True Crime Vault: The DNA Detective

Speaker 1 Hi 911, what is the address to your emergency?

Speaker 2 This 911 call began an investigation that would turn the town of Ashland, Ohio, into a crime scene.

Speaker 3 We've got something big going on here.

Speaker 6 The first thing that hit my mind is a monster.

Speaker 2 A new series from ABC Audio in 2020: The Hand in the Window.

Speaker 8 Out now, wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 9 Welcome to the True Crime Vault, home to 2020's most chilling stories.

Speaker 12 We were scared. Who did it? Who did it?

Speaker 12 Who killed her? Can this happen to anybody?

Speaker 7 Tonight, on an all-new 2020,

Speaker 13 a cold case murder for more than two decades, now solved in just two days.

Speaker 16 Giving up hope that they would find the person that did this

Speaker 16 would have giving up on her.

Speaker 6 And you couldn't do that.

Speaker 14 A young elementary school teacher who never showed up for work.

Speaker 17 And I knew something was wrong. So I'm yelling, Christy, Christy, Christy.
I told the police what I saw, but I've never told anybody else.

Speaker 15 I understand that a priest at one point told you not to look at her.

Speaker 6 He said it was probably in our best interest.

Speaker 14 Not the viewer.

Speaker 12 It's been 10 years.

Speaker 18 20 years.

Speaker 12 25 years.

Speaker 19 I just couldn't let go.

Speaker 20 Tonight, the family that never gave up. The revolutionary science that turns a drop of DNA into a literal portrait.
And the DNA detective who finally broke the case without ever leaving home.

Speaker 15 Well, my mouth drops open. It took you just a couple of days to find a real, serious tip.

Speaker 18 Aha, now we're getting close. When I first identified him, I couldn't believe it was him.
I was saying, it can't be him. It can't be Oscar.

Speaker 12 If he did do this, it almost seems like he was taunting or enjoying the fact that he got away with killing her.

Speaker 5 That mystery starts right now on 2020.

Speaker 20 Good evening, I'm Amy Robach.

Speaker 14 And I'm David Muir.

Speaker 5 Thanks for joining us tonight, right here, a grieving family waiting 26 years for an answer.

Speaker 20 And now, after just two days, they may have one. Here's Ryan Smith.

Speaker 10 Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a popular destination wedding location, attracting families from surrounding states for the beautiful venues, food, and flowers.

Speaker 10 But is it also possible that one of these wedding professionals, responsible for creating people's most cherished moments, is also responsible for a brutal murder two and a half decades earlier.

Speaker 11 25-year-old Christy Mirak was murdered.

Speaker 23 The girl also was severely beaten around the head and neck.

Speaker 11 This quiet neighborhood is in disbelief that such a tragedy could happen so close to home.

Speaker 12 The last person anybody would have ever linked to her murder or suspected.

Speaker 10 This story does not begin at a wedding, but during another time of anticipation and excitement, days before Christmas 1992.

Speaker 22 It's very scary. This is such a quiet neighborhood.

Speaker 11 We keep our doors locked. This is horrible.

Speaker 10 Christy Mirak, seen here in her yearbook photo, grew up in Pennsylvania, in cold country, the middle child of a close-knit family, an older sister to Vince.

Speaker 15 What was she like as a sister?

Speaker 19 She always was funny, very talkative, very opinionated. I think she would make a room kind of lighten up if it was down.

Speaker 16 She had this smile that just drew people to her.

Speaker 10 Annie Adams was one of Christy's best friends.

Speaker 16 When we were in high school, there was a show on TV called Dance It on Air.

Speaker 10 A music show for teens.

Speaker 16 That's all she wanted to do. She was just, she was getting on that show, she was getting on that stage.

Speaker 16 And

Speaker 16 she did get us on the stage.

Speaker 10 That's Christy on the right, next to Annie.

Speaker 10 By December of 1992, she was living in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Speaker 19 Her one goal and dream is that she always wanted to be a school teacher.

Speaker 10 And she got that job.

Speaker 24 Let's go with what we have up here.

Speaker 10 Teaching sixth grade at Worristown Elementary School, Principal Harry Goodman hired her.

Speaker 17 There are certain teachers where you can walk in their classroom and you almost get chills because they have the kids captivated and she taught with her heart.

Speaker 24 What would you look at?

Speaker 12 Emily. She was so cool.
She was young. She had good clothes.
She had that big smile, pretty blonde hair, and just that energy. It just made you want to spend more time with her.

Speaker 10 December 18th, Christy has dinner with her brother Vince. It would be the last time he would see her.

Speaker 14 Just like any other time, you say goodbye.

Speaker 6 We'll see you in a couple days, and, you know,

Speaker 7 soon we would.

Speaker 10 The evening of December 20th, Christy is at home preparing for the holiday, wrapping copies of the book, Miracles on Maple Hill, for for each of her 24 students.

Speaker 12 She wrote a message to them. Merry Christmas and have a great year.

Speaker 16 I did talk to Christy the night before. We always make plans to get together on Christmas Day.

Speaker 10 The next morning is a chilly one with temperatures below freezing. Christy is up before sunrise.

Speaker 17 It started out like any other day.

Speaker 26 Christy always got up very early in the morning. On this particular morning, sat on the couch in a blanket and watched a little bit of TV.

Speaker 10 Her roommate roommate leaves first at 7 a.m. Christie would usually leave shortly after by 7:45.

Speaker 10 But on this morning, she did not. In the next 45 minutes, something unspeakable would happen.

Speaker 27 I called her apartment about five times, nothing.

Speaker 10 Over at Christie's school, Principal Goodman gets worried when she doesn't show up to her classroom.

Speaker 17 I called her mother and I said, Have you heard from Christy?

Speaker 19 The phone rang. My mom was upstairs.

Speaker 6 She came downstairs and she said,

Speaker 6 Chrissy didn't show up for work.

Speaker 17 She was worried. I was worried.
I said, I'll tell you what. I'll drive down and I'll probably end up changing her tire on the car.
So I started driving. Her mother had given me her address.

Speaker 17 The farther I went, I did not see her. And then I started to panic.
I pulled up to her car was parked there, and I knew something was wrong.

Speaker 17 And the door was cracked open. So I'm yelling, Christy, Christy, Christie.

Speaker 10 When he walks up, he's horrified by the scene in the living room.

Speaker 17 I told the police what I saw, but I've never told anybody else what I walked in on.

Speaker 28 I was at home when I got the call. There's a young woman who was

Speaker 28 found murdered in her apartment.

Speaker 10 Joseph Madden Spacher is the Lancaster District Attorney in 1992.

Speaker 29 I said I'll be there in 15 minutes.

Speaker 19 And

Speaker 19 kept calling and calling and calling. And finally, when somebody answered her phone at her apartment, they acknowledged themselves

Speaker 19 as being someone from law enforcement and that there's been an accident. And she passed.

Speaker 15 What was your reaction when you heard that?

Speaker 6 Devastated.

Speaker 10 Officers begin to piece together what has just taken place. A horrific scene.
Christy dead on the floor. Her head beaten.

Speaker 7 Her jaw broken.

Speaker 10 She had been raped and strangled.

Speaker 17 I struggled for years with this.

Speaker 17 Screaming nightmares.

Speaker 10 She is still wearing her coat and gloves.

Speaker 31 It's not a great leap of faith to say she was going out the door.

Speaker 10 It is immediately clear to investigators that Christy was in a violent struggle for her life.

Speaker 26 Her footprint was found on the top of the door, suggesting that she had perhaps been lifted up and that her foot would have hit at that height.

Speaker 31 We found scuff marks just inside the foyer area.

Speaker 14 I saw a cutting board.

Speaker 7 It was in the living room, which

Speaker 29 seemed relatively strange to me.

Speaker 26 Initially, what is believed is that she may have grabbed the cutting board as a way to defend herself and then the suspect used that on her.

Speaker 10 In that scene of destruction, police are able to collect multiple samples of the killer's DNA.

Speaker 10 And those Christmas presents she had so meticulously wrapped the night before are now strewn about the apartment.

Speaker 12 That has always, always, always haunted me. That there was her body and close to it were these books that she had taken the time and put the thought into writing.
and for her kids.

Speaker 23 The cause of death is being listed as strangulation.

Speaker 10 At Christie's school, a classroom full of students is wondering why their teacher never showed up. Assistant Superintendent Bob Wildeson is there.

Speaker 3 We just knew that she was dead, that Harry Goodman is the one who discovered her, but

Speaker 3 it was just

Speaker 3 everyone was in shock about it.

Speaker 10 When 12-year-old Christina Butler gets off the bus that afternoon, Her mother is waiting to break the news.

Speaker 12 It was just almost incomprehensible to us at that time. We didn't understand the magnitude of it.

Speaker 12 We knew she was gone, and that was awful, but we didn't, we couldn't grasp just how violent and scary it was at the time.

Speaker 16 Who could this person be?

Speaker 16 And why would this person do this to her?

Speaker 16 Because

Speaker 16 she was just someone that everyone loved.

Speaker 10 Who would do this?

Speaker 10 Still ahead. A disturbing visit the next day from a mystery man looking for Christy Christie at school.

Speaker 3 I thought this was perhaps the killer.

Speaker 10 Stay with us.

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Speaker 10 Drive a few miles out of downtown Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and you will find some of the most bucolic farmland in the country.

Speaker 26 A lot of the farmland here is owned by the Amish. You will see buggies, you will see horse-drawn plows.

Speaker 13 Lancaster has a very strong family feel. It's founded on strong faith that draws people to this area because they feel this sense of safety.

Speaker 10 That sense of safety is shattered by the murder of 25-year-old school teacher Christy Marak just four days before Christmas in 1992. Her family is now planning her funeral.

Speaker 15 I understand that a priest at one point told you not to look at her.

Speaker 6 He said it was probably in our best interest.

Speaker 14 Not the viewer.

Speaker 6 Just remember how she was.

Speaker 10 The day after Christy Morak's murder, teachers and students are mourning.

Speaker 8 We will continue our counseling center tomorrow.

Speaker 4 It was awful.

Speaker 17 I don't know how I got up in the morning and went in, but it was almost like it was my salvation to be able to get up and to go into school.

Speaker 10 Her principal is grief-stricken, but he's also under suspicion.

Speaker 28 He found the body, and those those kind of people are automatic suspects right off the bat.

Speaker 10 As police launched their investigation, a suspicious visitor shows up at Christie's school, carrying flowers and heading for her classroom.

Speaker 3 I say, excuse me, may I help you? He said he's just a good friend of Christie's, and he just wanted to stop and say hi.

Speaker 3 And which made me very, very suspicious. Things just didn't make sense to me that he didn't know anything about Christie's death at all.

Speaker 11 25-year-old Christy Mirak was murdered.

Speaker 3 It was on a radio, TV.

Speaker 6 It was all over.

Speaker 3 You hear all those things about returning to the scene of the crime. I thought this was perhaps the killer.

Speaker 10 The assistant superintendent escorts him from the building and calls police. The visit seems even more suspicious the next day when the man calls Wilderson at home.

Speaker 3 He heard we have counselors in the school and he wondered if he could avail himself to the counseling services. I said, no, he was not welcome in the school at all.

Speaker 10 The man turns out to be Christie's secret boyfriend, 20 years her senior, and married.

Speaker 26 There certainly was suspicion around him.

Speaker 10 Those close to Christie are convinced her killer must be someone she knows.

Speaker 10 She never would have opened the door to a stranger.

Speaker 15 I understand that she was a stickler for safety.

Speaker 19 Yeah, it was always something she was very conscious of. When I went to her apartment to visit her, I knocked, rang the doorbell, and she would make sure it was me before she would open the door.

Speaker 10 Police run the DNA found at the crime scene through the National Law Enforcement Database, but there is no match. Investigators begin reading through everyone she knows.

Speaker 29 She was very likable and had lots of friends, which meant lots of people to talk to. My God, these 1,600 people were interviewed or something.

Speaker 26 They felt that the suspect was someone who would not be the life of the party, more of an observer, someone on the sidelines.

Speaker 10 Ultimately, both Principal Goodman and Christie's married boyfriend provide airtight alibis and are cleared. The suspect list grows shorter and shorter.

Speaker 28 Initially, we thought we had plenty of viable suspects, but when you start running out of them, you're running out of them.

Speaker 12 We were scared. Who killed her? And why couldn't our parents answer that question?

Speaker 26 Her friends were extremely fearful. They didn't know if it was someone in their circle.

Speaker 10 Weeks turn into months. Months into years.

Speaker 19 Day by day went by, went by, went by, and nothing.

Speaker 6 This case went on and on and on.

Speaker 7 Nobody wanted to give up on it.

Speaker 10 Just before the 10th anniversary of Christy's murder, there is another blow. A devastating cancer diagnosis for her mom.

Speaker 26 It did not look like she was going to live much longer and she wanted one last opportunity to go public to see what she could do to remind people of her daughter.

Speaker 12 You can't help but have your heart break for her mother.

Speaker 10 She calls reporter Barbara Huff Rota to give one final newspaper interview pleading for answers.

Speaker 26 There was a sense of grief, but also a sense of hope. I think Christie's mother knew that soon she would be with Christy,

Speaker 26 and that was some small comfort for her.

Speaker 19 My mom, before she passed, said,

Speaker 6 Don't let this go.

Speaker 15 What did you say to her?

Speaker 6 I won't.

Speaker 6 And I didn't.

Speaker 16 I absolutely did not give up hope that they would find who did this.

Speaker 16 Sorry.

Speaker 6 I felt like I couldn't give up hope.

Speaker 16 Giving up hope

Speaker 16 would have been giving up on her

Speaker 6 and couldn't do that.

Speaker 10 Amazingly, the young student who lived through the trauma of losing her teacher. Good evening.
Is now all grown up and a reporter covering the cold case.

Speaker 22 This is the school where Christy Morack, or Miss Morack, as she was known to her students, never showed up the day she was murdered.

Speaker 10 She says her teacher's murder influenced her decision to become a reporter.

Speaker 12 I think her death really did shape a lot of us in ways that we didn't even know

Speaker 12 were shaping us.

Speaker 10 Trying to keep his sister's case front and center, Vince leases a giant billboard next to the highway.

Speaker 19 There's people out there that know stuff. We know they know stuff.
It generated a lot of things, but there was nothing, never anything that

Speaker 19 was concrete enough.

Speaker 31 I think it was an appropriate time to get some fresh eyes.

Speaker 10 Flash forward, two decades after the murder, District Attorney Craig Steadman's office takes over the Colt case.

Speaker 31 We took the entire file and the evidence and

Speaker 31 started again from the ground up.

Speaker 10 Coming up, a DNA revolution allows them to stare into the face of a killer.

Speaker 15 What was it like to look at a sketch of a person who potentially raped and murdered your sister?

Speaker 10 And a break in another famous cold case

Speaker 10 would lead to a breakthrough in this one.

Speaker 10 This past spring, another cold case becomes big news.

Speaker 14 So-called Golden State Killer.

Speaker 5 He went on a reign of terror for so many years.

Speaker 14 Has been captured.

Speaker 19 I was finishing eating dinner one night and I saw the case of the Golden State killer and I stopped and listened to that.

Speaker 24 They used a genealogy website to help connect Joseph D'Angelo's DNA to past crime scenes.

Speaker 8 Years and years later a genealogy site.

Speaker 19 And my first reaction was,

Speaker 19 why can't they do something like that with Christie?

Speaker 10 Across the country in California, a former actress and singer is also watching with keen interest.

Speaker 18 I'll have to check with my supervisors.

Speaker 10 Her name is Cece Moore, and she is now a genetic genealogist.

Speaker 10 You may have seen her on this show.

Speaker 14 Tonight, on an all-new 2020, our DNA detective connecting the dots.

Speaker 10 You may be my father. Cece helps foundlings, babies abandoned at birth, and adoptees find their biological parents.

Speaker 18 I know your father's very excited to meet you.

Speaker 10 Making family connections never thought possible.

Speaker 6 I love you like a little girl.

Speaker 10 Moore got hooked on genealogy when she researched her own family years ago. And although she didn't break the Golden State killer case, give it up for Cece Moore.
Her groundbreaking methods helped.

Speaker 10 She has received international recognition for her pioneering techniques.

Speaker 18 This was a different way of applying the science. It's not taught in schools.
There's no degree you can get in genetic genealogy. There's no certification.

Speaker 18 You had to think outside the box and perhaps you needed some creativity. And I came from a creative background.

Speaker 10 Moore has always known that she could use her genetic genealogy skills to catch criminals, but she was reluctant.

Speaker 18 There were some bioethicists and legal experts that I expected to be against this. And I was very surprised after the Golden State killer arrest that they were completely supportive.

Speaker 10 And she is now teaming up with a company called Parabon Nanolabs, who is already familiar with the Marack Cold case.

Speaker 27 Off the bat, yeah, we're talking a little bit of an older sample, 1992 level of mixture. Well, they have over 600 nanograms.

Speaker 18 They ruled out 60 men using DNA.

Speaker 10 In 2017, the Lancaster District Attorney connects with Parabon Nanolabs, who are able to use an innovative technique to create a rendering of the suspect using DNA found at the crime scene.

Speaker 10 Months later, the composite is released to the public.

Speaker 31 Almost 25 years,

Speaker 31 the perpetrator has walked out there among us. He could be your neighbor, your friend, your coworker.

Speaker 15 What was it like to look at a sketch of a person who could potentially break and murdered your sister?

Speaker 19 Someone's got rich. You know, know, I went through those images over and over with people I've ran into in my lifetime and people she knew.

Speaker 10 Ultimately, the sketch doesn't shake loose any viable leads. But now, Parabon has their new secret weapon.

Speaker 10 Cece Moore.

Speaker 10 Could this DNA detective help catch Christy Morak's killer?

Speaker 18 I feel a real affinity to her.

Speaker 18 And so I'm thinking about her a lot and really keeping her right where I can see her. So I'm always inspired to work hard on these, but I think it'll make me work even harder if that's possible.

Speaker 31 It was a no-brainer at that point in time to go ahead and do that, but this might truly be the last thing we can do for the case.

Speaker 10 In the Marack case, there was DNA found both on the carpet and Christie's body.

Speaker 10 Cece Moore and Parabon convert that DNA into a data file and upload it to a free no-frills genealogy website called JEDMatch, designed to find genetic relatives.

Speaker 18 We just need a second cousin, third cousin, or closer to do so.

Speaker 10 They get a hit. The DNA file matches up with several distant family members of the killer.

Speaker 18 I built back to great-grandparents for each of those second cousins, and then I started building forward. I flip that tree upside down, do what I call reverse genealogy.

Speaker 18 I'm building forward in time, trying to find the right person in the right place with the right ancestral mix to be the subject.

Speaker 10 Cece narrows her search down to a target family in Lancaster of Northern European descent.

Speaker 18 Those top few matches I was working with led to a specific family in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. So I knew that the suspect was closely related to that family, but I didn't know how.

Speaker 18 I had to find the right person in that family.

Speaker 10 She also notices that the suspect has some Latin American heritage.

Speaker 18 I was seeing a lot of people that shared DNA with this suspect that had poor Puerto Rican grandparents or eight Puerto Rican great-grandparents.

Speaker 18 I started digging into newspaper archives and I came across an engagement announcement for a son of that target family that listed his father who had a Latin American name.

Speaker 18 And I thought, aha, now we're getting close. There was an online magazine that had an interview with him and it talked about how he loved to cook Puerto Rican food because he was half Puerto Rican.

Speaker 12 And then I knew this was the guy.

Speaker 18 And when I first identified him, I couldn't believe it was him. I was saying, it can't be him.
It can't be this guy. I went back and rechecked my work over and over again.

Speaker 10 Cece's conclusion stuns district attorney Craig Stedman.

Speaker 29 This is big news.

Speaker 31 The biggest break we may have had in the whole case, and it turned out to be the biggest break we had.

Speaker 15 How long did it take you from the time you started working on this case to find that person?

Speaker 18 I think it took a couple of days.

Speaker 15 Well, my mouth drops open because this is a case that went unsolved for over 25 years, and it took you just a couple of days to find a real, serious tip.

Speaker 18 Genetic genealogy is incredibly powerful, and I've known that for a long time.

Speaker 10 Now it's up to law enforcement to confirm Cece's findings by obtaining DNA from the possible suspect and matching it to that DNA from the crime scene.

Speaker 31 We don't want to walk up to a homicide suspect, particularly one this brutal, and just say, hey, can you give us your DNA? So we made the plan to get his DNA through surreptitious means.

Speaker 10 An undercover unit begins to stake out the suspect, trailing him as he enters this elementary school. They sit and wait for their moment.

Speaker 31 I was nervous waiting for reports about whether they got it, whether they didn't get it. He was observed using a Kirkland water bottle and chewing gum.

Speaker 31 He threw them out and these things that he threw out became the most valuable things for us.

Speaker 10 DNA from that water bottle and chewing gum is rushed to the crime lab. After 25 years,

Speaker 10 Police think they have their man.

Speaker 31 When we finally got the confirming DNA, we wanted to arrest him pretty quickly.

Speaker 18 I was shocked because he seemed like such a normal person, a successful, talented family man.

Speaker 10 When we come back, an arrest that would stun Lancaster, the alleged perpetrator, had been hiding in plain sight.

Speaker 31 He had been at liberty, enjoying his life after this terrible, brutal crime for longer than Christy Murek was alive on the face of the earth. And we wanted to get him.
Listen to the bastard!

Speaker 10 Stay with us.

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Speaker 8 Good afternoon. Thanks for coming.
I'm Craig Stedman. I'm the District Attorney of Lancaster County.

Speaker 10 On June 25th, 2018, Lancaster District Attorney Craig Steadman calls reporters together for a late afternoon press conference, but he doesn't tell them why.

Speaker 12 It was unusual that there would be this last-minute press conference. We knew it was something big.

Speaker 26 The managing editor and I turned and looked at each other and at the very same time said Christy Morak.

Speaker 10 Unbeknownst to reporters, hours earlier, the man police believe savagely murdered Christy Morak and eluded law enforcement for 26 years was arrested.

Speaker 15 Tell me what it was like when you got the call from the DI.

Speaker 19 I looked and I saw a number and my stomach turned. The number was in my cell phone, but I haven't seen that number in years.
They told me

Speaker 19 there's been a break in the case and they made an arrest.

Speaker 15 What was that like?

Speaker 6 It's unbelievable.

Speaker 19 Took a deep breath and it just felt like all that stuff that was pushing on me for all them years just kind of fell away.

Speaker 10 Vince immediately jumps in his car to make the two-hour drive to Lancaster for the press conference.

Speaker 19 I was kind of blown away when I walked into the room because there was a big picture of Christy sitting in the front of the room. It kind of caught me off guard.

Speaker 6 I apologize for holding you up a little bit.

Speaker 8 This is a fluid situation and we just wanted to have things organized before we came in and spoke to you.

Speaker 12 I

Speaker 12 just felt like I could feel the energy from these investigators who have been at this case for so long.

Speaker 8 Today we are announcing the arrest of Raymond Charles Rowe for the murder of Christy Murak from December 21st, 1992.

Speaker 10 The man police have charged with criminal homicide is Raymond Rowe.

Speaker 10 And now, looking at that Parabon sketch created from the DNA at the crime scene, a chilling resemblance.

Speaker 18 It's just really interesting to see how close Parabon gets. I mean, this is a younger picture, which is closer to the age he was at the time of the murder.
I mean, look at the shaped face.

Speaker 18 I think that's right on.

Speaker 10 Most people know Raymond Rowe by a different name in this community. DJ Freeze.

Speaker 12 DJ Freeze was not who anybody expected at all.

Speaker 26 He is somebody who is very well known in the community.

Speaker 10 DJ Freeze was many things in the Lancaster community. A renowned DJ, a business owner, a father, husband, and churchgoer.
But now, a new adjective was being used to describe him. Murder suspect.

Speaker 10 He was one of the most sought-after wedding DJs. This ad touts him as the best in Lancaster.

Speaker 13 I think people would plan their weddings around his availability.

Speaker 13 If you wanted DJ Freeze as your DJ, you'd have to ask him as early as you could because his schedule would be very busy.

Speaker 10 Derek Diener has filmed numerous weddings where Raymond Rowe was the DJ.

Speaker 13 Bride and grooms connected to him as a DJ because he made their wedding reception seem like a Miami club.

Speaker 13 Watching Ray as a DJ was pretty incredible. I mean, he was very precise, very focused.

Speaker 13 He could really kind of build out music almost as a conductor would.

Speaker 10 DJ Freeze has been a fixture in this city since his late teens.

Speaker 10 He started making a name for himself break dancing, which he spoke about in this documentary.

Speaker 34 I was break dancing a lot all over town and we'd go to different bars and we went to a place called Tom Payne's.

Speaker 19 We didn't know the name at the time. We didn't know it was the chameleon club.

Speaker 10 The chameleon club, Lancaster's nationally renowned live music venue. In the late 1990s, he was the house DJ there.

Speaker 10 And also an advocate against violence, which now in hindsight has people's jaws dropping.

Speaker 26 Ray Rowe in 1992 was an organizer of an event called Stop the Violence. And the idea was to encourage kids to move away from violence.

Speaker 26 This happened just a few months before the homicide of which he is accused of committing.

Speaker 10 He later talked about violence in that documentary.

Speaker 34 I'm not a violent guy. I'm a very nice guy.

Speaker 34 You know.

Speaker 10 Rowe, the man accused of committing the Christmastime murder, comes across as quite the family man on this Christmas card of his own.

Speaker 13 Recently, I mean, I don't know when, but he found God and found faith. He wouldn't necessarily talk about it publicly, but if you talk to him one-on-one, you know, he would be very open about it.

Speaker 12 Raymond Rowe is the exact opposite of what everybody

Speaker 12 thought the killer would be like. That FBI profile said somebody who keeps to themselves, somebody who might not like attention.
This is somebody who seeks attention and thrives on it.

Speaker 12 It's the complete opposite.

Speaker 10 How is it possible this successful business and family man allegedly committed this horrific crime?

Speaker 35 I'm shocked, but I'm not surprised.

Speaker 10 Up next, hear from a woman from DJ Fries' past.

Speaker 35 Why didn't it happen to me? Would it have happened to me if I had stayed? What would have happened?

Speaker 10 Stay with us.

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Speaker 6 I hate him.

Speaker 13 She hates me.

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Speaker 10 Lancaster, Pennsylvania. A city coming to grips with the realization that the man accused of the horrific rape and murder of Christy Marek has been living among them.

Speaker 10 He had played at their weddings, their kids' elementary school parties, their high school graduation dances.

Speaker 26 The arrest in Ms.

Speaker 12 Morak's case was big. The fact that DJ Freeze is accused of killing her, that made it off the charts.
Nobody saw that coming.

Speaker 15 When you started learning more about what his life was like, what was your reaction?

Speaker 6 Couldn't believe it.

Speaker 19 That this person who supposedly committed this crime is just living his life the way he lived his life, still can't believe it.

Speaker 15 The other part of this that strikes me as ironic is he spent all this time in the middle of people's celebration of the milestones of their life.

Speaker 15 And yet, if he is the person that did this, he didn't give Christy that same chance.

Speaker 19 No, not at all. He was out there living his life longer than she lived her life, doing what he was doing.

Speaker 6 If

Speaker 12 Raymond Rowe did do this, it almost seems like he was taunting or enjoying the fact that he got away with killing her. He wasn't hiding.

Speaker 10 For that tight-knit professional wedding community, it is utter disbelief. The DJ and friend they had been working side by side with is now being charged with criminal homicide.

Speaker 13 I think everybody in Leichster was shocked by the news that, you know, Ray was arrested and his DNA was found.

Speaker 6 Everybody knew him and his family.

Speaker 35 When I got the phone call that he had been arrested for this crime,

Speaker 35 I believe my first words were, I'm shocked, but I'm not surprised.

Speaker 10 Emily Noble dated Raymond Rowe in 1996, four years after the murder of Christie, while they both worked at the chameleon club. Noble looking eerily similar to Marak.

Speaker 35 I met him for the first time when I began waiting tables, cocktail waitressing actually. He was sort of the house DJ.

Speaker 35 He was very shy.

Speaker 35 Everyone knew who he was because he had made a good name for himself in our little small town.

Speaker 10 The two shared a love of rap music. A favorite, the Sugar Hill gang.

Speaker 24 With a hymn, hop, the hymn to the hip and a hip, hip, hoppy, you don't stop the rock.

Speaker 10 One of the soundtracks for their courtship.

Speaker 35 When we first started dating, it was fun. It was exciting.

Speaker 35 It was dangerous. He was married.

Speaker 20 He was the cool DJ.

Speaker 35 After we kind of had settled into our relationship, he became very jealous. He became very possessive.

Speaker 10 Although Emily said he wasn't violent, he became controlling and emotionally abusive.

Speaker 35 Would just quietly say, you're worthless. Those red flags started to come up more often.
The insults, the put-downs, the controlling behavior.

Speaker 10 Emily says Roe hated that she smoked and once caught her sneaking a cigarette.

Speaker 35 He caught me smoking and sort of drugged me back inside from outside, reading me the riot act, saying, since you can't sort of abide by the rules, you're going to clean the kitchen floor.

Speaker 6 I felt horrible.

Speaker 35 I felt demeaned. I felt scared.

Speaker 10 Emily says during an outing at Red Lobster, celebrating Mother's Day with Roe's mother and his daughter, she showed up in an outfit that set him off.

Speaker 35 I had worn sandals with socks out to dinner, and that was something that he totally hated. And he sent me to the car to sit in the car while everyone else had dinner.

Speaker 35 I started thinking about how I was going to exit the relationship at that point.

Speaker 10 Eventually, Emily moved away to New Mexico. And when she got the call that Roe had been arrested decades after the relationship, it gave her chills.

Speaker 35 So then my mind went to, why didn't it happen to me? Would it have happened to me if I had stayed? I truly believe that his relationships with women were not healthy.

Speaker 10 So was there a relationship between Christy Morak and Raymond Rowe? It's a mystery everyone is trying to unwind.

Speaker 15 Do you think she knew Raymond Rowe? I don't know.

Speaker 19 I mean, knowing her and talking about like how secure she was, I just felt deep down inside that she knew the person some way or another.

Speaker 16 She was young. She went out with our friends.

Speaker 16 He might have been a DJ at some place that they went to.

Speaker 10 Investigators hope they will be able to piece together the connection before trial. But even if they can't, they are feeling extremely confident about the DNA evidence.

Speaker 31 The chances of a randomly selected unrelated person matching this were octilian, septillion, non-nillion.

Speaker 31 I had never heard of those numbers. I'm embarrassed to admit that.
I had to look them up to see what they were, but the zeros behind those are between like 24, 27 zeros.

Speaker 31 Octilion is a thousand trillion trillion.

Speaker 31 I can't really conceive of that.

Speaker 10 Roe is being held without bail. His lawyer did not return 2020's calls asking for comment.

Speaker 10 Cece Moore says cases like this should put potential criminals on notice.

Speaker 18 My greatest hope is it will start to work as a deterrent.

Speaker 18 If you're going to commit a violent crime like a rape or murder, you're going to leave DNA behind.

Speaker 18 And if you leave DNA behind, we can find you.

Speaker 10 Coming up next: an emotional surprise for the victim's brother Vince.

Speaker 6 For the long time.

Speaker 10 It's been an arduous 26-year journey for Vince Marek.

Speaker 10 That's 26 Christmases, 26 birthdays, and hundreds of other life milestones without his radiant sister by his side.

Speaker 10 No matter what happens at the trial, nothing will erase that heartbreak.

Speaker 19 Not having her for 25 plus years, I just want to have her back.

Speaker 6 Obviously, we know that's not going to happen, but I just wish it could continue where it left off.

Speaker 19 Those couple days before this all happened, when I last saw her, the teacher that she was, the person that she was, a lot of people missed out on the opportunity that she had to offer to them.

Speaker 10 Today, Vince is getting the chance to meet that woman whose tireless determination led to the arrest in Christie's case and provided him with a small measure of relief after all these years.

Speaker 10 Cece Moore.

Speaker 35 I recognize you.

Speaker 6 How you doing? Hi, good. It's nice to see you.

Speaker 23 You look exactly like your picture.

Speaker 4 I hope so.

Speaker 6 How are you doing? Good.

Speaker 6 Thank you.

Speaker 19 I mean...

Speaker 6 It's been such a long time.

Speaker 14 I mean, a lot of people have worked hard on this.

Speaker 6 I don't doubt anything they did, but

Speaker 19 to find out, this is how we're going to find the person who did this.

Speaker 6 It's just amazing.

Speaker 6 We thank you.

Speaker 18 Let me say the investigators on this case were

Speaker 6 incredible.

Speaker 18 I was so impressed with them. They jumped through hoops.
They care so much about this case, about you and your father and your sister and Christie.

Speaker 14 They were really good.

Speaker 18 I felt really drawn to Christie's case. She seemed like somebody that I would have liked.

Speaker 31 There are other Christie Meiraks and other cases and other families in anguish.

Speaker 35 They sent us some DNA from a reference sample.

Speaker 10 And that is exactly why Cece and Parabon will continue to use genetic genealogy on other cold cases.

Speaker 18 Not get very much sleep because it's hard to put aside these cases. I have dozens of cases waiting for me and it's hard.
to do anything else.

Speaker 10 Her work with Parabon has already led to breaks in 10 other cold cases, one just earlier today.

Speaker 12 You can't help but think how many other families may finally get answers.

Speaker 10 And Vince has a message for those families out there searching for those answers who may be losing faith.

Speaker 19 Stay positive

Speaker 19 and stay on top of it.

Speaker 6 Don't give up.

Speaker 16 There have been times over the years

Speaker 16 that

Speaker 16 I have

Speaker 16 had dreams about Christy.

Speaker 16 Always, somewhere at some point in that dream,

Speaker 16 she would say, I'm okay.

Speaker 16 And I never really got it,

Speaker 16 but the more I put it together, I do believe that she just wants people to know that she's okay.

Speaker 20 The murder trial of Raymond Rowe is expected to start next May.

Speaker 5 Prosecutors are extremely confident about this case and they will press for the death penalty.

Speaker 14 And of course, we'll be following that trial.

Speaker 5 In the meantime, that is 2020 for tonight. I'm David Viewer.

Speaker 20 And I'm Amy Robach. For all of us here at 2020 and ABC News, have a great night.

Speaker 9 You've been listening to the 2020 True Crime Vault. Friday nights at 9 on ABC.
You can also find all new broadcast episodes of 2020. Thanks for listening.

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