[music playing] Well, we started
riding around, drinking beer early
in the afternoon. There was a young lady pulled
up on the driver's side of the traffic light. And Terry made an obscene
gesture towards her. And when she turned to the
left, he got her off the road. And he took her
car by some water. And then it dawned on me, and
I said, you killed that girl, didn't you? And then he told
me, yeah, he had. And he said, you better not
ever tell anybody about this. Because you were here with
me, and you'll go to prison the rest of your life
just like I will. [music playing] We were very frustrated
with the search effort. And we were just trying
to do whatever we could. There was nothing else to do
but to go look for mom, and-- NARRATOR: Mike and Jeff
Jones have a problem. On April 16, 1979, they
reported their mother Harriet Simmons missing. The day before, Harriet
had climbed into her car in Raleigh, North Carolina for a
weekend road trip to Nashville. The drive should have
taken eight hours. Five days later, she
still has not arrived. It was totally out
of character for my mom not to call, you know,
when we knew she would, because her kids were her life. And she would never go that long
and not be in touch with them. NARRATOR: Ronnie Dement
is Harriet's son-in-law. He joins the search and begins
to retrace the route she would have taken to Nashville. After 2 and 1/2
hours of driving, he finds Simmons's car
parked in the exit ramp leading out of a rest stop. RONNIE DEMENT: Seeing
the car where it was, I know it was out of character
that her mom would never stop the car in that position. I just knew something happened
as she was leaving that rest area. I didn't know what, but
I knew she would never stop her car there. NARRATOR: Ronnie pulls
over and calls 911. Inside the car, police find
that Simmons's keys and purse are missing. In the back sits a flat
tire, an indication that Harriet might
have had car trouble and perhaps had asked
a stranger for help. We pretty much knew that
she had had a flat tire, and whoever stopped to help her
probably did something to her. It was a new car. Who leaves, I mean, a new car in
her situation, a brand new car that was in running
condition and working order. MICHAEL JONES: But
at the same time, I would like to say, you
got to remember, all of us were very young right
then and impressionable. And perhaps we didn't
know everything that needed to be known. Now we can see-- NARRATOR: Back in
Franklinton, North Carolina, Harriet Simmons's seven
children are anxious, waiting for some
word about their mom. In 1979, the siblings
ranged in age from 9 to 22 and suspect police are not
taking the disappearance seriously. Remains were found. They acted as if she
was a runaway mother. You know, they stereotyped--
she's single, she's da, da, da. And until-- I mean,
I actually remember talking to an investigator
and them actually saying, know the oldest one of
you guys is 19, or 21. And they just
basically treated us like we were a bunch of
little kids crying, hey, I want my mommy. Where is she? NARRATOR: Without a body and
with no prints or other usable evidence from inside the
car, the investigation into Harriet Simmons's
disappearance quickly goes nowhere. 11 months pass, and then
the other shoe drops. Simmons's disappearance
matures into an undeniable case of murder. MIKE WRIGHT: I got the
call around mid-morning that a passing motorist had
found a skull in the woods. NARRATOR: Mike Wright is
a crime scene investigator for the Buncombe County Sheriff,
260 miles out of Raleigh. He heads into a patch of
woods just off the Blue Ridge Parkway. MIKE WRIGHT: The
skull had been moved from the location of the rest
of the probably by animal activity. And so we did a grid search
of the surrounding area and then located articles of
clothing and additional bones and evidence in the leaves. We opened the box, found-- NARRATOR: Medical
examiner Dr. John Butts determines the victim to be
a white female between 45 and 55 years old. He notes four cuts in
the victim's clothing and four nearly identical
cuts in the victim's bones. What we're looking
at here is one of the ribs on the left side. And right here
above the label, you can see a little
nick and the bone. So we put those together,
the injuries to the bones, the injuries to the
clothing, the fact that we have a relatively
young individual. And the conclusion would be that
she's died as a result of being stabbed. NARRATOR: Within a week,
state investigators provide dental records
on a missing woman. Dr. Butts compares the
records to the Jane Doe and determines that
she is Harriet Simmons. A phone call is made
to Harriet's children back in Franklinton. Of course, it's always a
shadow hanging over your head. Again, we were so relieved
that she was found, and we were able to bury her. But of course you want
someone to be caught for it. NARRATOR: The
discovery of a body moved Simmons's case
from a disappearance to an unsolved homicide. The result, however, is the
same, no suspects and no leads in the investigation. Meanwhile, a second body turns
up 18 miles from the Blue Ridge Parkway in Asheville,
North Carolina. MIKE WRIGHT: I was at home
and it was around 4 o'clock in the morning. And the dispatcher
called and said that a body had been located-- NARRATOR: As sunrise creeps
up the back of the Smoky Mountains, CSI Mike Wright takes
another call for another body, this time, on the banks
of the French Broad River. And she had been
stabbed to the chest. And a local resident
here had heard her call for help when she had
crawled up out of the water. And he had attempted
to give CPR. NARRATOR: The
neighbor tells police that the girl died in his arms. In this case, we had
victims that were dead-- NARRATOR: Dave Bossard works
the scene as an investigator for the Sheriff's department. She told him that she had been
stabbed and thrown in the river and left for dead. And he did have somewhat
of a conversation with her while he was waiting for
the ambulance to arrive. NARRATOR: The
victim carries no ID and has suffered
multiple stab wounds. Even as CSI works the
scene, a second call comes in about a car found
eight miles upstream. City Police officers who
initially found the car, they had been contacted by a
Southern Railway dispatcher. The train crew had seen the car
while the train was crossing this trestle here. And the vehicle was in the river
about 20 feet off the shore, upriver from the bridge. And the car was partially
submerged about 20 feet off the bank. We had no crime
scene to work with-- NARRATOR: Police wonder
if the vehicle is related to the murder downstream. They track the license plates
to a local family and a woman named Margaret McConnell. They said that they had
found the car in the river. And they explained
what had happened. And they asked some of the
family to come downtown. NARRATOR: Margaret
McConnell tells police that her 21-year-old
daughter Betty Sue had taken the car to
work earlier that evening and Never came home. Two hours later,
Betty Sue McConnell is IDed as the murder victim. I can't explain how we felt,
how it was most terrible thing I'd ever gone through. NARRATOR: Local detectives
begin working the case with the help of the State
Bureau of Investigation. Detective Wright and I,
along with other officers, went to the McConnell
residence to try to find out as much as we could about
Betty Sue and her acquaintances and that sort of thing. NARRATOR: Betty Sue McConnell
worked the night shift at a donut shop frequented
by railroad workers. She had left work at 1:00 AM
on the night she was killed. It would have been
physically possible for someone to have killed the victim
at the other location, driven the car back here,
pushed the car into the river here, and climbed up a very
small embankment following along the trestle, and be
back to the railroad yard where all the railroad workers
would be expected to be within a matter of minutes. There were quite
a few railroad men that would come and go in the
course of two or three days. Once we determined
who all was there, we had to find out where they
lived and try to interview them that way. NARRATOR: While a
team of detectives begins eliminating
suspects, police process the victim's car. The car, which had been in
the river, of course, the river had run through it. And it had to be dried
before it could be processed for evidence. NARRATOR: A forensic
examination of the vehicle yields no prints, no blood,
nothing in the way of a lead. After three months of
legwork, detectives are resigned to their luck. Betty Sue McConnell's case
joins Harriet Simmons's in the cold files where
both will stay for 19 year until a recovering alcoholic
feels the sobering sting of conscience. Ain't no one could
ever be as hard on me as I've been on myself. I should have done this. I could have done that. But at the time, it was just-- I was totally freaking out. [guitar music playing] I tried to carry on a
very rich family tradition heritage as a storyteller. (SINGING) I found
a job in the city. NARRATOR: At Asheville,
North Carolina, Jerry Harmon is known as
the "Smoky Mountain Gypsy," a keeper of the
Appalachian oral history, a singer, and songwriter. (SINGING) But his heart
won't ever go alone. I grew up very much
around storytelling and was a storyteller myself. And the most devastating
thing that ever happened to me was a story that I
felt I couldn't tell, I was afraid to tell. When I was a kid sitting out on
the front porch with my daddy and my grandpa and my grandma-- NARRATOR: For 19 years, Harmon
has held a close secret, one kept at Bay by a combination
of fear and booze. JERRY HARMON: I lived in
a bottle for a long time. I climbed inside of a
bottle, and I stayed there. And I didn't feel anything. And then the time came when
that didn't work anymore. And finally, it,
just got to the point to where it was just unbearable. I sat him down in my
office, and he began talking about a case from 1979. NARRATOR: As Buncombe County
Sheriff's Captain Pat Hefner listens, Jerry
Harmon begins to talk about a night 19 years past. JERRY HARMON: I knew things
that the police officers, that the law enforcement
needed to know about. I knew that I had been with
someone who had committed cold-blooded murder. Well, we started
riding around drinking beer early in the afternoon,
probably noon, I guess. And we just rode around and
drank and partied all day. NARRATOR: In August
of 1979, Jerry Harmon is 19 years old and hanging
out with a new pal, 22-year-old Terry Hyatt. At 2:30 AM, the two men leave a
bar and get into Hyatt's truck. There was a young lady
pulled up on the driver's side at a traffic light. And Terry made an obscene
gesture towards her. And then, when she turned to the
left, he ran her off the road. And then he jumped out
and ran up to her car and jerked the door open, and
yelled back at me and said, follow me. And he jumped in her
car and took off. NARRATOR: Harmon follows
behind Terry Hyatt who drives a few miles and then
turns down a dirt road. And then he got the
girl out of the car, came back to the truck, got
into the truck with her. And I got away from there. And it's obvious
what was going on, he was raping this young lady. And I was just terrified. And then, when he finished,
I remember he came up to me and said-- you know, asked me if
I was going [audio out] Well, he got in her car and
started driving up and down the road extremely fast. And I remember telling her,
get out of here, go, leave. And she kept saying,
that's my sister's car. I can't leave my sister's car. And I said, forget
your sister's car. Just get away from here. NARRATOR: The young woman,
however, does not leave. Hyatt returns, pulls
her back into her car, and once again tells
Harmon to follow. And no one could
ever be as hard on me as I've been on myself. I should have done this. I could have done that. But at the time, it was just-- I was totally freaking out. And I just followed it. I couldn't comprehend what
was happening, why did I not try to do something. But still, the thought had never
occurred to me that actually someone was going to die. That just didn't seem real. Then we went, and he took
her car by some water. NARRATOR: Hyatt pulls
the girl out of the car and begins walking
towards the water. JERRY HARMON: And then I
heard this girl scream. And it was-- I assumed he was raping
or again or something. I mean, that's what I
figured was going on. Then he came back up there. And then it dawned on me, I
didn't hear the girl anymore. And I said, you killed
that girl didn't you? And then he told
me, yeah, he had. NARRATOR: Hyatt drives the
girl's car a few miles upstream and runs it into the river. JERRY HARMON: Well, I
was just freaked out. And he said, you better not
ever tell anybody about this. Because you were here
with me, and you'll going to prison the rest of
your life, just like I will. NARRATOR: For 19 years,
Harmon never breathed a word. Now he tells it
all to Pat Hefner, including the place where
the woman's car was dumped, the French Broad River. And that's what keyed me off,
because I knew that they had recovered a body at or
near the French Broad River from 1979 or 1980. So I began researching
the ones from 1979 and came up with the
name Betty Sue McConnell. NARRATOR: Betty
Sue McConnell was 21 when she was stabbed and
thrown into the French Broad River. The car she was driving was
also found in the river. So we didn't think there
would be any difficulty. We were just-- NARRATOR: Pat Hefner assigns the
case to Detective Anne Benjamin and Agent Tim Shook of the
state's cold case team. The two begin by sitting
down with Harmon. Yeah, and I mean, you
guys knocked on the door and introduced yourself. I said, OK. TIM SHOOK: Well, you
finally had somebody show up it was old
enough to remember when this murder happened. So then it was explained to
him early on that whatever involvement he had, we certainly
couldn't make him any promises. ANNE BENJAMIN:
Well, what finally made you cross over to where
you said, I need to tell. JERRY HARMON: Well, it wasn't
like this particular thing happened. It had been years and years. I'm just really,
I mean literally, waking up in the middle of
the night in cold sweat. And I could hear-- I could hear the
screams of that girl. His statement about where
it occurred, the description of her car, the fact that
it was left in a river, all those statements
that he made led us to believe that he knew
exactly what he was talking about. NARRATOR: Benjamin and believe
Harmon but would like more in the way of corroboration. Harmon then provides
detectives with a second name. He had mentioned
that if we really want to verify his story, we
need to talk to Mr. Hyatt's best friend at the time, which
was less Lester Dean Helms. NARRATOR: Two months later, Anne
Benjamin tracks Lester Helms to a nursing home. She and Tim Shook
head over for a chat. We just wanted to see if he
would corroborate what Jerry Harmon had already told us. Because we weren't really
accusing him of anything except guilty
knowledge of things that Terry Hyatt
would have done. ANNE BENJAMIN: And
he said, oh, yes. Yes, he killed that
girl, didn't he? And at that point, Tim said,
well, let's talk about it. TIM SHOOK: And when we asked
him to relate what he recalls, he starts talking about a lady
with a flat tire being abducted along the interstate. And I was taking notes and
really didn't-- you know, I thought, what is
he talking about? NARRATOR: While Helms
is talking about murder, it does not appear to be the
same murder Jerry Harmon shared with police. In Helm's statement, Terry Hyatt
raped a woman and killed her and then dumped her body
in Buncombe County, some 18 miles from where Betty Sue
McConnell's body was found. As we're walking out to the
car, I remember turning to Tim and saying, what
was that all about? And he says, I think I know. I had read the
file, and it begin to click, that sounds like
the Harriet Simmons murder, because her skeletal remains had
been found in Buncombe County up near the Blue Ridge Parkway. NARRATOR: Like McConnell,
Harriet Simmons was abducted from her car. Like McConnell, Simmons
was stabbed multiple times. TIM SHOOK: It had
never been associated in any way with Betty
Sue McConnell's abduction and subsequent murder. And we were both quite excited. We knew we had some
good information and some good witnesses. NARRATOR: Investigators
Benjamin and Shook believe that Terry Hyatt could
be responsible for at least two cold murders. Then they find a
third Hyatt victim, this one still very much alive. He told my mother, you
know, he's put a lot of bodies down there in that river. ANNE BENJAMIN: To tell you
the truth, the file, when I first got it, was
probably about this thick-- when I was handed it. NARRATOR: Anne
Benjamin is trying to make sense of two
murders, cold for 19 years. I've put some tabs in here
and did some color coding and tried to kind of put it
into some sort of an order. NARRATOR: Two women in
two separate attacks, each taken out of her
car, raped, and murdered. Witnesses have linked one
man to each of the murders, an ex-convict named
Terry Alvin Hyatt. When we looked
up his record, we found that he had actually
gone to prison in 1979. He had committed a kidnapping. NARRATOR: The kidnapping
occurred just a few months after the second
unsolved murder. Hyatt's kidnap victim, Carolyn
Brigman, survived the attack and is still alive. Detective Benjamin
decides to talk with her. Miss Brigman was very, very
fearful all these years of him. He had threatened her that he
would come back and get her at the trial. She didn't have a
driver's license. She didn't want
anybody to track her. So I actually found her
through her children. My mom came walking
through there. And he had his truck
parked on the side and had the hood up like he
was working on his truck. NARRATOR: Joseph and Melissia
are Carolyn Brigman's son and daughter. Their mom doesn't like to
talk about the kidnapping. But now her children are
willing to provide the details. And as she was walking by,
and she got right in front of the hood of the-- you
know, right beside the front of the truck, he spun around
and grabbed her and put a knife to her throat, and told her, do
not yell, and get in the truck. MELISSIA BROCK: He told her
when they crossed the bridge, I've thrown a lot
of people in there. My mom was trying to convince
him to let her go, that she wouldn't tell anybody. ANNE BENJAMIN: When he
had her in the truck, he had a large knife that
he held all the time. And of course, both
our murder victims were stabbed with a knife. After a while, he told
her that he was going to do something he
had never done before and he was going to
give her back her life. NARRATOR: In its details,
the Brigman attack is almost identical to
the two unsolved murders, bolstering Benjamin's case
and, if Carolyn Brigman will testify, putting a
face to the women Terry Hyatt is suspected
of victimizing. She was very willing to go
ahead and testify in court, which we desperately
wanted and she agreed to. NARRATOR: Brigman's
testimony is the final piece the state needs. Warrants are issued, and police
descend on Terry Hyatt's home in Nashville. TIM SHOOK: He met
us at the door. And his father came
to the door also. And we identified ourselves,
produced our credentials. NARRATOR: On a fall
morning, Terry Alvin Hyatt is brought in for questioning
about the murders of Betty Sue McConnell and Harriet Simmons. He seemed fairly
willing to talk, but his father was
very apprehensive and would rather
we weren't there. But of course, Terry
was in his 40s then. And he made the
decision to talk to us. NARRATOR: Under questioning,
Hyatt places himself at the scene of
the McConnell crime but says he did not kill her. When asked about
Harriet Simmons, Hyatt lawyers up
and is arrested. Assistant District Attorneys
Don Gast and Rodney Hasty prepare a case for prosecution. We didn't have any
hardcore DNA evidence that could show that he was
the person that raped them. But we had lots and lots
of pieces of the puzzle that, when assembled, painted a
clear picture that this guy is the one that committed
these murders. NARRATOR: The team decides
to seek the death penalty. On January 6, 2000, Terry
Hyatt's trial begins. BAILIFF: All rise. NARRATOR: Jerry Harmon, who was
with Hyatt when he allegedly killed Betty Sue McConnell,
takes the witness stand. I knew I was finally doing
what I should have done before. He killed an innocent
woman that had a family and had done nothing
to him whatsoever. No kind of self-defense
was involved, it was just cold murder. NARRATOR: Harmon is followed
by Lester Helm's, eyewitness to the Simmons murder, and
finally, by Carolyn Brigman. RODNEY HASTY: I have not seen
more chilling testimony come from the witness stand
than I did that day when all the family members were
there in the courtroom, lined up, hearing this
for the first time. And here this woman
is, brave enough to be the only one that lived. And at the time she
testified, for all she knew, the jury might let him go and
walk out of that courtroom. NARRATOR: On January
31, 2000, a jury finds Hyatt guilty
on all counts. JUDGE: Terry Alvin Hyatt to be
put to death as law provided. NARRATOR: He is sentenced
to die by lethal injection. Jeff Jones is in the court
to see his mother's killer sentenced. It's never easy to think
about someone else dying. But it has been bittersweet. I mean, it has been
a long road for us. We've all grown up with
this over our shoulders. And just to know that he passes
that close in front of you, and this is the person that
took your mother's life, is a very hard thing to restrain
yourself, both emotionally, verbally. You know, it's
something you deal with. And we were just glad
to have the moment. NARRATOR: In February of 2000,
while Terry Hyatt sits on death row, his DNA is collected and
entered into the state DNA databank. There it hits on yet another
unsolved case, the 1987 rape and murder of a Charlotte
woman named Jerri Ann Jones. When presented with the
DNA evidence and a deal to avoid another death
sentence, Terry Hyatt confesses to
Charlotte authorities. NARRATOR: Hyatt goes on to
say he raped the young woman. NARRATOR: On August
2, 2005, Wyatt pleads guilty to the
murder of Jerri Jones. The Simmons and
McConnell families are both in the courtroom
to hear this final verdict. I would grieve for the
other Jones family. And we offer our
complete support. And we're glad that he's
been exposed for what he is. Some days I think he
should sit there and suffer. But I don't think he's
doing that, because I really don't think it bothers him. I may be wrong,
but I really don't. So I think he should
just be put to death. I really do. NARRATOR: Margaret McConnell
has lived her life bereft of her daughter Betty Sue
and raises Betty Sue's child, Heather, as she would her
own, rich with memories of the mother
Heather never knew. Still I ask her
little things like, do I really sound like her,
what would she have done, just because everybody tells
me I'm so much like her that I ask all the time. MARGARET MCCONNELL:
And she is like her. She has her
personality, her laugh. If she's in a
different room, it's hard to tell the
difference, because she's a lot like her mother. This is the state's
exhibit number 28. And it's the piece
of the curtain that Sergeant Kolb
collected from the house. And right here in this hole is
the place where his blood was left as he cut himself entering
Mrs. Gaerte's residence. And it's from that
small little spot there that the case was broken. MARY LOU GAERTE: Nobody
answered the phone. So I thought, well, I'll
go over and check on her. NARRATOR: On a Monday
morning, Mary Lou Gaerte decides to check in on her
86-year-old mother-in-law Julia. She hops in her truck and
drives around the corner to Julia's farmhouse. On the outside, everything
appears to be normal. The inside however,
is a different story. It looked like somebody had
totally ransacked the house. And a lot of things were really
like thrown around, torn up, things were out of a cabinet. NARRATOR: Mary Lou walks
through the house and inches towards Julia's bedroom. MARY LOU GAERTE: In the
bedroom, I saw on her bed-- she was laying there, but there
was a pillow over her head and a footstool on
top of that pillow. NARRATOR: Julia Gaerte lies
dead, apparently smothered in her own bed. It was just kind
of like a nightmare, like something was
happening, but it really shouldn't be happening. NARRATOR: Mary Lou races
down the road to her sister-in-law's. GINNY SKILES: All of a sudden,
Mary Lou came across the yard screaming, Nanny's
been murdered, Nanny's been murdered. And somebody robbed her
house or something like that. And I thought,
what is she saying? And then, finally, we
realized what she was saying. And we called 911 at that point. Call had just come
in of the murder, notifying the Sheriff's
department of the murder. NARRATOR: Investigator Greg
Bricker of the Indiana State Police Department
catches the call. There was no reason
for it to happen. And Mrs. Gaerte
probably wouldn't have offered any resistance
to this person whatsoever. And it just wasn't
necessary to kill her. It was a vicious, cold-blooded
murder, no reason whatsoever. It appeared to me
to be somebody that had been doing burglaries
for a long time, maybe a professional. He hit all the right spots. NARRATOR: Crime scene
technician Thomas Kolb is called in to work the scene. Inside the house, he notices two
distinct styles of ransacking. THOMAS KOLB: The main
floor was very ransacked. All the drawers had been pulled
out, dumped on the floor. NARRATOR: Upstairs,
however, there is very little ransacking. Upstairs, the drawers
were pulled out. You can see things moved. But it wasn't totally
dumped on the floor. The bed just had the
covers moved back. So upstairs was kind of neat. And. There was also two different
sets of shoe prints. So I knew there was two people. I knew one would probably be a
male and the other one a female based on the shoe prints. NARRATOR: Kolb documents the
shoe prints and makes his way to the living room where
he gets a close look at the broken window, the
possible point of entry. THOMAS KOLB: We found
the rock inside the TV where it impacted. And there was curtains, so
you know that when he came in, he had to move the curtains. And you always hope
that you find something. So when I examined
the curtains, there was a small reddish brown spot,
which to me indicated a blood spot. As soon as I saw the blood,
I said, ah, that's great. We have hope now. NARRATOR: The curtain
is bagged and sent to the crime lab for testing. Meanwhile, Bricker asks
Ginny to scan the house and list any stolen items. There were some TVs, there
was a VCR, a phone that was missing, and also
her silverware was taken. NARRATOR: Bricker checks with
local pawn shops but turns up empty handed. . Meanwhile, officers
canvas the neighborhood. We had a team of detectives
at that point looking for information as to if anybody
ever saw anybody out of line, if there was anybody hanging
around that they didn't know, or any vehicles that they
could describe to us. NARRATOR: Less than
a mile down the road, investigators meet Tracy
Broxon, of Fort Wayne cop. Broxon tells police that
two days before the murder, she caught a strange man
snooping around her house. Well, it was odd that he
was trying the gate where the dogs was. I didn't know him. We're a half mile back. Who's back here
looking in the windows? NARRATOR: Broxon opened her
front door, gun in hand, and confronted the men. At that point, he started
backing off the porch. And he goes, I'm really lost. I'm really-- I think I'm really
at the wrong house type deal. And I said, yes, you are. You're at the wrong house. At this point, he turned and
went at a pretty good clip through the yard here trying
to catch up to the van. Yeah, somebody's casing
the neighborhood looking for a house to break into. NARRATOR: Bricker circulates
Broxon's description of the van and waits for a break. Yeah, it was very frustrating
because we weren't getting any information from the public. We had very little
information to go on that we gathered at the scene. It was very frustrating. Just no tips, period. NARRATOR: In the
weeks that follow, Bricker tracks
down known burglars and brings them in
for questioning. One by one, each is eliminated. GREG BRICKER: We had some leads
on people who were burglarizing homes in the area. And we interviewed
those subjects. They all had alibis. So we came up cold. NARRATOR: Now Bricker
turns to the crime lab and pins his hopes on science. I obtained a small
portion of the curtain with a reddish-brownish
stain present. NARRATOR: Leslie Harmon is a DNA
analyst with the Indiana State Police. On a Monday afternoon, she takes
delivery of the Gaerte evidence and examines the curtain. I took a small
portion of that cutting and started my analysis. NARRATOR: The stain is
confirmed to be blood. Harmon eventually
extracts a DNA profile and puts it into
the CODIS database. The first time that we
ran it, there were no hits. There was absolutely
no leads on this case. And every lead we did
get was a dead end. I just ran out of things
to do, places to go, people to look at. And I put the case-- I suspended the case until
further information came up. NARRATOR: Julia Gaerte's case
is shipped to the cold files where it will stay
for 3 and 1/2 years until police tracked down a
woman who is ready to point a finger at a killer. NARRATOR: Do you know of
any solved cold cases? Tell us at aetv.com. MARK HEFFELFINGER: I
got a call from my boss. I remember sitting on a couch
and she called me and said, hey, Mark, you know
the Gaerte case? NARRATOR: Mark Heffelfinger is
a detective with the Indiana State Police. On October 24, he takes a call
about the Julia Gaerte case, now nearly four years cold. She just said, well, we got
a DNA match on the blood that was taken from curtain
on the window that house. Comes back to a guy by
the name of Donald Houser. NARRATOR: Indiana periodically
runs its cold cases through CODIS, the
state's DNA databank. It was during such an exercise
that the name of Donald Houser, a convicted burglar,
came back as a match. The DNA was a start. It's a starting point
and somebody to look at. That in and of itself won't
necessarily get you conviction. So what I needed
to do at that point was establish what can I
find out about Donald Houser. NARRATOR: Heffelfinger
digs through the file and pulls out a
name, Angela Stone, Houser's ex-girlfriend and
former burglary accomplice. Within a day, Heffelfinger
tracks down Stone and brings her in for some hard questions. MARK HEFFELFINGER: This
is tape number two, continuation of the
interview with Angela Stone-- NARRATOR: On October 26,
Detective Heffelfinger sits down with Angela
Stone and presses her about Julia Gaerte's murder. At this time, I truly
believed she was a witness. I really believed that. NARRATOR: Heffelfinger believes
Julia Gaerte's murder was a burglary gone wrong and that
Angela Stone might have been in the house when it happened. After almost two hours
of back and forth, Angela Stone comes
across with the details of how her ex-boyfriend
killed Julia Gaerte. MARK HEFFELFINGER: I
am excited as can be. I am surprised, because
I didn't think she would be that good of a witness. But actually she turns
out to be more a witness, she's an accomplice. That just really helped
seal this up for us. NARRATOR: Stone confirms her
story with a set of silverware stolen from Julia Gaerte's house
and given by Houser to his mom as a Christmas gift. After recovering
the stolen item, cold case detectives are ready
to talk with Donald Houser. When I go in to
talk to Donald Houser, I got just more ammunition. He can't say, no, it wasn't me. Your girlfriend at the
time says you did it. She saw you do it. Donald Houser was brought
back to DeKalb County, where the jail is just across
the street there. NARRATOR: One day after his
conversation with Angela Stone, Detective Heffelfinger
meets with Donald Houser in a small interview room. He sat right here, at
this table, in this chair. And I sat at that
end of the table. Initially when he came in,
he was the calmest, coolest-- no emotion whatsoever. NARRATOR: Heffelfinger
has a game plan. He tells Houser he's really
out to get Angela Stone and tries to pin
him against his ex. MARK HEFFELFINGER: And I knew
that he was in prison now, currently, because of a burglary
he'd done in which she was there also. And she was not in jail. And I think that was going
to be upsetting to him. So I kind of use that
as an angle, look, I'm not necessarily
interested in you. But you're in jail,
Angela is not. Why isn't she? NARRATOR: Houser takes
the bait and starts talking about the
string of burglaries he and Stone
committed, but denies ever being at the Gaerte house,
that is until Heffelfinger tells him about the
blood on the curtain and the stolen silverware set
recovered from his mother's house. NARRATOR: Houser switches gears,
laying off blame for the murder of Julia Gaerte on his
former girlfriend and partner in crime, Angela Stone. Whether he was just
ignorant of the fact that he's incriminating himself,
or whether he didn't care, or whether he was so focused
on getting Angela in jail-- of what, I'm not sure. But either way,
he started talking about Angela being there,
what Angela's involvement was. Of course, he couldn't do that
without implicating himself also. MARK HEFFELFINGER: It
was quite exciting, because I have to be cool as
I could be too and not let him know that I'm excited
about the fact that he just implicated
himself in the murder. NARRATOR: The case against
Donald Houser is complete. Six years after 86-year-old
Julia Gaerte was murdered, her suspected killer
will stand trial. This was obviously one of the
strongest cases I'll ever see. NARRATOR: Steven Clouse
prosecutes the case against Donald Houser. Central to the state's
evidence is the DNA. This is the state's
exhibit number 28 that was admitted into
evidence in the trial. And it's the piece
of the curtain that Sergeant Kolb collected
from the house that contained Donald. Houser's blood stain. And right here, in this hole,
is the place where his blood was left as he cut himself entering
Mrs. Gaerte's residence. And it's from that
small little spot there that the case was broken. NARRATOR: On November 11,
Houser takes the stand and tells the jury
he is innocent and that he was on
drugs when he confessed. It's a story that
jurors don't buy when weighed against the
evidence stacked against him. We had an eyewitness
who testified well. We had a confession. We had physical evidence from
the scene the suspect left. And we also had
physical evidence recovered four years later
from his mother's home that he had stolen. All this together really made
for a great case to prosecute. NARRATOR: After 20
minutes of deliberations, the jury finds Donald Houser
guilty of murder and sentences him to life without parole. Meanwhile, Angela Stone
pleads guilty to burglary and gets 30 years. GREG BRICKER: Well it was-- I was happy-- happy
for the family, happy for the community,
happy for law enforcement that we could clear this
up and we've got somebody off the streets that's capable
of killing somebody like Mrs. Gaerte. Because that kind of person,
who knows what they can do? NARRATOR: For the
victim's family, the verdict answers
every question in the death of 86-year-old
Julia Gaerte save one. It is both the hardest and
simplest of questions, why? She was definitely
no threat to anyone. But it was just really,
really senseless, because she would have let them
had anything just to leave her alone. But they wanted more. And a really, really
great woman was lost. [music playing]
