[THEME MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: August 20,
1977, horseback riders in California's Sierra
Nevada mountains make a terrible discovery. One of the riders got a
little ahead of the other one and pulled off the trail,
and that's when Brynn Rainey's body was discovered. It was a very horrific scene. NANCY GRACE: Two years later,
another young woman's body discovered nearby. She was choked, she
was sexually assaulted, and then her body was dumped
on the side of the road. It would strongly suggest
that she fought for her life. NANCY GRACE: Both cases go cold
and stay that way until 2017, when the former
girlfriend of a suspect comes forward with new
and disturbing evidence. She described a few incidents
between the two of them. One of them she said they
were in a hot tub together, and he held her head
under water to the point where she was
gagging on the water. I thought, was he
going to drown me there and put me in his truck? NANCY GRACE: This is the
story of the South Lake Tahoe Strangler and how a
remarkable new technology, investigative
genetic genealogy, is used against him as a weapon. Without forensic
genealogy in this case, I don't know that we
would have solved it. It was a huge part of
this investigation. NANCY GRACE: Criminals
who hide in the shadows for years now
discover they may not be able to hide from
forensic science and their own family tree. I'm Nancy Grace. This is "Bloodline Detectives." [THEME MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: 1977, El Dorado
County on America's West Coast. It's a former gold
rush area, but now it's better known for unspoiled
scenery and lively casinos. El Dorado County is
in Northern California. It's approximately
200,000 residents. It stretches from the
border of Sacramento County all the way up to the border
of Nevada and South Lake Tahoe. Tahoe in the
'70s was the place to be seen outside of Vegas
by the major stars of the day. They had Elvis, Sonny and
Cher, Florence Henderson. There were a lot of
local stars back then that were at the casinos
in the Nevada side. And back in the '70s, the
Hard Rock was the Sahara. It was a Mecca for young
people in their early 20s to work and party
and spend their time. NANCY GRACE: Brynn
Rainey and her brother moved to California searching
for new opportunities. Brynn Rainey was
originally from Ohio. She came out to the
Lake Tahoe area in 1977. She came out here with
other family members, fell in love with the South Lake
Tahoe area and decided to stay. April of 1977, she's
hired by the Sahara Casino as a Keno runner, from people
and they'd take them in and take your money and
go place the bet for you and bring it back. They would run around the
Casino back in those days when they had Keno and
it wasn't all electronic. Run the numbers and then
take them back to the person. NANCY GRACE: July
25, 1977, Brynn Rainey doesn't show up to work. She was due to work
at 2:00 AM on the 25th. She never showed up
for that work shift. On August 15th, her landlord
reported her missing. The landlord had said that he
had seen her around the time that she had last
been seen, which would have been
around July 24th, and that he had
not seen her since. They did initial investigation,
they contacted family members, they talked to her employers
and did what they could. They also put out an ABP. They called back then, and it
was a national notification of a missing person
that was out, so they did pretty much all they
could do with that at the time. NANCY GRACE: One month after
Brynn Rainey's reported missing, horseback riders
make a gruesome discovery near the casino town of State Line. On August 20, 1977, a body was
found at the Horse Stable Park. She was found just off a
trail in a shallow grave that had been disturbed. It was a very horrific scene. She was pulled out of the
grave that she was buried in. The gravesite was about
6 feet by 18 inches by about 2 feet
deep, and she had been dug up out of the grave by
animals and partially exposed. Her clothing was found
about 30 feet from her that included her panties,
the bra, the shirt, the blue jeans, her purse. Among her belongings
was a work identification that included her name and that
led detectives at that time to identify her as Brynn Rainey. NANCY GRACE: Detectives
sent Brynn Rainey's body to the coroner for autopsy. The autopsy showed
that the cause of death was strangulation. She had bruising on her, as
well as a broken hyoid bone. Anytime you have a shallow
grave that's been predated by animals, there's other layers
that you have to sift through in trying to figure
out what's a wound and what's an animal mark. And they also would have been
able to tell whether or not it was human blood and
they would have been able to identify seminal fluid. The fact that her clothing
had been removed from her body and was located near
the shallow grave would suggest that she was
brought out to that location alive. Whatever assault occurred likely
occurred at that location, and then she was killed
at that location. And the killer, of course,
took some rudimentary steps in order to conceal the body by
putting it in a shallow grave. And then you have to consider
the digging of that grave, and you wonder if it
occurred prior to the murder. In other words, did the killer
prepare that spot in advance, or is it something that was
done on the spur of the moment? NANCY GRACE: Now, police must
tell Brynn Rainey's family the horrible news. We weren't able to make
death notification in person, and so local law enforcement
reached out to law enforcement in the state of Ohio and
asked for their assistance. And as part of that
process, it came to light that Brynn's mother
had a heart condition, and there was some concern
that the shock of learning that her daughter
had been murdered could have a physical
effect on her. And so local law enforcement
was able to get her physician at the time to come with them
when they went to her home and broke the terrible news that
her daughter had been murdered. Brynn did not
have any enemies. There was no one that would
have had a reason to kill her, and the family just wanted
to know what happened. They believed that someone
could have possibly been responsible that they knew. One of the interesting
facts in this case is that an unidentified male
called Brynn Rainey's employer and informed them that she would
not be showing up for her shift at the casino where she worked. We certainly don't
know for sure who that was that made the call,
but under the circumstances, and the fact that Brynn at that
time was likely already dead, it would strongly suggest
that the killer made that call in order to buy
more time before people knew she was missing. NANCY GRACE: While detectives
try to trace that mystery caller, they also
pieced together Brynn Rainey's last known movements. She'd been picked up earlier
that evening by a friend and dropped off at a
bar that used to be there called The Bitter Creek. It was just kind of a beer bar. And she had gone to this bar
and witnesses were interviewed that said that she
was in the bar, and she was there
until that evening. And she had told her friend that
she was going to catch a bus, but we're talking
about her shift starting at 2:00 AM on the 25th. And to me, it sounds like
she either could have been hitchhiking or picked up
a ride from somebody else to try to get down
the boulevard, which would have been a good
five or six miles away. One of the main guys
that they focused in on was a boyfriend that
had come from Ohio, and he was infatuated with her. But then they were able to
eliminate him pretty early because they were able to prove
that he had left town two days before Brynn Rainey
was last seen. NANCY GRACE: Two years go by
and detectives run out of leads. And the case became cold as
a result, but on July 1, 1979, a young woman's body was
found on the side of the road by a passing motorist and
reported to law enforcement. Two years after
Brynn Rainey's murder, the discovery of a second young
woman's body in the same area injects new life into
the investigation. Could the same killer be
responsible for both murders? That's next on
"Bloodline Detectives." [THEME MUSIC] August 1977, horseback riders
in California's Sierra Nevada mountains discover
the remains of a woman in a shallow grave
close to Lake Tahoe. She's later identified
as a casino worker, 27-year-old Brynn Rainey. Police have very few clues
and the case goes cold. Then two years later,
a second female victim is discovered nearby. A young woman's body was
found on the side of the road in South Lake Tahoe. A passing motorist saw her body
laying on the side of the road and stopped and
contacted law enforcement and reported that they had
found what they believed to be a deceased young woman. She was wearing
socks, no shoes, jeans and rock and
roll Rod Stewart t-shirt from a concert in 1979. She had pretty significant
injuries to her upper body, facial area and neck area. Ligature marks were
apparent on her wrists. On her face, there was an
elongated mark on her cheek that looked like it either
could have been some type of gag or a rope that had
caused the damage. Later on, they found that
her bra was pulled up over her breasts under
her shirt and that she had fingernail scratch marks
under her right breast. NANCY GRACE: Detectives
struggle to identify the victim, then they receive news
of a missing person. The South Lake Tahoe
Police Department had learned that
there was a party and that there were
juveniles at the party. And when they investigated that
party, which was near where the body had been
recovered, they were able to identify a
young man who had picked this young woman up and
brought her to the party, and then essentially
lost track of her. They're actually
the ones that helped identify her the next day. There were some police officers
that went down to a local beach called Reagan Beach and talked
to her friends, to these boys, and they were the
ones that said, I think that might
have been this friend of ours named Carol Anderson. They were able to go and
contact the victim's parents, and the parents showed a
photograph of their daughter, Carol Anderson,
and law enforcement was immediately able to
recognize that they had found this couple's daughter. NANCY GRACE: An autopsy reveals
the COD, cause of death. Carol's body showed signs
of severe trauma to her face, to her neck. She showed signs of ligature
marks on her wrists, as if she had been tied. Carol also had a
damaged hyoid bone. Carol's cause of death
was strangulation as well. They looked at
clothing items just to see whether or not there was
anything odd about the clothing items that were there. They collected quite
a few clothing items. All of the undergarments,
the outer garments. They're looking for
any kind of bite marks, things like that
that they might be able to get any
kind of body fluid from a suspect or a perpetrator. And they're taking hair samples. So they're taking hair
from the pubic area, they're taking
hair from the head, and that way we can do
any comparisons if there's any of those pieces of
evidence that are found later on somebody, on their
clothing or anything else, if they have a suspect. Forensic investigators
collect a DNA sample that does not belong to the victim. In the meantime,
police piece together Carol Anderson's final hours. That morning it's reported
that she left her house around 10:00 AM on Saturday. Now, it's summer,
she's out of school. It's South Lake Tahoe. The weather is beautiful. It's a beautiful
place, and she's hanging out with her friends. So she's down at Reagan Beach,
where all the kids hung out. Going back and forth
probably to liquor stores or doing whatever
they do there as kids. She hears about
a party, which is not very far from Reagan Beach. This party that
Carol had been at was given by guys that
were in their early 20s that were renting the house. And there were
quite a few people there, 60 to 70 people it's
estimated, were at the party. And the reports indicate that
she was there in the evening, and she was there and
then left around 11:30. There's different stories
that she was offered rides and refused them, and
there's other people that say she left with somebody. And then there's all kinds
of different theories that were looked at. One of the early thoughts was
that because Carol Anderson had been at this party, that
her killer may have been at the party and that may
be where her killer came into contact with her,
and perhaps lured her away from the party. Or was willing to give her
a ride away from the party, or a ride home, and
that's how he was able to gain control over her. And so it was really
important to us to identify as many people as
possible who were at that party to see if any of them either
might be responsible for Carol Anderson's death or might know
something that would help us move the investigation forward. NANCY GRACE: Police follow
up on every single lead, but in the end, Carol
Anderson's case goes cold. Then in the early
2000s, a cold case unit reopens the investigation. One of the things that
moves any of these cases forward dramatically
is when we're able to develop some
forensic evidence that can link the killer to the crime. And in the Carol
Anderson case, we were able to test
samples that had been collected
during her autopsy and preserved for decades. And the result of
that testing was developing a male DNA profile. And so you need to
find that person and you need to match
them to the evidence that they left behind. And one of the first
things we do when we have a robust profile is we add
it to the CODIS database and we look to see if there are
any matches to known offenders. And in this
particular case, there were no matches, and so we
needed to continue to search for people who may have crossed
paths with Carol Anderson, who may have been in the area,
who may have been motivated to commit this kind of a
crime and get from them, either surreptitiously
or voluntarily, a DNA sample to test back
to the crime scene DNA. NANCY GRACE: Detectives
have an individual DNA profile for the prime suspect. Now they need to match
that profile to a name. They were focusing
on the party where she had last been
seen and the people that were at the party. So there were a
lot of interviews and identifying the
people that were there and getting their names. It became a priority to go
out and try and get their DNA. The investigator that actually
had it, Brett Peterson, he had two binders for people
that were at the party. One binder was people that
were in CODIS or that we had DNA from, and the
other binder was people that needed to get it. And that binder, the
team would periodically, we'd be somewhere,
we'd find somebody, and we'd go interview them, and
we get that DNA and check it. And it would come
back negative, but we kept going, kept pushing it. NANCY GRACE: It's a huge task. 60 cold cases and a
mountain of evidence. We brought together
all 60 unsolved cases, and we did a thorough review
of each and every one of them and we tried to categorize them. So we had cases from
the '70s and the '80s, where physical evidence items
were collected at the crime scene, packaged, and
preserved by law enforcement, but had never been subject
to modern technology and had never been checked
for DNA evidence, for example. And so we started working
through those cases as our first step. We identified the Brynn Rainey
case as one that had never been subject to modern
forensic technologies, and we thought that might
provide us with a lead. In 2017, Deanna
Hayden was a senior criminalist at the Department of
Justice, re-examined the shirt. I remember being at the task
force and the discussion taking place that
she said, you know, I think going to take
another look at that shirt and see what I can find. And she did that, and she took
another cutting of a blood stain, was able to develop a
pretty significant DNA profile. NANCY GRACE: The DNA extracted
from Brynn Rainey's shirt undergoes testing
alongside the male DNA collected from the Carol
Anderson crime scene. On November 17, 2017, we
received a message from DOJ that we had a match between the
Brynn Rainey case and the Carol Anderson case through DNA. It meant that the same suspect
was involved in both Brynn and Carol's murder. When we got that
information from DOJ, we brought the team together
and started again reviewing the case, looking
at the similarities, and we started to
make assignments for follow up in what we
were going to do next. The really interesting thing
is these two cases happened in such close proximity
and time to each other, and we were working
them in parallel really. And then all of a sudden,
no longer in parallel, we have one investigation
for these two cases, and I'm sure that was
something that investigators were happy to hear. This was new information. This changed the way that
we had been looking at both of these cases,
and we immediately started to look for the
imaginary Venn diagram of where and what connection
these two victims might have with one another. And that was a big
leap forward as far as searching for the killer. Two victims, one killer. Can a new generation
of Bloodline Detectives crack this case? That's next. [THEME MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: 2017, South
Lake Tahoe, California. Two young women murdered
just two years apart, yet both their cases remain
unsolved nearly 40 years. The remains of
Brynn Rainey found in 1977, the body of teen
girl Carol Anderson, just 16, discovered nearby, 1979. Then, 2017, a breakthrough. Detectives discover the
suspect's DNA samples from both murders are not just a
match, they're a perfect match. Now, all detectives
need is a name. One of the first things we
did was go back and re-review everything that we knew and
everything that we thought we knew about both
the Carol Anderson case and the Brynn Rainey case. And what we were looking for
was any connection that we had failed to see in the past. Any new interpretation that we
could make of the information that we had based
on the new knowledge that they had been both
killed by the same person. It also, of course,
brought to the forefront the idea that we were
dealing with a person who was a serial killer, in
the sense that had killed at least twice and had
killed two young women, both in the South Lake Tahoe area,
had disposed of the bodies in a somewhat careless manner. There were some real
indicators there that made us feel very strongly
that we were going to be able to identify a suspect. NANCY GRACE: That same year,
investigators team up with DNA investigative specialists
Parabon NanoLabs. I joined forces with Parabon
to offer a genetic genealogy service to law enforcement. I was one of the early adopters
and one of the pioneers of genetic genealogy. And since that
time, my team and I have been responsible for over
275 positive identifications. We started with two
types of DNA tests, called Y-DNA and
mitochondrial DNA. And then in 2010 is when we
started using autosomal DNA, which is the basis for
investigative genetic genealogy and the work we do
with law enforcement. We reached out
and we established a contract with Parabon. We shared with Parabon the
DNA information that we had. In 2017, the crime scene
DNA sample was sent to Parabon and Parabon created a SNP
profile with their partner lab. They worked with the
agency on this case to predict what the suspect
may have looked like. Phenotyping is where
you take areas in the DNA and you estimate genetic
expressed traits. So that would be where they
would go through and look at these areas of the DNA and
decide whether or not they felt somebody had brown
hair, blue eyes, whether or not they had
any kind of predisposition for baldness, whether
they would have had a round face, a slender face. Those types of things to try and
build what they would imagine would be how the DNA would
express itself visually to us. NANCY GRACE: The
phenotype test indicates the suspect is Caucasian with
dark brown hair and dark eyes. In December 2017,
Parabon delivered their report with the
snapshot phenotype predictions to the agency. And so in early May, the case
managers reached out to the El Dorado authorities to
ask them if they might be interested in trying genetic
genealogy on Carol's case, and they agreed. Autosomal DNA is the type of
DNA that you inherit from all of your ancestral lines. You receive 50% from your
mother and 50% from your father, about 25% from each of your
grandparents, and about 12.5% from each of your
great grandparents. And that type of DNA
is essential to being able to identify someone
from their DNA alone. We need to have
lots of information, and we need to be able to piece
that family tree together. And so we have to have
DNA from different sides of the family tree, from
different ancestral lines. We had a handful of matches
that would be related somewhere in the second to
fourth cousin range, and that means we're
building those trees back to great grandparents, great
great grandparents, and then great great great grandparents
trying to identify those common ancestors. It only took two days to narrow
the genetic genealogy data down to just three brothers. Three brothers that
could potentially have been the
contributors of the DNA recovered from Carol Anderson
and from Brynn Rainey. The one that was of
greatest interest to us was Joseph Holt, because we were
able to establish that he lived in and around the
South Lake Tahoe area during the time frame that
these crimes occurred. Through our investigation,
we found Joseph Holt had grown up in Cupertino, California. He graduated from
Cupertino High School. He went to Berkeley. He moved to South Lake Tahoe. He became a realtor. His profession throughout
his life was real estate. He had a son. He was married at one point. We learned about some of
Joseph Holt's relationships with different women. Investigator Gaines talked
to a former girlfriend, who said that Joseph
Holt wanted to tie her up when they were intimate. One woman messaged
us and said that she had dated Joseph
Holt, that she had met him in South Lake Tahoe. NANCY GRACE: That woman
is Colleen Wilson. Like the murder
victim Brynn Rainey, Colleen is a casino
worker living in the South Lake Tahoe area. I received a phone call
from a homicide detective, and my heart just dropped
when he introduced himself. I think he said, you used to
date Joseph Holt. And I said, yes, a long time ago. And I told him that I was
living in a duplex on Ski Run, and he was the
real estate agent. And I remember he
came over to meet me and told me he was going
to be showing the place. He would call me ahead of time. And I came home and there
were some flowers on my table. And I thought, OK, did
he show it to clients? And there was a little note
there, a little card saying thank you for cooperating. You know, you're great. And then it said, I
like you mucho moss. I go, OK, this is
really strange. So he came over. I said, did you show
the place yesterday? You were in here. And he says, oh, yeah, I did. Didn't my office call you? And I said, no. And he said, oh, I'm
so sorry about that. Let me take you to dinner. I'm so sorry to interrupt
your life right now, and I know it's busy. So I said, OK. And he said let's
go to the hot tubs. And I said, OK. And he goes, you need to relax. Let's go rent a hot tub. They were private. We went in, we were
having a great time, and then I made a comment. I go, oh, I guess my waterproof
mascara isn't waterproof. And then he took the back of
my neck and he dunked my head. He goes, well I can
take care of that. And he dunked my head in
the hot tub to where-- I mean, then I didn't
think it was funny. I mean, I was gagging water,
and I said, that's not funny. What are you doing? He goes, oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I was just joking. And I think I was crying. He goes, I'm sorry. Come here. And I said, get
the F away from me. And he goes, no, please? Please? Don't walk home. It's dark out. Don't walk home. It's not safe. I will take you home. And I said, you're not
taking me anywhere. NANCY GRACE: Colleen
Wilson's testimony paints a disturbing picture of
Joseph Holt. But where is Holt? We find out next on
"Bloodline Detectives." [THEME MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: Now
Bloodline Detectives are investigating two
cold case murders, and they make a
remarkable breakthrough. The victims are two young
women murdered two years apart way back in the
'70s near South Lake Tahoe, Northern California. The breakthrough is
thanks to the expertise of Parabon NanoLabs,
whose scientists are experts in genetic genealogy. Using DNA left at
the crime scenes, Parabon narrows the suspects
down to a single family. Police then identify Joseph
Holt as the likely killer. Detectives then interview
a former girlfriend of Holt, who offers a shocking
account of their time together. Colleen Wilson recalls
Holt pushing her head underwater in a hot tub. I thought, was
he going to drown me there and put me in his
truck and dump me somewhere? I thought about that a lot. I called my friend, who worked
in surveillance at Harvey's, and he said, lock the doors. I'll be over. He had an extra truck, he
parked it in front of my duplex. And he came over and
installed some locks. So I remember bolting
every time I went to sleep. Every little noise
would wake me up. Is it him creeping around? The next day, he came with
flowers again apologizing. You know, I'm sorry. I didn't-- it got out of hand. I was just, you know,
roughhousing around. And he said, we need
to go on a road trip. We need to go on a road trip, go
to the ocean, get off the hill. You know, get down to sea level. Let me make it up to you. I'm going to take
you to Santa Cruz. We'll go to San Francisco,
wherever you want. I almost went because he
told me he would-- he goes, how much do you make at work? I go, well, you never know
what tips are going to go. He goes, I will pay you
to take the weekend off. And I said no. I think it was like
the second month, just really odd
things were happening. I could tell somebody
was coming into my place while I was at
work, and I remember talking to my sister about it. First, she thought it
was funny, and I didn't. I said, no, he's starting
to get really creepy. And I asked her about the
zip ties in his truck. I go, they were all
over the floorboard. And she says, well, he could use
them for his real estate signs. And then, I go, OK. All right. And then he called and
left a pretty nasty message on my answering
machine, and said, oh, I see you've moved on. How many guys do you date? I see you have overnight
guests all the time. I thought, OK, I really need
to put some distance between he and I. Then he just
kind of disappeared. I remember seeing him. I think it was in 1995
in Rallies up here. And I go, oh my god,
that's Joseph Holt, and I went down the other-- I think I was about
eight months pregnant, and I know he saw me
because he looked. And I thought, I'm off. I'm out of here with my basket. I think I just left that stuff
there and went in the car. NANCY GRACE: In
hindsight, Colleen Wilson believes she had a very
lucky escape from Joseph Holt. Holt's own escape comes in
a different and unexpected way. After we identified
Joseph Holt as a suspect, we learned that
he had passed away in 2014 from a heart attack. And the first thing we do when
we find out that someone is dead is we try to
see if there were any tissue samples
collected, whether an autopsy was performed. If there's any possibility that
there's something out there we can use to compare
that deceased person's DNA with the DNA from
the crime scene itself. And in the case of Joseph
Holt, there was nothing left. So we had to move on to
looking at his descendants. In particular, we focus
on male descendants who are going to
carry the father's DNA in their own DNA matrix. I met with the son, told him
that I believe that his dad may have known Carol Anderson,
and that I would like to get his DNA to eliminate
him, and the son was cooperative, very cooperative. He told me that he had
several things that belonged to his dad, that he had
cleaned out his dad's house and had moved the
things, and that he had access to those things. So I asked him if he would bring
me some things that may have belonged to his dad
that we might be able to establish
DNA from, and he said he would be willing to do that. And he said he didn't
want me to go with him. He wanted to bring them
to me, and he brought me a jacket, some
eyeglasses, a wallet, a used Q-tip, some I
believe scissors, five harmonicas, and a toothbrush. I took them and packed
them up as evidence and I brought them
back to our office. I conferred with
Deanna Hayden and she said that she believed the
toothbrush would be the most viable to get DNA from. That was transported to the
DNA laboratory in Richmond, and she did the testing on
it and confirmed that Joseph Holt was our perpetrator. The story of Joseph Holt,
the South Lake Tahoe strangler doesn't quite end there. Cold case detectives are
certain he murdered Brynn Rainey and Carol Anderson,
but they also suspect Holt could
be responsible for many other deadly crimes. We find out more next on
"Bloodline Detectives." [THEME MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: Lake
Tahoe, California, 2022. Bloodline Detectives
identify the killer of two young women in the late '70s. The investigation
is helped by Parabon NanoLabs, which specialize
in investigative genetic genealogy. The killer is Joseph
Holt. Holt, now dead, but investigators
are convinced he's responsible for
many other crimes. People who commit
random acts of violence, particularly the ones
that do it repeatedly like Joseph Holt
had, sometimes will document what they've done. During the search, we
found some interesting items. We found some weapons. A couple of them were
illegal, sawed off shotguns, that type of thing. Stun gun, handcuffs. I did find a newspaper
clipping from him that was from Los Gatos, and
he had handwritten on it the date of January 30, 1975. And it referenced a burglary
of a vehicle that occurred, and that one of the
victims had been shot. So they did a composite with
the victims of the suspect, and if you look
at that composite and you look at a
picture of Joseph Holt, I don't think it takes
a seasoned investigator to see the similarities
in that composite. We'll never really
know how Joseph Holt selected his victims. We'll never really
know how he came into contact with Brynn Rainey. Similarly to Brynn
Rainey, we're really never going to know how
Joseph Holt came into contact with Carol Anderson. We know that he was living near
where the party took place, and it's reasonable to
suspect that he was passing by the party, saw Carol Anderson
perhaps walking or hitchhiking away from the party trying
to get home that evening, and he offered her a ride. I was present when investigators
met with Carol Anderson's family to tell them
what we had learned and to share with them that we
had identified Carol's killer. But unfortunately, he
was dead, and he was beyond the reach of justice. Brynn Rainey's family was
still primarily in Ohio, and her brother lived in a
very rural part of Colorado. So some of these
contacts, by necessity, had to be made telephonically. And one of the investigators
on the case and I called her brother and broke
the news to him, and it was-- it was very impactful for him to
know finally what had happened to his sister and to have
a better understanding of everything that
we had done in order to try to solve the case and to
provide some degree of closure. And he was remarkably grateful
for what we had done, even though it wasn't going to
result in a prosecution or a conviction. I think Joseph Holt was
a very sick individual, and he has proven he was
capable of incredible levels of depravity and
violence and evil. And I don't know what
makes a person like that. I mean, oftentimes
it's a bad childhood. Some people just
aren't good people, and I don't know that we'll
ever know the answer to that. Maybe something
traumatic happened to him when he was young, but it
doesn't sound like that's something we'll ever know. NANCY GRACE: Ultimately, the
South Lake Tahoe strangler's identity is revealed
through advanced science called investigative
genetic genealogy. Detectives and scientists alike
use it to solve cases that are 30, 40, even 50 years old. I think it was big news when
we were able to put on social media that the case had
been solved, that both cases from the '70s had been solved. I think it was big
news for the community to know that the task
force, that the agencies and the county are still
working on these cases that are that old. It was surely exciting
for us as a task force having worked these
cases for 7, 8, 9 years, to bring one to closure
is always exciting for us. To give the families
of the victims closure is really one of
our biggest goals. I think most of the time,
there's something left behind by the suspect in these cases. I think as science
progresses, we will be able to utilize the
smaller pieces of evidence more and more as we go. We owe a huge
debt of gratitude to those original crime
scene investigators for collecting this evidence. There is no way they could
have known way back in the '70s just how important
this evidence would be. Law enforcement
wasn't even working with DNA yet at that time. And then, the agencies
that were in charge of storing this DNA for decades
just did an incredible job. And there's no way that this
case could have been solved without those original
crime scene investigators and the agency that
so carefully protected this DNA evidence for decades. I wish he were here
today to face the families, face the courts, rot in jail. He's evil, gets pleasure
off of causing woman pain. I don't think he ever changed. I would not be surprised at
all if there were more victims. I had no idea he was
capable of what he did. I thought, I am so lucky right
now, because I really started thinking about it, and I said
he kept pressuring me to go on that road trip with him. And I thought, what
if I didn't come back? What if he threw me on
the side of the road? And my mother used
to tell me it's the quiet ones you
have to watch out for, and I thought, oh, my
mother, you're right. I mean, she was right. It's amazing when we realize
that now so many brutal killers can never hide from their own
DNA, their own family tree, or from the incredible science
of investigative genetic genealogy. We can only imagine the look
of shock on their faces, when years later, when they
believe they've gotten away with horrible crimes, Bloodline
Detectives knock on their door. I'm Nancy Grace. Thanks for joining us here
on "Bloodline Detectives." [THEME MUSIC]
