The Code Breakers

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Speaker 4 Tonight, we take you inside two cases.

Speaker 5 Two young women both brutally murdered in their homes.

Speaker 9 The killers in each case evading police for decades.

Speaker 11 In one case, a mother just 19 years old, she was engaged to be married.

Speaker 13 Her fiancé, who was about to marry her, adopt her daughter, he gets home and he immediately notices something is wrong.

Speaker 13 There's blood smeared on the stairway.

Speaker 15 The killer had attacked her in the bedroom.

Speaker 3 There was handprints of her trying to hold the door closed, and she just wasn't strong enough.

Speaker 18 Another case in Texas, a beloved teacher, her whole future ahead of her.

Speaker 21 Drove in to Memphis.

Speaker 22 She just started a new school. She was loving teaching, her students.

Speaker 23 She was in a very good place.

Speaker 13 Now, I want your merchants.

Speaker 24 What's going on?

Speaker 20 Oh, she got murdered.

Speaker 20 What did your daughter do? She's been murdered!

Speaker 25 You remember walking in and what you discovered?

Speaker 27 I remember walking into the bathroom and seeing her body on the floor.

Speaker 29 She'd been handcuffed.

Speaker 27 That's correct. She had been handcuffed with her hands behind her back.

Speaker 31 There were about 36 different wounds on her body. She put up a fight.

Speaker 19 Of course, the question, who would want to kill each of these women, the mystery behind their murders, would torment their loved ones for decades.

Speaker 32 They've got handprints, they've got footprints. Why are they not finding this person?

Speaker 3 It was like the talk of the town forever.

Speaker 4 And for the detectives who were working these cases, frustrating dead ends.

Speaker 25 There was also a suspicion, could it have been a member of law enforcement?

Speaker 33 Right, there was no forced entry, so our speculation was that it was somebody that she knew or somebody that presented a position of authority that could have garnered that trust to get inside the apartment.

Speaker 35 All of these questions lasted for years and years.

Speaker 12 Yes, yes.

Speaker 36 Both of these brutal murders were cold cases for decades.

Speaker 38 And what links both of those cases all of these years later is the cutting-edge forensic technology inside this lab.

Speaker 40 Tonight, you'll see it unfold right here as they unmask the killer in both cases.

Speaker 11 It's the first week of December 1988.

Speaker 9 19-year-old Kathy Swartz is home with her nine-month-old daughter. In Kathy's living room, a tree decorated, ready for the first Christmas for her little baby.

Speaker 43 She was living with Mike Warner. They were, you know, setting up their life, although he wasn't the father of the child.
They were a couple and they were trying to make their way.

Speaker 32 He definitely came in and kind of was her knight in shiny armor. They were a happy little family.

Speaker 45 Mike got up around 5:30 in the morning for his job.

Speaker 13 He gets home at 3.30

Speaker 13 and he immediately notices something is wrong.

Speaker 43 Things were in disarray. Blood up the banister and then in the bedroom was Kathy, very bloody, unclothed mostly.

Speaker 13 He would later describe it. It was like the walls were painted with blood.

Speaker 45 Mike Mike is so distressed, he immediately runs to a neighboring apartment because he can't bring himself to call the police.

Speaker 45 Mike does go back into the apartment to find her daughter.

Speaker 13 Kathy's baby, who's nine months old, dressed in pants, a shirt. She has one sock on.
Her diaper looks like it's been recently changed. She was standing up in the crib when Mike walked in.

Speaker 40 This is that baby left standing alone in that crib all those years ago.

Speaker 18 She's now 36 years old.

Speaker 9 How was your mother described to you?

Speaker 3 Beautiful, happy-go-lucky. She did love like ACDC,

Speaker 3 Metallica. She was like a little rock and roll girl.
And everybody tells me that I was like her whole world.

Speaker 14 So you were 16 years old when you read the police report.

Speaker 17 It was awful

Speaker 3 for somebody to do what they did to her knowing I was in the crib right next door. I just couldn't believe that somebody could do that.

Speaker 48 So detectives had questioned at the time whether or not this suspect had changed the diaper.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 When the police got there on scene,

Speaker 3 I was dry. I didn't have a dirty diaper on and it was some hours I was alone.

Speaker 13 So one of the first things that investigators notice is that there doesn't seem to be any sign of forced entry, which again suggests that she knew the person who came in and killed her.

Speaker 32 She was very good about locking her doors. I would call her and I would say, hey, I'm going to come over.

Speaker 32 I would go to her door. It was locked and I would knock and she would, you know, who is it? And then she would let me in.

Speaker 45 We theorize that the assault started in the kitchen because in the kitchen there was passive blood drops on the floor

Speaker 45 and then the smearing goes up the stairway to the upstairs bedroom.

Speaker 13 There are defensive wounds found on her hands. Her throat has been cut in multiple places.
She's been strangled.

Speaker 32 She fought like hell.

Speaker 32 She was trying to protect her daughter, and she did.

Speaker 51 And the idea that this happened and you were just a couple of feet away. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Makes me mad that I wasn't old enough to help her.

Speaker 3 I'm 100% convinced she was trying to save her baby.

Speaker 3 I feel like she would have just ran outside and yelled, but I was upstairs and she wasn't gonna leave that apartment without me

Speaker 45 in the bedroom where kathy was found is a phone on the bed the phone cord was cut

Speaker 45 but on the phone there was kathy's fingerprints and then there was also an unknown fingerprint in blood

Speaker 45 in 88 obviously dna was in its infancy The fingerprint on the phone, how significant?

Speaker 3 Very significant because they were in actual blood, and it was not my mom's.

Speaker 13 There is a bloody footprint in the bathroom.

Speaker 13 It looks like the suspect took a shower after the murder to try to maybe wipe the blood off, clean up.

Speaker 13 But in the process of doing so, he left behind a left footprint, size 9, in blood. blood.

Speaker 43 And then the person left without being seen and without being discovered.

Speaker 32 It was very unsettling that something like that could happen.

Speaker 32 It just didn't make any sense. None of it made any sense.

Speaker 8 But when crime scene investigators passed through that gruesome scene again, this time with a new forensic light source, they find a new clue and one that was imperceptible to the naked eye.

Speaker 43 It was like a great big neon clue. It's like, holy smokes.

Speaker 9 South Lanes is a bowling alley in Three Rivers, Michigan. It's the social epicenter of this small town where Kathy Swartz's father ran the pro shop.

Speaker 10 After her brutal murder back in 1988, it also became a place that connected Kathy's daughter Courtney to her mother.

Speaker 3 I grew up in the Bowling Alley. I spent a lot of time there.

Speaker 3 I was raised by my grandparents. They tried to fill the void as much as they could.

Speaker 47 What were you told about your mother's absence when you were a little girl?

Speaker 3 About first grade, they had told me that a bad man had hurt my mom and she was up in heaven.

Speaker 3 And when it would thunderstorm, they would tell me that that was my mom up in heaven bowling a strike.

Speaker 3 So it was pretty cool watching the thunderstorms as I was little because I'm like, oh, she must be bowling pretty good today.

Speaker 9 Your mother's best friend, Jennifer,

Speaker 9 has told you a lot about your mom.

Speaker 3 Yes, she has.

Speaker 32 Kathy and I were very good friends. I've known her since grade school, so we've been friends a long time.

Speaker 32 Kathy was like somebody you could count on. She was a good listener, always there for you, just a, you know, good person.

Speaker 9 Childhood friends Kathy and Jennifer both found themselves pregnant as teenagers and formed an unbreakable bond.

Speaker 50 They would talk on the phone several times a day until December 2nd, but Jennifer couldn't get a hold of her best friend.

Speaker 32 A police officer came to my apartment and he asked me to go to the station.

Speaker 32 I remember him asking me questions: you know, do you know anybody that would want to hurt Kathy? Along those lines. And I finally just was like, What's going on?

Speaker 32 Is Kathy okay?

Speaker 32 And he told me and I just

Speaker 56 I don't even remember

Speaker 32 I know that

Speaker 32 the first thing out of my mouth was is Courtney okay where is Courtney

Speaker 3 I do remember pictures of our first Christmas tree and she had presents under there for me

Speaker 3 but she never got to give them to me.

Speaker 57 We can see it's the pain you still carry with you.

Speaker 4 They were a young family just starting out.

Speaker 7 Kathy and Mike Warner had only been engaged about three weeks before her brutal death.

Speaker 9 And since he was the one who found her body, you know, of course, police would have a lot of questions for him.

Speaker 13 When the police initially interviewed him, he had this kind of flat affect affect to his voice. He didn't seem to be all that upset that she was dead.

Speaker 13 He didn't get emotional, and that seemed very suspicious to police.

Speaker 32 I can't imagine, you know, walking into that scene

Speaker 32 and what that does to somebody.

Speaker 45 There was polygraph examinations that were done with... We were able to verify that he was at work in Sturgis all day long, and there was no way he could have came back to Three Rivers to do it.

Speaker 32 I had no doubt in my mind that he didn't have anything to do with this. You know, I knew it in my heart.
No, he loved her.

Speaker 32 She and Courtney were his world.

Speaker 43 I go by judge Jeffrey Middleton now, but at the time of this, I was chief assistant prosecuting attorney.

Speaker 43 We would have maybe one homicide a year, not a young woman killed alone in her apartment during broad daylight. At that point they were leaving no stone unturned.

Speaker 45 So the police department actually rented the apartment for a month after the crime just so that we could return and continue to look for clues and process.

Speaker 45 This is one of the first cases where they deployed alternative light sources.

Speaker 43 They went into the crime scene with a black light.

Speaker 13 On the refrigerator, they noticed two pieces of writing. Metallica was written on the refrigerator, and Harley was here.

Speaker 13 These were inexplicable writings that apparently had been erased.

Speaker 43 And we found that someone had written on her body.

Speaker 43 Probably a magic marker on the inside of her thigh that said, I was here with an arrow pointing up toward her groin.

Speaker 43 That was not visible to the naked eye.

Speaker 11 And when detectives speak to Kathy's friends, they hear about an ex-boyfriend named Troy Schultes.

Speaker 50 It turns out he had a nickname Harley, which of course got their attention.

Speaker 5 He was a huge fan of the band Metallica.

Speaker 13 In fact, he has a Harley-Davidson decal on his truck. The truck was spotted outside Kathy's apartment that very afternoon of her murder.

Speaker 32 Well, that's who I told him to look at, and all to question.

Speaker 32 I know a lot of other people did, too. I don't know how to really describe it, but it was not a good relief.
They were not good together.

Speaker 13 And when they further look into him, he doesn't have an alibi for that afternoon. So he immediately becomes their number one suspect.

Speaker 13 They pick him up for questioning.

Speaker 45 Troy Schulte's admitted that he was the one that wrote on the refrigerator and on the wall in the apartment, but he never admitted to writing it on her thigh.

Speaker 43 And he said, well, I didn't do it.

Speaker 11 And still with no solid alibi for the night of the murder, police zero in on Troy.

Speaker 32 I thought that's got to be it. Because again, it's got to be somebody she knew, somebody she trusted.

Speaker 18 And before long, an arrest in the Kathy Swartz case is announced.

Speaker 8 But if investigators think they've got their guy, a rude awakening is ahead.

Speaker 40 Kathy Swartz's daughter Courtney, the baby left standing in her crib after her mother was brutally murdered, is a mother herself now.

Speaker 3 Why are you breaking everything?

Speaker 52 And she and her four children have stayed in Three Rivers, Michigan, finding comfort in a mother that she lost when she was just a baby.

Speaker 3 I do bring the kids out here for like holidays, her birthday,

Speaker 3 but I also do come out here a lot

Speaker 3 by myself too.

Speaker 9 Back in 1988, police believe they found the perpetrator who brutally murdered Courtney's mother, the man whose nickname was scrawled across her refrigerator, her ex-boyfriend, Troy Schultes.

Speaker 45 You know, you look at that and you think, well, that's somebody leaving a calling card behind that they were there.

Speaker 15 Without any kind of solid alibi and now under a cloud of suspicion, Troy is arrested, he's charged, and he pleads not guilty.

Speaker 45 We had the fingerprints, but we also had a sample of blood that was left behind.

Speaker 45 We believe because Kathy fought back that whoever the killer was had sustained an injury, and Troy's blood type did not match.

Speaker 13 They take fingerprints and footprints from him, and those prints also do not match.

Speaker 43 So, the charges were dismissed. As it turns out, he was wrongfully arrested and wrongfully charged.

Speaker 9 So, with the investigation now back at Square One, the Three Rivers Police Department, they refocused on matching the fingerprint and the footprint found at the crime scene to the killer.

Speaker 45 We had fingerprinted and footprinted so many individuals that had been living in Three Rivers at that time, and none of them were a match.

Speaker 43 I thought we would solve this quickly. So the first month passed, we didn't know, three months passed, a year passed, and it wasn't solved.

Speaker 13 Police even looked at similar crimes that had taken place elsewhere in the area. They took fingerprints, footprints, there was no match.

Speaker 43 And the case got colder and colder.

Speaker 40 And as DNA technology improves, law enforcement, they continue to work the case.

Speaker 45 We fast forward to 2012. We're going over the evidence again.

Speaker 45 The fingerprint that they had found on the phone was in the suspect's blood and it was still in viable condition to obtain a DNA profile from that.

Speaker 45 And we've entered into CODIS and we think that's going to give us a hit. And of course it doesn't.

Speaker 9 As the years continue to pass, the mystery and the collateral damage for this whole community only grew.

Speaker 9 The town was haunted by this.

Speaker 40 Did you feel the eyes of the town on you as you were growing up?

Speaker 49 Yes.

Speaker 3 And I was the baby, so like everybody wanted to take care of the baby and you know like it's still that way.

Speaker 32 When you don't have answers,

Speaker 32 you just have questions all the time.

Speaker 32 But it definitely changed me. It really changed me.
I slept with machete under my mattress for years.

Speaker 61 So every December 2nd represents another year without justice for Courtney and her grandparents.

Speaker 21 Today the family is together remembering Kathy on the anniversary of her death.

Speaker 13 It's hard.

Speaker 56 Real hard.

Speaker 32 I felt a certain point that I wasn't sure that they would ever find out.

Speaker 13 Probably right there, before she died.

Speaker 21 It's been 25 years, but remembering hasn't gotten any easier for David Swartz.

Speaker 13 i think uh yeah probably the worst thing for me the why

Speaker 13 why why why why did it have to happen like something like that

Speaker 51 when you look at these kinds of cases around the country there is generally an investigator or a detective who never gives up yes and in this case it was jeffrey middleton Middleton.

Speaker 3 Yes, he is a great guy.

Speaker 51 What was it, do you think, that kept him going on this case for so long?

Speaker 3 He was young, just starting out, and this was

Speaker 3 really the only cold case in our town.

Speaker 43 I spent more time on this case than any other case in my entire career. Sometimes in later years, I would pretend I was on vacation and lock myself in in the library and just go through this file.

Speaker 43 As Courtney got older, she would call me sometimes and ask if I knew anything, and I never had any answers.

Speaker 63 Police have DNA, fingerprints, and a lot of physical evidence. What they don't have is the person who murdered a 19-year-old Three Rivers woman in 1988.

Speaker 64 Here's a lot of the evidence right from property.

Speaker 11 Eventually, the Three Rivers Police Department decided to partner with the Michigan State Police.

Speaker 52 They're convinced that with advances in DNA testing technology, the Kathy Schartz case can finally be solved.

Speaker 45 In Kathy's case, we had DNA that was in CODIS, and we had not gotten a match. We had exhausted the fingerprints, and these things, which normally get us a hit, did not.

Speaker 45 So, I honestly felt like the genetic genealogy was our only chance for solving this case.

Speaker 9 And then, three years ago, Othrum, a forensics lab in Texas, now enters the picture.

Speaker 9 A promising something everyone close to the Kathy Schwartz case has waited decades for, answers.

Speaker 67 Othrum uses DNA technology to help identify victims and perpetrators when law enforcement cannot.

Speaker 55 They knew that it was an unknown male contributor to that DNA, but they didn't know who it was.

Speaker 10 All these years later, they said, well, look at this and see if there's something you can do with it.

Speaker 39 And you were convinced you could?

Speaker 55 We were absolutely certain that we could help the Michigan State Police work this case.

Speaker 45 They said, we'll get you a lead back. We're not going to guarantee that it's the lead, but we'll get you a lead.

Speaker 68 They had over a thousand suspects. All of a sudden, it's narrowed down to four.

Speaker 45 It was our breakthrough.

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Speaker 40 In 2022, a package containing DNA, that single bloody fingerprint from Kathy Swartz's pink phone, arrives right here at this building, just north of Houston.

Speaker 46 You know, to the outsider, it looks like just another office building, but what's actually happening inside, in these labs, is now changing how investigations across this country are being solved.

Speaker 19 This is the headquarters of Authram, a cutting-edge forensics lab that's been mentioned in some of today's most talked-about criminal investigations.

Speaker 50 And Authram has been credited by law enforcement with helping to solve cases that have been unsolvable for years now.

Speaker 62 How are you? It's good to see you. Good to see you.

Speaker 16 How are you? Yeah, this is you. Thank you.
Welcome to Authram.

Speaker 53 David and Kristen Middleman are the husband and wife team behind all of this.

Speaker 68 Everything you see on our right side will be forensic. Everything you see on the left side will be research.
Not every case is suitable for DNA testing right now.

Speaker 68 Burnt remains, exploded remains, really difficult mixtures, but we hope that one day we live in a world where every case can be suitable for DNA testing.

Speaker 36 So you'll hold on to remains for a while while and keep trying.

Speaker 68 We don't give up ever.

Speaker 54 The Middleman's partnership, both in work and in life, actually began over a few blind mice.

Speaker 39 It's the year 2000. You've just started your PhD at Baylor.

Speaker 51 You're doing a study on mice?

Speaker 65 I was.

Speaker 47 And there was another young scientist.

Speaker 68 David, yep. So our projects collided and he actually cured my blind mice.
So I thought, wow, if this guy can do that, I think I'll marry him.

Speaker 40 David Middleman had worked in biomedical research for years before realizing that law enforcement was relying on a limited form of DNA testing.

Speaker 46 He knew that better technology was available, but said it just wasn't being widely used out there.

Speaker 13 It sounded like science fiction at the time. This way you could take decades-old DNA, put it into a genealogy database, build a family tree for your suspect, and then that takes you right to his door.

Speaker 13 That was pretty amazing.

Speaker 61 You start to think, wow, this is really an unused tool here for law enforcement.

Speaker 55 Yeah, it felt wrong that there were tools available and and yet there was this piling up backlog of of cases that ron solved so at one point you turn to kristen and you say i want to i want to start my own lab his words were let's build a forensic lab of the future and my words were

Speaker 68 what who's going to give you evidence you thought from the very beginning who's going to trust us with this 100 i said i i don't think people will come and he said well i'm going to build it and we're going to see

Speaker 13 within a a year, he was solving cases almost every week. And the more cold cases they closed, the more publicity they got.
And police departments around the world started sending them cases.

Speaker 13 It's just grown exponentially. In terms of publicly announced solves, Authram is number one in the world.
That includes homicides, rapes, unidentified bodies that they've been able to give names to.

Speaker 40 And Authram's reputation now for cracking these cold cases using DNA evidence and forensic genetic genealogy is what actually led Michigan detectives to send that 30-year-old DNA to this lab.

Speaker 40 In the Kathy Schartz case, this DNA was how old when it got here from that ping phone?

Speaker 55 It was decades old and in spite of being so old, the DNA was still intact and usable for testing.

Speaker 40 She knew right away this was suitable and this was just his DNA, the suspects.

Speaker 55 Yeah, the DNA was a single unknown male contributor. It's a small sample, but in spite of that, there's anywhere from hundreds to thousands of cells worth of DNA.

Speaker 74 So So if you touch David's hand how much DNA, how many cells have you left there?

Speaker 68 Hundreds, hundreds of cells.

Speaker 48 Hundreds of cells on his hand and sometimes you're dealing with 10, 15 even less.

Speaker 26 From years ago and still able to solve the case.

Speaker 55 It's a very very sensitive technology.

Speaker 75 In this Kathy Swartz case, you've chemically labeled all the different parts of the DNA in this room right here.

Speaker 48 And what do you do with it from there?

Speaker 55 It is now ready to actually be read. This particular DNA sequencer is one of the most powerful sequencers.

Speaker 76 This is here with the green. Yes.

Speaker 38 Give me a comparison to what authorities used to have to deal with.

Speaker 40 What would the DNA sequence reveal versus what you can reveal with the DNA sequencing from this machine now?

Speaker 47 Sure.

Speaker 55 So for the last 30 years, people have used a different kind of DNA testing technology that can measure 20 data points in the DNA. This machine actually can read out the entire sequence.

Speaker 55 So whereas you might get 20 data points in the earlier versions of this technology, this machine could give you anywhere from 100,000 to a million data points.

Speaker 63 100,000 to a million.

Speaker 55 100,000 to a million data points.

Speaker 38 So now that you have this sequencing that they just didn't have access to years ago, in this particular case, for example, what do you then do with that?

Speaker 55 So with the data file that comes out that might have 100,000 to a million DNA markers, you can do a lot more, including genetic genealogy and that search for distant relatives.

Speaker 35 You're taking what in many cases is a very old DNA sample from these cold cases.

Speaker 74 You're expanding the DNA sequence, but you're also able to take that information now and put it up against vast public data now because families and relatives and third cousins and fourth cousins have put all of this information out there.

Speaker 25 And it would seem that this might unlock cold cases everywhere.

Speaker 13 Correct. At that point, Authorum's in-house genealogy team takes over to build a family tree for the suspected killer of Kathy Swartz.

Speaker 68 These types of crimes going unsolved have a ripple effect across society.

Speaker 68 Not just the victim and the family not having answers, but the law enforcement that worked the case for decades, consumed by a case they can't solve.

Speaker 10 Finding those investigators and then gaining their trust is what Othram says has been critical to their success in helping to crack these cases.

Speaker 40 In those early years, you have no background in law enforcement.

Speaker 47 Are you essentially making cold calls to police stations?

Speaker 55 I spent my time almost exclusively talking to law enforcement.

Speaker 50 You live in Texas, and you know if you want to land a case in Texas, you got to get to the Texas Rangers.

Speaker 40 But how did you convince them that we've got a tool here?

Speaker 55 Well, the one that I've done the most work with is Ranger Brandon Bess.

Speaker 13 Brandon Bess is almost out of central casting for a Texas Ranger. He's this imposing man with his white hat.
When David Middleman founded Authram, Nobody had heard of them.

Speaker 13 And when he best visited in 2019, he was really kind of taken aback.

Speaker 77 David walks in this room and it's to speak to David's confidence in that he's wearing a t-shirt that's about two sizes too small.

Speaker 76 He's wearing jeans that have holes in them.

Speaker 76 It looks like he hadn't slept in 14 days. His hair standing up.
I have instant respect for him because I can tell this is a guy that doesn't give up.

Speaker 13 Best came away impressed. He heard about the opportunity to

Speaker 13 solve a cold case and he thought, let's team up.

Speaker 55 And he had one case in mind. they told me it was the most heinous thing that had ever happened that was unsolved in Beaumont

Speaker 42 that other case that young school teacher 31 year old Catherine Edwards

Speaker 79 911 what's your emergency

Speaker 55 what was unique about this case the victim was a school teacher well liked by everyone there was no sign of forced entry So it's a very odd situation, and it just didn't add up.

Speaker 76 This is a crime of violence, a crime of passion, a crime of control.

Speaker 34 It gets you chills even today.

Speaker 27 Even today. Yes, even today.

Speaker 33 Either it was someone that she knew or someone that presented themselves as an officer. It was almost like whispered in the hallways, it could be one of our own.

Speaker 13 So on January 14th, 1995, the Beaumont Police Department gets a 911 call from a man at a townhouse in West Beaumont.

Speaker 13 Oh, Jesus.

Speaker 80 911, what's your emergency?

Speaker 16 Oh, get me the police, please.

Speaker 13 He had found his daughter in the second floor bathroom, slumped over the tub.

Speaker 17 Okay, ma'am, what's going on, ma'am? Our daughter, our daughter has been murdered. Okay, what happened, ma'am? We came over here and found her.
She's handcuffed. She's been tortured.

Speaker 17 Please, someone we're sending someone. Don't hang up.

Speaker 24 All right.

Speaker 20 Okay, is there anyone else in the house? My husband is here with me. Okay.
We found her.

Speaker 13 That woman was Catherine Edwards, and she's a teacher at a local elementary school.

Speaker 33 She was supposed to have plans with her sister and family for lunch. When she didn't respond by phone call, they went by her house and found that her car was still there.

Speaker 33 Got inside the house with a key.

Speaker 31 Her father said he grabbed her and pulled her over and rolled her over to look and see if there's anything he could do.

Speaker 31 He was crying hysterically.

Speaker 17 Police!

Speaker 76 To listen to the emotion in those calls, you know, just gut-wrenching.

Speaker 10 In my 30-plus years, I'd never heard anything like it.

Speaker 31 Dad covers her with a towel.

Speaker 73 Police show up.

Speaker 31 There's one officer by the name of Carmen Brown. She shows up first and she secures the crime scene.

Speaker 66 And that officer, Carmen Brown Apple, says the memory of her entering Catherine Edwards' townhouse has played over and over again in her mind for decades.

Speaker 49 You remember walking in and what you discovered?

Speaker 27 I remember walking in and going up the stairs,

Speaker 27 looking first into the bedroom that was very much in disarray.

Speaker 74 What did you find as far as the bedroom and the bathroom?

Speaker 27 Bedroom, there was a, looked like there had been some type of tussle in there. Things had been knocked around.
Sheets were partially torn off. A portion of the bedpost had come off.

Speaker 27 And then walking into the bathroom.

Speaker 27 and seeing her body on the floor.

Speaker 29 She'd been handcuffed.

Speaker 27 That's correct. She had had been handcuffed with her hands behind her back.

Speaker 74 When her mother said her name,

Speaker 34 you thought, I know her.

Speaker 27 I know her. I went to college with her.
We were in sororities together. She was so full of life and so friendly and so nice.
That just always stuck with me.

Speaker 27 To come to the scene and then suddenly realize it was Mary Catherine, it just

Speaker 16 knocked me for a minute.

Speaker 34 It gives you chills even today. Even today.

Speaker 27 Yes, even today.

Speaker 76 She is not your typical victim by any stretch of the circumstance. It was an extremely unusual case.

Speaker 13 Catherine and her twin sister Allison grew up in Beaumont. They're part of a close-knit Presbyterian family.
They both attended Forest Park High School and then Lamar University, which is in Beaumont.

Speaker 13 And they both became school teachers at the Beaumont Independent School District. Catherine and her sister were extremely close.

Speaker 31 When you talk about Mary Catherine and talk about Allison and look at them, I mean, they are identical twins. You can't tell them apart.

Speaker 31 They both had students come up to each other in the grocery store thinking they were the other twin.

Speaker 26 Investigators learned that her sister Allison was likely the last person, aside from the killer, obviously, to see Catherine alive.

Speaker 9 Allison would tell detectives that her twin sister arrived at her house after work to pick up her beloved beagle, Maggie.

Speaker 45 She came by, visited with her sister, went home.

Speaker 31 From what we can tell, she had had a glass of wine and just kind of was relaxing and about to go to bed. And I think the last time she was heard from was about 8 o'clock that night.

Speaker 13 One of the neighbors told police that he heard someone clomping down the stairs overnight on the night of January 13th.

Speaker 33 There was a 12-year-old boy and his dad that were staying with some friends that were right next door to Catherine Edgeward's town home.

Speaker 33 He heard somebody run down the stairs and then a door slammed and a little while later a car sped off with loud music.

Speaker 33 There were some other neighbors that heard some loud banging.

Speaker 31 It lasted for 60 to 90 seconds and they said they never never heard a scream, so they just figured that something else might have been going on.

Speaker 31 They had no idea that there was a murder taking place next door.

Speaker 13 Crime scene investigators found that there was no sign of forced entry, which is significant, because it either meant that Catherine had kept her door unlocked or had potentially recognized her killer and let him in.

Speaker 18 Of course, in these cases, it's standard procedure for investigators to look at those closest to the victim.

Speaker 50 And really from the beginning, her ex-boyfriend is seen as a prime suspect but critical evidence from the scene actually points in a different direction.

Speaker 76 The crime scene investigators at the time also collected a lot of evidence from the house and one of those pieces of evidence being the bed spread.

Speaker 13 Investigators found semen on Catherine's bedspread and from the rape kit.

Speaker 31 We've got some DNA here. Now we just got to match it.

Speaker 40 The DNA actually doesn't match her ex-boyfriend and he's now cleared in the case, and there are no matches to the DNA in CODIS, which is the National Criminal Offender DNA database either.

Speaker 13 Police were really stumped. They tried every avenue they could think of, but every avenue hit a dead end.

Speaker 13 One of their initial theories was that the killer had some sort of law enforcement background.

Speaker 13 The handcuffs were Smith ⁇ Wesson. That's a popular brand with law enforcement.

Speaker 31 They were trying everything they could think of.

Speaker 83 They really did.

Speaker 31 They went and tracked down sales of handcuffs in this area, receipts.

Speaker 13 All members of the Beaumont Police Department were tested. There were no matches.

Speaker 33 It kind of sent a panic through the community. You know, if this can happen to somebody in a really quiet part of town, could it happen to them?

Speaker 16 Kind of thing.

Speaker 31 It went from a rumor to just spreading like wildfire throughout the community. Everybody wanted to know, was this a one-time deal? Was this a serial killer?

Speaker 15 The case would go cold for decades and obviously it's just one of hundreds of thousands of unsolved murders in this country.

Speaker 9 But then in 2020 two investigators, Ranger Brandon Best and Beaumont Police Detective Aaron Llewellyn, decided to take a fresh look at the case.

Speaker 42 At the time, Bess had just been connected with this new lab called Authram and Detective Llewellyn knows that there's DNA that's actually available to test in this case.

Speaker 33 But when Brandon presented Othrum to me right then and there, I'm like, let's make this happen.

Speaker 76 We believed that was going to be our only hope.

Speaker 40 The last hope for answers, the DNA evidence from the murder of that elementary school teacher, Catherine Edwards, is now headed to Othram for testing.

Speaker 84 A bloody fingerprint left on a phone and a footprint.

Speaker 9 And in the case of that Michigan mom, Kathy Swartz, what new lead is about to be uncovered right behind this glass?

Speaker 18 You'll see right here tonight how both cases are about to crack wide open, sending investigators across this country to find the killers they've been searching for for decades.

Speaker 43 The person that did it was in the 10,000 pages of police reports.

Speaker 31 You have all these puzzle pieces, but

Speaker 31 if they don't all fit together, you don't see the picture.

Speaker 85 I want you to think about the next words that come out of your mouth. I want you to think very hard about that.

Speaker 76 We felt like we had a home run right then and there.

Speaker 3 And they said he was like a godly man down there.

Speaker 32 I was like,

Speaker 56 wow,

Speaker 32 we're going to get some answers.

Speaker 86 tonight two horrible murders.

Speaker 87 I just

Speaker 60 just felt awful.

Speaker 9 And now a survivor who lived to tell.

Speaker 60 I was just like, I can't tell anyone. I'll never tell anybody what happened.

Speaker 56 What did your daughter do? She's been murdered!

Speaker 34 It gives you chills even today.

Speaker 27 Even today.

Speaker 43 That someone had written on her body, on the inside of her thigh, and said, I was here.

Speaker 73 But only one way to solve them after years of going cold.

Speaker 45 I honestly felt that genetic genealogy was our only chance.

Speaker 51 All these years later, they said, well, look at this and see if there's something you can do with it.

Speaker 43 It's his fingerprint. It's his bare bloody footprint.

Speaker 86 And it's his DNA.

Speaker 3 It turned into a massacre.

Speaker 32 The floor goes out from under you.

Speaker 32 It was

Speaker 32 like, no way. This cannot be happening.

Speaker 56 He said, Your sister's dead, your sister's dead.

Speaker 85 There's two people that know that story. You're one of them, and she's the other.

Speaker 45 And she can't talk.

Speaker 83 Without the DNA, the story doesn't matter.

Speaker 19 That the two of them were able to go back and look at that evidence

Speaker 28 from when you were a nine-month-old baby in the crib, just a few feet from your mother.

Speaker 33 And there was a moment I'm like, oh, this is our guy.

Speaker 9 For some families, you are the last hope.

Speaker 9 Courtney Swartz's childhood was clouded in mystery.

Speaker 10 She was the sole survivor.

Speaker 9 She was just a baby at the time during a vicious attack that left her 19-year-old mother, Kathy Swartz, strangled and stabbed to death right near her.

Speaker 46 Among the clues left behind at the scene, a single bloody fingerprint on Kathy's pink phone.

Speaker 9 It contained DNA of the possible killer, but of course the question for decades, who was the killer?

Speaker 9 For years, you were haunted by that question.

Speaker 3 Yeah, growing up, most kids, you know, they look at people and they don't have to think, is that the man that killed your mom?

Speaker 32 And

Speaker 3 everybody that I met, that's the first thing that would pop into my mind.

Speaker 52 This is the original file from 1988.

Speaker 64 When you have your files in Sokola case, the killer's name,

Speaker 64 it's in there somewhere.

Speaker 45 The profilers really believed that whoever it was would return and return to her grave site. And for years, that was part of our initial officer, a rookie training program:

Speaker 45 this is Kathy Schwartz's gravesite. If you see somebody at that grave site, you need to stop and identify them because they could be a prime suspect in the murder.

Speaker 89 More than a thousand miles from Three Rivers, Michigan, we're right here on the Natchez River in Beaumont, Texas, where another family, heartbroken for decades, the community wondering, do they too have a killer in their midst after the brutal murder of a young elementary school teacher, Catherine Edwards?

Speaker 89 She was just 31. And detectives here wondering, would they ever have the tools to solve this case?

Speaker 76 You know that every day that you don't solve that crime is a day that you're not going to be able to bring that perpetrator justice.

Speaker 27 This certainly is a scene that has always stayed with me.

Speaker 40 And you retired and when you left the force at that point it had not been solved.

Speaker 27 That's correct. Every now and then someone would dust off the case file and

Speaker 27 start looking at it with fresh eyes and I always thought maybe this time something will spark and we'll catch whoever did this.

Speaker 7 It would turn out that spark, the one that that would finally reignite the whole investigation into the murder of Catherine Edwards, was actually coming thanks to a major leap forward in forensic technology.

Speaker 13 In 2020, a courier drops off a package at Authram's office.

Speaker 13 And inside are a sample of the bedspread from Catherine Edwards' apartment, a vial of DNA taken from the posthumous rape kit.

Speaker 13 Authram technicians take a look and they build a genetic profile of their suspect.

Speaker 9 Investigators now have a human profile that can actually be searched in public databases to try to find possible family members across this country.

Speaker 41 And to do that, you need a genealogist to connect the dots.

Speaker 40 And Beaumont Detective Aaron Llewellyn didn't have to look far for help.

Speaker 13 Aaron Llewellyn knew one who would work the case for free, and that was his wife, Tina.

Speaker 33 I can remember sitting at the table one night and getting really frustrated trying to map all this out.

Speaker 33 And she's like, let me help.

Speaker 22 Actually, just move over.

Speaker 33 I got this. Tina doesn't ask.

Speaker 13 Tina Llewellyn was a detective in the Beaumont Auto Crimes Division.

Speaker 13 And she had an amateur interest in genealogy.

Speaker 33 I can remember dozing off one night and I wake up and she's got lines going here and lines going there.

Speaker 42 So now along with the Middlemans from the Othrum Forensic Laboratory, you've got two husband-wife teams actually working the case of this elementary school teacher, Catherine Edwards.

Speaker 13 And soon another critical partner joins the hunt.

Speaker 13 When Tina Llewellyn is looking through the matches to their suspect, these are distant relatives of the suspected killer, she notices that a lot of them are enclustered in Cajun Country in Louisiana.

Speaker 13 And the same contact name keeps popping up. This woman named Shera Lapointe.

Speaker 23 I was sitting at my desk one day and I got a phone call. He said, I'm Detective Erin Llewellyn from the Beaumont Police Department.

Speaker 23 Your email is attached to one of the matches that we have to the person of interest.

Speaker 9 Shara Lapointe just happens to be a professional genealogist with experience working in criminal cases. She also has Cajun ancestry.

Speaker 23 Cajuns, back to the late 1700s, we were a small population who came to South Louisiana. And so they married their neighbors who was usually their relatives also.

Speaker 13 Cajun

Speaker 13 ancestry is notoriously complicated and complex to perform genealogical work on.

Speaker 23 I knew it was going to be a challenge from the start. We spent hours and hours and hours.
on the phone talking to each other.

Speaker 22 Probably no less than five times a day.

Speaker 9 A friendship quickly forms as the two women spend the next three months building a family tree around the suspect's DNA using every record they can find.

Speaker 9 A combination of internet research and good old-fashioned library archives.

Speaker 22 A lot of newspaper articles. A lot of newspaper articles.

Speaker 23 Obituaries, census records. I remember I got to a couple in Beaumont and there are yearbook records of two sons.
that that couple had.

Speaker 22 And the first one we came across, he was the right age. He went to the same high school with our victim.

Speaker 31 Aaron goes and does research and finds out that he had a criminal history from here. And it was a prior sexual assault that had occurred in 1981.

Speaker 33 And there was a moment like, oh my, this is our guy.

Speaker 39 And the details of that assault set off alarm bells for detectives.

Speaker 33 There were a lot of similarities in that case that mimicked Katherine Edwards' case. The victim's hands were bound behind her back.
She was sexually assaulted.

Speaker 76 We felt like we had a home run right then and there.

Speaker 4 Suddenly they realized that this suspect had a second victim.

Speaker 50 The difference this time, the victim survived and lived to tell.

Speaker 60 He started telling me that he was training to become a policeman and stuff.

Speaker 60 He was like, I'm just take you home. I don't know why, but I believed him.

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Speaker 95 It started with a phone call in the early hours of the morning.

Speaker 80 Hi one one, what is the address your emergency?

Speaker 95 A terrified woman tells the operator she's been kidnapped, assaulted, and that she's trapped in a room with her attacker.

Speaker 95 He's fallen asleep, so she quietly and ever so carefully finds his phone and calls for help.

Speaker 70 Is there any way you can get out of the building?

Speaker 92 I don't know without leaving him. I'm scared.

Speaker 95 This 911 call began an investigation that would turn the town of Ashland into a crime scene.

Speaker 69 We've got something big going on here. The first thing you hit my mind is a monster.

Speaker 95 A new series from ABC Audio and 2020, The Hand in the Window. Out now, wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 40 So all these years later, investigators in the Catherine Edwards case, a school teacher who was brutally murdered, now think there might have been a second victim of this suspect who is still alive, Paula Bledsoe Ramsey.

Speaker 60 I was 19.

Speaker 60 There was a new country western bar that opened up.

Speaker 60 I really didn't want to go that night, but I'd promised the other girls that I would go. I decided I wanted to leave.

Speaker 32 I was...

Speaker 60 I was done. I wanted to get home.
The parking lot was mud and my car was stuck in the mud. I just thought, I'll just walk to the gas station and call my mom.

Speaker 9 She says, A man offered her a ride home.

Speaker 60 He said his brother's name, and then he said where he went to high school. And then he said, Do you go to Forest Park?

Speaker 60 and I was like, Yeah.

Speaker 60 And then he started telling me that he was training to become a policeman and stuff. And so then he was like,

Speaker 60 I'll just take you home.

Speaker 60 And

Speaker 60 I don't know why, but, you know, I just

Speaker 60 believed him.

Speaker 42 She realized very quickly that that man wasn't driving in the direction of her home.

Speaker 60 He started off being very nice.

Speaker 60 Next thing I know, we're at this field.

Speaker 60 And then his whole demeanor changed.

Speaker 13 He drove her to a nearby park, threatened her with a knife, tied her hands behind her back, and raped her in the backseat of the car. Then he dropped her off at her house.

Speaker 87 I just

Speaker 56 felt awful and shameful.

Speaker 60 I was just like, I can't tell any, I'll never tell anybody what happened.

Speaker 60 I don't know, I was kind of like, I don't know if anybody would believe me, you know, is it my fault? Was it my fault?

Speaker 10 Paula said she summoned the courage about a week later to tell police what had happened.

Speaker 39 They would soon tell her that they identified the man who attacked her.

Speaker 73 And it turns out he wasn't a police trainee.

Speaker 9 He was a 21-year-old salesman in Beaumont.

Speaker 13 She said, yeah, I did it. I just got carried away.

Speaker 31 She said that the prosecutor talked to her, said, you know, this is his first offense. We want to plead him to an aggravated assault.

Speaker 31 She didn't understand what that meant other than he was pleading to a felony and for assaulting her. And so she agreed to the plea bargain agreement.

Speaker 60 I think

Speaker 60 today they take it more serious than they did back then. I wanted him

Speaker 60 to be punished. I think I was just pushing everything down and

Speaker 96 just

Speaker 60 trying to focus on with life.

Speaker 16 Hey, good, how are you?

Speaker 44 Ranger Best. Brandon.
Yes, Yes, sir. Pleasure.

Speaker 74 Yes, sir.

Speaker 38 So when you looked at what had happened in 1981 with this sexual assault, you thought there's a lot here that seems awfully close to the Catherine Edwards case.

Speaker 75 I didn't.

Speaker 40 It turns out that the man who pleaded guilty in that 1981 case is a man by the name of Clayton Foreman. This is the same name that turned up in Tina and Sherra's genealogy hunt.

Speaker 39 He was one of two brothers from the family tree that they actually put together.

Speaker 65 And you might be wondering why his name never surfaced before.

Speaker 40 You have to remember that this case was back in 1981 and DNA collection wasn't even a thing by law enforcement.

Speaker 8 It was still a decade away.

Speaker 13 This is how he eluded detectives at the time. He essentially got away scot-free.

Speaker 63 As investigators get closer to solving this mystery, they begin to learn more about Clayton Foreman's background.

Speaker 40 And in a twist in this case, one of the things they learned is that Clayton Foreman, the suspect, actually went to the same school as Catherine Edwards, the woman who was killed.

Speaker 40 In fact, they probably walked down the same hallways hallways here at school.

Speaker 5 And there was something else.

Speaker 48 Catherine Edwards was actually friends with the suspect's first wife.

Speaker 9 In fact, Catherine Edwards was a bridesmaid at their wedding.

Speaker 13 Investigators figure out that Clayton Foreman is working in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio, and he's working as a rideshare driver.

Speaker 31 We've got a suspect. Now we've got to make sure that's the right guy.

Speaker 31 So they go, they pull the trash can, they get some plastic silverware from takeout and some other things things from the trash can.

Speaker 49 So you tell the FBI what you found and they gather some trash at the suspect's home in Ohio.

Speaker 33 Correct. They shipped that down here to me and then once I went through it, I coordinated with our lab here in Texas to see what items would be best to test.

Speaker 33 And they compared it to the evidence that we had.

Speaker 76 And we got the call.

Speaker 77 This is our guy.

Speaker 77 This is a match.

Speaker 76 Of course, we're chomping at the bit

Speaker 76 to get there to Ohio.

Speaker 49 So he'd been told that one of his Uber customers had had something taken and that he needed to come down.

Speaker 34 Maybe you guys could ask him a few questions about it.

Speaker 35 That's not what you were going to ask him.

Speaker 33 No, no, not at all.

Speaker 85 What we're here about is we're toll case investigators.

Speaker 76 Do you want that shock and awe factor? You want him to walk in the room. You want him to see a guy with a cowboy hat on, and he knows that this is not someone from Ohio.

Speaker 85 We're asking you to visit with us about a crime that we're investigating. Okay? You don't have to talk to us at all.

Speaker 97 He thought we were there just following up on an old case. Like, hey, these guys, they don't have anything.
They're just asking me all these questions in case they do one day.

Speaker 97 I don't think he had any idea that we had his DNA.

Speaker 85 So the crime that we're looking at is the murder of Mary Catherine Edwards. She was murdered in 1995.

Speaker 85 She and her sister,

Speaker 85 Allison, were actually in your wedding in 1982. Were you aware of the crime even?

Speaker 12 No.

Speaker 85 You didn't know that Catherine Edwards was murdered? No, sir. sir did not wedding night only would have been the only time you seen her probably should okay never obviously had sex with her no never

Speaker 85 did you ever go in her house at all any house that she ever lived in no clay I'm a level with you okay right here and now and I want you to hear me real close

Speaker 85 what I'm gonna tell you right now is your DNA was on

Speaker 85 Catherine's bed and was inside Catherine.

Speaker 85 Okay. I mean, I don't know how I got there, but

Speaker 85 Chris say it was there. There's only one way for it to get there.
Okay.

Speaker 85 And that's by you putting it there.

Speaker 79 Okay.

Speaker 85 There's two people that know that story. You're one of them, and she's the other.
And she can't talk.

Speaker 40 What I asked you is now

Speaker 85 to be honest with us completely and tell us how did that happen?

Speaker 85 I'm not going to say anything.

Speaker 85 So if I need an attorney now, I think.

Speaker 85 Do you probably need one or you do need one?

Speaker 85 I don't need an attorney.

Speaker 33 After he makes it outside, you know, that's when we execute the arrest warrant and arrested him.

Speaker 49 You showed up with the handcuffs that he used on Catherine Edwards.

Speaker 33 We did and got to put him on him after we got through interviewing him.

Speaker 49 Did he know that those were the handcuffs he used?

Speaker 35 He was told.

Speaker 84 New developments tonight on the murder of a beloved BOMA teacher.

Speaker 39 So finally, 36 years after Catherine Edwards' murder and arrest, the team can now return to Texas to prepare for trial.

Speaker 67 And in South Carolina, another team of investigators are now chasing a promising lead in their case because of this new technology: the murder of Michigan mom, Kathy Swartz, whose daughter has gone so many years without answers.

Speaker 51 At what point did hope return for you?

Speaker 3 I got a phone call from Sam Smallcomb,

Speaker 3 and he said we may have the guy that killed your mom.

Speaker 81 Hey, gentlemen, how can we we help you?

Speaker 15 Investigators working the cold case murder of Kathy Swartz, the young Michigan mother who was murdered, her baby right nearby, they had sent off the perpetrator's DNA taken from her pink phone to that lab in Texas, Othram.

Speaker 15 So after three decades with no arrests in this case, Othrum actually uses their cutting-edge technology to build a comprehensive DNA sequence of who the perpetrator is.

Speaker 48 So now that you have this sequencing that they just didn't have access to years ago, what do you then do with that?

Speaker 55 We could use that profile to search a database of people. And in doing this, we can then begin to figure out how these people that are near relatives are arranged on a family tree.

Speaker 55 And if we can do that, then we can begin to ask where the person that we're looking to identify might fit on the tree.

Speaker 25 In going down the family tree, you find that there is actually a family that lives in Three Rivers, Michigan, a mother and father with four sons.

Speaker 42 Yes.

Speaker 14 That's correct.

Speaker 45 We got the report back, and they believed it was a family that had lived in Three Rivers.

Speaker 45 The DNA was male, so this narrowed it down to four brothers. The youngest brother, Barry, and then there was the oldest was Sonny Waters,

Speaker 45 then John Waters, and then Robert Waters.

Speaker 45 We were very excited because now we have leads to run off from. We are very quickly able to eliminate Barry because his DNA that was in CODIS.

Speaker 53 And they're able to rule him out.

Speaker 47 So they take him right off the list.

Speaker 10 Detectives then track down two more of the Waters brothers who both quickly agree to turn over their DNA.

Speaker 98 One, two, three, four.

Speaker 9 And with that DNA, they're able to eliminate them as well, which just left Robert Waters.

Speaker 45 Robert Waters was married, had a couple of children, and had been living in Beaufort, South Carolina for quite some time. He was a local business owner and had a plumbing business.

Speaker 9 And from what detectives can tell from looking at his wife's Facebook page, Robert Waters appears to be a happily married family man.

Speaker 56 Hey, how you doing? Good morning. Hey, Robert.
Hey, how you doing?

Speaker 16 Good. How are you?

Speaker 78 How can we help you?

Speaker 45 I'm Sam Smokum from 3-Riverse PD. This is Todd Peters from Michigan State Police.

Speaker 59 Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, too.

Speaker 45 Can we talk for just a couple of minutes? Nothing convenient.

Speaker 56 All right.

Speaker 43 He seemed like the guy next door that would mow your lawn for you if you were going to be out of town for a week.

Speaker 4 So I'm helping Sam, and we reopened this case from

Speaker 64 Three River way back in the day. Going back through and

Speaker 64 getting interviews and just clearing everything down okay so we were wondering if you wouldn't have you'd have time to come down to the Trill E and talk with us down there yeah okay

Speaker 64 somebody comes into your and knocks on your door investigators from another state and asks you to come down to a department and talk you're probably gonna ask why

Speaker 64 never asks why and agrees to drive himself down and meet us there so we'll just expect you in a couple minutes and we'll meet you down that's fine all right thanks sir

Speaker 9 after initially not showing at the police station detectives call Waters. He's informed that they have a warrant for his prints and his DNA, and later that day he actually comes in.

Speaker 64 But what I'm trying to do is do the three and we had to just focus on getting the fingerprints and the DNA.

Speaker 80 Yeah, don't have a C.

Speaker 45 And one of the issues we had run into is the Beaufort Police Department did not have the fingerprint live scan machine. So we had to use the traditional ink and paper.

Speaker 81 Hang on for just a second. I gotta take a call real quick here.

Speaker 100 Yes, sir. Hey, sorry to madia.
We're struggling with this print here.

Speaker 73 Unfortunately at that police station they're having trouble actually getting a clean print from Waters.

Speaker 81 You want to come get your fingers dirty again?

Speaker 64 We're going to try to do it on just card stock.

Speaker 45 So we rolled him a second time, sent those back.

Speaker 64 Never gets upset about it, never gets worked up about the time.

Speaker 80 We're going to go flat down.

Speaker 45 He still just willingly, I guess, hung out with us.

Speaker 39 So you've got the detectives now waiting for a definitive answer from the lab in Michigan.

Speaker 90 So they spend the next five hours actually making small talk with Robert Waters.

Speaker 34 If you like Steve Food, yep, I do.

Speaker 78 You will like that place.

Speaker 64 We talked about our families, his family, plumbing, and remodeling houses. You would never guess by looking at that guy that he was concerned about why he was there or the outcome of it.

Speaker 24 All right.

Speaker 96 Okay.

Speaker 34 I just wanted to tell you,

Speaker 80 we did submit the print that we took from you earlier. It did match to the one at the crime scene.
So at this time, you are under arrest for the murder of Kassie Schwartz.

Speaker 56 Okay.

Speaker 45 It really surprised me. He did not really react.

Speaker 45 I feel like he knew when we showed up that morning that the game was up.

Speaker 90 Do you remember when you learned that the prints were a match?

Speaker 3 There was just so many emotions and everything going on that

Speaker 3 I was just overwhelmed and so excited because finally

Speaker 3 they had him.

Speaker 18 So after decades, you have your answer.

Speaker 56 Yes.

Speaker 100 53-year-old Robert Waters, a former Three Rivers resident, now a plumber, husband, father, and accused killer.

Speaker 32 I didn't recognize his name. Didn't sound familiar to me at all.

Speaker 10 But investigators always believe that Kathy Schwartz must have known her killer in some way.

Speaker 9 You remember there was no forced entry. And they finally discovered the connection when they go back to speak to Kathy's one-time fiancé, Mike Warner.

Speaker 98 Well, let me ask you the obvious question. What about Rob Waters? He came there one time.

Speaker 79 He came there one time. One time.

Speaker 98 Okay. Do you remember, like, was that close to December? That was...
I think so.

Speaker 45 He knew Robbie Waters had visited the apartment about a month before the murder.

Speaker 37 Who we hadn't seen since grade school.

Speaker 56 Yeah.

Speaker 13 Okay, so he just somehow figured out that you guys were living in Riverside

Speaker 98 and showed up that one time.

Speaker 79 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I honestly think she knew him then, obviously, because he was friends with Mike and he

Speaker 3 was in town and tried to come see my mom and she wasn't having it.

Speaker 86 He's waiting to be extradited to St. Justice County.

Speaker 32 It really was, you know, like, wow.

Speaker 32 we're gonna get some answers. We're gonna find some things out.

Speaker 9 But before his day in court could actually come, the suspect Robert Waters does something that shocks everyone.

Speaker 32 No way, this cannot be happening.

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Speaker 100 A major breakthrough in a cold case murder out of three rivers.

Speaker 86 Investigators say they have finally arrested a suspect. His name is 53-year-old Robert Waters.

Speaker 80 Those two tight.

Speaker 80 No.

Speaker 45 The plans were already in place. He had waived extradition, so he knew that he was going to be brought back to Michigan.

Speaker 51 They go down to South Carolina, and they discover that this man had been living

Speaker 73 a full life.

Speaker 57 Yeah. Married, children, a job.

Speaker 60 A good job.

Speaker 3 A good life.

Speaker 3 And they said he was like a godly man down there.

Speaker 18 To that, you say?

Speaker 3 No.

Speaker 3 They don't know the real

Speaker 38 But after evading law enforcement for decades, Robert Waters never makes it back to Michigan.

Speaker 64 At like 6.30 in the morning, I received a call from the investigator from Beaufort

Speaker 64 and she had explained that she had just come from the jail and that

Speaker 64 Robert Waters had hung himself in his cell.

Speaker 32 I'm like, no way, this cannot be happening. Again, like a disbelief, you know, like, why?

Speaker 32 How could this happen?

Speaker 45 He had some material that they'd given him in the jail, and it was some devotionals, and the parts that he had ripped out talked about forgiveness and asking for forgiveness.

Speaker 64 To me, it says that you're guilty. I mean, no one is going to do that in that situation if they're innocent.

Speaker 51 You feel Robbed that you did not get the opportunity to see him face to face?

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 3 I just wanted him to feel my presence in the room.

Speaker 51 What would you have said to him in court?

Speaker 3 I don't think I would have said anything. I just think I would have walked in

Speaker 3 and my presence is enough words for him.

Speaker 51 He would have seen that baby.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 51 That he left there in that crib all the time.

Speaker 3 And probably my mom, because I look like her, they say.

Speaker 32 He's a coward. To take her away from all of us in the manner that he did, And then he got to go live his life.
You're not going to

Speaker 32 give us any answers. I mean,

Speaker 32 he's just a coward.

Speaker 40 But remember, there are two cases here that have been unlocked by this new technology.

Speaker 9 And back in Beaumont, Texas, Catherine Edwards' loved ones are determined to see the suspect in that case, Clayton Foreman, the man charged with murdering her, face a jury.

Speaker 13 Clayton Foreman goes on trial in March of 2024 in Beaumont.

Speaker 13 He is charged with capital murder.

Speaker 12 Blayton Bernard Foreman, how do you plead to the indictment?

Speaker 35 Guilty or not guilty?

Speaker 65 Not guilty.

Speaker 76 There were family there, there were friends there, there were former students of Catherine's that were there to see that justice was going to be served.

Speaker 40 Prosecutors begin by playing that 911 call Catherine's parents made for the jury. Police, please, what's going on?

Speaker 81 My daughter was murdered.

Speaker 31 That 911 tape was very impactful to start the trial off with. That really gets you involved and to know that something horrible happened.

Speaker 9 You know, Catherine's parents did not live to see the man accused of killing their daughter arrested. So this is left now to the twin sister, Allison, to tell jurors about her sister.

Speaker 78 Are you related to Mary Catherine Petrus?

Speaker 88 Yes, she was my twin sister.

Speaker 13 Allison is now 60 years old.

Speaker 13 And

Speaker 13 she offered really powerful testimony about growing up with Catherine.

Speaker 88 She just was always very nurturing and loving to people.

Speaker 88 And if anyone had a problem, they would come to her and she would talk to strangers and make friends with people and compliment people and just was an amazing person.

Speaker 13 Allison recalls the afternoon where her sister's body was discovered. Catherine just never showed up to this lunch.
So eventually her father, Lum, agreed to go check on her.

Speaker 56 And my dad answered the the phone.

Speaker 56 And

Speaker 56 he was frantic.

Speaker 56 And

Speaker 56 he said, your sister's dead, your sister's dead.

Speaker 31 It was just heartbreaking to see. I mean, her twin, identical twin, is what she would have looked like today if she was alive.
And there she is up on the stand testifying.

Speaker 31 And the emotion and the love and the hurt, all of it came out and was was so impactful with the jury.

Speaker 13 Allison said when Catherine died, she thought her parents died a little bit that day too.

Speaker 56 It was horrible.

Speaker 56 They were never the same.

Speaker 56 But we decided as a family after that happened that we were going to not let

Speaker 56 what happened kill us too.

Speaker 56 And that we were going to live to honor her. And that's what we always did after that.

Speaker 9 In a heart-crushing moment, Allison shares with the jury how she honored her sister after her death.

Speaker 56 Four years later I had a daughter and her name is Catherine.

Speaker 56 Catherine

Speaker 56 after my sister and she never got to know her.

Speaker 56 My oldest was nine months old and she was her godmother and she never got to know her either.

Speaker 33 You can know the case inside out, but until you see somebody testify and see the raw emotion that's going on, that was raw, raw emotion that they relived on the stand.

Speaker 45 Excuse me, thank you.

Speaker 50 Prosecution's next witness is about to detail the surprising connection between Catherine Edwards and Clayton Foreman.

Speaker 78 And you got married to a person by the name of Clayton Foreman.

Speaker 101 Yes.

Speaker 63 What she's about to tell the jury about his reaction to Catherine's death.

Speaker 101 It dumbfounded me.

Speaker 5 Jurors in the trial of Clayton Foreman, the man accused of killing that school teacher, Catherine Edwards, are now hearing about this investigation that took nearly 30 years and all of it now culminating with this cutting-edge DNA testing done by that Texas lab, Othrum.

Speaker 8 Please have a seat.

Speaker 55 I was very eager to get to the courtroom. I work at Othrum.
We'll do the testing and it will result in the building of a DNA profile to generate new leads in the investigation.

Speaker 55 It's one thing to solve a case, and it's another to be able to defend how that work was done, allow it to be interrogated openly and critiqued.

Speaker 55 We want to see at least 50% of the markers and you can see that in actuality we have, it looks like 87%. So that's far in excess of what is necessary to produce a workable profile.

Speaker 83 Without the DNA, the story doesn't matter.

Speaker 31 That's that one puzzle piece that puts it all together.

Speaker 9 So prosecutors want the jurors now to hear from the woman who can actually detail the connection between that school teacher, Catherine Edwards, and Clayton Foreman.

Speaker 59 She was married to him.

Speaker 101 My name's Diana Coate.

Speaker 50 And remember, Catherine Edwards and her twin sister were actually bridesmaids at the wedding.

Speaker 99 Were they friends of yours in high school?

Speaker 32 Yes.

Speaker 9 She also testified that while she was married to Foreman, she actually discovered something unnerving in his car.

Speaker 78 You had found a briefcase in the trunk of the defendant's car. Is that correct?

Speaker 96 That's correct.

Speaker 78 All right, what was inside the briefcase?

Speaker 101 There was a gun, a set of handcuffs, and some horrible pornographic material.

Speaker 90 Okay.

Speaker 78 Regarding the gun, was there any reason for him to have a gun that you knew of at the time?

Speaker 101 No reason. I mean...

Speaker 78 Is there any reason that you knew of that he would have a pair of handcuffs in the back of his trunk?

Speaker 91 No.

Speaker 78 Did you ever talk to him about that?

Speaker 91 No.

Speaker 101 I didn't know what he would say. I didn't know what he would do.

Speaker 19 And later, when questioned by the defense, Diana said she never saw the briefcase again.

Speaker 26 She also recalled an odd conversation that she'd actually had with her ex-husband about Catherine and her twin sister.

Speaker 101 He had told me that in high school he would see them in the hall and he always thought they were so cute because they were twins and he felt as though he wanted to make sure he protected them.

Speaker 9 After 11 years of marriage, Diana and Foreman divorced, but they continued to stay in touch.

Speaker 9 And she tells jurors how two years later, in 1995, she actually called her ex-husband after finding out that Catherine had been murdered.

Speaker 78 Was that very upsetting to you?

Speaker 96 Yes.

Speaker 78 When you told him, how did he react?

Speaker 101 He didn't.

Speaker 101 It was very shocking to me. He just, it had like no feeling whatsoever and just basically was like, oh, really?

Speaker 101 And

Speaker 101 it dumbfounded me.

Speaker 56 You're excuse me. Thank you.

Speaker 19 And there was one more witness jurors would hear from, Paula Ramsey, Foreman's victim from 1981.

Speaker 10 It had been decades since Paula had even heard heard the name of the man who assaulted her.

Speaker 60 It was a Friday, and I was at work. My phone rang, and it said Beaumont Police.
This emotion came over me, and I was like,

Speaker 60 what? Is someone messing with me?

Speaker 40 And on the other end of the line was Detective Lue Allen.

Speaker 60 He said he's a suspect in a murder. And that's when he started telling me about the DNA.
And he said, it is a cold case murder. And I was like, you don't even have to ask.
I will go. I will testify.

Speaker 60 We hung up. I just

Speaker 60 broke down. I mean, you just go back to being that girl again where that fear

Speaker 102 and

Speaker 60 all of it just kind of consumes you again.

Speaker 9 And so suddenly, all these years later, in a courtroom full of strangers, Paula is telling her story about how she was assaulted by foreman.

Speaker 99 Did he do something

Speaker 87 with your hands?

Speaker 87 He tagged them in the back,

Speaker 56 behind.

Speaker 98 He took your hands, put them behind you, and just secured them with an object.

Speaker 67 Do you believe that object may have been a belt?

Speaker 56 Yes.

Speaker 34 Did he threaten to cut your throat if you didn't do what he wanted?

Speaker 82 Yes.

Speaker 60 I just kind of blocked out everything else and just focused on the questions.

Speaker 45 Did he say something that you found odd concerning what he had just done to you?

Speaker 56 Yes.

Speaker 96 What was that?

Speaker 87 When I was getting out of the car,

Speaker 56 he said,

Speaker 56 stop crying.

Speaker 27 I'm sorry.

Speaker 87 I hope I didn't hurt you.

Speaker 87 You have to

Speaker 60 say these things out loud. And then knowing that

Speaker 60 he's sitting right over there

Speaker 12 and

Speaker 3 just

Speaker 60 being in the same room and and

Speaker 27 that was hard.

Speaker 31 She relived it on that stand and it was amazing to watch her how brave she was to do that.

Speaker 78 You came here today to tell the story what happened to you 42 to 43 years ago, right?

Speaker 56 Yes.

Speaker 78 Who did you do that for?

Speaker 87 Poor Catherine.

Speaker 60 I wanted to see justice done for her.

Speaker 46 And in the end, Clayton Foreman's defense, they wouldn't call call any witnesses, but they did deliver a closing statement.

Speaker 81 You, ordinary citizens, get to decide whether or not on the day in question, January 14th of 1995, Clayton committed the offense of capital murder.

Speaker 81 He may not like it, but he did back in 81.

Speaker 81 That doesn't make him a murderer. It doesn't make him that he went out and killed somebody.

Speaker 13 The case was very one-sided, and the prosecution had all the witnesses, had all the evidence. There was very little the defense can do.

Speaker 84 The verdict is in 29 years of waiting, came down to seven days of testimony and ultimately 52 minutes of deliberation.

Speaker 76 I'll tell you that anytime I've had a jury trial, I'm scared to death when they're walking back in that room. That is the most tense moment ever for me.

Speaker 78 We, the jury, find the defendant guilty of the offense of capital murder.

Speaker 13 It took police nearly 30 years to bring Clain Foreman to trial for the murder of Catherine Edwards. It took the jury less than an hour to convict him.
It was very fast.

Speaker 13 He was sentenced to life in prison.

Speaker 60 It was just really,

Speaker 60 I was thankful that I did it. Thankful that it did help.
It did help putting him away.

Speaker 9 It was an extraordinary thing to have closure in that courtroom for that young school teacher.

Speaker 50 And that other case, the mother who was brutally murdered, her baby just a few feet away, now she's about to meet the couple who unlock this case.

Speaker 18 As we stand here today all these years later, it's so peaceful and quiet here.

Speaker 25 It's hard to imagine what played out behind this.

Speaker 27 It is. Thankfully, the detectives worked very, very hard on this.

Speaker 18 Never gave up.

Speaker 16 Never gave up, and they solved it.

Speaker 27 Detective Lou Ellen called me and he said, hey, Carmen, you remember how you said you always wanted that case solved before you retired?

Speaker 27 Well, I know you've retired, but I think we got him.

Speaker 18 And he did.

Speaker 29 I can see the satisfaction on your face.

Speaker 14 Justice after all these years.

Speaker 27 After all these years.

Speaker 82 Absolutely.

Speaker 9 Justice, finally, for that elementary school teacher, Catherine Edwards.

Speaker 4 And in the second case, justice as well for Kathy Swartz's daughter Courtney.

Speaker 16 Hi Courtney. Hello.

Speaker 8 Hi. So these are the two who helped solve the case.

Speaker 28 Hello.

Speaker 27 Hi Kima Piggy.

Speaker 19 Just the idea though that the two of them were able to go back and look at that evidence and solve it all these years later.

Speaker 3 I can't even, I don't even have no words.

Speaker 3 You don't need words.

Speaker 68 I'm glad you have answers. Thank you.

Speaker 64 It's unbelievable just in my career to see like when I started in 97 to where we're at today.

Speaker 40 You have these cases that are literally going nowhere.

Speaker 64 You give them this DNA sample and the next thing you know, you know who your suspect is.

Speaker 38 Do you think that there are cases like this all over the country right now just waiting to be solved with this new technology?

Speaker 97 Absolutely, all over the country and all over the world, but finding every case I think would be the goal.

Speaker 12 Everyone.

Speaker 38 Every sexual assault, every every homicide, every one of them.

Speaker 97 We need to find those cases and we need to get them submitted and work.

Speaker 29 And that means answers finally for thousands of families.

Speaker 95 Sure, absolutely.

Speaker 55 There are tens of thousands of little tubes of DNA in crime labs across this country

Speaker 55 and all of them have answers.

Speaker 68 I think we're going to live in a world in this lifetime where there are no unidentified victims, victims that are named voiceless, where perpetrators are caught the first time they commit a crime.

Speaker 51 For some families, you are the last hope.

Speaker 68 For many.

Speaker 68 I don't believe in closure when you've gone through something as horrible as

Speaker 68 one of these violent crimes, but I do believe that truth allows you to turn the page.

Speaker 3 I have been living with this for 36 years and these people,

Speaker 3 they took their time, they solved this this case with DNA so I can close this book and open up my own book with my own kids. And that's,

Speaker 3 there's no words for that.

Speaker 46 And we should know that that lab, those DNA decoders, Kristen and David Middleman, Othrum, they recently announced their 455th DNA match, Deborah.

Speaker 10 They are solving these cases.

Speaker 103 And how incredible, David. Catherine Edwards' killer, Clayton Foreman, will be eligible for parole in 30 years.
He'll be in his 90s. He's appealing his conviction.
That's our program for tonight.

Speaker 103 Thanks so much for watching.

Speaker 87 I'm Deborah Roberts.

Speaker 73 And I'm David Muir from All of Us here at 2020 at ABC News.

Speaker 28 Good night.