DNA & Forensics
Cases cracked by DNA, genetic genealogy or forensic science.
33 cases
The Burning Barrel
On a July evening in 1981, Charlotte Grabbe never came back from the soybean fields of her family's Marshall, Illinois farm — her tractor parked in the shed, her lunch box untouched, and her divorce from the violent Fred Grabbe still unfinished.
Master and Slave
Elaine O'Hara vanished near Dublin in August 2012, the day after her release from a psychiatric hospital — and the investigation that unfolded over the next three years exposed one of the most shocking crimes in Irish history.
A Doctor's Blood
On Halloween night 1992 in tiny Kipling, Saskatchewan, a distraught young mother sought help from the town's beloved Dr. John Schneeberger — and what she remembered from that examination room would pit her word against his DNA.
The Girl in the Barrel
During a final walkthrough before the sale of a Jericho, New York house in September 1999, the buyer insisted on removing a 355-pound barrel that had sat wedged in the crawlspace for decades — a barrel the seller had never once opened.
Interpol's Most Wanted
In July 1996, a fishing trawler off Southwest England hauled up the fully clothed body of a man wearing a Rolex — and the watch's stopped hands, along with a maple leaf tattoo, began unraveling an international deception.
The Green Chain Killer
When Pauline Lasham told police her son Robert Napper had confessed to a rape near Plumstead Common, they checked their records, found nothing, and let it go — while the attacks along London's Green Chain Walk were only beginning.
God Chose Us
Two days before her high school graduation, Shari Faye Smith's little blue Chevette sat idling at the end of her family's long South Carolina driveway, the driver's door open and the mail scattered — and seventeen-year-old Shari was gone.
The Canal Killer
In February 2001, two boys fishing in London's Regent's Canal snagged a duffel bag weighted with bricks — the first of six bags divers would recover, holding a woman whose missing head, hands, and feet made her nearly impossible to identify.
The Tacoma Murders
In 1986, months apart, young Michella Welch and Jennifer Bastian were murdered near Tacoma parks just three miles from each other — crimes so similar police assumed one killer, until DNA told a stranger story that took decades to finish.
Divine Justice
In a Pacific Northwest decade haunted by vanishing girls — several later confirmed as Ted Bundy victims — fourteen-year-old Kathy Devine's 1973 disappearance near Olympia sat unsolved for decades, filed under the wrong killer.
Murder in the Sacristy
On Holy Saturday 1980 — her seventy-second birthday — Sister Margaret Ann Pahl went early to prepare the chapel at Toledo's Mercy Hospital, intending to confront Father Gerald Robinson about his sermon; a bloodstained cloth on the chapel floor was the first sign something was wrong.
Dead in the Water
Jo Rogers and her daughters Michelle and Christe left their Ohio dairy farm for their first real vacation, snapping photos from a hotel room overlooking Tampa Bay — days before the Coast Guard began pulling bodies, roped to concrete blocks, from the water.
The Mousse Can Killer
Robert Mark Edwards was raised on beatings and addiction and turned early to burglary — and when a woman was found beaten and strangled, the bloody can of hair styling mousse left on her bed became the case's strangest piece of evidence.
The Dinner Theater Murder
Hoping to rekindle a stagnant marriage, Steven Hricko booked a Valentine's weekend at a Maryland resort featuring a murder-mystery dinner theater show. His wife Kimberly — a surgical technologist whose job included disposing of unused drugs — was suddenly, surprisingly affectionate.
A Cruel Hoax
Rebecca Koster promised her mother she'd message when she made it home from a night out in Holbrook, Long Island. The message never came — and a single fingerprint on a strip of duct tape led police to a stranger named Evans Ganthier.
The South Side Strangler
A car left running all night on a quiet Richmond street led police to Debbie Davis's apartment in September 1987 — the first in a series of brutal stranglings across Virginia that would push detectives toward a brand-new forensic tool called DNA.
The Cape Coral Monster
Jan Cornell rushed home before her early-morning shift in May 1990 to find her Cape Coral townhouse silent — her eleven-year-old daughter Robin and roommate Lisa Story inside. The DNA left behind would wait twenty-six years for a match.
Luminol and Lies
Bill Mowbray was Brownsville's flamboyant Cadillac king — lakeside mansion, beach condos, his face on TV commercials — and secretly drowning in debt. When a gunshot rang out in the couple's bedroom, the answer to what happened would hinge on chemical traces of blood.
Apartment 9
Mindy Morgenstern, a farm-raised North Dakota college student adopted from Colombia, was found murdered in her Valley City apartment in September 2006. The DNA under her fingernails pointed somewhere unthinkable: a corrections officer living in her own building.
The Long Walk Home
Seventeen-year-old Mary Quigley never made it home from a back-to-school keg party in Santa Clara, California, in September 1977. For decades the question of who followed her into the night went unanswered — until DNA pointed to a name: Richard Archibeque.
The Hammer Killer
In January 1984, residents of Aurora, Colorado, began waking to a nightmare: an intruder standing over their beds with a hammer. The attacks were only the beginning of a spree that would take decades to unravel.
The Lakewood Monster
On the Fourth of July 1996, nine-year-old Cynthia Allinger left her Lakewood, Washington, apartment in her favorite flowered dress to visit friends nearby. By the time the fireworks faded, she still hadn't come home.
The Speed Freaks
Wesley Shermantine and Loren Herzog grew up inseparable across Fine Road in tiny Linden, California. What the two friends did in the methamphetamine years would leave San Joaquin County digging for victims decades later.
The I-65 Killer
Night auditor Vicki Heath was found behind the Super 8 in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, in 1987 — one victim of a predator working the motels along Interstate 65 whose name would stay hidden for thirty-five years.
2-4-1
Virginia Tech junior Morgan Harrington left her seat at a Metallica concert in Charlottesville in 2009 and never came back inside — and years later the case of Hannah Graham would bring her name roaring back.
The Bedford Cold Case
Bank president Raymond Scheublin came home to Bedford, Massachusetts, in June 1971 to find his wife Natalie bound and dead at the bottom of the cellar stairs. The case would sit cold for half a century.
The Stranger
Gladys Hensley, 62, was a quiet fixture of her Eugene, Oregon, senior apartment complex until someone sliced through her window screen in the night. Finding the stranger who climbed in would take decades.
What the Woods Kept
Terry Peroni was last seen walking into the Oregon woods with Marcus Sanfratello after a Fourth of July party in 1983. What searchers eventually found along the Illinois River kept the case alive for forty years.
The Beast of Buckland
For two years a predator the papers called the Beast of Buckland stalked the women of Portsmouth after dark. Then 24-year-old barmaid Linda Cook took the short way home — and police fixed on the wrong man.
Home Alive
Mia Zapata, the electrifying voice of Seattle punk band The Gits, left a Capitol Hill bar alone on a July night in 1993. Finding out what happened on her walk home would take a decade and a science that didn't exist yet.
Reduced to Ash
Ten-day-old Delimar Vera was presumed dead in a Philadelphia rowhouse fire in 1997, though no remains were ever found. Her mother, Luz Cuevas, never stopped looking at one particular child at family gatherings.
The Baton Rouge Serial Killer
Nurse Gina Wilson Green was found strangled in her tidy Baton Rouge home near the LSU campus with no sign of forced entry — the beginning of a hunt for a killer whose victims kept opening the door.
The Gum Ruse
Susan Vesey celebrated her twenty-first birthday in Everett, Washington, in July 1980. By morning she was dead on her bedroom floor, her infant son unharmed beside her — and the case would stay cold for decades.
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