Another Cold Case Solved, by jay7777

[almagata]

Joseph Holt was announced as the killer of Brynn Rainey and Carol Andersen of South Lake Tahoe in 1977 and 1979. He died in 2014. He is also a suspect in a 1975 Los Gatos shooting.

www.sacbee.com/news/local/crime/article226747699.html?fbclid=IwAR0DQJBcsV914XV9TNfIA1LXq1h3R-pBQyjhhxI_3bIneaHfT29kfvizeH4

El Dorado County, California — Investigators in El Dorado County, California, have identified the same man as the killer of a young woman in 1977 and a teen girl in 1979 using an emerging DNA technique that relies on genealogy databases. The El Dorado County District Attorney's office announced Monday that they partnered with Virginia-based Parabon NanoLabs to identify the killer of 27-year-old Brynn Rainey and 16-year-old Carol Andersen as Joseph Holt, a local real estate worker who died in 2014.

The decades-old murders of Rainey and Andersen near South Lake Tahoe are among the nearly 60 cold cases a county task force has been aiming to solve with the help of new forensic technology. The county of less than 190,000 has nearly double the amount of cases as counties twice its size, according to the district attorney's office.

Since district attorney Vern Pierson established the task force in 2007, investigators have taken a fresh look at evidence, tracked down new leads and launched a video campaign in the hopes of publicizing the cases and generating tips. CBSNews.com featured both Rainey and Andersen's stories as part of the campaign in 2015. The push resulted in "forward progress" on several cases, but the Rainey and Andersen cases remained unsolved until now, the district attorney's office said.

The family expressed relief that the cases had been closed after so many years in statements released by the district attorney's office.

"Finally, after 44 years of hell and back, we have some answers," Rainey's brother Pete Garl said.

Rainey was last seen on July 24, 1977, at a bar just before her 2 a.m. graveyard shift at the casino where she worked, just over the state line in Nevada. She had moved to South Lake Tahoe from Ohio just a few months before, and would often catch the bus or hitchhike to work. The next month, her nude body was found partially buried in a shallow grave in a horse riding area known as the Stateline Stables. Her cause of death couldn't be determined because of decomposition, but a pathologist believed she was likely strangled or suffocated, according to the district attorney's office.

Two years later, on June 30, 1979, Carol Andersen vanished on her way home from a party near a South Lake Tahoe ski resort. The Nevada teen's battered body was found a few hours later on the side of a road about four miles away. Investigators said she had been strangled, and her wrists had marks indicating she had been bound.
sketch.png


Her sister Deanna Andersen told CBSNews.com in 2015 the rising high school junior suffered from epilepsy, and their mother rarely let her leave home by herself. Her mother had asked her not to go to the party the night she was slain, Anderson said.

Anderson said she is convinced her sister was targeted.

"She was so innocent," said Deanna Andersen, who was 7 at the time of the murder. "She was just getting into the party scene."

Holt lived about a six-minute walk from the home where Andersen was last seen, according to the district attorney's office, and about a mile and a half from the location where Rainey was found slain. Both Rainey and Andersen's family told investigators they had no indication that either knew Holt, a graduate of the University of California Berkeley who was 27 when he moved to South Lake Tahoe in 1974.

Investigators made a significant break in both cases in 2017 when they determined an unidentified male DNA profile from Andersen's body matched a DNA profile from a blood stain found on Rainey's shirt, indicating they had likely been killed by the same man. Investigators previously didn't have evidence to link the two killings.

The profile, however, didn't come up with a match in the FBI's national criminal database. Investigators didn't identify the suspect until 2018, after a Parabon genetic genealogist searched the DNA profile against genetic blueprints available on public genealogy databases.

The technique that has gained popularity among law enforcement since it was used to identify "Golden State Killer" suspect Joseph DeAngelo, though it's also raised a host of privacy concerns. It utilizes the public DNA databases, where users who have obtained their own DNA profiles from commercial companies such as Ancestry.com and 23andMe can upload them to expand their search for relatives.

The analysis led investigators to three deceased brothers they believed might be the source of the unidentified crime scene DNA, one of whom was Holt, according to the district attorney's office. Parabon's genealogist built a "family tree" that investigators used to locate Holt's son. The son provided investigators with his father's toothbrush in Oct. 2018, and the match was confirmed in January.

Investigators executed a search warrant on Jan. 23 of a garage where Holt had stored some of his personal property, and uncovered "evidence suggestive of other criminal conduct," according to the district attorney's office. Investigators said they found a clipping of a newspaper article from an unsolved 1975 shooting of a driver by a man who was burglarizing his car in Los Gatos.


The victim survived, and investigators were able to develop a suspect sketch that "strongly resembles" Holt in the mid-1970s, according to the El Dorado District Attorney's office. In addition, the handgun was reported stolen from a cab driver in South Lake Tahoe. Investigators said Holt was known to frequent both South Lake Tahoe and Los Gatos.

In a statement, the El Dorado County District Attorney's office said the task force is "honored and proud to bring resolution to both Brynn Rainey and Carol Andersen's family after all these years."

Investigators emphasized Holt's family has been cooperative and were unaware of any allegations against him.

Speaking with CBSNews.com in 2015, relatives of both Andersen and Rainey said the murders were devastating for their families. Compounding their grief was a lack of answers about what happened to their loved ones. The families said that both of the victims' mothers had died without knowing the identity of their daughters' killer.

Now, they said, surviving family members have those answers.

"Almost 40 years ago, a beautiful, vibrant teenager was taken from her mother, older sisters, younger brother, and younger sister," Andersen's family said in a statement. "Unfortunately, relatively quickly the case went cold and while from time to time it would be revisited nothing could be found, until about a year ago. It was at that time that an incredible team of four investigators from the El Dorado County District Attorney's Cold Case Files and through all their hard work and efforts, they were able to give the family some answers and closure and ultimately allow Carol Andersen to rest in peace."

____________________

Here is his obituary which gives a bit more history of this life.  Another killer who was living a completely normal life. 

www.inedc.com/1-9135.html

[jenn]

Thank you, Almagata, for posting this.

[Jay7777]

I'll second that!

[kemo]

In 1975 in Los Gatos Ca, two men caught a guy breaking into their car. They gave chase and the guy turned around and shoot one of them twice (he did not die). The perpetrator got away but dropped his gun. The gun turned our to have been taken from an empty Taxi in South Lake Tahoe earlier that year. The composite of the Los Gatos shooter looks just like Holt at the time.

I assumed that Holt must have been a suspect at the time but the connection may have only been made after newspaper articles about the crime were found among Holts processions last year.

It would appear that while Holt was pursuing in real estate career in Tahoe, he had a vehicular burglary sideline. I find this interesting; the guy not only commits sexually motivated murder but does property crimes as well, yet he avoids any criminal record and had cultivated a reputation of a successful businessman; law abiding citizen.

He was said to have moved to Tahoe work as a real estate agent but the obituary says nothing about that, only that he was an investor in rental property. One only makes it as an income
property investor with up front capital. I wonder where that came from. His father was an airline pilot so there may have been some family money but I’d like to bet there was more to it. A little serious digging might turn up some long buried secrets.

There are also a number of unsolved murders of women in the Tahoe area from the 70’s and 80’s and no doubt some from the Santa Clara County area as well. Julie Schossow, Marilyn Putt and
Debney Lynn Lobenoff we’re abducted from the Tahoe area and found murdered under very similar circumstances in 1981-82. Their bodies were found in water without forensic evidence.

Some psychopaths die alone in prison, other die Rich surrounded by friends and family.

[starsky]

Some comments on this:

1.) Don't you wish there had been a sketch artist for EAR as there was for this cold case? Look at the resemblance between the suspect and the actual killer:

imgur.com/a/GLGEOGw

2.) As you mention, the 1981-82 killings have both location and MO similarities. Julie Schossow, 25, and Marilyn Putt, 27, worked as blackjack dealers at Harrah's Casino, across the street from Sahara Casino (now Hard Rock), where 27 year old Brynn Rainey worked as a keno girl. In all cases, the cause of death was ligature strangulation.

3.) There are gaps of 2 years. 1977, 1979 and two in 1981

More here:
www.tahoedailytribune.com/news/information-sought-in-1982-south-lake-tahoe-killings/

[Jay7777]

Pure evil:

Dead and gone! Another sickco bites the dust. Sure It was solved years ago but interesting to know, so I posted here, even if it is kind of out of place.

Angus Sinclair dead: World's End serial killer dies in prison aged 73

www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/angus-sinclair-dead-worlds-end-serial-killer-dies-in-prison-aged-73/ar-BBUCX5t?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=HPDHP

World's End serial killer and rapist Angus Sinclair has died aged 73.

The notorious Scottish murderer died overnight at HMP Glenochil in Alloa, Clackmannanshire, the country's prison service confirmed.

He had spent more than half his life behind bars for killing four girls, as well as for a string of sex attacks on young children.

But detectives suspect the monster, who grew up in Glasgow, could have been behind several unsolved murders from the 1970s.

Sinclair was serving the longest minimum sentence ever imposed by a Scottish court after the World's End Murders in 1977.

He was convicted and jailed for life in 2014 after raping and murdering Christine Eadie and Helen Scott, both 17, in Edinburgh.

He was handed a 37-year minimum term - the same number of years his victims' families were forced to wait for justice.

But at the time, he was already in jail - having been locked up since 1982 for sexually assaulting girls between the ages of six and 14.

While still in prison for the sex attacks, he was given a life sentence in 2001 for murdering Glasgow teenager Mary Gallacher in 1978.

He had earlier served six years behind bars for raping and killing his eight-year-old neighbour, Catherine Reehill, in 1961.

He was 16 at the time. He pleaded guilty to culpable homicide over the little girl's death - admitting strangling her and dumping her body on a tenement stairway.

It meant he spent around 40 years of his life locked up.

And Sinclair is believed to have killed at least four other women in a gruesome sex killing spree in 1977, Glasgow Live reported.

Jayme Closs kidnap suspect denies 'thinking like serial killer' in prison letter

He had started his life of crime at the age of 13 when he stole from a church's offertory box in 1959. He would go on to become one of Scotland's most notorious killers.

Two years ago, it was reported that Sinclair had suffered a series of strokes behind bars and would be "lucky to last the year".

Prison sources told the Daily Record at the time that his condition had deteriorated and he was showing no signs of recovery.
The circumstances surrounding his death today remain unclear.

Sinclair had been first locked up for 10 years for Catherine's killing.

He later carried out the World's End Murders - although he was tried twice for the crimes, after initially being acquitted.

Christine and Helen were attacked and murdered after a night out at Edinburgh's World’s End pub in October 1977.

The pair were later found dead six miles apart in East Lothian, having been gagged, beaten, raped and strangled.

Christine's naked body was discovered in Gosford Bay by hill walkers, while Helen's was found in a corn-stubble field.

No attempt had been made to conceal the bodies.

A high-profile investigation was launched - but despite more than 500 possible suspects, the killer could not be found.
In May 1978, the probe was scaled down.

However, in the late 1990s, Sinclair was tracked down following a cold case review and the development of DNA profiling.
He was charged over the teenagers' killings.

But despite DNA evidence linking him to the two girls, the monster was acquitted of the murders, the Record reports.

Sinclair's defence counsel argued that no evidence had been presented proving that any sexual encounter was non-consensual.
And the judge ruled that there was no case to answer.

But in 2014, Sinclair was tried for the second time following the introduction of the Double Jeopardy (Scotland) Act in 2011.
The Act ended a rule that you couldn't be tried twice for murder.

By this point, the killer was already jailed for murdering Mary at Barnhill Rail Station in the north of Glasgow.

During the second World's End trial, jurors visited the murder scenes and Sinclair was convicted of the killings.

He was sentenced to life behind bars. He would have had to live to at least 106 years old to be even eligible for parole.

Before Sinclair's death, a detective who nailed him had urged the serial killer to confess to other murders.

Speaking in 2017, retired Joe Jackson said: "If he has any humanity, he’ll confess to the terrible things he’s done".

That year, a prison source described Sinclair as “skeletal” and said his only nutrition was liquids taken through a baby cup.

The killer was said to have suffered a series of strokes since 2014, and to be under constant medical attention at the prison.

A source at the jail said at the time: “Sinclair is now deteriorating rapidly. He eats only wet food, drinks from a plastic cup like a baby’s bottle and is spoon-fed his meds.

“It would be a tragic thing to see if it was someone other than him. Nurses visit three times daily and he’ll be lucky to see the end of the year.”

[spodey]

And another cold-case killer identified and arrested: www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/03/14/dna-leads-to-arrest-34-years-after-navy-recruits-slaying/

[Jay7777]

You beat me to it Spodey:

DNA match leads to arrest in Navy grad's killing — 34 years later

www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/dna-match-leads-to-arrest-in-navy-grads-killing-—-34-years-later/ar-BBUMLnf?ocid=spartandhp

ORLANDO, Fla. - In the summer of 1984, Pamela Cahanes' body was found in an overgrown lot in unincorporated Sanford. The 25-year-old had graduated from boot camp at the Orlando Naval Training Center two days earlier. She had been beaten and strangled. Her white uniform lay inches from her body.

Her killing has gone unsolved for 34 years.

On Thursday, Seminole County Sheriff Dennis Lemma announced an arrest in Cahanes' killing: Using a public database, he said, investigators matched DNA found on Cahanes' body to Thomas Lewis Garner, a 59-year-old dental hygienist from Jacksonville.

Garner was arrested Wednesday at his apartment in Jacksonville by officials with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and deputies from Seminole and Jacksonville counties. He was taken to the Seminole County Jail, where he's being held without bond on a first-degree murder charge.

Lemma said Garner had been stationed at the Orlando Naval Training Center at the same time as Cahanes. Other than a battery charge while he was serving in the Navy, Lemma said Garner had led an unremarkable life since the brutal slaying.

"It's extremely bizarre to think that somebody could commit a crime like this, then go on and lead a normal life," Lemma said during a news conference announcing Garner's arrest.

For years, authorities had tested the DNA found on Cahanes to no avail. But recent advancements allowed investigators to build a "family tree" that eventually led to Garner being considered a suspect in the case. A spokesman for the Sheriff's Office said Garner's DNA was matched using a "genealogy research database," but did not elaborate on which specific database led authorities to Garner.

Investigators then trailed Garner until he dropped a "personal item" that analysts could test for DNA. Testing later placed the odds of the evidence found on Cahanes' body belonging to anyone other than Garner at 700 billion to 1, Lemma said.

Garner had not previously been considered a suspect, Lemma said. Garner has not admitted to killing Cahanes and authorities are not sure how the two encountered each other.

"If you think about his perspective, quite literally he was probably under the belief that he was getting away with murder," Lemma said.
Cahanes grew up on a dairy farm in a large family in Minnesota, the seventh of eight children. She enlisted in the Navy and, in May 1984, flew down to Orlando to attend boot camp at the Orlando Naval Training Center in what is now Baldwin Park.

She graduated Aug. 3.

On Aug. 5, 1984, Cahanes was found face-down in her underwear in the yard of a vacant home on what is now the corner of Riverview Avenue and West First Street in Sanford. She had been beaten and bloodied. But she had not been robbed, and Lemma said it did not appear she had been sexually assaulted.

Retired SCSO Investigator Bob Jaynes worked on Cahanes' case for more than 20 years. He kept a picture of her on his desk and had hoped to solve the case while Cahanes' mother was still alive. But the break came too late. Alice Cahanes died in 2016.

"It is extremely sad to know that our victim's mom had passed away, and never had the opportunity to see this," Lemma said. "I'm convinced she's looking down from heaven right now, knowing this is a day of relief as this person is held accountable and responsible for what he's done."
Several siblings gathered at a home in Minnesota, where they heard news of Garner's arrest Thursday morning.

"Pam was a loving, charming farm girl at heart who wanted to continue to explore by going into the Navy," said her sister, Eileen Bergmann, 69.
"We had no idea this was coming," she said. "We're just in shock right now, but I never gave up hope."

[Jay7777]

Its amazing how many cold cases are being solved these last couple of years. This folder makes for good reading but I hope it also continues to grow, as these sick people are finally brought to justice.

[spodey]

Here's another developing story...this just in:


www.dothanfirst.com/news/local-news/breaking-major-development-in-20-year-old-beasley-hawlettcase/1854150972

[Jay7777]

Very old but worth posting here:

www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/jack-the-ripper-identified-but-these-cold-case-murders-kidnappings-remain-a-mystery/ar-BBUYsgW?ocid=spartandhp

Jack the Ripper identified, but these cold case murders, kidnappings remain a mystery

Researchers say they've finally identified the serial killer known as Jack the Ripper based on DNA evidence.

The man who killed at least five women in the Whitechapel district of London in the late 1800s is believed to be Aaron Kosminski, a 23-year-old Polish barber and prime suspect at the time. The forensic investigation was published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Forensic Sciences last week.
The finding could book-end a cold case that's remained largely a mystery for over 100 years. It also raises questions about what other details could be discovered from other well-known murders and kidnappings.

[kg]

Feb 26, 2019 18:20:54 GMT kemo said:

In 1975 in Los Gatos Ca, two men caught a guy breaking into their car. They gave chase and the guy turned around and shoot one of them twice (he did not die). The perpetrator got away but dropped his gun. The gun turned our to have been taken from an empty Taxi in South Lake Tahoe earlier that year. The composite of the Los Gatos shooter looks just like Holt at the time.

I assumed that Holt must have been a suspect at the time but the connection may have only been made after newspaper articles about the crime were found among Holts processions last year.

It would appear that while Holt was pursuing in real estate career in Tahoe, he had a vehicular burglary sideline. I find this interesting; the guy not only commits sexually motivated murder but does property crimes as well, yet he avoids any criminal record and had cultivated a reputation of a successful businessman; law abiding citizen.

He was said to have moved to Tahoe work as a real estate agent but the obituary says nothing about that, only that he was an investor in rental property. One only makes it as an income
property investor with up front capital. I wonder where that came from. His father was an airline pilot so there may have been some family money but I’d like to bet there was more to it. A little serious digging might turn up some long buried secrets.

There are also a number of unsolved murders of women in the Tahoe area from the 70’s and 80’s and no doubt some from the Santa Clara County area as well. Julie Schossow, Marilyn Putt and
Debney Lynn Lobenoff we’re abducted from the Tahoe area and found murdered under very similar circumstances in 1981-82. Their bodies were found in water without forensic evidence.

Some psychopaths die alone in prison, other die Rich surrounded by friends and family.

Add Donna Lass to the list of unsolved cases of women who disappeared from South Lake Tahoe area. Hmmmmmm.... there is that realty connection again. Oh EAR, do you hear me?

[Jay7777]

DNA test solves 45-year-old double-murder mystery in Montana

www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/dna-test-solves-45-year-old-double-murder-mystery-in-montana/ar-BBVduvi?li=BBnbfcL&ocid=HPDHP

BILLINGS, Mont. — A genealogy database used to match a family's DNA with evidence found at a 1973 crime scene has led investigators to identify the long-dead suspect in the strangulation killing of a young married couple, a Montana sheriff said Monday.

Linda and Clifford Bernhardt, both 24, were killed at their Billings-area home in a case that would stymie investigators for decades.
Investigators now believe they were killed by Cecil Stan Caldwell, a longtime city of Billings employee who was once a co-worker of Linda Bernhardt, Yellowstone County Sheriff Mike Linder said. He did not identify a motive in the killing.

Caldwell had no criminal record, and died in 2003 at the age of 59, according to his obituary in the Billings Gazette.

Relatives of the victims attended a news conference in which Linder named Caldwell as the suspect. The family issued a statement thanking the sheriff's office for its work, but made no further comment and asked for privacy.

Clifford Bernhardt was a concrete worker and Vietnam veteran and his wife worked at a grocery distribution warehouse. They had been married several years and moved into a new house just weeks before they were killed.

Linda Bernhardt had been bound and sexually assaulted before her death, and authorities used psychologists to try to build a profile of the suspect, according to reports at the time.

Hundreds of interviews were conducted, and police at one point even brought in a psychic in their desperate search for clues to a crime described in a newspaper article as "the most sensational unsolved murder case in Billings history."

They also enlisted the help of "The Amazing Kreskin," when the mentalist visited town, according to a 1980 news report.

Scott Goodwin, a volunteer with the cold case unit who helped with the investigation, said he and others involved were unwilling to let it go.
"We were obsessed with it," Goodwin said. "These are two young people who didn't deserve what happened to them. They didn't do anything. They came home on a Tuesday night and they were murdered."

All other leads had dried up by 2004, when DNA was discovered on evidence gathered at the crime scene, Linder said.

But comparing that DNA against an FBI database of known criminals yielded no results, leaving authorities frustrated yet again.

In 2015, the sheriff's cold case unit enlisted a Reston, Virginia, technology company, Parabon NanoLabs, to analyze the DNA by comparing it to genetic samples available through a public genealogy database. That process ultimately narrowed the list of suspects to Caldwell and his brother, who is still alive and living outside the area, said Vince Wallis, a former detective captain with the sheriff's office who now works for the Billings Police Department.

After DNA was obtained voluntarily from the brother, it was analyzed by the Montana State Crime Lab to eliminate him as a suspect. That left only Caldwell, Wallis said.

Wallis added other circumstantial evidence including "unspecified behavior" by Caldwell connected the suspect to the crime scene, but he declined to offer additional details.

An anonymous donor in 2013 had offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the couple's killer.

[Jay7777]

A suspect confessed four times to killing a nurse. After three decades, police finally listened.

www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/a-suspect-confessed-four-times-to-killing-a-nurse-after-three-decades-police-finally-listened/ar-BBVbLlO?ocid=spartanntp

Last summer, a Michigan felon then living in Southern California powered up a Facebook account and let rip.

“I am no angel. If I get pi**ed I kill,” Michael Leon Curry wrote on Facebook on June 28, 2018. “I have never killed anyone who did not — who didn’t deserve it.”

Around 2,000 miles away, investigators with the Michigan State Police were carefully noting Curry’s online statements. Rather than the usual social media bombast, these investigators believed the comments were a hatchway into the mind of an alleged killer. They knew they were dealing with a longtime suspect in a cold case who was shockingly open about his alleged crime.

Earlier this month, Michigan authorities traveled to California with an arrest warrant for Curry. On March 17, the 51-year-old suspect was transported back to Bangor, Mich., about 28 miles west of Kalamazoo, and charged in the 1986 slaying of a nurse’s aide, West Michigan’s WWMT reported.

Subscribe to the Post Most newsletter: Today’s most popular stories on The Washington Post

But Curry’s candid streak did not apparently stop at social media posts.

According to information provided at a probable cause hearing held earlier this month and recently made public, not only had Curry been a suspect during the early days of the 1986 investigation, but he also had confessed to the crime — at least four times.

Curry allegedly confessed to a cellmate; confessed in interviews with investigators; and even confessed in writing. Before heading into custody in 1989 for a lengthy prison sentence for an unrelated crime, Curry again allegedly tried to communicate his guilt. But despite all his efforts, the suspect was never charged.

“A lot of people didn’t believe [his confession] at the time,” Tim Wydick, the original police investigator on the case, told WOOD. “People thought he was trying to get attention.”

Authorities have not detailed what has changed to lead investigators to now file charges. Curry remains in custody, charged with first-degree homicide. His attorney did not immediately return a request for comment.

Wilda Wilkinson’s grown daughter Rhonda realized something was wrong when she learned her mother had not shown up for work. It was July 29, 1986, and Wilkinson’s co-workers at a hospital had called Rhonda about the nurse’s aide’s no-show.

According to testimony given this month in a probable cause hearing, Rhonda drove to her mother’s house in Bangor, a single-story bungalow shaded by a hulking tree in the front yard and wrapped with a waist-high chain-link fence.

All the doors and windows were locked, according to testimony at the hearing. Wilkinson’s car was in the driveway. Rhonda forced the screen off a back window and crawled inside. She found her mother dead on the bedroom floor.

Wilkinson, 59, had bruising around her neck. The dead woman’s nightgown had also been tampered with, police would later determine. The top of the gown was pulled down, and the bottom was lifted above her waist. The victim’s underwear were also missing from the body. An autopsy ruled Wilkinson’s death a homicide.

Investigators questioned a number of possible suspects in the case, including Curry, who lived near the victim. On Aug. 21, 1986, Curry was arrested on an unrelated unarmed robbery charge, according to testimony at the hearing. While he was in custody, his cellmate in the jail, Robert Pritchard, told investigators in January 1987 that Curry had confessed to the Wilkinson killing.

Pritchard also showed detectives a letter allegedly written by Curry admitting to the crime.

When investigators interviewed Curry, he “confessed to committing the crime by strangling Wilda Wilkinson with his hands in her house,” Michigan State Police Sgt. Kyle Gorham testified at the probable cause hearing. “Michael Curry provided detailed information of the crime.”

According to Curry, he had been planning to rob the house when he knocked on the front door to see if anyone was home. “[H]e was startled when a female surprised him by answering the door,” Gorham said. “Upon her answering the door he pushed the female victim . . . inside the residence.” Curry then said “he strangled the victim with his hands.”

Curry also told detectives how he arranged Wilkinson’s clothing and took her underwear to make the scene look like a sex crime.
“Michael Curry confessed twice verbally” about the crime to investigators, Gorham told the court. But still he was not charged.

Despite knowing the details of the crime — including the color of the underwear taken from the victim — the police were suspicious of Curry’s confession, an investigator told WOOD. Curry’s account lacked other specific details.

“We put him on a polygraph and at first he said, ‘I’ll tell you all about it,’ then we put him on a polygraph, he reneged everything,” a detective told the television station. “We thought that he was just screwing with us basically, because he was that kind of a guy.”

Wydick, another original detective on the case, told WOOD that his team presented their evidence to prosecutors, who decided against issuing an arrest warrant in the case because of a lack of physical evidence backing up Curry’s confession.

But the suspect was not done taking credit for the crime.

In December 1989, Curry was arrested after nearly beating his roommate to death. He was eventually convicted by a jury of assault with intent to kill. But a day after Curry’s arrest in 1989, an anonymous letter was sent to Wydick.

According to the probable cause hearing, the letter again referred to the Wilkinson attack: “almost 41 months have passed, 1,233 days since that fatal hot and humid July night,” the note stated, correctly referring to the amount of time that had passed since the killing. The note also again referenced how Wilkinson had been found without her underwear in an attempt to make the crime look sexually motivated.

Although the letter was unsigned, forensic analysis showed Curry’s fingerprints were on the note. But again, he was not charged.
Curry served nearly 27 years for his assault conviction until his release in 2017, WWMT reported.

The Wilkerson investigation went cold for decades until a renewed push from the victim’s family prompted the Michigan State Police to reopen the case in 2010.

“Her daughters were really pushing to get this solved because they wanted to find out who was responsible while they were still alive,” Michigan State Police Lt. Shane Criger told WWMT.

According to testimony at the probable cause hearing, investigators began monitoring Curry’s Facebook account by at least last summer. Detectives also revealed they exhumed Wilkinson’s body in October 2018 for further forensic tests, more than three decades after her death.

Prosecutors have yet to reveal what other new information led them to charging the man who has been so open in claiming his guilt in the 1986 crime.
“I have no idea what they’ve done over the last year,” an investigator who worked on the case told WOOD. “I have no idea what new information or anything they have.”

[almagata]

Mar 26, 2019 3:19:03 GMT Jay7777 said:

DNA test solves 45-year-old double-murder mystery in Montana

www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/dna-test-solves-45-year-old-double-murder-mystery-in-montana/ar-BBVduvi?li=BBnbfcL&ocid=HPDHP

BILLINGS, Mont. — A genealogy database used to match a family's DNA with evidence found at a 1973 crime scene has led investigators to identify the long-dead suspect in the strangulation killing of a young married couple, a Montana sheriff said Monday.

Linda and Clifford Bernhardt, both 24, were killed at their Billings-area home in a case that would stymie investigators for decades.
Investigators now believe they were killed by Cecil Stan Caldwell, a longtime city of Billings employee who was once a co-worker of Linda Bernhardt, Yellowstone County Sheriff Mike Linder said. He did not identify a motive in the killing.

Caldwell had no criminal record, and died in 2003 at the age of 59, according to his obituary in the Billings Gazette.

Relatives of the victims attended a news conference in which Linder named Caldwell as the suspect. The family issued a statement thanking the sheriff's office for its work, but made no further comment and asked for privacy.

Clifford Bernhardt was a concrete worker and Vietnam veteran and his wife worked at a grocery distribution warehouse. They had been married several years and moved into a new house just weeks before they were killed.

Linda Bernhardt had been bound and sexually assaulted before her death, and authorities used psychologists to try to build a profile of the suspect, according to reports at the time.

Hundreds of interviews were conducted, and police at one point even brought in a psychic in their desperate search for clues to a crime described in a newspaper article as "the most sensational unsolved murder case in Billings history."

They also enlisted the help of "The Amazing Kreskin," when the mentalist visited town, according to a 1980 news report.

Scott Goodwin, a volunteer with the cold case unit who helped with the investigation, said he and others involved were unwilling to let it go.
"We were obsessed with it," Goodwin said. "These are two young people who didn't deserve what happened to them. They didn't do anything. They came home on a Tuesday night and they were murdered."

All other leads had dried up by 2004, when DNA was discovered on evidence gathered at the crime scene, Linder said.

But comparing that DNA against an FBI database of known criminals yielded no results, leaving authorities frustrated yet again.

In 2015, the sheriff's cold case unit enlisted a Reston, Virginia, technology company, Parabon NanoLabs, to analyze the DNA by comparing it to genetic samples available through a public genealogy database. That process ultimately narrowed the list of suspects to Caldwell and his brother, who is still alive and living outside the area, said Vince Wallis, a former detective captain with the sheriff's office who now works for the Billings Police Department.

After DNA was obtained voluntarily from the brother, it was analyzed by the Montana State Crime Lab to eliminate him as a suspect. That left only Caldwell, Wallis said.

Wallis added other circumstantial evidence including "unspecified behavior" by Caldwell connected the suspect to the crime scene, but he declined to offer additional details.

An anonymous donor in 2013 had offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the couple's killer.

Thanks for posting this Jay.

I'm glad this one was solved.