Another Cold Case Solved, by jay7777

[Jay7777]

One more solved, through confession this time:

www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/10/19/haunting-murder-mystery-apparently-solved-after-33-years-when-man-calls-tv-station-to-confess/


‘Haunting’ murder mystery apparently solved after 33 years when man calls TV station to confess

It’s every journalist’s dream to answer the phone and get the tip that breaks a big story.



But not like this.



On Oct. 11, a reporter at WISN 12 News in Milwaukee picked up the phone to hear a man confess to a 33-year-old murder. The caller, 50-year-old Jose Ferreira, told the television station that he was responsible for the 1982 death of 13-year-old Carrie Ann Jopek. Ferreira hadn’t just killed her, he told the reporter. He had raped her as well.



“His story was very detailed — disturbingly so,” WISN news director Chris Gegg told the Associated Press.



On Saturday, a week after his phone call, Ferreira was officially charged with killing Jopek. His arrest has brought closure to Jopek’s mother, who long blamed herself for her daughter’s death. He has not yet filed a plea and his lawyer did not respond to requests for comment from the Associated Press.



AD



“It’s been 33 years since she’s been gone,” Carolyn Tousignant said, according to the AP. “I’ve been praying for this day.”



Although bizarre, the telephoned confession was a fitting end to a vexing crime that also began with a call.



On March 16, 1982, Tousignant received a call from Kosciuszko Middle School to say that Jopek had been suspended from school. The principal asked if Tousignant wanted to come get her daughter, but Tousignant decided to let the 13-year-old walk the one block home from school.



“I figured she’ll be home, Tousignant told WISN, “but she never showed up.”




Carrie Anne Jopek went missing in 1982. He said she'd been haunting him since that day.




For 17 months, there wasn’t a sign of Jopek. Her mother “waited and waited” for her daughter, but the investigation into the disappearance went nowhere, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.



Then, in August of 1983, a contractor was working on the back porch of a neighboring house when he struck something hard: human bone.




“She spent two of her birthdays underneath that porch,” Tousignant told the AP.



“I didn’t want to know [she was dead], yet somehow I knew it would be best if the whole thing would just end,” she told the Journal Sentinel at the time.



Although the mystery of Carrie Ann’s location was sadly solved, the mystery over her murder was just beginning. It would take more than three decades for it to unravel.



Jopek was found wearing the same clothes in which she had disappeared, leading Tousignant to think that she had died the very day she went missing. But by the time her body was unearthed, it was difficult for investigators to determine how she died, according to the Journal Sentinel.



Ferreira, who was 17 at the time and lived nearby, was apparently questioned about his neighbor’s disappearance but never arrested. Even when Jopek’s body was found, there wasn’t enough evidence to charge him.



But Tousignant had her suspicions.



Carolyn Tousignant talks to reporters while going through clippings about the 1982 disappearance of her daughter, Carrie Ann Jopek. (Greg Moore/AP)


According to Tousignant, Junior, as Ferreira was known, once told her that he and some friends were with Jopek when she hit her head and died, but he refused to tell police, according to this week’s WISN report. It’s unclear whether she went to police at that time to report that crucial conversation.




In that same conversations, she said Ferreira had told her: “They were drinking, they were all drinking Yukon Jack and smoking weed,” Tousignant told the TV station. ”They got scared, so they grabbed a dry cleaning bag, wrapped her up in that and dug a hole under the porch and buried her.”



If Ferreira somehow managed to escape investigators, he ultimately couldn’t hide from his own conscience, it seems.



On the morning of Oct. 11, he called the WISN news room and confessed to killing Jopek. The phone call raised “several red flags” and the news station contacted police before going public with the confession, according to the AP.



Ferreira told the station that he had “lived across the street from Carrie Ann and went to a party with her the night she died,” the TV station reported the next day. “He said she fell and broke her neck. He said he had sex with her because he thought she was unconscious. When he realized she was dead, he buried her.”




“Oh, my God,” Tousignant told WISN when she heard of Ferreira’s confession. “He always said that she was haunting him.”



Ferreira appeared in court on Saturday on a charge of second-degree murder. According to WISN, he told police that he and Jopek were hanging out at the house party when they went into the basement to make out. When Jopek had second thoughts, however, Ferreira pushed her down a flight of stairs, breaking her neck.



Her last words were “I don’t know if this is a good idea,” according to court documents obtained by the TV station.



Ferreira then allegedly had sex with her body before burying her under the porch.




Although painful, the new details of the decades-old death are a relief for Jopek’s family. For years, Tousignant felt her daughter’s disappearance was her fault for not picking her up at school that day in March of 1982. Now she says she can sleep easier knowing what really happened to Carrie Ann.


“She would’ve snuck over there anyway,” she told the AP, referring to the house party.



While welcome, the sudden break in the 33-year-old mystery is also raising some questions about the Milwaukee Police Department, which failed to crack the cold case until Ferreira’s fortunate media confession. Strangely, this is not the city’s first old case to be solved in the past few years thanks to an apparently guilt-ridden confession coming out of the blue.



In 2013, a 16-year-old murder mystery came to a shocking end when a man already in prison for an unrelated case confessed to accidentally shooting a woman in the back of her head during a robbery.



Randy Q. Baines admitted to killing Leila Dempsey as she held her 2-year-old son in her arms.



“He told investigators Dempsey’s death had been bothering him,” the Journal Sentinel reported.


Why, exactly, Ferreira cracked still remains unclear, however.



For Jopek’s family, the reason may not matter. What does is that he’s finally behind bars.



“Now he’s gonna pay for what he did to her,” her mother said.

[Jay7777]

West Mesa Killings.

An interesting case I believe Lorenzo Montoya is a stronger suspect than Joseph Blea but I believe it is one of them for sure! So I put this in the solved Cold Case category!


www.abqjournal.com/715705/news/west-mesa-murders-seven-years-later.html


Seven years ago Tuesday, police began throwing everything they had at the biggest crime the city had ever seen – the murders of 11 women found buried on the city’s West Mesa.



The pace was frantic. There were human remains to identify and a serial killer to catch.



But as years have passed, answers have been few and far between, and there have been no arrests.



This year, police said only one detective remains full-time on what was once the 40-member 118th Street Task Force.



Det. Mark Manary’s assignment: Find out who murdered 11 women and an unborn child.



Eleanor Griego, the mother of victim Julie Nieto, said she is worried that nothing is happening and the killer won’t be caught.



“At this point, I’m losing hope on them finding anybody,” she said.



In recent weeks, Manary gave some details about what he’s been up to.



He said he has investigated 40 tips that came into the West Mesa hotline in 2015 and done interviews.



“About 200 women with similar backgrounds to the victims have been interviewed” so far in the investigation, he said.



The women interviewed were likely working the streets or involved in drugs, as many of the victims shared that lifestyle.



Manary said investigators dug into the victims’ pasts to create detailed timelines for the years when they disappeared – 2003 and 2004. They have also done the same for potential suspects.



“Many persons of interest have been eliminated by means of that timeline,” Manary said.



But he is tight-lipped about who remains on the list – and he won’t call anyone a person of interest.



Last year, police confirmed that two men, Joseph Blea and Lorenzo Montoya, were still on that list.



A Journal review of scores of old reports and court records, some of which were recently released, add new details to what’s already been reported about why police had them on the list.



Suspected early on





Joseph Blea. (MDC)



It was just a week after finding the first bones that police began to home in on Joseph Blea, who is in prison for other crimes, as a potential suspect.



April Gillen, Blea’s former wife, contacted police seven days after the discovery of a bone on the mesa and said she thought police should look into him.



They already knew a lot about him.



Officers had run across him nearly 140 times between 1990 and 2009. Some of those encounters were along the East Central corridor, a seedy stretch known for prostitution and drugs that many of the victims reportedly frequented, according to a search warrant affidavit unsealed last year.



In one police report, six years before the West Mesa victims disappeared, a woman who had been walking on Central Avenue said Blea called her over to his car and exposed himself. Police found rope and electrical tape on his front seat.



In the weeks after the victims’ remains were found, detectives with APD’s Repeat Offender Project tailed Blea for four days as he appeared to stalk prostitutes on the stroll.



“On two separate occasions Mr. Blea drove Central Ave from the west part of Albuquerque to the east part of Albuquerque,” an officer wrote in the warrant. “He slowed and circled the block in areas where prostitutes were working. He did not approach any prostitutes but appeared to be closely watching them.”



When detectives interviewed a prostitute who knew him, she said he had taken her to his house and tried to tie her up, but she didn’t let him.



About eight months after the West Mesa murder investigation began, detectives searched Blea’s home and collected women’s jewelry and underwear.



His wife, Cheryl Blea, told police she had on occasion found jewelry that didn’t belong to her or her daughter in their home. And she said her daughter had found women’s underwear hidden in their shed.



In a 2015 interview with the Journal, Robert Cloven, the father of victim Virginia Cloven, said some families had noticed the women’s jewelry was missing.



Manary wouldn’t say if the jewelry or underwear found at Blea’s house matched any of the victims’ DNA.



“Due to this being an ongoing criminal investigation, this question cannot be answered at this time,” he said in an email.



Blea reportedly had a fascination with the West Mesa case.



When detectives interviewed Monroe Elderts, Blea’s former cellmate, Elderts said Blea told him he knew some of the victims and had paid them for sex acts.



“Mr. Blea spoke poorly about other identified victims, calling them trashy,” police said Elderts told them.



Blea told Elderts he hit one of the victims when she tried to take his money.



Detectives’ investigation into Blea also led them to other alleged crimes – a young woman he knew said Blea repeatedly raped her when she was 14, including once with a screwdriver. Charges in that case were later dropped.



Last year, Blea was sentenced to 90 years in prison for sexual assaults on four victims in the late 1980s and early ’90s.



He is appealing those convictions.



His former attorney, John McCall, said police investigated Blea in connection with the West Mesa murders, but he said Blea says he had nothing to do with them.



“We dealt with issues relating to all of this,” McCall said last week. “But it doesn’t seem like they really had any conclusive evidence regarding Joseph Blea. He’s denying involvement in West Mesa consistently.”



Blea’s appellate public defender, Nina Lalevic, said she was just assigned the case and hadn’t reviewed it or spoken with Blea yet. She said she didn’t know that police had investigated him in connection with the West Mesa murders.



Killed in the act?





Lorenzo Montoya. (MDC)




When Lorenzo Montoya was killed in 2006, the bodies of the West Mesa victims had not yet been found. Police Chief Ray Schultz said at the time that police had been looking into him in connection to prostitutes who had vanished from the city.



That’s likely because, like Blea, Montoya cruised the East Central corridor and was known to be violent.



His first prostitution-related arrest was in 1998 when he picked up an undercover detective posing as a prostitute. He offered her $40.



She took him to a motel room near Washington and Central, where officers arrested him.



That incident apparently didn’t deter him.



In 1999, vice detectives watched him pick up a prostitute near Central and San Mateo and followed him to a dark dead-end road near the airport. Police believe they caught him in the act as he was trying to rape and strangle her.



Montoya had apparently never planned to pay her – he had only $2 in his wallet.



He was arrested, but the case was later dismissed.



About five years later, he was still at it. Detectives watched him pick up a prostitute on Central Avenue and arrested him. The woman told officers he paid her $15.



By that time, Montoya already had a history of violence.



According to a domestic violence form his girlfriend filled out after an alleged assault, Montoya repeatedly beat her.



The woman said he had also done “gross things to me” but didn’t detail what they were in the document.



She wrote that Montoya threatened “to kill me and bury me in lime.”



That threat may shed light on Montoya’s last crime.



In December 2006, he invited a woman who police described as a “freelance dancer” to his trailer, then raped and killed her, according to a search warrant affidavit.



“She was bound by the ankles, knees and wrists, with duct tape and cord,” a detective wrote in the warrant. Deputies believe she was strangled.



When the woman’s boyfriend came to check on her, he shot and killed Montoya.



The woman’s body was found next to Montoya’s SUV partially wrapped in a blanket. Montoya had a flashlight in his hand.



The decomposed remains of the West Mesa victims were found about two years later. Investigators have said they believe they were strangled.


‘We’ll get our justice’



Although Manary admits that cases get colder as time goes on, he said the passage of time can sometimes help an investigation.



“The longer a case goes, the harder it is to collect certain evidence that is time sensitive,” he said. “But at the same time a witness that may have been too scared to talk at the time of the incident because of their personal situation may be more willing to talk at a later date.”



While they wait for answers, the families have looked for closure elsewhere.



The city and KB Home, the developer that owns the land where the remains were found, promised to build a memorial park for the victims seven years ago.



There is still no sign of it.



In the absence of the park, family members are left to memorialize their loved ones on their own.



Every year, Griego takes balloons to the still empty pit where her daughter Julie Nieto’s bones were found.



Last year, just as she was setting her memorial in the vacant lot, she had a heart attack. She managed to drive herself to her doctor’s office, where an ambulance took her to the hospital. She survived and underwent heart surgery.



The episode was a stark reminder that closure may be elusive for the aging parents.



A few months after Griego’s heart attack, Dan Valdez, who was often the de facto spokesman for the victims’ families, died of cancer, not long after the Journal interviewed him.



Valdez had spoken about the possibility of dying without knowing who killed his pregnant daughter Michelle.



“We don’t have any answers. God, I wish we had some answers,” he said at the time. “We all meet our maker in the end anyway. We’ll get our justice. Maybe not here on Earth. But we’ll get our justice.”

[Jay7777]

Break in ‘unholy’ cold case: Police arrest former beauty queen’s priest in her 1960 killing:

www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/break-in-%e2%80%98unholy%e2%80%99-cold-case-police-arrest-former-beauty-queen%e2%80%99s-priest-in-her-1960-killing/ar-BBplzAr?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=HPDHP

From 1960 guys!


This is why I started copying all the text down, the web-link goes away in time!

[Jay7777]

35 years latter and another Cold Case appears to be solved:

www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/arrest-made-in-35-year-old-cold-case-killing/vi-BBqnhAh?ocid=HPDHP

This is why I started copying all the text down, the web-link goes away in time!

[yorkshireman]

This was on the news this morning; fantastic result through familial DNA match: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-36245888

Never give up hope!

[Jay7777]

Another one in the works! I love to see these old ones get hopefully solved:

www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/after-three-decades-of-dead-ends-michigan-investigators-get-key-information-on-cold-murder-case/ar-AAhuejL?li=BBnbfcL&ocid=HPDHP


This is why I started copying all the text down, the web-link goes away in time!

[Jay7777]

These are too interesting not to post, so here is another:

www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/houston-murder-suspect-on-run-36-years-captured-in-ohio/ar-AAhAzB4?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=HPDHP


This is why I started copying all the text down, the web-link goes away in time!

[Jay7777]

46 years later, another Cold-Case solved!

www.aol.com/article/2016/08/19/arrest-made-in-46-year-old-cold-case/21454987/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl10%7Csec3_lnk3%26pLid%3D-648706433_htmlws-main-bb

Arrest made in 46-year-old Utah rape and murder cold case.


SALT LAKE CITY (KSTU) — More than 40 years after the rape and murder of Loretta Jones, a man has been arrested after police say he confessed to committing the crime.



Loretta Jones was raped and murdered on or about July 30 of 1970, and at the request of her family the cold case was reopened in 2009.



Sgt. David Brewer of the Carbon County Sheriff's Office reopened the case and recently obtained the confession of Thomas Edward Egley, according to a press release from the sheriff's office issued Thursday. Egley also confessed to destroying evidence that would have linked him to the crime.



"We're grateful for the hard work that Carbon County investigators put into solving this 45 year old cold case," Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes stated in the press release. "I hope this arrest brings some measure of closure to the family, even after all these years."



Egley was arrested on a $1 million warrant in Colorado, where he currently resides. He awaits extradition to Utah to face charges of rape and murder. Officials in Carbon County said the arrest will bring peace to the victim's family.





"The community of Carbon County, particularly the victim's daughter who was four years old at the time, can finally find solace in knowing Loretta Jones's family will have the justice they deserve resulting from the tragic death of Ms. Jones some 45 years ago," stated Gene Strate, the Carbon County Attorney. "Sergeant Brewer and Detective Hendricks from the Carbon County Sheriff's office should be commended for their efforts.

[Jay7777]

Happy to report, another cold-case bites the dust:

www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/minnesota-man-confesses-to-killing-of-jacob-wetterling/ar-AAizeUJ?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=HPDHP

Minnesota man confesses to killing of Jacob Wetterling


This is why I started copying all the text down, the web-link goes away in time!

[Jay7777]

Another good one and DNA solved it!

www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/dna-leads-to-arrest-in-26-year-old-double-murder/ar-BBwL5W0?li=BBnbfcL&ocid=edgsp

DNA leads to arrest in 26-year-old double murder


FORT MYERS, Fla. — Although Jan Cornell never stopped hoping for closure in the brutal 1990 murders of her daughter Robin Cornell and roommate Lisa Story, she calls the arrest of a suspect nothing short of a miracle.
Cape Coral police Chief David Newlan announced Wednesday that Joseph Zieler, 54, of North Fort Myers, was arrested for the murders of Story and Cornell.
“It was like winning the lottery of justice,” Cornell said. “Every prayer, every word, everything, came full circle.”
Cornell was at her boyfriend's home on the evening of May 9, 1990, watching television when she fell asleep. When she returned home she discovered that her daughter, 11, and roommate, 32, had been killed inside the apartment.
Zieler was in Lee County jail on a felony aggravated battery charge for shooting his son with a pellet gun in August when a DNA test matched him to evidence found at the scene of the murders 26 years ago.
Zieler, who was 28 at the time of the double murder, will face five charges, including two counts of sexual battery, one count of burglary and two counts of first degree murder. He is scheduled to have his first appearance for these charges Thursday morning in Lee County court.
Jan Cornell said there was no way to describe how she felt when police came to her home Monday to give her the news.
“It was a miracle,” she said.
Cornell said she has no idea who Zieler is, has no connection and no information on the man who has been implicated in the double murder.
“I’ve looked at every outlet to see where there might have been a connection,” she said.
Cornell credited the 2009 law that requires DNA testing for those arrested for felonies for helping break the case.
“When you are looking for someone who killed people you loved you just get more hope,” she said. ”If (Zieler) never got in trouble this case would never be solved. This is the beginning of the end.”
The Lee County Sheriff’s Office notified Cape Coral police when Zieler's DNA received a hit on CODIS, Newlan said. Further DNA from Zieler was obtained and tested by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The results came back positive with evidence collected in the apartment at Courtyards of Cape Coral Condominiums.
"We got him," Newlan said. “This brings closure to the family. Twenty-six years is a long time.”
The arrest closes the city's longest open homicide. The case has drawn attention over the years airing on America’s Most Wanted three times as well as on other similar crime shows and in dozens of publications.
Police officers and others involved in the case shared Cornell’s elation.
“To tell you the system works is the best thing ever,” said Christy Jo Ellis, chief investigator for the Cape Coral police. “I’m over the moon. It was so surreal when I got the phone call. I said, ‘Are you kidding me?’”
Ellis said that the case is on track to being solved makes her feel great as she approaches the 25th anniversary of her police career, adding that she always believed the case would be solved.
“It’s just phenomenal,” she said. “We have the lock, we just need the key.”
She said Zieler's arrest was a welcome surprise.
“This guy has been off the radar for 26 years,” she said, noting Zieler has been in the community the entire time, 20 years at his North Fort Myers address, seeing the yearly updates. “Because he had an arrest in 2016 and due to a DNA swab it just shows that the system works.”
Barrett Walker, Ellis’ supervisor in the major crimes unit, said that the department is building a case.
“Now we have to organize the case. We have other evidence,” he said, adding that Zieler has not confessed to the crime. “We still have a lot of answers we need to get to.”
Walker said those who knew Zieler in the 1990s or knows him now need to contact the Cape Coral police.
Steve Russell, the 20th Judicial Circuit State Attorney, said the arrest of Zieler and subsequent prosecution should give hope to victims’ families and fear to those who commit crimes that cases can be solved at any time.
“The Cape Coal Police Department never let this go away,” he said.
Newlan, Walker, and Ellis all stressed that the double murder was not a cold case and that it never became a case that languished.
“A lot of detectives have kept in touch, different generations of law enforcement,” Newlan said.
Walker cited the evidence-gathering chain from the initial investigation.
“It makes us proud of what we were and proud of what we are,” he said. “They documented and preserved evidence the right way.”

[Jay7777]

Ok another very good one:

www.kcra.com/news/local-news/news-sacramento/after-43-years-arrests-made-in-yuba-county-girls-killings/41649410?utm_campaign=KCRA%203%20-%20KCRA3&utm_medium=FBPAGE&utm_source=Social

After 43 years, arrests made in Yuba County girls' killings
Detecives: 2 girls killed by shotgun blasts outside Wheatland


YUBA CITY, Calif. (KCRA) —

Detectives arrested two men Tuesday in connection with the cold case homicides of two young girls who were killed 43 years ago in Yuba County.



Larry Don Patterson, 65, and William Lloyd Harbour, 65, were taken into custody by US Marshals and other law enforcement agencies on homicide charges, officials said.




"We express our sympathy and condolences to the families of Valerie and Doris after enduring decades of not knowing who was responsible for the brutal murders," Sheriff Steve Durfor said in a news conference.



Valerie Janice Lane, 12, and Doris Karen Derryberry, 13, both from Olivehurst, were good friends and were together on Nov. 11, 1973, when they left the Derryberry's house to go shopping at a mall in the nearby town of Linda.


Courtesy of the Yuba County Sheriff's Department

When neither of the girls returned home the next day, they were reported missing by their mothers.



Just a few hours later, the bodies of the two girls were found that afternoon along a dirt road near Camp Far West Lake outside of Wheatland.



Both girls were killed by shotgun blasts at close range, and evidence showed that one of the girls was sexually assaulted, according to the Yuba County Sheriff's Department.



"For the Olivehurst community, this was fairly shocking," Yuba County District Attorney Patrick McGrath said. "In the time of 1973, this received a lot of media attention both from Sacramento and around the country. This was a big deal, and still is, obviously."



The double homicide case was an ongoing investigation until 1976, but despite significant investigative efforts and more than 60 interviews, there were no successful leads. The case remained unsolved for decades.

.

Courtesy of the Yuba County Sheriff's Department

In March 2014, Yuba County investigators reviewed the case, and evidence items collected during the investigation were reviewed and sent to the California Department of Justice Forensic Labs for analysis.



Nine months later, results revealed that DNA evidence matched and were identified as Patterson and Harbour, and the case was reopened.



More than a year of investigations led Yuba County officials to issue arrest warrants for Patterson and Harbour.



Harbour, who was 22 years old at the time of the killings, was taken into custody about 10:35 a.m. Tuesday during a traffic stop on Rupert Avenue and Edgewater Circle in Linda. He lives at Sixth Avenue in Olivehurst, officers said.



Patterson, who was also 22 years old and lived on Charlotte Court in Olivehurst when the killings happened, was arrested in Oakhurst, Oklahoma, detectives.



Both had previous criminal records that showed up in the department's data base.


Yuba County Sheriff's Department

Harbour was arrested on drug charges in 1997 and other drug offense in 2003, Durfor said.



Patterson was arrested in 1976 in connection with the rapes of two women in Chico and was convicted in 1980. He served time in prison and was registered as a sex offender, Durfor said.

[Deleted]

Sept 29, 2016 16:54:49 GMT Jay7777 said:

Another good one and DNA solved it!

www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/dna-leads-to-arrest-in-26-year-old-double-murder/ar-BBwL5W0?li=BBnbfcL&ocid=edgsp

DNA leads to arrest in 26-year-old double murder


FORT MYERS, Fla. — Although Jan Cornell never stopped hoping for closure in the brutal 1990 murders of her daughter Robin Cornell and roommate Lisa Story, she calls the arrest of a suspect nothing short of a miracle.
Cape Coral police Chief David Newlan announced Wednesday that Joseph Zieler, 54, of North Fort Myers, was arrested for the murders of Story and Cornell.
“It was like winning the lottery of justice,” Cornell said. “Every prayer, every word, everything, came full circle.”
Cornell was at her boyfriend's home on the evening of May 9, 1990, watching television when she fell asleep. When she returned home she discovered that her daughter, 11, and roommate, 32, had been killed inside the apartment.
Zieler was in Lee County jail on a felony aggravated battery charge for shooting his son with a pellet gun in August when a DNA test matched him to evidence found at the scene of the murders 26 years ago.
Zieler, who was 28 at the time of the double murder, will face five charges, including two counts of sexual battery, one count of burglary and two counts of first degree murder. He is scheduled to have his first appearance for these charges Thursday morning in Lee County court.
Jan Cornell said there was no way to describe how she felt when police came to her home Monday to give her the news.
“It was a miracle,” she said.
Cornell said she has no idea who Zieler is, has no connection and no information on the man who has been implicated in the double murder.
“I’ve looked at every outlet to see where there might have been a connection,” she said.
Cornell credited the 2009 law that requires DNA testing for those arrested for felonies for helping break the case.
“When you are looking for someone who killed people you loved you just get more hope,” she said. ”If (Zieler) never got in trouble this case would never be solved. This is the beginning of the end.”
The Lee County Sheriff’s Office notified Cape Coral police when Zieler's DNA received a hit on CODIS, Newlan said. Further DNA from Zieler was obtained and tested by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The results came back positive with evidence collected in the apartment at Courtyards of Cape Coral Condominiums.
"We got him," Newlan said. “This brings closure to the family. Twenty-six years is a long time.”
The arrest closes the city's longest open homicide. The case has drawn attention over the years airing on America’s Most Wanted three times as well as on other similar crime shows and in dozens of publications.
Police officers and others involved in the case shared Cornell’s elation.
“To tell you the system works is the best thing ever,” said Christy Jo Ellis, chief investigator for the Cape Coral police. “I’m over the moon. It was so surreal when I got the phone call. I said, ‘Are you kidding me?’”
Ellis said that the case is on track to being solved makes her feel great as she approaches the 25th anniversary of her police career, adding that she always believed the case would be solved.
“It’s just phenomenal,” she said. “We have the lock, we just need the key.”
She said Zieler's arrest was a welcome surprise.
“This guy has been off the radar for 26 years,” she said, noting Zieler has been in the community the entire time, 20 years at his North Fort Myers address, seeing the yearly updates. “Because he had an arrest in 2016 and due to a DNA swab it just shows that the system works.”
Barrett Walker, Ellis’ supervisor in the major crimes unit, said that the department is building a case.
“Now we have to organize the case. We have other evidence,” he said, adding that Zieler has not confessed to the crime. “We still have a lot of answers we need to get to.”
Walker said those who knew Zieler in the 1990s or knows him now need to contact the Cape Coral police.
Steve Russell, the 20th Judicial Circuit State Attorney, said the arrest of Zieler and subsequent prosecution should give hope to victims’ families and fear to those who commit crimes that cases can be solved at any time.
“The Cape Coal Police Department never let this go away,” he said.
Newlan, Walker, and Ellis all stressed that the double murder was not a cold case and that it never became a case that languished.
“A lot of detectives have kept in touch, different generations of law enforcement,” Newlan said.
Walker cited the evidence-gathering chain from the initial investigation.
“It makes us proud of what we were and proud of what we are,” he said. “They documented and preserved evidence the right way.”

It was in the Ft Myers paper this morning that this guy's father was a Cape Coral policeman.

[Jay7777]

This guy is a real piece of work and I am glad they finally caught him:

www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/man-due-in-court-as-decade-long-multiple-killing-emerges/ar-AAjWjb6?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=HPDHP

Man due in court as decade-long multiple killing emerges:

WOODRUFF, S.C. (AP) — Parents whose son was slain in a 2003 quadruple murder are speaking out after an unexpected break in the case. Todd Kohlhepp faces four counts of murder in the killings more than a decade ago at Superbike Motorsports in Chesnee, South Carolina.

Authorities say Kohlhepp confessed to the unsolved killings after a woman was found chained up on his property this week in a separate investigation.

Tom and Lorraine Lucas lost their son, Bryan, who was the service manager gunned down at the store. They spoke to reporters ahead of a bond hearing for Kohlhepp on Sunday, the 13th anniversary of the killings.


Standing with his wife outside the Spartanburg County Detention Center, Tom Lucas said he wants to be in court to look the man accused of killing his son in the eye. Tom Lucas said, "We want to see the face. I want to look at him, and I want to try to use that in healing."

Todd Kohlhepp accepted responsibility for an unsolved massacre one day before the 13th anniversary of the deaths that stumped authorities, said Sheriff Chuck Wright, first elected a year after the murders. 


Kohlhepp, 45, confessed to the deaths of the owner, service manager, mechanic and bookkeeper of Superbike Motorsports, a motorcycle shop in Chesnee, in Spartanburg County. He faces four counts of murder and a single kidnapping charge, according the Spartanburg County Sheriff website on Sunday.

"God answered our prayers. If it wasn't for Him answering our prayers and Todd talking to us, I don't know that we'd ever solve that case," Wright said.

Wright says Kohlhepp also showed law enforcement officers Saturday where he says he buried two of his other victims on his 95-acre property near Woodruff. Kohlhepp, in handcuffs and wearing an orange jumpsuit, was at the site for less than an hour.


Those are in addition to the body found Friday at the site. Wright and Coroner Rusty Clevenger identified that victim as 32-year-old Charles Carver, the boyfriend of the woman found Thursday in a locked metal container.



© Mary Ann Chastain, File/ AP Photo FILE - In this Nov. 6, 2003 file photo, Doris Henry is comforted by her husband, Jack Henry, as they await word from Spartanburg County Sheriff's deputies about her sister and…



Carver and the woman went missing around Aug. 31. Their last known cellphone signals led authorities to the property. 

The Associated Press is not naming the woman because the suspect is a sex offender, though authorities have not said whether she was sexually assaulted.

Carver died of multiple gunshot wounds. An anthropologist is helping determine how long Carver was buried, Clevenger said.

He declined to say how many times Carver had been shot.


The sheriff says it's possible more bodies will be uncovered. The wife of one of the 2003 victims said detectives told her Kohlhepp was an angry customer who had been in the shop several times. Melissa Ponder told The Associated Press she was resigned that her husband Scott's death would never be solved before getting a phone call Saturday evening from one of the case's original detectives.





© The Associated Press Todd Kohlhepp is escorted into a Spartanburg County magistrate courtroom, Friday, Nov. 4, 2016, in Spartanburg, S.C.. Kohlhepp, a 45-year-old registered sex offender with a previous kidnapping conviction, a…

Detectives told family members of all four victims of the confession at the same time. "He knew too much about the crime scene," Ponder said of Kohlhepp's account to detectives. "He knew everything."


The Superbike killings stunned the Chesnee community, with rumors like they were committed by a Mexican drug gang or were part of a love triangle crushing the families of the victims. Melissa Ponder is glad the rumors weren't true. "It isn't closure, but it is an answer," she said. "And I am thankful for that." Kohlhepp was released from prison in Arizona in 2001.


At 15 years old, he was convicted of raping a 14-year-old neighbor at gunpoint and threatening to kill her siblings if she called police. Kohlhepp had to register as a sex offender. But that didn't stop him from getting a South Carolina real estate license in 2006 and building a firm. Wright said "it's strange" that Kohlhepp managed the pretext of a normal life for so long.


Scott Waldrop, who's lived next door to the Woodruff property for nearly 22 years, said he thought Kohlhepp was a serious Doomsday "prepper" who liked his privacy, but "he didn't seem like a threat." Waldrop said when he saw the container, it was full of bottled water and canned goods. After buying the property two years ago, Kohlhepp immediately started putting a chain link fence around it.


Waldrop said Kohlhepp paid him to put no trespassing signs, cut trees for him and other odd jobs around the property. Kohlhepp also installed deer cameras and put bear traps throughout. "I was the only one he let over there, I think because I laughed at his jokes and listened to him," he said. "I just hate to know somebody who's done something like this."


Kohlhepp has a house about 9 miles away in Moore, where neighbor Ron Owen said Kohlhepp was very private, but when they did talk across the fence, he was a "big bragger." Kohlhepp liked to talk about the money he made day trading online, for example, and about his two BMWs. He recently told Owen, 76, that he'd spent $80,000 on the chain link fence.


"We didn't see any signs whatsoever that this was going on," Owen said. "My first reaction's a baseball bat, but I know I'm not to take that in my own hands. God will deal with him." ___ Collins reported from Columbia. ___ Associated Press writers Allen G. Breed and Jonathan Drew in Raleigh, North Carolina; and Alex Sanz in Spartanburg contributed to this report.

[Jay7777]

Looks like another one will be solved:

www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/janet-walsh-murder-will-new-clue-solve-1979-cold-case/ar-BBxLVS2?li=BBnbfcL&ocid=HPDHP

This is why I started copying all the text down, the web-link goes away in time!

[Jay7777]

This could be real interesting:

www.msn.com/en-us/music/celebrity/decades-old-slaying-of-righteous-brothers-singers-ex-solved/ar-AAmkCdX?li=BBnbfcL&ocid=HPDHP

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Investigators used a controversial DNA testing method to solve the decades-old killing of the ex-wife of Righteous Brothers singer Bill Medley, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said Friday.
Karen Klaas was attacked Jan. 30, 1976 as she returned to her home in Hermosa Beach. The 32-year-old was sexually assaulted, strangled with her pantyhose and never regained consciousness. She died a few days later at the hospital.
The sheriff's department said Friday that the case "was solved through the use of familial DNA, which identified the killer," but provided no other details.
The technique, which has raised ethical issues in the forensics community, allows investigators to search law enforcement databases to identify likely relatives of the person who may have committed the crime. Law enforcement officials have argued the technique can provide valuable leads to investigators.
A sheriff's spokeswoman would not say Friday evening whether investigators had formally made an arrest in the case and declined to identify the suspect. Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell, District Attorney Jackie Lacey and other officials are expected to release additional information at a news conference Monday.
Sheriff's investigators, seeking help from the public in 2009, said two witnesses spotted a shaggy-haired, bearded man in a trench coat and blue jeans leaving the house, but the man was never seen again. Officials said they were able to cull together a DNA profile of Klaas' killer but in 2009 said it hadn't matched anyone in the national DNA database.