The throng of reporters camped out around Tucson is beginning to thin.
It’s been nearly two weeks since Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos held a news conference updating the case.
And despite more than 20,000 tips, the investigation appears to be cooling and the paths to solving the Feb. 1 kidnapping of Nancy Guthrie could be narrowing.
Officials insist the investigation is still in full force and that they have some solid clues: Her blood drops on the doorstep. Her suspected abductor snatched the front door Nest camera, but not before it captured the ski-masked armed man with a backpack lurking on the porch and trying to cover the lens with his gloved hand. More than a dozen gloves have since been recovered in the surrounding community, including one authorities say matched that worn by the person in the video.
Guthrie, the mother of “Today” show co-anchor Savannah Guthrie, vanished from her Arizona home more than three weeks ago and there is still no person of interest, no suspect or even a description of a kidnapper’s getaway car.
But so far there have been no DNA matches with known criminals in the federal database.
Ransom notes came after the Feb. 1 kidnapping, but no proof that the Guthrie was alive followed. Locals were detained and quickly released as investigative leads dried up.
Still, experts say it’s far too early to call this a “cold case” and noted a break could come at any moment.
But the paths to finding Guthrie and her abductor are limited:
1. Forensic evidence
Investigators could get a scientific breakthrough with DNA evidence.
Sheriff’s investigators say they are still checking DNA from the gloves recovered in the area and Guthrie’s home, which was searched after the 84-year-old grandmother failed to show up on a Sunday to her church group and a missing person’s case became the nation’s biggest kidnapping drama in decades.
Nanos and his department have said there are multiple DNA strands mixed from the home — meaning two or more persons — and “there can be challenges separating DNA.”
A glove was found two miles from the scene that authorities say it appears to match the pair worn by the masked man. But the DNA found on the glove did not match any in the Combined DNA Index System, which has more than 19 million offender samples nationwide.
Investigators haven’t said how much weight they are giving to specific pieces of evidence. Still, experts say anything with Guthrie’s DNA discovered outside the home may also contain her abductor’s DNA.
“We believe that we may have some DNA that may be our suspect, but we won’t know that until that DNA is separated, sorted out, maybe admitted to CODIS, maybe through genetic genealogy,” Nanos told NBC News.
2. Familial DNA
Genetic genealogy is most famous for apprehending the Golden State Killer, Joseph James DeAngelo Jr., known for serial rapes and murders in the 1970s and 1980s in California. The technique, known as forensic investigative genetic genealogy, incorporates public genealogy websites with DNA analysis. The National District Attorneys Assn. heralded it as a “new era in crime solving.”
With FIGG, authorities can compare DNA collected from Guthrie’s home with publicly accessible databases containing the genetic profiles of millions of people who have given them over for family history research and other reasons. From there, investigators can sometimes find distant relatives to help piece together a family tree that can point to a suspect, said CeCe Moore, a genetic genealogist and co-founder of DNA Justice.
In the Golden State Killer case, investigators retrieved old DNA processed in the Ventura County crime lab connected to one of his crimes. Instead of processing it on CODIS, they used another part of the DNA to search for potential relatives of the unknown killer in ancestry databases.
If the person has a long family history in the United States, it’s a bit easier for investigators to use genetic genealogy, Moore added, because there’s more representation in the databases that law enforcement can access.
However, law enforcement does not have easy access to the roughly 50 million genetic profiles contained in Ancestry.com, 23andMe and MyHeritage databases. Those companies have barred authorities from accessing such information and said they would release it only if compelled by a court order or warrant.
Databases GEDmatch, FamilyTreeDNA and DNA Justice are open to law enforcement use but contain fewer than 2 million genetic profiles, Moore said.
“Cases with Latin American subjects are incredibly difficult,” she said. “Mexico is typically a little bit easier because we have more representation in the database from Mexico than any of the other Latin American countries. But still, because we’re limited to the smallest databases, which are less than 2 million profiles, it’s going to be quite difficult, unless they just get lucky.”
Investigators can also run familial searches on the CODIS system, where relatives of the suspect may have been placed. Such a search is legal in Arizona.
3. Evidence breakthrough
Identifying the suspected kidnapper: FBI agents have already identified the masked man’s backpack as a 25-liter Ozark Trail Hiker Pack sold at Walmart, which is now working to assist investigators. The masked assailant’s gun holster, slung between his legs, is what law enforcement terms a universal fit holster and is ill-fitted for a much larger gun. Retired LAPD Capt. Paul Vernon, who oversaw homicide probes, said the style of carry may be familiar to some at a gun range, and investigators will be pursuing the carry method as a signature part of the man’s behavior. Once law enforcement identifies the man’s specific clothing, weapon, and the carry holster, it may trigger someone’s memory and generate a vital tip, Vernon said.
On Monday, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department addressed reports that there may be video of the suspect at Guthrie’s door on a day prior to her abduction, saying it was inconclusive.
“We are aware that doorbell images released earlier in the investigation depict a suspect in different stages of attire, including with and without a backpack,” the department statement said. “There is no date or time stamp associated with these images. Therefore, any suggestion that the photographs were taken on different days is purely speculative.”
Cellphone pinging: Investigators, particularly those with FBI technical units, will use geo-fencing to scour the cell towers around Guthrie’s home for cellphone users. They will seek to separate out the phones that aren’t usually there. Even if a kidnapper carries a disposable phone with prepaid minutes, also known as a “burner,” investigators will want to identify the phone and see if they can trace its past movements. In a Los Angeles County jewelry heist, investigators last year linked a burner phone from a traffic accident to the heist location and to other crimes. Vernon said that if you identify a phone, it’s possible to see if it pings along a route, say, along the highway from Tucson toward the border.
Cameras: The investigation is also continuing to try to retrieve other data from cameras around Nancy Guthrie’s home. Detectives have asked residents of the Catalina Foothills neighborhood where Guthrie lived to submit any suspicious behavior captured on security cameras for the entire month before the abduction. Initially, they asked specifically for any videos related to Jan. 11. Authorities haven’t said whether they have evidence that the perpetrator may have surveilled the home before the kidnapping. But it is not uncommon for burglars, robbers and home invaders to be seen on surveillance of a crime in the weeks before, law enforcement experts say.
Investigators in the Nancy Guthrie case in Arizona have turned to an investigative technique called genetic genealogy as they try to make the most of DNA evidence that’s been collected during the search for the mother of “Today” show co-host Savannah Guthrie.
The process has been used to crack some notable cases in the past decade, including identifying the so-called Golden State Killer in California who’d eluded authorities for over 40 years and the man behind the high-profile killings of four Idaho college students.
Nearly three weeks after Nancy Guthrie, 84, was believed to have been forcibly taken from her Tucson home in the middle of the night, authorities haven’t named a suspect or a person of interest in the case. The Pima County Sheriff’s Department announced this week that Savannah Guthrie, her two siblings and their spouses have been cleared as suspects.
The sheriff’s department has also said that a DNA profile from a set of gloves found about 2 miles from Nancy Guthrie’s house didn’t match any entries in the national database maintained by the FBI known as the Combined DNA Index System, or CoDIS. The database contains DNA profiles of individuals with a previous arrest for certain crimes who had supplied a DNA sample.
The sheriff’s department also said that the DNA profile from the gloves didn’t match other DNA evidence from Nancy Guthrie’s property. The department has said DNA was collected at the property that isn’t from Guthrie or those in close contact with her, and that investigators were working to identify who it came from. The department said Friday that DNA analysis was underway on biological evidence recovered during the investigation and that the process can be lengthy.
In an aerial view, a Pima County sheriff’s deputy keeps guard outside of Nancy Guthrie’s residence on Feb. 15, 2026, in Tucson, Arizona.
Brandon Bell/Getty Images
The department noted that investigators were looking into investigative genetic genealogy options to check for matches. A federal law enforcement source told CBS News investigators would also be checking commercial DNA databases, which are separate from CoDIS.
Emanuel Katranakis, a former deputy chief with the New York Police Department who spent 25 years in the NYPD’s Forensics Investigations Division and was its commanding officer, told CBS News that genetic genealogy is essentially the final effort to match a DNA sample to a person after collecting the evidence and searching in CoDIS, if there is no direct or partial match in the federal or state databases.
“If this perpetrator has a relative that is a convicted offender in the database, you build a family tree around it,” Katranakis said. He also said, “You’re throwing a wide net, you’re looking for cousins.”
It’s a strategy that has worked before.
In Idaho, Bryan Kohberger is serving four life sentences after pleading guilty last year to killing four college students in the early morning hours in their home in 2022. Investigators were able to tie him to the killings using DNA retrieved from the button snap of a knife sheath that was left near one of the slain students’ bodies.
The FBI used genealogy sites to build family trees of genetic relatives using the crime scene DNA profile, and from there identified Kohberger as a possible suspect, prosecutors said. Investigators searched through garbage from the Pennsylvania home of Kohberger’s parents and recovered a Q-tip that was determined to come from the father of the person whose DNA was found at the Idaho home.
Bryan Kohberger appears at his sentencing hearing July 23, 2025, in Boise, Idaho.
AP Photo/Kyle Green, Pool
In California, the decadeslong pursuit of the so-called Golden State Killer, who was behind 13 killings and dozens of rapes, led to the 2018 arrest of a retired police officer in his 70s after a DNA sample was submitted to a public database popular with genealogy enthusiasts.
The sample was collected after a double murder in 1980 but didn’t match with anything in law enforcement’s systems until the 21st century, according to court documents. After turning to the public database, investigators ultimately landed on Joseph DeAngelo. He was arrested in 2018 after investigators obtained a tissue from his trash that had his DNA. DeAngelo, now 80, pleaded guilty in 2020 and is serving multiple life sentences.
Joseph James DeAngelo sits in court during victim impact statements Aug. 20, 2020, in Sacramento, California.
Santiago Mejia/San Francisco Chronicle via AP, Pool
Suzanna Ryan, laboratory director at private forensic DNA lab Pure Gold Forensics in Southern California, told CBS News that when investigators turn to genetic genealogy, there has to be enough of a DNA sample left to undergo additional analysis.
“Sometimes the original lab has to use all of the sample for traditional testing in order to even attempt to obtain a result,” she said in an email.
An ideal DNA sample would have a single source profile, like a blood stain or a semen sample, Ryan said. However, labs can also work with samples that have two contributors as long as most of the sample is from a potential perpetrator.
“The labs could work with a mixture of, let’s say 80% contributor ‘A’ to 20% contributor ‘B’ as long as the potential perpetrator is the 80% component,” Ryan said. “If it’s the other way around, they usually can’t do much with that type of mixture in terms of the downstream genealogical research.”
The use of genealogical databases in criminal investigations has raised questions about whether people who upload their DNA profiles are fully aware of how they might be used.
FamilyTreeDNA, which allows users to use their DNA data to find relatives, told CBS News it doesn’t work directly with law enforcement on forensic genetic genealogy cases. The company said related work is carried out through an independent third-party partner that uses a consent-based database.
“Participation in investigative genetic genealogy matching at FamilyTreeDNA is strictly voluntary and opt-in only,” the company said in a statement. “We place the highest priority on customer privacy, data security, and ethical use in all aspects of our operations.”
CBS News has also reached out to several other popular commercial DNA database companies for their responses.
Genetic genealogy helps solve cold cases, and the Prince George’s County Police Department used federal funds dedicated to it to solve the Sherry Crandell case.
It took nearly 28 years for police in Prince George’s County, Maryland, to determine the identity of the man detectives say killed 50-year-old Sherry Crandell back in 1998.
The case had gone cold until a few years ago, when the department turned to what’s known as “genetic genealogy” in the hopes of using DNA taken from the crime scene to look for new leads.
“Its effectiveness has led to the Department of Justice, basically expanding its grant programs so that local law enforcement can take advantage of this process, because it’s an expensive process,” said Robert Dean, a special assistant state’s attorney in Prince George’s County. “The actual laboratory work, a lot of that is done by private labs, and they charge.”
Typically, a case costs between $30,000 to $60,000. Prince George’s County applied for and was awarded a $500,000 grant in 2020 to help solve cases such as the Crandell case.
“I’m proud to say that this was the first case that was submitted for testing,” said County Executive Aisha Braveboy, who was the county’s top prosecutor at the time the grant application was submitted.
The closest genetic hit that investigators got came from a fourth cousin of the suspect. The FBI has also started providing local departments with greater resources, especially on the genealogical side.
“Our investigative genetic genealogy team started working Sherry’s case four years ago,” said Jimmy Paul, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Baltimore Field Office. “They kept at it, following lead after lead, a thorough, detailed and time consuming process, which finally paid off this year.”
It’s a process that’s worthwhile, he added.
“Through investigative genetic genealogy, investigators are able to solve the worst of the worst crimes and identify the worst of the worst criminals, even when decades have passed since the crimes took place,” Paul said.
Millions of federal grant dollars are now available to departments that apply for them to solve cases with genetic genealogy. Dean said without that support, the Crandell case would not yet be solved.
“It would have taken longer. So maybe we would be talking, instead of four years after this grant was available, maybe eight years,” he said. “The technology is there, but accessing the technology does cost money.”
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A woman found dead in a ravine in 1998 has been identified, California police say.
Photo from El Cajon Police Department
For decades, a woman found dead in a California ravine posed a mystery.
But now, the woman’s family has some answers; she has been identified as Alicia Ledezma Sanchez, El Cajon police said in an Oct. 30 Facebook post.
The woman, whose body was decomposing and had no identification when it was found in an El Cajon ravine surrounded in heavy shrubbery on Aug. 13, 1998, was believed to have been dead for up to six weeks.
Despite an investigation, police said the woman’s identity remained a mystery.
Five years later, police said its cold case team took another look at the case, and a forensic artist created a sculpture using the woman’s skull.
“Photographs of the sculpture were released in hopes that a member of the public could assist in identifying the woman,” police said.
Still, no leads surfaced, and the woman’s case stayed cold, according to police.
Again, in 2008, police tried to push the case forward.
After getting a DNA sample, police said investigators made a DNA profile for the woman.
When the profile was uploaded into a database, however, no matches were found, police said.
In 2023, police said they partnered with Othram Inc. and Parabon Labs and set their sights on advanced DNA techniques, including genetic genealogy and phenotyping, in hopes of identifying the woman.
Genetic genealogy uses DNA testing coupled with “traditional genealogical methods” to create “family history profiles,” according to the Library of Congress. With genealogical DNA testing, researchers can determine if and how people are biologically related.
“Due to the unknown woman’s unique biogeographical ancestry, efforts to find close relatives were challenging,” Othram said.
Further research, though, showed the woman “likely family ties to Michoacán de Ocampo, Mexico, and potential relatives in the San Diego area,” the company said.
Soon, a potential family member contacted the cold case team, believing they may know the woman’s identity, police said.
The woman’s DNA was compared to a possible son’s, confirming her identity as Sanchez, who was born in 1968, police said.
“Families deserve answers and this is a case where identifying the victim is the first step in getting answers,” Kristen Mittelman, Othram’s chief development officer, said in an email to McClatchy News.
An investigation into Sanchez’s slaying is ongoing, police said. Anyone with information about Sanchez is asked to contact police at 619-579-3320.
El Cajon is about a 15-mile drive northeast from San Diego.
Daniella Segura is a national real-time reporter with McClatchy. Previously, she’s worked as a multimedia journalist for weekly and daily newspapers in the Los Angeles area. Her work has been recognized by the California News Publishers Association. She is also an alumnus of the University of Southern California and UC Berkeley.
Workers clearing brush near an Oregon bridge made a grim discovery more than three decades ago: “the fully skeletonized remains of a man.”
For decades, the man found near St. Johns Bridge in North Portland in 1992 had no identity, Oregon State Police said in an Oct. 13 news release.
But now, thanks to help from DNA testing, the man has been identified as Bryant Edward Deane, who is believed to have been 39 years old when he died, police said.
Case grows cold
After the workers found the remains, the medical examiner’s office took up the case, police said.
Examinations by a forensic pathologist and forensic anthropologist showed the man was nearly 50 years old and stood between 5 feet, 2 inches and 5 feet, 5 inches tall, troopers said.
The examinations also determined the man likely walked with a limp, based on the “arthritic changes, several fractures (and) a marked difference in leg length,” according to police.
The man, who was believed to have been dead for a year before he was discovered, had more pronounced fractures on his left side, “suggesting the decedent may have fallen from the bridge or been struck by a vehicle and thrown from the bridge,” police said.
Investigators, however, could not determine a cause or manner of death, troopers said.
With no leads, “the case went cold,” police said.
Though investigators made some progress, troopers said the case had no significant breakthroughs in the absence of genetic genealogy.
The man’s profile was entered into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System in 2011, police said.
NamUs, a “national repository for missing, unidentified, and unclaimed persons cases,” serves as a resource for “law enforcement, medical examiners, coroners, and investigating professionals,” according to the program’s website.
His DNA profile was also entered into the Combined DNA Index System, police said.
CODIS is “a computer software program that operates local, state, and national databases of DNA profiles from convicted offenders, unsolved crime scene evidence, and missing persons,” according to the Department of Justice.
Even still, no matches were found, according to police.
In 2019, more comprehensive DNA profiles were entered into CODIS but still yielded no matches, police said.
Genetic genealogy leads to ID
Five years later, police said investigators looked to advanced DNA testing in hopes of identifying the remains, partnering with DNA Doe Project, a nonprofit that says it aims to identify “John and Jane Does using investigative genetic genealogy.”
Genetic genealogy uses DNA testing coupled with “traditional genealogical methods” to create “family history profiles,” according to the Library of Congress. With genealogical DNA testing, researchers can determine if and how people are biologically related.
The nonprofit said volunteer genetic genealogists began digging into the case, soon learning the man “had deep roots in Franklin County, Massachusetts.”
Though answers seemed within reach, challenges arose, the nonprofit said in a news release.
“While our initial impression was that this case could be quite straightforward, we quickly realized that was not the case,” Eric Hendershott, a team co-leader, said in the release.
For the next five months, the nonprofit said its team built out the man’s family tree, which grew to include “nearly 20,000 people, tracing family trees back as far as 16th century England.”
“Finally, a connection was made between two of the key families of interest – a couple who’d married in Northfield, Massachusetts in 1951,” the nonprofit said.
Additional research showed one of the couple’s children, Bryant Deane, vanished from public record, the nonprofit said.
Though the unidentified man’s estimated age was greater than Deane’s in 1992, the nonprofit said its team pushed ahead.
The medical examiner’s office spoke with the man’s possible brother, who said he had not spoken with Deane “since the mid-to-late 1970s,” police said.
The brother gave a DNA sample, which was tested, confirming the remains belonged to Deane, according to police.
Bryant Edward Deane family’s headstone. Photo from DNA Doe Project
“This case was cold for 33 years,” Hailey Collord-Stalder, forensic anthropologist with the Oregon State Medical Examiner’s Office, said in the release. “Bryant’s parents passed in 2017 and 2019, respectively, never knowing what happened to their son. His family left a space for him on their headstone; now he can finally be laid to rest with his family.”
In the nonprofit’s release, team lead Jeana Feehery said the case was one “where one small DNA match helped fill in the connections that our higher matches could not.”
“This highlights how even distant relatives of Does can help us solve cases — every piece of the puzzle is important,” Feehery said.
Daniella Segura is a national real-time reporter with McClatchy. Previously, she’s worked as a multimedia journalist for weekly and daily newspapers in the Los Angeles area. Her work has been recognized by the California News Publishers Association. She is also an alumnus of the University of Southern California and UC Berkeley.
Canadian authorities have identified a person known as “The Woman in the Well” nearly two decades after her remains were found.
The woman, Alice Spence, was born in September 1881 and had moved to Canada from Minnesota in 1913, police said.
In June 2006, crews excavating a site in Sutherland, Saskatoon, found an old well and a barrel containing preserved human remains, according to a news release from the Saskatoon Police Service. The area was previously the site of the Shore Hotel, a boarding house that was demolished in 1927, according to a news release from the private genetic genealogy company Othram.
The woman had been partially dismembered, police believed, and was wrapped in a burlap sack and stuffed in the barrel, Othram said. Police found clothes, including a fitted jacket and long skirt, that dated to between 1910 and 1920, Othram said. A broken necklace and men’s clothing were also found.
An autopsy determined the woman had died under suspicious circumstances, but authorities were unable to identify her despite years of investigation. Police developed a DNA profile, but found no matches, and facial reconstruction images released to the public turned up no answers, Othram said.
In 2023, the Saskatoon Police Services submitted forensic evidence from the case to Othram. Othram’s scientists were able to develop a DNA extract from the skeletal evidence. They built a comprehensive DNA profile, Othram said, which was used to generate “new investigative leads” that were returned to the police service.
A breakthrough came in June this year, Saskatoon Police Service Sergeant Darren Funk said in a news conference. At an event in Ottawa, Funk heard the Toronto Police Service describe how they had used investigative genetic genealogy to solve a homicide. Investigative genetic genealogy uses the DNA of people who were related to the subject to help make an identification.
Funk connected with the Toronto Police Service and asked them to review the case of “The Woman in the Well.” The Toronto Police Service’s follow-up investigation led investigators to people who may have been the woman’s relatives. Police collected reference DNA samples from those subjects, and those samples were compared to the woman’s DNA profile. Authorities also used historical information and city archives to help make the identification.
Alice Spence was married to a man named Charles Spence and had a daughter, Idella, police said. Spence’s listing in a 1916 census was the last proof of life historians could find for her.
The family’s home in Sutherland was destroyed by a fire in 1918, police said. Other records show Charles and Idella Spence living with a housekeeper in 1921. Investigators believe that Alice’s death occurred sometime between 1916 and the fire in 1918.
Spence’s descendants, located through forensic genetic genealogy, were largely unaware of their relative and her death, police said.
The police service said it believes this is the oldest investigation in Canada to be solved with the assistance of investigative genetic genealogy. Saskatoon Police Service Chief Cameron McBride called it a “testament to the determination and innovation of investigators throughout all these years.”
Kerry Breen is a news editor at CBSNews.com. A graduate of New York University’s Arthur L. Carter School of Journalism, she previously worked at NBC News’ TODAY Digital. She covers current events, breaking news and issues including substance use.
When Steve Edsel was a boy, his adoptive parents kept a scrapbook of newspaper clippings in their bedroom closet. He would ask for it sometimes, poring over the headlines about his birth. Headlines like this: “Mother Deserts Son, Flees From Hospital,” Winston-Salem Journal, December 30, 1973.
The mother in question was 14 years old, “5 feet 6 with reddish brown hair,” and she had come to the hospital early one morning with her own parents. They gave names that all turned out to be fake. And by 8 o’clock that evening, just hours after she gave birth, they were gone. In a black-and-white drawing of the mother, based on nurses’ recollections, she has round glasses and sideswept bangs. Her mouth is grimly set.
The abandoned boy was placed in foster care with a local couple, the Edsels, who later adopted him. Steve knew all of this growing up. His parents never tried to hide his origins, and they always gave him the scrapbook when he asked. It wasn’t until he turned 14, though, that he really began to wonder about his birth mom. “I’m 14,” he thought at the time. “This is how old she was when she had me.”
Steve began looking for her in earnest in his 20s, but the paper trail quickly ran cold. When he turned 40, he told his wife, Michelle, that he wanted to give the search one last go. This was in 2013. AncestryDNA had started selling mail-in test kits the previous year, so he bought one. His matches at first seemed unpromising—some distant relatives—but when he began posting in a Facebook group for people seeking out biological family, he got connected to a genetic genealogist named CeCe Moore. Moore specializes in finding people via distant DNA matches, a technique made famous in 2018 when it led to the capture of the Golden State Killer. But back then, genetic genealogy was still new, and Moore was one of its pioneers. She volunteered to help Steve.
Within just a couple of weeks, she had narrowed down the search to two women, cousins of the same age. On Facebook, Steve could see that one cousin had four kids, and she regularly posted photos of them, beautiful and smiling. They looked well-off, their lives picture-perfect— “like a storybook,” Steve says. The other woman was unmarried; she didn’t have kids. She was not friends with her immediate family on Facebook, and she had moved halfway across the country from them. One evening—a Saturday, Steve clearly remembers—Moore asked to speak with him by phone.
She confirmed what he had already suspected: His birth mom was the second woman. But Moore had another piece of news too. She had unexpectedly figured out something about his biological father as well. It looks like your parents are related. Steve didn’t know what to say. Do you understand what I mean? He said he thought so. Either your mom’s father or your mom’s brother is your father. A sea of emotions rose to a boil inside him: anger, hurt, worthlessness, disgust, shame, and devastation all at once. In his years of wondering about his birth, he had never, ever considered the possibility of incest. Why would he? What were the chances?
In 1975, around the time of Steve’s birth, a psychiatric textbook put the frequency of incest at one in a million.
But this number is almost certainly a dramatic underestimate. The stigma around openly discussing incest, which often involves child sexual abuse, has long made the subject difficult to study. In the 1980s, feminist scholars argued, based on the testimonies of victims, that incest was far more common than recognized, and in recent years, DNA has offered a new kind of biological proof. Widespread genetic testing is uncovering case after secret case of children born to close biological relatives—providing an unprecedented accounting of incest in modern society.
The geneticist Jim Wilson, at the University of Edinburgh, was shocked by the frequency he found in the U.K. Biobank, an anonymized research database: One in 7,000 people, according to his unpublished analysis, was born to parents who were first-degree relatives—a brother and a sister or a parent and a child. “That’s way, way more than I think many people would ever imagine,” he told me. And this number is just a floor: It reflects only the cases that resulted in pregnancy, that did not end in miscarriage or abortion, and that led to the birth of a child who grew into an adult who volunteered for a research study.
Most of the people affected may never know about their parentage, but these days, many are stumbling into the truth after AncestryDNA and 23andMe tests. Steve’s case was one of the first Moore worked on involving closely related parents. She now knows of well over 1,000 additional cases of people born from incest, the significant majority between first-degree relatives, with the rest between second-degree relatives (half-siblings, uncle-niece, aunt-nephew, grandparent-grandchild). The cases show up in every part of society, every strata of income, she told me.
Neither AncestryDNA nor 23andMe informs customers about incest directly, so the thousand-plus cases Moore knows of all come from the tiny proportion of testers who investigated further. This meant, for example, uploading their DNA profiles to a third-party genealogy site to analyze what are known as “runs of homozygosity,” or ROH: long stretches where the DNA inherited from one’s mother and father are identical. For a while, one popular genealogy site instructed anyone who found high ROH to contact Moore. She would call them, one by one, to explain the jargon’s explosive meaning. Unwittingly, she became the keeper of what might be the world’s largest database of people born out of incest.
In the overwhelming majority of cases, Moore told me, the parents are a father and a daughter or an older brother and a younger sister, meaning a child’s existence was likely evidence of sexual abuse. She had no obvious place to send people reeling from such revelations, and she was not herself a trained therapist. After seeing many of these cases, though, she wanted people to know they were not alone. Moore ended up creating a private and invite-only support group on Facebook in 2016, and she tapped Steve and later his wife, Michelle, to become admins, too. The three of them had become close in the months and years after the search for his birth mom, as they navigated the emotional fallout together.
One day this past January, Michelle, who also works as Moore’s part-time assistant, told me she had spoken with four new people that week, all of them with ROH high enough to have parents who were first-degree relatives. She used to dread these calls. “I would stumble over my words,” she told me. But not anymore. She tells the shaken person on the line that they can join a support group full of people who are living the same reality. She tells them they can talk to her husband, Steve.
When Steve first discovered the truth about his biological parents, a decade ago, he had no support group to turn to, and he did not know what to do with the strange mix of emotions. He was genuinely happy to have found his birth mom. He had never looked like his adoptive parents, but in photos of her and her family, he could see his eyes, his chin, and even the smirky half-grin that his face naturally settles into.
But he radiated with newfound anger, too, on her behalf. He could not know the exact circumstances of his conception, and his DNA test alone could not determine whether her older brother or her father was responsible. But Steve could not imagine a consensual scenario, given her age. The bespectacled 14-year-old girl who disappeared from the hospital had remained frozen in time in his mind, even as he himself grew older, got married, became a stepdad. He felt protective of that young girl.
As badly as he wanted to know his birth mom, he worried she would not want to know him. Would his sudden reappearance dredge up traumatic memories—memories she had perhaps been trying to outrun her whole adult life, given how far she had moved and how little she seemed connected to her family? A religious man, Steve prayed over it and settled on handwriting a letter. He included a couple of paragraphs about his life, some photos, and a message that he loved her. He left out what he knew about his paternity. And he took care to send the letter by certified mail, so that he could confirm its receipt and so that it would not accidentally fall into anyone else’s hands.
She never responded. But Steve knew that she had received it: The post office sent him the green slip that she had signed upon delivery, and he scrutinized her signature—her actual name, written by her actual hand. At 40 years old, he touched for the first time something his mother had just touched, held something she had just held. He put the slip inside the pages of his Bible.
Steve had never faulted his mother for leaving him at the hospital, and finding out about his paternity made him even more understanding. But the revelation also made him struggle with who he was. Did it mean that something was wrong with him, written into his DNA from the moment of his conception? On a podcast later, he admitted to feeling like trash, “like something that somebody had just thrown away.” Those first six months after his discovery were the hardest six months of his life.
Across human cultures, incest between close family members is one of the most universal and most deeply held taboos. A common explanation is biological: Children born from related parents are more likely to develop health complications, because their parents are more likely to be carriers of the same recessive mutations. From the 1960s to the ’80s, a handfulofstudies following a few dozen children born of incest documented high rates of infant mortality and congenital conditions.
But in the past, healthy children born from incestuous unions would have never come to the attention of doctors. As widespread DNA testing has uncovered orders of magnitude more people whose parents are brother and sister or parent and child, it’s also shown that plenty of those people are perfectly healthy. “There is a large element of chance in whether incest has a poor outcome,” according to Wilson, the geneticist. It depends on whether those runs of homozygosity contain recessive disease-causing mutations. All of us have some of these runs in our DNA—usually less than 1 percent of the genome in Western populations, higher in cultures where cousin marriage is common. But that number is about 25 percent, Wilson said, in people born from first-degree relatives. While the odds of a genetic disease are much higher, the outcome is far from predetermined.
Still, these numbers make people wonder. Steve was born with a heart murmur, which required open-heart surgery at ages 13 and 18, though he does not know for sure the cause; heart defects are among the more common birth defects in the general population. He and Michelle were also never able to have children together. Others in the Facebook group have shared their struggles with autoimmune diseases, fibromyalgia, eye problems, and so on—though these are often hard to definitively link to incest. Health problems arising from incest might manifest in any number of ways, depending on exactly which mutations are inherited. “When I go to the doctor and they ask me my family history, I wonder: How much do I need to go into it?” says Mandy, another member of the group. (I am identifying some people by first name only, so they can speak freely about their family and medical histories.) How much experience would a typical doctor have with incest, anyway?
After Mandy first learned that her father was her mother’s uncle, she went looking for stories about other people like her. All she could find were “gross fantasies” online and medical-journal articles about health problems. She felt very lonely. “I don’t have anybody I can talk to about this,” she remembers thinking. “Nobody knows what to say.” When she found the Facebook group, she could see that she was far from the only one like her. She watched the others cycle, too, through the stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
She does not know exactly what happened between her biological parents, but her mother was 17, and her mother’s uncle was in his 30s. The discovery, for all the hurt that it surfaced, has helped Mandy reconcile some of her childhood experiences. Unlike Steve, she was raised by her biological mother, and she believed her mother’s husband to be her biological father. He mostly ignored her, but her mother was cruel. She treated Mandy differently than she did her younger brothers. “At least now I have more of an answer as to why,” Mandy told me. “I wasn’t a bad kid and unlovable.”
Kathy was also raised by her mother, though she had an early inkling that her dad was not her biological dad. Their blood types were incompatible, and she heard rumors about her mother and grandfather. Although her mother’s family was violent and chaotic, she was close to her dad’s family, especially her granny on that side. “They’ve been my rock,” she told me. By the time Kathy took a DNA test confirming that her dad was not her biological dad, she had spent a lifetime distancing herself from her biological family and embracing one with whom she shared no DNA.
Hers was, in some ways, the opposite journey of adoptees such as Steve, who wanted so badly to know his biological family. But the two of them have become close. Kathy remembers how angry he used to be on his mother’s behalf. She told him that she used to be angry too, but she had to leave it behind. “It’s not going to bring me any peace. It’s not going to bring my mother any peace,” she recalled saying. And it wouldn’t undo what had been done to his mother by her father or her brother so many years ago.
In the end, Steve was able to identify his biological father, though not through any particular feat of genetic sleuthing. One day, two and a half years after his DNA test, he logged in to AncestryDNA and saw a parent match. It was his mother’s older brother. From the site, he could see that his father-uncle had logged in once, presumably seen that Steve was his son, and—even after Steve sent him a message—never logged back on again.
By then, his initial anger had started to dissipate. He still felt deeply for his birth mom. Michelle says that her husband has always been a sensitive guy—she makes fun of him for crying at movies—but he’s become even more empathetic. The feelings of worthlessness he initially struggled with has given way to a sense of purpose; he and Michelle now spend hours on the phone talking with others in the support group.
Steve has still never spoken to his birth mother. He tried writing to her a second time, sending a journal about his life—but she returned it unopened. He messages her occasionally on Facebook, sending photos of grandkids and puppies he’s raised. Every year, he wishes her a happy birthday. She has not replied, but she has also not blocked him.
When the journal came back unopened, Steve decided to try messaging his mother’s cousin—the other woman he’d initially thought could be his birth mom. He yearned for some kind of connection with someone in his biological family. He wrote to the cousin about his mom—but not his dad—and she actually replied. She told him that she and his mom had been close as children, Steve recounted, but she did not know about a pregnancy. To her, it had seemed like her cousin one day “fell off the face of the Earth,” he says. She agreed to read his journal, and the two of them soon began speaking on the phone about their families.
Months later, Steve felt like he could finally share the truth about his biological father, and the cousin again accepted him for who he was. They met for the first time in 2017 when she was visiting a nearby town, and she later invited Steve and Michelle to Thanksgiving. Last year, she extended another invitation to a large family gathering. Steve’s immediate biological family was not there, but hers was, and they all knew about him and his mom and his dad. They greeted him with hugs, and they took photos together as a family. “It felt like a relief,” he told me, like a burden had been lifted from him. In this family, he was not a secret.
Hackers accessed the personal data of millions of people who used services from the genetic testing company 23andMe in October, the company confirmed Monday.
When did 23andMe know about the hack?
The company launched an investigation in October after a “threat actor” claimed online to have 23andMe users’ profile information.
A spokesperson at the time said the company believed threat actors targeted the accounts of 23andMe users who had reused usernames and passwords from other sites that had been hacked. The spokesperson didn’t reveal how many people had been impacted by the hack.
While the hacker only accessed about 14,000 accounts through the attack, a feature on 23andMe allows users to see information about possible relatives, a company spokesperson said. By exploiting this feature, the hacker was able to view the information of millions of users.
A 23andMe spokesperson on Monday clarified that about 5.5 million customers had their “DNA Relatives” profiles accessed in an unauthorized manner. The profiles contain information such as display names, predicted relationships with others and the DNA percentages the user shares with matches.
Additionally, about 1.4 million customers participating in the Relatives feature had their “Family Tree” profile information accessed, which 23andMe describes as a limited subset of the Relatives profile data.
As of Friday, 23andMe said it was still in the process of notifying affected customers. The company is now requiring existing customers to reset their passwords and enable two-step verification.
The company said it believes “threat actor activity is contained.”
What is 23andMe?
The company analyzes people’s DNA from saliva samples provided by customers. The company produces reports about the customers’ DNA that includes information about their ancestry and genetic health risks.
Aliza Chasan is a digital producer at 60 Minutes and CBSNews.com. She has previously written for outlets including PIX11 News, The New York Daily News, Inside Edition and DNAinfo. Aliza covers trending news, often focusing on crime and politics.
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September 4, 1981 was the day these men say their childhood ended. Jeff Slaten and his younger brother, Tim, had been awakened by Lakeland, Florida, police officers, and told their mother had been murdered. Police hustled the boys outside, but Tim, still in his pajamas, caught a glimpse of his mother. She had been raped and strangled.
“I saw the whole crime scene right then and there as a 12-year-old kid,” Tim Slaten tells CBS News chief investigative and senior national correspondent Jim Axelrod. “You can’t unsee that,” says Axelrod. Tim, with tears in his eyes, says he “still sees” the image of his dead mother, and knows he always will.
Prior to and after Linda Slaten’s murder, Tim Slaten’s football coach, Joe Mills, would regularly drive Tim to and from football practice. Coach Joe became a role model for the boy, who proudly hung up his football team photo, with the coach standing behind him, in his room.
Tim Slaten
To this day, the Slaten brothers feel grief and guilt, for not hearing anythingthat night, for not coming to their mom’s rescue. “I (would have) died died that night tryin’ to save my mom,” Jeff Slaten says. “But I didn’t hear nothing. And it’s so hard to live with that.”
Immediately after the murder, Jeff and Tim moved in with their grandparents. For those first frightening days, the entire family slept in the same room. It was their grandfather who rarely slept. He was standing guard all night with a shotgun.
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.”
Jeff Slaten
A few weeks later, the boys were back in school, and Tim was back playing football, his favorite sport. “Just trying to live life again,” he says. His teammates and coach, “Coach Joe,” were always supportive, always rooting for him. Coach Joe, 20 at the time, was a young man Tim had looked up to. He often drove Tim to and from football practice — a routine that had started well before the murder.
For years, Tim Slaten proudly hung his team football photo in his bedroom, taken just one month after the murder. The photo was also a reminder, he says, of something his mom had taught him: to keep moving forward and never give up.
After the murder, Lakeland investigators had collected a rape kit and lifted a palm print from Linda Slaten’s bedroom window, where the killer had entered. Detectives had questioned a slew of suspects, like Linda’s abusive ex-husband, Frank Slaten. Even her own son, Jeff, became a person of interest, telling Axelrod, “Lakeland Police, they was interrogating me all the time.”
But no one was charged. Before long, the case went cold and stayed that way for nearly four decades. Jeff Slaten says, he thought for sure he’d take his last breath without knowing who murdered his mom.
But remarkable advances in DNA technology renewed hope, and that carefully stored rape kit revealed an unlikely suspect, Joseph Clinton Mills — Coach Joe.
Now those car rides to practice took on new meaning. So did Tim’s team football photo, which sickens him today. Because standing directly behind Tim is the man he once trusted and admired, Coach Joe. He would often ask Tim how the case was going. Was there any news? Were there any new leads? Coach Joe was talking to a 12-year-old boy, trying to keep tabs on a murder investigation through the son of the murdered woman when he knew exactly who did it.
“I’ve been carrying the killer’s picture in my house this whole time and never had a clue,” Jeff says. “He’s a cold-hearted monster, that’s for sure.”
On Sept. 4, 1981, Jeff Slaten, 15 and his brother Time, 12, were awakened by Lakeland, Florida, police and told their mother, Linda Slaten, had been murdered. Investigators collected a rape kit and lifted a palm print from the windowsill where the killer had entered. They questioned a slew of suspects, but no one was charged, and the case went cold.
Prior to and after Linda Slaten’s murder, Tim’s football coach, Joe Mills, would regularly drive Tim to and from football practice. Coach Joe became a role model for the young boy, who proudly hung up his football team photo in his room where Mills stood right behind him.
Linda’s sons spent decades living in fear of the man they called “the Monster.” Nearly 40 years later, advances in DNA technology revealed Linda Slaten’s likely killer: Coach Joe.
“I looked up to this guy,” Tim tells “48 Hours” contributor Jim Axelrod. “And I had a picture in my house ever since then, and never knew it was him.”
“He’s a cold-hearted monster, that’s for sure,” says Jeff.
SEPTEMBER 4, 1981
Jim Axelrod: On the morning of September 4th, 1981 … you’re going to walk three doors down —
Judy Butler: Mm-hmm.
Jim Axelrod: — and have a cup of coffee with your sister.
Judy Butler: Right.
When Judy Butler knocked on her older sister’s front door, Linda Slaten never answered. At the time, the sisters both lived in a Lakeland apartment complex.
Jim Axelrod: So, you started to walk back to your place, and what happened?
Judy Butler: And I turn, and I see that the screen is out of the window.
Linda’s bedroom window was wide open. Judy walked over and looked inside.
Judy Butler: And my vision comes across her.
Jim Axelrod: Where was she?
Judy Butler: She was laying … instead of up and down on the bed, she was laying crossways. … And at first, I thought maybe she was asleep. … And then, then, I just started screaming.
Linda Slaten’s killer entered through her bedroom window.
Lakeland Police Department
When police arrived, they found the partially nude body of Linda Slaten, 31, with a wire coat hanger wrapped around her neck. The killer had entered her bedroom through the open window.
The crackle of police radios inside the small two-bedroom apartment woke up Linda’s 15-year-old son, Jeff, who was sleeping on a cot in the living room.
Jeff Slaten: I asked, “What is goin’ on?” He said, “Police officers. … Put on some clothes and go outside.” And he made sure I went out the front door.”
Jeff Slaten: And when I went out there, it looked like every cop in the state of Florida … news crews, and my Aunt Judy was out there crying, and she told me my mom been murdered (cries). And I just couldn’t believe it.
In the apartment’s second bedroom, another officer woke up Linda’s younger son, Tim, then 12 years old.
Tim Slaten: He goes, “You need to wake up and go outside with your brother.” He never mentioned my mom. I’m like, “why’s he not saying my mom? And why’s a cop waking me up?”
Still in his pajamas, Tim walked past his mother’s closed bedroom door. Suddenly, it swung open, as an officer left the room.
Tim Slaten: And I saw the whole crime scene. … I mean, I saw my mom’s bloody body with a coat hanger around her neck (cries).
Jim Axelrod: You can’t unsee that.
Tim Slaten (very emotional): No. … And I still see it.
1974 | SEVEN YEARS BEFORE THE MURDER
Linda Slaten
Jeff Slaten
In 1974, Linda Slaten was a 24-year-old single mom — finally free. She had just divorced Jeff and Tim’s abusive father, Frank Slaten, after nine volatile years of marriage.
Jeff Slaten: He was a violent alcoholic to be honest with you.
Tim Slaten: Yes.
Jim Axelrod: Did he hit your mom?
Jeff Slaten: Oh, yeah.
Tim Slaten: Yes.
In the years that followed, nothing was easy for the young family. Linda struggled for work, made her own clothes to save money, and couldn’t afford a car.
Jim Axelrod: If you couldn’t get a ride to practice, who would take you?
Tim Slaten: Coach come pick us up.
That’s “Coach Joe,” as the kids called him. He often drove Tim and some other boys to and from football practice.
SEPTEMBER 3, 1981 | LINDA SLATEN’S FINAL HOURS
On the last full day of her life, Linda and Jeff argued. Tensions had been rising with her teenage son.
Jeff Slaten: I remember coming home, there was nothing to eat in the house. … You know how it is when you’re a 15, 16-year-old kid, you’re mouthy and …
Jeff Slaten: I got mad, and I went out the door and got on my bicycle and road 11 or 12 miles to the northside of town … to go to my grandma and grandpa’s house to get somethin’ to eat.
At 8:30 that night, Tim came home from football practice.
Tim Slaten: The coach brought me home.
Around 9 p.m., Linda took Tim to a party next door to play cards.
Jeff Slaten: Grandma and grandpa brought me home by, I think it was around 9 — 9 or 9:30 or so.
Linda and Tim came home about 11. By midnight, Jeff made up with his mom, he says, and still remembers their final moment together.
Jeff Slaten: She’s washin’ the dishes and stuff. When she went to go to her bedroom and … I said, “I love you, Mom. I’ll see you tomorrow,” you know.
Sgt. Edgar Pickett was a legendary fingerprint expert with the Lakeland Police Department and led the crime scene unit when Linda Slaten was murdered. Sergeant Pickett recovered a palm print from the bedroom windowsill — a piece of evidence that would later play a crucial role in the investigation.
Edgar Pickett/CBS News
Jim Axelrod: What do you remember about the Slaten case?
Sgt. Edgar Pickett: I could remember everything about it. Goin’ to that window and lookin’ at it, where he went through it. … Then I went in there and the children was asleep. And I saw that coat hanger around her neck.
Former Sergeant Edgar Pickett, now 94 years old, was a legendary fingerprint expert with the Lakeland Police Department. He led the crime scene unit. In fact, the crime lab bears his name. But that sort of recognition was a long time coming.
Arriving at the Slaten crime scene in 1981, Pickett, then 53, was just a year away from retirement. But his hard-earned reputation had never spared him from prejudice.
Jim Axelrod: So, you pull up at the scene, and another detective says what to you?
Sgt. Edgar Pickett: That “A Black man don’t have any business lookin’ at a naked white woman.”
Jim Axelrod: Even though she was a homicide victim?
Sgt. Edgar Pickett: That’s correct.
Sergeant Pickett believed Linda Slaten had been strangled with a coat hanger from her own closet. He dusted most of the bedroom for fingerprints, even the floor.
Sgt. Edgar Pickett: And then I got that print off of that windowsill. … It was a palm print … it wasn’t a fingerprint.
Jim Axelrod: You got the most important print there is.
Sgt. Edgar Pickett: I know it.
The evidence Pickett uncovered would play a crucial role decades later — especially the palm print.
Sgt. Edgar Pickett: I had really had never seen anybody in the shape that that lady was in. And I’ve seen a lotta people killed.
An autopsy later confirmed what he already knew: Linda Slaten had been sexually assaulted and strangled to death. Swabs taken and preserved in a rape kit revealed semen. That morning, Pickett says, his thoughts kept returning to Linda Slaten’s boys.
Sgt. Edgar Pickett: I had children too. And I really wanted to clear that case. I did.
Jeff and Tim Slaten stand outside their former home.
CBS News
Jim Axelrod: You guys are standing on the spot where your life changed.
Tim Slaten: Yes, right here.
Jeff Slaten: Yeah, when I stopped being a kid was right there (pointing).
Jim Axelrod: You were 15.
Jeff Slaten: 15.
Jim Axelrod: You really felt like this was the end of your childhood, right here?
Jeff Slaten: Yes, sir. I think this is exactly when it ended, when my Aunt Judy told me my mom had been murdered.
Emerging through the terror and tears that September morning 41 years ago, the questions kept coming. Why? Who? Who could have done such an evil thing?
SEPTEMBER 4, 1981 | HOURS AFTER THE MURDER
On that late-summer morning in 1981, Jeff and Tim Slaten faced a frightening world they no longer recognized, a world without their mother.
Jim Axelrod: How do 12 and 15-year-old boys process that, deal with that?
Tim Slaten: It was hard.
Jeff Slaten: Yeah. I thought about committin’ suicide a couple times (cries). It was that bad.
The brothers moved in with their grandparents, Clarence and Margaret Harris.
Tim Slaten: We just, we stayed in the house. We didn’t go anywhere.
Jeff Slaten: Scared to death.
Tim Slaten: Scared to death to do anything.
For those first terrifying days, the family slept in the same room — except Grandpa Harris.
Tim Slaten: He would stand guard with a gun all night while we slept.
The grandparents hoped a quick return to familiar routines would help their distraught grandsons. A few weeks after their mom’s funeral, the boys were back in school.
Tim Slaten: And just you know, being with friends and just — just started livin’ life again, I guess. … You know, goin’ back to football.
His teammates, and Coach Joe in particular, were always supportive, always rooting for him, says Tim.
Tim Slaten: And I looked up to this guy. He was my assistant football coach. … Give me rides to the games, rides to practice.
Tim Slaten’s football 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.
Tim Slaten
Tim’s team football photo hung in his bedroom. It was taken just one month after the murder. The picture was a reminder, he says, of something his mom had taught him: to keep moving forward and never give up.
Jim Axelrod: She was a fighter?
Tim Slaten: Yes. Oh, yes.
Jeff Slaten: She mighta only weighed 100 pounds soakin’ wet, but she was pretty tough.
Judy Butler: Everybody liked her that met her. Everybody was asking her for a date. … Cause she was so young and pretty.
And then Linda met and married Frank Slaten.
Judy Butler: He was a mean, no-count scoundrel.
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. But investigators eventually seemed satisfied that Frank was home in Alabama on the night of the murder.
Jeff Slaten
The brothers say it’s hard to know when their dad began to beat their mom. The more he drank, the more violent he became.
Jeff Slaten: Yeah, I remember one time I was in the bathroom. He had her by the throat with a gun to her head and I was comin’ there tryin’ to get him off of her. … And I felt like I had saved her that, you know, that night. That day.
Jim Axelrod: But you were just a little guy yourself.
Jeff Slaten: Yeah, I was only … 6-and-a-half, 7 years old.
Frank Slaten’s history of abuse made him a person of interest for Lakeland detectives. But investigators seemed satisfied that Slaten was home in Alabama on the night of the murder. At the time of her death, Linda had a boyfriend. He, too, had a credible alibi. Others were looked at — like the partygoers next door — but no one was charged.
Jeff Slaten: The Lakeland Police Department … they used to come down to take me out of school and they was always interrogating me all the time.
Jim Axelrod: In the early days, it sounds like who the police really were most thorough in checking out —
Jeff Slaten (Jeff raises his hand): Was me.
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.
Jeff Slaten
As a 15-year-old, Jeff had plenty of typical teen conflicts with his mom, which he readily admitted to detectives — including that heated argument on the last day of her life.
Jeff Slaten: I know they had me, put me on a lie detector test one time. … And I passed it. Then they wanted to do it again. … They was wantin’ to put me under hypnosis.
Jeff Slaten: And then there’s one time, one of the cops … he’s, like … “You got big arms on you. And you’re strong enough to put your hands around your mom’s neck and kill her.”
Jeff Slaten: Wha…who would do that to a kid? I was a 15-year-old kid hurting, and say that to me? I mean, that’s— that’s always hurt.
Finally, Jeff’s grandparents said, “Enough.”
Jeff Slaten: They’s, like, “Get out there and find who killed my daughter. Leave this kid and leave this family alone.”
Two weeks later, according to the Lakeland Police report, Jeff took a second polygraph test and was cleared. At that point, the investigation slowed, then ground to a halt.
As the years passed, Jeff and Tim started their own families. But to this day, there is still grief and guilt for not hearing anything that night — for not coming to their mom’s rescue.
Jeff Slaten: I (would have) died that night tryin’ to save my mom. … I mean, we’re right there in the house. How could you not hear somethin’ like that?
And they lived in fear of the man they called, “The Monster.” Unless he was dead, he was out there … somewhere.
Around the 20th anniversary of their mom’s murder, Jeff and Tim met with Lakeland Detective Brad Grice, who was taking a fresh look at the case.
Det. Brad Grice: Soon as Jeff and Tim walked in the door, I realized I had known Jeff for years, since I was in my twenties … through bowling.
Jeff Slaten: I was, like, “Brad.” (laughs). … Sure enough, I knew him from bowlin’ years ago.
Grice took DNA samples from the brothers to clear them again, then gave Jeff something in return — a promise.
Det. Brad Grice: He made me promise that I wouldn’t retire until I solved his mother’s case. And I wanted to so bad for him and his brother. I did.
Grice had already sent DNA from the Slaten rape kit to the state’s major crime lab at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement — the FDLE.
Jim Axelrod: Do you have any confidence that you could solve it?
Det. Brad Grice: I was hopin’ DNA would, you know? It was becomin’ a big tool.
By March 1999, the FDLE had developed a full DNA profile of Linda Slaten’s anonymous killer.
Jim Axelrod: All you need is a DNA match.
Det. Brad Grice: A hit. … That’s all I needed was a hit in the database.
Detective Grice took dozens of DNA samples from prior persons of interest, submitting them to the FDLE for comparison.
Det. Brad Grice: We were tryin’ everything.
Even the brothers’ father, Frank Slaten — who had stopped drinking — volunteered a sample. None matched.
Then in September 2001, Grice got a tip. Nearly a year after the Slaten killing, a 24-year-old man named Jimmy Ulmer pulled a 10-year-old girl through her bedroom window and nearly killed her.
Det. Brad Grice: He was convicted of that and sentenced to, like, 80 years in prison.
The savage assault seemed eerily similar to the Slaten case. And Detective Grice discovered that, around the time of Linda’s Slaten’s murder, Jimmy Ulmer had been staying with a friend who happened to live in the very sameapartment complex as Slaten.
Jim Axelrod: Hang on. Jimmy Ulmer … was staying in an apartment right across the way from the Slatens?
Det. Brad Grice: Yes.
Jim Axelrod: You must’ve felt like that’s our guy.
Det. Brad Grice: I felt very strong. I did.
Ulmer had died in prison five years earlier in 1996. But Grice got a DNA sample from his mother.
Det. Brad Grice: I honestly felt that when we got the results back that we would know who did it. Then we get the notice that it wasn’t him.
Jim Axelrod: At that point, you must’ve been, like, “We’re never gonna solve this thing.”
Det. Brad Grice: It sure felt that way. It was very discouraging.
Jeff Slaten: You know it’s like, “Oh my God, we’re back to square one again.”
Tim Slaten: It felt like you was on a rollercoaster for pretty much your whole life.
By 2005, 24 years after the murder, Detective Grice was heading up a new cold case unit. And the FBI was running the DNA profile of Slaten’s killer continuously through all federal databanks. But the years continued to pass without a match.
Det. Brad Grice: Jeff would call. And “Jeff, I — I got nothin’ for ya,” you know? … It hurt my heart too, you know?
Grice had a growing suspicion he was chasing a ghost.
Det. Brad Grice: I honestly thought the suspect might be deceased.
He had made that promise to the brothers that he wouldn’t retire until their monster was caught.
Det. Brad Grice: I had some medical things that were poppin’ up.
It was a promise he couldn’t keep. Detective Grice retired in 2015.
Jim Axelrod: There was probably nothing in your professional life you wanted more than to call Jeff Slaten and say, “Got him.”
Det. Brad Grice: Absolutely.
Jeff Slaten: After Detective Brad Grice retired, I’m like, I said, “Well, I’ll probably take my last breath and not know who murdered my mom.” I was already starting to come to terms with it.
But three years later, there was renewed hope. A groundbreaking DNA technology began to electrify the law enforcement community. And Genetic Genealogist CeCe Moore was taking on the Slaten case.
CeCe Moore: I was determined I was going to help these boys find out who killed their mom.
JUNE 2019 | 38 YEARS AFTER THE MURDER
CeCe Moore is a renowned expert in the field of investigative genetic genealogy.
CeCe Moore: If you have that DNA there is no reason you cannot solve that mystery, whatever that mystery is.
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.
Lakeland Police Department
Moore launched her hunt for Linda Slaten’s killer by uploading the anonymous DNA from Slaten’s rape kit to a public genealogy website called GEDMatch. She then meticulously constructed — branch by branch — his genetic family tree.
CeCe Moore: I built the family trees of those people who shared DNA with him. And then I identify common ancestors between those people.
She made those connections by poring over birth certificates, marriage licenses, obituaries and social media to fill in the family tree with names.
Jim Axelrod: It sounds like basically you’re putting together a giant jigsaw puzzle.
CeCe Moore: Yes. My work is constantly putting together puzzles. Piece by piece by piece.
CeCe Moore (referring to section of family tree): These matches all share DNA with each other. So, they’re my first genetic network.
CeCe Moore uncovered three genetic networks — branches of the killer’s family tree that ultimately narrowed to the one person most likely responsible for the murder of Linda Slaten.
CeCe Moore: Fortunately, those three genetic networks converged into one family tree that pointed at one immediate family. And he was the only son in that family. And we knew the killer was a male. So, it had to be him that was the DNA contributor.
After hundreds of leads and dead ends, after dozens of suspects were investigated and cleared, CeCe Moore identified the probable killer in one weekend.
CeCe Moore: There was just one person who was high confidence.
Jim Axelrod: And who was that?
CeCe Moore: Joseph Clinton Mills.
Joseph Clinton Mills — Coach Joe — who drove Linda Slaten’s 12-year-old son, Tim, to and from practice. But authorities wanted to be certain before they notified the brothers.
CeCe Moore: And then there is sort of exhilaration because he’s alive. … And so there’s a real chance for justice and maybe even answers.
CeCe Moore’s final 2019 report confirmed that Joseph Mills, then 58, was living in Kathleen, Florida, about half an hour from the crime scene.
Det. Tammy Hathcock: I reviewed the case, and … I’m like, “I remember that name.” … I remember seeing that name. That — that guy was interviewed.”
Detectives Tammy Hathcock and Russell Hurley were the next generation of Lakeland investigators leading the Slaten cold case.
Det. Tammy Hathcock: I’m telling you, it’s like I won the lottery. I remember grabbing that piece of paper from the report and just running down the hallway to my sergeant saying, “Oh, my God he was interviewed! He was interviewed!”
According to the case file, investigators did question Joseph Mills, then 20 years old, just one day after the murder.
Det. Tammy Hathcock: He was very basically touched. I mean like just a very brief interview.
And it was conducted on the phone, not in person.
The fact that investigators never questioned Mills face to face suggests he was never considered a suspect. During the brief call, Mills acknowledged he had driven Tim Slaten home from football practice on September 3. Just hours later, Linda Slaten was dead.
Jim Axelrod: How was Joseph Mills not followed up on more aggressively in 1981?
Det. Tammy Hathcock: At that point, I mean he was just a football coach that had dropped off Timmy. … He was never on their radar to … be a suspect just based off of the information that they were given by Timmy and by Mr. Mills.
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 2019, investigators compared Mills’ palm print from in 1984 to the palm print that was lifted off Linda Slaten’s windowsill in 1981 and they were a match.
Lakeland Police Department
Joseph Mills was convicted in 1984 of grand theft for forging a will. He never went to jail, but he was fingerprinted. Lakeland police also took a palm print. In August 2019, investigators compared those prints to the palm print Sergeant Pickett lifted off Slaten’s windowsill nearly 38 years before.
Jim Axelrod: When the prints came back, there was a match?
Det. Russell Hurley: Yes.
High-tech genetic genealogy had identified Mills as the likely killer, and an old-fashioned palm print match helped confirm his identity. But Hathcock and Hurley still needed to compare a fresh DNA sample from Mills to the decades-old DNA recovered from the crime scene.
Det. Russell Hurley: ‘Cause we had to get his DNA without his knowledge and see if we can get a match. …We had to do some surveillance.
Det. Tammy Hathcock: It was several weekends that we were following him around …
Det. Tammy Hathcock: … trying to get discarded DNA.
Jim Axelrod: Just looking for a cup that he drank from or a tissue that he used.
Det. Tammy Hathcock: Anything.
After tracking Mills with no luck, the detectives decided it was time to get their hands dirty. They covertly took Mills’ trash back to the police department
Det. Tammy Hathcock: Here we are in dress clothes just digging through trash bags. … Not the most glamorous thing.
They discovered a piece of used medical adhesive tape and sent it off to the FDLE crime lab for testing. After searching Mills’ trash, they dug through his life.
Det. Tammy Hathcock: He’s been married to the same woman. And he lived in the same place.
Det. Russell Hurley: He was a business owner … a cleaning service.
Det. Tammy Hathcock: …he was a truck driver over the years.
Det. Tammy Hathcock: He had a family.
Jim Axelrod: Married, kids
Det. Tammy Hathcock: Married, kids, grandkids.
Eleven days later, the stunning lab results: Joseph Mills’ 2019 DNA found on the medical tape and the 1981 unknown DNA from Linda Slaten’s rape kit were a spot-on match. That’s when the brothers were told the monster had been found.
Jim Axelrod: This guy you last knew as Coach Joe, oh my goodness, it was him.
Tim Slaten: And I had a picture in my house ever since then, and never knew it was him.
“Coach Joe”Mills and Tim Slaten
Tim Slaten
Tim’s 1981 team football photo, a source of pride for years, sickens him today. Because standing directly behind him is the man he once trusted and admired. Coach Joe.
Tim Slaten: I’ve been carrying the killer’s picture in my house this whole time and never had a clue.
Even after the murder, Joseph Mills continued driving Tim to and from football practice — picking him up and dropping him off at his grandparents’ house.
Tim Slaten: He’d ask us how the case was goin’. … He wouldn’t ask questions about it. He just, “Well, any new news or any new leads?” And I was, like, “No, nothing.” You know.
Jim Axelrod: He’s talkin’ to a 12-year-old boy and tryin’ to keep tabs on a murder investigation through the son of the murdered woman?
Jeff Slaten: Yeah.
Tim Slaten: Yes.
Jim Axelrod: When he knows exactly who did it.
Jeff Slaten: He’s a cold-hearted monster, that’s for sure.
On Dec 12, 2019, the detectives moved in, arresting Joseph Mills.
Joseph Clinton Mills was arrested 38 years after Linda Slaten’s murder.
Lakeland Police Department
DET. TAMMY HATHCOCK (sitting next to Mills in backseat of police car): You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law …
Det. Russell Hurley: He was calm, cool, and collected like it was another day on the beach. … Most people’s reaction would be, “Why am I bein’ arrested?”
Jim Axelrod: “Why are you takin’ me in?” You expected some of that?
Det. Tammy Hathcock: Right, some kind of emotion, and nothing.
DECEMBER 2019 | 38 YEARS AFTER THE MURDER
DET. RUSSELL HURLEY (police interview): It’s been 38 years, and I’m sure you go to bed every night thinking about this. I have no doubt in my mind.
Detectives Hathcock and Hurley finally had Joseph Mills right where they wanted him — in the claustrophobic confines of a police interview room.
JOSEPH MILLS (police interview): When I picked the boys up, we — we — we stayed in the vehicle. And I don’t recall going to, in or out of the house, period.
Det. Tammy Hathcock: There’s no way that is the truth. I mean, he’s saying he’s never been in there. … We got him.
DET. TAMMY HATHCOCK (police interview): What we have tells us a different story. OK. You were in that apartment.
Ratcheting up the pressure, the detectives told Mills they had overwhelming evidence placing him inside Linda Slaten’s bedroom.
DET. TAMMY HATHCOCK (police interview): Your fingerprints matches you, the DNA matches you.
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.
Lakeland Police Department
That’s when Mills’ story began to change.
DET. RUSSELL HURLEY: And then how did you end up crawling through her window?
JOSEPH MILLS: It was like an invitation.
An invitation from Linda Slaten, Mills claimed, for consensual sex — a flat-out lie, say the detectives.
Det. Russell Hurley: He said it was a sex game, that she had the hanger around her neck when he came through the window and she asked him to tighten it down.
DET. RUSSELL HURLEY: And then did you … start applying pressure?
JOSEPH MILLS: Yes.
Det. Russell Hurley: And when I pointed out well the brutality of the hanger and how deep it was into her skin he stuck with the “It was a game.”
DET. RUSSELL HURLEY (to Mills): You purposely killed her. We’re all sittin’ here, we know that.
Jim Axelrod: At the end of the day what happened here?
Det. Russell Hurley: I think it’s pretty evident that he targeted her.
After dropping off Tim from football practice on Sept. 3, 1981, Joseph Mills returned later that night, the detectives say, breaking in through Linda Slaten’s bedroom window. No one heard Mills, they believe, because no one was home. Jeff was still at his grandparents’ house; Linda and Tim were at the party next door.
Det. Russell Hurley: If you look at the crime scene and all that — the hanger obviously came from the closet. … We figured that’s what happened … is he was hiding in the closet.
DET. RUSSELL HURLEY: Were you ever in the closet?
JOSEPH MILLS (long pause): No sir.
In the final moments of her life, the detectives believe that Linda, after saying goodnight to her sons, walked into her bedroom and closed the door — never knowing that Mills was already inside waiting for her. There was no invitation, no consensual sex, they say. Joseph Mills raped and murdered Linda Slaten.
Detective Brad Grice always suspected the killer’s name was buried somewhere in the thick police case file.
Jim Axelrod: Why do you feel that the investigation didn’t circle back to Joseph Mills?
Det. Brad Grice: Well, obviously, I put a lotta that on me now.
Jim Axelrod: You do?
Det. Brad Grice: I do.
The crime lab’s results revealed that Joseph Mills’ DNA on the medical adhesive tape and the unknown DNA recovered from the rape kit were a spot-on match.
Lakeland Police Department
Grice blames himself for not taking a harder look at Joseph Mills — a sentiment notshared by the Slaten brothers. They feel nothing but gratitude to the detective and friend who spent 17 years chasing the elusive killer.
Jeff Slaten: I could tell how — how hard he wanted to solve it.
Jeff Slaten: And I actually named my son after him. My son’s named Brad, too.
Det. Brad Grice: Jeff put a little pressure on me over the years, you know, he did. You can’t retire until you solve this case, and then he named his son after me.
Det. Brad Grice: And honestly, I just wanted to solve this case for them more than anything.
So did this former investigator — 94-year-old Edgar Pickett. The brothers had always wanted to meet him.
Jeff Slaten: So, I wanna thank you for all you did for our mama back then. … If you hadn’t of done it, this monster would still be running free today.
Sgt. Edgar Pickett: Sure would, huh?
Jeff and Tim Slaten meet Sgt. Pickett for the first time, thanking him for his role in solving their mother’s murder.
CBS News
It is poignant praise for Sergeant Pickett, who lifted the palm print that helped identify the monster, Joseph Mills.
Sgt. Edgar Pickett: That’s the case I can never forget.
Sgt. Edgar Pickett (pointing to his head): It’s up here, I can’t get rid of it.
During his distinguished and trailblazing 29-year career, Sergeant Pickett had seen it all. And yet, it’s the Linda Slaten case that haunts him to this day. He never knew police had questioned a man named Joseph Mills just one dayafter the killing.
Jim Axelrod: You didn’t know for 38 years that he was talked to immediately afterward?
Sgt. Edgar Pickett: No, I didn’t.
Instead, Pickett says he was asked to compare prints of a number of black men who were questioned in the days after the murder following neighbors’ reports of suspicious activity.
Sgt. Edgar Pickett: They kept pickin’ up a lotta Blacks. And they was given me their prints for me to look at theirs.
It not just haunts, but angers Pickett: Black men were rounded up and fingerprinted, while the White football coach — driving Linda’s sonto and from practice — was never considered a suspect.
Sgt. Edgar Pickett: They just talked to him and let him go.
Jim Axelrod: You’re telling me this case … could’ve been solved in the first days after the murder…if they had just taken a print from Joseph Mills?
Sgt. Edgar Pickett: That’s correct.
Jim Axelrod: There’s a lot of people who came before you. I get it. … But you got a palm print in the windowsill almost immediately. … Wouldn’t you just get some prints from the guy, anybody who had been near the house in the 24 hours prior to the murder?
Det. Russell Hurley: There was no indication that he had been in the house. I mean, all the witnesses said that he dropped the kid off from practice and never got out of the truck, so … The only reason why he was spoke to was because, when they backtrack on the previous 24 hours, he was in that equation
Jim Axelrod: You don’t feel like he slipped through the net?
Det. Tammy Hathcock: No.
Det. Russell Hurley: No.
Joseph Mills’ day of reckoning would finally come 40 years later.
Jeff Slaten: He’s got cold, black, murderin’ eyes, this Joseph Clinton Mills. He just sit there. … Not a word…
FEBRUARY 9, 2022 | 41 YEARS AFTER THE MURDER
Tim Slaten: Our mom was a good person. He took that away from us.
To avoid a trial and a possible death sentence, Joseph Mills pleaded guilty to all charges — including first-degree murder, sexual battery and burglary. At his sentencing, what Linda Slaten’s family wanted most was the answer to one question.
JEFF SLATEN (yelling at Mills in court): Why? I just want to know why, Joe? Why’d you take my mama from me? I loved my mama. We was happy.
Tim Slaten: My blood would start boilin’ every time I look at him.
The brothers, and Aunt Judy, tried to look him in the eye.
Judy Butler: To see if there was any human being in there, to see if he was alive, to see if he had a soul. Never saw it.
His silence infuriated the family. And a few minutes later, so did his comments to the court.
JOSEPH MILLS (in court): I am a good person. I’m not that person that they’re painting me out to be …
CeCe Moore: I think this case made me the angriest out of the hundreds of cases I’ve been involved in because what he did with her children there. … And then the things he said about her.
Jim Axelrod: That she lured him in.
CeCe Moore: Even all these years later he was willing to try to make her look bad, to denigrate the victim, and her boys have to hear that. It’s just sickening.
JUDGE: I will sentence you to life in prison without the possibility of parole …
And just like that, Joseph Clinton Mills was gone — facing four life terms and finally, a measure of justice.
Jim Axelrod: Maybe not full justice in your view.
Tim Slaten: It’s not full justice, by no means.
Tim Slaten: I wanted him to go to trial. … I wanted to see him up on the stand and tell everybody why he did this, and he never did that.
The Slaten brothers feel somecomfort knowing Joseph Mills will never leave prison alive. But there’s still anger, they say, because Mills never took full responsibility for the premeditated rape and murder of their mother. He never apologized. And there were all those years of freedom.
Tim Slaten: He lived his whole life. He raised his family. You know, he had a good life.
The Slaten brothers feel some comfort knowing Joseph Mills will never leave prison alive, but there’s still anger, because Mills never took full responsibility for the premeditated rape and murder of their mother.
Jeff Slaten
It’s the brothers who feel they were handed the far more severe sentence: lifewithout the possibility of growing up with their mom.
Jeff Slaten: She’d still be here today. She’d only be 72, you know? Coulda had her my whole life.
Jeff Slaten: I just wonder what life could have been like to have her.
Jim Axelrod: Any part of you when you think about all of this … at all angry with the way the police handled it, that it took this long to get Joseph Mills?
Tim Slaten: You could look at it that way. I know it’s a lotta hard work behind the scenes that people don’t see that goes on. You know, what they do, the hours upon hours they put in. I mean, you could get mad, but only so much could be done in a day.
CeCe Moore: We owe a huge debt of gratitude to those original crime scene investigators. Because at the time this crime was committed, they didn’t even know DNA was going to be used in criminal investigations. … And so the fact they collected that and then it was stored responsibly and carefully all these years by that department is so important. If that hadn’t happened, we couldn’t have done our work.
Jeff and Tim say they’re determined to move on as best they can, to live life well for their mom and for their families.
The brothers also know they never would have survived their ordeal without each other. They remain extremely close, live just a few miles apart, and share passionate hobbies, like restoring cars.
Jim Axelrod: You give the credit for living this life to the spirit of your mom?
Tim Slaten: Yes.
Jeff Slaten: Most definitely.
“Sure do love you, Mom. I miss you so much every day,” say Jeff Slaten with his brother Tim at their mother’s gravesite.
CBS News
Jeff Slaten: My mom, she’s looking down on us and would want us to live our lives and do good. You know. … And I always think she’s looking down on us. I want to make her proud.
Tim Slaten: Yes.
Jeff Slaten: Want to make her proud.
Tim Slaten: Yes.
The Slaten brothers visit their mother’s grave together often.
Jeff burns a candle next to a portrait of his mother every year on the anniversary of her death.
Produced by Mead Stone. Gabriella Demirdjian is the field producer. Marc Goldbaum and Sara Ely Hulse are the development producers. Nancy Bautista is the broadcast associate. Mead Stone, Greg Kaplan and Grayce Arlotta-Berner are the editors. Peter Schweitzer is the senior producer. Nancy Kramer is the executive story editor. Judy Tygard is the executive producer.
It was Jan. 6, 1982, a bitter cold evening with blizzard-like conditions, when two women hitchhikers vanished from the popular ski resort town of Breckenridge, Colorado, and were later found shot to death.
Even though the women — 29-year-old Bobbie Jo Oberholtzer and 21-year-old Annette Schnee — disappeared on the same day, their cases were not linked until Annette’s body was discovered six months later. She was wearing an orange sock — a recent Christmas present from her mother. Investigators had found her other orange sock near the body of Bobbie Jo, and they knew then that the women almost certainly were killed by the same person.
But for nearly 40 years, the identity of their killer confounded police, even though he was within their grasp the night of the murders. It was only when the killer was identified decades later that investigators learned the bitter truth.
On the night of the murders, authorities had launched an all-out effort to rescue a local miner, Alan Lee Phillips, whose truck became stuck in a raging snowstorm. It would be decades before police realized Phillips had, only hours before the rescue, killed Bobbie Jo and Annette.
Details of Phillips’ rescue and his crimes were revealed during his trial this year, where he was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and other charges.
Some recall that the weather on the night of the murders was brutal, with temperatures plunging to negative 20 degrees Fahrenheit. When Phillips’ truck got stuck in a snowdrift on a mountain pass, he began using his truck’s headlights to signal SOS in morse code. Incredibly, a sheriff flying overhead on a commercial jetliner spotted the signal through the falling snow and alerted the crew, who radioed down to dispatch at the sheriff’s office.
Dave Montoya, a local fire chief, heard the call and offered to drive up the pass. When he arrived, he was met with a familiar face. He had worked alongside Phillips in the mines. And on Phillips’ face, Montoya recalls, was a prominent bruise. He told Montoya he got it when he fell while wandering around in the snow.
Police now believe that Phillips got the bruise when Oberholtzer hit him in the face with a special brass key ring made by her husband, Jeff. He specifically made it for her in case she ever encountered trouble while hitchhiking.
Partly because investigators did not believe Jeff Oberholtzer had a solid alibi, he became a suspect in his wife’s murder.
“To live under this cloud of suspicion for as long as you did, what did that do to you?” Morales asked Oberholtzer on location in Colorado.
Jeff Oberholtzer continued to reside in the area even after his wife was murdered.
“It was very painful,” he replied. “Being under suspicion from not only the authorities, but also being tried in the court of public opinion. People didn’t want a suspected murderer in their house.”
It would take a long time for the full story to unravel, but Oberholtzer eventually was cleared.
Annette Schnee
Schnee family
As it turned out, Phillips’ first victim that January day was Annette Schnee, a housekeeper at a local Holiday Inn. After Annette left work, she visited a doctor and then hitchhiked to a drug store in Breckenridge later that afternoon. Hitchhiking was very common in the mountain towns back in the 1980s. Annette got some medication at the drug store and was not seen after 4:45 p.m. that day.
Authorities now believe Phillips picked up Annette in his truck.
A few hours later, at about 7:50 p.m., Oberholtzer disappeared. Oberholtzer was at a pub that night with a few friends, and at 6:21 p.m., she called her husband, Jeff.
“She said she’d be home relatively soon … she said she had a ride,” Jeff told “48 Hours.”
Bobbie Jo Oberholtzer
Laurie Merlo
Jeff said he fell asleep watching TV. When he woke up around midnight, and Bobbie Jo still was not home, he felt something was terribly wrong. He said he went out looking for her, and tried to report her missing. Breckenridge police told him they could not do anything for 24 hours, so he returned home.
Just hours later, Jeff said he received a call from a rancher in the area, who said he had found Bobbie Jo’s license on his property. Jeff rushed over and, on his way, he said he spotted Bobbie Jo’s distinctive blue backpack on the side of the road and stopped to retrieve it. He said he also found two items: Bobbie Jo’s right glove, and a tissue, both of which had traces of blood.
No one knew it then, but decades later, those traces of blood would lead directly to Phillips. Police have always credited Bobbie Jo with fighting back enough to draw that blood.
The next day, Jan. 7, worried friends formed a search party and went out on skis looking for Bobbie Jo. Around 3 p.m. that afternoon, they located her body in a snowbank where Phillips had shot and killed her.
Jim Hardtke, then an agent for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI), said Bobbie Jo was fully clothed, and an autopsy would later reveal she was not sexually assaulted. A pair of zip ties were on one of her wrists. Not far away was that special key chain made by Jeff.
There was another item found not far from Bobbie Jo’s body—an orange sock or bootie. It seemed to have no direct connection to the crime scene, or at least none that was readily apparent, according to Hardtke.
“It was just one of those mysterious things that you pick up at a crime scene that you keep until you know what it is or never will find out,” Hardtke said.
One of the many twists in the case is that, at that point, authorities did not yet know that Schnee was missing. They had never even heard her name.
It wasn’t until two days later — on Jan. 8 — that a co-worker of Annette’s called Frisco police to report that Schnee had not come to work at the Holiday Inn for two days. That was very unlike Annette, said her sister Cindy French.
Police traced Schnee’s movements to the drug store in Breckenridge, but there her trail vanished. She seemed to have simply disappeared.
“Mom would just say, ‘I just wanna know why, how,’” French remembers. “‘And nobody can give it to me. Nobody knows why or how.’”
But on July 3, 1982 — nearly six months after Schnee was last seen alive — a young boy out fishing came upon her body in a stream, about 23 miles from where she was last seen in Breckenridge. Agent Hardtke attended the autopsy. No bullet was recovered, but forensics showed that Annette was shot in the back as she was running downhill toward that stream, authorities said.
Hardtke suspected Annette had been sexually assaulted, but it was impossible to tell given the amount of time her body had been in the stream. Hardtke based his assumption about the sexual assault on the state of Annette’s clothing. The zipper on her jeans was broken and her shoes were on the wrong feet.
Even though Bobbie Jo Oberholtzer and Annette Schnee disappeared on the same day, their cases were not linked until Annette’s body was discovered six months later. She was wearing an orange sock, pictured. Investigators had found her other orange sock near the body of Bobbie Jo, and they knew then that the women almost certainly were killed by the same person.
Evidence
During the autopsy, Hardtke spotted something that would forever change the investigation.
“On her left foot, I noticed an orange bootie,” he said. “And in my mind, I’m remembering the orange bootie that was found at the top of Hoosier Pass…very close to where Bobbie Jo Oberholtzer’s body was found…so it tied the two together.”
As Hardtke told “48 Hours,” “Holy s***, this is amazing. This ties…the cases together.”
In piecing together the timeline of events the day of the murders, detectives believed that Phillips first picked Schnee up hitchhiking, assaulted and killed her. During that assault, Schnee lost her orange bootie in Phillips’ truck. Later that day, police believe Phillips picked up Oberholtzer hitchhiking and attempted to assault her as well.
Detectives believe that when Oberholtzer fought back and jumped from his truck, she kicked out the orange bootie left there by Annette.
The orange socks/booties convinced police that they were looking for one killer, but Phillips’ identity remained hidden for decades. In early 2020, Park County Detective Sgt. Wendy Kipple heard about something called genetic genealogy, in which specially trained genealogists upload a DNA sample from a crime scene through publicly available DNA databases.
Kipple submitted the DNA from the blood collected in connection with the Oberholtzer murder to United Data Connect, a genetic genealogy company located in Denver.
“On Jan. 9, 2021, I get a phone call from the genealogist, and he says, ‘I have two more names for you.’”
“And what were the two names you were given?” Morales asked Kipple.
“Alan Phillips and Bruce Phillips,” Kipple replied.
“And Bruce Phillips was the brother that never lived here, didn’t have any ties to Colorado. And what did you learn about Alan Phillips?” Morales asked.
“Alan Phillips still lived nearby,” Kipple said. “He had worked here in, in the mine, Henderson mine, for decades he worked there. He had his own mechanic shop. And he was still here.”
Alan Lee Phillips was arrested and charged with the murders in February 2021 — nearly four decades after the killings.
Park County Sheriff’s Office
As it turned out, he was the person authorities had rescued that long ago night in a snowstorm, the man with the large bruise on his face. But it took nearly 40 years to connect that rescue victim to the man who killed Annette Schnee and Bobbie Jo Oberholtzer.
On Nov. 7 of this year, Phillips was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.
Gabriella Vargas is a self-proclaimed “pink-haired, tattooed mom from California who enjoys woodworking and gardening.” She also happens to be one of the most talented investigative genetic genealogists in the world, according to the investigators she worked with. When the 34-year-old Roxanne Wood cold murder case came across her desk in April 2021, “it was deemed unsolvable prior to my involvement,” Vargas said.
Vargas was confident she could solve this cold case – and fast – finally bringing justice for Roxanne Wood’s family. “48 Hours” correspondent Peter Van Sant takes viewers inside the haunting case in “The ‘Unsolvable’ Murder of Roxanne Wood.”
In February 1987, Terry Wood came home from a night of bowling to discover his wife, Roxanne, dead on the kitchen floor in their home in Niles, Michigan. Detectives say Roxanne had been sexually assaulted and her throat slashed. DNA was preserved from the crime scene, but given technological limitations of the time, there wasn’t enough evidence to charge any suspects. The case went cold.
Janet Wood
In February 1987, Roxanne Wood and her husband, Terry Wood, went out for a night of bowling with friends. Roxanne left the bowling alley early to return home so she could rest up for work in the morning. But then a man entered her home through an unlocked door. He sexually assaulted her, grabbed a filet knife from Roxanne’s own kitchen drawer and slit her throat. Terry returned home 45 minutes after his wife to find Roxanne dead.
Even though witnesses placed Terry at the bowling alley at the time of the murder, he was immediately considered a suspect.
Investigators found DNA at the crime scene and a sample was preserved. But given the limitations of technology in 1987, not much could be done with it. Terry continued to live under a cloud of suspicion in the community.
As DNA technology evolved, that sample was eventually able to be uploaded to CODIS, a national criminal DNA information repository, in 1999. But no match was returned from that database. As disappointing as that was, everyone was hopeful that the DNA would at least clear Terry when it was tested against his. The result? It wasn’t Terry’s DNA.
After that, the case offered no new leads until 2020.
In order to solve the mystery faster, investigators needed a way to quickly search through the massive case file. They enlisted a group of students from Western Michigan University to digitize approximately 3,500 pages of reports, notes and information into a searchable database.
Around the same time that the students began crunching data, investigators decided to test the DNA one last time. They hired Identifinders International — a company that specializes in genetic genealogy — to examine the tiny amount of DNA left from the crime scene.
“We found out there was, what I would call, a gnat’s eyebrow of DNA left. About 3% of what we normally use,” said Colleen Fitzpatrick, president and founder of Identifinders. “That was the lowest amount of DNA we’ve ever had to work with to solve a case.”
Gabriella Vargas, pictured with Ari, a Goffin’s cockatoo, is a self-proclaimed, “pink haired, tattooed mom from California who enjoys woodworking and gardening.” She also happens to be one of the most talented investigative genetic genealogists in the world, according to the investigators she worked with.
CBS News
Identifinders spent about 10 months working with the data the sample produced, but came up empty.
“It really did feel impossible,” said Fitzpatrick.
Then, one day in April 2021, Fitzpatrick happened to be chatting with investigative genetic genealogist Gabriella Vargas, who worked as a consultant for Identifinders.
“And I said, ‘Well, why don’t you let me look at it?’” said Vargas. “I concluded that I did not stand with the others. I believed that this case was extremely solvable. And I believed that I could solve it.”
So, Vargas got to work. She was able to generate a genetic profile from the suspect’s trace DNA. This genetic profile provided a plethora of information valuable to nailing down a suspect, like where their ancestral origins come from and what race they are.
Once she had the genetic profile, Vargas turned to GEDmatch, an online database where people can upload their DNA results in the hopes of finding more relatives after using consumer sites like 23andMe and Ancestry.com. Users can opt into law enforcement matching, which can allow investigators like Vargas to find matches for their suspects.
Using the results from GEDmatch, Vargas was able to build out the family tree of Roxanne’s killer, going as far back as 1797.
“Essentially what we’re looking for amongst these matches are where they connect to each other. And it led me to a union couple,” said Vargas.
A union couple is where two sides of a family tree meet. This couple was born around 1920, and based on that, Vargas could presume that they would have kids around 1940 or 1950. Thus, the suspect would have to be one of their three sons.
Vargas immediately notified law enforcement of her findings. Investigators conducted background checks on all three sons and eliminated two of them as suspects. The last had a criminal history and had served time for unlawful deviant conduct.
Investigators had their suspect, and his name was Patrick Gilham. But before an arrest could be made, they had to be sure Gilham’s DNA matched the DNA left at the crime scene.
Investigators surveilled Gilham for days, learning his habits and traffic patterns. They even followed him to a laundromat where an undercover trooper collected Gilham’s discarded cigarette butt to be tested for DNA.
The DNA came back from the lab as a perfect match to the crime scene DNA, and Gilham was arrested in February 2022. He was questioned by police for over five hours and insisted he did not remember murdering Roxanne. He said that only a monster could do such a thing.
Gilham later pleaded no contest to second-degree murder and was sentenced to a minimum of 23 years in prison.
Gabriella Vargas, who cracked this ice-cold case in just four days, hopes this innovative investigative technique can help other families in search of justice.
“It’s an honor to be able to work these cases to bring justice to these victims and closure to these families,” said Vargas. “And I will never stop. If anything, I’m more determined now to solve as many cases as I can.”
In February 1987, Terry Wood came home from a night of bowling to discover his wife, Roxanne, dead on the kitchen floor in their home in Niles, Michigan. Detectives say Roxanne Wood had been sexually assaulted and her throat slashed. DNA was preserved from the crime scene, but given technological limitations of the time, there wasn’t enough evidence to charge any suspects. The case went cold. Then, 34 years later, investigative genetic genealogist Gabriella Vargas got to work on what had been deemed unsolvable by many because of the scant amount of DNA that was left.
“I believed that this case was extremely solvable,” Vargas told “48 Hours” correspondent Peter Van Sant. “I believed that I could solve it.”
FEBRUARY 19, 1987
Brad Woods remembers February 20, 1987, like it was yesterday. He was just 14 years old.
Brad Woods: I was getting ready for school. … And I can remember my mom pounding on the bathroom door, saying to hurry up, she needed to talk to me.
Hours earlier, Brad’s 30-year-old sister Roxanne, known as “Rock”, had been nearby in her Niles, Michigan, home alone, when she was viciously attacked — her throat slashed.
Brad Woods: When I came out, you know, she had told me that — she had gotten a call that — Rock had been killed.
Devastated, Roxanne’s family couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to harm her.
Janet Wood: She always made people think you’re her best friend. … She just loved everyone.
Janet Wood: She was tall, statuesque. She dressed to the nines. That was very important to her. She was very classy.
Roxanne Wood, nicknamed “Rock,” was described by her younger brother and sister as the rock of their family.
Janet Wood
JanetWood could not help but admire her older sister. Their parents were divorced, and Roxanne had taken on a maternal role with her siblings.
Brad Woods: With divorced parents, a lot of times, you feel like you’re being shuffled between, you know, house to house. … And the one thing that was always stable for me was — was Rock.
Janet Wood: She was being mom to you.
Brad Woods: Yeah. … Rock. You know, she was always there.
Peter Van Sant: She was your rock.
Brad Woods: She was. She was (laughs).
Roxanne’s last name would eventually change from Woods to Wood after meeting future husband, Terry Wood, shortly after she graduated from high school.
Janet Wood: She was working at his father’s company. … Terry was still in high school. … On the wrestling team. … And in he walks. And he’s in his wrestling shorts and whatever. … (laughs) She said, “The nicest looking legs she ever saw.” And — and she was just smitten by him right away.
Roxanne and Terry married in 1982.
Janet Wood: She said it was the happiest day of her life.
Six years later, Janet would change her name from Woods to Wood as well, when she married Terry’s brother, Rob. Both brothers wound up working for the family business. For Roxanne and Terry, it proved to be a bit too much togetherness.
Janet Wood: They got dressed in the morning together, and they rode to work together, (laughs) and they came home for lunch together, and then they went back to work together.
Roxanne’s solution? Taking a job in nearby South Bend, Indiana. A little time apart seemed to help the marriage.
Janet Wood: Very, very content, happy, looking forward to starting a family.
Terry and Roxanne Wood
Janet Wood
February 19, 1987, started out as a typical Thursday evening for the couple. They met for dinner at a restaurant in downtown Niles after work and then went to a local bowling alley, arriving in separate cars.
Det. Sgt. John Moore: From the report, you could tell when Roxanne entered that bowling alley, all eyes were on her.
Michigan State Police Detective Sergeant John Moore.
Det. Sgt. John Moore: There wasn’t a whole lotta ladies there because this was the men’s bowling league, so she drew some attention.
As midnight approached, Roxanne was ready to call it a night, but Terry wanted to stay.
Janet Wood: There’s witnesses where Terry and she said goodnight to each other— hugged, kissed, “Love you. Drive Safe.”
After Roxanne headed home, Terry stayed behind and bowled another game. He then headed home and arrived home about 45 minutes after his wife. Terry entered the house through the garage and once inside, he came upon a horrific sight.
Det. Lt. Chuck Christensen: She was laying on the floor. She had her nightgown on. He said there was a lot of blood.
According to Detective First Lieutenant Chuck Christensen, Terry said he rushed over to Roxanne.
Det. Lt. Chuck Christensen: He got behind her, according to him, and — and picked her head up. And held her — held her head in—
Peter Van Sant: To see if —
Det. Lt. Chuck Christensen: —his hands for—
Peter Van Sant: — she was alive?
Det. Lt. Chuck Christensen: To see if she was alive, yes.
Finding no signs of life, Terry grabbed the phone and called the local police station.
TERRY WOOD (police call audio): She is dead, she has been cut.
Det. Lt. Chuck Christensen: Terry noticed that … her panties were down around her knee/ankle area … her nightgown was pulled up.
DISPATCHER: Now listen to me, OK?
At times, Terry seemed to get belligerent with the person trying to help him.
DISPATCHER: I’m going to get some information from you and I’m going to get a car started, OK?
TERRY WOOD: No, get 50 f****** cars started, g*******now!
DISPATCHER: They are started.
TERRY WOOD: No, they’re not. Now, g*******. Now!
The dispatcher kept Terry on the phone.
DISPATCHER: Don’t scream into the phone because the phone distorts, and I can’t understand you that well, OK?
TERRY WOOD: You mean so you can get a recording on it.
DISPATCHER: No, I’m trying to get some information from you, OK?
TERRY WOOD: Yeah, right.
Terry’s aggressive demeanor on the phone quickly became a red flag according to investigators.
Peter Van Sant: Is that suspicious behavior to you?
Det. Lt. Chuck Christensen: It’s a bit suspicious. … Typically, they’re in … shock, distraught. But not normally do you hear that anger component in there, to the level that it is in this one.
Detective Sergeant Jason Bailey says a seed of suspicion grew even more once police arrived at the home.
Det. Sgt. Jason Bailey: He definitely had fits of rage. I know at one point he was screaming—that he wanted a supervisor, a sergeant there.
Peter Van Sant: Is he making himself a suspect by this kind of behavior?
Det. Lt. Chuck Christensen: Everybody reacts differently. But based on this abnormal reaction, I believe he was making himself a suspect.
First responders eventually had no choice but to subdue Terry by placing him in the back of a patrol car. And when they drove him down to the police post for routine questioning, Terry quickly asked for an attorney, which investigators say set off more alarm bells.
Janet Wood: The detective at that time told him within five to ten minutes … “You did this, and I will not rest until I put you away forever.”
Peter Van Sant: An investigator said that to Terry?
Janet Wood: To Terry. … “I believe you’re the killer and I will not rest until you’re behind bars.”
IN SEARCH OF ANSWERS
As investigators began piecing together clues in Roxanne Wood’s rape and murder, the emerging picture offered up just one suspect: her husband, Terry.
Det. Lt. Chuck Christensen: There was no sign of any forced entry.
Peter Van Sant: Did that raise eyebrows?
Det. Lt. Chuck Christensen: Absolutely.
But Terry told police they’d been having problems with the lock on the back door, claiming it didn’t work. Investigators, however, remained suspicious.
Det. Lt. Chuck Christensen: We have a sheath, up here, of a filet knife, located near the body.
An open drawer in the Wood home kitchen where a filet knife, thought to be the murder weapon, was kept.
Michigan Department of State Police
That filet knife, presumed to be the murder weapon, had been taken from a kitchen drawer. It was never found.
Det. Lt. Chuck Christensen: That would be odd … that a killer would come to a house without a weapon.
Terry told police that he’d slipped in Roxanne’s blood as he lifted her head to check on her. But there were no blood smears indicating he’d actually done that. Investigators thought they’d discovered a potential motive when they looked into Roxanne and Terry’s past.
Det. Lt. Chuck Christensen: We did uncover an extramarital affair by both parties.
Peter Van Sant: By both parties?
Det. Lt. Chuck Christensen: Yep.
Peter Van Sant: And, so, when you have a murder like this, and you learn there was some infidelity, are you wondering, “Could jealousy have been a motive?”
Det. Lt. Chuck Christensen: Absolutely.
Janet Wood: I remember the detective saying … “It was rage. … Only someone close to her would have this kind of rage.” I never bought that.
Janet firmly believed in Terry’s innocence.
Janet Wood: I just knew him too well. … So that just didn’t fit with what I knew. … Terry wasn’t a rageful guy. He may have a sharp tongue (laughs), occasionally, but never a violent— person.
Despite strongly suspecting Terry, prosecutors didn’t believe there was enough evidence to charge him. After just a few months, the case went cold, leaving a cloud of suspicion hanging over Terry. He declined “48 Hours”‘ request for an interview.
Det. Sgt. Jason Bailey: I’d heard stories that at times he’d walk into — walk into a place and somebody would call him “Slash.”
DNA was preserved from the crime scene, but given technological limitations of the time, there wasn’t enough evidence to charge any suspects.
Michigan Department of State Police
DNA was left at the crime scene. A sample was preserved but given the limitations on technology back in 1987, not much could be done with it. Still, Roxanne’s family never gave up.
Janet Wood: I didn’t lose hope ever. … I mean, this guy just didn’t do this and then lead a clean, pristine life, the rest of his life.
DNA technology evolved, and the sample was eventually able to be uploaded to CODIS, the national criminal DNA database in 1999. But no match was returned. As disappointing as that was, everyone was hopeful that the DNA would at least clear Terry when it was tested against his. The result? It wasn’t Terry’s DNA.
Peter Van Sant: So, did that eliminate Terry as a person of interest, as a suspect in this case?
Det. Lt. Chuck Christensen: No.
Peter Van Sant: Why not? It’s not his semen.
Det. Lt. Chuck Christensen: Just because you find semen in somebody doesn’t necessarily mean that that person is the one that killed them.
After that, the case offered no new leads until 2020.
After more than three decades of compiling thousands of reports, police were drowning in paperwork. That’s when a professor and an innovative group of students at Western Michigan University figured out a way to speed up the investigation.
Dr. Ashlyn Kuersten: The real-world experience I think is priceless.
Dr. Ashlyn Kuersten teaches a criminal justice studies program. For years, she’s been talking to Detective Christensen about how her students might help on a cold case.
Dr. Ashlyn Kuersten: What a great partnership that would be if we could ever make something like that happen.
Investigators enlisted a group of students from Western Michigan University, including Samantha Rogers and McKenzie Stommen, to digitize approximately 3,500 pages of reports, notes and information about the Roxanne Wood case into a searchable database. “I was hopeful that we would be able to solve the case or move the case forward,” said Stommen.
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So, the professor and the detective came up with a plan. Dr. Kuersten’s students would process around 3,500 pages of documents accumulated since the day Roxanne was murdered into a single, digitized database. Samantha Rogers was one of several students who worked on the case.
Samantha Rogers: The officers are able to search by name … and see if they’ve already been interviewed. If they needed a follow-up. …They can search locations. … Things that they wouldn’t be able to do just flippin’ through thousands of pages.
McKenzie Stommen says the decades-old files were a solemn reminder of how long some victims wait for justice.
McKenzie Stommen: It gave … a sense of gravity to what we were doing that these cases have gone unsolved for that long.
Around the same time the students began crunching data, Christensen decided it was time for a Hail Mary pass. Colleen Fitzpatrick is the president and founder of Identifinders International, a company that specializes in genetic genealogy.
Colleen Fitzpatrick: It’s been used in forensic cases to help identify — unidentified remains and violent offenders for violent crimes.
Christensen hired her genealogy company to examine the tiny amount of DNA preserved from Roxanne’s case.
Colleen Fitzpatrick: We found out there was, what I would call, a gnat’s eyebrow of DNA left, about 3% of what we normally use. … That was the lowest amount of DNA we’ve ever had to work with, to solve a case.
Identifinders spent about 10 months working with the data the sample produced but came up empty.
Colleen Fitzpatrick: It really did feel impossible, it really did.
Then one day in April 2021, Fitzpatrick happened to be chatting with investigative genetic genealogist Gabriella Vargas who worked as a consultant for Identifinders.
Gabriella Vargas: And I said, “Well, why don’t you let me look at it? … I concluded that … I did not stand with the others. … I believed that this case was extremely solvable. And I believed that I could solve it.
So, Vargas got to work. Incredibly, she was able to generate a genetic profile from the killer’s trace DNA.
Gabriella Vargas: It … tells me where does … their ancestral origins come from. Are they Eastern European? Are they Mediterranean? Are they African American?
Peter Van Sant: And what was the race of this person?
Gabriella Vargas: Caucasian.
“Roxanne Wood’s family was my motivation for working as hard and as fast as I did,” Gabriella Vargas, an investigative genetic genealogist, told “48 Hours” correspondent Peter Van Sant. “They never gave up hope that one day, justice would be served.”
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Vargas then turned to an online DNA service. When consumers use DNA sites like 23andMe and Ancestry.com, they can take their results and upload them to a broader database called GEDmatch in the hope of finding more relatives.
Gabriella Vargas: They can choose to opt into law enforcement matching. If they do that, I can see if they are a match to my suspect.
Vargas was able to use GEDmatch and the genetic profile she developed to start to build the family tree of Roxanne’s killer.
Peter Van Sant: How far back did you go in time?
Gabriella Vargas (showing family tree to Van Sant): One side of the tree … the ancestor was 1823. On the other side, the top ancestor was 1797. … Essentially what we’re looking for amongst these matches are where they connect to each other. … And it led me to a union couple.
A union couple is where two sides of the family tree meet.
Gabrielle Vargas: This couple was born around 1920. Based on that, we can presume that they would have kids around 1940, maybe 1950. … It would have to be one of their children.
The couple she found had three sons. She let the detectives know. They did background checks and eliminated two of the three brothers as possibilities. They were down to the last brother.
Det. Sgt. John Moore: He’s been involved in a lotta different things, a lotta —
Peter Van Sant: Violent things?
Det. Sgt. John Moore: Horrible — violent things, sexual deviant things. You name it, he’s probably been involved in it.
Peter Van Sant: And you connect the DNA with someone who has a history of violent behavior … you got yourself a suspect.
Det. Sgt. John Moore: Absolutely.
DNA LEADS TO SUSPECT WITH A VIOLENT PAST
After 34 years and one last chance at solving the case with a speck of DNA too small to see with the human eye, Detective Chuck Christensen’s daring bet paid off big.
Det. Lt.Chuck Christensen: And to know that we had come to this point was simply amazing.
Michigan State Police now believed they had finally tracked down Roxanne Wood’s killer.
Det. Lt. Chuck Christensen: We were confident now we were going to solve this and make an arrest.
Peter Van Sant: You could now pinpoint who that individual was that had committed these awful crimes. And who is that person?
Det. Lt. Chuck Christensen: That individual is Patrick Gilham.
Patrick Gilham — a man who was living just a few miles from where he allegedly raped and murdered Roxanne Wood.
And it turns out, he had a troubled past.
Det. Lt. Chuck Christensen: Had been a drinker.
Peter Van Sant: Was he into drugs?
Det. Lt. Chuck Christensen: He’s into drugs. Just an individual that was … lost in life and a bad individual … based on his background.
When detectives dug into Gilham’s criminal history, they found a connection to another disturbing case eight years before Roxanne’s attack.
Maureen Farag was attacked by Patrick Gilham in her Gary, Indiana, home in 1979 — eight years before Roxanne Wood’s attack.
Robert Farag
Robert Farag: My wife, Maureen, was attacked by Patrick Gilham in 1979.
Robert and Maureen Farag and their two young daughters lived in Gary, Indiana, back in September 1979.
Robert Farag: We were just kind of blossoming into adulthood with the kids, with our lifestyle, with our jobs.
Robert was economic director for the city, and Maureen was an art teacher at the local middle school.
Peter Van Sant: What is it about Maureen that you fell in love with?
Robert Farag: Wow. I can’t say one thing only. … She was very attractive, which just caught my eye. … She was so nice. People gravitated to her because of her warm personality.
One night, while making his way home from a business trip, Robert called Maureen with a favor.
Robert Farag: I said, “Maureen I don’t have my keys to the house, could you leave the side door open.”
At around 11 p.m., Robert turned onto his street. He’ll never forget what he saw.
Robert Farag: When I pull up—I see the police cars.
Robert quickly found Maureen, who calmly told him she was in bed when she was startled awake by a noise downstairs.
Robert Farag: Maureen sees this guy going through her purse. … He got scared, whatever and chased her. Maureen started going upstairs. And he grabbed her at the bottom of the stairs and got on top of her. And he tried his best to molest her. He wasn’t successful.
Maureen told Robert the man then took her purse and fled. Throughout the attack, Maureen had stayed quiet. She didn’t want to awaken her two girls.
Peter Van Sant: That takes an incredible amount of courage. … She was willing to sacrifice herself there, if need be, to protect her 1 and 3-year-old daughters.
Robert Farag: Yes. Maureen had a lot more than courage. She had strength.
About a week later, Gilham was pulled over in Gary for a traffic violation. A police officer noticed credit cards on the seat next to him. They were Maureen’s.
Robert Farag: The police officer called me and said, “We picked the guy up. We’re bringing him in to the station.”
Det. Lt. Chuck Christensen: When he was interviewed by police, he said, “All I remember is going into the house. And I blacked out and woke up with my pants around my ankles.”
Patrick Gilham was charged with burglary and unlawful deviate conduct. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 14 years in Indiana State Prison.
Peter Van Sant: How did you go on with life from that point?
Robert Farag: We forgot about it. … We changed our house. We changed our neighborhood. … She never told anybody because she felt that was a private issue.
Patrick Gilham was charged with burglary and unlawful deviate conduct. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 14 years in Indiana State Prison — but only served seven years of his sentence before being released.
Patrick Gilham served just seven years of his 14-year sentence. About four months after his release, police believe Gilham assaulted Roxanne Wood.
Det. Lt. Chuck Christensen: Criminals learn as they go. And I believe he learned from that first crime he did that, “I better not leave this witness alive because I will be in prison for a long, long time.”
Maureen Farag died in 2018 from cancer not knowing anything about the Roxanne Wood case. Now, armed their DNA evidence, investigators were ready to move in on Patrick Gilham.
Det. Lt. Chuck Christensen: At this point, we decide to get a surreptitious sample to compare to the profile that we had from Roxanne Wood from the scene. And we do this through our undercover surveillance team.
Ryan Codde: I’m Ryan Codde. And I am a trooper with the Michigan State Police.
Peter Van Sant: And you do some undercover work from time to time?
Ryan Codde: I do. I’m assigned with a fugitive recovery team for the Fifth District.
In May 2021, Codde and his team surveilled Gilham in South Bend for days on end and picked up a crucial clue that would aid them in collecting his DNA.
Ryan Codde: We noticed that he was a smoker.
In May 2021, undercover investigators surveilled Patrick Gilham in South Bend for days on end and picked up a crucial clue that would aid them in collecting his DNA: he was a smoker.
Michigan Department of State Police
Peter Van Sant: And why does that help you?
Ryan Codde: Just in the simple fact that uh, you know, when you’re smoking, it’s a great source of DNA. You have your lips directly on the butt of the cigarette. And your saliva gets in the cigarette.
Hot on Gilham’s tail, the team witnessed their target flick a cigarette butt outside his truck window while driving.
Peter Van Sant: Oh boy, you’re rubbing your hands, you’re going, “This is gonna be that final piece of the puzzle,” that you had talked about, right?
Det. Lt. Chuck Christensen: Yes. Yes.
Det. Sgt. John Moore: But there’s a twist. We sent that up to the lab right away. A couple days later the lab director calls me, and he said, “It’s not a match.”
A CRUCIAL PIECE OF EVIDENCE
Det. Sgt. John Moore: DNA is DNA. If … it’s not a match, it’s not a match.
Detective Moore says investigators were shocked when the lab called to say the DNA sample from Patrick Gilham’s cigarette butt did not match Roxanne’s killer.
Det. Sgt. John Moore: We were scratchin’ our heads. … I called the trooper that grabbed that cigarette butt, and I said, “Is there any way at all that you lost sight … when it flipped outta his finger?” And he said, “… a car drove by right then.”
It was possible the cigarette butt tested was not Gilham’s.
Det. Lt. Chuck Christensen: The only thing logically that we can do is go back and get another one.
So undercover Trooper Ryan Codde headed back to work, once again tailing Gilham.
Trooper Ryan Codde: He pulled into this laundromat … which we saw as a window of opportunity that he would most likely be coming out to take a smoke break.
This time, Codde was determined not to lose sight of Gilham’s discarded cigarette butt for even a moment. And instead of tailing him in a car, Codde followed Gilham on foot.
Trooper Ryan Codde: I’m not a smoker. … And there was a gas station right over on the corner that I saw. And I — I was like, “Well, you know, I need to go over and get a pack of cigarettes … and — sit on the — the curb next to the laundromat.”
Trooper Ryan Codde: He came and took a seat — probably about six to eight feet away from me. And we had a smoke together (laughs).
Peter Van Sant: So how did you strike up a conversation with him?
Trooper Ryan Codde: I just tried to say hi to him … made some small conversation. … He liked the Red Wings.
It wasn’t long before Gilham finished his cigarette and went back inside.
“48 Hours” correspondent Peter Van Sant, left, with Michigan State Trooper Ryan Codde outside of the laundromat where Codde picked up Gilham’s cigarette butt.
CBS News
Trooper Ryan Codde: I — saw him throw his cigarette — which was right — right in about this area. And — so it was a great situation because the cigarette was by itself.
Trooper Ryan Codde: So, I pull out — a glove and go over, and I picked the cigarette up with my hand.
Peter Van Sant: Was it still — was it still smokin’—
Trooper Ryan Codde: Oh, it was — it was still warm. Yes, it was (laughs). So I wrapped it up inside that glove, I stuck it in my pocket, and — and headed out.
Investigators held their breath until the results from Gilham’s cigarette butt came back. It was a perfect match to the DNA left at the 1987 crime scene.
Det Lt. Chuck Christensen: I was ecstatic. I was very, very happy.
But investigators were not yet ready to make an arrest, opting to bring Gilham in for an interview in July 2021.
DET. SGT. JASON BAILEY: You’re not in trouble. You’re here voluntarily.
Detective Bailey says they told Gilham they needed to question him about an old case.
Det. Sgt. Jason Bailey: “Do you know anybody by the name of Roxanne?” He explains to us, “I know two Roxannes.” And he says, “One’s a stripper, one’s a drug addict.”
Gilham was shown a picture of Roxanne Wood.
DET. SGT. JASON BAILEY: That girl look familiar? You ever met her before?
PATRICK GILHAM: Nope. Never met her.
DET. SGT. JASON BAILEY: That’s a newer picture. Here’s an older picture.
Then Gilham was shown a second photo of Roxanne.
PATRICK GILHAM: Nope.
DET. SGT. JASON BAILEY: Never seen her? Never met her? Don’t know who she is?
PATRICK GILHAM: (shakes his head no)
Det. Sgt. Jason Bailey: And I said, “Well, we’re here to talk to you about her. This woman’s been assaulted.”
Patrick Gilham reacts after being shown photos of Roxanne Wood during questioning.
Michigan Department of State Police
PATRICK GILHAM: This is too much for me man. (Waves his hands in the air, taps hands on table.)
Det. Sgt. Jason Bailey: You could see his body just tense up, and — almost to the point of hyperventilation, hands started shaking, threw his hands, you know, back in the air. … I’ve never had a reaction outta somebody … like that in 23 years of doing this.
Peter Van Sant: Does he continue talking?
PATRICK GILHAM: I gotta talk to my lawyer.
Det. Sgt. Jason Bailey: At that time, he requested to speak to his attorney.
PATRICK GILHAM: I gotta talk to my lawyer, man.
Patrick Gilham was arrested at his South Bend, Indiana, home in February 2022, just days shy of the 35th anniversary of Roxanne Wood’s murder.
Michigan Department of State Police
In February 2022, just days shy of the 35th anniversary of Roxanne’s murder, Patrick Gilham was arrested at his South Bend, Indiana, home.
Roxanne’s brother, Brad Woods.
Brad Woods: It didn’t seem real. It was nothing like I had ever played in my mind of how I would be when they came to the door to say, “We’ve got him.”
Detective Christensen then met face to face with the man who had lived for decades with cruel rumors and doubt: Terry Wood.
Det. Lt. Chuck Christensen: I sat him down and explained … he was no longer a person of interest, and we knew he had nothing to do with it.
Terry and Roxanne Wood
Janet Wood
Peter Van Sant: How did he react?
Det. Lt. Chuck Christensen: He was very emotional. He started crying, of course … was bewildered, and in shock.
As a 35-year-old burden was lifted off Terry, the hammer was about to fall for Gilham.
DETECTIVE: You’re under arrest, OK?
Investigators questioned him for five-and-a-half hours at a police station in South Bend, with Gilham only asking for an attorney at the very end. At times, he spoke in circles.
PATRICK GILHAM: I can’t believe I did it — if I did it. But you’re saying I did so.
Det. Lt. Chuck Christensen: When pressed on it, he just kept saying … “You guys are telling me I did this. And if I did this, I’m a monster.”
PATRICK GILHAM: I’m a monster, man. If I did that, that’s a monster. That’s a monster, man.
Det. Lt. Chuck Christensen: “Only a monster would do this.”
DET. SGT. JASON BAILEY: Let me ask you this. How do you think your DNA was found with her?
PATRICK GILHAM: I have no clue.
DET. SGT. JASON BAILEY: How do you think?
PATRICK GILHAM: I have no clue man!
Det. Lt. Chuck Christensen: He said that several times during the interview when he was confronted with the case facts. And he kept saying, “I don’t remember.”
But Janet Wood says Gilham’s reaction when he was questioned seven months prior proved he was lying now.
Janet Wood: He visibly reacted. … shook like a leaf, leaned back in his chair, pounding his chest.
PATRICK GILHAM: I gotta talk to my lawyer.
Janet Wood: “I think I need a lawyer.” … You tell me he doesn’t remember what he did.
Gilham was charged with Roxanne Wood’s murder. But had a golden opportunity to apprehend him decades earlier slipped through investigators’ fingers?
DAY OF RECKONING
In the summer of 1987, just months after Roxanne Wood was murdered in her home, her alleged killer crossed paths with yet another woman. It was a hot night in South Bend when Rose Caparell went outside to her front lawn.
Rose Caparell: I was standing down there watering and all of a sudden, I hear this loud car coming down the street.
Rose, standing alone, says she noticed a blue El Camino, driven by a stranger, getting closer.
Rose Caparell: I looked, and he had a taillight out on the car. … about three, four minutes later I hear the same car coming back down this street.
Peter Van Sant: Now, it had a bad muffler, right?
Rose Caparell: Oh, the muffler was loud. … I just got a feeling that somethin’ just wasn’t right. … And by the time I got halfway to my front door, a man came around the corner of the house.He had a stocking cap on, and he had a full beard. All you could basically see was his eyes. … I just turned and ran, screamin’ down the street.
Peter Van Sant: Have you ever run faster in your life than that moment?
Rose Caparell: No. And I’m not a runner. And I ran.
Rose says she ran to a neighbor’s house and called local police, but the assailant had escaped.
Peter Van Sant: What do you believe would’ve happened if that man had caught up to you?
Rose Caparell: My thought was he was gonna rape me.
In the summer of 1987, just months after Roxanne Wood was murdered in her home, her alleged killer crossed paths with Rose Caparell in South Bend, Indiana. “I truly believe that I would’ve been — raped and murdered,” she told “48 Hours.”
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A few days later, while Rose and her family were driving to dinner, her daughter Tina says she spotted that same blue El Camino with a burned-out taillight in a parking lot.
Tina Caparell: My mom says right away, “That’s the car.”
Stunned, Rose and Tina say they went to call the police leaving Rose’s husband, Stan, a retired Marine, waiting for the car’s owner.
Tina Caparell: I came back … to my dad holding a gun at the attacker sitting on the ground.
Tina says her father demanded the man hand over his driver’s license. They say the name on that license: Patrick Gilham.
Tina Caparell: We had never heard the name before.
Rose says the police never arrived, so Stan lowered his gun and let Gilham leave. She says she later reported the incident at the South Bend Police Station.
Rose Caparell: We didn’t pursue it ’cause we figured they would be doin’ somethin’ with it.
No arrest was ever made. Decades later when Caparell saw the report of Gilham being arrested for Roxanne Wood’s murder, she and Tina decided to tell their story to the Michigan police.
Peter Van Sant: Imagine if the police had come. They might have solved Roxanne Wood’s case just a few months after it had occurred.
Det. Lt. Chuck Christensen: Possible. Yes.
Peter Van Sant: An opportunity lost.
Det. Lt. Chuck Christensen: Yeah. Yeah. It could have went that way.
But in April 2022, Gilham’s day of reckoning finally came.
Rose Caparell: When he walked in, I openly said, “Piece of s***.” … I didn’t realize I was saying it as loudly as I did.
In a Michigan courtroom, he faced some of people whose lives he had viciously altered.
Janet Wood: He made eye contact with me. He sat down and he looked up. And he stared right in my face.
Even though Gilham had insisted to investigators that he didn’t remember murdering Roxanne, he later pleaded no contest to second-degree murder. And now everyone waited for his sentence to be handed down.
Brad Woods: It was almost like being face-to-face with the devil. I remember being shaky, and nervous, and I just couldn’t believe I’m sitting this close to the person that did this.
Brad and Janet finally got the chance to address the man who killed their sister all those years ago.
JANET WOOD (at sentencing): Patrick Gilham is the very definition of a nightmare women fear our whole lives …
Janet Wood addresses Patrick Gilham at his sentencing. Gilham, wearing headsets, appeared confused, as though he’d seen a ghost, when looking at Janet.
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According to Brad Woods, Gilham appeared confused, as though he’d seen a ghost, when looking at Janet. He wore headphones in order to hear.
Brad Woods: Janet does look a lot like Rock … he was probably in shock, seeing her sitting there.
JANET WOOD (at sentencing): …His actions gave all of us a life sentence, while he got to live his as a free man. … And we are here today to see him finally pay something for what he’s done which is likely the rest of his life in a cage like the violent animal that he is.
BRAD WOODS (at sentencing): It seems like people like him find Jesus in prison, but don’t bother looking because the devil will be the only one greeting you.
When it was his turn to speak, Gilham offered an apology and a prayer.
PATRICK GILHAM: I can’t believe I did what I did. And I pray for them every night. I am so sorry. I just hope that sometime in the future, with God’s help, that they can start to forgive me.
The judge sentenced Gilham, who was 67 at the time, to a minimum of 23 years in prison. Sitting in court, Terry Wood, now vindicated, watched as his wife’s real killer was led away. Robert Farag witnessed Terry’s pain firsthand.
Robert Farag: I shook his hand. He was, you know, shaking, crying. I felt more empathy for him than I could for any other person I’ve met.
Terry was cleared and his wife’s killer found thanks, in large part, to advances in technology. Genetic genealogist Gabriella Vargas, who solved a decades-long cold case in just four days, says she’s eager to do it again.
Peter Van Sant: As a result of your work, more and more law enforcement agencies will be coming to you, more and more families hoping that you can do your miracle work and solve their cold cases. That’s quite a burden for you, isn’t it?
Gabriella Vargas: Oh, absolutely not. It’s an honor. It’s an honor to be able to work these cases to bring justice to these victims and closure to these families. And I will never stop.
As the Wood family finally found some peace, their rock will always be with them giving them the strength to move forward. Janet remembers a dream she had about her sister.
Janet Wood: We were in downtown Niles. … She came up and grabbed me. She goes, “Janet.” And I was like, “Rock, oh my God.” And we’re walkin’ and walkin’ and walkin’ and just laughin’.
Sisters Janet Wood, left, and Roxanne Wood.
Janet Wood
Janet Wood: And all of a sudden, I look up and it’s dead silent. And we’re at the gates of the cemetery. And I said — um, I said, “Oh.” I said, “Do you have to go back?” And she goes, “Yes.” She goes, “But it’s fine.” She goes, “I’m good. I’m really good.” (Claps her hands) That was it.
Patrick Gilham will be eligible for release in 2040 with good behavior.
He will be 86 years old.
Produced by Susan Mallie and Jennifer Terker. Stephen McCain is the development producer. Lauren Turner Dunn and Emily Wichick are the field producers. Ken Blum and Mike Baluzy are the editors. Lourdes Aguiar is the senior producer. Nancy Kramer is the executive story editor. Judy Tygard is the executive producer.
