See how DNA helped solve the murder of 16-year-old Sarah Yarborough almost 30 years after the crime.
Where’s Sarah Yarborough?
Sarah Yarborough
Federal Way High School yearbook via Laura Yarborough
It was the morning of Saturday, Dec. 14, 1991, when 16-year-old Sarah Yarborough arrived early to drill team practice at Federal Way High School near Seattle, Washington. Later, when members of her team showed up, they saw that Sarah’s car was in the parking lot. But Sarah was not there.
A 13-year-old witness
Drew Miller
Drew Miller
Drew Miller, who was just 13 years old at the time, lived down the street from the high school. He and a friend were going skateboarding that morning, and took a shortcut through the school grounds. That’s when Miller says they noticed a mysterious man.
A man in the bushes
Miller says the mysterious man kept to himself and walked ahead of the boys. Miller says they didn’t think much of it until they came across a horrendous scene. There in the bushes, where the man had just been, was the body of a young woman.
King County Superior Court
Miller says the man walked out of the bushes ahead of the boys. Miller says they didn’t think much of it at first. But then they came across a horrendous scene. There in the bushes, where the man had just been, was the body of a young woman. It was Sarah Yarborough.
The crime scene
Sarah Yarborough’s clothing was found in the grass near where her body was discovered.
King County Superior Court
Sarah’s body was found about 300 feet away from her car. She was partially dressed, and a pile of her clothing lay in the grass nearby.
Sketches of the suspect
Witnesses Drew Miller and his friend who was with him the morning they found Sarah Yarborough’s body, worked with police and a sketch of the man they saw in the bushes was released to the public. Police would later release a more elaborate sketch.
King County Sheriff’s Office
Miller and his friend worked with police to create sketches of the man they saw at Sarah’s crime scene. The sketches were then released to the public and posted all around the Federal Way area.
A case gone cold
Sarah Yarborough
Mary Beth Thome
Investigators found the killer’s DNA on several items of Sarah’s clothing that were at the crime scene. As a result, they had a full male DNA profile of the suspect. Family and friends thought they would find Sarah’s killer quickly. But as weeks stretched into months, then years, there was no match.
The beginnings of DNA technology
FBI/Wikicommons
By the early 2000s, investigators had received and looked into over 3,000 leads. They entered the DNA from the crime scene into the recently established CODIS system – a national DNA database that includes profiles of convicted offenders. But as the years went by, there was still no match.
Taking a chance on forensic genetic genealogy
In 2011, King County investigators reached out to Colleen Fitzpatrick, one of the pioneers of forensic genetic genealogy, to inquire about using the new investigative tool.
CBS News
In 2011, investigators reached out to Colleen Fitzpatrick to inquire about using forensic genetic genealogy to help come up with a possible suspect. Forensic genetic genealogy is the practice of using software to compare unknown DNA profiles to information from public DNA databases and searching family trees to identify suspects.
A break in the case
CBS News graphics
In 2011, 20 years after Sarah’s murder, Fitzpatrick traced Sarah’s killer’s family tree back to a man named Robert Fuller, whose family had come to America on the Mayflower. Fitzpatrick says it felt hopeful, as it was the first break in the case in 20 years.
After eight years of DNA searching …
Edward, left, and Patrick Nicholas.
King County Sheriff’s Office/King County Superior Court
In September 2019, Fitzpatrick’s team made a breakthrough. They came up with two new possible suspects: brothers Edward and Patrick Nicholas, who as the DNA showed, were descendants of Robert Fuller. Edward’s DNA profile was already in the CODIS database, and wasn’t a match.
A suspect
Patrick Nicholas
King County Superior Court
Investigators then zeroed in on Patrick Nicholas. Detectives discovered that around the time of Sarah Yarborough’s murder, Nicholas had often taken a bus route that went past Federal Way High School. Back then, Nicholas was 27 years old and is seen here in a booking photo from a few years after.
A plan to capture Patrick Nicholas’ DNA
Undercover detectives came up with a plan to follow Patrick Nicholas in the hopes of obtaining a surreptitious DNA sample.
King County Sheriff’s Office
Undercover detectives followed Patrick Nicholas to a laundromat. They watched him go outside and smoke two cigarettes. Nicholas dropped the two cigarette butts and a napkin. Undercover detectives collected them for DNA testing.
A DNA match
The DNA on Patrick Nicholas’ cigarette butts matched the DNA found at Sarah Yarborough’s crime scene.
King County Superior Court
All three items were rushed to a crime lab and within days, detectives received the call they had been waiting for. The DNA from the cigarette butts matched the DNA found at the Yarborough crime scene.
Unraveling Patrick Nicholas’ criminal history
Patrick Nicholas in a 2019 booking photo.
King County Sheriff’s Office
Patrick Nicholas was arrested and charged with Sarah Yarborough’s murder. His previous criminal record included five sexual assaults that investigators knew of, none of which had required him to submit his DNA. Therefore, there was no record of him in the CODIS database.
Evidence revealed at trial
Some of the evidence found during a 2019 search of Patrick Nicholas’ house.
King County Sheriff’s Office
In the spring of 2023, Patrick Nicholas went on trial for the murder of Sarah Yarborough. Prosecutors revealed evidence found during a search of Nicholas’ home around the time of his arrest. This included a torn photograph from a magazine of a woman in a cheerleading outfit.
In searching Nicholas’ home, detectives also found a newspaper from 1994 that had on its front page an article about the Sarah Yarborough case.
The verdict
After nine days of testimony, it took jurors just over a day to reach a verdict.
Pool
On May 10, 2023, Patrick Nicholas was found guilty of first-degree murder and second-degree murder. The jury decided both had been committed with a sexual motivation.
Patrick Nicholas sentenced
Laura Yarborough, Sarah’s mother, reacts to hearing the guilty verdicts.
Pool
At Nicholas’ sentencing hearing two weeks after his conviction, Sarah’s Yarborough’s family and friends took to the podium to say all that Patrick Nicholas had taken from them. Nicholas received a sentence of almost 46 years.
Sarah Yarborough, never forgotten
Sarah Yarborough
Katie Roy
The trial brought Sarah Yarborough’s friends and family together. They say Sarah left a legacy of love and she will never be forgotten.
Authorities in North Carolina have made a breakthrough in a decades-old cold case involving a woman found by road crews on a highway near Jacksonville in 1990. After 33 years, the woman’s remains were identified recently using updated DNA technologies and forensic genealogy tests, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, which is handling the case, wrote on Facebook.
The remains were identified as Lisa Coburn Kesler, who was 20 at the time of her death and previously spent most of her life in Jackson County, Georgia, Orange County Sheriff Charles Blackwood announced.
“Our vision statement talks about the ability to be able to visit and travel through our community safely,” said Blackwood in a video message shared on Wednesday morning. “It took a long time to be able to solve this case. But the work, the diligence and not giving up, shows that we’re staying true to our mission.”
Kesler’s body was originally discovered along the side of I-40 East near New Hope Church Road, about 50 miles west of Jacksonville in southeastern North Carolina. Officials have said they believe that someone strangled her about one week before the discovery in 1990, and dumped her body on the roadside.
The woman’s identity was unknown for years, despite investigators’ efforts to learn more about her through potential witness interviews, missing persons reports and facial reconstruction techniques that allowed them to create a bust of the victim and model of her skull. They generated digital illustrations and approximate images of her that were then sent out online, hoping someone would recognize her, and pursued “hundreds of leads” overall, the sheriff said.
A digital illustration by Carl Koppleman (left) and a representation of Kesler’s possible appearance created by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Orange County Sheriff’s Office via Facebook
But the identity remained a mystery until a new investigator, Dylan Hendricks, took over the case in 2020 and collaborated with the State Bureau of Investigation in North Carolina. They collected a hair fragment from the remains and sent it to a forensics laboratory for DNA profiling. A forensic genealogist, Leslie Kaufman, who specializes in homicide cases involving unidentified human remains, used databases to link the resulting DNA profile to people whom she believed to be the victim’s paternal cousins.
Subsequent interviews with those family members by investigators, plus additional tests cross-referencing the victim’s DNA and a DNA sample taken from a maternal relative, eventually led them to confirm Kesler’s identity.
“Essentially, there was a Lisa-shaped hole on a branch of the family tree right where the DNA told us Lisa should be, and no one knew where she was,” Hendricks said in a statement. Clyde Gibbs, a medical examiner specialist with the office of the chief medical examiner, has since updated the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System to reflect the new development in Kesler’s case. The chief medical examiner will also amend Kesler’s death certificate to include her name and other details about her, according to the Orange County sheriff.
“Throughout the decades, some of our finest investigators kept plugging away. When you can’t close a case, it gets under your skin. You might set the file aside for a while, but you keep coming back to it, looking to see something you didn’t notice before, or hoping information gathered in ensuing cases has relevance to your cold case,” Blackwood said in a separate statement.
The sheriff also detailed his office’s work on Kesler’s case, and what work still needs to be done to find her killer, in an editorial for The News of Orange County newspaper.
“I am very happy we solved the decades-old mystery of this young woman’s identity, and I hope it provides solace to her remaining family members,” Blackwood wrote, adding, “Our work on this case is not finished.”
“Although we collectively demonstrated the value of dogged determination, we still need to identify Lisa’s killer,” the sheriff continued. “There is no statute of limitations on murder, and the investigation remains open.”
Anyone with information potentially related to the case has been asked to report what they know to Hendricks by calling 919-245-2951. Tips can also be submitted anonymously on the Orange County Sheriff’s Office website.
The mother of a newborn girl whose body was found in a New Jersey park on Christmas Eve nearly 40 years ago has been identified and is now charged in the death, authorities announced Thursday.
The infant, dubbed “Baby Mary” by a police chaplain, was found by two young boys in a secluded park in Mendham Township in 1984, Morris County Prosecutor Robert Carrol said. The child’s umbilical cord was still attached when she was found, and she was wrapped inside a towel inside of a plastic bag. She was alive when she was abandoned, Carrol said.
The woman, who was 17 at the time, was arrested in South Carolina on April 24 and charged as a juvenile with manslaughter. She is not in custody but is “being monitored,” Carroll said.
The woman’s name was not released since she was a juvenile when the death occurred. The identity of the child’s father – who was 19 at the time – was also determined, Carroll said, but authorities said he was unaware the baby had been born and he was not involved in her death. He died in 2009.
Authorities annouce an arrest in the 1984 cold case death of “Baby Mary” in New Jersey, on Sept. 7, 2023.
Morris County Prosecutor’s Office
A possible motive or reason for abandoning the baby has not been disclosed.
A breakthrough in the case came several years ago when a DNA match between the infant and the father was made, Carroll said, though he declined further comment.
“The death and abandonment of this baby girl is a tragic loss and even after nearly 40 years, remains just as heartbreaking,” Carroll said in a statement. “Justice may not take the form the public has imagined all these years, but we believe with this juvenile delinquency complaint, justice is being served for Baby Mary. Nothing can right this terrible wrong.”
At the time of the newborn’s death, New Jersey did not have a safe haven law that allows
parents to anonymously surrender a newborn baby at a hospital, police station or fire station. The Safe Haven Infant Protection Act became law in the state in 2000.
“I want young parents to know that there is help available,” Sheriff James Gannon said. “If the baby appears to be 30 days old or less, and free of any abuse or neglect, the baby will be accepted with no questions asked.”
“Baby Mary” is buried at St. Joseph’s Church in Mendham Township.
“Every Christmas Eve for the past 35 years members of our department and community have left their own families at noon to remember Baby Mary at a service by her grave, to ensure she is never forgotten,” Mendham Township Police Chief Ross Johnson said. “Today we are finally able to bring closure to this case and the community that has supported her.”
Police charged a 61-year-old man with murder 30 years after he allegedly abducted and killed a 12-year-old girl after she got off a Florida school bus, officials said Thursday.
A DNA match from another case helped police identify Jeffrey Norman Crum as the alleged culprit in Jennifer Odom’s death, Hernando County Sheriff Al Nienhuis said during a press conference. Crum is already serving two life sentences for sexual battery and attempted murder. A grand jury indicted him Monday on first-degree murder, kidnapping and sexual battery charges in the Odom case.
“This is a bad guy who is very violent, who enjoyed violence, who enjoyed hurting people, particularly women, particularly taking advantage of them and raping them,” Nienhuis said. “There’s evidence in his history, and some of it is part of the case, that he was very violent when it came to his acts against women.”
Photos show Jeffrey Norman Crum in 1993 and in 2023.
Hernando County Sheriff’s Office
Odom went missing on Feb. 19, 1993, in Pasco County. Law enforcement and volunteers scoured the area, searching 60 square miles, officials said. Six days later, on Feb. 25, a man and woman found Odom’s body in an abandoned orange grove. Her backpack and clarinet case, which were not with her body, were discovered two years later by a couple hunting for scrap metal.
Investigators have focused on a blue truck over the years. Odom’s classmates told officers they saw a faded blue pickup truck slowly following Odom as she walked home.
Hundreds of leads were followed over the years and the investigation was never closed, Nienhuis said. As technology advanced, investigators on the case had evidence tested and retested.
DNA evidence from a separate Pasco County case helped detectives identify Crum as a suspect in Odom’s death. There were no matches or leads in a national DNA database, but in recent years the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which had been comparing DNA to find close matches in the system, identified one of Crum’s family members — which then led them to Crum.
Jennifer Odom
Hernando County Sheriff’s Office
Crum, who police had not identified as a suspect in Odom’s case before then, quickly became the number one suspect in the girl’s death. Dozens of people were interviewed after Crum’s name came up, and police built a case against him.
Police would not share many details because of the open case, but officials said Crum owned a blue truck and was familiar with the area where Odom was taken and killed.
Prosecutors will treat this as a death penalty in the case, State Attorney Bill Gladson said.
“This is every parent’s worst nightmare,” he said. “This is a thing that keeps parents up at night, worrying about their children.”
Nienhuis said he would not be surprised if there were other victims and asked anyone with information to come forward.
Police have arrested an 83-year-old former pastor on murder charges nearly 50 years after he allegedly abducted and killed 8-year-old Gretchen Harrington in Pennsylvania, officials said Monday.
David Zandstra has been charged with criminal homicide, first, second and third degree murder, kidnapping of a minor and the possession of an instrument of crime. He was interviewed during the initial investigation in 1975, but it wasn’t until a police interview this year that investigators were able to gather enough information for an arrest, District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer said.
Harrington left her Marple home around 9 a.m. on the morning of Aug. 15, 1975 for her summer bible camp, Stollsteimer said. The camp used the premises of both the Reformed Presbyterian Church and the Trinity Church Chapel Christian Reform Church, where Zandstra was a pastor.
Zandstra would run opening exercises at Trinity and was one of the people responsible for bringing the kids from Trinity to Reformed, where Harrington’s father worked as the pastor, officials said.
David Zandstra, 83, is charged with murder in the 1975 killing of 8-year-old Gretchen Harrington.
Office of the Delaware County District Attorney
On the day of her disappearance, Harrington’s father became worried when she didn’t arrive at Reformed, and police were contacted by 11:23 a.m.
Harrington’s skeletal remains were found two months later in Ridley Creek State Park, authorities said.
During the investigation, a witness told police they’d seen Harrington speaking with the driver of either a two-tone Cadillac or a green station wagon, the latter of which Zandstra was known to use. Police interviewed Zandstra in October of 1975, but he denied seeing Harrington on the day she’d disappeared.
On Jan. 2 of this year, investigators spoke with a woman who alleged Zandstra had abused her as a child. The alleged victim, who was not identified, was best friends with Zandstra’s daughter and slept over at the home often, authorities said. She told police that during one sleepover when she was 10, she woke up to Zandstra groping her. She told Zandstra’s daughter what had happened and the daughter “replied that the defendant did that sometimes,” the district attorney’s office said.
Investigators then met with Zandstra in Marietta, Georgia, where he currently lives, on July 17, officials said. At first, he denied his involvement in Harrington’s disappearance, but after he was confronted with the evidence provided by the alleged groping victim, Zandstra admitted to seeing Harrington on the day she vanished.
He admitted that he was driving a green station wagon that day and said he’d offered Harrington a ride and taken her to a wooded area.
“The defendant stated that he had parked the car and asked the victim to remove her clothing,” officials wrote in a news release. “When she refused, he struck her in the head with a fist. The victim was bleeding, and he believed her to be dead. He attempted to cover up her body and left the area.”
Trooper Eugene Tray, who interviewed Zandstra, said the alleged killer seemed relieved.
“I don’t know if he’s sorry for what he did, but this is a weight off his shoulders for sure,” Tray said.
Zandstra was taken into custody in Georgia, and he remains in jail in Cobb County without bail. He is fighting extradition and officials are working to get a governor’s warrant to bring him to Pennsylvania.
“We’re going to convict him,” Stollsteimer said. He’s going to die in jail and then he’s going to have to find out what the God he professes to believe in holds for those who are this evil to our children.”
Harrington’s father has since died, but her mother and three sisters are still alive, officials said.
Officials are investigating if there could be other victims connected to Zandstra, who lived in Plano, Texas, and then in Marietta after Harrington’s death.
Police say they found more than 200 guns in a walled-off vault in the home of accused serial killer Rex Heurmann. He is charged with the murders of three women and is suspected of killing a fourth. Elaine Quijano has the latest.
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Thanks to DNA evidence from a discarded pizza box, a Manhattan architect has been charged in connection with a series of murders that occurred over a decade ago on Long Island’s Gilgo Beach. Beginning in 2010, 11 people were found slain in the Gilgo Beach area. Suspect Rex Heuermann has so far been charged in connection with three of the murders. Meg Oliver has the latest.
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Canadian police said Tuesday they have solved one of the highest-profile cold cases in Quebec history, linking the 1975 rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl to a West Virginia man who died more than 40 years ago.
Police in Longueuil, Quebec, said that DNA evidence allows them to be 100% certain that Franklin Maywood Romine murdered teenager Sharron Prior in the Montreal suburb.
Sharron Prior
Longueuil Police
The body of Romine, who was born in 1946 in West Virginia’s second largest city of Huntington and died in 1982 at the age of 36 in Verdun, Montreal under mysterious circumstances, was exhumed from a West Virginia cemetery in early May for DNA testing intended to confirm his link to the crime.
Longueuil police say the DNA of Romine – who had a long criminal history – matches a sample found at the murder scene. He also matched a witness’ physical description of the suspect.
The rape and killing of Prior had gone unsolved since she disappeared on March 29, 1975, after setting out to meet friends at a pizza parlor near her home in Montreal’s Pointe-St-Charles neighborhood.
Her body was found three days later in a wooded area in Longueuil, on Montreal’s South Shore.
“The solving of Sharron’s case will never bring Sharron back. But knowing that her killer is no longer on this Earth and won’t kill anymore, brings us to somewhat of a closure,” Prior’s sister Doreen said Tuesday, according to CTV News.
Law enforcement investigated more than 100 suspects over the years, but never made any arrests. Yvonne Prior, the teenager’s mother, is now in her 80s, still lives in Canada, and has spent her life searching for her daughter’s killer.
Romine’s name didn’t come up in investigation until last year, according to WCHS-TV of Charleston, West Virginia. When Longueuil police said started looking through criminal records, they found an extensive history of violence and attempts by Romine to evade law enforcement by moving between West Virginia and Canada.
Romine first attempted escape from the West Virginia Penitentiary in 1964 and later escaped in 1967, according to records obtained by WCHS. Two years later, Romine already had a Canadian rap sheet.
In 1974, he was arrested for breaking into a house and raping a woman in Parkersburg, West Virginia. He was released on a $2,500 bond two months later and fled to Canada, according to an Associated Press story from the time.
Just months after Prior’s murder in 1975, Romine was captured by Canadian border officials and extradited back to West Virginia, where he was sentenced to five to 10 years in prison for sexual assault in the Parkersburg case.
He died in Canada in 1982, shortly after his release, although officials say they haven’t been able to find a death certificate detailing the circumstances that lead to his death. His body was returned to his mother in West Virginia, where his family buried him in the Putnam County, West Virginia Pine Grove Cemetery.
Putnam County Prosecutor Mark Sorsaia told CBS affiliate WOWK-TV earlier this month that he filed the court’s legal petition to get approval for the exhumation.
Sorsaia called the crime against Prior “the most evil element in the human race.”
“It’s a combination of the most evil element in the human race, contacting the most innocent element in the human race – a child,” he told WCHS. “Some things are worse than death – losing a child like that, for a family, for a mom. To know that your child died that way.”
On Tuesday, Prior’s family thanked the police for the “miracle of science” that finally identified the killer, CTV News reported.
“You may never have come back to our house or Congregation Street that weekend but you have never left our hearts and you never will,” Sharron’s sister Moreen said.
Le meurtrier de Sharron Prior identifié grâce à son ADN 48 ans après les faits
The remains of a Georgia woman killed 46 years ago were identified and confirmed as a victim of Samuel Little, known as the most prolific serial killer in U.S. history, authorities said Thursday.
Yvonne Pless was about 20 when Little killed her in 1977, according to a news release from the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office and the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council. She had been dubbed “Macon Jane Doe” by The Telegraph newspaper in the city.
Little, who died in December 2020, confessed in 2018 to killing two Macon women, prompting Georgia investigators to travel to Texas in 2019 to interview him. They were able to confirm that his confessions matched the unsolved Macon cold case. They were able to notify a remaining family member of the other woman, Fredonia Smith, who was killed in 1982.
But Pless’ remains hadn’t been identified, so her family was not known. Last year, investigators used forensic genetic genealogy to identify Pless’ remains and then identified a relative who connected them with her remaining family in Macon.
By the time of his death at nearly 80 years old, Little had confessed to killing 93 people between 1970 and 2005. Most of the slayings took place in Florida and Southern California. Georgia authorities say eight of his victims were Georgia residents, and the remains of a Tennessee woman were also found in Georgia.
Little, who was in and out of jail for decades for stealing, assault, drugs or other crimes, for years denied killing anyone.
It wasn’t until he was questioned by Texas Ranger James Holland in 2018 about a killing it turned out he didn’t commit that the details began to come out. Over about 700 hours of interviews, he gave details from scores of killings that only a murderer would know.
He said he started killing in 1970, on New Year’s Eve in Miami.
“It was like drugs,” he told Holland. “I came to like it.”
His last was in 2005, he said, in Tupelo, Mississippi. He also killed people in Tennessee, Texas, Ohio, Kentucky, Nevada, Arkansas and other states.
Little strangled most of his victims, usually soon after meeting them during chance encounters.
Almost all of his victims were women, and he targeted people living on the edges of society, such as prostitutes or drug addicts. They were people he believed wouldn’t be looked for and wouldn’t leave much evidence for police.
He wasn’t wrong – police around the country initially classified many of the deaths as accidents, drug overdoses or the result of unknown causes.
Kentucky authorities finally caught up with him in 2012 after he was arrested on drug charges and his DNA linked him to three California killings.
When he began recounting the other slayings, authorities were astounded at how much he remembered. His paintings, they said, indicated he had a photographic memory.
Samuel Little, 79, confessed to strangling 93 victims between 1970 and 2005 — triple the number of victims that Ted Bundy confessed to killing.
Before he died in 2020, Little answered questions from “60 Minutes” on the phone for nearly an hour. He said there were probably innocent people in jail for some of his crimes.
“Probably be numerous people who are– been convicted and sent to penitentiary on my behalf,” he said. “I say, ‘If I can help get somebody out of jail, you know, God might smile a little bit more on me.’”
Little spoke mostly about his victims.
“They was broke and homeless and they walked right into my spider web,” he said.
In this handout photo provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, serial killer Samuel Little is seen in a composite image depicting multiple mug shots/booking photos from 1966-1995.
On a warm day on Sept. 22, 1990, a 14-year-old boy walking near a creek bed in Opelika, Alabama, discovered the dead body of a young Black man with a single gunshot wound to his head, Opelika Police Department said.
On Sept. 22, 1990, the body of a young Black man was recovered from a creek bed off Anderson Road, approximately one-tenth of a mile from Interstate 85 in Opelika, Alabama.
Opelika Police Department
For 33 years, investigators have been trying to learn the victim’s identity, and are hoping that with new DNA advances, and the public’s help, the time has come to solve this cold case mystery, Sgt. Alfred White with the Opelika Police Department told CBS News.
The victim was wearing six pairs of socks on each foot, a detail which White, an investigations supervisor, said seemed strange considering “it’s not very cold here that time of year.”
He was wearing size eight black Ellesse shoes, a white St. Louis Cardinals jersey-type shirt with red pinstripes, and Jordache blue jeans, police said.
The man could have been wearing the six pairs of socks because his shoes were much larger than his feet, White said.
The man, believed to be between 18 and 25 years old, had no tattoos and a piercing in his left ear, police said.
An autopsy conducted in Montgomery concluded the cause of death was homicide from a single gunshot wound, police said. Ballistics for the bullet, which is from a small-caliber gun, have not been matched because the gun used in the killing has not been recovered, White said.
No missing person reports matching his description were filed at the time, police said. Investigators at the time followed up on a number of leads but soon the case went cold, said White.
“He doesn’t appear to be from the local area,” said White, adding that the body was found not far from Interstate 85.
Opelika, a mid-size city in the Eastern part of the state, is a 30-minute drive from the Georgia border, and around two hours from Florida.
White added that Opelika was a small town, and even smaller in 1990, and said that while it sees its fair share of murders, “it is rare when we can’t identify that person.”
A composite drawing of a young man unidentified for 33 years in Opelika Alabama. He was found fatally shot on Sept. 22, 1990.
Opelika Police Department
Investigators are currently working to enter identifying details into NamUS, the national clearinghouse for missing and unclaimed persons, White said. Currently, investigators are working to solve three cold cases in Opelika, he added.
Police are hoping to employ similar techniques they used to solve the cold case of “Opelika Jane Doe,” who was believed to be a Black girl between 4 and 7 years old whose body was found in January of 2012 in Opelika, according to a news release on DNAsolves.com.
Investigators used DNA testing and genetic genealogy to identify her last year as Amore Joveah Wiggins, the release read.
This past January, the girl’s father and stepmother, Lamar and Ruth Vickerstaff, were arrested in Jacksonville, Florida, the release said. Lamar Vickerstaff was charged with murder, while Ruth was charged with failure to report a missing child.
Investigators discovered that Wiggins was never enrolled in school or reported missing, the release read, and they believe she was killed in 2010 or 2011.
For people with any information on this case or the identity of the victim, please contact the Opelika Police Department Detective Division at 334-705-5220, or the Secret Witness Hotline at 334-745-8665.
An Alabama jury on Thursday ruled a man convicted of the 1999 slaying of two teenage girls should spend the rest of his life in prison, capping a cold case with strange twists that rocked a small city for over two decades.
The ruling comes a day after jurors convicted Coley McCraney, 49, of capital murder for the deaths of Tracie Hawlett and J.B. Beasley, court records show. The panel on Thursday determined that McCraney should serve the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole, according to CBS affiliate WTVY and court records.
“We lost two precious girls…who didn’t have the opportunity to grow up and experience life,” Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a press conference after the sentencing decision.
Tracie Hawlett, left, and J.B. Beasley
WTVY
Marshall, who prosecuted the case, said the verdict doesn’t bring closure but answers the question of what happened to the teens nearly 24 years ago. “Ultimately, he’s going to be able to spend the rest of his life in prison thinking about what he has done,” Marshall said.
Hawlett and Beasley, both 17, disappeared after setting off for a party in southeastern Alabama on July 31, 1999. They never returned. Their bodies were found the next day in the trunk of Beasley’s black Mazda along a road in Ozark, a city of 19,000 people about 90 miles southeast of Montgomery. Each had been shot in the head.
The slayings went unsolved for nearly 20 years without an arrest until police hired a company to run crime scene DNA through an online genealogy database. Police said they identified an extended family member and then asked McCraney to submit a DNA sample that they said matched the crime scene DNA. McCraney, a truck driver and preacher without a criminal record, was arrested in 2019.
Family members testified during the sentencing hearing about the anguish of losing their daughters.
“I think the hardest thing that we’ve gone through is holidays with an empty chair that Tracie should have been in,” Hawlett’s mother, Carol Roberts, testified, according to WTVY.
“I wake up and I hear her screaming,” Roberts told CBS News correspondent Omar Villafranca in 2019. “We haven’t slept all night in almost 20 years. I don’t care how many times a night I wake up, Tracie’s on my mind.”
J.B.’s mother, Cheryl Burgoon, said losing her daughter was something she could not get over, WSFA reported.
“It hurts so bad…I’m so angry,” Burgoon told the courtroom.
However, supporters of McCraney, who believe jurors erred in their verdict, held “Coley Strong” signs outside the courthouse or told jurors they know McCraney as a kind and religious man, news outlets reported.
“He is godly driven,” James Fuller, McCraney’s cousin, testified, according to WTVY.
WALLKILL, N.Y. — A suspect just arrested in the 2003 cold case murder of a college student in a northern New York City suburb is about to be released, CBS New York’s Lisa Rozner and Ali Bauman report.
Edward Holley, 42, was charged last week but by law, he had to be indicted within six days. That didn’t happen, so he’ll be released from jail Thursday, authorities say.
Last Thursday, New York State Police charged Holley with second-degree murder two decades after Wallkill resident Megan McDonald’s body was found badly beaten and abandoned on a dirt road.
Her family expressed relief but almost a week later, Holley is being freed because he wasn’t indicted on the murder charge in the required six-day window.
His attorney, Paul Weber, says Holley maintains his innocence.
“There’s a lot of holes in this, and I think there are two other players that are probably the people that they should be focusing on,” Weber said. “They did not meet the burden of probable cause for the arrest.”
Investigators allege Holley and the college student had broken up days before her disappearance and that he owed her a substantial amount of money.
“There’s no phone records, no contact between them. … She broke up with him, and he moved on,” Weber said.
McDonald’s family released a statement saying they are “disappointed. However, his temporary release was expected. After patiently waiting for over 20 years, we are confident that the police have arrested the right person – Edward Holley. The process may not be easy or follow our preferred path, but we will not rest until justice is secured for Megan.”
Last week, Orange County District Attorney David Hoovler lamented that police didn’t consult with his office before making the arrest, saying, “Complicated cases are normally at least partially presented to a grand jury before an arrest is made.”
Hoovler warned that this could happen saying, “Grand jury presentations on ‘cold’ homicide cases involving complicated fact patterns can rarely be commenced and completed within six days.”
“They have to ultimately prosecute this thing, and you have to follow their rules,” said Joseph Giacalone, a retired NYPD sergeant who served as commanding officer of the Bronx cold case squad.
Asked if it’s common for police to make an arrest in a cold case like this without working with the district attorney, Giacalone said, “No. The issue that it comes down to when you’re dealing with cold cases, the idea is to bring the prosecutor in at the earliest part of the reinvestigation.”
Before his arrest, Holley was already in jail for violating probation on a drug possession charge. He was scheduled to be released Thursday in that case but would have been held longer if he’d been indicted.
Wednesday evening, Hoovler announced that he requested a special prosecutor be appointed in this case. The DA said in his prior job in private practice, he represented a client potentially tied to the case..
Human skeletal remains recently discovered in western Pennsylvania have been identified as a man from New Castle who went missing nearly ten years ago, authorities announced this week.
Christopher Story was 40 years old at the time of his disappearance, according to a missing persons report filed a decade ago by the FBI. He was last seen at his home around 11 p.m. on August 11, 2013, the report says.
“The NCPD has continued to aggressively investigate this case since that date attempting to find Chris Story and determine what happened to him,” the New Castle Police Department said in a Facebook post shared on Wednesday.
Human skeletal remains found in western Pennsylvania were recently identified as belonging to Christopher Story, who disappeared in August 2013.
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Almost a decade after his disappearance, Story’s remains were found in a wooded area in Taylor Township, which is less than five miles away from the Mahoningtown neighborhood where he lived, New Castle police said. The Lawrence County Coroner confirmed his identity, the police department said.
Detectives at the New Castle Police Department worked to recover the skeletal remains over the last several weeks, with help from the coroner’s office as well as K9 cadaver dogs and the FBI, officials said.
“After examining the remains and looking for certain medical characteristics and comparing X-rays, Coroner Richard ‘RJ’ Johnson notified the detectives and New Castle Police that the remain are those of missing person Chris Story,” the police department said. The announcement noted that Story’s family “has been notified of the findings and that their loved one has been found.”
The coroner has not yet determined a definitive cause or manner of death, police said. The detective bureau’s investigation into Story’s death and disappearance is active and still ongoing, they said, and Story’s remains will be sent to the FBI for forensic testing.
Federal investigators say Story was last seen wearing a white t-shirt, khaki shorts, a dark baseball cap and black shoes. In its missing persons report, the FBI wrote that he “left behind his wallet, phone charger, and medication.”
At the time of his 2013 disappearance, the FBI noted that the man “has surgical pins/rods in his spine and may walk with a limp” and “may appear agitated and may also appear confused or suffer hallucinations” without access to his medication.
A young mother is killed in her bed, her toddler unharmed. Unsolved for 40 years, how the unusual crime scene helped close the case. “48 Hours” correspondent Erin Moriarty reports.
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On a wintery night near Rochester, New York, retired Detective Marc Liberatore shows “48 Hours” how he helped bring one of the coldest cases in America to trial. On Feb. 19, 1982, police officers arrived at the Brighton home of Jim and Cathy Krauseneck and encountered a horrific scene.
The body of a 29-year-old mother Cathy Krauseneck dead in bed with an ax lodged in her head.
Det. Mark Libertore: It was a single blow to the head. And she died instantly according to the medical examiner.
Jim Krauseneck told police he arrived home from work and found his wife’s body. His 3-and-a-half-year-old daughter Sara was there and unharmed. Minutes later, he showed up at his neighbor’s house — seemingly traumatized — with Sara in his arms. The neighbor called 911 after Jim told her he thought Cathy was dead.
NEIGHBOR TO 911: Her husband’s here and he can’t even talk.
911 DISPATCHER: OK. I’ll have someone right over there …
Dispatch immediately sent first responders. Brighton Police Lieutenant Bill Flood arrived to get a statement from Krauseneck.
Det. Bill Flood: He was moaning, he was crying.
Jim, Cathy and Sara Krauseneck
Annet Schlosser
Krauseneck, a Kodak company economist, said he’d left for work that morning at the usual time – around 6:30 a.m. He said he’d been gone all day. Cathy had planned to stay home to take care of Sara.
Det. Bill Flood: You could tell that little girl had been left alone … it looked obvious to us that she had dressed herself.
It seemed obvious to Detective Flood that Sara was confused about what had happened. Sara said she’d seen a “bad man … sleeping in mommy and daddy’s bed with an ax in his head.” Asked if the man was black or white, she said he was “many colors.” But Flood thinks Sara hadn’t seen a man at all; that it was her mother in bed, covered with blood.
Gary Craig: And what does a 3-and-a-half-year-old do?
Gary Craig: The murder in and of itself is baffling and hard to believe … But you add this element where Cathy’s daughter has been left in the house … with her murdered mother … It’s inconceivable that somebody could do that.
Liberatore and his partner Steve Hunt of the Brighton Police Department, say the first investigators at the scene found no significant forensic clues like fibers or fingerprints. And in 1982, DNA had not yet become an investigative tool. But there was something about the scene that struck them immediately. It looked like someone had pushed the pause button on a burglary.
Det. Steve Hunt: And there was a door leading into the house that had a pane of glass broken out and there was a maul, which is like a heavier ax, on the ground leaning up against the wall right next to that.
At first glance, it looked like someone had pushed the pause button on a burglary. But investigators say the scene lacked one of the most important hallmarks of a burglary: nothing was taken.
Monroe County Court
The ax found at the door, and the one in Cathy’s head, both belonged to the Krausenecks. In the dining room, there were valuable items scattered.
Det. Steve Hunt: And on the floor was Cathy’s purse, with the contents … strewn about.
There was a tea set on the floor, too.
Det. Steve Hunt: Everything was standing straight up like it was set there neatly.
And a black garbage bag next to it. Inside, was a faint shoe print as if someone had stepped in it to hold it open. But despite many apparent signs of a burglary, Liberatore and Hunt say the most important one was missing.
Det. Steve Hunt: Nothing was taken.
Det. Mark Liberatore: There’s an officer involved in this case from the 1980’s … who hits the nail on the head: We in Brighton do not handle a lot of homicides. We do handle a lot of burglaries … And this was not a burglary.
Investigators suspected the burglary was simply staged to cover up the real crime — Cathy’s murder — and they began to focus on her husband.
Gary Craig: Let’s face it, I mean, more often than not … it’s the husband, it’s domestic … so police are going to go there.
But could Jim Krauseneck have committed such a brutal murder and left his baby daughter alone in that house? “48 Hours” spoke to friends and family who said the couple had seemed happy.
Cathy and Jim had grown up in the same small town in Michigan, but on opposite sides of the tracks. Cathy’s father was a trucker; Jim’s owned a successful carpet store. They met in high school, began dating in college, and married after graduation.
Jim and Cathy Krauseneck cut their wedding cake on May 3, 1974.
Annet Schlosser
Susie Jackimowicz: It was a fancy wedding.
Cathy’s cousin Susie was just a kid.
Susie Jackimowicz: Like a princess wedding kinda deal. Jim was pursuing an economics degree in Colorado when they had Sara in 1978.
Cathy Behe: She was just so excited about her daughter, just so excited about her.
Cathy Krauseneck’s friend, Cathy Behe, says she was a warm soul who lived for love, but remembers feeling that the last time they saw each other – just six months before the murder – something just didn’t seem right.
Cath Behe: Not the vivacious Cathy that I remembered.
Erin Moriarty: What was the next thing you heard?
Cathy Behe: I got a call from my sister, and she told me about Cathy being murdered.
If Cathy and Jim were having trouble, they kept it to themselves. But police grew suspicious when they discovered a pamphlet in the couple’s car that offered services including marriage counseling. And there was more. When they went to Kodak, they learned that Jim Krauseneck had gotten his job under false pretenses, claiming to have a Ph.D. when he’d never actually completed the program. There was also Krauseneck’s behavior. Newspaper reporter Gary Craig says initially, he was cooperative.
Gary Craig: He was willing early on to give statements.
Krauseneck had spoken to investigators that night and the next morning, even agreeing to another meeting that afternoon. But when the time came …
Gary Craig: He was gone.
Erin Moriarty: Less than 24 hours after he found his wife murdered?
Gary Craig: Yes.
Krauseneck’s parents had driven from Michigan and returned there with Jim and Sara. Police say Jim left town without telling them.
Det. Mark Liberatore: I wouldn’t consider it normal … but this is America and he’s free to do so.
When Rochester authorities followed them to Michigan, Krauseneck continued answering their questions and even provided hair and blood samples. Ten days after the murder, he hired a lawyer.
By this point, police were focused squarely on Jim Krauseneck. But they had a problem. They needed to establish exactly when the murder had happened. Had Jim even been home at the time? Remember, he told police he left for work at about 6:30 a.m.
Gary Craig: Back in 1982, the time of death gave a very broad range. And the science was that you really could not pinpoint.
Autopsy findings reportedly narrowed the time of death to between 4:30 a.m. and as late as 7:30 a.m. — an hour after Krauseneck claimed to have left the house. With no direct evidence against him, nor any clear motive, authorities didn’t want to try their luck with a jury. The investigation went cold.
Sara and Jim Krauseneck
Sharon Krauseneck
Krauseneck and Sara eventually moved out west. He would briefly wed twice more before marrying his current wife, Sharon, 23 years ago — Never dreaming that his past would come looking for him.
A SURPRISE VISIT
In 1997, Sharon James ran into Jim Krauseneck, an old friend, at a trade show when sparks flew.
Sharon Krauseneck: And he asked me out. And from then on, for two years, we dated.
They both lived near Seattle. Krauseneck and his daughter Sara had moved there 10 years earlier but couldn’t leave the past behind.
Sharon Krauseneck: He was devastated with the death of Cathy.
Sharon says Jim told her about Cathy’s 1982 murder but didn’t offer details.
Sharon Krauseneck: And I didn’t want to pry because he would start getting emotional.
Erin Moriarty: What was it that made you fall in love with him?
Sharon Krauseneck: Jim is … so honest. He’s so loving … I wanted to be a part of his family.
They married in 1999.
Sharon and Jim Krauseneck married in 1999.
Sharon Krauseneck
Erin Moriarty: You like to spend a lot of time together?
Sharon Krauseneck: Oh, absolutely. … people will say we call each other everything but our names. We’ll call each other lovey-dovey, honey … and they say well, you act like newlyweds.
As the years rolled by, Sharon had no idea that more than 2,000 miles away in Rochester N.Y., someone else would set her sights on Jim Krauseneck: Monroe County District Attorney Sandra Doorley.
DA Sandra Doorley: Cathy really needed to have justice.
In 2015, the FBI had provided resources to help Brighton police with their investigation.
Det. Steve Hunt: I mean you look at all those boxes of paperwork and evidence. … It’s daunting.
Detectives Mark Liberatore and Steve Hunt of the Brighton Police Department took the lead. Pouring over the file, they, too, became convinced the evidence pointed to one person: Jim Krauseneck. So, on April 16, 2016 …
Sharon Krauseneck: We were just having a lazy Saturday morning. And then all of the sudden, the doorbell rang.
DET. MARK LIBERATORE: Hi. … Mark Liberatore, how are you?
Erin Moriarty: You wanted to surprise him?
Det. Mark Liberatore: Yes.
Det. Steve Hunt: Absolutely.
DET. STEVE HUNT: You’re probably a little bit surprised why we’re here.
Erin Moriarty: Did Jim at that point think maybe I’d better call a lawyer?
Sharon Krauseneck: No, no not at all.
On the contrary. She says her husband welcomed them in and allowed them to record the conversation:
JIM KRAUSENECK: Hopefully you’ve got some good news.
DETECTIVE: We just want to kind of revamp everything, go through everything again with you.
She says they sat around the kitchen table talking for more than an hour.
Sharon Krauseneck (upbeat): They said … “we think we know who killed Cathy and we need your help.” And in that type of a tone.
DET. STEVE HUNT: I’m sure you think about this, “who could possibly have done this?”
JIM KRAUSENECK: I did, for a long time.
But then, Sharon says, detectives Liberatore and Hunt suddenly turned up the heat.
DET. MARK LIBERATORE: Did you have anything to do with this?
JIM KRAUSENECK: I didn’t kill Cathy.
DET. MARK LIBERATORE: I disagree.
JIM KRAUSENECK: Well then —
DET. MARK LIBERATORE: I think you did.
Det. Steve Hunt: You could see his heart pounding through his shirt.
Erin Moriarty: That would be a very scary thing … that somebody is accusing you of killing someone.
Det. Mark Liberatore: I would say scary … if you did it.
Erin Moriarty: Was that the first time then you started hearing details of what happened to Cathy?
Sharon Krauseneck: Yes
“Jim … is a decent, loving human being,” Sharon Krauseneck exclusively tells “48 Hours” correspondent Erin Moriarty. “There is no way, absolutely no way Jim would ever, ever have done anything like that.”
CBS News
Sharon says it also was the first time she’d heard any suggestion that her husband was involved.
Erin Moriarty: Did you ever ask him point-blank?
Sharon Krauseneck: No, I didn’t. I didn’t have to.
Erin Moriarty: You didn’t have to know?
Sharon Krauseneck: No … I know. I know he did not murder his wife.
Erin Moriarty: Sharon, how can you be so sure? You only have Jim’s word for it.
Sharon Krauseneck: No … When you’re married to a man, you know his heart and you know his soul. … Jim could never, Erin, never in this world do something so horrific.
Erin Moriarty: You know, somebody listening to you would say, you sound a little naive. Didn’t you have some doubts? Didn’t you want to know more?
Sharon Krauseneck: I — you can call me naive I suppose.
But she insists that no one who has known Jim Krauseneck as well as she has — for as long as she has — could possibly have doubts.
Sharon Krauseneck: No, I’m not going to question him. I don’t doubt for a moment he was innocent.
But the detectives still hoped to find what investigators 40 years ago were never able to find: a smoking gun that tied Jim Krauseneck to the Brighton ax murder.
DA Sandra Doorley: You have to remember, back in 1982, there was no such thing as DNA testing. So, my first thought was, y’know, what can we test? … Are we going to find someone else’s DNA on any item within the home?
Det. Mark Liberatore: We sent … the evidence from ’82 back to the FBI lab.
The ax used to murder Cathy Krauseneck.
CBS News
The results: there was no DNA evidence that directly tied Krauseneck to the crime, but none tying anyone else to the murder, either. And although DNA evidence can degrade over time …
DA Sandra Doorley: The most important thing was finding the absence of someone else’s DNA within that home.
But to charge Jim Krauseneck, they wanted to prove his wife had died before had he gone to work. Jim claimed to have left the house at around 6:30 a.m., and Cathy had been fine.
Det. Mark Liberatore: We need a definitive time of death.
Back in 1982, the medical examiner was unable to narrow the time of death enough and, since then, other experts have agreed with her. In 2018, prosecutors turned to Dr. Michael Baden.
For over 50 years, Baden — a forensic pathologist — has been hired to work on a “who’s who” of whodunnit cases, from the assassination of JFK to the reported suicide of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, often raising eyebrows and generating controversy.
In this case, using the same file from 1982, Baden said in his analysis, it appeared Cathy died at about 3:30 a.m. That would be hours before Jim Krauseneck said he left for work that day.
DA Sandra Doorley: You know, some people may say that we were looking … for an opinion.
Erin Moriarty: That you were just looking for somebody who would pick a time of death that was before Krauseneck left the house in order to secure an indictment.
DA Sandra Doorley: Absolutely.
Erin Moriarty: But if, in fact, Dr. Baden had agreed with the other medical examiners … would you have hired him?
DA Sandra Doorley: Absolutely not.
Jim Krauseneck was indicted on Nov. 1, 2019, and surrendered to authorities in Rochester, N.Y., a week later. The then-67-year-old pleaded not guilty.
Monroe County Sheriff’s Office
Armed with Dr. Baden’s opinion on Cathy’s time of death, along with what they believe is evidence of a staged burglary, prosecutors went before a grand jury. Jim Krauseneck was indicted on Nov. 1, 2019. He voluntarily surrendered to authorities a week later.
Erin Moriarty: Do you have any doubt about Jim Krauseneck’s guilt in his wife’s murder?
DA Sandra Doorley: I have absolutely no doubt.
Erin Moriarty: None?
DA Sandra Doorley: None, whatsoever.
But Jim Krauseneck’s attorneys say there’s a mountain of doubt in this case because Jim Krauseneck is not the Brighton ax murderer.
Bill Easton: There was someone who could be responsible for it.
A serial predator had been living in the neighborhood who actually confessed to killing Cathy.
ED LARABY: CAREER CRIMINAL
Attorneys Bill Easton and Michael Wolford are trying to save James Krauseneck.
Bill Easton: There really is no evidence that Jim Krauseneck killed his wife. … He is the most reserved, humble, gentle person.
A man both believe had zero motive for murder.
Michael Wolford: They had a wonderful relationship. They had a wonderful family.
And so, his lawyers insist that Feb. 19, 1982, was a typical morning, in a home defined by love, until a stranger slipped in and took it all away.
Bill Easton: Jim Krauseneck went to work … someone came in and killed Cathy Krauseneck. We think that someone was Ed Laraby.
Ed Laraby — a monster just down the road.
Gary Craig | Reporter: He was just a violent son of a gun and terrible, terrible human being.
Edward Laraby had a reputation and record as a violent sexual predator.
Monroe County District Attorney’s Office
From Rochester’s back streets to New York’s toughest prisons, Ed Laraby had a reputation and record as a violent sexual predator.
Michael Wolford: Laraby hunted women. … He was a psychopath.
Before dying in prison in 2014, Laraby was locked up for a total of 32 years on charges that ultimately included attempted murder, robbery and his sick specialty — rape. But all too often, Laraby was released back on the streets.
Rachel Rear: And every time he was free, he would rape again. … He liked to laugh at women and humiliate them.
Erin Moriarty: You probably know as much about Ed Laraby as anyone.
Rachel Rear: I think so.
Erin Moriarty: Right?
Rachel Rear: Yeah.
Rachel Rear wrote “Catch the Sparrow,” a harrowing story, painfully close to home.
Rachel Rear: It’s about the murder of my stepsister in 1991.
Stephanie Kupchynsky, 27, was a music teacher and violinist when her life tragically intersected with Ed Laraby’s.
Rachel Rear: It’s mind-boggling to me that he was ever free.
In 1991, freshly paroled after serving a sentence for robbery, Laraby had come back to the suburbs of Rochester … his familiar hunting ground.
Rachel Rear: He got the job at Newcastle apartment complex which is where my stepsister lived.… Laraby himself said that they were foolish to hire him.
It wasn’t long before Stephanie went missing.
Rachel Rear: It was like she evaporated.
LOCAL NEWS REPORT: Stephanie Kupchynsky’s death rattled many when she disappeared from her apartment in 1991. Her remains found 7 years later.
Edward Laraby confessed to the 1991 murder of Stephanie Kupchynsky, 27.
Rachel Rear
The remains of Stephanie Kupchynsky lay scattered in a shallow stream bed. She had been strangled.
More than a dozen years later, Laraby, by then convicted of other crimes and back in prison, admitted he was her killer.
Erin Moriarty: What made him confess to Stephanie’s murder?
Rachel Rear: What ultimately made him confess was that he was dying.
Laraby, who was suffering from ALS, came up with a bucket list of a dying man: pizza, sandwiches, and he was angling for an agreement to be buried off prison grounds. So, in 2012, Ed Laraby confessed.
Rachel Rear: He went into Stephanie’s apartment … And then she screamed … And then he choked her … And she died. And he confessed to killing her.
But Ed Laraby didn’t stop with Stephanie Kupchynsky.
Rachel Rear: Once he confessed to Stephanie’s murder and realized that he could get things in exchange for confession, all of a sudden then he started wheeling and dealing and making more deals.
Ed Laraby contacted the FBI claiming he was a serial killer, and one of the victims he listed was a Rochester housewife murdered on a February morning in 1982: 29-year-old Cathy Krauseneck.
Michael Wolford: Laraby lived very close by … And she was someone that he was going to prey on.
The idea that decades earlier Ed Laraby might have murdered Cathy doesn’t come as a surprise to investigators and those who know him best.
Det. Mark Liberatore: Everybody from back in that time frame is familiar with Ed.
Rachel Rear: He would’ve been out of prison at the time that Cathy was killed.
Free, violent and just down the road. Police went to question him, shortly after Cathy’s murder. But Ed Laraby wasn’t talking back then. They filed their report, and then backed off.
Erin Moriarty: And is it fair to say the police dropped the ball in that case? … Because you’ve got a sexual predator within minutes of the house and they … they don’t do anything more than visit him once?
Gary Craig: Oh, I think it’s very fair to say that. … To have apparently ignored Ed Laraby in 1982, whether he did or didn’t do it, is clearly — was just a major lapse in the investigation.
Det. Mark Liberatore: I don’t know that I’d used the phrase drop the ball … And unfortunately … the officer and the sergeant who approved that report are both deceased.
Still, the FBI and detectives Liberatore and Hunt don’t believe Ed Laraby murdered Cathy.
Det. Steve Hunt: He was a bad man, he was.
Erin Moriarty: That’s one way to put it.
Det. Mark Liberatore: He’s a bad man, but he’s not our bad man.
Erin Moriarty: This is a guy who has a long history of hurting women and he’s confessing to killing Cathy Krauseneck.
Det. Steve Hunt: Yeah, but his confession —
Det. Mark Liberatore: Inappropriately —
Det. Steve Hunt: — was way off base.
Det. Mark Liberatore: — way off.
Erin Moriarty: Why are you so sure it’s not Edward Laraby?
DA Sandra Doorley: Because his confession didn’t match up to the facts, as simple as that.
Cathy Krauseneck
Annet Schlosser
Laraby said Cathy had dark hair when in fact she was blonde, that she was heavyset when she wasn’t. Even Rachel Rear, who knows all too well the damage Laraby can do, doesn’t believe he killed Cathy.
Rachel Rear: To me, I was like, it’s not his M.O. … I don’t think he was a serial killer. He’s a serial rapist.
After four decades of dead ends, law enforcement was convinced that Jim Krauseneck, not Ed Laraby, wielded that bloody ax.
Sharon Krauseneck: This man is an innocent man. … He’s been treated so unjust.
But come 2022, James Krauseneck, the successful businessman and father, headed to trial. The 40-year-old murder case could hinge on mere minutes, and prosecutors proving that Krauseneck was home when Cathy was killed.
PROSECUTOR PATRICK GALLAGHER (closing argument): You look at the evidence, it’s clear. She was killed in her sleep.
WHAT TIME DID CATHY DIE?
After four decades, as James Krauseneck finally came to trial, prosecutors were betting on Michael Baden, that forensic pathologist they had engaged, and his theory of when Cathy most likely died — about 3:30 a.m.
Michael Wolford: Well, they needed a Dr. Baden, who said basically that it happened at 3:30 in the morning. … That was different than any other medical examiner that was involved in this case.
One of them was Katherine Maloney, a forensic pathologist who would testify for the defense — something she had seldom done before.
Erin Moriarty: Can you pinpoint the actual time of death?
Dr. Katherine Maloney: No. Oh my goodness I wish I could … The best you’re going to do is — is a window of several hours.
Doctor Maloney thinks it’s possible Cathy could have died much later in the day.
Erin Moriarty: I mean, so you’re saying Dr Baden is wrong?
Dr. Katherine Maloney: I disagree with him. I think he’s wrong. … I think she likely died sometime between like 5 a.m. and 1 p.m.
Timing of the death seemed crucial. If Cathy was murdered in the dead of night, before Jim Krauseneck went to work, then prosecutors say her killer wasn’t an intruder — it had to be her husband.
Forty years after Cathy Krauseneck was killed in her sleep, her husband Jim Krauseneck stands trial for her murder.
Shawn Dowd/Pool
The stage was set for a gruesome drama in search of its final act.
NEWS REPORT: What makes this case so unique is it happened over 40 years ago.
Over those decades, hearts had been broken and relationships shattered.
Erin Moriarty: Really, how would you describe the last 40 years on your family?
Susie Jackimowicz: It’s been a terrible … It’s just god-awful.
Cathy Krauseneck’s father Bob Schlosser and cousin Susie Jackimowicz.
CBS News
Cousin Susie Jackimowicz witnessed the shift in Cathy’s now 95-year-old father Bob Schlosser — who today believes Krauseneck is a killer, but for years was certain his son-in-law was innocent.
Bob Schlosser: I just didn’t think that he would — that he would do such a thing.
Erin Moriarty: I mean, had there ever been a real serious problem in their marriage that anybody had heard of?
Bob Schlosser: No, not that I knew of.
Jim and Cathy Krauseneck
Annet Schlosser
But investigators believe the marriage was secretly crumbling.
Det. Mark Liberatore: He snapped is what we believe. He just snapped.
Erin Moriarty: People look at Jim Krauseneck, he just doesn’t look like an ax murderer.
Bob Schlosser: What’s an ax murderer look like?
Schlosser believes that over time, Krauseneck began separating Sara from her mother’s family — the child who was home when her mother was murdered.
Bob Schlosser: We didn’t see Sara anymore.
Susie Jackimowicz: Not only was Cathy taken away, Sara was taken away.
Jim Krauseneck’s daughter Sara gives her father a hug in court.
Shawn Dowd/Pool
Sara’s a grown woman now, firmly standing by her dad as sure that he’s innocent, as prosecutors Constance Patterson and Patrick Gallagher are certain he’s Cathy’skiller.
Prosecutor Patrick Gallagher: No doubt at all.
Prosecutor Constance Patterson: Absolutely no doubt in my mind.
But as the trial moved forward, lawyers on both sides confessed they had a daunting challenge: time itself.
Patrick Gallagher: Dealing with — with memory issues, dealing with deceased witnesses.
Bill Easton: Witnesses can’t recall what happened 40 years ago.
So, investigators pursued evidence that didn’t rely on the frailties of memory. They homed in on the physical crime scene.
Prosecutor Patrick Gallagher: I wanted to not only prove that that Cathy was clearly killed in the early morning hours, but also prove that it was a staged burglary.
Det. Steve Hunt: There’s a lot of questions and things just didn’t make sense.
Authorities argued the scene was staged by someone who had no idea what a burglary looked like.
Det. Steve Hunt: The house wasn’t ransacked.
Det. Mark Liberatore: In fact, there was cash on the dresser in the room where Cathy was killed, that wasn’t taken.
The broken glass, the seemingly precise placing of that maul.
Det. Steve Hunt: They wanted us to believe that the maul was used to break that pane of glass.
That silver tea set, barely disturbed.
Patrick Gallagher: And when you looked at the pieces that don’t fit, the reason they don’t fit is because it was a staged burglary.
The faint shoe print (circled) investigators found inside a garbage bag at the Krauseneck crime scene.
Monroe County District Attorney
Then there was that faint shoeprint investigators found inside a garbage bag. Prosecutors thought the print told a story.
Patrick Gallagher: The only way that gets in there is when the bag is being opened, when items are being placed in that bag.
Erin Moriarty: And somebody is putting their foot on there, so they can hold it open?
Patrick Gallagher: So … You’re stepping on the edge of that bag … you’re holding one edge and you’re placing that silver in the bag.
Investigators say the print was from special footwear: a boat shoe.
Erin Moriarty: And why a boat shoe?
A crime scene photo shows a pair of boat shoes, like her husband was known to wear, by Cathy Krauseneck’s bed. Forty years later, detectives believe the faint shoe print in that garbage bag was made by those boat shoes, which were not tested.
Monroe County District Attorney’s Office
Patrick Gallagher: And, so, there’s a picture in that bedroom where you can see next to the bed … You can see these boat shoes.
Erin Moriarty: And whose shoes are those?
Patrick Gallagher: And those are James Krauseneck’s shoes.
Det. Steve Hunt: He’s a boat shoe wearing guy, and we don’t have murderers running around in February in the wintertime wearing boat shoes and killing people.
But the shoes Krauseneck wore back then were not tested to see if they were a match. And his lawyers say it’s not just the wrong theory — it’s the wrong man.
They say it’s Ed Laraby, that career criminal, who, before he died, had confessed to killing Cathy.
Bill Easton: He lives four-minute walk away.
But there’s the problem of Laraby’s M.O. Remember, he was a repeat sex offender.
Erin Moriarty: Was there any sign that Cathy had been sexually assaulted or that she had had any contact at all with her killer?
Det. Mark Liberatore: None whatsoever.
Erin Moriarty: Do you believe that there was tunnel vision in this investigation?
Bill Easton: I think it would almost be the dictionary definition of tunnel vision … There was this overwhelming … urge and desire to solve the crime, and it had to be Jim Krauseneck.
Susie Jackimowicz: I know he did it. I know it was him.
Come closing statements, cameras were allowed into the courtroom as lawyers made their final pleas:
BILL EASTON: The mystery of Cathy Krauseneck’s death remains to this day, and we submit it has not been resolved by this trial.
PATRICK GALLAGHER: Common sense tells you this was a staged burglary. … Those are the only reasonable inferences that can be drawn from this case.
BILL EASTON: There are no eyewitnesses. There are no earwitnesses. … There is no direct evidence. That was the case 40 years ago and that’s the case now.
But Gallagher reminded the jury of that time-stamp — 3:30 a.m. — that pathologist Michael Baden put as Cathy’s possible time of death.
PATRICK GALLAGHER: Common sense tells you she died early that morning.
Michael Wolford: As we said at the outset, there is no new evidence, simply a new opinion by Dr. Baden. … We don’t think that cuts it.
Forty years after that awful day, the case would now go to a jury.
Erin Moriarty: Were you worried?
Sharon Krauseneck: I was worried, yes. … And Jim being the husband … and that’s being the typical fall guy, the husband must have done it. … I was very fearful.
A JURY DECIDES
Jim Krauseneck’s fate will be determined by 12 strangers.
Sharon Krauseneck: They want to hold someone accountable for this … I was very fearful.
Because it’s Sharon and Sara’s future as well.
Sharon Krauseneck: On Friday night. The jury hadn’t finished their deliberations. And I was so thankful. I thought, “Oh … give us this weekend (cries).
Erin Moriarty: Did you think this could be the last weekend you could spend with him?
Sharon Krauseneck: I think deep down, I probably did.
James Krauseneck is led away in handcuffs after he was found guilty for the 1982 murder of his first wife Cathy in Brighton, New York.
Jamie Germano
Altogether, it takes the jury less than 10 hours of deliberations to reach a verdict: Jim Krauseneck is guilty of second-degree murder.
Sharon Krauseneck: I remember standing up. I saw this one deputy across from me and I said, “Oh, please … let me hug my husband. … he said “no.” No … I can’t.
BOB SCHLOSSER (to reporters outside courtroom) We got our justice. It took 40 years. … Thank God, we got it.
SHARON KRAUSENECK (walking through court lobby with Sara): He’s innocent. He’s innocent!
Michael Wolford: Unfortunately, there is a presumption of guilt. … if the husband is … living in the home and the wife is killed … he’s almost presumed guilty,
Defense attorney Michael Wolford says that Jim Krauseneck was convicted because of who he was, not what he did.
Michael Wolford: I think there was a gut reaction on the part of the jurors, that “well, he probably did it.”
But the jurors “48 Hours” spoke to insisted they decided this case on the evidence — evidence they admit had divided them at the start.
Jane | Juror: I just kept thinking someone else really could have done this.
Helen | Juror: The forensics did not point to anybody else.
The first time they voted, we were told six said guilty, three not guilty, three undecided.
Ivan | Juror: The most important thing to me … was the staged burglary scene.
They said that staged scene was a critical clue. And there was something else they seemed to agree on. That, in the end, it was impossible to say exactly when Cathy died.
Jane: We threw out all of that testimony … We — It meant nothing to us.
But their verdict means everything to Krauseneck’s heartbroken daughter Sara, who tells the judge at sentencing it adds insult to deep injury.
SARA KRAUSENECK (in court): I’ve been blessed with the most extraordinary parents. Sadly, they have both been taken from my life. My mother’s killer got away with her murder, and my father’s life has been taken by a failed justice system that convicted him of a crime he did not commit.
But Sara’s grandfather — Cathy’s father — wants to make sure Jim Krauseneck spends the rest of his life paying for her death.
BOB SCHLOSSER (to Jim Krauseneck in court): And Jim, I hope you live to be 100 years old and enjoy your new home!
And finally, it’s up to Jim Krauseneck himself to take one last opportunity to address the court.
JIM KRAUSENECK (in court): To this day it’s still very difficult for me to talk about the circumstances that surrounded her death. All I see is Cathy with an ax in her head, and Sara standing in the hallway, disheveled, with an empty and distant look on her face. I did not murder Cathy. I loved Cathy with all my heart and with all my soul.
The judge is unmoved, giving the 71-year-old Krauseneck 25 years-to-life behind bars.
Before his own life is over, there’s one more thing Cathy’s father wants to do.
For decades, Cathy has been buried in Jim’s family plot.
Bob Schlosser: I want to move my daughter’s remains … where her mother and brother are.
But to move her, Bob Schlosser needs Sara to agree and that may never happen. Sara and Sharon continue to support Jim, who intends to appeal his conviction.
Erin Moriarty: You’re going to stand by him no matter what?
Sharon Krauseneck: Oh, absolutely.
Sharon Krauseneck rejects the possibility that her husband has permanently traded his golden years for the hardened metal of a prison cell.
Sharon Krauseneck: We have a lot of hope. We have a lot of faith. … This is not our retirement. This is a hiccup. This is just a — just a — a pause.
And Krauseneck’s lawyers say that forcing him to defend a 40-year-old case violated his constitutional right to a fair trial.
Erin Moriarty: Are you worried at all about that … if an appellate court ruled in favor … of Jim Krauseneck, and said that his rights had been violated … then it would all be for nothing?
DA Sandra Doorley: It wouldn’t be all for nothing. Cathy’s story was able to be told and that family was able to get justice … Justice has been done for Cathy.
Cathy’s family and Sara haven’t spoken since the trial.
Sara has moved out of the country.
Produced by Josh Yager and James Stolz. Marc Goldbaum and Charlotte Fuller are the development producers. Michael Loftus and Liz Caholo are the associate producers. Richard Barber is the producer-editor. Atticus Brady is also an editor. Patti Aronofsky is the senior producer. Nancy Kramer is the executive story editor. Judy Tygard is the executive producer.
In the winter of 1982 in Rochester, New York, Jim Krauseneck says he came home from work to find his wife, Cathleen Krauseneck, lying in bed, dead with an ax lodged in her head. For over 30 years, no one was charged with Cathy’s murder, until the Brighton Police Department collaborated with the FBI to reopen the case in 2015 with their sights set on Krauseneck as the primary suspect.
The ax used to murder Cathy Krauseneck.
CBS News
The unsolved murder of Cathy Krauseneck ended with the conviction of her husband in 2022. But Jim Krauseneck and his supporters argue the jury got it wrong.
1966-1974: The early years
Jim Krauseneck’s family owned a successful carpet store in Mount Clemens, Michigan.
USA Today/IMAGN
Jim and Cathy Krauseneck grew up in the small town of Mount Clemens, Michigan. Jim’s family owned a carpet store; Cathy’s father was a truck driver. They met each other in high school and started dating while attending Western Michigan University.
May 3, 1974: Jim Krauseneck and Cathy Schlosser wed
Jim and Cathy Krauseneck cutting the cake on their wedding day.
Annet Schlosser
Soon after marrying, the young couple moved to Fort Collins, Colorado, where Jim attended graduate school at Colorado State University. Cathy worked as an orthopedic therapist.
April 1978: Cathy gave birth to a baby girl, Sara
1979 to 1981: Jim taught at Lynchburg College
The Krauseneck’s moved to Lynchburg, Virginia, where Jim taught economics at Lynchburg College.
September 1981: New job, new city
Jim, Cathy and Sara Krauseneck
Annet Schlosser
Jim, Cathy and then 3-year-old Sara moved to Brighton, an upscale suburb of Rochester, New York. Jim started a new job as an economist for Kodak.
Feb. 16, 1982: Background check
Modern day photo of Kodak’s headquarters in Rochester, New York.
CBS News
Kodak reportedly discovered Jim Krauseneck did not complete his Ph.D. from Colorado State University.
Feb. 19, 1982 | Around 6:30 a.m.: Jim Krauseneck told investigators he left for work
Feb. 19, 1982 | 4:50 p.m.: Jim Krauseneck returns home
Evidence photo of the broken glass on the Krauseneck’s front door (lower right pane) and maul, a type of ax, on the ground.
Monroe County District Attorney’s Office
Jim Krauseneck told investigators he returned home after work. He said he found the garage door open and saw broken glass on the floor by the front door along with a maul.
Jim said he then ran upstairs to the master bedroom where he found Cathy in bed with an ax embedded in her head. Sara was unharmed in the next bedroom.
Feb. 19, 1982 | Around 5 p.m.: Jim Krauseneck runs to his neighbor’s home
Evidence photo of the ax handle.
Monroe County District Attorney’s Office
Jim Krauseneck’s neighbor told investigators Krauseneck came to her door “clutching Sara in his arms” with the “look of terror on his face.” The neighbor called 911, frantically telling the operator she believes a murder occurred across the street.
Feb. 19, 1982 | Around 5:03 p.m.: Authorities start arriving at the scene
Valuables, including a silver tea set, were scattered across the floor in the Krauseneck family’s home.
Monroe County District Attorney’s Office
Although police were unable to find significant forensic clues like fingerprints, they did find what they say was evidence of a staged burglary. There were valuable items scattered across the dining room floor, including Cathy’s purse and a tea set.
Investigators say nothing was taken and both the ax and the maul belonged to the Krausenecks.
Believing a burglary could have been staged to cover up Cathy’s murder, investigators began to focus on Jim Krauseneck.
Feb. 19, 1982: The crime scene
A shoe print (circled) was discovered inside a trash bag found at the crime scene.
Monroe County District Attorney
Detectives discovered a faint shoe print inside a trash bag near the silver tea set.
Feb. 19, 1982 | Later in the evening: Brighton Police Det. Bill Flood interviews Sara Krauseneck
Sara Krauseneck, left, and Det. Bill Flood.
Annet Schlosser/Bill Flood
Sara, 3-and-a-half years old, mentioned seeing a “bad man,” but she first said the man had a hammer in his head. Then she said an ax. She also described the man’s face as “many colors.” Detective Flood believed Sara was not seeing a “man” at all… but rather her dead mother, covered in blood.
Feb. 20, 1982: Cathy’s autopsy is conducted and Jim heads to Michigan
Jim Krauseneck
USA Today/Imagn
Jim Krauseneck spoke to investigators again and agreed to another meeting with investigators in the afternoon. But when the time came, Jim and Sara had left to be with family in Michigan.
Meanwhile, the medical examiner concluded Cathy Krauseneck’s cause of death was from the ax wound to the head.
During the autopsy, the medical examiner reportedly found no evidence of sexual assault and narrowed Cathy’s time of death somewhere between 4:30 a.m and 7:30 a.m. Authorities could not prove Jim Krauseneck had been home at the time she died.
With no direct evidence against Jim Krauseneck nor any clear motive, the case went cold for decades.
Jim and Sara Krauseneck moved out west. He would briefly wed twice more before marrying his current wife Sharon.
1997: Jim Krauseneck meets his current wife, Sharon
Jim Krauseneck married Sharon James in 1999.
Sharon Krauseneck
While at a trade show, Krauseneck runs into Sharon James, an old friend. The two date for the next two years and marry in 1999.
2014: A Rochester career criminal “confesses” to Cathy’s murder
Edward Laraby
Monroe County District Attorney’s Office
Before dying from ALS, Edward Laraby, a career criminal who had been locked up on charges of attempted murder, robbery and sexual abuse, wrote a confession claiming he killed Cathy Krauseneck. Authorities said Laraby’s confession was riddled with errors that didn’t match up to the facts of the case. Laraby mischaracterized Cathy as a brunette and heavy set. He said he sexually assaulted her and then killed her. But investigators at the scene found no evidence of sexual abuse. Due to these inconsistencies, prosecutors and authorities do not take action.
2015: The case is reopened and the FBI gets involved
In April 2015, at the direction of former Brighton Police Chief Mark Henderson, a thorough review of the case, including travel to interview potential witnesses, persons with knowledge and suspects, was to be conducted.
In June 2015, then-Police Chief Henderson and then-Captain Catholdi attended a meeting of the FBI Buffalo Cold Case Group and presented the Krauseneck case to the group. After a Q & A period in which several ideas on how to proceed were discussed, the entire case file was given to the FBI to be digitized.
Chief Henderson contacted Cathy Krauseneck’s family to let them know the new status of the case.
April 2016: Investigators interview Jim Krauseneck again
Jim Krauseneck
Sharon Krauseneck
Brighton, N.Y., investigators Mark Liberatore and Steven Hunt pay Jim Krauseneck a surprise visit at his home in Gig Harbor, Washington, for an interview. During the interview, Det. Liberatore asks Krauseneck outright if he had something to do with his wife’s death. After Krauseneck told him he didn’t kill Cathy, Liberatore said he disagreed and thinks he did do it.
2018: Authorities contact pathologist Dr. Michael Baden
In 2018, prosecutors turned to forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden, who has been hired to work on a “who’s who” of whodunit cases, from the assassination of JFK to the reported suicide of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, often raising eyebrows and generating controversy.
AP Newsroom
Seeking another opinion on when Cathy Krauseneck could have been killed, the Brighton Police Department and the Monroe County District Attorney’s office asked pathologist and former New York Chief Medical Examiner Michael Baden to review the evidence.
October 2019: Dr. Baden reports his findings
Dr. Baden’s report.
CBS News
After reviewing the Monroe County autopsy, toxicology reports, the scene, autopsy photographs and police reports, Dr. Baden stated that it appeared that Cathy died around 3:30 a.m. Prosecutors believe that means Jim Krauseneck would have been home during the time Cathy was killed.
November 2019: Jim Krauseneck indicted and arrested
Jim Krauseneck was indicted on Nov. 1, 2019. He voluntarily surrendered to authorities a week later.
Monroe County Sheriff’s Office
The grand jury indictment was signed on Nov. 1 and a week later Krauseneck surrendered to authorities at the Hall of Justice in Rochester, NY. The then-67-year-old pleaded not guilty.
Sept. 6, 2022: The trial begins
In September 2022, Jim Krauseneck was tried for the 1982 murder of his first wife, Cathy.
Shawn Dowd/Pool
Forty years after Cathy Krauseneck was killed in her sleep, her husband Jim Krauseneck stands trial for her murder. Monroe County District Attorney Sandra Doorley insists she has “absolutely no doubt that Jim Krauseneck killed Cathy that day.” Defense attorney Bill Easton says his client is innocent and told “48 Hours,” “There really is no evidence that Jim Krauseneck killed his wife.”
September 2022: Expert shoe witness called to the stand
A crime scene photo shows a pair of boat shoes, like her husband was known to wear, by her Cathy Krauseneck’s bed. The shows were never tested. Forty years later, detectives believe the faint shoe print in that garbage bag was made by those boat shoes.
Monroe County District Attorney’s Office
Prosecutors called an expert witness who testified the footprint found inside the trash bag was from a special footwear – a boat shoe. A pair was captured in one of the 1982 crime scene photographs of the bedroom. But the shoes Krauseneck wore back then were not tested to see if they were a match. Jim Krauseneck’s lawyers say investigators have the wrong theory and the wrong man.
Sept. 22, 2022: Closing arguments
Jim Krauseneck’s daughter Sara gives her father a hug in court.
Shawn Dowd/Pool
The morning after closing arguments are heard, the court hands the case to the jury, who will determine whether Jim Krauseneck is guilty or not guilty of Cathy’s murder. The jurors’ decision will also affect the futures of his wife Sharon and his daughter Sara, who was 3-and-a-half years old when her mother was killed. Sara, now 44, attended the trial to support her father.
Sept. 26, 2022: A verdict
James Krauseneck is led away in handcuffs after he was found guilty for the 1982 murder of Cathy Krauseneck in Brighton, New York.
Jamie Germano
A jury finds Jim Krauseneck guilty of second-degree murder of his first wife Cathy. Deputies immediately take him into custody.
Nov. 7, 2022: Jim Krauseneck sentenced
Sara and Jim Krauseneck read their statements in court ahead of Jim’s sentencing.
Shawn Dowd/Pool
During sentencing, Sara, the girl left in the house at the time of her mother’s murder, read a statement in which she expressed her disappointment in the verdict.
“My mother’s killer got away with her murder, and my father’s life has been taken by a failed justice system that convicted him of a crime he did not commit,” she said.
In his statement before sentencing, Jim Krauseneck, 71, spoke to the court for the first time. Krauseneck read a note in which he reaffirmed his love for Cathy and his innocence.
“In closing, I did not murder Cathy. I love Cathy. With all my heart and with all my soul,” he said.
The judge sentenced Krauseneck to 25 years in prison.
November 2022: Jim Krauseneck plans to appeal
While Krauseneck was found guilty by a jury, his supporters, including his daughter Sara, his wife Sharon, and his immediate family are still sure of his innocence and convinced that he was convicted of a crime he did not commit.
In her statement at court, Sharon Krauseneck said they plan to appeal the jury’s guilty verdict “so that justice can truly and honestly be served.”
A 75-year-old man was arrested and charged in a cold case from 2005, California police announced on Sunday.
Philip William Frase was arrested by investigators from the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office on Feb. 6, the office said in a statement on Facebook. He has been formally arraigned in the Sisikyou County Superior Court and charged in the “unlawful killing” of Patricia Joseph, a woman whose body was found in the Klamath River several days after being reported missing, police said.
Joseph was 56 at the time of her death. She was found partially clothed and had been in the water for several days, police said, and a forensic autopsy revealed that she had died from multiple blunt force traumas and asphyxia.
Joseph’s death was solved by a cold case and forensic evidence team that was established by Siskiyou County Sheriff Jeremiah LaRue in early 2021. The team prioritizes cold cases and reviews physical evidence using modern tools, the office said in their statement. The cold case team “completed a comprehensive review” of the initial investigation into Joseph’s death, and “re-submitted evidence to the Department of Justice.” That analysis “produced compelling results” that connected Frase to the crime.
“This arrest is the result of the determination of our investigators and reflects our faithful commitment to pursuing justice for victims of violent crimes and their families,” LaRue said. “Our cold case team will continue to focus on these cases with dedication. I would like to commend everyone for their devotion to this investigation and thank the District Attorney’s Office for their assistance. Our hearts are with Patricia’s family, and we hope this arrest begins the path toward closure and healing.”
Frase remains in custody on $2 million bond, as well as an additional $15,000 bond for a “failure to appear” charge. Jail records show that Frase has been charged with murder.
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After Linda Slaten was murdered in 1981, her sons Jeff and Tim spent almost 40 years hoping their mother’s case would get solved. Take a look inside the investigation.
On the morning of Sept. 4, 1981, the Lakeland, Florida, police were called to an apartment complex where they found the body of 31-year-old Linda Slaten. She had been raped and strangled with a wire coat hanger while her two sons Jeff, 15, and Tim, 12, slept in the other rooms. The killer had entered through her bedroom window.
Tim’s haunting memory
Lakeland Police Department
Tim Slaten says he will never forget that morning after police woke him and his older brother, Jeff, up. As Tim walked past his mother’s bedroom, an officer swung the door open. “I saw the whole crime scene,” Tim says. “I saw my mom’s bloody body with a coat hanger around her neck … And I still see it.”
A crucial print
Edgar Pickett
When former Sergeant Edgar Pickett — who led the crime scene unit — arrived at the crime scene, he dusted most of Linda’s bedroom for prints.
A crucial print
Lakeland Police Department
Sergeant Pickett also dusted the bedroom windowsill where he recovered a palm print — a piece of evidence that would later play a crucial role in the investigation.
Recovered DNA
Lakeland Police Department
During the autopsy, swabs were collected from Linda Slaten that contained semen. Investigators carefully preserved the contents of the rape kit for years to come.
Forensic DNA analysis didn’t exist until 1984. Later, it would prove key to solving this case.
The brothers’ new reality
Jeff Slaten
The Slaten brothers immediately moved in with their grandparents. They had to face a new reality of life without their mom. A few weeks after their mom’s funeral, the brothers returned to school and familiar activities.
“Being with friends and just started living life again, I guess,” says Tim. “You know, going back to football.”
The supportive coach
Tim Slaten
Tim says his teammates and coach were always very supportive. When he didn’t have a ride, “Coach Joe,” as the kids called him, would take Tim to and from football practice and continued to do so after his mom was killed.
This team photo was taken a month after Linda’s murder. Tim hung it on his bedroom wall as a reminder, he says, of something his mom taught him: to keep moving forward and never give up.
Persons of interest
Jeff Slaten
As detectives searched for the killer, Linda’s ex-husband, Frank Slaten, became a person of interest due to his history of abuse towards her. Before their divorce, Jeff says his dad was “a violent alcoholic.” But investigators eventually seemed satisfied that Frank was home in Alabama on the night of the murder. At the time of her death, Linda had a boyfriend who was also a person of interest, but he had an alibi as well.
Clearing Jeff
Jeff Slaten
Investigators focused their attention on Linda’s older son, Jeff. As a 15-year-old, Jeff had plenty of typical teen conflicts with his mom, which he was open about with detectives. But investigators seemed most interested in the argument Jeff had with his mom on the last day of her life.
“They used to take me out of school and they was always interrogating me all the time,” Jeff says. But after he took two polygraph tests and passed, police cleared him.
The case loses momentum
CBS News
Lakeland, Florida, detectives looked at other people as well, but no one was ever charged. And without any new leads, the case eventually ground to a halt.
Guilt and grief
Jeff Slaten
In the following years, Jeff went on to have two kids. But he’s always lived with guilt for not hearing anything on the night of his mom’s murder. “I (would have) died that night trying to save my mom,” Jeff says. “But I didn’t hear nothing. And it’s so hard to live with that.”
“We’re still here”
Tim Slaten
Tim got married and started a family, too. The Slaten brothers had built lives for themselves, but they made sure to frequently check in with the Lakeland investigators to see what kind of progress was being made on their mom’s case.
“No matter how many detectives we had to go through over here, we was going to let them know, ‘we’re still here. And we wanna know who killed our mom,’” says Tim.
A new detective
Lakeland Police Department
In 1998, Detective Brad Grice took over the Slaten case and immediately got to work. He sent the unidentified DNA from the Slaten rape kit to the state’s major crime lab at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement — the FDLE. A year later, the FDLE had developed a full DNA profile of Linda Slaten’s anonymous killer. Detective Grice then took DNA samples from prior persons of interest and submitted them to the FDLE for comparison. None were a match.
Old friends reunite
Brad Grice
Around the 20th anniversary in 2001, Detective Grice called the Slaten brothers to arrange a meeting at the Lakeland Police Department. “Soon as Jeff and Tim walked in the door, I realized I had known Jeff for years, since I was in my 20s,” Grice says, “through bowling.”
Grice’s search continued
Jeff Slaten
Detective Grice took DNA samples from the brothers and cleared them again.
Even Frank Slaten, who had stopped drinking and apologized to his sons for past abuses, volunteered a sample of his DNA and Grice was able to clear him, too. Here they are pictured together in 2005. That’s Jeff on the left, Tim in the middle and their dad on the right.
17 years of dedication
Brad Grice
In 2005, Detective Grice sent the unknown DNA profile from the Slaten rape kit to the FBI’s national DNA database where it was continuously compared against new DNA submissions. Through the course of his investigation, Grice says he eliminated dozens of suspects through DNA evidence. But after 17 years of working the Slaten case, he retired in 2015.
Renewed hope
CBS News
Detectives Tammy Hathcock and Russell Hurley were the new generation of investigators working the Slaten case. In 2018, Detective Hathcock received a call from the FDLE about a groundbreaking new DNA technology called investigative genetic genealogy that law enforcement agencies were using.
The FDLE explained that the detectives could submit the unidentified DNA from the Slaten case to be examined by genetic genealogist CeCe Moore. “If you have that DNA, there is no reason you cannot solve that mystery,” Moore says.
Pieces of a genetic family tree
CBS News
CeCe Moore uploaded the anonymous DNA from the Slaten rape kit to a public genealogy website called “GEDMatch,” which generated a list of people who shared DNA with the unknown killer. From there, she constructed a genetic family tree with the help of birth certificates, marriage licenses, obituaries, and social media.
In the end, Moore developed three branches of the killer’s family tree that led her to the one person who was most likely responsible for Linda Slaten’s murder.
Linda’s killer revealed
Tim Slaten
According to CeCe Moore, that person was Joseph Clinton Mills – the same man Tim Slaten knew back in 1981 as “Coach Joe.” Tim’s team football photo, which used to make him feel proud, sickens him today because standing directly behind him is the man he once trusted. “I’ve been carrying the killer’s picture in my house this table whole time and never had a clue,” Tim says.
In plain sight
Lakeland Police Department
Back in 1981, Joseph Mills – then 20 years old – was interviewed by police just one day after the murder, but it was conducted over the phone. During the brief call, Mills told investigators that he’d dropped Tim off after football practice on Sept. 3, 1981, the night before the murder – but police never considered him a suspect
The palm print
Lakeland Police Department
After learning Joseph Mills’ name, Detectives Hathcock and Hurley discovered that in 1984, Mills had been convicted of grand theft for forging a will. He never went to jail, but police collected fingerprints and palm prints from him.
In the summer of 2019, investigators compared Mills’ palm print from 1984 to the palm print that was lifted off Linda Slaten’s windowsill in 1981 and they were a match.
Digging through trash for DNA
Lakeland Police Department
Despite CeCe Moore’s findings and the palm print match, the detectives still needed to compare a fresh DNA sample from Mills to the DNA from the Slaten rape kit. So Detectives Hathcock and Hurley covertly took trash bags from Mills’ home and went through them at the police department.
They recovered a piece of medical adhesive tape in one of the bags that they sent to the crime lab for testing.
A look into Joseph Mills’ life
Lakeland Police Department
While they awaited the DNA results, the detectives dug further into Mills’ personal life. He was 58 at that time and had lived in Kathleen, Florida, for most of his life, which was just 30 minutes away from the crime scene. He was also married with children and grandchildren.
A spot-on match
Lakeland Police Department
Almost two weeks later, the crime lab’s results revealed that Mills’ DNA on the medical adhesive tape and the unknown DNA recovered from the rape kit were a spot-on match. In December 2019, detectives arrested Mills and brought him in for questioning.
The interview room
Lakeland Police Department
During his interrogation, Mills told detectives that Linda Slaten invited him over for consensual sex, which investigators knew was a lie. “I think it’s pretty evident that he targeted her,” Det. Russell Hurley says. The detectives believe that after Mills dropped Tim off on Sept. 3, 1981, he returned later that night and broke in through Linda’s bedroom window while no one was home. He then hid in her closet and waited for her to go to bed. That’s when he raped and strangled Linda with a wire hanger from her closet.
The sentencing
WTSP
Joseph Mills pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and sexual battery. At his sentencing, Linda Slaten’s family took turns confronting him and asked him why he killed Linda. And while they didn’t get an answer – or an apology – from Mills, he told the court, “I am a good person.”
The judge sentenced Mills to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
A small measure of justice
CBS News
Although the Slaten brothers feel some solace in knowing that Mills will never leave prison alive, it angers them that he had all those years of freedom while they lived most of their life without their mom. “I just wonder what life could have been like to have her,” Jeff says.
The Slaten brothers today
CBS News
Tim and Jeff remain extremely close. They visit their mother’s grave often and Jeff lights a candle every year on the anniversary of her death. Despite everything they’ve been through, they always continued to live life to the fullest for their mom.
“My mom, she’s looking down on us and would want us to live our lives and do good,” Jeff says, “I want to make her proud.”
