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. She also said DeRoos strangled her once, the same way Curran died. The family did not see Melissa for decades until November. Well, here we are in 2022, and that little piece of evidence that they collected was exactly what we needed.. Woman found dead in 1971 identified 52 years later after community fundraiser for DNA testing, How race affects social media efforts to find missing kids, hours of research through genealogical records and public records. Dean was reportedly involved with a Jesus People organization before his death. The technique is used to create family trees based on genetic similarities to hopefully lead back to the owner of the unknown sample. (The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children). Beyer was adopted by a family friend and said he saw his grandparents and biological family as often as he could. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children described how Sharon was with cousins playing behind her grandmothers home in Alamogordo, New Mexico, July 21, 1960, when she was kidnapped. when he met his second wife, Sarah Hepting. 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. "We determine if someone is missing and if someone is missing with a vehicle. Kane was reportedly working as a prostitute at the time she was killed and may have been meeting a customer, Womer said, adding that police are trying to determine whether it was Grim. Sign up for our trending newsletter to get the latest news of the day. Photographer: Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg via Getty Images. the one of the notorious Golden State Killer. 5 Decades-Old Cold Cases Finally Solved Twenty-three-year-old Tonya McKinley had gone to Darryl's Bar & Grille in Pensacola, Florida, to celebrate the upcoming new year of 1985 but never returned home to her 18-month-old son. 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). Syed had been convicted of murdering his high school ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, in 1999. Despite the abundance of blood at the scene, none of the DNA could be conclusively linked to anyone other than the victim. One March day in 1983, she turned down a stranger's request for a date and a short time later, her body was pulled from a nearby river (pictured), shocking what was at the time a cozy, tight-knit community, according to the Los Angeles Times. She was found two days later, sexually assaulted and strangled. Dukat was only 8 years old, grabbed by a stranger and killed with a 20-pound rock in a shallow stream on her short walk home from school, according to the Columbus Dispatch. That is, until 2019, when Detective Sgt. William DeRoos was married to Michelle DeRoos in the summer of 1971 in Burlington, about two weeks before the murder. In April of that year, their 17-year-old daughter Brittanee took off for spring break, without her parents' permission, to Myrtle Beach, Florida, and never came home (via Democrat & Chronicle). For 34 years, Reyes, along with her two brothers and their grandmother, have wondered who killed Kane. She was a firecracker very outgoing, not afraid of anything, very honest, blunt and caring, she said. Investigators were surprised when Dean's sister, after learning of her brother's death, asked, Where's the baby?. Forte would have been 22 at the time of the crime. This is fourth oldest cold case to be solved in in the country using genetic genealogy and the oldest in the state of Pennsylvania, according to state police Cpl. 2. After she hadn't been responding to calls from her family, her father and two maintenance workers made their way into her apartment. Legal Statement. (Jeff Highsmith). When Diane Lynn Dahn missed her shift at the San Diego Transit Corporation on May 2, 1988, a coworker went to her apartment to check on her. The 1980 murder of Asenath Dukat was one that shook the Columbus, Ohio community for a simple reason. After more than three decades of questions and grief, Tamika Reyes finally knows who killed her mother. He died in the hospital three days later, and his murder would become the oldest such unsolved crime in the history of the county, according to the New York Post. The Best New Cooking & Food Shows of 2022, 2022 Movie Moments That Punched Us in the Gut, True Crime Cold Cases That Had Updates In 2022. If a possible match is found, genealogists can build out family trees to help police find potential suspects. This is the fifth time the Sheriffs Homicide Unit has used investigative genetic genealogy to solve a cold case. "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. Fortes name never came up over the years, police said, and they believe this was a random attack. 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. The investigation determined that Forte was the suspect in Chiverellas death. It also did not match the known DNA of the police's 13 main suspects. Reyes was 9 when her mother was killed, and said she thinks about her every day. Former Sen. Patrick Leahy,who was county prosecutor at the time of the murder, said he saw many gruesome crimes during his time as prosecutor but Rita Curran's family stayed in this thoughts for years after. CNN has reached out to Karim Merchant, Jones public defender, for comment. Beichlers case was revived in 2019 when prosecutors released composite images of a man whose DNA was supposedly left at the scene. In March 2022, a Chattahoochee County Grand Jury made the decision to indict 64-year-old Marcellus McCluster for the murder of then-20-year-old Rene Dawn Blackmore of Arizona. Published: Apr. Your effort and contribution in providing this feedback is much This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Thanks to these samples, a number of high-profile crimes have been solved in the past few years, perhaps most notably the arrest and conviction of the Golden State Killer. I knew," Jeff Highsmith said. In 1988, state authorities in Georgia were presented with a crime that would seem nearly impossible to solve: The killing of 19-year-old Stacey Chahorski, whose body was found alongside a highway near the state's border with Alabama. A man named Steve Branch was identified as a person of interest. 2023 FOX News Network, LLC. Raymond Moody, 62, pleaded guilty Oct. 19, 2022, in Georgetown, South Carolina, to raping and killing 17-year-old Brittanee Drexel in 2009. 2023 Cable News Network. In December 1975, 19-year-old Lindy Beichler was murdered in her Lancaster, Pennsylvania, apartment. Her siblings on Thursday described her as a quiet, sweet girl that had aspirations of becoming a nun. In 1971, Melissa Highsmith was 22 months old when a babysitter kidnapped her in Fort Worth, TX. ", "This is truly a mothers worst nightmare," she said. The nurse told a security guard, who relayed the information to Orlando police, who paid a visit to Cates in the hospital where they were able to obtain a confession on an officer's body cam. The search for Melissa Highsmith had a rare happy ending. In May 2021, police in Colorado said a man they had rescued from a snowstorm in. Going over the old case files, they zeroed in on Larry David Smith, who had been interviewed in connection with the slaying in 1973 but was never seriously considered a suspect. Unfortunately, all the evidence against him was circumstantial, and without enough to connect Louise to the murder, the case went cold. In December 1996, police stumbled upon a mystery fit for a detective novel. All rights reserved. And I went running down the street like a wild woman until I found a place I could just collapse and cry.. Cold case team says it's ID'd Zodiac Killer. The police don't give up.". At the time, the San Diego County Sheriffs homicide unit conducted an extensive investigation, but the department came up short on identifying a suspect until now. The young mother and dance instructors own father discovered her remains brutally beaten, duct taped and sexually assaulted in her vehicle parked outside the mall. Justice has been served today.. No one knew what had become of her. These two cases were investigated separately until 2003, when the national DNA database CODIS revealed that samples from both crimes matched the same man. More than 27 years after a woman and her son were killed in a Seattle suburb, authorities have charged a man in their deaths. 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. The suspects profile was created and uploaded into commercial genealogy sites that allow law enforcement agencies to participate, police said. Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. Two years later, in 1989, a California woman, Renee Cuevas, was also found murdered. 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. Discovery Company. CNN Sans & 2016 Cable News Network. Highsmith was only 21 months old when shewas kidnappedby a woman purporting to be a babysitter more than a half a century ago. These familial matches led police to David Sinopoli, one of Beichlers neighbors at the time. Nearly 58 years later, police solve cold case murder of 9-year-old Pennsylvania girl The men responsible for the killings were identified as Billy Sunday Birt, Bobby Gene Gaddis, Charles David. CNN . FOLEY, Ala. ( WALA) - Twenty-two years ago, a man's body was pulled from Styx River in . Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper. 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. After more than 25 years, she was finally identified as Joyce Meyer, a woman who had drifted apart from her family after moving to Virginia in the mid-'80s. On Tuesday,. appreciated. Mark Beyer, who was 2-years-old when his mother was murdered. While Rice told police the two were best friends, others in their circle reported that the two weren't getting along, and that Knutson was afraid of Rice. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig). On Tuesday, investigators said they had solved the casethrough modern DNA and genealogy technology. To law enforcement agencies everywhere, arguably one of the greatest of these technologies would be the myriad uses of DNA profiling and, more recently, forensic genealogy. Las Vegas police use DNA testing and genealogical research to solve 42-year-old homicide of teen girl, Its unfortunate my nephew never had the chance to know his mom, Dahn-Minter said during a police news conference. Lee had disappeared and her body was found several weeks later, strangled. Because Forte had been dead since 1980, DNA was taken from his exhumed body. We share these cases to highlight their resolution and bring closure to the victims and the community . This led investigators to believe that whoever wrote the letter had committed the homicide.. The 17-year-old had left home in Chili, NY, without telling her parents, who were going through a divorce. And grief, Tamika Reyes finally knows who killed Kane about two weeks before the murder, the case cold! 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