Speaker 1: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 2: I'm a journalist who's spent the last twenty five years
Speaker 2: writing about true crime.
Speaker 3: And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's
Speaker 3: worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.
Speaker 2: Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most
Speaker 2: compelling true crimes.
Speaker 3: And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring
Speaker 3: new insights to old mysteries.
Speaker 2: Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
Speaker 2: cases through a twenty first century lens.
Speaker 3: Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.
Speaker 1: This is buried bones.
Speaker 3: Hey Paul, Hey Kate, how are you.
Speaker 2: I'm doing well. How about you?
Speaker 3: I'm doing good. It's getting warm here, so it gets
Speaker 3: a warm in this office.
Speaker 2: I think we've all heard about that, the man cave.
Speaker 2: I'm glad you're calling it in an office now. I
Speaker 2: think it was usually just your man cave. But for video,
Speaker 2: it's a little different.
Speaker 3: Right, No, that's absolutely it. I'm hoping not to start sweating.
Speaker 2: No, me too. I had to turn my little air
Speaker 2: conditioner off in the cottage. It's going to be steamy
Speaker 2: in here. Pretty soon, but I'll just talk faster.
Speaker 3: No big deal, all right, I'll try to keep up.
Speaker 2: So I've been working on some stress relief stuff. And
Speaker 2: I know you do a lot of outdoor stuff, and
Speaker 2: I do too. My mom is a huge gardener, and
Speaker 2: so I sort of started picking up gardening and I'll
Speaker 2: enjoy it. Do any planting or you and your wife
Speaker 2: do any kind of vegetables or anything out there.
Speaker 3: Well, living in California, I did a lot of not
Speaker 3: so much gardening, but a lot of landscaping. I installed
Speaker 3: multiple backyards, from the sprinkler system, degrading to building retaining
Speaker 3: walls and planting all the various you know, types of
Speaker 3: trees and shrubs and stuff. I did try at one
Speaker 3: point to have a little vegetable garden where I lived.
Speaker 3: I mean, it gets so hot, you know, it just
Speaker 3: didn't really work out very well. And then now here
Speaker 3: in Colorado you really can't where I live. You know,
Speaker 3: if you plant anything, you're going to attract the deer
Speaker 3: or you're going to attract the bears. And so it's
Speaker 3: just like now I'll just keep the natural, you know,
Speaker 3: plants and stuff around the house.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I understand that we have tons and tons of loads
Speaker 2: of deer in our neighborhood, and people try everything, including
Speaker 2: my mom. They put the little tents over them to
Speaker 2: try to get them to stop eating. We don't really
Speaker 2: have them over in our joint. So a friend of
Speaker 2: mine had built me a raised bed a long time ago,
Speaker 2: and I could not handle a raised vegetable bed, and
Speaker 2: so I bought myself just a small little vegetable box
Speaker 2: and killed everything. Last year. The heat did. I'm gonna
Speaker 2: blame Texas heat. The heat did, except I'll tell you
Speaker 2: what survived. Strawberries were awesome. Okay, tomatoes were great, except
Speaker 2: the stupid squirrels. I love squirrels, but they're stupid in
Speaker 2: this case. And then jolapenos did really well. So guess
Speaker 2: what I bought this year. Because I want my self
Speaker 2: esteem to continue to go up.
Speaker 3: You're going to be redoing jlapenos, tomatoes, and strawberries.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I was a big failure with cucumbers. But I
Speaker 2: bought a peach tree this year, and so I'm really
Speaker 2: excited about those. But now I have a whole bird
Speaker 2: netting that goes over it because the squirrels and the
Speaker 2: birds love these peaches that are green, little peaches now,
Speaker 2: so I get with my mom. My Mom has just
Speaker 2: been so into plants for so long, and I get
Speaker 2: what she likes about it. It's really relaxing and you
Speaker 2: go out every morning and kind of check on everything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I think I travel so much I
Speaker 3: would not be able to give it the attention that
Speaker 3: it probably would something like that would need.
Speaker 2: Well, I really took an interest when I got the
Speaker 2: cottage because it's sort of a I've put pictures on
Speaker 2: Instagram of it. It's we have a forested area in
Speaker 2: the back, even though you know, we have a fenced
Speaker 2: in backyard. And when we bought it from the original owners,
Speaker 2: it had just been so overgrown. I didn't even know
Speaker 2: what was back there, and we eventually cleared it out
Speaker 2: kept all the trees. We have cedar, and we have
Speaker 2: some cedar elm and a lot of different kinds of trees.
Speaker 2: And I was sitting in here in the fall last
Speaker 2: year and the cedar elm was this beautiful color. When
Speaker 2: it turned, it was like a mustard color. A wind
Speaker 2: came through and it like rained cedar elm leaves all
Speaker 2: over the place. And I think that's what convinced me
Speaker 2: to go ahead and start trying with trees and vegetables
Speaker 2: and everything else. So it's satisfying to me. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: find it relied.
Speaker 3: Boy.
Speaker 2: Both of us need anything that can relax us. Besides,
Speaker 2: I know, whiskey and cider for me.
Speaker 3: Now you'll have to have to send me some photos
Speaker 3: of some success.
Speaker 1: I will.
Speaker 2: I'm going to try to post more photos I posted.
Speaker 2: Starting a couple of months ago, I started posting on Sundays,
Speaker 2: just cute photo of something that's going on in my life.
Speaker 2: Usually it's like the dogs people love Ruby and Bailey,
Speaker 2: or why I have a hummingbird feeder. My kids love
Speaker 2: the hummingbird feeder, and so I did post some cottage stuff,
Speaker 2: but I'm going to try to do some trees and vegetables.
Speaker 2: It makes me happy. Yeah, And you know, not everything
Speaker 2: that you know I post, of course, has to do
Speaker 2: with the shows or the death or anything else. And
Speaker 2: so I'm trying to look really more positively.
Speaker 3: You know, these days, especially well, you have to have
Speaker 3: something that distracts you. And that's where like me taking
Speaker 3: my jeep out or mountain biking. You know, it just
Speaker 3: gets the mind away from sort of the drudgery of
Speaker 3: the cases. You know, because I get involved in so
Speaker 3: many different cases.
Speaker 2: Now, yeah, speaking of getting dragged into the drudgery of cases,
Speaker 2: that's what we're doing now. I'm going to drag you
Speaker 2: into the drudgery in the case. I wonder if you're
Speaker 2: going to know this case. It's from nineteen seventy Sacramento.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, well you know, of course I wasn't living
Speaker 3: in California back in nineteen seventy and Sacramento. You know,
Speaker 3: my focus was the unsolved cases in the Bay Area,
Speaker 3: so very very familiar. Okay, down in the Bay Area,
Speaker 3: but there's a chance I could have heard something up
Speaker 3: in Sacramento.
Speaker 2: When I was in San Francisco working for a network,
Speaker 2: we were in Sacramento all the time. I don't really
Speaker 2: like to go. I loved visiting there, one of my
Speaker 2: favorite places to go, visit, going back and forth. So
Speaker 2: let's go ahead and set the scene. This is autumn
Speaker 2: of nineteen seventy in Sacramento, and this is the story
Speaker 2: of a woman named Nancy Binilac, and she's twenty eight
Speaker 2: years old, and she is a native of Grass Valley, California,
Speaker 2: which is nearby, but she's in Sacramento. Is Grass Valley
Speaker 2: Are you familiar with that. I hadn't been there before.
Speaker 3: I don't think yep. You know, that's just kind of
Speaker 3: in the foothills past the Sacramento Full sum area. It's
Speaker 3: a beautiful place at a lot of law enforcement relocates
Speaker 3: there when they retire.
Speaker 2: Okay, well this sounds like a really really, really nice
Speaker 2: are Nancy is someone who has been well liked by
Speaker 2: her peers. She was a cheerleader in high school. Doesn't
Speaker 2: always mean you're well liked, but it's a point she was.
Speaker 2: She was in high school. Everybody, you know, when she
Speaker 2: was in high school, people seem to really like her.
Speaker 2: She made good grades, she had a lot of friends,
Speaker 2: and she graduated in nineteen sixty. So she went to
Speaker 2: school for stenography, and then she became a court reporter
Speaker 2: at the Sacramento County Juvenile Court in nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 2: I am beyond fascinated with court reporters and what they do.
Speaker 2: And I know it's changed, and I don't you know,
Speaker 2: I've had to write about it several times just because
Speaker 2: I have, you know, of course, these old cases. I
Speaker 2: think my nineteen fifty two case we had to touch
Speaker 2: on whatever the court reporter was doing in the device
Speaker 2: they were using at the time. I don't know very
Speaker 2: much about it. I know you've been there with them,
Speaker 2: but do you know a lot about court reporting?
Speaker 3: No, you know, of course I've testified a ton. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, I've testified close to two hundred times over
Speaker 3: the course of my career. And I was the court
Speaker 3: reporter's worst nightmare because when I'm testifying, I'm a very
Speaker 3: fast talker, and literally these gals throw up their hands
Speaker 3: and say slow down. So I'd have to kind of
Speaker 3: remind myself I need to talk, you know, very purposefully.
Speaker 3: And then of course with the scientific side, you know,
Speaker 3: there's sometimes there's some of the some of the technical
Speaker 3: terms that have to be spelled out for them, but
Speaker 3: how they are able to keep track in real time
Speaker 3: with that device, because there's many times where you know,
Speaker 3: the judge or an attorney needs something read back that
Speaker 3: was just stated and that she's able to take a
Speaker 3: look at, you know what at the time was printed.
Speaker 3: I think I'm sure they're electronic today and go back
Speaker 3: and say, okay, defense attorney asked this question, the witness,
Speaker 3: you know, respond it this way, the prosecutor kind of
Speaker 3: you know, and so how they keep track of all
Speaker 3: that is amazing.
Speaker 2: I guess attention to detail and definitely keeping attention in general,
Speaker 2: and Nancy seemed to do that very well. So she
Speaker 2: is twenty eight, she's a court reporter in Sacramento. She
Speaker 2: is a very full personal life. There are quite a
Speaker 2: few people in this story. Luckily, you know, we'll have
Speaker 2: a lot of clarity later on, but I'll just start
Speaker 2: introducing them to you. She's engaged to a guy named
Speaker 2: Ferris Salami, and he is the chief public Defender for
Speaker 2: the county. What does that person do is that? I
Speaker 2: don't know why. I feel like I've not heard that
Speaker 2: phrase very often. Chief public defender for the county.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, the various public defender's offices in DA's
Speaker 3: office have different rank structures, so I'm interpreting chief public
Speaker 3: Defender as he is, in essence, the top administrator for
Speaker 3: the public defender's office probably has had a very significant
Speaker 3: legal career and then promoted up through the ranks. So
Speaker 3: I'm somewhat surprised she's at the time twenty eight and
Speaker 3: she's dating the chief public defender. You know, in court
Speaker 3: they would be bumping into each all the time, so
Speaker 3: you could see where they would be getting to know
Speaker 3: each other. Just because of the court I would expect
Speaker 3: him to be older. How old is he?
Speaker 2: So what I'm reading about Ferris is that he represented
Speaker 2: some of the Capitol's most notorious killers. He died in
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen at eighty four, so he was born in
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty, so he was forty. Okay, But I mean,
Speaker 2: is that a conflict of interest? Would you think that
Speaker 2: would be a conflict of interest or now?
Speaker 3: No, you know, because the court reporter really is a
Speaker 3: part of that neutral party of the court, you know,
Speaker 3: So I don't see where there would be any issues
Speaker 3: there at all.
Speaker 2: Okay, So this is an exciting time in her life.
Speaker 2: She's planning her wedding, she's trying on dresses, looking forward
Speaker 2: to the future, and you know, as I sometimes do,
Speaker 2: I wanted you to see what she looks like. So
Speaker 2: open up your document that I sent you and look
Speaker 2: on page one, but don't go past page one, and
Speaker 2: then you'll see a photo of Nancy.
Speaker 3: I see a photo of Nancy. It's a crop photo.
Speaker 3: There appears to be maybe a man's arm around, you know,
Speaker 3: around her shoulder, like he was standing next to her
Speaker 3: holding her but he's been cropped out. So taking a
Speaker 3: look at the photo of Nancy, it's I mean, she's
Speaker 3: attractive woman. She's got the old style hair. I'm not
Speaker 3: sure what you'd call that, like a boufont or something.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 2: That's a big that's a big head of hair. I
Speaker 2: love it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 2: She was stylish, yeah.
Speaker 3: You know. And it's that's like when I do the
Speaker 3: cases from this era, you know, that's part of the
Speaker 3: the interesting aspect is looking at you know, the victims
Speaker 3: in terms of in life, you know, the family photos
Speaker 3: or whatever. You know, it was a different era.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we are in wedding planning phase, right, and
Speaker 2: she's supposed to quit around November thirtieth. So now we
Speaker 2: go back a couple of more weeks. It's probably about
Speaker 2: two and a half weeks, and we're on Monday, October
Speaker 2: twenty sixth, nineteen seventy and this is where people start
Speaker 2: becoming alarmed about this story. She doesn't come to work
Speaker 2: that day, so this is her last few weeks of
Speaker 2: work essentially, and she doesn't show up. Nobody can reach
Speaker 2: her by phone. She has a phone at home, of course,
Speaker 2: no cell phone because it's nineteen seventy. But you know,
Speaker 2: she's a phone at home and nobody can get a
Speaker 2: hold of her. They think that this is odd, of course,
Speaker 2: and out of character, because she's a very reliable person.
Speaker 2: Somebody reaches out to Nancy's sister, whose name is Linda,
Speaker 2: and they want to know if she has any information.
Speaker 2: So her sister does some brainstorming, and then about ten
Speaker 2: o'clock she calls a family friend who's a guy named
Speaker 2: Jack Moncreef. He lives in the same apartment building as Nancy.
Speaker 2: So she's on the second floor and Jack is on
Speaker 2: the first floor, just beneath her, and over the phone, Jack,
Speaker 2: who is looking out his window towards the building's parking lot,
Speaker 2: he says, to Linda, your sister's car is here. She's
Speaker 2: in the parking lot, and he said, you know, I'll
Speaker 2: go upstairs and make sure she's okay. But when Jack
Speaker 2: knocks on Nancy's door, she doesn't answer and the door's locked.
Speaker 2: So let's pause here so that you can kind of
Speaker 2: gather your thoughts on what we have. I know it's
Speaker 2: pretty vague right now. Nobody's seen her since it sounds
Speaker 2: like Sunday, and her car is in the parking lot.
Speaker 2: She was expected to be at home anyway, she was
Speaker 2: in for the night, and her door is locked. And
Speaker 2: Jack will say in a minute, he doesn't see anybody
Speaker 2: jimmy ing anything open. There doesn't look like any violence
Speaker 2: that's happened on the exterior of that door.
Speaker 3: You know, this sounds like the you know, prototypical. We
Speaker 3: need to do a welfare check. You know, Nancy is
Speaker 3: a very responsible woman, has a stable job, has not
Speaker 3: had this type of absence. And the fact that her
Speaker 3: car is in the parking lot and her apartment is locked,
Speaker 3: it's like, well, she in the apartment has has she
Speaker 3: suffered some sort of health issue, you know, like say
Speaker 3: she had a stroke, or has foul play happened? Again?
Speaker 3: Was she a victim inside the apartment or was she
Speaker 3: a victim that has been abducted away from this location taken?
Speaker 3: And let's say in the offender's vehicle.
Speaker 2: If you are Jack, do you if we have three doors,
Speaker 2: do you try to find another way in because you're
Speaker 2: worried about your friend? Do you contact the apartment manager
Speaker 2: to try to get a key, or you just fought
Speaker 2: out call the police because you're worried at this point, well.
Speaker 3: I think, you know, at this point, I'm not sure
Speaker 3: what you know, how much concerned Linda is expressing just like, hey,
Speaker 3: this is unusual. So I imagine Jack is just kind
Speaker 3: of you know, walked around the perimeter of what he
Speaker 3: can of this apartment. Are there any open you know,
Speaker 3: are there any windows where he can have you know,
Speaker 3: visibility inside? And then eventually that's where it's like, well,
Speaker 3: let's get the apartment manager and have that you know,
Speaker 3: person go in. That's typically what ends up happening. And
Speaker 3: then then if something's discovered, if something bad is discovered,
Speaker 3: now you're getting law enforcement role in out.
Speaker 2: Okay, but what if they open the door and she's
Speaker 2: sleeping with another guy or you know, something else is happening.
Speaker 2: I mean, you're running that risk of a manager using
Speaker 2: the key when all this woman wanted was privacy.
Speaker 3: And locked her door, right, you know, And so that
Speaker 3: sometimes happens. You know, sometimes you know, law enforcement does
Speaker 3: a welfare check and see something where they have to
Speaker 3: force themselves in and turns out, well, the person was
Speaker 3: just living their life and didn't want to be disturbed.
Speaker 3: But some you know, private party on the outside, whether
Speaker 3: it be a family member, or somebody else has called
Speaker 3: law enforcement say hey, can you check you know, because
Speaker 3: this is not this is not right.
Speaker 2: That's why we're looking for patterns. Right, she didn't show
Speaker 2: up to work. That was weird. Yeah, and her car
Speaker 2: is in the parking lot. Okay, So Jack does what
Speaker 2: you say. He finds the apartment manager. It's a guy
Speaker 2: named Victor Anderson. And see, now we've already come up
Speaker 2: with three or four male names, and then we've got Linda,
Speaker 2: so this is kind of a big cast. So Victor
Speaker 2: is the apartment manager. They go up this second floor
Speaker 2: to Nancy's apartment. He uses his master key. They get inside,
Speaker 2: and they look around the apartment. Nothing's happening, nothing seems touched.
Speaker 2: And then they get into the bedroom and that's where
Speaker 2: they find Nancy and she is deceased and she's laying
Speaker 2: down in a pool of blood in her bedroom. And
Speaker 2: I actually have a photo that Maren was able to
Speaker 2: grab off of a TV show. She sometimes has to
Speaker 2: do this when we can't figure out where photos are.
Speaker 2: She'll just take her camera and take a photo of
Speaker 2: it so that we can at least show you some stuff.
Speaker 2: She has a photo that this show cut out that
Speaker 2: shows the position of her body, and then of course,
Speaker 2: you know, we'll have medical examiner stuff, and then there's
Speaker 2: how everybody reacts to this. So what do you want
Speaker 2: to do first.
Speaker 3: Well, just describe what they see, Okay.
Speaker 2: So he rushes back down to the apartment and he
Speaker 2: tells Linda that you know, this is what's happened. She's dead.
Speaker 2: I don't know anything about it. She's face down and
Speaker 2: she's has blood everywhere. The police arrive and here's what
Speaker 2: the scene is. She is naked except for a pair
Speaker 2: of under where she has more than thirty stab wounds.
Speaker 2: Many of these are on the front of her body.
Speaker 2: But investigators also think that Nancy's attacker rolled her over
Speaker 2: so onto her stomach before he tried to or she
Speaker 2: tried to decapitate her. She has defensive wounds on her
Speaker 2: hands and arms, and there is a large slash on
Speaker 2: her leg, suggesting that she might have put up a fight.
Speaker 2: And I have a photo of the position of the body,
Speaker 2: but it's been cut out just for you know, privacy sake,
Speaker 2: I guess. And then there are some other clues at
Speaker 2: the scene. But that's where we are. Thirty stab wounds
Speaker 2: and there is evidence of sexual assault.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I'm looking at a photo and this is
Speaker 3: a photo that shows on the left hand side of
Speaker 3: the photo appears to be the bed, and then you
Speaker 3: have this white almost like a mannequin laying face down
Speaker 3: on the floor. So somehow, you know, with computer graphics,
Speaker 3: they were able to very precisely remove the visual aspect
Speaker 3: of Nancy, but maintain the proportions of her body, the
Speaker 3: arms being folded up, the legs kind of sticking straight out,
Speaker 3: and then it appears that her head might be on
Speaker 3: what looks like a pillow with some blood staining on
Speaker 3: the pillow. I don't know if they remove so let's
Speaker 3: say the blood pool or any other of the blood
Speaker 3: patterns that may have been present, if they digitally remove
Speaker 3: those from this photo, because that's what I'd be interested
Speaker 3: in taking a look at. Plus, I'd want to see
Speaker 3: the stab wounds. I want to see the types of
Speaker 3: blood flows out of the stab wounds to indicate the motion.
Speaker 3: You know, you imagine that the offender is probably initially
Speaker 3: attacking her and they're face to face. That's why she
Speaker 3: has a lot of these stab wounds to the front
Speaker 3: of her plus the defensive injuries, you know, and a
Speaker 3: lot of the blood in stabbing scenes often come from
Speaker 3: cuts to the hands, cut to the arms. And now
Speaker 3: during during the commotion, during the battle, you're now getting
Speaker 3: blood being flung off from the limbs.
Speaker 2: Is that blood on the pillow? Do you think is that?
Speaker 2: I mean, I know it looks kind of weird with
Speaker 2: this photo, and they've obviously altered some stuff, But does
Speaker 2: that Is that a big blood pooling on the pillow
Speaker 2: that her head's face down in?
Speaker 3: You know, well, it's it's hard to say how big
Speaker 3: that that blood pool is. What ends up happening is
Speaker 3: is you get the fabric the blood flows through capillary
Speaker 3: reaction spreads as as the blood feeds that fabric. So oftentimes,
Speaker 3: you know, it looks a lot larger than the amount
Speaker 3: of blood that was probably deposited. But if if she's
Speaker 3: if he tried to decapitate her, and if she may
Speaker 3: have already been dead at this point, her heart isn't pumping,
Speaker 3: but there could be a significant amount of blood from
Speaker 3: what I'm assuming is going to be a cut neck,
Speaker 3: a cut throat, and that would all be underneath her.
Speaker 2: Okay, so this is something unusual, I think, And you
Speaker 2: could tell me what you think about the police theory.
Speaker 2: Near Nancy's body and now I don't think you can
Speaker 2: see that in the photo, but I have a separate photo.
Speaker 2: Near her body, police find a bloody piece of masking
Speaker 2: tape which has been curled into a circle shape, kind
Speaker 2: of like a band aid that you would put on
Speaker 2: the tip of your finger. I think. Okay, they theorized
Speaker 2: that the murderer had wrapped tape around each of his
Speaker 2: fingers to hide his prints. I don't know why you
Speaker 2: wouldn't just wear gloves, but that's what they think. And
Speaker 2: one of these popped off. That of course, suggests to
Speaker 2: them that there is pre planning involved here, which I
Speaker 2: think probably is the case. Anyway, what do you think
Speaker 2: about that theory? Number one and number two? If you
Speaker 2: look on I think it's page three, you'll see what
Speaker 2: they're talking about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was when you initially described it. I was like,
Speaker 3: that doesn't sound right, but this does look like you know,
Speaker 3: in essence, it looks like a band aid that was
Speaker 3: over the end of a finger. Yeah, and it appears
Speaker 3: to be quite bloody. You know, why would the offender
Speaker 3: wear something like that? You know, it's possible maybe he
Speaker 3: had you know, some pre existing cut and that was
Speaker 3: all he had available to put on his finger and
Speaker 3: it just is coincidental that it drops off during during
Speaker 3: the attack on Nancy. Now, back during this era in
Speaker 3: the nineteen seventies, fingerprints is the primary concern of the
Speaker 3: offenders because that's how law enforcement could actually identify you.
Speaker 3: And so these offenders will try, you know, a variety
Speaker 3: of different things to hide their fingerprints from being from
Speaker 3: leaving their fingerprints behind, you know. Most commonly it's wearing gloves,
Speaker 3: you know, but you do have some offenders that will,
Speaker 3: you know, they've they've tried to use sandpaper to file down,
Speaker 3: you know, the ends of their fingers and try and
Speaker 3: you know, put glue you know, on the ends of
Speaker 3: their fingers, you know. And it's just sometimes some of
Speaker 3: these alterations just make their fingerprints more unique, particularly when
Speaker 3: it's scars. So I'm not sure what's going on here
Speaker 3: just yet, but yeah, that is odd. But it also
Speaker 3: is potentially a great source of offender DNA.
Speaker 2: And it looks like they've saved that, which is good.
Speaker 2: And there's more DNA floating around that I can tell
Speaker 2: you about. So we've got that finger covering, they say,
Speaker 2: investigators don't think that the killer intentionally took, of course,
Speaker 2: this piece of tape off and left it behind. They
Speaker 2: think it slipped off in the struggle. And there's a knife,
Speaker 2: which we know gets really bloody and people get cut
Speaker 2: when they stab people, so it looks like because of
Speaker 2: the defensive wounds, she was fighting back to begin with.
Speaker 2: There's no murder weapon found at the scene, but a
Speaker 2: pathologist will later guess that it was a very sharp
Speaker 2: knife with a three or four inch long blade that
Speaker 2: was used to kill Nancy. Is that because he found
Speaker 2: a pattern of depth that showed kind of a consistency.
Speaker 2: Is that where he would have come.
Speaker 3: Up with that, right? So, and this is where sometimes
Speaker 3: the size of the knife can be exaggerated because they
Speaker 3: will misinterpret the wounds. So you think about aspects on
Speaker 3: your body. Let's say a stabbing to your abdomen where
Speaker 3: there's no bony structure underneath, So a very short blade
Speaker 3: you can push much deeper into the abdomen, and so
Speaker 3: the stab wound is much deeper than the actual length
Speaker 3: of the blade. So for the pathologists to kind of
Speaker 3: conclude this was a three to four inch long blade,
Speaker 3: I'm assuming he's looking at a stab wound in let's
Speaker 3: say the chest area where now you have the ribs,
Speaker 3: you're not getting that compression, and probably found a stab
Speaker 3: wound that wasn't significantly distorted. When a stabbing is occurring
Speaker 3: and the victim is moving, oftentimes the stab wounds the
Speaker 3: knife cuts you stab in, but then the victim kind
Speaker 3: of moves and now the stab wound is much larger
Speaker 3: looking than what the actual width of the blade is.
Speaker 3: And so that's where pathologist has to evaluate the stab
Speaker 3: wounds and find a stab wound in which it would
Speaker 3: be okay, this is not a compressible area on the body,
Speaker 3: and it doesn't appear that the knife cut sideways if
Speaker 3: you will, while it was in the body. So that's
Speaker 3: where he can take a look and go, okay, it's
Speaker 3: a it's a single edge blade, or it's a double
Speaker 3: edged blade. It's so long, it's you know, it has
Speaker 3: a certain width, and starts forming opinions in terms of
Speaker 3: the type of knife. Is a pocket knife? Is this
Speaker 3: something you know that that's like a bowie knife, a big,
Speaker 3: you know, big like hunting type of knife.
Speaker 2: If this turns out to be a stranger versus you know,
Speaker 2: somebody in her social circle. Do you think that you
Speaker 2: know what I hear a lot is that term overkill,
Speaker 2: thirty stand wounds trying to decapitate her. I hear that
Speaker 2: assumption a lot that this must be something personal, And
Speaker 2: I think you've said before absolutely doesn't have to be
Speaker 2: personal at all. It could be pure anger or control
Speaker 2: or whatever it is. So why don't we talk a
Speaker 2: little bit about dispelling that myth too?
Speaker 3: Well? I think you know it is not uncommon to
Speaker 3: have this number of stab wounds. Stabbings occur, they can
Speaker 3: be very quick, and I've previously talked about I'm not
Speaker 3: sure if it was with you or or in a
Speaker 3: different setting, but just watch prison shankings. You know, they'll
Speaker 3: release the videos of some guy walking across the yard
Speaker 3: and another guy comes up and all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: he's stabbing him with a shank, and within seconds there's
Speaker 3: ten twenty stab wounds on the victim. In those situations.
Speaker 3: Here with Nancy, you know she is being attacked and
Speaker 3: who knows what type of interactions occurred between the offender
Speaker 3: and Nancy prior to the stabbing starting. But once that
Speaker 3: stabbing starts, they often can go very quick in terms
Speaker 3: of the number of wounds, and it's not like the
Speaker 3: offender is sitting there counting one, two, three, it's just
Speaker 3: boom boom, boom boom. She's still moving, you know, and
Speaker 3: the offender is just trying to get get control it. Ultimately,
Speaker 3: you know, in something like with Nancy, you know, it's
Speaker 3: when is she going to die? When's she going to
Speaker 3: stop moving? I would be looking more if there is
Speaker 3: something really significant about the location of the stab wounds.
Speaker 3: I mean, this could be tough, but like I have
Speaker 3: some you know, some of these women victim cases. You
Speaker 3: know there's some significant mutilation and you can see a
Speaker 3: focus let's say, you know, a stabbing to the left eye.
Speaker 3: You know, why did the offender do that? When I
Speaker 3: see that in multiple cases, like it's a serial killer,
Speaker 3: it's not just the number of stab wounds, but also
Speaker 3: how is the offender utilizing that knife? And there's so
Speaker 3: many different ways and all, you know, each case can
Speaker 3: be different. So right now I'm going to assume that
Speaker 3: there isn't anything that I'm going, oh, there's a significant
Speaker 3: behavior with how the offender stabbed the victim. This was
Speaker 3: more a matter of getting control over the victim and
Speaker 3: killing the victim during the dynamics of this, you know,
Speaker 3: offender victim interaction, the cutting of the throat, and I
Speaker 3: would want to know why they thought he was trying
Speaker 3: to decap Did it appear that the knife was being
Speaker 3: used to try to saw through the vertebrae like significant,
Speaker 3: like to literally remove her head or are they just
Speaker 3: assuming because you know, homicidal's throat cuts, I mean typically
Speaker 3: go all the way through the neck with a sharp knife,
Speaker 3: So they just maybe making an assumption he tried to
Speaker 3: cut her head off. I would say, what he's doing
Speaker 3: is he's ensuring she's dead, you know. And this is
Speaker 3: part of what people don't recognize, you know. And I
Speaker 3: saw this with Golden State killer Joseph DiAngelo. Just because
Speaker 3: they're a serial killer doesn't mean that they're an expert
Speaker 3: on how to kill somebody, right, And I saw at
Speaker 3: DiAngelo he would check and some of his homicide victims,
Speaker 3: even though they're bludgeoned, he's checking, he's poking them, are
Speaker 3: you alive? With this case, that throat cut could just
Speaker 3: be merely that offender is making sure Nancy is dead
Speaker 3: when he or she walks out of that apartment. It's
Speaker 3: just like an offender maybe strangles a victim and then
Speaker 3: puts a ties a ligature on the victim to ensure
Speaker 3: that that victim is not going to come back to life.
Speaker 2: And it sounds like she's really fighting because, as I
Speaker 2: said before, she has several defensive wounds on her hands,
Speaker 2: in her arms, she's got the slash on her leg.
Speaker 2: It sounds like she was really fighting. But let's go
Speaker 2: outside the bedroom for a moment, because the police are
Speaker 2: trying to figure out what else happened in the apartment,
Speaker 2: of anything, to just get some clues on who this
Speaker 2: might have been. The bedroom is obviously where the scene
Speaker 2: of the action has been, but there's nothing touched in
Speaker 2: the rest of the apartment, which I'm assuming is not
Speaker 2: particularly big. There wasn't forced entrees I had mentioned on
Speaker 2: her front door, and the I think robbery was pretty
Speaker 2: quickly ruled out as a motive. I think your sister
Speaker 2: came in and identified what was there and what wasn't,
Speaker 2: or another family member. It definitely seems like it was
Speaker 2: sexually motivated. They found evidence of semen in the apartment,
Speaker 2: but they were very vague about it. We don't know
Speaker 2: who this belongs to, and it doesn't seem like they
Speaker 2: collected it. They collected a lot of blood evidence includes
Speaker 2: and of course that that masking tape, but I don't
Speaker 2: think they collected the semen. And even though they don't
Speaker 2: say explicitly that she was raped, there saying that there's
Speaker 2: obviously been sexual violence that's happened here. So that's where
Speaker 2: they settle on that this is, you know, a sexually
Speaker 2: motivated attack. And I'm assuming you would agree with that.
Speaker 3: You have a nude female that's what stabbed to death
Speaker 3: in her apartment, I would say, in all likelihood it's
Speaker 3: sexually motivated. You know. Now, could there have been let's say,
Speaker 3: consensual sex between Nancy and the offender, whoever that is,
Speaker 3: and then an argument ensues and now the offender kills Nancy,
Speaker 3: you know, so it's the sex aspect is not related
Speaker 3: to the violence. You had mentioned early on in the
Speaker 3: description that she's nude except her underwear is still on.
Speaker 3: Is it like completely on her, like she in normal,
Speaker 3: like she's just wearing it? Yes, you know, and there's
Speaker 3: different ways to interpret that. You know, that's part of
Speaker 3: taking a look at blood patterns and every thing else.
Speaker 3: Did she have that on, you know, prior to the
Speaker 3: stabbing start. You know, it is again was her consensual interaction?
Speaker 3: And she starts to redress and then things go sideways.
Speaker 3: Did the offender redresser? Because offenders do redress their victims
Speaker 3: for whatever reason. And then of course with the semen evidence,
Speaker 3: you know, it sounds like they're finding a semen stain
Speaker 3: on the bedding or on a pillow.
Speaker 2: Your ear, the body. We don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, until DNA technology came along, you know, it's really
Speaker 3: hard to say, well, is that something from a prior
Speaker 3: consensual encounter or is this something that the offender left behind.
Speaker 3: I'm surprised that there they must just be looking at
Speaker 3: here's a krusty stain. They could see it, but they
Speaker 3: don't collect it. And it's typically requires the lab to
Speaker 3: verify that, yes, that's a semen stain. But nineteen seventy
Speaker 3: you could do very very little in terms of all
Speaker 3: basically you could say, yeah, that semen, there's a sexual
Speaker 3: aspect here, but you can't You couldn't really type it
Speaker 3: back to a particular person. And of course they didn't
Speaker 3: know about the DNA that that semen stain would have contained.
Speaker 2: Well, that's what my question was going to be in
Speaker 2: the seventies or earlier. What would be the motivation to
Speaker 2: collect a semen's stain and preserve it as evidence if
Speaker 2: the only thing we could really use biologically actually in
Speaker 2: the seventies was blood typing and that was it. Would
Speaker 2: they just think, well, we're just going to collect this
Speaker 2: for some future thing or what.
Speaker 3: It's evidence of a crime. You know, we have statutes
Speaker 3: for you know, different sex based crimes, and so that
Speaker 3: semen is evidence that a sexual crime had been committed,
Speaker 3: depending on where it's deposited and everything else. So that's
Speaker 3: just part of normal proper crime scene investigative processes. You
Speaker 3: collect this evidence, even though at that point in the
Speaker 3: nineteen seventies you couldn't do much in Nancy's case. You know,
Speaker 3: right now, I don't know enough about the semen stain,
Speaker 3: but it's that is a significant item of evidence, and
Speaker 3: it may just come back to you know, her fiance
Speaker 3: from a prior sexual encounter, or it could be the offender,
Speaker 3: you know, and that could be what could have been
Speaker 3: used to solve the case if it had been collected.
Speaker 2: Now this question might seem a little odd, but would
Speaker 2: you be able to tell within a certain time period
Speaker 2: if the man who contributed to the semen if he
Speaker 2: was sterile or not compared to you know, a different man,
Speaker 2: and would that be in some case be somewhat helpful
Speaker 2: at least like exonerate the husband or something. If there's
Speaker 2: clearly a sample where the semen is not normal.
Speaker 3: Well, the forensic testing does not address fertility per se.
Speaker 3: What we look at is we look at are there
Speaker 3: sperm present? You know, So if we have a stain
Speaker 3: and are able to through testing determined this is a
Speaker 3: semen stain, but it's a sperm there's no sperm present, Well,
Speaker 3: that could be due to a genetic condition, but often
Speaker 3: it's due to a vasectomy. And so now that could
Speaker 3: be you know expressed. We're now during an interview, you know,
Speaker 3: let's say, you know, the fiancee Ferris was like, have
Speaker 3: you had a physeectomy? You know, and so even back
Speaker 3: in nineteen seventy you could say, okay, so that possibly
Speaker 3: is Ferris a semen there from a prior consentual encounter.
Speaker 3: Because it's a it doesn't have the sperm present. In
Speaker 3: part I mean, there's I could go into a you know,
Speaker 3: much deeper dive in terms of how we you know,
Speaker 3: interpret you know what we're seeing underneath the microscope when
Speaker 3: it comes to semen, when it comes to sperm, when
Speaker 3: the sperm was deposited, et cetera.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about now, blood one of my favorite things.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about the exit and what they think happened. So,
Speaker 2: no front door that's been locked, no violence outside of
Speaker 2: the bedroom, no robbery outside of the bedroom, and then
Speaker 2: how does this person get out? So police look and
Speaker 2: there's a bloody trail. And I'm going to put trail
Speaker 2: in quotes because it sounds more like droplets. But okay,
Speaker 2: you can see where this person went. There's a bloody
Speaker 2: trail leading through the sliding glass door. So she's got
Speaker 2: a door in her bedroom. There's a balcony on the
Speaker 2: other side of her bedroom, and then there's, you know,
Speaker 2: a staircase that goes down. They see this bloody trail
Speaker 2: going from the sliding glass door that opens to her balcony,
Speaker 2: looks out onto the back of the apartment building, and
Speaker 2: on the balcony they find another piece of that bloody
Speaker 2: tape that I showed you before. It seems like they're right.
Speaker 2: He must have put it on several of his fingers
Speaker 2: all of his fingers, which I mean, just as a
Speaker 2: side note, just seems a little laborious or inefficient or something.
Speaker 2: I don't think i've ever heard that before, somebody doing
Speaker 2: something like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, it's odd. You know, it's almost as if
Speaker 3: you remember those true detective magazines. Yeah, you know, it's possible.
Speaker 3: This guy was just reading a story and you know
Speaker 3: in that story, you know the offender and you know
Speaker 3: in the story had done something like that, so he thought, well,
Speaker 3: that's a way to possibly do it. Seems odd, but
Speaker 3: it appears that you know, masking tape is not very
Speaker 3: sticky to begin with, but also if it's now truly
Speaker 3: getting saturated with blood, it's now coming off right, and
Speaker 3: that appears to be what's happening here.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and it's great evidence, thank goodness. So you
Speaker 2: know they collect that tape. Also, when you were talking
Speaker 2: about that, it reminds me of all of the bad,
Speaker 2: botched kidnappings that we've dealt with on this show, where
Speaker 2: it's clear people have watched bad, hard boiled detective movies
Speaker 2: or read the books and they think that you're supposed
Speaker 2: to make things as complicated as possible, and then you
Speaker 2: know it all goes awry, the bloody trail drops down
Speaker 2: about thirteen feet onto the ground below, where the killer
Speaker 2: appears to have left some shoe prints. So I don't think.
Speaker 2: Let me look real quick. So he's on the balcony,
Speaker 2: there's the bloody tape, and then the bloody trail drops
Speaker 2: off about thirteen feet. Okay, So I'm gonna go back
Speaker 2: and say I was not right. There was not a staircase,
Speaker 2: so he would have had to have dropped down thirteen
Speaker 2: feet onto the ground and that's where the drops commence.
Speaker 2: And they said that the killer appeared to have left
Speaker 2: shoe prints in the dirt. Another good thing. They said
Speaker 2: that they were made by a quote casual boating shoe.
Speaker 2: I almost look that up because I don't know what
Speaker 2: that is. It seems kind of speculative, but maybe not.
Speaker 2: I mean, would you you would have now been able
Speaker 2: to identify kind of a combat boot versus you know,
Speaker 2: a lady's shoe, So I don't Maybe this isn't speculative.
Speaker 3: Well, we use outsai the you know, the tread patterns
Speaker 3: all the time to determine make and model the shoe
Speaker 3: and even possibly the size range of the shoe that
Speaker 3: the offender was wearing. So I'm not sure what the
Speaker 3: tread pattern for this would look like. I'm envisioning like
Speaker 3: a deck shoe. He almost like a topsider type shoe.
Speaker 3: And so maybe there was sufficient detail that indicated this
Speaker 3: is the type of shoe that they're looking for. You know,
Speaker 3: in this day and age, there are you know, tread
Speaker 3: databases that we can we would end up like back
Speaker 3: when I was doing this in the nineties, we would
Speaker 3: take a photo of the bottom of the shoe impression
Speaker 3: that we got from the you know cast at the
Speaker 3: crime scene, and that could go to the FBI, and
Speaker 3: then they could search their database and give us a
Speaker 3: list of possible makes and models of shoes. And then
Speaker 3: now I'm at a shoe store flipping shoes trying to
Speaker 3: find you know what match. So I'm imagining they probably
Speaker 3: went through that type of process.
Speaker 2: So, because I am a crack researcher and know how
Speaker 2: to type into Google it's a moccasin, I would not
Speaker 2: call this a boat shoe these days, but I mean
Speaker 2: that's what they were. So this is would you think
Speaker 2: this is distinct?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, that's exactly like when I said topsider,
Speaker 3: that's exactly what I was envisioning is that style of shoe.
Speaker 3: You know, in terms of what's unique or not, it's
Speaker 3: that tread pattern. You know, what did they recover at
Speaker 3: the crime scene. You know, is there something unique about
Speaker 3: the tread pattern from a particular brand of this topsider
Speaker 3: boat shoe or how they go? Okay, it's this type
Speaker 3: of shoe. On how how rare is this shoe? You know,
Speaker 3: most shoes are not very rare, so oftentimes you don't
Speaker 3: get investigative leads, but you have to at least consider
Speaker 3: there's a chance that this is an unusual shoe. You know,
Speaker 3: where is it sold? Is there a customer you know,
Speaker 3: database that you can get from the store, like they
Speaker 3: use credit cards and you start checking the box.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know how helpful that shoe was, but
Speaker 2: I thought the boat shoe part of it was interesting. Okay,
Speaker 2: the trail of blood goes from the shoe print over
Speaker 2: to it wraps around the apartment building on the sidewalk
Speaker 2: and ends in the parking lot. So then, of course
Speaker 2: the police say, because it ends in the parking lot
Speaker 2: and goes nowhere else, that suggests that the person hopped
Speaker 2: in a car and left. Does that make sense to you.
Speaker 3: It does, and at all, you know, the extent of
Speaker 3: this trail is telling me the offender is bleeding. So
Speaker 3: you think about Okay, let's say you have a bloody knife. Well,
Speaker 3: there's only so much of the victim's blood on this knife,
Speaker 3: so as you are walking away, there may be a
Speaker 3: few drips coming off of it, but it's not like
Speaker 3: there's a source of blood that's constantly feeding it, so
Speaker 3: that trail diminishes over time. Here you have a trail
Speaker 3: that's going out of the victim's apartment, down onto the
Speaker 3: ground and around the apartment complex of the parking lot
Speaker 3: that's not coming just off the knife. To me, that
Speaker 3: tells me he possibly got cut on his hand and
Speaker 3: is now as he's fleeing the victim's apartment, leaving his
Speaker 3: own blood behind. That is obviously key evidence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think he's regretting putting those little finger coverings
Speaker 2: on the tops of this. I mean, that just does
Speaker 2: not seem smart. Okay, So what they think happened is
Speaker 2: that the offender climbed onto a fence which is just
Speaker 2: outside of Nancy's apartment, pulled himself over the railing of
Speaker 2: her balcony, and then entered her bedroom through the sliding
Speaker 2: glass store. I'll explain, Okay, the sliding glass door and
Speaker 2: why they think that it's simply nobody in the seventies
Speaker 2: locked their doors, because people did lock their doors, so
Speaker 2: given the trail of blood, this is also how they
Speaker 2: think he exited.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: I don't know how helpful this photo is. I feel
Speaker 2: like I say that all the time. But if you
Speaker 2: look on page four of your nifty photo package, you'll
Speaker 2: see the back of her building trying to figure out privacy.
Speaker 2: I'm assuming we might be looking. I don't know where
Speaker 2: the parking lot would be, but you tell people what
Speaker 2: you see here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this you know I'm looking at. It's a
Speaker 3: black and white photo. Two story apartment complex. Appears that
Speaker 3: the upper story there's windows and balconies and so this sounds,
Speaker 3: you know, like the description of the sliding door for
Speaker 3: Nancy's apartment. There appears to be this fence that's in
Speaker 3: the foreground a little bit, and then pass that fence,
Speaker 3: which is very much in the foreground. There's a lot
Speaker 3: of vegetation, like biny type of vegetation growing up on
Speaker 3: two scaffolding of some sort, you know, So you know,
Speaker 3: if the offenders leaving through this, you know, this is
Speaker 3: a he's possibly getting some of this, you know, vegetable matter,
Speaker 3: you know, on his clothing, caught up in his shoes,
Speaker 3: et cetera. So that would be something from a trace
Speaker 3: evidence standpoint I would be paying attention to.
Speaker 2: I love forensic botany. I'm so fascinated by forensic botany.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, So now you kind of know. And also you
Speaker 2: can see there's privacy, so much of it has overgrown.
Speaker 2: It's not front and center. It seems like there's especially
Speaker 2: because if this happens late at night, he probably is
Speaker 2: able to slip over being unseen. And we don't have
Speaker 2: witnesses right now who say they've seen anything that the
Speaker 2: police have spoken to. Okay, so they collect the pieces
Speaker 2: of rolled up tape and they say they can't pull
Speaker 2: any prints off of these pieces of rolled up tape,
Speaker 2: and they can't produce any prints from the scene. So
Speaker 2: does that make sense? Would that be tough though from
Speaker 2: what you saw those kind of band aid looking things.
Speaker 2: Plus they're not finding any prints at the scene that
Speaker 2: they can use.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say, you know, it's possible that if
Speaker 3: he had that tape on all his fingers. It would
Speaker 3: prevent the fingertips from leaving prints, you know, but we
Speaker 3: use all the ridge patterns, so the palms, you know,
Speaker 3: the interdigital area, all of that surface area of your
Speaker 3: hands can also leave laytent prince behind that can be
Speaker 3: used to identify you. Just covering the fingertips is not
Speaker 3: necessarily going to be as effective as what this offender
Speaker 3: might might think. Now, if they're saying that they're not
Speaker 3: developing or finding prints, you can go into any residence.
Speaker 3: You're going to find prints. It's just that are they
Speaker 3: from the offender? And in this case, I would be
Speaker 3: looking to see I do I have any ridge detail
Speaker 3: in the victim's blood, because now that tells me that's
Speaker 3: a focus area for me, versus some random print that
Speaker 3: was deposited, you know, by you know, Ferris, you know,
Speaker 3: coming over to Nancy Place three weeks ago.
Speaker 2: Do my favor and go back to your photos because
Speaker 2: I forgot to ask you something. Go to page two,
Speaker 2: the body positioning one. I want to ask you about
Speaker 2: blood spatter and the patterns that you and I had
Speaker 2: talked about. So this is on a carpet, a carpet
Speaker 2: versus linoleum versus wood. What makes life easier for investigators
Speaker 2: when they're trying to look at these patterns with blood.
Speaker 2: Is it the carpet, because once blood's in there, even
Speaker 2: stomping over it might not drag it out. I would
Speaker 2: think wood floors would be terrible.
Speaker 3: Well, the easiest is typically your non porous surfaces. So
Speaker 3: when you start talking, let's say you're vinyl or linoleum floor.
Speaker 3: You know there the blood isn't necessarily getting disturbed. You
Speaker 3: imagine a blood drop hitting a vinyl floor. It makes
Speaker 3: a nice circular drop pattern, you know, that tells me
Speaker 3: it hit that vinyl floor perparticularly, versus something that's oblog
Speaker 3: tells me it struck that floor at an angle. And
Speaker 3: so I can start interpreting movements based off of that
Speaker 3: type of pattern off of that surface versus a drip
Speaker 3: onto carpet. It just gets absorbed into the texture of
Speaker 3: the carpet. And if you do have a textured surface,
Speaker 3: like a very heavily grained wood floor, that can also
Speaker 3: disrupt some of the interpretive aspects of the blood patterns.
Speaker 3: So the smooth, non porous surfaces are usually the best.
Speaker 3: Good to know.
Speaker 2: I had been wondering about that and I was waiting
Speaker 2: for kind of a carpety type case. I knew that
Speaker 2: would jog my memory. Okay, so you know, as I said,
Speaker 2: they collect the blood, and they collect all of the
Speaker 2: little finger coverings that he made, and you know, they're
Speaker 2: hoping that if they find it an offender, obviously they're going
Speaker 2: to be able to compare the blood type, which I
Speaker 2: know is not always helpful. It was helpful with the
Speaker 2: Jeffrey McDonald case. This time period actually could have been
Speaker 2: this year with four different people in the house with
Speaker 2: four different types of blood. But generally, I mean, was
Speaker 2: was blood typing something that would break a case? Do
Speaker 2: you think before DNA came along? Or was it really fingerprints?
Speaker 3: It's fingerprints back in the day. Now you know the
Speaker 3: ABO typing every now and then you'd have somebody who's
Speaker 3: you know, type B, you know, which is four percent
Speaker 3: of the population roughly, but most of the time you
Speaker 3: are dealing with A or O, you know, and that's
Speaker 3: most of the population. And then there was other things
Speaker 3: as the nineteen seventies progress, there's other types of typing
Speaker 3: that we would do, enzyme typing, protein typing, and so
Speaker 3: if you had sufficient evidence blood evidence behind you could
Speaker 3: generate a better, more discriminating profile. But it's was nothing
Speaker 3: like you know what we can do with DNA, never
Speaker 3: even approach that. But you could at least say, okay,
Speaker 3: this blood trail that's leading out to the parking lot,
Speaker 3: well that's different than the victim's blood. And so now
Speaker 3: you're excited and we go okay, so we've got a
Speaker 3: fender blood and what type is it? And then now
Speaker 3: you start talking to you know, potential suspects and part
Speaker 3: of what you could do, you know, back in the day,
Speaker 3: you could either get a direct blood sample, or you
Speaker 3: could determine secretor status and through their saliva determine their
Speaker 3: their blood type if they're a secretor you know, so
Speaker 3: there's there's ways to more rapidly screen, you know, the
Speaker 3: suspects using that blood type. Most of the time, it
Speaker 3: really didn't. You could you could eliminate, you could exclude,
Speaker 3: but the inclusion was so weak it didn't make a
Speaker 3: big difference in the cases.
Speaker 2: Well, let's see what you think about this next pieces
Speaker 2: of evidence. Here we have earwitnesses. Okay, they're trying to
Speaker 2: establish a timeline. They have interviewed in the one month,
Speaker 2: so the month of October and then intwo when she
Speaker 2: was supposed to be married, and of November. They speak
Speaker 2: to more than five hundred people, and this includes a
Speaker 2: neighbor who says that she thought she heard a baby's
Speaker 2: cry on the night that she was murdered, followed by
Speaker 2: hurried footsteps. And then there's another neighbor who heard a
Speaker 2: car pulling out of the complex. If these reports have
Speaker 2: anything to do with Nancy at all, this puts her
Speaker 2: murder or the attack and the murder somewhere between one
Speaker 2: am and two thirty am Monday morning, and then she's
Speaker 2: found some like seven or eight hours later. Okay, so
Speaker 2: what do you think about that?
Speaker 3: Well, that's probably as good as what you're going to get,
Speaker 3: you know, in terms of this baby's cry, of course,
Speaker 3: could be Nancy's, you know, screaming as she's being attacked.
Speaker 3: In the hurried footsteps. I mean, this ear witness, of course,
Speaker 3: is not necessarily going to know what law enforcement knows.
Speaker 3: And so if it's a proper interview of the witness,
Speaker 3: she is relaying sounds that are lining up with the
Speaker 3: physical evidence with the crime scene. So it kind of
Speaker 3: gives a level of veracity to what she's hearing as
Speaker 3: being related to Nancy being killed and the offender getting
Speaker 3: out of there.
Speaker 2: There is a report of an unfamiliar prowler in the
Speaker 2: area around this time. They're not saying this night, but
Speaker 2: around this time. So this is one of the more
Speaker 2: vague descriptions. Five foot nine, one hundred and seventy pounds
Speaker 2: having a Glenn Campbell style haircut. Okay, right, because you
Speaker 2: had that look on your face, I got you a
Speaker 2: photo of Glenn Campbell so you could see his haircut.
Speaker 2: That's on page five.
Speaker 3: Well, I can actually, you know what, I actually can.
Speaker 3: I can remember what he looked like. You did. I
Speaker 3: think I know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2: It's a smart cut.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, no, I absolutely, that's exactly what I was
Speaker 3: I was saying. Now, this is a fairly popular hairstyle
Speaker 3: for guys in the nineteen seventy, so it really isn't
Speaker 3: something that is all that useful. But that's interesting.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, I think it's making a comeback
Speaker 2: because I feel like half the boys at my kids'
Speaker 2: school have this sort of haircut. Now, if you go
Speaker 2: right below that, but don't go past page six, you'll
Speaker 2: see the sketch Okay, so this is what somebody said
Speaker 2: the prowler looked like. Who may or may not have
Speaker 2: anything to do with this case, but we like looking
Speaker 2: at sketches and from sketch artists, and you know, you
Speaker 2: tell me, on a scale of one to ten compared
Speaker 2: to the other ones we've had, what do you think
Speaker 2: about this sketch.
Speaker 3: I'm having a hard time seeing how they generated this.
Speaker 3: If this was through a what did we call him?
Speaker 3: It was? You had these identa sketches, these kits that
Speaker 3: had sort of standardized eyes and nose, and you could
Speaker 3: kind of piece like a jigsaw puzzle, like.
Speaker 2: A Mister Potato Head for offenders.
Speaker 3: Sort of yeah, you know, and so the you know,
Speaker 3: the the witness would sit there and say, no, the
Speaker 3: eyes are bigger or smaller, and they would just swap
Speaker 3: out those pieces here, you know, because it almost looks
Speaker 3: like that's what it is. I just can't see because
Speaker 3: you could normally see the kind of the lines between
Speaker 3: the different parts. But he doesn't look very generic. You know.
Speaker 3: There appears to be some facial details, you know, sort
Speaker 3: of this large round chin and you know, the bigger eyes,
Speaker 3: and of course that hairstyle to where I could see
Speaker 3: where that that might be a decent enough sketch for
Speaker 3: somebody go oh, I think I know who that is.
Speaker 2: Well, we'll see if it's helpful at all. So where
Speaker 2: we are now is police and Sacramento are trying to
Speaker 2: find this woman. Clearly they're working hard at it. They've
Speaker 2: interviewed five hundred people, and they are going to now
Speaker 2: start looking at her inner circle, so her fiance, her friends,
Speaker 2: they look at her own father. They're really digging around here.
Speaker 2: So we are also going to need to talk a
Speaker 2: little bit about another murder that happens that is very
Speaker 2: close and is very familiar, and it makes police wonder
Speaker 2: if there's a serial killer at work in nineteen seventy Sacramento.
Speaker 2: But this is all stuff we have to talk about
Speaker 2: next week. Of course, I know you like this case.
Speaker 2: You really you perk up with it, so I know
Speaker 2: this is kind of your thing. I find it so interesting,
Speaker 2: you know how cases were investigated, especially in the nineteen
Speaker 2: seventies when we were sort of on the edge of
Speaker 2: really being able to figure out some pretty cool stuff.
Speaker 2: But just please collect all your evidence, even if you think,
Speaker 2: Lord knows what people are not collecting right now, which
Speaker 2: could be incredibly helpful in forty years with technology. So
Speaker 2: I think that to me, so far as the lesson,
Speaker 2: please collect the semen sample.
Speaker 3: Yes please? So okay, So it sounds like we have
Speaker 3: another case that I'm going to listen to and we'll
Speaker 3: see if it's related or not.
Speaker 2: You got it? Okay, see you next week.
Speaker 3: All right? Sounds good.
Speaker 1: This has been an exactly right production.
Speaker 3: For our sources and show notes go to exactlyrightmedia dot
Speaker 3: com slash Buried Bones sources.
Speaker 1: Our senior producer is Alexis Emosi.
Speaker 3: Research by Maren mcclashan, Ali Elkin, and Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 1: Our mixing engineer is Ben Toliday.
Speaker 3: Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.
Speaker 1: Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.
Speaker 3: Executive produced by Karen Kilgaroff, Georgia hard Stark, and Daniel Kramer.
Speaker 2: You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
Speaker 2: Buried Bones.
Speaker 3: Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded
Speaker 3: Age story of murder and the race to decode the
Speaker 3: criminal mind, is available now, and.
Speaker 2: Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My life solving America's cold cases.
Speaker 1: Is also available now.
Speaker 3: Listen to Baried Bones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 3: or wherever you get your podcasts.