
of in this big change where she's now placed
back at Fairview. To her, her whole world
has now changed again. - [Narrator] Police have some
questions for Bill Graf. - The witness gave the
descriptions to the police, and I almost fit
that description. But I hadn't done anything. - They interviewed Mr.
Graf and polygraphed him. And the results
was that he passed and they believed
that he was truthful. (soft dramatic music) - I think everybody recognized that her vulnerable nature made Janie a prime target for someone that would
want to do her harm. - With no particular direction other than the description of this unknown male, the thought was
that the motivation for abducting this young female was most likely to
sexually assault her. - [Narrator] Detectives
run a background check on Fairview employees, and several of them stand out. - [Steve] So we are
focusing on employees that we were able to determine had prior sex offenses. - [Narrator] In 1979,
Oregon did not have a sex offender registry, making it difficult for Fairview to screen employees for
sex crimes convictions. - But despite all the efforts, there weren't any
employees that stuck out as a person of interest in the initial days
of the investigation. The longer that time went by, the chances of finding
her alive were dwindling. - [Narrator] In Coos
Bay, the Landers family waits for news of Janie. - I had just recently turned 14. And I do remember asking my dad probably a couple of times a day before I'd go to
school, you know, "Have you heard
anything about Janie?" And each day it
was, "No, no calls. They're still looking." I kept hoping and praying that she would go
back to the school, return there, be safe. (soft somber music) (soft sinister 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. (soft somber music) (soft suspenseful music) - 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. - [Narrator] The victim is
18-year-old Janie Landers. - There wasn't a
lot of evidence. There were blood there. There was no signs
of a struggle. It was pretty
clear that the body was just dumped in the bushes. (camera shutter clicking) - She had been stabbed
somewhere else, and she had fought for her life. - Detectives canvased the area and talked to the homeowners in the immediate vicinity, but they didn't find anything. (soft somber music) - All I remember
hearing at that time was that Janie's body was found at Silver Falls Park. The idea that I may have
been the last person to see Janie alive,
besides that man, haunts me to this day. I did feel guilty, because
I could have picked her up. - I have thought
about her and that car and that man with a knife hurting her and killing her. Yeah, it hurts. It still hurts. (phone ringing) - When my dad got
the call about Janie, he had distress in his voice, and then, he tells us
Janie's body was found. It looked like she had
been murdered. (cries) I didn't wanna believe
that they found her dumped somewhere. (soft dramatic music) The first call that my dad got, there was no indication
that it was serious, just that she was missing. They knew early on that she was seen
talking to some stranger, and they didn't tell us that until after her body was found. It was like they were
covering up stuff. - At some point during the day, they had a pretty
good indication that she wasn't coming back and should have disclosed
that to the family. (soft somber music) - In the autopsy, one of the things
that was determined was that her stomach contents were consistent with
what we 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. - This was a vicious
attack that Janie suffered. We learned that the
actual cause of death was blunt force
trauma to her head. There was some sort of instrument available to the offender to hit her in the head, and that would have killed her. (soft suspenseful music) - In 1979, the
forensic capabilities were not DNA. What we were looking
for was hair standards and fibers to do
direct comparisons, fingerprints, and
if we had blood, we were able to do some typing in order to narrow
down a suspect pool. One earring was collected
from Janie's ear, but other one was missing. That was collected as evidence. And there were four hairs that were found in Janie's hand, like clutched in her fist, that were collected at autopsy. - We learned from the autopsy that she was not sexually assaulted. However, it was
very cleared to us that we were looking
for a perpetrator who would prey on
children or young women. (soft dramatic music) - In 1979, when we wanna
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. (soft suspenseful music)
(film whirring) - There was 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 that food cart the day she went
missing, on March 9th. We don't know who he was, but we know that
he at least came and he had lunch there. We didn't have a lot of
other information to go on. (soft somber music) - My dad brought Janie
back home to be buried. Her funeral was
held at a church. I walk in through the foyer area. The first thing I see
is Janie's casket, and I just dropped to my knees. At that point, it
came to a reality that she was gone. (cries) I couldn't even get
up off the floor. I was just sobbing. - After the autopsy
and the search warrant, law enforcement is
still looking into who this individual was
last seen with Janie. And we still don't have
any real leads there. The investigation turns back towards who had contact and who had motive
to harm Janie. (soft suspenseful music) - [Narrator] Investigators
build a timeline leading up the
Janie's disappearance, and that's when they
learned of an incident with a fellow resident. - Janie had got
into an altercation with another resident at
that group home named Cheryl. Janie had caused some
significant injury to her. Cheryl had a boyfriend
named Ray Wright who was around the same age. Ray didn't really care
a whole lot for Janie. - Detectives started to look
into the Ray's background and determined that
he was really upset about what had happened
to his girlfriend. There was even rumors that
he wanted to kill her. - [Narrator] Investigators
bring Cheryl's boyfriend, Ray Wright, in for an interview. - He definitely had been on law enforcement's
radar before. He seemed like somebody
who would have a motive. - [Narrator] But Ray insists
he did not kill Janie. - We are never able to confirm
or deny his involvement. - And Cheryl had the same type of struggles that Janie had. She was a difficult witness. So both her and Ray
fell off the radar as plausible suspects
going forward. - The case slows over time because there's really no
new information coming in. After about 1980 to '81, the case was put
back on the shelf to work other active cases. - [Narrator] Joyce tries
to keep the case alive and police do what they can. But by the mid '80s, the case goes as cold
as the winter wind that blows across Coos Bay. (soft ominous music) (soft somber music) - In all the calls I made
to the Oregon State Police, they would tell me,
"It's a cold case. It's gonna take a long time." Another year would go by and another five would go by, but we didn't give up on her. (soft dramatic music) (soft ominous music) - A tip came into Salem
Police Department, individuals who said they were neighbors to Cheryl and Ray Wright. At some point close to the
time Janie went missing, said that they heard Ray
say that he killed Jane. - [Narrator] Cheryl
and Ray were together when Jeanie was killed, but they'd split up by the time the
case was reopened. - Cheryl was re-interviewed
by detectives, and Cheryl said that she remembered seeing the truck that Ray drove, and she remembered
seeing the earring that Janie had in that truck. (camera shutter clicking)
(soft ominous music) That was a huge
piece of information, because we knew that Janie was missing the
earring at autopsy. If we were able to
find that earring and match it to
Janie's other earring, that would've been a
massive break in the case. - [Narrator] Now, 10
years later, police again go
looking for Ray Wright and his truck. - Ray denied any involvement. He didn't have any
other knowledge to provide about the
injuries to Janie or anything of that nature. But, eventually, we
figure out that that car was destroyed and we
we're never gonna get any information out of it. - Ray was always someone that the police considered viable but, there was no evidence
that connected him to Janie on this day at all. - Cheryl and Ray made
statements and interviews, but we have to keep in
mind that Cheryl and Ray both had mental
disabilities as well. - [Narrator] What looked like
a promising lead fizzles. Once again, the case goes cold. (soft dramatic music) - Fairview Training
Center ultimately closed. People started moving
out of Fairview in the late '70s. And then, in the '80s,
there was a bigger push to start to move people
out of the institution, because Fairview just
has a long history of people's rights
being taken away. People were giving medications
they shouldn't have, people were sterilized
against their will. People were restrained. (soft dramatic music) - When I heard
Fairview was closing, I was probably one of the
happiest persons on Earth, because I knew of the
history of the facility. I learned about some
of the residents being strapped down
or locked in rooms. I know Janie experienced
some of that. I often wonder,
would my sister Janie be thriving today? (cries) The help that people
like Janie gets today is so much different, and I think she would've
done so much better had she gotten that
chance, but she didn't. I was always hopeful that
Janie's case would be solved. It's just, part of that time, I was a young mom
raising three little boys and the focus was there. - Janie was still a huge
part of Joyce's life, and I think Joyce really felt like she owed it
to her older sister to get justice. - Janie's case had gone 36
year(soft somber music) In 2015, I went to the Oregon
State Police Department to speak to detective
Hinkle about Janie's case and the possibility
of reopening it. (soft dramatic music) - [Narrator] Joyce
hangs her last hope of solving Janie's murder on the promise of
new technology. - I've talked to
detective Hinkle and a couple other officers. I knew just from my own studies and watching TV that the
technology was better in 2015 than it was in 1979. They had the ability
to test her clothing to see if anything
was there, you know. Was their ability to match DNA? The times had changed. (soft suspenseful music) - Typically, the
older the case is, the less likely it'll be solved, because the more
that time has passed, the more the
evidence is degraded. People have died, witnesses are not
able to be found. - This case had additional
problems from the beginning because Fairview
no longer existed at the time that I
started the case. In 2015, Fairview had been gone for 15 years. My first steps in
the investigation was to track down the case file and begin going through
those case binders and learning what happened with the original investigation. I paid special attention to the autopsy report and the crime scene photographs. She had fought, obviously, as evident by the
hairs in her hand and the defensive wounds on her arms. - [Narrator] Detective Hinkle focuses on Janie's stab wounds. - You can tell that
the wounds are deep, that there was a lot of force
behind these stab wounds, but there's also no
hilt abrasion present. The hilt separates the
handle from the blade. And the purpose of a hilt is to keep your hand
from sliding down onto the blade when using
that type of a knife. And to me, the lack of a
hilt, that's significant, because blood has
the consistency of about motor oil when
it's wet like that. And it's very common
for someone's hand to slip down onto the blade and also become cut in the course of this
type of an assault. So that would suggest to me that the killer was
likely to have been cut by the knife in the course
of this dynamic fight, and we had a high likelihood
of finding DNA evidence on the body or on the clothing. - I'm an expert in blood
stain pattern analysis, where one examines
different blood stains to see how they may
have been deposited. Was it transferred?
Was it smeared? Was it spattered? When I reviewed
the original report on the Janie Landers case, her clothing was submitted at that time for examination for trace evidence, the clothing obviously
had blood on it and it was ABO blood tested. But DNA didn't exist as a
forensic technology in 1979. - Luckily, the evidence had packaged in paper like it was supposed to be. So it didn't appear that it had been molded. We came up with a list of items. We felt like had the best likelihood of giving us a DNA profile or a blood stain from the killer and not Janie. (soft suspenseful music) - I ended up collecting
four isolated blood stains from Janie Landers' shirt to send a DNA that I
thought might be transfers from the perpetrator. If the perpetrator
had pick her up and had, say, a cut
on his finger or 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. (soft dramatic music) - [Narrator] Nine months
after Janie's shirt is submitted for testing,
the results come back. - I got a call
from Jen telling me that they found a DNA
profile from an unknown male on a blood stain
on Janie's shirt, which was super exciting, because now we have a suspect. We don't know who they are, but we have a suspect. (soft somber music) - Detective Hinkle
came into my office to tell me they have a hit on the blood on Janie's sweater. (soft dramatic music) - [Narrator] Almost 40 years after Janie Landers
was murdered, cold case investigators
finally close in on her killer. - I got a call
from Jen telling me that there was a CODIS hit, and the suspect
was Gerald Dunlap. So I wanted to know, "Who the hell is Gerald Dunlap?" His DNA profile was in CODIS because he was sentenced and was in Oregon State
Prison at some point. - [Narrator] Gerald Dunlap
is a convicted sex offender, first arrested in the 1960s. (soft suspenseful music) - Gerald Dunlap was sent
to prison for 99 years for the rape 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. It's not unusual in the
United States back in the '70s for people to get
really long sentences and only serve a
small portion of it. - 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. (soft ominous music) - [Narrator] After he's
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 coworkers and supervisors in laundry, they all said that they
worked a day shift, and every single person
had a break at 2:00 PM. 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 patted
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. (soft ominous music) (soft somber music) - What we were dealing
with was a serial rapist, somebody who preyed
upon young women. - The justice 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
Hinkle came to my home, he said, "I have
some pictures here that I'd like you to go through and see if you can
identify by anyone." I look through them. "This is the man
that I saw there." And he says, "Yeah, we got him." - [Narrator] Janie's
family finally knows who the killer is, but justice comes too late. Dunlap died in prison in 2002. - One moment, I'm
feeling elated. Yes, we have a match of DNA, but yet, he's deceased. So, right away, I'm thinking, "We don't even get
to take him to court 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. - Once Paige Clarkson made
the determination officially that the case was at
its legal conclusion, her and I drove down to Coos Bay and met with Joyce
and her father and officially told them
that the case was closed and that Gerald
Dunlap murdered Janie. (soft dramatic music) - I feel relieved knowing her case was solved and the person that did it died prison where he belonged. Unfortunately, my
mom passed away before her case was solved. But my dad was with me that day that detective Hinkle came. And he went from
the very beginning of the case to the end, and he brought a brick
from one of the cottages that Janie lived in. And on the front,
it has her name and year of birth
and year of death. My dad and I were
looking at the brick and her little hair ties. And he looked at me, and as tears were
going down his face, he asked me, "Can we
now let Janie rest?" (soft somber music)
