Over the next 14 years, authorities diligently ruled out the presence of any DNA not matching Strutner's in the 1980 evidence and finally, in 2022, he was named as Dukat's murderer. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, Beichlers case was revived in 2019 when prosecutors released composite images of a man whose DNA was supposedly left at the scene. As it happened, around this same time, Cates was in the hospital in North Carolina, and as Florida detectives were shoring up their case, Cates blurted out to a nurse that he had killed someone in Florida decades prior. Another victim of a brutal murder who went unidentified for decades, Lina Reyes Geddes was found near a spring in the vicinity of Lake Powell, Utah, in 1998, shot, bound, and wrapped in a sleeping bag. The next day brought another disturbing discovery: A county road worker found 16-year-old Patricia Kalitzke's body in an area north of Great Falls, the paper reports. 2 min. The Union County Sheriff's Office announced Monday night its solved two cold cases, according to Capt. Highsmiths mother gave her the job. The Cascade County Sheriff's Office announced on Tuesday that it has closed the file on the 1956 double homicide of Patricia Kalitzke and Lloyd Duane Bogle, resolving the . In March 1959, the Spokane community was shaken by the disappearance of a little girl, 9-year-old . Previously wed to Tommy Retew, who filed the first missing persons report, Angela and her freshly-minted husband James Coxwere in a disastrous and trebly fatal car crash just weeks after tying the knot. Hope to see the resolution to all and have a great new year. Murder of The Lyon Sisters. All the latest content about Cold cases from the BBC. (NCMEC/ Highsmith family Facebook page). Unfortunately for criminals and murderers, this means its much easier to get caught, especially for those who committed crimes before DNA testing. Nesson's family urged Reynoldsburg police to reexamine the cold case in August 2019. Bur was charged after DNA evidence allegedly placed him at the scene of her death, according to police. After more than 25 years, she was finally identified as Joyce Meyer, a woman who had drifted apart from her family after moving to Virginia in the mid-'80s. Blood evidence believed to be the killers was found on the victims clothing but remained unidentified. News 13 True Crime Cases That Were Solved In 2022 For years, these cases have been cold until 2022, when advancements in DNA technology helped bring closure to the victims' family and friends. Sheriff Al Roork. cold case solved- man convicted for several rape and kidnapping crimes1. Raymond Moody, now 62, pleaded guilty during an Oct. 19, 2022, hearing in Georgetown, South Carolina. Charles W. Helem was arrested for murdering his ex-girlfriend in Chantilly. While floating around Missouri for awhile, authorities say Angela and Mikey came into contact with the brothers Dale and Clarence Krusen. 4 Mysterious Cold Cases to Know in 2021: Unsolved Murders, Disappearances Entertainment Four Mysterious Cold Cases That Authorities Just Can't Crack From the death of a possible Cold. "Rather than a trial and conviction, this story seemingly ends at the identification of the deceased offenders. Cates had developed a habit of borrowing and pawning power tools from Stagner, a city maintenance worker, in order to support this habit; even Cates' own family members had long suspected his involvement in the killing, but police were never able to gather enough evidence to support a probable cause warrant for his arrest. The team's years of digging uncovered new forensic evidence and photos from . She performed well in school, becoming an honors student during her academic career. To date, this cold case is one of the oldest to be recently solved with DNA evidence.[2]. Investigators agreed and asked the Franklin County Coroner's office to again evaluate the 15-year-old's autopsy. (Jeff Highsmith). The case was revived in 2021 when Sgt. While initial tests done previously on the blood were inconclusive, advances in DNA testing allowed for the blood to be positively identified as belonging to George Peacock. "Boy in the Box" identified as 4-year-old Joseph Augustus Zarelli. Police in Gresham, Oregon, say a suspect in the city's oldest cold case homicide was arrested with the help of DNA technology more than 40 years since the crime. The duo were convicted of those crimes in 1977 and again incarcerated. Johnathan Grossman works alongside Denmark, and in 2021 their unit closed 16 cold cases, the most in years, including the 1966 murder of 17-year-old Daniel Goldman. Investigators said they determined Robert Meyer of Cincinnati, and Charles Webber of Columbus killed Lori Nesson in 1974. An undated image of Sharon Gallegos. You'll see how forensics techniques help to bring closure to many cases, but also how, occasionally, other things propel a case toward resolution. 4. On Good Friday of this year, Krusen took and failed a polygraph when asked about what happened to Angela and Mikey. Fortunately, Kadner had something to work with. As later reported by the Great Falls Tribune, 18-year-old Lloyd Bogle was found shot in the head with his arms tied behind his back with his own belt. The young mother and dance instructors own father discovered her remains brutally beaten, duct taped and sexually assaulted in her vehicle parked outside the mall. The technique is used to create family trees based on genetic similarities to hopefully lead back to the owner of the unknown sample. It was only three days into 1956 when three boys from Montana, out for a hike on a normal January day, made a gruesome discovery they were unlikely to ever forget. Investigators determined Drexel was strangled. Anna Kane 6ABC News Tamika Reyes was only nine years old when her mother, 26-year-old Anna Kane, was found strangled and left in the woods outside of Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1988. But it was only recently, when widow Barbara Krusenfailed a polygraph test administered by the FBI, that authorities say they were finally able to sift fact away from fiction, subterfuge, rumor, and doubt. Their killings went unsolved until this week when investigators announced they had cracked what is believed to be the oldest case solved with DNA and forensic genealogy. But it wasn't until 2022 that, you guessed it, advances in DNA technology finally allowed authorities to use an imperfect DNA profile to identify the victim as Dawn Olanick, whom it is believed Kinlaw murdered when she resisted his attempt to coerce her into prostitution. It involves the shooting deaths of two teenagers from Eugene, and the killer won't spend a single minute in prison. At around 10 pm on August 26, 1976, Cynthia decided to go to the Fox Theater to watch the film, "The Omen." Take a look at our list of 10 solved cold cases below. She had been shot in the head, just as Bogle had been, but she had also been sexually assaulted. Phil Matteson, a now-retired detective with the sheriff's office, sent that sample to a local lab for testing in 2001, and the team there identified sperm that did not belong to Bogle, her boyfriend, the paper reports. Feb 7, 2022 1 min read Save A lot of cold cases are solved by looking for matches for a relative. Dukat was only 8 years old, grabbed by a stranger and killed with a 20-pound rock in a shallow stream on her short walk home from school, according to the Columbus Dispatch. A viewer contacted police and said Nesson's death shared similarities with the death of Karen Adams, a 17-year-old Whitehall girl whose body was found in Blacklick in 1975. Going over the old case files, they zeroed in on Larry David Smith, who had been interviewed in connection with the slaying in 1973 but was never seriously considered a suspect. While there are thousands of cold cases out there, recent developments and ongoing investigations in these cases may reach resolution by the end of the year. Jul 02, 2021 at 2:30 pm A dead blond boy found fully dressed and wrapped in a blanket more than 50 years ago has been an identified through genetic genealogy, bringing an end to one Oregon's . 5 Cases We Believe Will Be Solved in 2021 CrimeCon Jan 05, 2021 2020 certainly held a number of surprises for the true crime community. playlist_add. Using DNA from living relatives, the little girl was finally identified as Sharon Lee Gallegos, a 4-year-old who was abducted from her grandmother's home in Alamagordo, New Mexico 500 miles from where her body had been discovered in July 1960. January 07, 2021: Ryan Mitchell McCormack: Missing Persons : White : 5'10" 185 : M : May 26, 2020: Keeslyn Noelle Roberts: Missing Persons . Many suspects in cold cases never face justice. "I'm very, very sorry for what my dad did, that he took her life, horribly," his daughter said in an interview with The Times. At a cemetery in Annandale, Virginia (pictured), the body of a middle-aged woman was found. These two cases were investigated separately until 2003, when the national DNA database CODIS revealed that samples from both crimes matched the same man. They found him on the ground near his car, and someone had used his belt to tie his hands behind his back, according to a report from the Great Falls Tribune. Of those suspects, one in 20 will be arrested, and just one in those 100 charged will be convicted. The results came back to match a man named Marcus Love. Unfortunately, the 62-year-old mystery has only been partially solved the cops are still on the lookout for Gallegos' abductor, although it seems a safe bet that if they're still alive, the extremely long, doggedly determined arm of the law will catch up to them eventually. An image of "Little Miss Nobody," a girl discovered in a remote Arizona desert more than 60 years ago. The case went cold. (Yavapai County Sheriff's Office). When two officers approached him, he shot them to death. Missing Melissa Highsmith reunited with family (Highsmith family Facebook page). Upon further testing, Loves blood was found to be mixed in with other samples of Reeds blood taken from the scene of the murder. Smith died in 2013 at the age of 94. The difficulty lay in the fact that not only was the available DNA evidence too weak to pinpoint a suspect, but, at the time, the victim herself was also unidentified. In 2009, Dawn and Chad Drexel lived every parent's worst nightmare. ST. LUCIE COUNTY A more than 30-year-old cold case homicide involving a stormy relationship and shotgun blasts has been solved as a DNA match allowed St. Lucie County sheriff's investigators . Martinez had been identified as a suspect through familial DNA testing, in which unknown DNA material is matched against offenders in a DNA database to potentially identify close male relatives. In this case, it led back to Rueben Smith. She was happy and apparently sounded like herself. That changed the whole dynamic of the case.". Sep 15, 2021. But with new technology, including advances in genetic identification, breakthroughs do occur. A blood sample found in Louises car back in October 1989 was tested for DNA. 2 min. Both mother and son were quickly murdered after that. Unfortunately, all the evidence against him was circumstantial, and without enough to connect Louise to the murder, the case went cold. That left Angela and Mikey stranded in Alton, Missouri. We live in an era of incredible technology: cars, computers, and even robots. Raymond Moody, 62, pleaded guilty Oct. 19, 2022, in Georgetown, South Carolina, to raping and killing 17-year-old Brittanee Drexel in 2009. officials say In May 1987, 23-year-old Shannon Lloyd of Orange County, California, was murdered in her apartment. Initially, the evidence against Lizzie looked damning: she had recently attempted to purchase prussic acid (a poison) and was alleged to have burned a dress in the stove. At first, the widow now claims, her husband lied to her about the victims whereabouts and said someone came and picked them up.. The search for Melissa Highsmith had a rare happy ending. Paul Joseph Fronczak (Solved! In December 1975, 19-year-old Lindy Beichler was murdered in her Lancaster, Pennsylvania, apartment. Her body was located more than 13 years later, in May of this year, about 35 miles from where she disappeared, officials have said. Cottingham, now 73, has said he has killed as many as 100 people in New Jersey and New York and is already spending life in prison for the 1960 murders of several females. If you have any theory of just what might open this case up please feel free to include. Both men are now dead. That heartbreaking nickname was retired forever in 2022, thanks to DNA retrieved from the little girl's remains in 2015. ): Paul Joseph Fronczak was kidnapped as a day-old baby out of a Chicago hospital in 1964. A man confessed to the crime shortly after. ". The main problem with positively identifying her was the fact that her fingertips had been cut off, and entreaties to the public for help yielded nothing, according to The Salt Lake Tribune. Evidence from the case was then submitted to the Ohio Attorney General's Bureau of Criminal Investigation in January 2020. A gruesome double homicide opened the year of 1956 in Great Falls, Montana. Because Forte had been dead since 1980, DNA was taken from his exhumed body. But not always. Somewhat mysteriously, she was in California at the time. The following day, his girlfriend, 16-year-old Patricia Kalitzke, was found in another area of town, also killed with a bullet to the head, but with the added horror of a sexual assault. In May 2022, genome sequencing technology became available to the Fairfax police department, enabling investigators to reach out to potential family members. Fortes DNA was a match to genetic material found on the victims jacket.[7]. According to Garden Grove Deputy Police Chief Amir Al Farra, she was sexually assaulted and strangled to death. The 74-year mystery of the Somerton man, as experts 'solve' case. According to NPR, the investigation into the crime went nowhere for decades, until the resolution of a cold case in a nearby county prompted investigators to use blood evidence from the scene to attempt to whittle down their suspect list. 2021 at 12:01 p.m. Unrelenting determination coupled with advancing technology helped solve one of Spokane's most heinous and haunting crimes: the rape and murder of a 9-year-old girl, 62 years ago. The woman took her fromher home in Fort Worth, Texas, in August 1971. Her boyfriend, who went to her apartment to look for her, discovered her dead of blunt force trauma. The case now appears to have finally been solved - but the killer can't go to jail. In November 2021, Joseph Martinez, 49, was arrested in her death after police possibly matched his DNA to semen found on Soriano's sweatshirt. It's clear that in many cases, when cold cases do get solved, the suspect has already died. Mr. Smith died by suicide in 1999.[1]. The wayward mother met Barbara at a bus station in Springfield, Missouri. In December 1996, police stumbled upon a mystery fit for a detective novel. Georgette Banks - May 9, 2021; 2600 block of Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue, SE James Beckham - August 7, 2021; 200 block of 49th Street, SE Publish Date 11/11/2020. Here are a dozen of the most stubbornly unresolved cold cases that were finally put to bed in 2022. And they catch the killers just when the offender was feeling home free. ", "This is truly a mothers worst nightmare," she said. Bogle, an airman hailing from Texas, and Kalitzke, a junior at Great Falls High School, had fallen for each other and were even considering marriage, the Tribune reports. With the help of partnering labs, forensic genealogists are able to use preserved samples to create a DNA profile of the culprit and then use that profile to search public databases for any potential matches. This would prove to be an incorrect guess, and as there was a dearth of reported missing child cases involving children of that age, police hit a dead end in the case of the girl who would become known to locals as "Little Miss Nobody" (via CBS News). He's now retired but still focuses on the ones that remain . The family of Melissa Highsmith provided this photo of her as a baby. a 28 -year-old cold case murder in Colton was solved. "The FBI and our partners will not give up. The case was cracked after new testing was done on DNA. . Bear Brook State Park in Allenstown, New Hampshire, U.S. A double homicide of two teens in Montana has been solved after more than 60 years thanks to forensic genealogy. Story tips can be sent to stephanie.pagones@fox.com and on Twitter: @steph_pagones. 1 of 2. The serial murderer known as the "Torso Killer" admitted to killing a 23-year-old woman outside a Long Island shopping mall in 1968 and four other women decades ago. A double homicide of two teens in Montana has been solved after more than 60 years thanks to forensic genealogy. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. When the officers arrived on the scene, they found the body of . It was January of 1980 when 21-year-old Helene Pruszynski was kidnapped, raped and murdered in Douglas County, Colorado. 25, 2022 at 9:15 PM PDT FOLEY, Ala. ( WALA) - Twenty-two years ago, a man's body was pulled from Styx River in. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper. The Hazelton, Pennsylvania, girl was found later the same afternoon, raped and strangled. And they can know it's solved.". (Provided by family to Fox News Digital), "A woman answered the ad and agreed to meet her at the restaurant where she worked, but she never showed up," the NCMEC said. More than 260, to be specific. Kim Bell. Detectives began watching Sinopoli, and before he boarded a flight at Philly International Airport, they collected a discarded coffee cup that provided the DNA sample they needed to nail him. But there was one big problem: Gould had died in 2007 and his remains had been cremated, according to the Tribune. As we've seen, DNA technology is growing by leaps and bounds every year and while no workable DNA profile could be created at that time, it was a different story just seven years later. One March day in 1983, she turned down a stranger's request for a date and a short time later, her body was pulled from a nearby river (pictured), shocking what was at the time a cozy, tight-knit community, according to the Los Angeles Times. April 20, 2021 Cold Cases | News Releases Cynthia Hernandez, a young and reserved 18-year-old living in Glendora, had her whole life ahead of her when she suddenly went missing from a movie theater parking lot. Moody confessed and led investigators to Brittanee's remains, but his belated cooperation did nothing to keep the entire book from getting thrown at him in court. For a show that has "unsolved" in its title, Unsolved Mysteries has actually solved plenty of cases over the years. In addition to providing closure for the families and friends of the victims, every closed cold case serves another important purpose: Letting those who commit murder know that homicide investigators are the Terminators of law enforcement, and that (to paraphrase Kyle Reese) they will not stop EVER! Technology that would help solve the killing was nearly half a century away from development, Yost said. 26 November 2021 26 Nov 2021. "I am mourning my beautiful daughter Brittanee as I have for the past 13 years. Richard Cottingham and victim Diane Cusick. According to WRDW News, the case is believed to be the first time that both a murder victim and perpetrator were identified using DNA technology in the same case. Raymond Moody was sentenced to life in prison Oct. 19 for the 2009 rape and murder of 17-year-old Brittanee Drexel in Myrtle Beach, S.C. (Georgetown County Sheriff's Office/Associated Press). A match was made, confirming Edward Geddes as the murderer and giving a modicum of closure to the family of Lina Reyes Geddes, who for 20 years had been known to Utah law enforcement only as the "Maidenwater victim," after the area in which she was found. "Give them some closure.". . 8. Stephanie Pagones is a Digital Reporter for FOX Business and Fox News. However, this was a case that ended with good news: he was found two years later in a stroller and returned to his parents, according to CNN. She stated that an attorney had drawn up the paper and she and Clarence signed them, and Clarence took Angela to the attorneys office and got her signature on the papers prior to her leaving for California. BCI's forensic evaluation of the evidence in Nesson's case led to the development of two DNA profiles of her likely assailants: Meyer and Webber. Her body was found on the west side of Reynoldsburg the next day. dec 23, 2021. alleged serial rapist arrested after online dna match to 1997 case. Then he torched their bodies on his property. Investigators have solved a 28-year cold case and a Texas man is in custody. Hall's daughter, happy to finally have closure, had a message for those facing the unsolved murder of a loved one: "Please don't give up. Have a tip or story idea? While the identification of Kane's killer provided a measure of closure to her daughter, Reyes was understandably disappointed that Grim had eluded justice by way of dying. Nadine Madger was a Willoughby, Ohio, woman who was found murdered in January 1980. In 1975, long before DNA evidence would become a factor in criminal justice, 19-year-old Lindy Sue Biechler was brutally stabbed to death inside her home. Armed with this knowledge, Kadner in 2019 sought out the assistance of Bode Technology. At least, it seemed that way for more . A direct sample of Sinopolis DNA was obtained and matched to the sample found at the murder scene. The woman allegedly offered her clothes and sweets, but she refused, at which point she was forced into the vehicle. EUGENE, Ore. -- Retired detectives have solved a Lane County murder mystery that began 44 years ago. She took that crucial test at the dogged insistence of Weaver, who reopened the case last summer. "One of our sisters called her daughter the youngest one and her daughter led us to her mom," Jeff Highsmith,who had never met his older sister, previously told Fox News Digital. REMAINS OF NY TEEN BRITTANEE DREXEL FOUND 13 YEARS AFTER GOING MISSING IN SOUTH CAROLINA, SUSPECT CHARGED, Her mother, Dawn, called the discovery of Brittanees remains "the beginning of a new chapter. The case lay dormant for years until, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the killing in 2021, investigators decided to take a fresh look. In 1979, Sandra Matott disappeared without a trace, leaving behind several children, including her son Darrell Haymes..