Parallels PT 2

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I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson.

I'm a journalist who's spent the last 25 years writing about true crime.

And I'm Paul Holz, a retired cold case investigator who's who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solved them.

Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes.

And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.

Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a 21st-century lens.

Some are solved, and some are cold.

Very cold.

This is Buried Bones.

Hey, Paul.

Hey, Kate.

You know, you've got this case.

I'm really interested to hear this other case that might or might not be related.

We'll wrap up some stuff with Nancy first, and I'll give you a recap, and then we'll get into the other case, and we'll see where we go here.

So, just to recap, for the last episode, we are in 1970 Sacramento, and 28-year-old Nancy Benilak was murdered and sexually assaulted in her apartment.

The front door was locked.

There doesn't seem to be any theft, any disturbance anywhere in the apartment except for in the bedroom.

Nancy is face down, 30 stab stab wounds, very, very violent.

They collect evidence, including these weird finger coverings that the offender apparently made.

Now they're going to start really trying to get the timeline down.

We have some ear witnesses who say somewhere in the 1 a.m.

to 2 a.m.

range, they heard different kinds of noises.

We have no idea if any of it has to do with Nancy.

And so now, you know, we're at a little bit of a loss as they move.

forward.

Did I miss anything?

Is there anything that I didn't include, Paul?

You know, the one thing that I think stands out is the prowler that had been seen.

So they have the composite of that prowler, but that may or may not be the person responsible for Nancy's homicide.

Exactly right.

So let's continue.

They talked to a lot of people, including, of course, her fiancé, Ferris, who is the chief public defender.

And I read an obituary of him, and he just seems like this legend in that area.

So that was really interesting.

He tells police that he last saw Nancy Sunday night.

So presumably not long before she was killed.

So, aside from the offender, if he is not the offender, aside from the offender, it seems like her fiancé is the last one to have seen her.

So, earlier in the day, they went from Nancy's hometown, Grass Valley, which is about an hour outside of Sacramento, where they hung out with her mom.

Then they went back to Sacramento.

They got dinner.

Ferris brought Nancy to her apartment.

They spent some time together, which could have meant sex.

I don't have a lot of details here, but he did not stay the night.

He left around 1.30 and then he went back home.

So he says when he left Nancy's apartment, she was asleep in bed and wearing just her underwear, which would have been, you know, her way.

He said that her sliding glass door is where he was sure the entry was made.

And I'll tell you why in a minute, looking for patterns.

But what do you think so far?

You know, I mean, the fiancé, nobody saw him coming or going.

He was around all the time.

You know, I don't know if police buy his story or not.

It seems feasible for a Sunday.

Well, yeah, I think, you know, of course, he has to be looked at pretty hard because he's putting himself in her apartment almost in the middle of what the earwitnesses are saying when they hear, you know, the baby cry, hurried footsteps, somebody driving out of the parking lot at a, I'm assuming, a high rate of speed.

You know, so it's like, okay, so what is going on here with him?

We see this all the time.

It's entirely possible.

He's telling absolute truth.

You know, it just so happens that once he left, the offender came in and then is, for whatever reason, attacking Nancy.

The interesting part of the entry is when we talk about Nancy's sliding glass door, you know, the droplets were there.

There was a trail of blood that dropped down to the first floor, the ground floor, the boat shoe that was there, the print, and then the trail off to the parking lot.

So he said that Nancy's sliding glass door when he left was slightly open.

Okay.

And the reason was she had a cat, and that way the cat could go in and out of the apartment.

So the police find this out from Ferris.

And of course, they're not crossing him off the list just yet.

But when we're talking about access, they're saying, okay, well, that seems to make sense.

But they now feel pretty certain, and this is what I want to know from you too, that whomever killed Nancy knew this, knew her habit, knew that this would be accessible at some point and was potentially watching.

You know, my question would be, well, what's the visibility of that sliding door, let's say, from somebody who is just kind of wandering the grounds?

You know, at least with the photo of the apartment complex, I could kind of see the top of like, I'm assuming windows are sliding doors.

So it's possible you have a prowler who happens to notice, oh, there's an opening.

How does the prowler get up to the second floor?

Is there something that

this person could climb up to get onto the balcony to walk through this open sliding door?

That's one thing I'd be taking a look at.

And this is where it's just trying to determine, like you had brought up all this, did the offender have pre-existing knowledge of Nancy's habit and knew that sliding door would be unlocked and open?

And is this something that It's because the offender has, you know, a personal connection to Nancy?

Or is this a stranger who is doing surveillance ahead of time and happens to notice this?

Yeah, absolutely.

I think, and I have forgotten to mention this in my recap, investigators think that the offender climbed up that fence.

So if you look at that photo again, there's a fence and that once he got on the fence, he was able to sort of pull himself over the railing onto her balcony.

The question would be, would he be able to see whether or not she was leaving this door open and letting the cat in and out?

I think he could, you know, based on what I'm seeing from this photo of the apartment complex.

Now,

to climb up that fence and to get up over that balcony, I mean, there's some physical agility here.

You know, so that's, that would be something, you know, as I'm eyeballing, you know, suspects, you know, does this guy look like he's physically capable of getting up into Nancy's apartment, as well as being able to jump down and run away?

You know, I know I might be able to do that today, but I would probably struggle at my age, right?

So

that's just an interesting observation is that the physicality he's demonstrating to get in and out of her apartment.

Yes, Glenn Campbell, as in our sketch, the prowler would have been able to do something like that.

We'll see how it goes.

Okay.

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So Ferris, the fiancé, doesn't have an alibi for that evening.

She says alibi, basically.

And then she goes home.

He goes home and that's it.

He's very cooperative with the police.

He says, come search my house, take all my clothing, look for anything you want.

He takes that lie detector.

He even says, take some of my blood.

You know, they compare it against the blood they found at the scene, and he's ultimately ruled out as a suspect.

I don't know what that means.

I don't know if they look at the blood and he's got an obvious different blood type and that is ruling him out and that's it.

Is that going to be enough, I guess, in the 1970s to rule somebody out, right?

Well, that's, you know, that really was the power of the ABO testing was to exclude.

And so under the circumstances of the crime scene, it sounds like they were confident that the blood trail or the blood that was left behind came from the offender.

And it's a different blood type than the fiancé.

And so they can say, well, he's not the one that's dripping blood and running off.

So he's likely is not her killer.

Now, is that an absolute elimination of his involvement in the case?

You'll probably hit me with some detail down in a few minutes.

That probably puts more suspicion on him.

But right now, I would say it sounds like he's excluded.

Yeah, I think so.

No, no more suspicion.

Ferris goes on to live until 84 and is a legend in defense.

They eventually rule out the fiancée.

The police begin interviewing the people closest to her, family and friends, especially those with fresh injuries.

That makes sense, you know, with the stabbing.

So then they go to Nancy's father.

So his name's Brian.

And when police interview him, he has a bandage on his hand that he says is the result of a workplace accident.

But he says, just so you know, Nancy and I have never had a great relationship.

He was abusive towards Nancy's mother in the past, but he's also ruled out as a suspect.

And there's just not enough solid evidence tying him to the daughter's murder.

So the wound on the hand, I know, is valid.

And I guess that's just one little thing that they're going to be looking at and saying, oh, you've got these, you know, fresh wounds.

Let's talk about it in your past relationship with her.

No, you know, but this is this is just investigation 101.

They are checking the boxes, looking at family, friends, you know, the fiancé.

And when something like a fresh wound on dad's hand, you know, that's going to stand out.

They're going, oh, you know, that is consistent with our offender having been cut.

But of course, we know, just like what he explained, is there's innocent explanations for that as well.

Okay.

Well, let's see.

We've got a couple of other people that I need to run by you.

This might be a dead end, but here it goes.

There's a guy named Barry Seagal.

He is a name dropped as a person of interest from a Sacramento B article, which is interesting, October 29th, which is just days after Nancy's murder.

So, this is one of the early people on their suspect list.

He spent more than eight years in prison during the 1960s for the second-degree murder of his landlady.

When he's in prison, he befriends a supervising deputy district attorney, Vincent Regar.

I have no idea why or how, but when the killer is paroled, the deputy assistant attorney offered him a place to stay.

And almost immediately after Nancy's murder, the sheriff tries to suggest that Seagal might have been involved with this.

And it sounds like it's just simply because he was a criminal and had killed a woman.

And that was basically it.

But all of these people are being pulled into this case because the police are really desperate, obviously, to try to find out who did this.

Yeah, you know, and this is part of just starting to assess characteristics of your offender and what suspect pool that offender would be found in.

And, you know, of course, with a, let's say, a sexually motivated homicide, you're looking at individuals that have a past that includes that type of crime.

And it sounds like this Barry Seagal was somebody that, you know, the DA's office was aware of and had been released.

So

you have to have to look at him for sure.

But there are different categories, right?

So peeping Tom would be the beginning of being a sexual predator, right?

And then what are the beginnings of the serial killer?

But aside from what, you know, we've talked about hurting animals and having problems in childhood.

I know there are these different tiers, but they're categories too.

Yep.

But it's not hard and fast.

You know, and when you take a look, typically when you start looking at offenders that are breaking into houses, and this was a much more common from a from a serial predator standpoint, much more common back in the 70s than today because of technology and surveillance and dead bolts and all that.

But usually it's these barriers to a fence.

You mentioned the peeping Tom.

Well, I like to talk initially to people and say, think about walking in your neighborhood and you accidentally walk on your neighbor's front lawn.

You get nervous.

It's like, oh no,

that's kind of not socially acceptable.

And so imagine taking that to the point where now you're walking up all the way across the lawn to look into your neighbor's house through a window.

You know, you've crossed a certain social barrier to do that.

Now you're breaking into houses when nobody's home.

Then you're breaking into houses when somebody's home.

And it's when you start to see that, where now you have like the cat burglar aspect where they're going into occupied houses, that is a predictor.

of being a very dangerous offender because they are just one step away from going hands-on with a person.

So that's one kind of prototypical evolution.

That's Joseph DiAngelo.

That's the golden state killer.

But they don't necessarily follow that pattern in the same way.

It varies from person to person.

And then you brought up the serial killer triad, the bed wetting, the animal cruelty, the fire setting.

And then the reality is the only one I put really any weight on is the animal cruelty.

Because if you're willing to inflict violence on a creature, you're one step away from doing that to a person.

You know, there is a story that I thought about you when I heard this, there's a story happening, not in Austin, but in the Austin area, about a high school club where, you know, I don't know if it was a 4-H, but students were raising animals and they caught a young woman, a teenager, poisoning and killing a goat from her competitor.

And I just thought, oh my God, I mean, that's unbelievable.

I don't remember ultimately what happened to her if she was 18 or, you know, whatever happened, but to just brazenly be willing to do that to a goat, you know, just for a contest, I mean, I'm real.

Once I trained a couple of the prosecutors in my former office, you know, they would be presented cases of, you know, your, your teenage boys doing bad things to cats and dogs.

And so they would bring me the details, you know, and so I'm assessing, going, yeah, this is a predictor.

This is a person that is likely going to hurt somebody down the road.

And we need to intercede now to try to prevent that person from that, that boy, from doing that in the future.

And then that's when it's, you know, mandated psychological counseling, etc.

Now, we're going to put a pause in Nancy's case because we have another case.

And police are not yet able to determine whether these cases are related, but they seem very similar.

So this is about a woman named Judith Hawkari.

She's in Sacramento, and she is murdered six months before Nancy.

And I have pictures around this too.

Now, you know, you can imagine this is a 23-year-old nurse.

She is also engaged.

They look fairly similar.

I know you don't put a ton of weight on that.

And I'll show you a picture of Judy in a second.

But they are, you know, struck by the similarities here.

Let me tell you a little bit about Judy and then we'll look at some photos.

So she is, as I said, 23 years old.

She's engaged.

She's in the workforce.

They live within one block of each other, these two women.

So go to your photos.

I told you there's a lot of photos with this one.

This is what happens when we dip into the 1970s.

There's photos galore.

If you look on your page seven, there's a picture of Judy, 60s hair.

And we're barely into 1970s, so she's got the high hair again.

Love it.

You know, I don't know if you find it valuable to compare the way they both look and, you know, all of that, but the photo of Nancy is on page one.

Well, you know, Nancy and Judith, you know, they do have a somewhat similar look.

Both appear to be brunettes.

Classic 1960s kind of look about them.

I think it's, you know, the fact that you do have them living so close and that Judith, you know, six months prior had been killed, you have to look at the possibility that these cases are related.

Now, I'd like to know more details about what happened in Judith's case.

Okay, look on the next page because I just want you to see the distance with their apartments.

I mean, I told you a block, a block's a block, but if you look on page, you're page eight, you'll see Nancy's apartment and Judith's apartment.

Is that a coincidence?

I mean, how is that?

I don't know.

There are such things as coincidences, I guess.

Yes.

I mean, it absolutely could be a coincidence.

However, you have to put some weight on that proximity.

You know, these offenders, you know, when they're out prowling, they get comfortable with a certain geographic location.

You can go into any neighborhood and find a victim.

So it's possible this could be a watering hole.

This is what I, where a predator is just comfortable in this, you know, particular area of town for one reason or another and has killed two women six months apart in that same area.

But I've just seen it enough to where it's also possible these are two completely separate cases and just coincidentally happen to be in the same part of the area of town.

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, here are the circumstances with Judy.

So it is 11:30 p.m.

on the night of March 1970, about six months before Nancy goes missing.

Judy Judy is a nurse.

She leaves her shift at the hospital and she tells Raymond, I'll see you at my apartment.

And she starts to head home.

So Raymond, her fiancé, his name is Raymond Willis, he was at her apartment waiting there for her and he said it should have only taken her 10 minutes.

So he knew she should have been home before midnight.

She left at 11.30.

So she doesn't show up.

And when she hasn't come home by 1.45, he becomes very worried.

He goes outside.

He sees Judy's car parked in the apartment complex's parking lot, but she's not there.

Okay, so it appears that she drove from the job, the hospital, to her apartment complex, but never makes it up to her residence.

Yes.

Okay.

I don't know when he calls the police yet, but he said that the car's doors were all unlocked.

The keys were in the floorboard.

And a few buttons from the coat that she was wearing seemed to be yanked off, and they were in the back seat, as if there had been a struggle between Judy and we presume to be the offender.

No blood in the car.

There were strips of towel in the back seat, which didn't belong to Judy.

And so, you know, obviously none of this sounds very good.

And we have some speculation coming up.

Well, this almost sounds like.

you know, the offender could have been inside Judith's vehicle out there at the hospital.

And, you know, she gets in and at a certain point, the offender pops up from the rear seat.

That's, you know, with the strips of towel, like, you know, binding material that the offender brought with him.

And,

you know, then if that's kind of the scenario, and, you know, right now I'm just kind of doing like a little speculation, but if that's the scenario, then

Judith isn't the one that drove the vehicle all the way back to the, you know, the parking lot.

The offender likely did that once he got her under control inside her own vehicle.

So interesting.

This October, we're doing something very different.

We'll be recording Buried Bones live at sea.

That's right.

Kate and I will both be part of the first ever True Crime Podcast Voyage, hosted by Virgin Voyages and iHeart Podcasts.

This is five nights of mystery, luxury, and Halloween fun, sailing to the Dominican Republic, Ambimini, Bahamas, adults only.

No kids, no stress.

Expect a live podcast recording of buried bones, crime-themed trivia, behind-the-scenes sessions with iHeart hosts, and yes, plenty of surprises.

And it's all wrapped in the full Virgin Voyages experience: 20-plus eateries, Michelin star chef-curated menus, lux staterooms, Wi-Fi, and entertainment included.

It's not just a cruise, it's a celebration of thoughtful true crime storytelling, and we want you to join us.

Book your cabin now at virginvoyages.com/slash true crime.

That's virginvoyages.com/slash true crime.

We'll see you on board.

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Okay,

so here's where we may see the man we may not.

Her co-workers, Judy's co-workers, later say that a man with red hair had stopped by the hospital earlier in the day asking for Judith, her real name.

But there are three Judiths at that place at the time, and so we don't know which Judith he was looking for.

And And it doesn't sound like he connected with any of them.

So that sort of went a little cold.

There was a witness that reported seeing a brown car turn into her apartment's parking lot around the time that Judy would have arrived home.

So between 11:30 and 12.

Another person said they saw a dark-colored car driving so fast and recklessly from the area that it nearly sideswiped their vehicle.

And neither car is ever identified.

So I presume what that means, Paul, is the first witness, if it's connected to this case, is seeing the guy pull into the parking lot because they're not saying Judy's car is pulling into the parking lot.

They're saying a brown car pulls into the parking lot around the time she got home.

And then there's another car that leaves very quickly and recklessly.

And so there's a possibility, taking into consideration those details, that Judy could have driven to her parking lot and is abducted as soon as she opens the door to her vehicle.

Under that circumstance, I would expect that there would be some ear witnesses because I don't think Judy would be very, I think she'd be, you know, pretty loud screaming and trying to fight this guy as he's trying to get her into his vehicle.

But remember, her coat jacket buttons are in the back seat and those strips of towel are in the back seat.

Yeah.

So do you think he tried to get her in the back seat first and then there was a struggle and he gagged her with these towel strips?

I'm not saying that's what happened.

I'm just saying I wonder if that could have been a possibility too.

That's a big chance.

It is, you know, and that kind of goes back to my initial speculation that he's, you know, you have an offender lying in wait inside her own vehicle.

This could have been a tandem, you know, where he gets her under control.

And then you have another offender that's that's driving a vehicle.

And now you have, let's say, two offenders that are the ones that are abducting Judith.

And so at her apartment, you know, why, why let her get all the way to her apartment if your plan is to attack her initially at the hospital.

Okay.

Well, let's keep going.

Okay, no solid leads.

They are searching, searching.

We still don't know that Nancy is going to be a victim because that's several months away.

But about a month and a half-ish later, end of April, 1972, hikers,

like always hikers or the bottle collectors or kids, discover Judy's body.

It's in a shallow grave near an abandoned mine shaft, a series of abandoned mine shafts, about 50 miles from Sacramento.

That's a long way from her apartment.

So that's the next photo.

So page nine is the photo of the shallow grave.

That looks so shallow to me.

It looks pretty deep.

It's hard, the perspective of this photo.

It's a black and white photo, and it's showing the grave in front, in the front of the foreground of the photo.

And then you have what appear to be two

detectives standing looking down into it.

So obviously Judy's body has been collected at this point.

But the grave itself, that's, I mean, that's down several feet.

You know,

it's not like a cemetery grave, you know, but most certainly relative to my experience with shallow graves, usually that's like 18 inches, you know, and part of the victim is sticking up out of the ground.

This looks like it's possible that she could have been completely out of sight because it looks like it's deep enough.

I wonder with the mine shafts, if this was dug already, it's just some hole, maybe Maybe machinery had been removed or something.

And this was something.

I can't see this guy digging that.

I mean, boy, when I think shallow grave, I think just enough to cover up a body.

Well, let me tell you what they find.

Okay.

They find her body.

And here's what the medical examiner says.

She was brutally beaten.

She was sexually assaulted.

She was bludgeoned.

They don't know with what.

She was then, and she was also strangled with her own nylon stockings.

So he put her in a large canvas bag that was buried.

Now they say here, two feet deep.

You're right.

The perspective is wonky on this then.

Two feet, that's not two feet what I see.

But anyway, so they also find more of those towel strips, like the ones found in her car.

So they think that he used those to gag Judy.

They also find a gray sweatshirt that they believe belonged to her killer.

probably because it must have been buried with her, and even trace the canvas bag to a company that produced them specifically for for the San Juan Unified School District in Sacramento County, which seems like a specific clue.

So what do you think about that?

I mean, does it sound like somebody who is the same kind of killer as the person who ends up killing Nancy also?

Totally different.

It is different in terms of the M.O.

You know, you've got an abduction, sexual assault, homicide,

and, you know, hiding the body 50 miles away.

Then you have with Nancy, of course, you have the offender going in and

stabbing her you know there's some planning going on here with with judith in terms of the towel strips

you know so that's that's kind of interesting from okay the offender is deciding to use the towel strips you know for for binding maybe possibly a ligature or a gag the canvas bag coming back to san juan school district

you know that's where okay who all would have access to these bags you know is is this something that you know somebody who's not affiliated with the San Juan School District would be able to just casually grab, you know, while being on school ground somewhere?

Or is this something where it's a specific person, let's say a maintenance person, a janitor that would have access to these bags?

But that's also a little bit of a mess-up on the offender's part to have something that could be traced back to him.

You know, this could also be staged where it's, you know, purposefully choosing something that doesn't come back to the offender.

You know, so, but right now, it's interesting.

I mean,

there's overlap in terms of the victimology.

There's overlap in terms of sexual assault, homicide of a female, but there are some significant differences.

I still would consider the possibility of the same offender, even with those differences.

It's so interesting because, you know, if you were to tell me about these two cases and the way that the crimes were structured and the way they were planned out, I would have thought it would have been flipped.

I would have thought he would have gone in and realized this was too quick with Nancy.

I'm probably going to get caught.

They're probably going to be able to trace me.

And then he works harder on the next, on Judy, to really, he takes her really far out to cover it up.

And this is sort of the opposite.

So that when I initially read that, I thought, I don't know.

I mean, don't they usually get a little bit more sophisticated, not less sophisticated when they do these?

I guess not, right?

They learn from their experiences,

but they also experiment as they do, you know, cases.

But I open up when I, when I teach the serial predator course, I bring up three cases out of the 1970s that you go, this is from three different offenders.

And it turns out, no, it's the same guy.

He's doing it differently each time.

So that's part of the linkage, the difficulty of linkage using behaviors and MO aspects.

It is a very difficult thing unless you have a really unique set of circumstances.

That's the beauty of having DNA today because we can, you know, really link cases through DNA showing it's the same offender, even though the cases on the surface look like completely different types of cases.

Well, let me tell you in Judith's case, who they're looking at.

They looked at Raymond, they cleared him.

I told you that, the fiancé.

The news spreads about Judy's murder.

The guy who owns the property, these mining shafts, he comes forward.

He says that three men he had never met before were digging a hole on his property about a week after Judy was last seen.

And the guys told him they were digging for antique bottles to sell, which I had not heard of, but sounds interesting.

They said it was a thing that people actually still do at old mining sites.

Oh, yeah.

But he was uncomfortable with the encounter, and so he wanted to call the police.

These three guys were never fully identified.

You know, there's a vague description of one of them, slim, six foot tall, has brown hair.

But there just doesn't seem to be any kind of a strong link between Judy and these men.

Another weird thing about this story is the hiker who who found Judy's body happened to actually live near both of the women in Sacramento.

He's hiking 50 miles outside of Sacramento and he finds these bodies and he lives, you know, within a couple of blocks of these women.

They look at the guy and then they rule him out and there's just never a clear connection.

And there's never, Paul, a clear connection between Judy's case and Nancy's case.

And this goes cold.

Both of these cases go cold for a long time.

Okay.

Well, but both cases have sets of circumstances in which modern technology might be able to pay off.

Okay.

We're going to flash forward 30 years.

I'm going to name drop in a second.

You can tell me if you know this person.

So in 2004, investigators reopened Nancy's case.

So the second case, and they create a DNA profile based on, I'm presuming the blood evidence.

It's not the semen.

This isn't something that was possible, of course, you know, after the murder.

And so the DNA profile helps investigators eliminate every single one of their original suspects.

So all of these guys it eliminates.

And they also submit it to FBI's CODIS, and there's no match.

Okay.

So there's a guy who works in the Sacramento DA's office during this time period.

His name is Scott Triplett.

Have you ever heard that name?

Yeah, the name is vaguely familiar, but I can't picture him.

So Scott Triplett says the staff uploaded the DNA into CODIS in 2004, and the DNA profile was run through the California Department of Justice familiar search five times between 2009 and 2021, each with negative results.

So explain how that works.

It's different than CODIS, right?

So tell me how often, you know, they end up running these searches.

It has to be requested.

Is that right?

Yes, it has to be requested.

There is a formal process to make a familial search request.

And you would have a group of people at the DOJ level that would evaluate each request and whether or not it merited doing this familial search.

It's still relying upon CODIS.

Now, CODIS is actually broken up basically at three tiers.

You have a local CODIS, you have a state-level CODIS, and then of course you have the national CODIS.

Most states in 2004,

in fact, many states today, don't allow familial searching to be done on their database.

And so for a familial familial search in California, you can only do that for the DNA profiles that are at the California level.

So, even though it's possible that this guy would have a son that's in CODIS in some Midwestern state, they're not legally permitted to search that database.

So, within California, we would just do the familial request against the California database, and we would attempt to try to do familial requests on other states that would allow it, but that typically would be rejected.

Well, the detectives in Sacramento keep this case going and going and going for decades.

They, of course, see what happens with the Golden State killer, and they're hopeful that they might be able to crack Nancy's case, too.

I know that they were trying to make that connection in 1970 between the two, but it sounds like that sort of dropped off, and they were really trying to concentrate on Nancy's case because I'm not quite sure what they collected on Judy's case.

And I don't know if this, you know, probably her case would still officially be open, but they were really concentrating on breaking Nancy's case.

Well, and that's because

they were confident that they had DNA evidence that would link back to the offender in Nancy's case.

In Judy's case, you know, her body's found a month later.

You know, it's possible she's so decomposed and they just never did get a good DNA profile in Judy's case, even though, you know, investigatively they're going, well, there's a chance that these cases are related.

But their efforts are going to be going on that DNA evidence from Nancy's case.

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay.

So in 2019, so just six years ago, they uploaded the suspected killer's DNA profile into the public genealogical databases.

It takes three years and financial support in the form of a grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance.

Tell me that.

I don't know if I've heard that before.

Bureau of Justice Assistance?

Yeah,

this is a federal entity.

We shorten it, we refer to them as BGA.

And so law enforcement gets a wide variety of different grants out of these BGA programs.

And so there are grants that at the federal level were coming out, you know, specifically for cold cases or prosecuting cold cases.

And these grants have been modified over the past few years to permit that funding to fund the genealogy testing.

Okay, good.

Well, thank goodness for that Bureau of Justice Assistance because they helped figure out this killer.

So eventually, using those funds and using genealogy, they land on the name Richard John Davis.

He was 27 years old when he murdered Nancy.

I can give you details.

You can also see his photo.

And I don't know if you just want to compare him to the Boy Scout looking, you know, Glenn Campbell, but Davis is on the very last page.

And of course, it's a a much older photo.

You know, in some ways, he almost has a Ted Bundy look to him.

Yeah, it's hard to say if, does he match that composite?

But most certainly you could see even at his age, he's got a fairly full head of hair.

So it's possible, you know, maybe he did match the Glen Campbell look.

But, you know, the composite is on the side now.

They got DNA, right?

And so once they identify him as a potential through genealogy, then they would have done a direct sample from him and compared, you know, his DNA profile using the traditional law enforcement type of DNA, the STRs, to the STR profile that had previously been generated from assuming the bloodstains collected at Nancy's apartment or along that blood trail and would be 100% matched.

So they know he's the guy.

Well, let me tell you about Richard John Davis.

He lived in the same apartment complex as Nancy.

Okay.

That brings me back to earwitnesses who said, oh, we heard a car take off out of the parking lot.

We don't know if that was him or not, but let me tell you a little bit more about the circumstances.

So he has a roommate.

Both Richard and his roommate were interviewed after Nancy's death and they provided alibis for each other.

You know, certainly, I don't know what that means.

I mean, my goodness, if we were hanging out at my house, you could slip out for 20 minutes or go to that, say, I have to go to the bathroom, Kate, and slip out and, you know, come back out.

And if you're living right across the way, I mean, I, maybe the roommate isn't making up this alibi.

I don't know, but I could see it being possible that he slips across the way and doesn't take very long to do all this, but I don't know.

Well, like Nancy's case, you know, this is not where the offender has spent a ton of time.

Like I said, this type of homicide can occur very quickly.

Now, if he, you know, was in there sexually assaulting her over the course of hours, that's one thing.

But, I mean, it appears based on Ferris and his interview is that, well, when I left, Nancy was, you know, she's clothes like she would be for bed, which basically was just in her underwear.

So it looks like Richard Davis breaks in, confronts Nancy.

She probably puts up much greater resistance than what he was expecting.

And now he kills her and he runs off.

And this is a matter of a few minutes in which all of that could have occurred versus that other scenario I brought up where he's spending a lot of time sexually assaulting her.

He never got to the point of sexually assaulting her in all likelihood under this set of circumstances.

The police have for 50 years quietly believed that Richard should be on the radar.

And here's one main reason.

They said that his apartment had the perfect vantage point of her door.

He would be able to see the fiancé going and coming.

And all he would have had to do is walk toward the back to see her leaving the door open, just a crack to let the cat in and out.

And, you know, he lived there.

He lived in the apartment complex.

So he would have known very well about her habits, even though I think she would have had a more predictable schedule, I would guess, as a court reporter than somebody like Judy as a nurse who probably worked all kinds of different shifts.

But, you know, he's there.

He's able to see everything.

And I think the police just had a bad feeling about him.

They think that the bloody trail that we were talking about that ends in the parking lot, that someone said, oh yeah, I heard a car take off.

And I think this complex is small enough for people, it would have been unusual for a car to leave that early in the morning.

They think actually maybe this blood trail doesn't actually end in the parking lot.

It could have extended all the way to a staircase where Richard could have gotten into his place.

Well, but you also have to, you know, this guy's rapidly getting out of Nancy's apartment, you know, and at a certain point, once he's separated himself, he's now looking, oh, I'm bleeding.

And now he wraps his hand in his shirt or something.

And so now you're not getting that consistent trail.

That's just a normal response that you see from offenders in flight.

You know, once they get a certain distance away, you know, now they're kind of assessing what happened and looking at themselves.

It's also entirely possible he got into his vehicle and drove off, you know, because he's now thinking, oh, shit, I need to get away from here because they're going to, you know, find out, you know, that I tried to attack Nancy or I killed Nancy.

Would you expect, now, I guess this is what I thought.

I expected that level of violence and sort of planning, whether I think the finger protectors are silly or not.

He's planning stuff.

I would have thought this was not his first encounter, a violent encounter.

But would that surprise you or not surprise you, regardless of whatever his background is?

Would you think that he has done something along these lines before or no?

Well, I think that's one of the things things that we are finding out with the cases being solved with genealogy is cases that I normally would evaluate and go, you know, this looks predatory.

Like you mentioned with Nancy's case, the pre-planning, the covering up the, you know, the fingertips.

He's obviously going in there with a knife.

He's figured out that that sliding door would be available for him to be able to get into and out of, and nobody would know.

And you'd go, yeah, this, this guy possibly has others.

And he was, you said, 27 at the time of her homicide.

Yep.

You know, and generally, this is, you know, where you do see offenders have a few cases at a younger age in a predatory, fantasy-motivated type of homicide.

However, we're seeing those types of cases where these offenders commit them once and never do it again.

It's what we call the one-off offender.

There's likely a lot of fantasy going on in Richard Davis's head, you know, and it's he's watching her.

He's watching Nancy, fantasizing about what he wants to do with Nancy, and then develops a plan.

And he got scared or, you know, when she fought back and he wasn't expecting it.

And now he's going, oh, God, you know, I don't, I didn't like that.

I'm paranoid.

I'm never going to do that again.

And that's just what we're finding.

You do have offenders that commit this horrific type of crime and then never do it again.

That's why they're not being solved in CODIS because they...

CODIS is predicated on the repeat offender versus genealogy.

He may never offend to get his DNA collected from him, but he he can't help his third cousins from doing genealogy research.

And now we can triangulate from the third cousins and drop down on Richard Davis.

Well, let me tell you about Richard.

He had no violent record.

He had a couple of DUIs.

He had a drinking problem, according to people in his life.

But after he was killed, Richard seemed to live a quiet life with a wife and children.

I mean, you know, that we know of.

Of course, I always say that.

He wasn't arrested for anything violent.

We don't know what happened.

Investigators are incredibly happy about this, as is, I'm assuming, Nancy's family.

This is solved 50 years later.

The really sad part of this to me is that Richard Davis died in 97 in Sacramento County.

Okay, so he died before they ever discovered who he was.

Yep.

You know, I've had that happen.

He got away with it.

Right.

But, you know, it's still, it's an answer.

It is.

You know, and Nancy's family will never bring Nancy back, but having an answer at least is something.

And, you know, just talking about the other case that they were never able to connect, which is Judy Hokkari's case.

It's unsolved.

They were never able to move the needle on that.

And, you know, it's considered, I believe, an open case at this point.

But at least we're able to talk about it in case people do know anything that happened.

These are, for us, relatively recent cases where there could be people out there.

I think through those circumstances, and Richard living in that complex makes sense as the offender.

You know, he's able to see her pattern and everything.

I'm not sure Richard with Judy makes sense.

It's not his apartment complex.

I guess he could be stalking her, but she has an unpredictable schedule.

I guess it could be a crime of opportunity, but if he was interested in that, he had one already, you know, there in the apartment complex.

I mean, I guess you never know, but I was just thinking, to me, this feels like two different offenders, but I don't know.

We don't know.

It would not surprise me, you know, with Judith, you know, that Richard is prowling a different apartment complex than his own

right and for that first case maybe he does do surveillance on on judy finds the life pattern the offender in judith's case i mean the torn towel strips that shows pre-planning if the offender is at her place of work and is maybe hiding in her car you know he's definitely showing that there's been some thought put into attacking Judith and then figuring out how I'm going to dispose of her body.

That very well could be Richard Davis.

Yeah.

You know, and he, then he can't help himself when he's seeing Nancy day in and day out in his own apartment complex.

You know, I think with Judith's case, it sounds like, you know, of course, I don't know to what extent that they've gone after the evidence, you know, and it's a much more difficult case from a DNA standpoint, but I, those, those torn towel strips, I think the technology today, the sensitivity of the DNA testing today, could potentially find offender DNA.

So I'm hoping that they've at least pursued that and maybe they struck out.

But if they haven't, that would be one of the things I would recommend.

You never know.

This guy could have put the towel in his mouth while he's tearing it, and you actually have a saliva stain with a whole bunch of DNA on it.

And you just need to have the right DNA analyst who's very thorough to find something like that.

Okay.

One thing that I think you'll find interesting, there was a lot of chatter online on Reddit and other message boards and blogs that the belief that Nancy might have been a victim of the Zodiac killer.

I didn't explore it because, of course, now we know this was a lot of this predates, of course, the DNA evidence.

I'm not sure why that would have been an option for folks on Reddit to think that she would have been.

Do you have any ideas about that?

Oh, yeah, no, for sure.

This is,

I, you know, I kind of got into the Zodiac world because I was working that and, you know, my lab had actually done work on the Zodiac case.

So I had access to some materials.

And, you know, once my name kind of got associated with work in the Zodiac, then of course I've got all the various online people, you know, hitting me up.

And with Zodiac, there's a thought that Zodiac has many, many more cases than the actual, you know, four attacks that we know he did.

Even some of my unsolved cases out of Conta Costa County, these Zodiac sleuths are saying, well, it's got to be Zodiac.

He must have done all of this.

And then as we solve cases, like, no, it's not.

You know, we have a lot of these predators out there, particularly back in the 1970s.

So it's not surprising to me, you know, like with Nancy's case, that somebody would go, well, that's got to be Zodiac, you know, because he at one point he sent like a card in and it was like, me, 38, you know, SFPD zero or something.

You know, so they're thinking, well, he's now admitting that he's done 38 cases.

And so they're trying to scoop all these unsolved cases as being zodiac.

And that's just not the case.

Well, I hope somebody is involved still with Judy Hakkari's case because, you know, she deserves justice too.

And I don't know what the reaction was of Nancy's family about at least having some answers here.

I'm sure there's some sort of sense of relief, not closure, but just some sort of knowing, you know, that

this is a person who, though he died without facing justice, there still is that, you know, that being able to put that part of it to rest.

That's a hard case.

I mean, talking about young women dying in their 20s in such a horrible way and, and with such promise, not even the I'm going to get married part, but the just these, you know, they seem like effervescent, well-liked people.

And it's just so awful to kind of go through that.

But I also, I, I like this case.

these two cases because the juxtaposition of them to me really kind of shows how unpredictable a killer could could be because you and I are both kind of going, it could be, and they might be connected and they might not.

What you can't do is rely on a profile or what we've heard on TV to say, this was overkill.

It had to have been the fiancé or somebody who knew her or somebody who was in love with her.

When that was clearly not the case, but a lot of people would say something like that.

So that's why I bring these kind of cases to you.

No, well, I think, you know, and like when you, when you say a profile, you know, the sort of that behavioral analysis, I do believe that there is value to having

somebody who has expertise in that, but it's also recognize the limitations of that, you know, and it's

really where, you know, if there is something that the offender has done that is just so unique, that behavioral profiler possibly can spot that where the average detective won't, because the average detective doesn't work these types of cases day in and day out and hasn't seen stuff.

So there is value, but sometimes people way overreach.

And, you you know, and it's not necessarily appreciating that you can have what appear to be the same types of cases happening at the same time in the same neighborhood, and it's all by different offenders.

That's the reality.

Or you can have cases that don't look related at all, like Judith and Nancy's outside of the geographic connection, and it could be the same offender.

He's just doing different things.

Well, next week, we'll probably not be diving into DNA, much to your chagrin.

We'll probably be stomping around on a farmhouse in the 1800s trying to figure out what somebody would do with like a pickaxe or something.

They're all valuable.

These are all the same people.

I mean, I just see it's, don't you see that?

That pattern?

It's just people are people and that's it.

It doesn't matter if it's from the 1700s or 2025.

They all kind of react exactly the same to things.

They cover stuff up and you know, we might have more resources now, but it doesn't mean you're not going to get caught.

They got caught caught in the 1800s.

You'll get caught now.

Nope, for sure.

Well, I'm looking forward to it.

All right.

I will see you next week.

Sounds good, Kate.

This has been an Exactly Right Production.

For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com slash buried bones sources.

Our senior producer is Alexis Emorosi.

Research by Marin McClashin, Allie Elkin, and Kate Winkler-Dawson.

Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.

Our theme song is by Tom Breifogel.

Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.

Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer.

You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at Buried Bones Pod.

Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked: A Gilded Age Story of Murder and the Race to Deco the Criminal Mind, is available now.

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