Sat, Sep 24, 2022
Indio, California, Desert Star Ranch: Horse ranch owner Wendi Brant, age 45, was murdered on August 10, 1998 in a brutal assault in which she struggled with her killer. Her body was found later the same day. Police focus on her estranged husband, William I. Hillman, but there are other potential suspects that complicate the investigation and throw the case into a decades-long cold case.
Sat, Oct 1, 2022
Two 1982 Murders: First murder: On June 25, 1982, Lee Gunsalus Rotatori, a 32-year old woman from Nunica, Michigan, was sexually assaulted and murdered in her hotel room in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Second murder: About July 1982, Thomas Oscar Freeman was murdered in Cobden, Illinois. Lee Rotatori's murder went unsolved for nearly 40 years, until it was announced by authorities in 2022 that the perpetrator has been identified as Thomas Oscar Freeman himself by using investigative genetic genealogy. As of 2022, Freeman's murder remains unsolved and the case remains open. Investigators believe the two murders are connected.
Sat, Oct 8, 2022
Burley, Idaho, February 1995: When a young girl, 14-year-old Regina "Gina" Krieger, vanishes under mysterious circumstances, police must discover if she simply ran away or was actually the victim of something far more sinister. Her body was found two months later on the banks of the Snake River. For years, the police suspected her father, Dan Krieger, was to blame, but no in-depth investigation was done on the case which want cold for decades before 'heating up' again. Finally, Gilberto Flores Rodriguez was arrested and charged with the murder. In June 2021, he was sentenced to life in prison. Cody Thompson was a witness who was already behind bars for a different crime.
Sat, Nov 12, 2022
On September 4, 1981, Jeff Slaten, age 15 and his brother Tim, age 12, were awakened by Lakeland, Florida, police. The boys were told that their mother, Linda Slaten, had been murdered. Investigators collected a rape kit and lifted a palm print from the windowsill where the killer had entered. They questioned a slew of suspects, but no one was charged, and the case went cold for 40 years. Prior to, and after Linda Slaten's murder, Tim's football coach, Joe Mills, would regularly drive Tim to and from football practice. Coach Joe became a role model for the young boy, who proudly hung up his football team photo in his room. In the photo, Coach Mills stood right behind Tim. Linda's sons spent decades living in fear of the man they called "The Monster". Nearly 40 years later, advances in DNA technology revealed Linda Slaten's likely killer: Coach Joe. "I looked up to this guy," Tim tells "48 Hours" contributor Jim Axelrod. "And I had a picture in my house ever since then, and never knew it was him." "He's a cold-hearted monster, that's for sure," says Jeff.
Sat, Nov 5, 2022
Two young girls were raised in Louisiana by their grandmother who never told them that their mother had died young at age 23. Years later, the teenage girls, Christine and Donna, found photos of their mother, Mary Scott, who had been living in San Diego, California when they were young. They also learned, through old documents, that their mother had died in San Diego in 1969. Mary had been raped and strangled in her apartment. The original 1969 case went cold, through no fault of investigators. The homicide team worked hard, but in 1969, there was very little to track the culprit with. It was not until advent of genetic genealogy forensics that the investigative team in San Diego could zero in on a killer. On October 24, 2020, 75-year-old John Sipos was arrested, charged with the crime and found guilty.
Sat, Dec 3, 2022
Santee, California, May 2, 1988: Diane Dahn, age 29, was murdered when an intruder came into her apartment. She was stabbed to death in front of her own son Mark, who was age 3. Diane managed to grab a strand of the man's hair, which was put into evidence. The case had stops and starts but basically went cold for 30 years until the hair strand was submitted for DNA testing. There was no match in the Federal CODIS database, but the investigators were able to make a match using forensic genetic genealogy. However, the man who killed her, Warren Robertson, had died in Indiana in 1999.
Sat, Dec 17, 2022
Pensacola, Florida: Shortly before 5:00 AM on January 1, 1985, Tonya Marie Ethridge McKinley, age 23, is found dead on the roadside. She is identified by the contents of her purse. Law enforcement homicide detectives are unable to solve the case in 1985, but they have the foresight to collect biological evidence from the victim and from a bloody towel left at the scene. The case goes cold for over 30 years until forensic genetic genealogy matches the evidence DNA to Daniel Leonard Wells, who is now age 57, of Pensacola. He is arrested and confesses to the murder, but within 24 hours, he commits suicide in his jail cell.
Sat, Jan 14, 2023
Vicki Lynne Hoskinson, age 8, disappeared on September 17, 1984 in her hometown of Tucson, Arizona while riding her pink-colored bicycle a few blocks to mail a birthday card to her aunt. She had been abducted by a stranger, Frank Atwood. The tip to police that cracked the case was when a physical education teacher, Sam Hall, provided Atwood's license plate number to the investigators. The day before the murder, the teacher had noticed that a man was watching school children. This made the teacher uneasy and he jotted down Atwood's Datsun 280Z vehicle's license plate number and watched the stranger until he left the school area. This valuable information led to the arrest of Frank Jarvis Atwood, age 28, from Los Angeles, who was on parole at the time. Atwood had a long history of sexual assaults against children. Atwood was arrested and convicted of Vicki's murder and was sentenced to death. He was executed by lethal injection on June 8, 2022. Seven months after Vicki's abduction, her partial remains were found by a hiker in a desert area 20 miles from her home.