But while while investigators had Grims DNA profile, there was nothing to identify him because he had never been arrested for anything that required his DNA to be put into the system, authorities said. DeRoos was found dead of a drug overdose in a hotel room in 1986. Did you encounter any technical issues? The subsequent investigation led Santa Cruz County police to a man named Eric Drummond, who had reportedly previously asked Smith on a date and was declined. Published 3:28 PM EST, Thu February 17, 2022. This is the fifth time the Sheriff's Homicide Unit has used investigative genetic genealogy to solve a cold case. A gruesome double homicide opened the year of 1956 in Great Falls, Montana. The man who would eventually be named as her killer, Raymond Moody, had been a person of interest in Brittanee Drexel's disappearance as far back as 2012 but until just recently, they had nothing solid connecting him to the crime. "The DNA evidence ended up being so incredibly key," Moore said. In this case, investigators were looking for relatives whose DNA matched those of the unidentified suspect in Dahns murder. The most stubborn cold case in the history of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, was finally cracked in 2022 thanks to an ingenious piece of investigative work. Despite ongoing searches, his disappearance remained unsolved for over four years. Moody had been a suspect since 2012, but it was not immediately made public what evidence led to his arrest. According to Garden Grove Deputy Police Chief Amir Al Farra, she was sexually assaulted and strangled to death. Originally from Rochester, New York, Drexel was spending her spring break vacation in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and was last seen walking from one hotel to another. Mr. Here are a dozen of the most stubbornly unresolved cold cases that were finally put to bed in 2022. The case went cold. In February 2019, DNA from Baggens clothes and body was submitted to a public genealogy database after previous attempts to match the DNA had been unsuccessful. You know you have family, you know you have family who loves you, but sometimes you do feel alone all the time.. "She was a firecracker -- very outgoing, not afraid of anything," her daughter said. Stephanie Pagones is a Digital Reporter for FOX Business and Fox News. In order to find another match to Mr. In recent years, companies like 23andMe and Ancestry have encouraged people to explore their genealogy by spitting into a tube and sending it off for analysis. Reyes was 9 when her mother was killed, and said she thinks about her every day. A local newspaper, the Reading Eagle, ran a front-page story seeking information on Kanes death. (The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children). Finally, in 2022, Pennsylvania State Police used genetic genealogy testing to identify the killer a local man named Scott Grim law enforcement officers said at a news conference last week. ", "This is truly a mothers worst nightmare," she said. 25, 2022 at 9:15 PM PDT. The case of the young woman known as "Princess Doe" is just a bit unusual in that the man responsible for the crime was identified by police long before the victim was. Schubert, only 18 at the time, had assisted other police departments on several cold cases. CNN has reached out to Karim Merchant, Jones public defender, for comment. Due to decomposition, it was tough to determine the girl's age, let alone her identity; at the time, authorities believed her to be about 7 years old. They declined to elaborate how they obtained his DNA when hes been dead for four years. Two years later, in 1989, a California woman, Renee Cuevas, was also found murdered. An undated image of Sharon Gallegos. Raymond Moody, 62, pleaded guilty Oct. 19, 2022, in Georgetown, South Carolina, to raping and killing 17-year-old Brittanee Drexel in 2009. It was hurtful. Both were signed "Jane Doe," and despite their best efforts, police were unable to identify the woman who would become known as the "Christmas tree lady" (via DC News Now). Genetic genealogy uses an unknown DNA sample and compares it to databases of DNA to look for partial, but not exact, matches. Cold Cases We Were Surprised And Relieved To See Finally Solved Rima Pundir February 23, 2022 2.9k votes 606 voters 31.4k views List Rules Vote up all the cold cases that were closed in unexpected ways. She was a great mother.. 2. But, after 52 years, Curran's family finally has closure. A spot of blood on the victims shirt that seemed to suggest the culprit stood over the body and bled on the shirt as he ransacked the victims pockets. 12:45 PM EDT, Fri March 18, 2022. New DNA evidence shows someone else did it. Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox. To date, this cold case is one of the oldest to be recently solved with DNA evidence.[2]. His remains were identified 47 years later. The lack of closure has added to the distress of losing their mother, she said. The woman took her fromher home in Fort Worth, Texas, in August 1971. A college student disappeared in 1976. 7.6K 402K views 6 months ago In this video, we will talk about decades-old cold cases that were solved in 2022. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper. Her cause of death was stab wounds to the chest and her death was ruled a homicide, investigators said. or redistributed. The DNA from the saliva matched what was found on Kanes clothing, authorities said this week. Using genealogy techniques, detectives discovered that the murderer had ancestral origins in the small Italian town of Gasperina, and that only a couple thousand people with such ties lived in the area at the time of the killing. Dean was reportedly involved with a Jesus People organization before his death. The results came back to match a man named Marcus Love. Police theorized that the killing may have been part of a pattern of attempted child abductions going on at the time, and over the years following, they investigated a slew of potential suspects, even resorting to the not-so-solid technique of hypnotizing subjects in their attempts to elicit a confession. Another victim of a brutal murder who went unidentified for decades, Lina Reyes Geddes was found near a spring in the vicinity of Lake Powell, Utah, in 1998, shot, bound, and wrapped in a sleeping bag. "One of our sisters called her daughter the youngest one and her daughter led us to her mom," Jeff Highsmith,who had never met his older sister, previously told Fox News Digital. Police determined that Mr. Smith had indeed lived in the area at the time and had, in fact, been arrested for but never convicted of sexual assault and attempted murder in Las Vegas in 1998. Mr. Smith died by suicide in 1999.[1]. After what investigators called an exhaustive process, nine family trees were created with nearly 1,300 people connected to Robertson either through blood or marriage. Two years later, in 1989, a California woman, Renee Cuevas, was also found murdered. Highsmith was only 21 months old when shewas kidnappedby a woman purporting to be a babysitter more than a half a century ago. Grim died in 2018, but through an undisclosed method, police were able to obtain a sample of his DNA to match the evidence retrieved from the letter. The keys to the car appeared to have been dropped between the drivers seat and the door and were not readily visible, the document says. "When I looked at her, I just knew. In a statement, the Fairfax County Sheriff's Department thanked "several generations of FCPD detectives" along with Othram, the company that supplied the genome sequencing technology and expressed its conviction that said the technology will help them to resolve many more unsolved cases in the future. As later reported by the Great Falls Tribune, 18-year-old Lloyd Bogle was found shot in the head with his arms tied behind his back with his own belt. Cates had developed a habit of borrowing and pawning power tools from Stagner, a city maintenance worker, in order to support this habit; even Cates' own family members had long suspected his involvement in the killing, but police were never able to gather enough evidence to support a probable cause warrant for his arrest. 00:22 Sophie Sergie04:45 Marise Chiverella07:56 Roxanne Leig. Colorado police solve four decades-old homicide cold cases with DNA from exhumed killer Vianne Falcon, Falcon-Dewey's mother, told CNN affiliate KING on Wednesday that she was emotionally. She was last seen alive around 8:10 a.m., according to Pennsylvania State Police. He has been a guest speaker on numerous national radio and television stations and is a five time published author. officials say In May 1987, 23-year-old Shannon Lloyd of Orange County, California, was murdered in her apartment. But she was disappointed to learn that Grim had died in 2018 of natural causes at age 58 and will not pay for robbing her and her siblings of a childhood with a mother. However, in 2020, Bedford Police Sgt. In addition to providing closure for the families and friends of the victims, every closed cold case serves another important purpose: Letting those who commit murder know that homicide investigators are the Terminators of law enforcement, and that (to paraphrase Kyle Reese) they will not stop EVER! At the same time our family will always feel the emptiness and the sorrow of her absence, said Carmen Marie Radtke, Marises sister, during the news conference. Then, in 2021, police turned to the relatively new field of genetic genealogy. Many questions still remain about the case, but Holly has reportedly been in contact with her newfound family members. I worked the streets.". DNA testing of Curran's housecoat at the lab in Florida further confirmed that DeRoos had committed the crime. A Warner Bros. Thats where genetic genealogy came in. Consequently, we will continue to ask ourselves what would have been or could have been.. A blood sample found in Louises car back in October 1989 was tested for DNA. Cottingham, now 73, has said he has killed as many as 100 people in New Jersey and New York and is already spending life in prison for the 1960 murders of several females. The man behind the abduction, rape and death of upstate New York teenager Brittanee Drexel pleaded guilty in October to a case that went cold after the 17-year-olds disappearance during spring break 2009. Hall's daughter, happy to finally have closure, had a message for those facing the unsolved murder of a loved one: "Please don't give up. She was spending the summer working as a maid at a local motel and taking graduate courses at the University of Vermont. There was little evidence left at the scene, and they went unidentified until late 2021, when genealogical researchers tracked down the John Doe's sister. Fortunately, the profession seems to attract those who have this quality, as proven by the many decades-old cases which finally see their resolutions every single year. As with many such cases, the DNA evidence taken from Smith's body was insufficient to pin the crime on Drummond in the '80s, and although there was significant circumstantial evidence of his involvement, he walked free for nearly four decades. Please keep after. Although her mother had a dark past that included drug use and prostitution, she was trying to turn her life around, Reyes said. (NCMEC/ Highsmith family Facebook page). A match was made, confirming Edward Geddes as the murderer and giving a modicum of closure to the family of Lina Reyes Geddes, who for 20 years had been known to Utah law enforcement only as the "Maidenwater victim," after the area in which she was found. Trieb said in a report that his team determined forensic evidence would be key to solving the case because of its age. When 53-year-old John Stagner was beaten to death in his bed in Orlando, Florida, in 1992, police honed in on a suspect almost immediately, according to Fox 35 Orlando: Ronald Cates, a friend of Stagner's who happened to be a drug addict. She was found two days later, sexually assaulted and strangled. Rita Curran was a 24-year-old second grade teacher when she was violently murdered in her Burlington apartment in July 1971. The window screen was cut out of her bedroom window, but nothing was stolen, and investigators suspected the screen had been cut after the murder to make the window look like an entry point. Anna Kane, in an undated family photo. No child should ever have to grow up without their mom.. According to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, the Highsmith family had just moved to the Fort Worth area, and Melissa's mother placed a local newspaper ad seeking a babysitter. In this case, it led back to Rueben Smith. Investigators analyzed Kanes clothing and found traces of an unknown mans DNA. Now they're using DNA to help cops crack cold cases. Then Reyes got a call last week from a detective about a stunning development in the case. Most recently, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to another 25 years to life in prison for the rape and violent murder of Diane Cusick. A DNA sample taken at the time of that arrest was eventually used to connect him to the Lloyd and Cuevas slayings. "We came into this like we come into all cases," AWP diver Doug Bishop explained. Witness testimony and even the confession of an alleged victim brought varying levels of closure to unsolved crimes. (Nassau County District Attorney's Office). appreciated. According to Mosby, the clothes had never been tested, and DNA evidence confirmed that Syed was not involved in his girlfriend's murder. Jerome Frank Jones, 51, has been charged with aggravated murder in the 1994 deaths of Stacy Falcon-Dewey, 23, and her 3-year-old son, Jacob Dewey, in Renton, Washington, according to the documents filed Tuesday. 2 min; DEC 14, 2022; 3 YEAR OLD COLD CASE SOLVED The circumstances around what led up to her death remain a mystery, 34 years later -- but DNA evidence points to her killer. Theyre trying to determine whether he knew Kane, and have urged anyone who knows the nature of their relationship to reach out. The body of a young child tragically known as "Little Miss Nobody" was identified in February after remaining a mystery for over 60 years. Louise was eventually arrested for the double homicide in 2022.[3]. Legal Statement. Not long after finding Dean and Tina's identities, investigators began to search for Holly. While it's undetermined who killed Dean and Tina, and whether it was their killer(s) who gave Holly up for adoption, family members have their suspicions. Related: Top 10 Grim Cold Cases With Recent Twists And Turns. Police were hoping this was the break in the case they needed, but the DNA didnt return any matches. The family did not see Melissa for decades until November. According to WRDW News, the case is believed to be the first time that both a murder victim and perpetrator were identified using DNA technology in the same case. Information about the babysitter has not been released, although Melissa said she contacted the woman who raised her, who admitted that she was the missing child. 2023 Cable News Network. More evidence, including Curran's clothes, was sent to a lab in Florida in 2022 where they performed new DNA-extracting techniques. Using DNA from living relatives, the little girl was finally identified as Sharon Lee Gallegos, a 4-year-old who was abducted from her grandmother's home in Alamagordo, New Mexico 500 miles from where her body had been discovered in July 1960. Using genetic genealogy and familial DNA, police in Colorado have solved the decades-old cases of the deaths of four females, saying the killer was a man who died by suicide in jail in 1981.. It started as a hobby. NEBRASKA MAN ID'D AS MINNESOTA COLD CASE MURDER VICTIM MELISSA HIGHSMITH The real Melissa Highsmith beside a colorized photo. As we've seen, DNA technology is growing by leaps and bounds every year and while no workable DNA profile could be created at that time, it was a different story just seven years later. Moody confessed and led investigators to Brittanee's remains, but his belated cooperation did nothing to keep the entire book from getting thrown at him in court. (Nassau County District Attorney's Office). All of that stuff was preserved the way it should be, because they knew probably somewhere down the line whatever they collected could be that little piece of evidence (to solve the case), Trate said. On July 31, 1960, the decomposed body of a small child, dubbed "Little Miss Nobody" was found just outside of Congress, Arizona in Yavapai County and she was never formally identified. In May 2020, investigators started using investigative genetic genealogy, which combines DNA evidence and traditional genealogy, to find biological connection between people. JonBenet Ramsey cold case: DNA expert explains how mystery might be solved in short order CeCe Moore is the chief genetic genealogist at Parabon NanoLabs, a Virginia-based DNA tech firm The murder caused ripples of fear in a time when many Burlingtonresidents left front doors unlocked, and the killer remained a mystery for decades, despite the police looking into hundreds of tips. The bodies of Falcon-Dewey and her son were discovered on October 28, 1994, after a Seattle Times newspaper delivery person called 911 and reported seeing the mothers body, according to a probable cause document. Meanwhile, detectives sent the genetic evidence from the cigarette butt to a genealogy company to see if a bigger database of DNA could help them find the killer. In 1988, Robertson worked as local tow truck driver in San Diego, according to investigators, but after Dahns murder, he left his family and moved about 20 miles away to Lakeside, California. In October 2022, Moody was sentenced to life in prison plus two consecutive 30-year stretches, ensuring that the now-62-year-old will never walk free again. While the identification of Kane's killer provided a measure of closure to her daughter, Reyes was understandably disappointed that Grim had eluded justice by way of dying. Wise died in a car crash in 1999, but that fact did nothing to diminish the power of the statement given by the FBI's Atlanta office in the wake of the resolution of the case. Richard Cottingham, nicknamed the "Torso Killer" or "Times Square killer," allegedly admitted in December to killing five women on Long Island, New York, in the late 60s, early 70s. "They weren't going to bring Rita Curran back but they could at least bring closure," he said in an interview after the news conference. You've successfully subscribed to this newsletter! Sign up for our trending newsletter to get the latest news of the day. In May 2022, genome sequencing technology became available to the Fairfax police department, enabling investigators to reach out to potential family members. Soon after the murder, William DeRoos left his then-wife, moved to Thailand and became a monk. In an interview with Burlington police in the fall of 2022, Michelle DeRoos, who now goes by another name, said that her husband at the time had a criminal history and told her not to mention to police that he was not home at the time of the murder because they would try to accuse him of it. Four-year-old Sharon Lee Gallegos partially decomposed body was found over 500 miles from her New Mexico home July 31, 1960. "And after 50 years, they did.". I couldnt believe it, she said, referring to the day police told her about the killings. Did you encounter any technical issues? However, not all of these breakthroughs were the result of forensic genetic genealogy. 2. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, More evidence, including Curran's clothes, was sent to a lab in Florida in 2022 where they performed new DNA-extracting techniques. The team has. Elkhart County, Indiana, is where, in May 2002, Robert Reed was found robbed and murdered inside his residence. Case Breakers calls for police to conduct a DNA test to verify their findings; Fox News' Eric Shawn has the details. Reyes said shes still bothered by the image the media painted of her mother, who was unemployed at the time of her death. It was abusive, and I ran away at 15 years old. No one knew what had become of her. In the world of unsolved mysteries, it is always satisfying to see some of. But in November 2022, a DNA test from the website 23andMe connected Highsmith's children to the family she was born into. New field of genetic genealogy and taking graduate courses at the time of her death stab! 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Name in News delivered first thing every morning to your inbox thinks about her every day date! As MINNESOTA cold case sample taken at the time, had assisted other police departments several. The lack of closure has added to the chest and her death was stab wounds to the and... Children to the Lloyd and Cuevas slayings body was found two days later, in 1989, a test! Lack of closure to unsolved crimes, I just knew soon after the,. Name in News delivered first thing every morning to your inbox, moved to Thailand and became a monk seen... About the case, but not exact, matches came in to verify findings! & Exploited Children ) exact, matches their mother, who was at. Homicide, investigators were looking for relatives whose DNA matched those of day! Help cops crack cold cases that were finally put to bed in 2022. [ ]! Closure has added to the day police told her about the case because of its.! Woman, Renee Cuevas, was sent to a lab in Florida further confirmed that DeRoos committed. Has used investigative genetic genealogy time the Sheriff & # x27 ; D as MINNESOTA cold case is one the! I just knew wounds to the Lloyd and Cuevas slayings said in a hotel room in 1986,... Unsolved crimes defender, for comment of Orange County, California, was sent to a lab in Florida confirmed... How they obtained his DNA when hes been dead for four years 9 when her mother who! Pm EDT, Fri March 18, 2022. [ 3 ] Thailand and became a....

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