11 Cold Cases FINALLY Solved In 2022 | Documentary | Mysterious Hook

1. The Murder of Laura Ann Wizer

Nearly 30 years ago, the body of a young girl was found days after she disappeared. It had been determined that she was raped and beaten, and the suspected killer has finally been identified, but they won’t be brought to justice. You almost can’t think of anything bad happening to us as long as we stay close to our home. But on November 9, 1983, 11-year-old Laura Ann Wizer was found sexually assaulted and strangled to death after disappearing just a few feet away from her home in Fort Pierce, St. Lucie County, Florida. What malicious monster did Laura run into? Did she know her assailant, or was it a stranger?

Laura Ann Wizer was born on May 10, 1972, to her father Jose Luis Navarro Wizer and mother Judy Marie Wizer. Other than Laura, the couple had four more children. Jose worked in the United States Armed Forces, while Judy took care of their family. Laura was growing up in a nice home in St. Lucie County, Florida, and was described as a feisty and outspoken girl by those who knew her. In 1983, at 11, the bright and beautiful Laura was in sixth grade at Chester A. Moore Elementary School when everything changed.

On Sunday, November 6, 1983, around 1:30 PM, Laura was seen for the last time near Midway Road and Okeechobee Road in Fort Pierce. The night before, she had been sleeping over at a friend’s house and was on her way home with a pile of clothes in her hands. She was within sight of her family’s driveway when she was last spotted. Without anyone knowing how, the little girl vanished into thin air. Worry set in for Laura’s family when she did not return home that afternoon as planned. Her parents called the friend Laura had been with, but they were informed that Laura had left hours ago. Panic-stricken, they quickly searched the area but couldn’t find her. They then went to the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office to report her missing.

Sadly, at the time, authorities did not take reports of missing adolescents seriously until they had been missing for a longer period. In their words, adolescents who did not return home on time were often playing with their friends and had simply lost track of time. This miserable strategy from law enforcement obviously forced Laura’s parents to helplessly wait for their daughter to show up at home, which she never did. A BOLO (Be On the Lookout) sheet, however, was put out for Laura after the family insisted that she would never go anywhere on her own. Unfortunately, authorities never implemented a large-scale search in the initial phase of the investigation.

Soon, a piece of information regarding Laura came to light. A deputy from the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office, James Howard Harrison, came forward saying that he saw the girl walking near a gas station close to her home. He had been on patrol in the same area on the day Laura went missing. That was the last time anyone saw Laura alive ever again.

On November 9, 1983, three days after Laura went missing, her family received the news they feared the most. Her 90-pound lifeless body had been found in a drainage ditch of what was then called the Dunn Citrus Grove near Midway Road and Shinn Road, approximately 600 yards from the intersection where she was last seen walking. Her body was taken to the medical examiner’s office for an autopsy. According to the report, she had been murdered on the same day she went missing; she had been sexually assaulted and strangled to death in a disgusting act of sheer brutality.

Laura’s family was devastated at her demise, and they were upset at the half-hearted efforts of the local authorities. They could not wrap their heads around the fact that the police had never even bothered to start a large-scale search for Laura. At the same time, their small neighborhood was shocked at this brutal crime. But it was too late for any explanation, and people wanted nothing more than to find the murderer who chose this little girl as their prey. However, sadly for them, decades would pass before the mystery could be unraveled.

There were not many clues to follow. A brief investigation ensued, and detectives did a couple of interviews but could not gather any evidence to lead to a conviction or even apprehension. Soon the case went cold and remained so for four decades.

Years later, in 2020, the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office established a dedicated Cold Case Squad, and Laura Ann’s cold case was selected for the team to reinvestigate along with a few other cases. Detective Paul Taylor was in charge of the investigation. Although Taylor had no personal relation to the deceased girl, he took a special interest in this case. In a press conference, he later shared that he somehow did relate to the little girl’s story after losing his only son to suicide. He even saw his son and Laura in a dream, which he considered an indication to keep digging through the mystery. Keeping a picture of Laura on his office desk, he promised himself to never give up on this little girl.

As a part of the investigation, Taylor traced his way back in time, speaking to the witnesses as well as the original investigators. His investigation led him to one of their own who had never been on their radar but was a part of the original investigation. The suspect was none other than the former St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office Deputy, James Howard Harrison. Yes, you heard it right: he was the last person to see Laura alive.

As he dug deeper into the evidence, Detective Taylor discovered many holes in the original investigation. Not only had Harrison last seen Laura, but he was also the one who reported the discovery of Laura’s body. However, he was not the one who discovered it. Two men were working at Citrus Grove when they noticed the lifeless body of a little girl and reported it to the patrol officer in the area: Harrison. After Taylor talked to one of them, the man described the incident as deeply traumatizing; however, he could still remember the crime scene in great detail. Taylor was shocked to learn that his description did not match what was in the case file. The man further told him that Harrison asked them to immediately leave after they reported the discovery to him. This seemed strange, but what had been stranger was that no one else wanted to talk to them further after that. Taylor was the first detective who talked to him after Harrison.

Harrison spent 20 minutes with Laura’s corpse before the other officers joined him. For the first time, there seemed to be a suspect in the murder of Laura Ann Wizer, and it was someone they could have never predicted. As the connection was made, Detective Taylor began to put the pieces of the puzzle together. The question had always bothered him as to why Harrison did not give the girl a lift. In any normal situation, even back then, a law enforcement officer who saw a little girl carrying a bundle of clothes would have assumed she was a runaway and would have stopped to at least talk to her or would have driven her home. Detective Taylor and his team theorized that Harrison moved the girl’s body into the drainage ditch where she was found to get rid of potential evidence before backup arrived.

It was time for authorities to look at Deputy Harrison more closely. For the first time, supposedly, he had complaints brought forward from within the Sheriff’s Office, as coworkers felt he had been inappropriate with young women while conducting his duties as a deputy. Aside from his job in law enforcement, he also worked as a preacher in the region. Even in that job, he couldn’t keep his dignity intact. Several accusations had come forward that Harrison had molested young girls at his job at Bethel Baptist Church in the city of Fort Pierce.

Detective Taylor uncovered proof of Harrison tampering with evidence, moving things at the crime scene, and hindering the investigation. Despite this checkered past, he was never charged. He was just kicked out of the church, and he himself resigned from the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office in 1984, just five months after Laura’s homicide. As nobody kept any tabs on him and he was never formally charged, he just picked up his family and left like nothing had ever happened. Over the years, he moved around a lot and worked with 10 different law enforcement agencies in his entire career. Every time he started over, he took advantage of his position and maintained access to potential victims.

Sheriff Ken J. Mascara, who used to work with Harrison, said that he voiced concerns about Harrison’s inappropriate interactions with young people. These complaints did not go anywhere at the time he made them around 1979 or 1980. With all this new information, Detective Taylor went forward to gather more conclusive evidence. In 2021, analysts at a private DNA lab were able to recover the DNA from the sexual assault of the victim, which suggested that the suspect was male, but it was degraded too much by the time they were able to compare the DNA samples. Due to the extreme degradation, forensic analysts could not get a 100% match.

Although no conclusive DNA evidence could be found, detectives decided that there was enough probable cause and circumstantial evidence to consider Harrison responsible for Laura’s murder. “We have established probable cause to determine that Harrison abducted, sexually assaulted, and murdered the juvenile victim,” said Chief Deputy Brian Hester in a press conference in February 2022. Unfortunately, Harrison would once again elude justice by dying from cancer in 2008.

The Wizer family was in disbelief at how the layers of this cold case had unfolded. “It naturally was like a disbelief, a dream,” Laura’s older brother Joe Wizer stated. “After all this time, you’re telling me you’re able to tell us who murdered our little sister?” Sadly, Laura’s parents would never see this day. Her mother passed away in 2007, and her father soon followed in 2009. Regardless of the outcome, Laura’s remaining family was grateful to Detective Taylor for cracking this case, especially since nobody expected it. Several police departments around the state are now checking their own cold cases because they believe there were other victims. Ironically, where one police officer put all his efforts into helping people, the other abused his power to commit a crime. But at least in the end, the truth won.

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2. The Murder of Roxanne Lee Wood

Within half an hour of saying goodbye to his wife, Terry Wood’s life changed forever when he discovered her body lying in a pool of her own blood in their kitchen. 31-year-old Roxanne Lee Wood and her husband Terry lived together for two and a half years on Tam O’Shanter Lane in Niles, Michigan. They did not have any children but were making plans to start a family together. Roxanne worked in the customer service department at Automatic Molded Plastics in South Bend, Indiana. She was affectionately known as “Rock” to those closest to her. She adored tending to her rose bushes. Family and friends described her as outgoing and said she loved to laugh.

On the night of February 19, 1987, Roxanne and Terry went out to the White’s Bowling Lanes on 11th Street in Niles. She left the place at around 12:30 AM, driving home alone. She and Terry had taken separate cars, and he left a little later at 1:00 AM. When Terry eventually arrived at their home, he discovered Roxanne covered in blood, her throat slit. There were no signs of forced entry, save for the rear door that was left slightly ajar. Roxanne was dressed in her nightwear, an empty knife sheath laying next to her body.

When police arrived and investigations began, it was deduced that Roxanne had been sexually assaulted and stabbed to death. A post-mortem revealed her throat had been slit after her death. Divers searched the nearby Brandywine Creek following Roxanne’s murder looking for the weapon, but nothing was found. The murder weapon was never recovered, but police believe that a filet knife from the couple’s own kitchen was used to kill Roxanne. Local newspaper The South Bend Tribune reported that Roxanne had been struck on the head with a frying pan found nearby; she was hit with such force that the handle had broken off the pan.

Police first had to interview the spouse, Terry. In incidents such as this, the spouse is always considered a person of interest. DNA evidence collected from the scene included two vials of dried blood. In April of the same year, Terry Wood put up a reward of $15,000 to anyone who could provide information in identifying the killer. Unfortunately, this did not garner any fruitful leads, and the case grew colder as the years passed. Terry remained the state’s prime suspect despite his claim of innocence. These suspicions were fueled by the hiring of an attorney who advised Terry to exercise his right to remain silent in regard to Roxanne’s case. Terry Wood lived under a cloud of suspicion as there were no other leads in the case for nearly 14 years.

In 2001, DNA taken from the scene was tested against samples given by Terry. The DNA found at the scene was not a match, and this left investigators with more questions than answers. Terry being cleared was both a relief and a new set of problems. Now, it meant starting the investigation process from scratch. They began by interviewing over 200 people, but they were no closer to finding the killer in 2001 than they were in 1987. The DNA sample was entered into CODIS, but still, no match was found.

The case remained cold until criminal justice students from Western Michigan University, under the guidance of Dr. Ashlyn Kuersten, Identifinders, and the Michigan State Police teamed up to find the killer. Students Ashleigh Shebick and Carl Huber put in over 1,200 hours of their time scanning and digitizing multiple boxes of evidence. The Cold Case Program was spearheaded by Dr. Kuersten, and Roxanne’s case was the first to be investigated by her team of students. The documents were made easily accessible and allowed detectives to browse through files and develop profiles using specific names, dates, and keywords. Using character recognition software, data was compiled to create profiles of potential persons of interest based on personal traits and characteristics.

Armed with a character profile, detectives now needed a DNA profile. Identifinders tested the two dried blood samples to narrow down a genetic profile of the possible killer. They decided to try using genetic genealogy—a more modern and advanced method of testing DNA using genetic profiles from relatives of possible suspects. It was Gabriella Vargas, an investigative genetic genealogist who had been working as a consultant with Identifinders International, who ended up cracking the case.

“Literally, a case that took them 34 years to investigate took me four days to solve,” she said proudly. It was a landmark discovery for DNA testing, as the decades-old sample was considered very low-level and highly degraded—a nod toward the major strides made in technology in helping identify a killer that would have gotten away with a crime. Prior to Vargas handling the testing, two other genealogy agencies gave up on the case, calling it unsolvable.

She started the process of DNA matching using family trees. Once she found the right family, it was the process of eliminating possible suspects. They found three possible matches; all three were brothers, and one of them was the man they were looking for: Patrick Wayne Gillum. Of the three brothers, Patrick was the only one who had a criminal history and lived near Roxanne at the time she was murdered. Detectives knew that Gillum was a smoker and, after some undercover work, were able to recover a cigarette butt and test for a DNA match. The match was positive, and police prepared to make the arrest.

Mere days before the 35th anniversary of Roxanne’s death, police arrested Gillum, now 67 years old, on February 17, 2022, at his South Bend home in Indiana. Initially, details of his identity were not released to the public as investigators waited for him to be arraigned on the charges. Authorities did reveal, however, that the killer had no connection to Roxanne. At a press conference held on February 18, 2022, Berrien County Prosecutor Steve Pierangeli announced the identity of Roxanne Lee Wood’s killer as Patrick Wayne Gillum.

Gillum was previously charged and arrested in Gary, Indiana, for breaking into a home and attacking Maureen Farag. She ultimately survived the attack, and Gillum was sentenced to 14 years in prison. He only served seven years—half his original sentence—before brutally killing Roxanne just six months after his release. He lived just four miles away from Roxanne when the murder was committed. Maureen’s husband, Robert Farag, supported the Woods family at Gillum’s sentencing in April 2022. “I just hope he doesn’t see the light of day. He doesn’t deserve it,” said Farag.

For Roxanne’s family, they were relieved to finally get some answers to the questions that had plagued them for 35 years. They characterized him as a predator whose actions have haunted their family for decades. Brad Wood, Roxanne’s brother, never gave up on finding justice for his sister. During Gillum’s sentencing, Roxanne’s family were given a chance to speak. Wood said his voice would be heard if Gillum was ever released early for murdering Roxanne. “He is a monster and should never be allowed to walk the streets where my wife, my daughters, and my granddaughters walk free,” he said.

Roxanne’s younger sister, Janet Wood, said that Gillum’s actions gave her entire family a life sentence while he got to live life as a free man for far too long. “By the grace of God, and the right detectives and modern technology, he was found, 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,” she said.

Gillum was allowed to address the family after they had their say in court. He expressed remorse for his actions and the devastation he caused for both the family of the victim and his own. “I’m very sorry. I can’t believe I did what I did. I pray for them every night. I am so sorry. I just hope sometime in the future, with God’s help, that they can forgive me… And to my family that I’m sorry I disgraced, I’m so sorry,” said Gillum.

In an interview with WSBT-TV, Janet voiced her anger at what had happened to Roxanne. “I lost a best friend, a lifelong best friend,” she stated. During his sentencing, Gillum pleaded no contest to the charge of second-degree murder and was given a minimum sentence of 23 years. He will likely spend the rest of his life in prison as he will be 90 before he serves his minimum sentence.

3. The Murder of Archie Rutherford

On May 25, 1982, just before 5 PM, 58-year-old Archie Rutherford was found by his wife, beaten and stabbed to death in his home in Spokane. The news of the murder threw his city into chaos, and fear gripped the hearts of many.

Archie Rutherford was born in 1924 in Montana but spent most of his life in Spokane. It was in Spokane that he met his wife, Eleanor, in 1948. Archie and Eleanor became parents for the first time when they welcomed their son Stanley into the world. At the time, their joy knew no bounds. Archie had a passion for art, especially stage plays. This burning desire for theatrical performance drove him to join the Spokane Civic Theatre, a non-profit theater that was established in 1947. His artistic brilliance paved the way for him in the establishment, and he quickly rose to the rank of a theater director. This position offered him the opportunity to direct several plays.

In addition to being active with the Spokane Civic Theatre, Archie also worked as a night clerk at the Tradewinds Motor Hotel in Spokane. From time to time, he also monitored a drive-in restaurant jointly owned by him and other family members. Archie’s wife, Eleanor, was six years older than him. Like her husband, she was active in Spokane’s art scene. She helped organize music and art festivals. Besides this, she was involved in several philanthropic works, and this made her quite popular in the city. In particular, she worked as a writer for a popular newspaper in the city, The Spokesman-Review. Eleanor loved her job, and everyone she worked with had only good things to say about her. Archie was supportive of his wife, and together they lived a very peaceful and contented life in the city.

By the early 1980s, Archie was in his late 50s, and Eleanor was a few years shy of clocking 65. It seemed to the couple that life would continue at such a pleasant pace for a long time, but they were wrong. Neither of them had any idea that a horrible, life-changing incident would soon occur.

On May 22, 1982, Eleanor took a trip to Seattle. She had been planning it for a while, and when the day arrived, Eleanor said goodbye to Archie. She had no idea this was the last time she would see him alive. On her second day in Seattle, she started to worry; Archie had not tried reaching out to her to ask how she was. By May 25, she was done with her business in Seattle, and that afternoon she had her flight back to Spokane. She had different thoughts while on the plane; most of them were centered on Archie. She wondered why she had not heard from him for days. It was quite unusual, and she was deeply troubled by it. These thoughts troubled her till she landed in Spokane.

Upon disembarking, she expected to see Archie waiting for her. They had planned that he would pick her up at the airport, but when she looked around, she realized he was nowhere to be found. At that point, she began to panic. She thought that perhaps he had encountered something that had delayed him, so she decided to wait a while. The more she waited, the more anxious she became. When she could no longer bear the uncertainty, she made arrangements with a close friend to pick her up and take her home.

As the car that took her home pulled up to her house, she noticed that her green 1979 Honda was not in the driveway where it was usually parked. The absence of the car meant that her husband was not at home, which puzzled her. She got out of her friend’s car and headed towards the house. Something else caught her attention: on the front porch were piles of newspapers that someone had dumped there. In addition to this, a towel had also been carelessly thrown beside the newspapers. All of these things seemed odd to Eleanor; she could not make sense of what she was seeing. Much to her surprise, when she tried the door, she discovered it was unlocked. Did this mean that Archie was at home, or had he forgotten to lock the door before leaving the house?

At that point, she did not know what to think. As she stepped into the silent house, she knew something was terribly wrong. The mess that had been outside the front door was nothing compared to what waited for her inside the house. The house was nothing short of chaotic, and things were all over the place. Steak knives from the kitchen drawer were scattered on the dining room table, and a color television that was always in plain sight was missing. She took all of this disorder in at a glance and slowly made her way to the bedroom.

As she opened the bedroom door, nothing prepared her for what she saw. Archie was lying motionless and naked on the bed. A television set was lying on the bed near his head, and its cord was wrapped around his neck. Archie’s head and neck were bloodied, and blood covered the bed on which he lay. The wall of the room was also splattered with it. In addition to this, pieces of broken glass were visible near his head. There was no visible sign that he was breathing, and Eleanor hoped that somehow he would still be alive. But a part of her knew that there was no way he could have survived whatever had been done to him. She managed to calm herself enough to call the police and tell them what had happened.

In a matter of minutes, the wailing of sirens filled the air as detectives from the Spokane Police Department made their way to Eleanor and Archie’s house. When they arrived at the scene, a distressed-looking Eleanor opened the door and led them to where her husband was. Even the detectives were shocked by the brutality of the scene; they were unable to immediately determine that Archie was dead. Without wasting much time, the detectives set to work. They began to collect evidence that would be of help to their investigation.

While examining Archie’s body, one of the detectives noticed cuts behind his left fingers and forearm. These injuries were believed to have been inflicted when he tried to protect himself from whoever killed him. More pieces of broken glass were under his back when his body was moved, but that was not all. A piece of cast iron was also found under his body, and another was on the bedroom floor. The frying pan from which these iron pieces had broken off was later discovered sitting on a stove in the kitchen. When the pan was examined, strands of hair and blood were found on it. Detectives believed Archie’s killer had used it as a weapon, so they collected it as evidence. When the detectives checked the kitchen, they noticed a bloody knife in plain sight. There were also bottles of whiskey thrown across the floor of the kitchen. In the bathroom, they found cigarette butts and ash discarded inside the toilet. Soon after, detectives completed a thorough sweep of the house, and Archie’s body was moved to the hospital for an autopsy.

From their findings, detectives had cause to believe that robbery was likely the motive for the murder. They believed this because Eleanor revealed that several items were also missing from the house in addition to her car. The missing items included some of her jewelry, house keys, and Archie’s wallet in which he kept several of his credit cards. Detectives knew they needed to find Eleanor’s car as soon as possible. They knew finding the vehicle was vital since it would likely lead them closer to the truth. Information about the car was soon released to the public.

Archie’s autopsy results came in the following day. They revealed that he had been stabbed multiple times in the head and neck. An object had also been used to violently hit him on the head, resulting in a fractured skull and internal bleeding. Detectives believed that the frying pan found in the kitchen was used to cause this damage. Rutherford was likely knocked unconscious by a blow to the head before he was repeatedly stabbed on the left side of the head and neck, Spokane County Coroner Lois Shanks told the media. At the time of the murder, the possibility of Archie being asleep when he was attacked was not ruled out.

Friends of Archie and Eleanor were deeply saddened when they heard the tragic news. They visited Eleanor to mourn with her and also to comfort her. It was a difficult time for Eleanor, and she needed all the emotional support she could get. Simultaneously, the detectives were hard at work trying to solve the case. To help the detectives in their investigation, several people who had seen Archie hours before his death came forward to say what they knew. A friend of Archie, whose name was not disclosed, told detectives that he and Archie had had breakfast together on May 24th at a restaurant known as The Shack. The friend also revealed that he later saw Archie at work on the night of the same day. A police officer also reported that he had seen Archie that same night driving the missing Honda.

As for the stolen car, it did not take long for it to surface. It was found the next day at a car dealership, which was about four miles from where the murder had occurred. Detectives immediately examined the vehicle and found a fingerprint that did not belong to Eleanor or Archie. This discovery excited the detectives, who felt closer to solving the crime. The fingerprint was immediately submitted for analysis, but after several days of cross-checking it against the database, no match was found. This was something detectives had not expected, and they were left disappointed. They had the fingerprint of an unknown person who was most likely the killer, and they could not identify him. It was a frustrating time for them.

After this, the pace of the investigation began to slow down, and it seemed as if Archie’s killer had vanished into thin air. Days soon turned into weeks, and detectives made little to no progress with the investigation. However, when they least expected it, an incident occurred that allowed the investigation to pick up pace once again. Some of Archie’s credit cards that had been reported missing suddenly turned up a few weeks after the murder in Kalispell, a city located northwest of Montana, about a four-hour drive from Spokane. According to the police, one evening, two men had strolled casually into a radio station in Kalispell. They looked respectable, and no one seeing them would have thought that they were up to no good. The two men quickly made friends with workers at the radio station and were allowed to stay the night.

This turned out to be a terrible decision because the two men had vanished the following day. Employees of the radio station did not give much thought to this until they discovered that some vital items in the radio station had also vanished along with the two men. It was then that they realized that the two men had been thieves. The incident was reported to the police, who took time to carry out an investigation. During the investigation, it was discovered that the two thieves had used Archie’s credit card the night they arrived at the radio station. It was a significant discovery, and police knew that apprehending one or both thieves would lead them closer to solving Archie’s murder case. However, they could not do much because they did not have the name of either of the two thieves. None of the employees at the radio station knew their names.

Detectives did not have to wait too long for the name of one of the thieves to become known. This happened due to a random phone call Eleanor received from a stranger a few weeks later. During that phone call, the stranger identified himself as Bob Neville, and much to Eleanor’s surprise, he had told her he had one of Archie’s credit cards. Bob was soon found and interviewed by the police. During the interview, he revealed that a man called Jerry Provost had given the credit card to him. According to Bob, he had met Jerry in Spokane and they had struck a deal. The deal was that he would drive Jerry to the state of Idaho in exchange for some cash. However, for some reason, they had gone to Montana instead. They had also picked up a local disc jockey along the way. Bob told police that he dropped Jerry off at Polson, Montana, and that was the last he saw of him.

With this information out in the open, detectives knew exactly who they were looking for. A manhunt for Jerry began. Unexpectedly, Jerry turned himself in to the police. When he was interviewed and asked about the credit cards, he confessed that he had gotten them from two Black men. Nothing ever came out of this confession because the identity of the two men remained a mystery. Soon after this series of incidents, the investigation died down due to a lack of leads, and the case went cold. It would remain like this for many years.

On August 18, 1996, Eleanor sadly passed away at the age of 78 without ever finding out who murdered her husband. Years passed, and most of Spokane’s inhabitants soon forgot about Archie’s murder, but the detectives of the city’s Police Department never forgot. From time to time, the case was revisited, but no progress was made. Then, in October 2020, the case took a positive turn. A match was found for the fingerprint that had been lifted from Eleanor’s Honda all those years ago. Detectives could not believe their eyes. The fingerprints belonged to a man by the name of Tracy Pruitt.

The discovery was remarkable, but detectives knew they needed something more solid to be sure if Tracy was indeed the man they had been looking for. Due to this, they decided to take another look at the evidence that had been taken from the scene of the murder. The evidence they had were swabs of blood drops that had been obtained from the kitchen of the house where the murder took place. There were also swabs that had been taken from Archie’s body. All of these were submitted for forensic analysis. Soon enough, the results were out: there was a match from the DNA from the blood drops, and it was none other than Tracy. It was the final piece of the puzzle, and detectives knew they finally had their man.

Tracy was not a stranger to the police. He had been involved in several criminal activities in the past and had even spent several years in prison for one of his crimes. In the same year that Archie was murdered, two women had accused Tracy of sexually assaulting them. He was arrested in Ohio for charges relating to the crime and received about 50 years of jail time after pleading guilty to rape and aggravated assault. However, he spent only 27 years in prison and was then released. After he gained his freedom, he settled in California where he lived an everyday life, but authorities kept a close watch on him due to his criminal past.

On October 27, 2022, Tracy woke up not knowing he would be back behind bars before the end of the day. He was arrested in Los Angeles by Spokane police detectives, who also received help from the Los Angeles Police Department. After this, he was charged with first-degree murder and second-degree robbery. In addition to this, his bond was set at a million dollars. At the moment, Tracy remains in custody in a jail in California, but he will soon be moved to Spokane to answer for his crimes.

4. The Murder of Natalie Shubin

It was a murder that shocked and shattered the innocence of Bedford, Massachusetts. When Raymond Shubin returned home from work on June 10, 1971, his perfectly ordered life was torn apart. In the basement, he discovered the beaten and bloodied body of his wife, Natalie. Raymond immediately called police and investigations began in earnest.

Natalie Shubin, a 54-year-old mother of two grown children, was found bludgeoned and stabbed to death. Her ankles were bound, a gag hanging around her neck, and her body lay face down in the basement of her Pine Hill Road home. Police initially looked at her husband, Raymond, who was the president of Lexington Trust Bank. He was cleared as a suspect after providing a solid alibi. An autopsy revealed she had been stabbed fatally and beaten over the head with an unknown blunt object. At the crime scene, police recovered blood from a bathroom sink and lifted a partial fingerprint.

Apart from Natalie’s 1969 Chevy Impala, nothing of importance had been stolen. Only a paring knife and a pry bar, which was likely used to beat Natalie, were missing from the home. The master bathroom was disturbed by the killer. The closet and several purses were rifled through, possibly in search of items of value. The car was later discovered in the parking lot of the Bedford Veterans Administration Hospital. However, the interior had been wiped clean, leaving no evidence apart from a partial fingerprint.

The violent death of the well-known and respected Natalie Shubin sent shockwaves through the small community. One resident, Maureen Sullivan, remembered being a carefree 14-year-old at the time; the places they used to play all year round were suddenly off-limits. The investigation was long and drawn out, with police searching the woods behind the home. Hundreds of surveys were distributed among the community, with people being asked if they had seen anything unusual that afternoon. Recently released prisoners from the local jail and patients and staff from the local VA Hospital were checked and cleared. This included four patients who escaped the hospital. All leads were exhausted by the end of the investigation as none of them panned out. For years, the case went cold as police were unable to identify a suspect.

Technological advancements would take years before finally delivering investigators a name. Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS), a technology used by the FBI, was used by State Police to run the fingerprint lifted from the crime scene. In 1999, the police finally had a name: Arthur Louis Masai. He was someone the police wanted to look into regarding the case.

Masai, though, proved a cunning foe. When investigators initially interviewed him, he denied knowing Natalie or anything about her murder. Eventually, he told investigators he’d been asked by an organized crime associate to murder the wife of a banker and make it look like a break-in. Masai claimed he turned down the offer. Police could not find any evidence to corroborate Masai’s claims. Furthermore, they found no link between Masai and Raymond Shubin involving a plot to have Natalie murdered.

During a 2005 follow-up interview with police, Masai shifted the blame onto one of his cousins. He alleged that he’d learned his cousin had carried out the murder. Speaking to police, Masai provided a detailed outline of how the murder had happened. Far from clearing his name, this revelation drew more police scrutiny of Masai’s story. Yet, it was not enough to secure an arrest. The case again went cold and would stay cold for the next 20 years. Meanwhile, Raymond Shubin passed away, aged 92, in 2012, never knowing the truth behind his wife’s murder. It was looking as though their children, Kenneth and Carol, too may also go to their graves without answers.

That’s when Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan and the Cold Case Unit refocused their efforts in the Shubin case. Approaching the case from a new angle provided some much-needed clarification. Digging into Masai’s past proved to be the pivotal point in turning the case in their favor. Investigators identified a woman—who has not been named—that admitted to being involved with Masai in schemes to defraud banks during the 1990s. She also revealed his weapon of choice: Masai habitually carried a knife and even bragged about killing someone with one. Further digging into his past revealed a lengthy criminal history. Masai had prior convictions for armed robbery, financial crimes, and assault and battery.

For the prosecution team, this was enough to take to a grand jury. It was the link and corroboration they needed to back up the facts they already had. During the arraignment, Prosecutor David Solet argued that Masai showed a disdain and general disregard for the law and the justice system. They addressed Masai’s long criminal history. These include prison sentences, assaults on correctional officers, and two prison escapes. As recently as 2016, Masai violated a court order for harassment and abuse. Solet told the court that Masai would not abide by the court’s orders and should therefore be held without bail.

After half a century, a grand jury finally indicted Masai on a first-degree murder charge. He was 76 years old and living in Salem, Massachusetts, at the time of his arrest on March 22, 2022. Masai’s estranged daughter, Candice Morin, spoke out about her father’s arrest. She had been born just weeks before the murder. According to Morin, she had not spoken to Masai since 1991. “If it’s true, it’s absolutely disgusting,” she said. She felt absolutely sorry for the family of Natalie and said it was shocking to hear that her father had committed such a brutal crime just two weeks before she was born. Natalie’s children, who are now in their 70s, watched the arraignment remotely. He pleaded not guilty and is being held without bail. Bedford Police Chief Ken Fong hopes that the arrest provided some closure and a sense of justice for Natalie’s family. “I’m hopeful that the arrest in this case today will provide some closure and sense of justice for Natalie Shubin’s family.”

5. The Murder of Robin Brooks

In 1980, 20-year-old Robin Brooks lived in an apartment on Tallyho Drive in the beautiful city of Sacramento. Sacramento is a city with a rich history. It has so many nicknames, including “The City of Trees.” Following the discovery of gold in the area back in the 19th century, gold seekers came in large numbers to mine the precious metal. At present, Sacramento is famous for its extensive and vibrant agriculture.

Robin was born in Fort Lee, Virginia, but lived most of her life in Highland, New York. She was carefree, fun-loving, and well-loved by her family. “She didn’t have fear, not like I had,” Maria Eric, Robin’s elder sister, had said. “I was more anxious, a little more careful.” When Robin was around the age of 19, she decided to move to Sacramento with Maria. She had always longed to experience something new, and moving to Sacramento seemed perfect.

In the new city, the two sisters settled in quite nicely. At the time, Maria was romantically involved with a man named Norbert Holston. Norbert was known for his anger issues, and this ugly side of him put a strain on his relationship with Maria. It also affected his relationship with Robin, which contributed to why the two sisters chose to live separately. However, Maria wasn’t comfortable with her sister living alone; she worried for her safety. But when she made her concerns known to Robin, it only led to an argument. “I was the older sister and I always felt like I was her protector. When she came out here, she was just having fun. She was 20,” Maria said.

Robin worked at a donut shop off Kiefer Boulevard, a few blocks from where she lived. Since she had no car, it became routine for her to walk all the way to work and back to her apartment at the end of her shift. Life in Sacramento seemed good, and Robin was enjoying every moment of it. But it wouldn’t be for long.

On April 24, 1980, she worked late until around midnight. There was nothing unusual about this, since her shift ended around that time. Robin couldn’t wait to leave work and go home. Joan Olsen, a coworker at the donut shop, had later said: “She was joking about having to go home and make her bed before she could crawl into it. She had stripped the bed and done the laundry before she came to work, and she was joking about how it wasn’t fair to have to make a bed at bedtime.”

As soon as Robin left for work, she made her way to her apartment. That would be the last time she was seen alive by anyone. Robin had a swim date planned with a couple of friends the next day. However, she did not show up for it. Her absence did not go unnoticed. Her shift at the donut shop was slated to begin at 4 PM, but Robin did not turn up for work. This was quite strange, and her absence worried her coworkers. When she didn’t show up, some of them walked over to her apartment to find out what was wrong.

On getting there, they discovered that Robin’s door was locked. They banged on the door several times and called her name but got no response. Several worrying thoughts began to race through their minds: had she left town without informing anybody? Was she asleep inside the house? They knew they had to find their way into the apartment to really know if she was inside or not. With the help of the house manager, they soon forced the front door open and stepped into a very silent house. Fearing the worst, they proceeded to the bedroom, and what they saw was too much to take in.

Robin Brooks’ lifeless body was right in the middle of a punctured waterbed. She had been bound and stabbed to death. It was an unsettling sight. Robin’s coworkers wasted no time in letting the police know what had happened, and in a matter of minutes, detectives from the Sacramento Sheriff’s Department arrived on the scene. An autopsy revealed that Robin had been sexually assaulted before she was stabbed five times. One of the knife blows had pierced her heart. Her killer’s DNA was also found on her body. In addition to this, blood was found smeared on the wall of her apartment that was not Robin’s. This made authorities infer that the killer had accidentally cut himself while assaulting Robin. Fingerprints belonging to an unidentified individual, believed to be the killer, were also found on the windowsill of Robin’s apartment. This made detectives infer that whoever killed Robin had gotten in through the window.

At the time, it seemed this evidence would be enough to quickly bring the killer to justice, but that was not the case. Authorities were handicapped by one major challenge: the technology available was not efficient enough to aid them in their investigative work. Due to this, several months and years went by without any progress being made in the case. Robin’s killer continued to remain at large. Maria was hit hard by her sister’s death. For a long time, she blamed herself for not being there for Robin. She was constantly depressed, and over time she found solace in alcohol. This habit made her spiral downward, and a long battle with alcohol addiction began.

In 2004, almost 24 years after Robin’s brutal murder, a big break was made in the case. With advanced forensic technology, investigators were able to create a DNA profile of the killer from his blood. This new development gave investigators something more tangible to work with, and they hoped the killer would be caught in time. Several individuals believed to be the suspect’s possible relatives were tested, but this yielded no result. Investigators were left even more frustrated than before. Detective Micki Links, who had come out of retirement to dedicate her time to the case, had said in an interview, “It’s very frustrating because we have our suspect, we have his DNA, and it’s a full profile. We know who he is, we just need his name. We need to find who he is.”

In 2017, the case took an interesting turn. Investigators were able to get an idea of what the killer possibly looked like. This was made possible by a forensic method called DNA phenotyping. The method involves predicting the physical appearance of an unknown individual by using DNA extracted from semen, blood, or other bodily fluid. Physical features such as hair color, height, skin color, and a whole lot more can be determined using this process. In Robin’s killer’s case, authorities were able to create two composite sketches. One was of what he would look like at age 25, and the other was of what he would look like at age 56. These two profiles were released to the public with the hope that someone would recognize the killer and come forward with vital information.

But authorities were disappointed; nothing came out of it. The only information authorities got was from an unnamed individual. This information was a different account of what they had initially believed happened on the day of Robin’s murder. According to the informant, Robin had not gone home after leaving work. “We believe she was at a party that same evening with Hiram Johnson High School students,” Sergeant Paul Belli, who worked on this case, said. This party had taken place at Roseport Way, and after the party, Robin had left for home.

While all these revelations were coming to light and the investigation was ongoing, Maria had also gotten her life together. She overcame her alcohol addiction and decided that it was best she lived a life that honored her sister’s memory. In 2020, investigators used a DNA search technique called genetic genealogy that helped them get closer to the truth. Genetic genealogy can be used to explore family trees by cross-referencing the DNA profile of an unknown person with that of other people in a public database. This method is very efficient and has been used to bring many elusive criminals to justice.

With this method, investigators were able to connect the dots and find Robin’s killer. A lab criminalist called Links’ office line to inform her about the significant discovery, but Links couldn’t be reached. When Links finally called back, the words she was told were: “You found your guy.” “I literally hung up the phone and I jumped up and down and I was clapping my hands and I ran around the office to tell everybody,” Links said. She informed Maria, who was also overjoyed by the news. “I was always so afraid he wouldn’t be alive. What’s a miracle is that DNA. It gives a lot of hope for other people. I never gave up,” Maria said.

The individual investigators discovered to be Robin’s killer was a man by the name of Philip Lee Wilson. He had continued living in Sacramento since the murder. He had been right under the nose of the authorities all the while, but they had no idea. On April 23, 2020, Wilson was arrested at the age of 71 in connection with the 40-year-old murder. He was held without bail and charged with one count of murder. Wilson maintained his innocence and the case went to trial. The trial took place nearly two years after his arrest.

Prosecutors presented evidence that Wilson’s DNA was a perfect match to the blood smeared on Robin’s apartment wall back in 1980. The fingerprints found on the apartment’s windowsill also matched his. According to prosecutors, Wilson snuck into her apartment through a window while she was sleeping. He bound her, sexually assaulted her, and killed her with a knife. Wilson’s attorney, Thomas Clinkenbeard, did not dispute that the DNA was Wilson’s. However, he argued that Wilson and Robin had known each other and they had had consensual intercourse on the day of the murder. Clinkenbeard also gave a reason as to why Wilson’s blood had been found in Robin’s apartment: the reason he gave was that Wilson had suffered a workplace injury.

In addition to all this, Clinkenbeard then blamed Robin’s murder on Maria’s ex-boyfriend, Norbert. He described Norbert as a volatile and hot-tempered man who Maria had been afraid of. He made it known to the court that in the days leading to Robin’s murder, both Norbert and Maria had gotten into an argument and the situation had escalated with Norbert threatening to kill both Maria and Robin. Clinkenbeard believed that Norbert had lived up to his threat by killing Robin. Well, Maria’s testimony rendered this claim invalid; she told the court that Norbert had been with her the night of the murder. Norbert himself was not available to give testimony in court because he had died many years ago.

After the trial, which lasted 10 days, the case was reviewed by the jury. On March 9, 2022—which was Wilson’s 73rd birthday—they reached a verdict that he was guilty of the murder charge. This decision was made after the jury had initially failed to reach an agreement. More than a month after Wilson was convicted, he was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. Maria was relieved and elated by the news; it was much-needed closure after many years. “I feel like I can go on with my life now. I think the case absorbed a piece of who I was,” Maria said. Links was also one of the people happy with the outcome of the case. “There is justice in the world and he will spend all his birthdays now in prison,” Links had said. “I wish we found him earlier, but finally justice has been done,” she added.

6. The Murder of Linda Tascheri

A 19-year-old girl, Linda, didn’t show up for breakfast and then lunch one day. When they sent her brother Howard to check up on her, he saw something that would scar him for life. Linda Tascheri was a bartending student living alone in the family cottage, a little behind the larger home where the rest of her family resided. Even though she lived alone at the guest house, she was always in contact with everyone. Well, she only lived about five minutes away. As Howard, her brother, described her, she was the one who the family members talked to if they had problems; she liked to keep the family together.

It was the 8th of February, 1978. It was past noon, her lunch was cold, and when Linda’s brother went over to the cottage to fetch her, the doors were invitingly open. When he entered the cottage, he was greeted by a scene so horrifying that it would scar him forever, or at least for 44 years. The house was warm and no one dared open a window. Buffalo was in the grips of a blizzard and there was no one outside. The streets were empty and everything was covered in a blanket of snow.

It was 8:00 in the morning on the 8th of February, 1978. Linda’s family—her mom and her brother—saw someone walking away from the cottage behind their home and getting into a green Chevrolet Nova parked across the street from their house. He was a man who was about 5 feet 10 inches tall, had a medium build, wearing a ski cap and a navy blue coat. Howard Tascheri, Linda’s brother, assumed the person was Linda’s boyfriend. Who else could it be? He must have stayed the night and just had to get home early. The day went rather normally, but it seemed like Linda had overslept; she wasn’t there for breakfast.

It was lunchtime when Linda’s mother sent Howard, who was 18 at the time, to wake her up. Linda would normally come to the main house to check her mail, but she hadn’t that day, which concerned her mother. She sent Howard to check up on her, and when he went to the cottage, he found the side door was unlocked. He pushed the door as it creaked open; the sound of the radio was the first thing he noticed as he stepped inside. As he made his way towards the hallway, he spotted bloodstains on the floor. He knew something was dreadfully wrong.

As he went deeper into the room, he was horrified to find his sister in her pajamas lying lifeless, staring at him in a pool of blood on the living room floor next to the doorway to her bedroom. Howard, trembling as he stuttered her name, knelt beside her as her ice-cold body stared at him. He was frozen for a moment with a million thoughts running through his mind. How could he break this news to his mother? But he had to. He went back and explained what he saw. They called the police. They knew it was the stranger, but he had been too far away for them to identify the man.

In the hours after Linda was found fatally stabbed, the Buffalo Police detectives began their investigation and gathered evidence from the crime scene. At the time, the area was covered in snow. The police officers who arrived at the crime scene found a trail of blood leading away from the cottage. This led investigators to believe that the killer had injured himself somehow. With limited resources, they had very little to work with. The Buffalo Police Department notified local hospitals and medical stores in the hopes that the killer would seek medical attention to tend to his wounds.

The entire cottage was filled with DNA evidence, with the killer’s blood splattered in several rooms and on several items, including a Grand Funk Railroad vinyl record cover. Linda had been stabbed 13 times and had wounds on her face, neck, and back. Linda had bruises on her face, abdomen, and arm, which were sustained at the time of the murder. The autopsy revealed that Linda died of blood loss. The police worked through the usual suspects—speaking to Linda’s boyfriend, her stepfather, and the handyman—but nothing came up and soon they were out of clues and no arrests were made.

The motive of the murder was ruled to likely be a robbery gone wrong. The killer had seen the cottage away from the main home; this attracted him, but when he entered the cottage, he saw a 19-year-old sleeping there. Wanting to steal things, he moved around the cottage looking for precious items to take, but it all failed when Linda woke up. In the commotion, he had no other option but to kill the witness.

But the question remained: who was the mystery man who was leaving the cottage that morning? Who was the man in that navy blue coat who got into a green Chevrolet Nova? With no other leads, the case went cold. All of the evidence collected in the case, including the DNA evidence, was eventually packaged in 39 envelopes and bags, stacked into boxes, and put away in storage about two months after the crime. Even though the killer had fled the crime scene, he had left his DNA. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, modern DNA analysis did not exist. It was determined that the blood found at the crime scene was a different blood type from that of Linda.

The Cold Case Squad began looking into the case again in 2006, and the detectives sent about 40 pieces of evidence to the Erie County Central Police Services Forensic Laboratory for analysis. The Tascheris knew the DNA evidence was the key to the killer, but the technology wasn’t advanced enough to decipher it back then. But when the technology was upgraded in April 2016, the family members contacted a homicide detective who was on the Cold Case Squad, seeking help.

The detective tracked down 14 other men whose names were in the original case file, as well as others who might have known Linda around the time she was killed. These were Linda’s stepfather, a couple of men who lived in the neighborhood at the time, and an old boyfriend. There was also a man who helped Linda’s sister move. All of them willingly submitted their DNA profile and they were all ruled out as the killer by the detectives.

The team began developing DNA profiles with the blood collected from the crime scene, but the DNA wasn’t complete, and so they could only create a partial DNA profile. There were parts of genetic information missing, making it complicated. A partial DNA profile is a profile made from a sample which is considered to be partial and does not have enough genetic materials available to sample. The sample could have degraded over time and the information might not be as accurate as they want it to be. That was exactly the reason why these two DNA samples from the crime scene were not allowed to be uploaded to the National DNA Database.

But the rules and standards changed three years later. In 2019, the lab staff uploaded all the DNA data they had in their possession, including the ones from the crime scene, and the next day they had the face of the killer. The National DNA Database had a match, and it came from Oregon. They finally had a name: John Sauberan. This felt too good to be true, and so they cross-checked him with the original case file, but his name did not appear anywhere. Sauberan had to have lived in the area in Buffalo at the time of the homicide. They went through the file again, and per the testimony given by Linda’s mother and brother, they found that the suspect had driven a green Chevrolet Nova. That was enough for them to zero in on the suspect.

The detectives asked for the records from the Department of Motor Vehicles to see people who owned the described vehicle, and even if they did not find John Sauberan, they did find people who were connected to Sauberan. The first address was to a woman with whom Sauberan had a child, and the second one was registered to Sauberan’s adoptive mother in Tonawanda. It was enough for the detectives to determine that Sauberan lived around the area at the time of the murder. The records also showed that he had lived in many other states since the 1980s, including Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Arizona, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, and Ohio, which earned him the name “The Drifter.”

When the investigators took Sauberan in for something that happened in the 1970s, he immediately asked for a lawyer. At the arrest, the county forensic lab performed additional DNA analysis on the original crime scene evidence, which included the blood stains on the sleeves of the Grand Funk Railroad album, and the analysis report was consistent with Sauberan’s DNA.

Back in the 70s, Sauberan was nicknamed “Chief the Thief.” He was known to steal bicycles. He also had been arrested in relation to an incident involving property damage and had been charged with robbery. There were a lot of coincidences that fit in perfectly. It was very likely that he was the man the Tascheris saw walking away from the cottage that morning. He also had a green Chevrolet Nova. The crime scene looked like a robbery gone wrong. He took pride in his stealing ventures, and the case of Linda could be one of the unfortunate ones where he broke into the cottage, but unexpectedly, there was somebody inside. And to eliminate the witness, he took the drastic step of becoming a murderer.

On the 11th of October this year, the jury found Sauberan guilty of second-degree murder, and the prosecution and the defense both agreed that the victim and the murderer did not know each other. Sauberan faces a maximum of 25 years to life as he awaits sentencing on the 13th of December. Do you think if they had stopped the man walking away that they would have at least known what had happened in the cottage? Maybe he would have tried to escape, and it would still have taken four decades for them to find justice. Maybe they could have got to Linda sooner and saved her. But at least now, all these years later, the family has closure on what happened.

7. The Murder of Sandra DiFelice

Las Vegas is the most populous city in Nevada. What many don’t know is that it was initially a small town founded in 1905. With time, it experienced a population explosion and rapid growth and development in various sectors. Today, the city is famous for its nightlife, casinos, and many points of interest which attract tourists from all over the world. Sandra was originally from the capital city of Idaho, Boise; however, she eventually moved out of Boise with her childhood friend to Las Vegas.

In Las Vegas, Sandra and her friend decided that it was best they stayed together as roommates. The house they lived in was a short distance from a local park as well as the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s downtown command center. This proximity to a police station offered some comfort and a sense of security to the two friends. There was another inhabitant in the house occupied by Sandra and her friend: this was Sandra’s three-year-old daughter, who she had with her boyfriend. To make ends meet in the new city, Sandra took up a job as a waitress at a popular restaurant called Sambo’s Restaurant. Life seemed to be moving at a good pace for the 25-year-old mother, but things would soon take a different and very dark turn.

Sandra had no idea that her life would come to an abrupt end on December 26, 1980. Post-Christmas festivity was still in the air, and no one living within the East Las Vegas neighborhood where Sandra resided would have expected a tragedy to occur. Around 9 PM on December 26th, Sandra’s boyfriend decided to pay her a visit. On arriving at the house, he noticed that it was unusually quiet. Not knowing what to expect, he went straight to Sandra’s room and was shocked to his core by the sight that greeted him: lying face up on the bed was Sandra. She was dead, and the walls were splattered with her blood.

His agitated boyfriend immediately sprung into action and called the police to report the incident. In a matter of minutes, police officers from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department arrived. They determined that Sandra had been sexually assaulted, stabbed, and strangled to death. Sandra’s daughter, who had gone to stay with her grandparents at the time, had not been around to witness the terrible scene. Sandra’s family was devastated when they were given the news of her death.

Investigators immediately commenced an investigation. Sandra’s roommate was questioned, and she revealed that she had seen Sandra alive barely two hours before her death. At the scene of the murder, investigators were able to collect several dark hairs. They had been found on Sandra’s stomach and were believed to belong to her killer. Sandra herself was blonde, so the dark hairs stood out. In addition, investigators also got their hands on several other items of evidence, and one of these included a drinking glass containing Kool-Aid. Upon further analysis, a fingerprint was discovered on the drinking glass, and it was not long before a match was found.

The fingerprint belonged to a man by the name of Paul Nuttall. He was immediately named as a person of interest. The investigation was moving quickly, and it seemed the authorities were making headway. However, they ended up being disappointed. Paul was brought in for questioning, but there was nothing tangible detectives could use to pin him to the murder. As it turned out, Paul was a close friend of Sandra’s roommate. According to the roommate’s explanation to the detectives, Paul had been at their residence the morning of the murder. She further explained that Paul had asked her to let him sleep in the house because he had nowhere else to go. She had declined, and her reason was that Sandra did not know him well. However, she later invited Paul in to wait for her while she got ready for work. She had told him they would leave together when she left the house. During this time, Paul helped himself to a glass of Kool-Aid. This perfectly explained why his fingerprint had been found on the drinking glass. The roommate also said that after she had gotten ready for work, she and Paul had then left the house.

With this revelation, authorities had no choice but to let Paul go. He was deemed an innocent man. Authorities had no further leads after this, and as time went by, the case grew cold.

It wasn’t until February 2021 that the case would be reopened again. This reopening was prompted by a call from Sandra’s daughter to the police department. She had asked for an update about her mother’s death, and investigators decided it was high time the case was revisited. “Upon a review of that investigation in conjunction with our DNA forensics lab, they were able to determine that there was additional evidence that could be submitted for processing using new DNA technology,” Lieutenant Jason Johansson, who had investigated the case, said.

The additional evidence that was submitted for testing was DNA that was found under Sandra’s fingernails. This DNA had never been tested, and it proved to be the clue detectives needed to crack the case. The DNA was a match to a man, and this was none other than Paul Nuttall. From the beginning, detectives had had their suspicions about him, but there was nothing they could do since the technology was limited at the time of Sandra’s murder. And now, with strong evidence, authorities knew they finally had him cornered.

Paul was eventually arrested on October 27, 2022, at his home in northwest Las Vegas. “After Paul Nuttall was taken into custody, my cold case investigators had the pleasure of making the one phone call that every cold case detective wants to make,” Lieutenant Jason said during a news conference after Paul’s arrest. “I am hopeful that in some way, shape, or form this provides some sort of closure for the family,” he added.

Paul, who is currently 64 years of age, was slammed with charges including murder, sexual assault with the use of a deadly weapon, and burglary while in possession of a deadly weapon. A look at Paul’s criminal history revealed that he had not been involved in any other violent crime; however, he had been arrested in the past for felony and drug possession. At the moment, it’s still unclear what fate awaits him since his court case is still ongoing. There is also a concern that Paul might have impaired thinking and reasoning ability. Authorities believe that this might hinder him from understanding the charges against him. Due to this, he is being made to undergo a mental health evaluation.

8. The Murder of Helen Cardwell

For 30 years, Noka Irvin was haunted by the memory of discovering her sister Helen’s body at a YMCA room in Niles, Illinois. 35-year-old Helen Cardwell had been living at the YMCA after suffering a stroke a year earlier. She had moved from West Virginia to seek treatment and help. She was undergoing rehabilitation and was about to start her life anew when it was tragically snatched from her.

It was November 7, 1992. Helen was preparing to start a job at the Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge sterilizing medical equipment when Noka stopped by at the Leaning Tower YMCA to pay Helen a visit. She didn’t expect the horror that was about to greet her. Helen was naked apart from a pair of white socks. She had been tied up and strangled with a sweater that was still around her mouth. It appeared she was sexually assaulted before being strangled to death. There was no sign of forced entry and nothing was stolen. Residents didn’t notice anything unusual or suspicious the night before. There seemed to be no evidence of a visible struggle in the room.

Niles Police followed up on all clues and interviewed everyone in the YMCA building. What little evidence there was was collected and bagged until further testing could be done to find Helen’s killer. Helen Cardwell was struck down in the prime of her life before she could embark on a journey to start afresh with a new job. Her killer, it seemed, had got away with murder.

For three decades, the case grew progressively cold. It was long enough for police to decide that Helen’s family needed justice for her untimely death. In 2020, the Niles Police Department reopened the investigation, and the Cold Case team took another look at the evidence collected. Technology had improved significantly since 1992, and the biological evidence found on Helen’s body and the sweater were submitted to the national database CODIS. In November 2021, there was a hit. It belonged to 72-year-old Richard Sisto.

Sisto had no connection to Helen apart from the fact that he worked just blocks away from the Leaning Tower in Village Crossing. Police were further baffled as to how Sisto went undetected while attacking Helen at her YMCA room. Sisto, though, was no stranger to crime. Until 1992, he was incarcerated in Texas for a 1977 aggravated sexual assault case. During his time in prison, he was accused of sexually assaulting a female prison guard in 1984. He was released on parole on April 19, 1992, and was working at the Touhy Avenue Jewel-Osco store during the time when he attacked and murdered Helen Cardwell.

When police made the link to Helen’s murder through DNA evidence testing, police initially could not find Sisto. He was being held in Harris County, Texas, on a parole violation. When they finally tracked him down, he was interviewed, and a DNA sample was taken. It proved to be a positive match. Sisto was extradited to Illinois to face murder charges in relation to the slaying of Helen Cardwell. He was held on a $1 million bond before being extradited back to Illinois. On November 23, 2021, Sisto was ordered by Judge Anthony Calabrese to be held without bond during his hearing at the Cook County Courthouse.

Detective Mike Boba of the Niles Police Department said it was something that has been in their heads and it was frustrating at the time. For Noka Irvin, the arrest comes with a great sense of relief as her sister’s killer was finally caught. “I’m so grateful they decided to reopen this case and I just appreciate everyone’s efforts in solving her murder,” she said. At the time of his arrest, Sisto had been diagnosed with a heart condition. He ultimately passed away on January 26, 2022, while awaiting trial.

9. The Murder of Arturo Martinez Altamirano

For 15 years, the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office played a game of cat and mouse as they tried to pinpoint a killer. Oscar Tejeda-Maya was named the prime suspect in the murder of Arturo Martinez Altamirano back in 2007; however, it would take years before an actual arrest could be made.

On October 29, 2007, hunters stumbled upon the body of Arturo along West Grove Road in Stanfield, Arizona. They contacted the PCSO immediately, and investigators began an investigation into the murder of the 37-year-old man. There didn’t seem to be a defined motive; however, there was DNA evidence and the name of a potential suspect: Oscar Tejeda-Maya. Witnesses claimed to have seen Arturo and Oscar together prior to the murder. His name was mentioned to police as a possible suspect.

Despite knowing the identity of the alleged killer, police were already too late as Maya slipped through the investigative cracks and disappeared, fleeing the country. The case grew cold as the years passed. In 2017, the homicide department reopened the cold case after learning that Maya had been living in Mexico all along. The next year, a DNA sample was obtained from a person who was reportedly a close relative to the suspect. Through testing, detectives were able to positively match and link Maya to the murder of Arturo.

Working together, U.S. Marshals and Interpol located and arrested Maya on January 12, 2022. Maya, who was 59 years old at the time of his arrest, was a Mexican citizen. He was extradited to the U.S. and faces a first-degree murder charge. Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb said it was their duty to make sure violent criminals were not permitted to live freely while their victims’ families suffered. “We are hopeful this will bring some peace to those who have waited so long for closure,” he said.

10. The Murder of Jasmine Porter

Jasmine grew up in Long Island and, according to her family, she was a very friendly individual who enjoyed having fun. “She was a phenomenal singer, a professional singer,” Jasmine’s younger sister, Shauna Porter White, told the media. “She was very outgoing and she trusted a lot of people. Everyone was her friend. I told her everyone’s not your friend,” she added.

By 1996, Jasmine Porter was 36 years old and a mother to a four-year-old boy called Jeremy. She lived a peaceful life with her son in an apartment on Davidson Avenue in the Bronx. “We never thought she would become a mom,” Jasmine’s brother Derek Porter said. “She liked to have fun, she enjoyed life. When she did get pregnant and finally had the baby, she was a great mom.” According to Derek, Jasmine was studying and had dreams of one day landing an administrative job with her degree. However, Jasmine would not live long enough to see that dream fulfilled.

On February 5, 1996, authorities responded to a call from Jasmine’s neighbors. They were concerned that they hadn’t seen her or Jeremy for some days. “When neighbors didn’t see him go to school that Monday, they realized something was wrong and called the police,” Derek said. When authorities arrived at Jasmine’s apartment, they opened the door and found her dead in the front bedroom with Jeremy beside her. Jasmine had been dead for about two days when her body was found. All the while, her son had stayed beside her. It was a horrible scene to behold. “He locked himself in the apartment with her, tried to clean her nose, wipe the blood off her nose,” Derek recalled. “You know the bond between mother and son is huge. He didn’t leave her side,” he added.

It was discovered that Jasmine had been sexually assaulted and then strangled to death. This was obvious from the severe trauma she suffered to the neck. Authorities declared her death to be a homicide. This was corroborated by Jeremy, who had watched his mother die in front of him. “The son indicated there was a man sitting on top of his mother and that the man was naked,” said Detective Robert Klein, a homicide investigator that had worked on the case. He stated that he tried to help her, but the killer was too heavy and that the man yelled at him to get away.

Derek also spoke about what Jeremy had told him after his mother was killed: “I picked him up and he talked to me. The person actually was going to strangle him, and he didn’t.” Also, at the time of Jasmine’s death, she had been six months pregnant. Her death was a tragic loss to her family and friends, and authorities made it a priority to hunt down her killer. But after several weeks of interviewing people, the investigators found nothing. They were no closer to solving the case, and it was frustrating. The case went cold, and it seemed Jasmine’s killer had gotten away with the crime for good.

In early 2021, Detective Robert overheard a robbery suspect speaking about Jasmine’s murder. This had been during a jailhouse call. It’s unclear what the suspect had said precisely, but it was enough to spur Robert into reopening the cold case. “But in the interim, I got a hold of the case file,” Detective Robert said. “I started tracking down people interviewed back in ’96, and I also got a hold of the forensic biology report.”

It soon came to the detective’s attention that scrapings taken from underneath Jasmine’s fingernails had never been tested. This was because the technology to carry out such tests had not been available at the time of the murder. Detective Robert soon submitted the scrapings for analysis and patiently waited for the result. “I knew there was a high probability that there would be the suspect’s DNA under those nails,” Detective Robert said. “First step was to obviously find that evidence, which can sometimes be tricky. But in my efforts to reach out to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner and the people over there, they actually were able to find it. It took a while, but they found it.”

The DNA evidence led authorities to a man named Gregory Fleetwood. Gregory was a man with a criminal record. He had been convicted of strangling a woman to death back in 1987, and just like Jasmine, the woman had also been pregnant. For the crime, Gregory was found guilty and imprisoned. However, he served only seven years in prison and was released in August 1994. The reason for his early release was that the murder charge had been reduced to a lighter charge of manslaughter. It was a shock that he murdered Jasmine barely two years after his release.

Gregory’s DNA was also linked to many other violent crimes of sexual assault which took place over the years. One of these had taken place a month after Jasmine’s murder, and as a matter of fact, it was right next door to where Jasmine lived. Gregory was soon arrested at his apartment in the Williamsbridge section of the Bronx and was charged with murder. After Gregory was taken into custody, he maintained his innocence by insisting that he had never met Jasmine before and had no hand in her death. “He basically denied ever having known the victim, ever having interacted with her, and said that if for some reason his DNA was on her, that’s a mistake that we made,” Detective Robert said.

The detective soon shared news of the arrest with Jasmine’s family. “When I called Ms. Porter White and informed her, it was very emotional for her,” Detective Robert said. “When we got the call, it was amazing that she wasn’t forgotten. It’s good work. The police department doesn’t always get their dues,” Derek said. Derek also spoke highly of Detective Robert, praising him for his role in the case: “That detective… I have tears in my eyes when I think of Detective Klein, what he did for our family. He treated Jasmine like she was his own sister.”

Sadly, Jasmine’s mother and younger brother Jason had passed away by this time and were not around to witness the breakthrough in the case. “I can’t think of anything that’s more gratifying than taking a case that’s sort of lying dormant for so long. Justice is at least on its way to being served. It’s sort of the pinnacle of my police career,” Detective Robert said. As for Gregory, who is now 66 years old, he could face 25 years to life imprisonment if found guilty of Jasmine’s murder.