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14-year-old raped, murdered Thanksgiving day · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:05
Speaker 1: Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Thanksgiving, a beautiful young fourteen
0:19
Speaker 1: year old girl goes to deliver a birthday card to
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Speaker 1: her friend as she has never seen alive again. Needless
0:30
Speaker 1: to say, we want justice. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.
0:51
Speaker 1: Wendy just fourteen years old. Now, think about it. Think
0:56
Speaker 1: about it. When I prosecuted cases, it was and still
1:01
Speaker 1: is the law that you, the prosecutor, may not ask
1:06
Speaker 1: the jury to place themselves in the shoes of the
1:11
Speaker 1: victim or the victim's family. But luckily those rules of
1:15
Speaker 1: evidence are not binding me right now. And I want
1:19
Speaker 1: you to think, place yourself, if you dare to do it,
1:24
Speaker 1: in the shoes of the mother and dad that are
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Speaker 1: waiting for their fourteen year old girl, Wendy to come home.
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Speaker 1: This little girl just one year older than my little
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Speaker 1: girl Lucy and my big boy John David. I can't
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Speaker 1: imagine them not coming home from something so simple as
1:49
Speaker 1: dropping off a birthday card. But that is what happened,
1:53
Speaker 1: and this is the story. Take a listen to this
1:58
Speaker 1: from what we can get there now. She left the
2:00
Speaker 1: friend's house round seven thirty at night in rude home
2:04
Speaker 1: and she never made it home. And about twenty minutes
2:07
Speaker 1: after her Boddy was found, she was reported missing by
2:12
Speaker 1: her parents. She'd been returning home from a visit with
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Speaker 1: friends Thanksgiving night when she was murdered. Jerome had been beaten, raped,
2:19
Speaker 1: and slashed. Her body dumped in the courtyard of school
2:21
Speaker 1: Number thirty three, just blocks from her home. Police have
2:25
Speaker 1: question one suspect in this case so far. On the
2:28
Speaker 1: night of the murder, detectives picked up a man near
2:30
Speaker 1: the school who was covered with blood, but after hours
2:33
Speaker 1: of grilling, the man's story rang true. He'd been assaulted
2:37
Speaker 1: and the blood on the clothing was his own. What
2:40
Speaker 1: a letdown, police think at the get go, they've immediately
2:43
Speaker 1: solved the murder all fourteen year old Wendy, but that
2:47
Speaker 1: was not the case. Let me introduce to you an
2:50
Speaker 1: all star panel. And when I say all star, I
2:53
Speaker 1: really mean it. First of all, Wendy Patrick, California prosecutor,
2:57
Speaker 1: author of Red Flags and host of Live would doctor
3:00
Speaker 1: Wendy on kb Q at Wendy Patrick PhD dot com.
3:05
Speaker 1: Got to get that PhD in there, Wendy, Workee Girl.
3:09
Speaker 1: Doctor Bethany Marshall renounced psychoanalyst to the stars, joining me
3:13
Speaker 1: from Beverly Hills. Of course, she's at Doctor Bethany Marshall
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Speaker 1: dot com. Professor Forensics, Jacksonville State University, author of Blood
3:21
Speaker 1: Beneath My Feet on Amazon now the star of a
3:24
Speaker 1: hit series on True Crime Network called Poisonous. Liaison's new
3:29
Speaker 1: guests Joining us today, Doctor Pamela Marshall from Decane University,
3:34
Speaker 1: Director and Associate Professor of the Bear School of Natural
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Speaker 1: Environmental Sciences, Forensics, Science and Law master's program That's not easy.
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Speaker 1: Expert in DNA interpretation. Newsday reporter, you know his name, well,
3:51
Speaker 1: Tony DeStefano and very special guests joining me. Longtime colleague
3:57
Speaker 1: now friend Phil Va Toronto. You know his name, well,
4:03
Speaker 1: I'm sure Phil and Kathy the parents of the so
4:08
Speaker 1: called Long Island jogger Carina Thea, Toronto. But first of all,
4:13
Speaker 1: I want to go to Tony to Stephano. Tony joining me,
4:18
Speaker 1: Newsday reporter, tell me about what we just heard from
4:23
Speaker 1: Anne Spurling at News A w RC. We're hearing about
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Speaker 1: how this fourteen year old girl goes out to deliver
4:31
Speaker 1: a birthday card and by the time her parents report
4:35
Speaker 1: her missing a couple of hours later, she was already dead.
4:41
Speaker 1: Well that's true. It was Thanksgiving Day of nineteen eighty
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Speaker 1: four and Wendy goes to deliver a birthday card. As
4:49
Speaker 1: you said, I never made it back. She had a curfew,
4:54
Speaker 1: and of course never made it back in time for
4:57
Speaker 1: that curfew. She was found by it umpster in a
5:01
Speaker 1: schoolyard area Jason to a schoolyard not far from her home,
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Speaker 1: and she had been severely beaten and there were obvious
5:11
Speaker 1: signs of sexual traveler. This case, you know, shocked and Rochester,
5:17
Speaker 1: New York, and it stayed. You know, it became a
5:23
Speaker 1: quest to find the killer. But this was not something
5:26
Speaker 1: that was going to come easily. Now, it really was not.
5:29
Speaker 1: Let's start at the beginning. Tony de Stephano, tell me
5:34
Speaker 1: about Rochester. I know a fair bit from living in
5:37
Speaker 1: New York City for so long. My sister lived with
5:40
Speaker 1: her family in Mount Kissco For a while. Tell me
5:43
Speaker 1: about Rochester. Rochester is you know, major upstate New York City.
5:49
Speaker 1: Used to be home to kodak uh, you know, the
5:53
Speaker 1: camera and film people, and maybe may still be for
5:55
Speaker 1: all I know. It's on the shores of the lake
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Speaker 1: and it's you know, a town that's gone through some changes.
6:03
Speaker 1: But it's a substantial metropolitan area for upstate New York, Rochester, Buffalo,
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Speaker 1: that sort of quadrant. So it's not an insignificant place.
6:12
Speaker 1: It's not like the country or farm land. Do people
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Speaker 1: commute in and out of New York Well, they don't know.
6:21
Speaker 1: Well you can, In fact, I did it once. It's
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Speaker 1: like forty five minutes by plane. But normally you don't.
6:30
Speaker 1: Normally you don't. It's it gets a lot of its
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Speaker 1: own internal commuter traffic from the suburbs around Rochester, but
6:37
Speaker 1: it's not really a place where they're come into New
6:42
Speaker 1: York City. Got a question for you, isn't that where
6:45
Speaker 1: the Dick Van Dyke Show was supposed to be set
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Speaker 1: in Rochester? Now you're you're you're gonna show my ignorance
6:54
Speaker 1: of popular TV culture. I'm gonna investigate. I'm gonna investigate
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Speaker 1: that immediately. I'm gonna put a crack in investigator on it. Brett,
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Speaker 1: that's you, because I think that it is and it
7:05
Speaker 1: was portrayed. Is this idyllic community almost like a bedroom
7:12
Speaker 1: a sleeper community of Manhattan. I don't think geographically that's correct,
7:16
Speaker 1: but the way people think of it is like that.
7:20
Speaker 1: Now it's taken on a whole new significance. This girl's
7:24
Speaker 1: body was found just blocks away from her own home
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Speaker 1: beside a dumpster, a dumpster, and to you, doctor Bethany Marshall,
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Speaker 1: it reminds me of a couple of cases in the
7:39
Speaker 1: past where I've referred to the way a killer disposed
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Speaker 1: of a body as if it were trash. And I'm
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Speaker 1: thinking specifically of Nicole Lovell, the little girl she was thirteen,
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Speaker 1: that was lured out of her home that by a
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Speaker 1: engineering student at Virginia Tech, David Eisenhower and his freaky sidekick,
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Speaker 1: Nicole Keepers, both engineering students, that lured her away from
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Speaker 1: her home and threw her off by the side of
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Speaker 1: the road like she was trash. And this dumpster thing
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Speaker 1: really sticks in my mind, Doctor Bethany, what does it
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Speaker 1: tell you, Nancy? Do you remember Chanelle she Nixon? Yes,
8:23
Speaker 1: I do, I certainly do. Right, she was taken from
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Speaker 1: her apartment, or was rape beaten, tortured and straangled, all
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Speaker 1: of that, and was literally put in a trash can,
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Speaker 1: just like this victim. What it tells me is that
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Speaker 1: the perpetrator had such little thought about the victim. The
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Speaker 1: victim was an it or a thing, or there was
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Speaker 1: no value to human life other than the momentary pleasure
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Speaker 1: of whatever the perpetrator wanted to do with this young woman.
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Speaker 1: The idea that she had parent, siblings, friends, she was
9:03
Speaker 1: carrying a birthday card, she had come from a friend's house,
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Speaker 1: that she was in her neighborhood, her community, that she
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Speaker 1: was only fourteen years old, was completely inconsequential to the perpetrator.
9:30
Speaker 1: Crime stories with Nancy Grace, we are talking about a
9:35
Speaker 1: beautiful young girl whose name I have not forgotten, Wendy Jerome.
9:41
Speaker 1: This little girl goes out to a friend's house with
9:44
Speaker 1: a birthday card and she never comes home. And my
9:47
Speaker 1: question is why why did the case go unsaw? You've
9:54
Speaker 1: heard that she was sex assaulted, that means raped, let
9:58
Speaker 1: me just boil it down for you, and murdered left
10:01
Speaker 1: by a dumpster. Well, I'll tell you why, because even
10:05
Speaker 1: with a rape, even with DNA, cops couldn't solve it
10:10
Speaker 1: through no fault of their own. Listen to our friend
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Speaker 1: Nikki Rudd whec Tan Rochester. Wendy Jerome had just turned
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Speaker 1: fourteen years old. She was a freshman at Edison Tech
10:22
Speaker 1: High School and one day wanted to become a cosmetologist.
10:25
Speaker 1: It hurts, it will never go away. Nobody knows why
10:31
Speaker 1: Wendy Jerome was at school thirty three on Webster Avenue
10:34
Speaker 1: last night. I know she was beaten very badly. She
10:39
Speaker 1: was partially dressed. We determined it was in fact the body.
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Speaker 1: It appears at this point that it's a white female
10:46
Speaker 1: early teens. Whoever it was covered her face with okay, okay.
10:54
Speaker 1: Wendy was Marlene Jerome's firstborn. I want to go to
10:58
Speaker 1: a very special guest joining me. I got to first
11:03
Speaker 1: meet him. I think Phil, through doctor Oz and you
11:10
Speaker 1: were in your Beautiful Wife, but especially your daughter. Karina
11:14
Speaker 1: has been a huge inspiration in my life and I
11:21
Speaker 1: draw upon her life and your story in my new book,
11:26
Speaker 1: Don't Be a Victim. Phil. As I am listening to
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Speaker 1: Wendy's mother speaking, all I could think about is the
11:33
Speaker 1: way you spoke about Karina after her murder, that the
11:38
Speaker 1: shock Karina was so close to home as almost unfathomable
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Speaker 1: that this could happen so close to a loving home
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Speaker 1: where mom and dad are. They're waiting for her to
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Speaker 1: come home, and she doesn't come back. But you had
11:52
Speaker 1: a feeling that day when Karina went jogging almost right
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Speaker 1: after she left, that something was going horribly wrong. That
12:01
Speaker 1: is true, That is true. I call it intuition, you know,
12:05
Speaker 1: a parent's intuition, of father's intuition, just a feeling that
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Speaker 1: something is amiss. And that's how it all started. And
12:15
Speaker 1: that clip that you played of the mother, it almost
12:18
Speaker 1: brought tears to my eyes because I know exactly exactly
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Speaker 1: how she feels, you know, you know, Phil, you just
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Speaker 1: gave me chill bumps all up and down my arm
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Speaker 1: when you said that, Because when I was trying to
12:32
Speaker 1: start the program today, I actually choked up thinking about
12:38
Speaker 1: my girl Lucy and my boy, big boy John David.
12:43
Speaker 1: And you don't know the suffering until it happens to you,
12:48
Speaker 1: and it did happen to Wendy Jerome's parents. Phil, the
12:54
Speaker 1: Toronto is not here just as a crime victim that
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Speaker 1: has lived through what Wendy's parents live through, but for
13:02
Speaker 1: a very important forensic reason. Why do this case go unsolved?
13:08
Speaker 1: You know? I noticed there that the reporter said the
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Speaker 1: killer covered her face with a jacket, and we see
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Speaker 1: that quite often, Joseph Scott Morgan, Yeah, we do, Nancy,
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Speaker 1: And you know one of the reasons this happens is
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Speaker 1: that if you just imagine, the perpetrator has not dehumanized
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Speaker 1: the person that they have victimized to the point where
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Speaker 1: they don't still see them as a human. They see
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Speaker 1: allegedly this individual that they have so traumatized and beaten
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Speaker 1: down literally staring back at them. So there's this effort
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Speaker 1: to cover the face. And I've seen this over and
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Speaker 1: over and over and over again, me too. Wendy Patrick,
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Speaker 1: California prosecutor, author Red Flags, host Live with Doctor Wendy.
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Speaker 1: I've seen it many many times at even sometimes I've
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Speaker 1: seen bodies their face covered up with leaves if the
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Speaker 1: attack was out in the open. Have you ever seen
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Speaker 1: that in your days as a prosecutor? Absolutely, And you know,
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Speaker 1: we used to wonder early in our career is what
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Speaker 1: the point of that would be. And as we've gained
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Speaker 1: a little bit of more maturity and experience, it does
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Speaker 1: seem that even for the most horrendous attacks and the
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Speaker 1: most brutal murders in cold blood, it still seems that
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Speaker 1: many killers tend to at least have some sort of
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Speaker 1: way of obscuring the body. One wonders whether it's for
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Speaker 1: their own edification feeling better about what they did, making
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Speaker 1: some sort of unaccountability by somehow obscuring the identity. But
14:38
Speaker 1: it's one of those things that is in nowadays. With
14:41
Speaker 1: the forensics that we have, really only has that very
14:45
Speaker 1: minimal value because it's just too easy to find out
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Speaker 1: who it is, how they killed, how they were killed,
14:50
Speaker 1: and everything else regarding how do we find the killer.
14:52
Speaker 1: You know, I still have a Jane Doe that was
14:54
Speaker 1: part of a serial killer case I prosecuted. I think
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Speaker 1: I am hearing doctor Bethany jump in, Bethany Nancy. I've
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Speaker 1: often thought about the serial killer who actually removes the
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Speaker 1: victim's head. That's a step further than what we have here.
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Speaker 1: But there's an attempt to dislocate the thinking mind and
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Speaker 1: the humanity of the victim from the body, which is
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Speaker 1: just a sexual object, like literally severing and taking apart
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Speaker 1: human mind from sexualized body. And I think this is
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Speaker 1: just one step down from that. I'm trying to take
15:29
Speaker 1: him what you just said and wrapped my mind around it. Guys,
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Speaker 1: listen to our friends Ecn's ten. Who do you think
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Speaker 1: killed Wendy Jerome? Somebody close with the devil. This was bad,
15:43
Speaker 1: This was a child after Thanksgiving dinner with her family,
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Speaker 1: Wendy got permission to go to our best friend's house
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Speaker 1: in their Beechwood neighborhood. She left there shortly after seven
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Speaker 1: thirty last night, and that was the last time she
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Speaker 1: was seen. She never made it home. Her better body
16:00
Speaker 1: was found in an alcove alongside the school. That's School
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Speaker 1: thirty three on Webster Avenue in Rochester, just a quarter
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Speaker 1: mile from Wendy's house, and we have a picture of
16:09
Speaker 1: the school at the time. Ronchester Police investigator John Brennan
16:13
Speaker 1: showed us some pictures from the crime scene, but most
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Speaker 1: of them they're tooboral. I wouldn't dream of seawan. She
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Speaker 1: was raped, yes, her throat was slit, yes, but that's
16:24
Speaker 1: not what killed her. No, she would be pretty bad,
16:30
Speaker 1: you would think with all that evidence, there had to
16:33
Speaker 1: be DNA evidence from the defendant, the killer. Now keep
16:37
Speaker 1: in mind this triangle. What does it mean that these
16:41
Speaker 1: three locations were in such close proximity to each other.
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Speaker 1: School number thirty three, where her body was found in
16:47
Speaker 1: an alcove near a dumpster, her home just a few
16:51
Speaker 1: blocks away, and the home of the friend where she
16:54
Speaker 1: had visited. Just turned fourteen years old. Take a listen
16:58
Speaker 1: to Nikki Rudd. Then night, Wendy had asked to visit
17:02
Speaker 1: her friend Susie, who lived just a few blocks away.
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Speaker 1: Her father Wayne said she could go, but her curfew
17:07
Speaker 1: was at eight. Wendy never made it home. Her battered
17:11
Speaker 1: body was found in an alcove alongside the school. She
17:15
Speaker 1: was found by a man taking a short cut through
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Speaker 1: the school's yard. Did you think the case would be
17:20
Speaker 1: swolved by now? I would have hoped so because we
17:24
Speaker 1: had DNA. Ronchester Police investigators still have the suspect's DNA
17:30
Speaker 1: from Wendy's underwear, but DNA did not match anyone in CODIS,
17:35
Speaker 1: the FBI's Combined DNA Index system. Now, investigators are hoping
17:39
Speaker 1: a new tool will crack the case, a familial DNA search.
17:44
Speaker 1: This was approved by New York State in twenty seventeen.
17:47
Speaker 1: DNA can be submitted to the state Crime Lab to
17:50
Speaker 1: see if any offenders in the state DNA data bank
17:53
Speaker 1: could be related to the suspect. And that is where
17:58
Speaker 1: Phil Vatronto and japan Wall Marshall come in. Phil Vatronto,
18:03
Speaker 1: the father of the Long Island Jogger, as she has
18:06
Speaker 1: now known Koreana Vatronto fought valiantly to allow the use
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Speaker 1: of familial DNA in court. Phil Vatronto, Why were people
18:18
Speaker 1: so resistant to using familial DNA, Well, there was a
18:23
Speaker 1: lot of reasons that I was told target certain minority
18:27
Speaker 1: groups had infringed upon the civil rights. But to me
18:30
Speaker 1: it was all bull. Now. I didn't even know what
18:34
Speaker 1: familiar DNA was until Tony wrote an article in news
18:38
Speaker 1: Day and I saw it, and I started to push
18:42
Speaker 1: for it, and I was told by the upper echelon
18:45
Speaker 1: of the police department, forget about it. It's not going
18:47
Speaker 1: to happen. Never passed in New York. And with that
18:51
Speaker 1: I dug in my heels, put my nose to the grindstone,
18:54
Speaker 1: and I went to war. I posted on my go
18:58
Speaker 1: fund me, which I had seven hundred and fifty thousand
19:02
Speaker 1: follow us, and I said send Mike Green, who was
19:05
Speaker 1: the head of the State Department Criminal Justice, and email
19:08
Speaker 1: saying we want FS testing. Within a half hour, I
19:13
Speaker 1: got a call back from the DA to Queen's THEA said, Phil,
19:16
Speaker 1: you got to tell everybody to stop. It. Just blew
19:18
Speaker 1: up my Green server time stories with Nancy Grace. Guys,
19:37
Speaker 1: I'm talking to Phil Vatranto, the father of the so
19:40
Speaker 1: called Long Island jog or Queen of Patronto, who was
19:43
Speaker 1: murdered the one time practically that she did not go
19:47
Speaker 1: jog with her dad, Phil Firefighter. She was attacked brutally
19:53
Speaker 1: and murdered. I have Phil with me right now. I'm
19:57
Speaker 1: not going to go into the details of Corina's murder,
20:00
Speaker 1: but it was brutal and at that time he started
20:05
Speaker 1: a war to allow familial DNA as a crime solving technique,
20:11
Speaker 1: and we saw at work in other cases like the
20:15
Speaker 1: famous Golden State killer case Jackie. If you would play
20:21
Speaker 1: our cut number one, this is John Blackstone speaking with
20:24
Speaker 1: CBS News and cuffed to a wheelchair. Joseph de'angelo was
20:28
Speaker 1: arraigned on charges for two murders in nineteen seventy eight.
20:32
Speaker 1: He was barely audible answering the judge. Investigators found de'angelo
20:38
Speaker 1: using DNA from crime scenes decades ago, which they submitted
20:41
Speaker 1: to a publicly shared genealogy website called Jetmatch. Cold Case
20:46
Speaker 1: investigator Paul Holes. We were able to do this without
20:49
Speaker 1: seeking the legal authority in terms of getting the federal
20:52
Speaker 1: grand jury subpoena or the search warrant that we would
20:55
Speaker 1: need if we wanted to search the other types of
20:58
Speaker 1: genealogy sites. Jetmatch users submit DNA profiles they buy from
21:02
Speaker 1: sites like ancestry, dot com and twenty three and me.
21:06
Speaker 1: They plug their data for free into Jetmatch, searching for
21:09
Speaker 1: distant relatives. Within days, investigators found distant cousins of the
21:13
Speaker 1: suspected Golden State killer. We literally went back to the
21:17
Speaker 1: great great great grandfather with individuals that were born in
21:21
Speaker 1: the early part of the eighteen hundreds. You know, I
21:25
Speaker 1: spoke to the investigator in that case, Paul Holes, in person,
21:29
Speaker 1: to get them to explain to me how familial DNA works.
21:32
Speaker 1: And it's not like, oh, we got a hit on
21:34
Speaker 1: your grandma. No, you go all the way back. In
21:37
Speaker 1: that case Golden State Killer Joseph de'angelo, they went back
21:41
Speaker 1: to the eighteen hundreds, and you go, this would marry
21:43
Speaker 1: that one, and this one was the cousin. This goes down,
21:45
Speaker 1: that's nephew. To finally get down to the DNA of
21:49
Speaker 1: the purpose and hey, you know you heard them say
21:52
Speaker 1: Joseph D'Angelo was rolled in wheeled in in a wheelchair
21:56
Speaker 1: at a court. Don't worry too much about him because
21:58
Speaker 1: later video shows him working out and doing calisthenics at
22:02
Speaker 1: the jail. Okay, so you can only surmise why he
22:05
Speaker 1: wanted to be rolled in in a wheelchair into court.
22:08
Speaker 1: Familial DNA works, and in this case of Wendy Jerome,
22:15
Speaker 1: that is what was needed. And it took a soldier
22:19
Speaker 1: like phil Va Toronto to go to war to allow
22:24
Speaker 1: familial DNA into court. But he was sparked by an
22:30
Speaker 1: article written by Crack reporter and Tony D. Stefano. Tell
22:35
Speaker 1: me about your article, Tony, that started this whole thing,
22:39
Speaker 1: ignited it. Well, it all started with essentially was a
22:42
Speaker 1: mistake by a police official in New York City. I asked,
22:46
Speaker 1: during the pendency of Karina's investigation, why have you tried
22:51
Speaker 1: familial DNA, and the officials said, yes, we have, but
22:55
Speaker 1: it came up with no hit. So I wrote that
22:59
Speaker 1: in a story, and of course I got an email
23:01
Speaker 1: from somebody out in California sort of reading on the
23:04
Speaker 1: expert in the field. He said, hey, NYPD doesn't use
23:09
Speaker 1: for me to the DNA, you can't use it in
23:11
Speaker 1: New York, so they're giving you a line of malarchy.
23:15
Speaker 1: So I checked in with him and I said, well,
23:18
Speaker 1: what's this all about familial DNA, and he told me,
23:22
Speaker 1: and that's one of those situations where you say, okay,
23:25
Speaker 1: explain that again, because it was one of these complicated
23:29
Speaker 1: but interesting forensic facets that I had to deal with.
23:34
Speaker 1: So I was going to do a story about it
23:38
Speaker 1: and raise the question why wasn't it used in New
23:41
Speaker 1: York State? And there are all sorts of bureaucratic reasons
23:44
Speaker 1: why it wasn't. It needed state approval, the Commission had.
23:48
Speaker 1: Let's just spoil that down to I needed what Phil
23:50
Speaker 1: mcrane said, b S. That's a technical legal term. And
23:55
Speaker 1: believe me, as a trial lawyer, I see it all
23:58
Speaker 1: the time, and yes, it's stinks. So to you fiel
24:02
Speaker 1: Vers Toronto, why did this ring pull out such a
24:05
Speaker 1: chord in your heart to make DNA familial DNA allow
24:09
Speaker 1: on the court? Why were you so invested? Well, at
24:13
Speaker 1: that time, we did not know who killed Karina, and
24:17
Speaker 1: I got national tension with you when we were both
24:21
Speaker 1: on Doctor Oz. And once we were on Doctor Oz,
24:25
Speaker 1: it took off. Okay, that's when I started to get
24:28
Speaker 1: backing from the All five DA's and we got a
24:32
Speaker 1: hold of mic Green. We had a special meeting and
24:35
Speaker 1: before that meeting, we did find Karina's killer through now
24:40
Speaker 1: not familiar DNA testing, but being Kathy felt like if
24:44
Speaker 1: we could get this passed, there's other families out there
24:48
Speaker 1: that don't know who killed their child or their loved
24:51
Speaker 1: when their mother, whoever, we could help them put this
24:56
Speaker 1: to rest. So we continued our fight. It got stro
25:00
Speaker 1: longer and stronger and stronger, and it was actually passed
25:05
Speaker 1: in five months from when we had that meeting, and
25:09
Speaker 1: that usually takes two years. We hadn't go five months
25:12
Speaker 1: at least. Believe me. Listen, Phil, When I first went
25:15
Speaker 1: to the DA's office, one of my tasks was that
25:19
Speaker 1: I had to go be a let me just say,
25:21
Speaker 1: lobbyists for anti crime issues. I went up to the
25:25
Speaker 1: Georgia Assembly. I couldn't wait for those three months to
25:30
Speaker 1: be over. With the level of BS I mean, it's
25:34
Speaker 1: way through it every day. I remember trying to get
25:38
Speaker 1: the rape She'll law passed. You have never seen the
25:41
Speaker 1: politics behind doing what's right. Same thing here now here
25:46
Speaker 1: comes another start guest joining us, doctor Pamela Marshall, Decane University. Man.
25:51
Speaker 1: If I were to read you her resume, it would
25:53
Speaker 1: take the rest of the hour. Doctor Marshall. Thank you
25:56
Speaker 1: so much for being with us. Now, Doctor Marshall, we
26:00
Speaker 1: not all have your kind of education, and I'm sure
26:05
Speaker 1: you've written tons of well very interesting articles because you
26:10
Speaker 1: just dummy down for us. From me, I'll speak for
26:13
Speaker 1: myself and explain how familial DNA works and why it
26:19
Speaker 1: is so important and the Wendy it's your Rome case.
26:22
Speaker 1: So one of the one of the things that we
26:25
Speaker 1: have is we have this national DNA database where we
26:28
Speaker 1: are able to link crimes across the country and when
26:32
Speaker 1: everything works well, we're able to find those matches to
26:36
Speaker 1: correct and find the true perpetrator of a crime. Unfortunately,
26:41
Speaker 1: for Wendy's case, they uploaded Semen sample in two thousand,
26:47
Speaker 1: because remember nineteen eighty four, DNA technology was not where
26:51
Speaker 1: it is now and CODAS the DNA Data Bank was
26:55
Speaker 1: kind of a pipe dream at this point. So the
26:58
Speaker 1: Semen sample, it made me want a wheel around in
27:01
Speaker 1: my chair to think of a time and I was
27:04
Speaker 1: there prosecuting in these days where we didn't have CODUS,
27:09
Speaker 1: the National DNA Databank, But you're right, it didn't even
27:14
Speaker 1: exist then. Okay, sorry for that, doctor Marshall, Go ahead, No, no,
27:17
Speaker 1: that's all right, I like how you get excited. So
27:20
Speaker 1: they uploaded the semen sample from the underwear, which didn't
27:23
Speaker 1: result in any CODAS matches. And unfortunately, as Phillis pointed out,
27:28
Speaker 1: it takes a lot of legislation, and even New York
27:32
Speaker 1: was only the eleventh state in the United States. The
27:35
Speaker 1: wowing is familial DNA. How does it work? Why did
27:38
Speaker 1: Paul Hold have to go back to the eighteen hundreds
27:41
Speaker 1: to catch Joseph D'Angelo the Golden State Killer. So that's
27:45
Speaker 1: actually a little bit different. So for the Golden State
27:48
Speaker 1: Killer and joseph'angelo. Okay, so that's the use of a
27:50
Speaker 1: public database. What makes familial DNA searching stand out as
27:56
Speaker 1: the use of our own cDNA law and Force database,
28:02
Speaker 1: So being able to go in and so what typically
28:05
Speaker 1: happens is crime scene evidence comes to the crime lab,
28:08
Speaker 1: we create a DNA profile, and we upload that profile
28:12
Speaker 1: to the database in looking at maybe thirteen locations. If
28:18
Speaker 1: you have a match, that means that the profile from
28:21
Speaker 1: the crime scene evidence and the profile from the suspect
28:24
Speaker 1: match at all thirteen. What familial DNA searching does is
28:28
Speaker 1: it shows profiles that share a net similarities, so we
28:32
Speaker 1: know that we get half of our DNA from our
28:35
Speaker 1: biological mother and half from our biological father. We also
28:39
Speaker 1: share those DNA markers with full siblings and half siblings,
28:43
Speaker 1: so it's allowing an active search for these family relationships
28:47
Speaker 1: through software, and that's how we get this familiarity. So
28:50
Speaker 1: you're not just looking for a match to the DNA
28:55
Speaker 1: at the crime scene. You put it into data banks
29:00
Speaker 1: all of these ancestry, usually public ones, to see if
29:04
Speaker 1: it even remotely hits on a family member, even if
29:08
Speaker 1: a distant family member. Crime stories with Nancy Grace, guys
29:27
Speaker 1: were talking about the murder of a fourteen year old girl.
29:30
Speaker 1: Listened to this. We spoke with Wendy's mother, Marlene Jerome.
29:34
Speaker 1: She's frustrated the man who raped and killed her daughter
29:38
Speaker 1: has never been caught. Is the guy's soul life? Is
29:43
Speaker 1: he dead? All these questions that go through my head.
29:46
Speaker 1: I'm just disgusted with the system. I think it's a joke.
29:49
Speaker 1: Investigator Brennan is also frustrated. And here's why they have
29:53
Speaker 1: the suspect's DNA, but they've been waiting on the State
29:57
Speaker 1: Blonis crime lab to test it. Piece of a it's
30:00
Speaker 1: a good point, possibly point is in the right direction
30:02
Speaker 1: to get the animal that killed this young woman. They
30:05
Speaker 1: have it, they have it. I need an answer. I
30:08
Speaker 1: want to know. Here's the deal. It's not your average
30:12
Speaker 1: DNA test. The DNA in this case didn't match anyone
30:15
Speaker 1: who has submitted DNA from past crimes. But the state
30:20
Speaker 1: just started within the last couple of years testing DNA
30:24
Speaker 1: to see if they can connect it to a family member,
30:28
Speaker 1: a family member who may have DNA in the system. Okay, guys,
30:33
Speaker 1: go with it to try to untangle this ball a
30:37
Speaker 1: string which is the Windy Jerome murder? Or listen to
30:42
Speaker 1: Eric Key to cost of r OC. Over the years,
30:45
Speaker 1: there have been hundreds of leads, but every time technology advanced,
30:49
Speaker 1: someone would review the case again. In twenty seventeen, New
30:53
Speaker 1: York State approved the use of familial DNA testing for
30:56
Speaker 1: law enforcement, which helps investigators find relatives for some other
30:59
Speaker 1: trying to identify. Through that, investigators were able to identify
31:03
Speaker 1: a family sample that eventually led them to Williams and
31:06
Speaker 1: the arrest. As a result to the collaborative efforts of
31:10
Speaker 1: an army of people over the last thirty five years,
31:14
Speaker 1: major crimes investigators traveled to Melbourne Florida. Earlier this week,
31:19
Speaker 1: on Wednesday, September ninth, with the assistance to the Florida
31:23
Speaker 1: Department of Law Enforcement, we arrested Timothy Lee Williams at
31:26
Speaker 1: his home in charging with the brutal rape and murder
31:30
Speaker 1: of Wendy. That's right, a Flourida man, aged fifty six,
31:33
Speaker 1: arrested for the right and murder of a fourteen year
31:36
Speaker 1: old girl. All the way up the country in Rochester
31:42
Speaker 1: to feel Vatronto, the father of the Long Island jogger
31:47
Speaker 1: Carina Vatronto. Can you imagine the parents waiting all these years,
31:54
Speaker 1: over thirty years to find out the truth. I can't
31:58
Speaker 1: imagine that. I mean, we found within four months. But
32:02
Speaker 1: when I heard that that we did find a person
32:07
Speaker 1: who meant the DNA specifications, and it was crying. Was
32:11
Speaker 1: solved it for me testing I started to cry, you know,
32:15
Speaker 1: it was such It was a bit of sweet because
32:20
Speaker 1: I was so happy and so glad that Karina had
32:24
Speaker 1: was instrumental in getting this case solved. But then it
32:29
Speaker 1: brought back those memories again. But we're not We're not done.
32:33
Speaker 1: We're gonna find more. We're gonna help other people, and
32:36
Speaker 1: you know, feel I remember the moment you called me
32:42
Speaker 1: when Williams was arrested. Maybe you rotten hell forever. I
32:48
Speaker 1: was with my children, the twins, and we were out
32:52
Speaker 1: in the middle. We were under a bridge, clearing brush
32:58
Speaker 1: for an Eagle Scout project, and the phone rang. I
33:02
Speaker 1: went to go get look at it. I saw it
33:04
Speaker 1: was you and picked it up, and you gave me
33:09
Speaker 1: the news that the first case in New York had
33:15
Speaker 1: been saw through familial DNA. Too. Tony Stephano with the
33:24
Speaker 1: new when you Newsday reporter, how do you feel since
33:29
Speaker 1: you set a fire with Phil Vitrano and it ignited
33:35
Speaker 1: into this solving Wendy's case. Well, you know, Phil was
33:40
Speaker 1: the catalyst, Cathy was a catalyst. It took a long time.
33:44
Speaker 1: It took longer than I expected for this to get
33:47
Speaker 1: a hit. But then again, you know, there was some
33:50
Speaker 1: sense of satisfaction that I felt that that little thing
33:55
Speaker 1: we'd had back way back when when Karina died and
33:59
Speaker 1: we sort of wrote a familial DNA sort of came
34:02
Speaker 1: to fruition and got some results and got some closed
34:08
Speaker 1: the circle and a very horrible crime, you know, and
34:14
Speaker 1: the defendant presumed innocent, of course, but hey, you know
34:18
Speaker 1: This gave a lot of satisfaction, sents, A satisfaction to
34:21
Speaker 1: a lot of people, myself included. Speaking of people satisfy.
34:26
Speaker 1: Take a listen to our cut nine kill a Grain
34:28
Speaker 1: WRC news A. In nineteen ninety nine, police were able
34:33
Speaker 1: to build a DNA profile from Seamen that was collected
34:36
Speaker 1: from an autopsy. They gave that DNA to CODIS, an
34:39
Speaker 1: FBI system that compares DNA from no defenders. It didn't
34:43
Speaker 1: get any hits. In twenty seventeen, New York State to
34:46
Speaker 1: prove the use of familial DNA testing, which searches DNA
34:49
Speaker 1: and a database to find blood relatives of the person
34:52
Speaker 1: they're trying to find. The June investigators on this case
34:55
Speaker 1: received those search results. This led them to further DNA
34:58
Speaker 1: evidence and all stimately to Timothy Williams. I know I
35:02
Speaker 1: would see the day and know it's here. I just
35:07
Speaker 1: wish my husband had been life to seed this. Hessed
35:11
Speaker 1: away two thousand and eleven, and I know he's up
35:16
Speaker 1: there with her and Eric my Lean saying it's over.
35:23
Speaker 1: It's family overert you know I'm comparing Joe Scott Morgan,
35:32
Speaker 1: The Mother's Voice Indonesia reports at the time her daughter
35:37
Speaker 1: went missing to now she's an old lady and Wendy's
35:43
Speaker 1: father is dead and she's talking about how she wished
35:49
Speaker 1: he had been alive to see this day. You and
35:53
Speaker 1: I have both handled cases that were cold cases, and
35:58
Speaker 1: the victim's family's speed in their whole life seeking justice,
36:04
Speaker 1: and it's debilitating. It is, Nancy, And you know, not
36:09
Speaker 1: only did this animal murder this poor angel Wendy on
36:16
Speaker 1: a Thanksgiving night, he murdered her father as well. He
36:20
Speaker 1: is still killing this mother. You can only begin to
36:24
Speaker 1: imagine the years and the toll this has taken on
36:28
Speaker 1: this family after all these years, but everyone in this
36:32
Speaker 1: case has persisted all the way back in nineteen eighty four, Nancy,
36:37
Speaker 1: when they took those samples, they protected that and because
36:42
Speaker 1: of what they had done in the past, we were
36:45
Speaker 1: able to take that data, that evidence, and process it
36:49
Speaker 1: and bring this to a conclusion. That's why people like
36:53
Speaker 1: myself and Pam, when we teach our college students they're
36:56
Speaker 1: gonna go out and work for police agencies. We tell them,
37:00
Speaker 1: you're you're not only working to crime scene, you're a historian.
37:03
Speaker 1: You're documenting things they're going to ring through time and
37:06
Speaker 1: you never know how this is going to impact and
37:08
Speaker 1: all the way back then those actions they took at
37:11
Speaker 1: that morgue and at the crime scene, at that point
37:13
Speaker 1: they caught this guy. They caught him. To doctor Pamela
37:16
Speaker 1: Marshall joining me from Decayne University, Doctor Marshall, when you
37:22
Speaker 1: are teaching or when you are researching your many works,
37:29
Speaker 1: does do you ever allow it to get to you
37:34
Speaker 1: that what we're talking about when it's say familial DNA
37:37
Speaker 1: and DNA at the scene, we're talking about real people,
37:41
Speaker 1: in this case, a little girl that had just turned fourteen.
37:45
Speaker 1: Because it's hard for me sometimes to keep laser focus
37:49
Speaker 1: when I personally identify with the victims, which is always
37:53
Speaker 1: absolutely I think. I think what's important for me is
37:56
Speaker 1: to not only teach and develop the passion for for
37:59
Speaker 1: an the science and my students, but also the compassion
38:03
Speaker 1: for each and every victim. I am very honest and
38:07
Speaker 1: upfront with my students that cases involving children were always
38:10
Speaker 1: the hardest cases for me personally to deal with. But
38:15
Speaker 1: we all have to find outlets and someone has to
38:18
Speaker 1: do this job. And as my good colleague Joe just
38:21
Speaker 1: pointed out, you know, this is a result of all
38:25
Speaker 1: of that dedication to preserving that evidence because they they
38:29
Speaker 1: had to go back and do another layer of DNA
38:32
Speaker 1: testing all the way back in twenty twenty, at July
38:36
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, they had to do initial DNA pesting. So
38:40
Speaker 1: the fact that they have preserved the sample for thirty
38:43
Speaker 1: six years in a way that still was able to
38:47
Speaker 1: bring Wendy justice. In any other victim that Timothy Williams
38:53
Speaker 1: may have, you know, participated in the deaths of those
38:57
Speaker 1: individuals as well, it's hard for me to imagine and
39:00
Speaker 1: that this could have been a one off. I agree.
39:02
Speaker 1: Truer words were never spoken, doctor Pamela Marshall. And while
39:06
Speaker 1: we are passing credit around, I just want to point
39:10
Speaker 1: out none of this would be possible. Wendy's case would
39:14
Speaker 1: not be solved if it were not for Newsday reporter
39:18
Speaker 1: Tony to Stephano and my dear friend Phil the Toronto
39:26
Speaker 1: and let me remind you that trying to solve Corina's case,
39:30
Speaker 1: investigators pulled Phil out of his daughter's funeral to get
39:35
Speaker 1: his DNA. They didn't want to do it, but they
39:37
Speaker 1: had to do it, and because of his fight, they
39:40
Speaker 1: went national on doctor Oz. Wendy's case has been solved.
39:47
Speaker 1: May she rest in peace. Nancy Grace Crime Story, signing
39:51
Speaker 1: off goodbye friend,