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Cold Case Solved After 37 Years—DNA Finally Exposes the Killer · The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories

0:04
Speaker 1: My philosophy on life.
0:06
Speaker 2: You should just be yourself and make the best of
0:08
Speaker 2: everything and smile.
0:11
Speaker 3: What did I do all the time I met Helene
0:15
Speaker 3: in the nineteen seventies. She was always smiling, always smiling.
0:21
Speaker 3: Her laughter was unique. It was just this, like a
0:25
Speaker 3: little songbird of laughter. I can still hear Helene's voice,
0:32
Speaker 3: I can still feel her presence. And that's why I
0:37
Speaker 3: made a promise to her parents that I would not
0:41
Speaker 3: rest until we found out who, why, how, and get
0:47
Speaker 3: the answers for them. And I made a promise to
0:51
Speaker 3: her because it shattered all of us.
1:24
Speaker 4: On a cold color other morning, a woman drives through
1:28
Speaker 4: Daniels Park.
1:30
Speaker 5: She was a forcer parent and she had several kids
1:33
Speaker 5: in the car. Daniels Park was wide open planes back then,
1:37
Speaker 5: so it's not a common to just be staring out
1:40
Speaker 5: the window as you're driving down, looking at the mountains,
1:42
Speaker 5: looking out sometimes wildlife. And she looked out and appeared
1:47
Speaker 5: to be a female body in the fields. She kept
1:50
Speaker 5: driving and she saw a road worker pulled over and
1:53
Speaker 5: told him what she saw, and he decided to, you know,
1:56
Speaker 5: get out of there and call the law enforcement.
1:59
Speaker 6: Douglas County officers did arrive the investigators found a younger female,
2:05
Speaker 6: probably at that point late teens early twenties, lying on
2:11
Speaker 6: her back.
2:12
Speaker 4: Douglas County Deputies called in the Colorado Bureau of Investigation
2:17
Speaker 4: to help process the disturbing scene.
2:22
Speaker 6: She was nude from the waist down, but wearing socks.
2:27
Speaker 6: Those are strong indicators that this is in a sex
2:31
Speaker 6: assault murder. It appeared that she had some kind of
2:37
Speaker 6: gag around her face and mouth, and it looked like
2:40
Speaker 6: her hands were bound behind her back. When they rolled
2:45
Speaker 6: her body over, it was clear that she had been
2:48
Speaker 6: stabbed numerous times.
2:52
Speaker 5: It was dark and wet where she had been bleeding
2:56
Speaker 5: into the ground, so they knew that this is probably
2:58
Speaker 5: where she was killed. Since there was so much loved there.
3:01
Speaker 6: You can't get a scene that has more tragedy in it.
3:06
Speaker 2: No one knew who this individual was.
3:08
Speaker 6: Law enforcement was really at that point just starting from scratch,
3:12
Speaker 6: Who is this in the field, how did she get here, and.
3:16
Speaker 2: What happened to her?
3:19
Speaker 4: Investigators scoured the area looking for evidence.
3:25
Speaker 6: Although crime scenes outside are very complicated and difficult, they
3:29
Speaker 6: can also be law enforcement's friends, and in this case,
3:32
Speaker 6: investigators at the time were able to have good tire
3:35
Speaker 6: impressions and shoe impressions of the suspect. Because it was
3:40
Speaker 6: frozen into the ground.
3:44
Speaker 5: You could see that there are two sets of footprints
3:45
Speaker 5: going in and only one set coming out, and they
3:49
Speaker 5: looked like they were like a boot, like a cowboy boot.
3:54
Speaker 5: So we now know that the crime scene occurred here
3:58
Speaker 5: because this person is walking, not being carried in, and
4:01
Speaker 5: just dropped.
4:03
Speaker 4: Hoping to identify the victim. Douglas County Deputies reach out
4:07
Speaker 4: to police in neighboring towns to see if anyone is
4:11
Speaker 4: looking for a missing woman. They don't have to wait
4:15
Speaker 4: long for an answer. Police in nearby Englewood say a
4:20
Speaker 4: twenty one year old woman was reported missing the night before.
4:25
Speaker 6: The Inglewood Police department had taken a missing person's report
4:29
Speaker 6: on January sixteenth, person that they took a report on
4:33
Speaker 6: bis Helene Presenski.
4:41
Speaker 1: Philosophy on life?
4:42
Speaker 2: Your philosophy on life?
4:43
Speaker 7: Yeah, I have one.
4:44
Speaker 5: You should just.
4:47
Speaker 2: Be yourself and make the best of everything.
4:50
Speaker 1: Smile, smile, Yeah, what did I do all the time?
4:55
Speaker 8: I first met Helene freshman year in high school. We
5:00
Speaker 8: study hall and I met her there there was a
5:04
Speaker 8: group of girls that all had the same schedule and
5:07
Speaker 8: we all made a quick close connection.
5:12
Speaker 4: Helene went to high school in Hamilton, Massachusetts, a small
5:16
Speaker 4: town north of Boston.
5:19
Speaker 8: She very much wanted to be part of the school
5:23
Speaker 8: and part of different organizations. Very much into drama, very
5:28
Speaker 8: much into the school spirit. She was into poetry, she
5:33
Speaker 8: was into singing. She had a beautiful voice.
5:36
Speaker 5: What certain things do you do well?
5:39
Speaker 3: I'm involved with a harmony, a musical group at the regional.
5:45
Speaker 9: They were a show choir before show choirs were the
5:50
Speaker 9: thing that they are right now. And Helene was a
5:54
Speaker 9: natural because she had this way of smiling when she sang,
6:03
Speaker 9: and she brought her personality to the songs. She was
6:09
Speaker 9: the youngest of three children, and her mom and dad,
6:13
Speaker 9: especially her dad, always called her baby.
6:18
Speaker 3: She was in cheerleading, she was the editor of the
6:21
Speaker 3: school newspaper. She was on the honor roll, she was
6:25
Speaker 3: in the homecoming court. She just did it all.
6:29
Speaker 4: Helene graduated high school and then left home for Wheaton
6:33
Speaker 4: College in Massachusetts, where she studied journalism. As a college senior.
6:38
Speaker 4: In nineteen seventy nine, she picked up and moved again,
6:42
Speaker 4: this time to Colorado, where she interned at a radio station.
6:47
Speaker 10: You couldn't ask for much more out of an intern.
6:50
Speaker 10: She was spot on everything that she did. I'd be
6:53
Speaker 10: in the anchor booth getting ready to do a newscast
6:57
Speaker 10: and the bulletin would come across, and she'd always rabbit
7:00
Speaker 10: and slip it to me. She was really not like
7:03
Speaker 10: an intern. She was more like a regular professional journalist.
7:08
Speaker 1: I was so impressed with her from day one because
7:12
Speaker 1: at the end of each shift she would call me
7:15
Speaker 1: on the two way and say, how can I do
7:17
Speaker 1: this better? She was a hard worker. She wanted to
7:21
Speaker 1: do her job right and worked very hard to accomplish that.
7:33
Speaker 10: It was a cold day and it looked like it
7:35
Speaker 10: was going to snow. Eleen came in the news booth
7:38
Speaker 10: and said, it's starting to snow outside, and I'm a
7:41
Speaker 10: little concerned about my bus ride home. And she said,
7:45
Speaker 10: could I leave a little bit early if I need to?
7:47
Speaker 10: I said, if you'll wait fifteen minutes, I'll give you
7:50
Speaker 10: a ride home. I said, I'd feel a lot better
7:52
Speaker 10: if you let me take you home. She thought about
7:55
Speaker 10: it for a minute and she said, now I think
7:57
Speaker 10: I'll just ride the bus left. I left the station
8:02
Speaker 10: that night to go home, which was about six fifteen.
8:07
Speaker 10: The phone rang about eight thirty or nine o'clock, and
8:11
Speaker 10: it was Helene's aunt and she said, Helene has not
8:15
Speaker 10: come home yet. Do you know if she went at
8:18
Speaker 10: someplace that I'm not aware of? And I said no.
8:21
Speaker 10: She left the station right around six o'clock, said she
8:25
Speaker 10: was going to catch the bus and go straight home.
8:31
Speaker 6: She knew something was wrong, and she called the Inglewood
8:34
Speaker 6: Police Department and reported Helen missing. The Inglewood Police Department,
8:38
Speaker 6: you know, searched the area of the bus stop that
8:41
Speaker 6: she was dropped off at, as well as where she
8:45
Speaker 6: would have been picked up at, and then kind of
8:47
Speaker 6: the route between those two the general area a you know,
8:52
Speaker 6: contacted businesses.
8:53
Speaker 2: In the area.
8:54
Speaker 6: Did they see anyone that looked like, you know, a
8:57
Speaker 6: twenty one year old young lady, you know, walking They
9:00
Speaker 6: knew the route that she walked, did anyone see her?
9:06
Speaker 4: The police aren't the only ones looking for Helene. Who worried,
9:09
Speaker 4: radio station colleagues begin a search of their own.
9:15
Speaker 10: We decided we'd go down near her aunt and uncle's
9:17
Speaker 10: house and we drive through the alleys. We knew the
9:21
Speaker 10: street that she walked from the bus to the house,
9:24
Speaker 10: so we drove that street several times. We did that
9:28
Speaker 10: for hours.
9:29
Speaker 1: We just kept hoping there's some other explanation. We just
9:33
Speaker 1: kept hoping for some miracle that she would be okay.
9:43
Speaker 1: I was at the Sheriff's office talking to a couple
9:46
Speaker 1: of investigators see if they had any idea, anything else
9:49
Speaker 1: we could do. My best friend was a captain, and
9:52
Speaker 1: he said, we just had a call from Douglas County
9:55
Speaker 1: that they found a body of a young female and
9:59
Speaker 1: they want you to go out and see if you
10:00
Speaker 1: can identify it. I just knew this had to be her.
10:04
Speaker 1: This was the only reported missing young female. I'm just
10:08
Speaker 1: sick of my stomach. I didn't want to go to
10:11
Speaker 1: the scene and identify the body, but didn't have any choice.
10:16
Speaker 1: We drove down to the location. I had to get
10:18
Speaker 1: out and walk out into the snowy field. But as
10:22
Speaker 1: soon as I got to the body, I know it
10:23
Speaker 1: was her. I instantly knew it was her. It was
10:28
Speaker 1: the worst thing I ever had to do, and it's
10:32
Speaker 1: never left my mind.
10:36
Speaker 3: On the seventeenth of January, I turned the news on.
10:41
Speaker 3: There was breaking news and they said Helen Prazinski found
10:47
Speaker 3: murdered in Denver, Colorado, and I thought, well, it's not Helene.
10:52
Speaker 3: Because they said it's Helen. But you know, I knew
10:57
Speaker 3: deep down that it most likely was her because how
10:59
Speaker 3: many Pep people have the last name Prazinski. So I
11:02
Speaker 3: had called my parents and asked them, and they told
11:06
Speaker 3: me that it was true. And then the journey began
11:12
Speaker 3: of just the shock and horror and wanting to find
11:14
Speaker 3: out what happened.
11:18
Speaker 5: It's awful for anybody the community that she lived in.
11:22
Speaker 5: You know, they're all in fear. Now, why here? Why
11:25
Speaker 5: did that happen? Could that happen to my kid? Could
11:29
Speaker 5: that happen to me?
11:39
Speaker 4: Twenty one year old Helene Prazinski has just been murdered.
11:43
Speaker 4: Her body was found discarded on the frozen plains of
11:47
Speaker 4: Douglas County, Colorado.
11:50
Speaker 5: We have a deceased body. Now we need to try
11:53
Speaker 5: understand what happened. They take her back to do an autopsy.
12:03
Speaker 5: All her clothing, everything could have evidence on it, whether
12:07
Speaker 5: it's fingerprints, whether it's hair.
12:09
Speaker 6: The corner identified that she had been stabbed nine times
12:12
Speaker 6: in the back.
12:14
Speaker 5: Cause of death was from loss of blood, and both
12:17
Speaker 5: of her lungs had collapsed.
12:19
Speaker 6: The pathologists were able to confirm that she was sexually assaulted.
12:25
Speaker 5: They were able to find some fluid, some dry fluid
12:29
Speaker 5: could possibly be solilah or could be semen. So they
12:32
Speaker 5: took samples of it and they preserved it. And in
12:36
Speaker 5: nineteen eighty nobody really knew what DNA was. But for
12:40
Speaker 5: whatever reason, the people working on this case just did
12:43
Speaker 5: a phenomenal job of preserving all of her evidence.
12:48
Speaker 6: The way that she was murdered does give an indication
12:52
Speaker 6: that this is a crime of passion, and so that
12:56
Speaker 6: sometimes leads to an individual who might know her.
13:00
Speaker 3: We were told at the brutality of the murder, it
13:03
Speaker 3: was with such rage that there was an opportunity for
13:08
Speaker 3: it to be someone that she knew.
13:10
Speaker 1: It seemed personal, but she's brand new to town. She
13:14
Speaker 1: didn't have friends outside of the radio station.
13:17
Speaker 4: Detectives questioned Helene's co workers at khow.
13:23
Speaker 10: I was contacted by several investigators after the day that
13:27
Speaker 10: Helene was found, and they wanted all the information I
13:30
Speaker 10: could give them about people that worked for many people
13:33
Speaker 10: in the radio station, anybody she had come in contact with,
13:37
Speaker 10: or if there was anybody I thought that might want
13:39
Speaker 10: to harm her.
13:41
Speaker 6: Her aunt and uncle, they were the only people that
13:44
Speaker 6: she had. She had no one else in her sphere
13:47
Speaker 6: of interest other than what she had developed for a
13:50
Speaker 6: very short period of time of two weeks at her internship.
13:55
Speaker 5: Unfortunately, nobody panned out.
14:00
Speaker 4: Helene's radio station colleagues used khow's hairwaves to help police
14:06
Speaker 4: catch her killer.
14:09
Speaker 10: We put out a ten thousand dollars reward for any information.
14:13
Speaker 10: We ran stories on the air asking people to come forward.
14:17
Speaker 5: A lady contacted law enforcement she saw a vehicle parked
14:22
Speaker 5: on the side of the road in the location that
14:24
Speaker 5: Helene's body was found. She saw a male suspect that
14:28
Speaker 5: was appeared to be kneeling down by the rear of
14:31
Speaker 5: the vehicle and looked toward her and the hazards won.
14:36
Speaker 6: Investigators used hypnosis and a crime scene sketch artist to
14:43
Speaker 6: develop a composite of a suspect that she thought she
14:48
Speaker 6: had seen.
14:51
Speaker 5: They have a composite of this white male with thick hair,
14:56
Speaker 5: kind of part of the side with the mustache, but
14:59
Speaker 5: it was aired and nothing ever came of it.
15:05
Speaker 4: Back at her hometown, Eleen's friends and family are shocked
15:10
Speaker 4: and heartbroken that the young woman they all love is
15:13
Speaker 4: gone forever.
15:16
Speaker 3: Going to her wake and her funeral was surreal, absolutely surreal,
15:26
Speaker 3: but it was.
15:26
Speaker 8: Very hard to get through. I remember sitting there surrounded
15:31
Speaker 8: by my friends. We all held hands, we all cried
15:34
Speaker 8: a lot.
15:37
Speaker 9: There was a casket there with roses draped over the casket.
15:45
Speaker 3: What could we say to her parents? When I looked
15:48
Speaker 3: at them, all the light had gone out of them
15:52
Speaker 3: and their eyes were just hollow, and it was just
15:57
Speaker 3: really hard. They were never the same.
16:13
Speaker 4: Investigators run down a trickle of leads, but more than
16:17
Speaker 4: a year after the murder, the case goes cold.
16:21
Speaker 5: There just wasn't any more leads for detectives to go
16:24
Speaker 5: off of. In the eighties, DNA wasn't something that you
16:28
Speaker 5: can go test to figure out who it was. There
16:30
Speaker 5: were no fingerprints, so the case became a cold case.
16:35
Speaker 1: I gave up all hope that they would ever find
16:38
Speaker 1: the god. I thought they would never find him.
16:43
Speaker 4: The years passed without any news on Heleen's case until
16:48
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty four, when the investigation gets a jumpstart.
16:53
Speaker 5: Did you kill a group?
16:56
Speaker 2: Is that gil and there's a great thing around her neck?
16:59
Speaker 10: Ye?
17:01
Speaker 2: You remember her for sure?
17:02
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's no doubt in your mind.
17:05
Speaker 2: No doubt.
17:13
Speaker 4: Four years after a twenty one year old Helene Prazinski
17:16
Speaker 4: was brutally murdered investigators get a hot lead. Two men
17:22
Speaker 4: who claim they've killed hundreds of women say that Helene
17:27
Speaker 4: is one of their victims.
17:36
Speaker 8: Okay, the time is eleven twenty am.
17:38
Speaker 2: Or back in a interview with hot as school.
17:41
Speaker 1: Do you remember if you were sitting at the bus
17:43
Speaker 1: stop waiting for somebody to get off or I wouldn't.
17:46
Speaker 7: Just pull up on the bus stop wait for somebody
17:48
Speaker 7: get off.
17:48
Speaker 1: Of the bus and asked me what that was this
17:50
Speaker 1: girl right at the bus stop?
17:51
Speaker 10: Or was she?
17:52
Speaker 5: I say she was waiting for the bullets. I was
17:55
Speaker 5: daring to show a coal out there too? Is it
17:58
Speaker 5: snow an outside? Somebody comes in the hof was a riot?
18:00
Speaker 5: And who take the richet and wait nothing?
18:04
Speaker 6: Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole were known as serial
18:09
Speaker 6: killers in the United States and had confessed to a
18:14
Speaker 6: number of murders across the United States. They had been
18:19
Speaker 6: in Colorado had claimed to have murdered Helene Prazinski.
18:24
Speaker 10: She was found in a field, which.
18:28
Speaker 7: May open the fields four round.
18:32
Speaker 6: It was a huge deal for the investigators at the
18:34
Speaker 6: time because it went cold and all of a sudden,
18:36
Speaker 6: here these two individuals, who for all intensive purposes were
18:41
Speaker 6: really capable of committing this type of crime.
18:45
Speaker 1: Do you remember having to stopped the car because she
18:47
Speaker 1: was causing the trouble?
18:48
Speaker 8: Well, Henry.
18:53
Speaker 6: During the interview with these two individuals, investigators were getting
18:58
Speaker 6: a lot of information that I was common in the
19:03
Speaker 6: Helene crime scene, that she was abducted, that she's taken
19:08
Speaker 6: to a field, that she was sexually assaulted, that she
19:12
Speaker 6: was stabbed, and then one of them said that they
19:18
Speaker 6: had shot her in the head. That caused the investigators
19:23
Speaker 6: to pause it because we know that that didn't occur.
19:29
Speaker 11: Everything you told us today about that girl that would
19:31
Speaker 11: showed you the picture of that's true.
19:33
Speaker 7: Yeah, you can't just make that if out of your mind.
19:37
Speaker 5: You don't think I'm the smart do you have to
19:39
Speaker 5: make upon These guys didn't kill Eleen, They had nothing
19:44
Speaker 5: to do with the murder of Eleen, and they weren't
19:46
Speaker 5: telling the truth.
19:48
Speaker 6: These two individuals were able to draw information out of
19:50
Speaker 6: the cops and then parlay that into a confession, and
19:55
Speaker 6: they were doing that pretty readily.
19:57
Speaker 2: In this case.
19:58
Speaker 6: They were just trying to be the most notorious killers
20:03
Speaker 6: in America, and so they were confessing to a lot
20:07
Speaker 6: of stuff.
20:09
Speaker 1: Do you remember stabbing her at all.
20:11
Speaker 9: See if my mind is getting calls all again, traffic gases.
20:15
Speaker 2: Well, we don't want you to get out.
20:17
Speaker 1: We don't want you to guess, we want you to think.
20:23
Speaker 5: So we were back to square one again.
20:30
Speaker 10: I continued to follow everything that took place, and I
20:35
Speaker 10: checked back frequently with people that I knew in Denver
20:39
Speaker 10: to see if anything had ever been discovered and if
20:42
Speaker 10: they were on any trails or had any new input.
20:46
Speaker 10: And every time I checked back, it was nothing.
20:48
Speaker 2: Nothing.
20:51
Speaker 3: Some people were frustrated, thinking, you know, we'll never know,
20:54
Speaker 3: but it certainly never left our minds, and we were
20:57
Speaker 3: always talking with one another about what else could we do.
21:02
Speaker 9: Over the years, we stayed in touch with Helene's family.
21:07
Speaker 8: It was difficult because it was way before cell phones
21:10
Speaker 8: and social media, but I stayed connected with her sister.
21:14
Speaker 8: I stayed connected with her parents. I used to go
21:17
Speaker 8: and visit them. But you know, you look around the
21:20
Speaker 8: room and who's missing Helene, And that never should have been.
21:26
Speaker 3: We were all building families. Now we're married, we're having children,
21:29
Speaker 3: we're building careers. But just never left us, not for
21:33
Speaker 3: a moment then, outside of my marriage, outside of being
21:37
Speaker 3: a mom, outside of my career. You know, people say, well,
21:40
Speaker 3: what's your hobby? And mine wasn't golf. Mine was solving
21:43
Speaker 3: Helene's case for her family because we didn't think that
21:47
Speaker 3: her parents or her family should carry that burden that
21:49
Speaker 3: we were going to start to just at least drive
21:51
Speaker 3: it with the detectives, in the sense that we would
21:54
Speaker 3: be calling the detectives, where are you on this case?
21:58
Speaker 3: Have there been any advancements? I made a promise to
22:03
Speaker 3: her parents that I would not rest until we found
22:07
Speaker 3: out who, why, how, and get the answers for them.
22:14
Speaker 9: And when Kimberly makes a promise, there's no breaking that promise.
22:26
Speaker 3: Out of the pain rose the commitment and drive to
22:31
Speaker 3: be like a bulldog and not rest until this was sold.
22:36
Speaker 3: Because it went cold fairly quickly, because there really weren't
22:40
Speaker 3: any suspects.
22:42
Speaker 4: Years stretch into decades and there are no leads. It
22:47
Speaker 4: seems that Helene Prazinski's killer has gotten away with murder.
22:58
Speaker 3: On the twenty six annivers three of Helene's death, I
23:03
Speaker 3: flew out to Colorado with the original Harmony group and
23:06
Speaker 3: our music director, CC Hunt with the goal of retracing
23:09
Speaker 3: Helene's steps, and we hauled every single media outlet and
23:13
Speaker 3: told him what we were doing.
23:14
Speaker 8: Four high school friends walk the path their friend, Helene
23:17
Speaker 8: Prasninski took twenty six years ago.
23:20
Speaker 9: Every TV station followed us. We started at the news
23:25
Speaker 9: and every and every channel.
23:27
Speaker 3: We thought, well, maybe this will trigger a memory of
23:31
Speaker 3: somebody's or maybe the killer will get curious as to
23:37
Speaker 3: what's all this attention. All of a sudden, I remember
23:39
Speaker 3: that now we're just looking for people that must know something,
23:46
Speaker 3: a mother, an old.
23:47
Speaker 9: Girlfriend, a fellow inmate.
23:49
Speaker 3: At some point, all.
23:55
Speaker 4: That media attention yields nothing new, So kimberly try us
24:00
Speaker 4: another approach, building a website dedicated to Helene's case.
24:06
Speaker 3: I secured a friend of mine who is a software developer,
24:12
Speaker 3: and we built traps on the website to say, if
24:15
Speaker 3: anyone goes to the website, we want to collect their
24:19
Speaker 3: IP address, and we want to know how long they
24:22
Speaker 3: sit on each page of the website. And then they
24:25
Speaker 3: would generate a report and send the Colorado Your of
24:29
Speaker 3: Investigation a report of who went to that website and
24:32
Speaker 3: hope that the killer would go to the website and
24:35
Speaker 3: we could find him that way. Because the DNA through
24:38
Speaker 3: the code of system, there were no hits and so
24:41
Speaker 3: we were trying to find other ways to trap him.
24:45
Speaker 6: How cool would it be to have a friend like
24:47
Speaker 6: that to stay with you even after you're dead for
24:52
Speaker 6: all these years. So here you have someone who is
24:55
Speaker 6: doing a tremendous amount of work. Anything new that happened
24:59
Speaker 6: in forensics science, anything new that happened to investigations.
25:02
Speaker 2: She was on top of it. She was searching it.
25:04
Speaker 6: She was trying to find an answer to whoever killed
25:08
Speaker 6: her friend Helene.
25:11
Speaker 4: Despite her friend's best efforts, Helene's case stays ice cold
25:16
Speaker 4: for nine more long years. It would take a new
25:21
Speaker 4: sheriff and a new unit for the investigation to finally
25:26
Speaker 4: heat up.
25:33
Speaker 6: So when I became elected sheriff, one of the first
25:37
Speaker 6: things I did is I created a cold case unit
25:39
Speaker 6: with a full time detective. And that unit, their only
25:46
Speaker 6: job really was to start from scratch. And I brought
25:49
Speaker 6: in Lieutenant Tommy Burrella, and I said, listen, I need
25:52
Speaker 6: you to solve those cases. I need you to make
25:54
Speaker 6: some moves on us.
25:55
Speaker 5: He established a cold case review team that's made of
25:59
Speaker 5: five civilians. Two of them were lawyers, one of them
26:03
Speaker 5: is a doctor, and the other two are people there
26:05
Speaker 5: and had an interest in this He really wanted us
26:08
Speaker 5: to put a lot of energy and work into getting
26:12
Speaker 5: these cold cases solved, and he said, you know, I
26:15
Speaker 5: would like to see two solved in the next two years.
26:20
Speaker 3: So we heard of the cold case focus in Douglas County.
26:26
Speaker 3: We were very excited, and we knew that Helene's case
26:29
Speaker 3: was one of them that was being worked on with
26:31
Speaker 3: this new team, and so that gave us renewed hope.
26:42
Speaker 4: That hope centers of the DNA sample investigators collected off
26:47
Speaker 4: Helene's buddy forty years earlier in nineteen eighty that DNA
26:52
Speaker 4: wasn't useful, But decades later, investigators have new tools that
26:58
Speaker 4: might help identify a lead skiller.
27:01
Speaker 7: The hardest thing about this case was who it happened to,
27:05
Speaker 7: because this was obviously a very talented young woman. When
27:09
Speaker 7: you knew what happened to the victim in this case,
27:12
Speaker 7: it just made you that much more committed to work
27:16
Speaker 7: hard to try to figure out who would do such
27:19
Speaker 7: a horrible thing.
27:21
Speaker 6: We had learned that there was an opportunity to use
27:24
Speaker 6: investigative genetic genealogists, and we contracted with United Data Connect
27:31
Speaker 6: to make that happen.
27:33
Speaker 7: Genetic genealogy is using a DNA technique that then allows
27:39
Speaker 7: you to apply genealogy techniques, liking it to getting you
27:45
Speaker 7: in the ballpark, and now you use genealogy techniques to
27:49
Speaker 7: find your seat.
27:50
Speaker 6: We gave them DNA of our suspect to create from
27:56
Speaker 6: that genetic data a family treat.
28:00
Speaker 4: Detectives build the branches of that tree using commercial genealogy
28:05
Speaker 4: sites like ancestry dot com or twenty three and meters.
28:10
Speaker 4: They simply run DNA from the crime scene through those sites,
28:15
Speaker 4: looking for anyone with even partial DNA matches. Based on
28:19
Speaker 4: the Centa Morgans.
28:22
Speaker 7: Santa Morgan's is a unit for measuring DNA. You and
28:25
Speaker 7: I may not be related at all, so there'd be
28:28
Speaker 7: no centamorgans. If you and I were siblings, it would
28:32
Speaker 7: be a very high number.
28:34
Speaker 4: Investigators work on the DNA simple and the genealogy sites
28:39
Speaker 4: for weeks, and they finally get a promising lead.
28:45
Speaker 7: We had gotten to the point with our genealogy work
28:49
Speaker 7: and the number of Cenamorgans that we had. We found
28:54
Speaker 7: who we thought was the mother of the person that
28:57
Speaker 7: did this horrible act in Douglas County.
29:05
Speaker 3: We got very very frustrating how long before the technology
29:11
Speaker 3: would catch up to be able to find this guy,
29:13
Speaker 3: and that was always the thing we'd say to each other,
29:16
Speaker 3: they've got his DNA.
29:22
Speaker 4: Using forensic genealogy, detectives find a match with a woman
29:27
Speaker 4: they believe as their suspects mother.
29:30
Speaker 7: She was the mother of multiple kids. But the women
29:34
Speaker 7: could be thrown out right away. They didn't commit this
29:37
Speaker 7: crime because it was a male sample.
29:40
Speaker 2: It was a semen.
29:42
Speaker 7: Sample, but by all accounts and all records, she didn't
29:46
Speaker 7: have any boys. So we thought, well, this is a problem.
29:51
Speaker 5: Everything was relooked at again, and the phone call started
29:54
Speaker 5: being made the possible family members in this possible family tree,
29:58
Speaker 5: asking people if they would voluntary give samples of their DNA.
30:04
Speaker 5: And as we're testing these people and getting their DNA,
30:07
Speaker 5: these sent the Morgans. The numbers are increasing, and as
30:11
Speaker 5: the numbers increase, that means we're getting closer and closer
30:14
Speaker 5: to our suspect.
30:16
Speaker 4: When detectives question the woman's relatives, they get one step
30:20
Speaker 4: closer to the truth. They discovered she'd given up two
30:24
Speaker 4: sons for adoption.
30:27
Speaker 7: My genealogist and this detective Doug deeper, and what they
30:31
Speaker 7: came up with was the very old newspaper article about
30:35
Speaker 7: a reunion between this woman and her son, and in
30:40
Speaker 7: that article they mentioned another son. Now we knew she
30:48
Speaker 7: had two boys. We were able to eliminate one of
30:51
Speaker 7: the sons very quickly because his DNA was already in
30:57
Speaker 7: the Codis DNA system and there was no match. The
31:02
Speaker 7: younger brother that we focused on. His name was Curtis
31:06
Speaker 7: Allen White. Mister White had committed a rape before nineteen eighty.
31:14
Speaker 7: He had gone to prison for that rape. In fact,
31:17
Speaker 7: he used to knive this long before DNA, so there
31:22
Speaker 7: was no DNA database.
31:23
Speaker 2: For him to go into.
31:25
Speaker 7: He served a very short sentence for such a violent crime,
31:29
Speaker 7: and then he parolled to Colorado.
31:32
Speaker 5: He was out here during the time that Helene came
31:36
Speaker 5: here in nineteen seventy nine and was out here during
31:39
Speaker 5: the time that Helen would have been murdered.
31:40
Speaker 2: So now we're feeling like, okay, this could be our guy.
31:46
Speaker 5: We check his fingerprints and they come back to a
31:49
Speaker 5: guy named James Curtis Clinton down in Florida. So detectives
31:55
Speaker 5: follow up on that and James Curtis Clinton is arrested
31:58
Speaker 5: in nineteen ninety eight for domestic violence and once they
32:03
Speaker 5: send the booking photo to us when it was compared
32:06
Speaker 5: to the composite drawing that was given to us by
32:08
Speaker 5: a lady under hypnosis in nineteen eighty were almost identical.
32:15
Speaker 5: Now we know that Curtis aln White and James Curtis
32:19
Speaker 5: Clinton are the same person.
32:24
Speaker 7: He was living in a very small town, a rural
32:28
Speaker 7: area in Florida.
32:30
Speaker 2: He was a truck driver.
32:32
Speaker 7: And now the focus was how do we get his
32:34
Speaker 7: DNA that shows that his DNA matches the DNA that
32:39
Speaker 7: was found on the clothing of the victim.
32:48
Speaker 4: Detectives fly from Colorado to Florida and tailed James Clinton
32:52
Speaker 4: for six days looking for any chance to secretly obtain
32:58
Speaker 4: his DNA.
33:00
Speaker 7: When you're out looking for someone's DNA, you have to
33:02
Speaker 7: be careful. What you do is use undercover officers to
33:07
Speaker 7: surveil the individual, and you're looking for a band in DNA.
33:13
Speaker 5: They're following Dames Curtis Clinton with no luck. He wakes
33:17
Speaker 5: up very on in the morning. His work truck is
33:19
Speaker 5: at his house. He gets in it and goes right
33:21
Speaker 5: to work. He finishes his day about three or four
33:24
Speaker 5: in the afternoon and drives his truck home and then
33:27
Speaker 5: spends the rest of the night in the house, and
33:29
Speaker 5: this went on every day, so there were really no opportunities.
33:33
Speaker 4: The detectives finally catch a break when Clinton heads to
33:37
Speaker 4: a local bar.
33:40
Speaker 5: When he leaves, the waitress takes the mugs off the
33:43
Speaker 5: bar and puts them underneath. Doesn't wash him yet, just
33:45
Speaker 5: puts them underneath to wash him at a later time.
33:48
Speaker 5: And the detective is watching it, and the owner comes
33:51
Speaker 5: in and meets us out back and hands us these mugs.
33:54
Speaker 7: And within days those detectives got back a positive result.
34:00
Speaker 7: The DNA that was found on the bear mugs matched
34:03
Speaker 7: the DNA that he had left forty years earlier on
34:08
Speaker 7: this poor victim's clothing, and we had our.
34:12
Speaker 5: Man, James Curtis Clanton is our murderer. Now there's a
34:17
Speaker 5: murderer on the loose, So we sent four detectives down
34:22
Speaker 5: to conduct twenty four hours of bounce on him, because
34:25
Speaker 5: anything he does at this from this moment on, we
34:27
Speaker 5: would be responsible for.
34:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, it is.
34:38
Speaker 12: One pm.
34:41
Speaker 11: Thanks your who's going down to dry away.
34:48
Speaker 5: We met him on his property. We come up with
34:57
Speaker 5: the roofs about a large insurance fraud. We use that approach.
35:02
Speaker 12: So I really appreciate your willingness to help us out
35:05
Speaker 12: with this. Your name came up initially as a suspect
35:08
Speaker 12: and our major securities fraud case out of Colorado, doctor
35:12
Speaker 12: pull by a million dollar days.
35:14
Speaker 5: We want to talk to him and try and get
35:17
Speaker 5: a confession. But I had never interviewed a murder suspect.
35:21
Speaker 5: Detectives in the cold case unit weren't comfortable interviewing the
35:25
Speaker 5: suspects for the same reasons, So we were wondering how
35:30
Speaker 5: we want to approach this, who should approach it, what
35:33
Speaker 5: sec should the interviewers be this We're playing with very
35:36
Speaker 5: high stakes right now, and we want justice for Helena,
35:40
Speaker 5: and just arresting a person is injustice. Having that person,
35:43
Speaker 5: you know, being held accountable is justice.
35:56
Speaker 4: Detectives are finally closing in on the men they believe
35:59
Speaker 4: murdered Leen Brazinski, James Curtis Clinton.
36:05
Speaker 2: We want to have an interview with him.
36:07
Speaker 6: We wanted to make sure that we could get as
36:09
Speaker 6: much information as we had, even though we had scientific
36:12
Speaker 6: proof that he was the person.
36:20
Speaker 12: So would you mind voluntarily coming down to the Sheriff's
36:24
Speaker 12: office here in Union County with us just to talk
36:26
Speaker 12: in a video recorded interviewer for a few minutes and
36:29
Speaker 12: I sincerely appreciate it.
36:31
Speaker 4: Clinton agrees to go back to police headquarters for an interview.
36:36
Speaker 12: So I apologize for the cramped conditions here. You're not
36:39
Speaker 12: locked in here or anything like that. Is there a
36:48
Speaker 12: need to call in for dispatch?
36:52
Speaker 11: What do you mean I'm going to be able to
36:54
Speaker 11: go to work on how?
36:56
Speaker 2: I how I was going to have to see if if.
36:58
Speaker 11: He had any additional question, I'm going to go to
37:00
Speaker 11: work tomorrow.
37:02
Speaker 2: Well, well, then we just have a few more questions.
37:06
Speaker 12: I want to try to make this an expedient for
37:08
Speaker 12: responsible grongly.
37:10
Speaker 11: Not go to work tomorrow.
37:12
Speaker 2: I didn't say that.
37:13
Speaker 12: That's where said, We're just I just want to make
37:15
Speaker 12: sure that we're come a little more basis so that
37:16
Speaker 12: we don't have to reach out to you again.
37:20
Speaker 5: In corporate trend, those slides the picture forward and says.
37:24
Speaker 1: Could probably tell by now and there's more of this
37:27
Speaker 1: in this financial case, right.
37:29
Speaker 2: So we talked about how I don't really care about
37:35
Speaker 2: stolen cars nineteen eighty Colorado. What you care about a
37:40
Speaker 2: young woman Colorado.
37:42
Speaker 5: In nineteen eighty And I want to I want to
37:45
Speaker 5: show you a picture of Ritsy.
37:47
Speaker 7: If you recognize it. We go chet turning.
38:02
Speaker 5: Now you see him look at it, and his demeanor changed.
38:07
Speaker 4: Investigators are now certain they are face to face with
38:12
Speaker 4: Helene's killer.
38:14
Speaker 12: We actually have do have a want for your arrest
38:17
Speaker 12: for first gree murder and kiss for what first great
38:20
Speaker 12: murder and kidnapping.
38:21
Speaker 2: That's when we fort a strong guy.
38:22
Speaker 5: I basually have your DNA and her honor. When the
38:28
Speaker 5: sergeant said your seaman was found on her and in her,
38:32
Speaker 5: he kind of paused and just said, Oh, I think
38:36
Speaker 5: that was a very pivotal moment in mister Clinton's hearts.
38:40
Speaker 11: At this point, you are after arrest.
38:42
Speaker 2: We're going to turn you over to the custody of
38:44
Speaker 2: the Union County ourselves.
38:45
Speaker 12: Just woint where you will be old without bond, anny.
38:47
Speaker 4: Extradition, beliefs. Arrest James Clinton on the spot, don't getting
38:55
Speaker 4: on Alene. Police bring Clinton to Colorado the face murder charges.
39:03
Speaker 4: During the flight, he opens up about that night in
39:06
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty Do.
39:07
Speaker 13: You remember what you were wearing? You have been wearing
39:11
Speaker 13: cowboy with shears wear? What what made Helene the right target?
39:20
Speaker 11: Faith?
39:23
Speaker 5: He said he saw Helene stand up to get off
39:25
Speaker 5: the bus. He made a U turn and as she's
39:28
Speaker 5: crossing the street. He shows in a knife. She says,
39:31
Speaker 5: I see it. He walks over, puts his arm around
39:33
Speaker 5: her and says, come with me, and ties her hands
39:36
Speaker 5: behind her back with the strap from her purse.
39:41
Speaker 11: She didn't tell me about herself. She asked me what
39:43
Speaker 11: I was doing. I told her that I was getting
39:48
Speaker 11: nabbing her for money, and she said, well, my parents
39:50
Speaker 11: don't have any money, and you know, stuff like that.
39:57
Speaker 11: I didn't tell her what I'd been doing in jail.
40:00
Speaker 2: Which.
40:04
Speaker 5: We just talked about in six hours on a plane.
40:06
Speaker 5: I mean, anything and everything, and there was nothing that
40:08
Speaker 5: was off limits. And you know, one thing that we
40:10
Speaker 5: asked several times was did you commit any other crimes?
40:15
Speaker 5: And did you commit any other sex assaults or rapes
40:18
Speaker 5: or murders or anything. And he was adamant that he didn't.
40:22
Speaker 5: He was angry, and he said that women have always
40:25
Speaker 5: been the cause of his pain in his life, so
40:28
Speaker 5: that he had his mind that he was going to
40:30
Speaker 5: crab a girl and he was going to kidnap her,
40:32
Speaker 5: and raper that was his plan.
40:38
Speaker 6: It was one of those kinds of feelings where it
40:40
Speaker 6: hits you in the chest.
40:42
Speaker 2: You're like, we've got this guy.
40:44
Speaker 1: Well, she was kidnapped and murdered in Douglas County nearly
40:47
Speaker 1: four decades ago.
40:48
Speaker 2: And I just got off the phone with Helene's sister.
40:53
Speaker 6: It was kind of one of those bittersweet moments because
40:57
Speaker 6: this has been a long time.
41:00
Speaker 1: He just amazed, just amazed and glad. I'm glad that
41:04
Speaker 1: they caught him.
41:07
Speaker 3: That was a phone call I won't forget. Finally hearing
41:11
Speaker 3: that they got the guy was such a shock. It
41:14
Speaker 3: was just like this, this huge jault of happiness.
41:21
Speaker 10: I was just totally elated that had finally happened after
41:24
Speaker 10: forty years.
41:26
Speaker 9: It was a relief, But there's never closure on something
41:32
Speaker 9: that's so heinous like this.
41:39
Speaker 4: More than forty years after Helene's murder, her killer finally
41:43
Speaker 4: faces justice. James Clinton pleads guilty in a Colorado courtroom.
41:51
Speaker 8: So I'm glad that the people that loved Helene didn't
41:54
Speaker 8: have to sit through a trial.
41:57
Speaker 4: Sixty three year old Clinton is sentenced to life in prison.
42:02
Speaker 4: He will be eligible for parole after twenty years.
42:08
Speaker 3: We went out for the sentencing of dis murderer and
42:13
Speaker 3: we got in a big group for a group photo afterwards,
42:16
Speaker 3: and it was mind boggling how many people played a
42:19
Speaker 3: significant role in.
42:21
Speaker 8: All of us.
42:23
Speaker 3: We will forever be grateful for everything that they did.
42:29
Speaker 3: The big void is now closed, and now we can
42:35
Speaker 3: really start with the healing. You can't heal when that
42:38
Speaker 3: wound remains open, and we'll never heal completely. But now
42:41
Speaker 3: we can soften the edges around the broken pieces of
42:46
Speaker 3: our hearts and be with Helene in a different way. Now,
42:52
Speaker 3: you know, not being buried in her murder, but being
42:54
Speaker 3: buried back into the joy and the spirit of her life.