MURDERED: Fiona Yu

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Speaker 2 Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers.

Speaker 4 And I'm Britt.

Speaker 2 And the story I have for you guys today is one that I feel so hopeful about because with your help and the right amount of pressure and attention, I think that this case, which has been largely forgotten, can be brought back to the forefront and we can help get this case solved.

Speaker 2 This is the story of Fiona Yu.

Speaker 2 As an ASU sun devil myself, I can attest that August in Tempe, Arizona is hot, like really freaking hot.

Speaker 2 And granted, when I was there in the late aughts, it might have been a smidge hotter than it was on August 4th, 1997.

Speaker 2 I know global warming has exacerbated this a bit, but make no mistake, everything above 100 degrees is hot, especially in the late afternoon hours when the asphalt has been just baking in the sun.

Speaker 2 The heat comes at you from above and below.

Speaker 2 So I can imagine that when Kazu Ito left her campus job at the library at around 5.10 to bike home, she was pedaling as fast as she could to reach her apartment's air conditioning.

Speaker 2 When she walked in at around 5.20, she knew that her roommate, Fiona Yu, was back from work as well because her bike and backpack were there.

Speaker 2 She didn't spot Fiona right away, but the apartment was two levels, so maybe she was upstairs or even out getting the mail at the community mailboxes that were a two minute walk away.

Speaker 2 Either way, it wasn't anything Kazu gave a second thought to. Instead, she dropped her things and made her way to their little kitchen to start making dinner.

Speaker 2 It was close to six o'clock when the phone rang, and it was Kazu's boyfriend Tony.

Speaker 2 The two chatted for a few minutes as Kazu moved around their place, but when she hung up the phone and returned to the kitchen, Suddenly, she got this eerie feeling.

Speaker 2 It's that full body chills feeling that you sometimes get when you're being watched or when you instinctively know that you're in danger, even if you don't know what it's from.

Speaker 4 Yeah, what Gavin DeBecker calls the gift of fear, right?

Speaker 2 I will recommend that book until I'm blue in the face, but yes, that is what Kazu is feeling. Something just isn't right.

Speaker 2 And it's in that moment that she might have started to wonder why she still hadn't seen Fiona.

Speaker 2 Since Fiona hadn't come through either the front or the back sliding door while Kazu was home, she figured that Fiona must have been upstairs on the second floor where I'm assuming the bedrooms are.

Speaker 2 So with that prickly feeling still at the nape of her neck, Kazu took the stairs one by one to the top of the landing. And that is where she found Fiona.

Speaker 2 There was no question about what happened. She hadn't fallen.
She wasn't asleep. The bloodstains, the way her shirt had been removed and her pants lowered made it obvious that she had been attacked.

Speaker 2 Someone did this to her. Someone had been in their home or might still be.
But Kazu couldn't think about that because Fiona was still alive. She needed to get her friend help.

Speaker 2 Kazu got police and by the time they arrived and EMTs got Fiona out of the apartment to take her to the hospital, it seems like the scene had been cleared and there wasn't anyone who didn't belong.

Speaker 4 Do you think the attacker was still in the house when Kazu got that weird feeling though?

Speaker 2 You know, one of the first things I watched when I was looking into this case is this hour or so segment called Campus Killer from Murder Reopened.

Speaker 2 And the second they started talking about her getting that weird feeling, I was like, oh my God, he is still in the house. Again, when you talk about that gift of fear, like, yeah.

Speaker 2 And honestly, that idea makes even more sense when you know the full timeline that police end up working with, because what they pieced together is that Fiona had been working that day on campus too, just like Kazu.

Speaker 2 So same quick bike ride for her to get home when she got off work, which is about a half mile away.

Speaker 2 According to an Arizona Republic article by Jim Walsh, a neighbor saw Fiona on her bike ride home, which would have been like 4 or 4.30.

Speaker 2 Then by 5.05 or 5.10, it seems like Fiona had already dropped off her bike and book bag in the apartment.

Speaker 2 And then she went out to get the mail over at the community boxes because Someone sees her walking back to her place where she enters through the rear sliding door, like mail in hand.

Speaker 2 So when you really break down this timeline, this is what makes it so eerie and makes you wonder if the person was still there.

Speaker 2 Because even if you go with the earlier timeline when she's seen at 5.05, Kazu is in around 5.20. So this attacker had max 15 minutes.

Speaker 4 I mean, it's like they were lying in wait for her.

Speaker 2 It seems like it. Now, at first, police kind of throw around this idea that maybe Fiona had like interrupted a burglary, but that theory makes no sense.

Speaker 2 And eventually, investigators pivoted away from that.

Speaker 4 Yeah, to me, that just doesn't make sense. It feels so much like the attacker was just like sitting there waiting for her.

Speaker 2 Right, because in my mind, like if it's a burglary, like does she, does she have time to like set her stuff down and then like, oh, I'm going to get the keys and then go out and get the mail?

Speaker 2 You would think that if it really was just this like surprise, it happens almost right away.

Speaker 2 I mean, granted, I guess if he was on the second floor, she could have done that without knowing he was there. But if that's the case, you would think like, okay, he like would hear her come home.

Speaker 2 And then when she leaves to go get the mail, that would have been the perfect opportunity for him to have left.

Speaker 4 Right. Like he missed his chance.
She's gone. He doesn't know that she's just running out to get the mail.
She could be gone for hours.

Speaker 2 Like, I just don't think it makes sense that he would stay. Like, that would spook someone who is committing a burglary, don't you think?

Speaker 4 You would think so?

Speaker 4 But we've talked about this a million times. We don't understand criminals, right?

Speaker 2 No. Well, the other thing, though, is that there was no forced entry to the home.

Speaker 4 So that scraps everything. I mean, that means in 15 minutes, she lets someone in her home that she knows and they attack her.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and my personal opinion is I don't think she lets someone in. But I mean, granted, the reporting on this case is so limited.

Speaker 2 There are a hundred details I don't have, even more questions I do have. But with the limited information that I do know, my theory would be one of two things.

Speaker 2 Either someone saw her go out and get the mail and then they slipped in, whether they were like sitting in wait or it was happenstance,

Speaker 2 or I heard that there was a problem with the lock on the back sliding glass door. I don't know what the problem was, like if it wouldn't fully catch or if it was just completely broken.

Speaker 2 But if someone either knew Fiona or Kazu or Kazu's boyfriend Tony, who lived with them, they might have known that that lock didn't work and they could have gotten there before Fiona had gotten home and again, waited upstairs for her.

Speaker 2 So she gets home, drops her bike, her bag, goes to get the mail. And it's not until she goes upstairs that she's attacked.

Speaker 4 Yeah, so of those two theories, I think the one that's more likely is someone knew about the lock, someone who knew her or Kazu or the apartment.

Speaker 2 I agree, but actually, there was this profiler who was brought in by police to consult on this case. And he thinks it's more likely that the person entered when she went out to get the mail.

Speaker 2 But he does add that he thinks that this person was familiar with her. He said in that documentary episode, quote, I think this is a much more long-term observing of this particular victim.

Speaker 2 I don't think he saw her for the first time that day and then victimized her that day.

Speaker 2 I think for days and days, if not longer, he has been cognizant of her presence, monitoring the activity in the apartment, and then either impulsively doing something or taking advantage of what he perceived to be a golden opportunity to access her.

Speaker 2 End quote. So I agree, if that is the case, I do think it's someone familiar with her, but maybe the truth lies only with Fiona.

Speaker 2 But she would never get to tell them who it was or how well she knew them, because shortly after she arrived at the nearby hospital, she passed away from her injuries.

Speaker 2 Though it's not entirely clear what the extent of her injuries were.

Speaker 2 The original detective on her case, Detective Larry Baggs, told the documentary crew he noticed, quote, patterned injuries and they were in the area of her head, end quote.

Speaker 2 And there's some early reporting that alludes to head injuries, but her ultimate cause of death was actually strangulation.

Speaker 4 I thought she said when Kazio found her, she saw blood.

Speaker 2 So I did say that, but there's a lot of unknown information around this.

Speaker 2 I don't know how much blood or if any of that blood was actually Fiona's, because the only thing ever officially reported that i could find is that they found bloodstains on her that actually belonged to her killer oh i don't know where on her or when that was discovered there is like no mention of this in the earliest days of the reporting then all of a sudden it's kind of just like stated as fact in articles that came out in the aftermath when they started comparing like the samples to suspects And listen, there were suspects.

Speaker 2 The first being Fiona's long-term boyfriend, Mark, who she had just recently broken up with within the last few weeks.

Speaker 2 So a jealous or angry boyfriend makes for a compelling motive, but motive doesn't mean a whole lot when there are no means and opportunity, which it seems like Mark didn't have because police learned that he was all the way out in New York with his family when they went looking for him that first day of their investigation.

Speaker 4 Okay, but that's exactly how many hours later?

Speaker 2 I'm not saying it's likely, but. No, police thought the same thing too.

Speaker 2 Like, he could have killed her and then flown home right away to try and have an alibi, which is, I think, what you're getting at.

Speaker 2 So they didn't write him off when they found out that he was in New York.

Speaker 2 They did write him off, though, after he comes to Arizona and gives them a DNA sample, which they compared to the biological evidence that they had from the scene.

Speaker 2 And that proved that Mark wasn't Fiona's killer. With that, the net they cast begins to widen, to encompass friends, acquaintances, people who lived in close proximity.

Speaker 2 Like, surely, if they got enough swabs from people, they'd be able to find her killer with, I mean, just a process of elimination.

Speaker 2 So, they swabbed the guy who was said to have a crush on Fiona, the guy at the apartment complex who'd gotten into it with Kazu's boyfriend in the apartment where Fiona was later killed.

Speaker 2 And they planned to swab this maintenance man who came forward as a witness, claiming he saw who he described as a six-foot-tall black man coming out of Fiona's apartment the day of the murder.

Speaker 2 I mean, they especially wanted to swab him when in his statements, he started talking about how Fiona was such a quote, cutie and how most of them are and damn, he wants one.

Speaker 2 I know. But over and over again, they eliminated people almost as quickly as they became suspects.
All of them, even the maintenance man with the creepy comments, not his DNA on Fiona.

Speaker 2 Then it's not someone she knows or maybe just someone they can't find because actually in the earliest days of the investigation kazu's boyfriend told investigators about this new guy that fiona was seeing someone that she had just met two weeks before she died

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Speaker 2 I don't have details on how Fiona and this new guy met or what their relationship was, if any.

Speaker 2 The only information I have comes from an interview that Tony gave to the Arizona Republic that mentions this guy worked at a topless bar in Phoenix, and Tony had had concerns about him.

Speaker 2 Here, this is a quote straight from the article. He didn't look like the type of guy for her, Satterwhite said.
He just looked like a bully sort of guy.

Speaker 2 He looked like he could manipulate Fiona, end quote. Now, did Tony or Kazu know this guy's name? I don't know.
The article just says that police were looking for him, says he wasn't a suspect.

Speaker 2 They just wanted to find him, see if he knew anything that could help.

Speaker 2 So as they put out word that they're looking for this guy, they start exploring the alternative theory that maybe she didn't know her killer after all. I mean, it did.

Speaker 2 It seemed so unlikely, but so many people were being ruled out through DNA.

Speaker 2 And the more and more they learned about Fiona, the less they could come up with reasons someone who knew her would have wanted to harm her.

Speaker 2 I mean, person after person in her life described her as this kind and studious person. It didn't make sense that this happened to her.
So how do you find the roaming predator?

Speaker 2 The unfortunate truth is that you usually have to wait for them to strike again.

Speaker 2 And about a month and a half after Fiona was killed, on September 15th, another young woman was attacked in her off-campus apartment. But luckily, she lived to tell police what happened.

Speaker 2 Now, her attacker had gotten into her apartment through an unlocked door.

Speaker 4 Just like we're assuming happened in Fiona's case.

Speaker 2 Right. And she says, all of a sudden, he's just standing there.
And at first, she's confused. And so, I mean, the first instinct she has is to call out a friend's name, trying to make sense of it.

Speaker 2 Obviously, it is not her friend. And this stranger just comes at her and began beating her.
He took one of her shirts and tied it around her neck, strangling her until she passed out.

Speaker 2 And when she regained consciousness, he was still there, just standing over her. He said he wanted money and 10 bucks is what she had to hand over.
But he wanted something else too.

Speaker 2 He said he wanted the names of her friends in the pictures that she had around her apartment. Oh my God.

Speaker 2 He then forced her to perform a sex act and then he dragged her to her closet. Where for the next 30 minutes or so, he beat her so severely with his hand wrapped in her shirt that he began to bleed.

Speaker 2 And there is the most incredible account of her story written by Judy Villa. I just have to read you a few chunks directly quoted from that article.
She lost consciousness again.

Speaker 2 Dead people don't breathe, she said he told her when she woke up. I said, I'm not dead, asshole.
And he hit me again.

Speaker 2 Finally, he left for 20 seconds, came back with scissors and and opened them wide in front of her face. He slashed her knees, her breasts, her neck, and then he left her alone.

Speaker 2 Huddled in her walk-in closet, exhausted and bleeding, the Arizona State University Co-ed willed herself to live.

Speaker 2 She wrapped clothing around her legs and neck to stop the flow of blood from the gashes that had been inflicted by a hulking intruder. Not knowing whether the intruder had left, she waited 45 minutes.

Speaker 2 I did the alphabet and I mentioned my friends' names and I sang because I was so tired. I thought I'd go to sleep and I'd never wake up.

Speaker 2 Now she made it out of that closet and got help, but they couldn't catch her attacker in time to prevent him from attacking the very next day.

Speaker 2 And that's when another student who was in her dorm room heard something at her door. Now she looked through the peephole and she sees two guys that are about her age.

Speaker 2 So figuring that they were other students, she opened the door. But when she did, the guys forced their way in.
They strangled her until she passed out.

Speaker 2 And when she woke up, she heard one of them saying, she's not dead yet. So they held her down and sexually assaulted her before taking her wallet, her checkbook, and gym bag.

Speaker 2 So in both of these cases, the young women were robbed, which that's different from what we know about Fiona's case, but there is a lot that is still really similar.

Speaker 2 I mean, both were strangled until they passed out. Both were severely beaten, particularly in the face.

Speaker 4 Maybe that's what the detective meant by pattern injuries on her head, for Fiona, I mean.

Speaker 2 Maybe. I mean, and it's not exactly the same as this.
Like, this happened after, but.

Speaker 4 Right. I just meant a detective might call a beating or something pattern wounds or whatever the quote was.

Speaker 2 Right. And when I think about it, the first woman, he took 10 bucks from her.
Like, would we know if he took 10 bucks from Fiona? Like, the apartment wasn't robbed, but.

Speaker 4 Right. Like, that doesn't seem like a burglary amount, you know?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Now, obviously, the assaults in September got investigators' attention right away because at this point, Tempe Police and the ASU Department of Public Safety are working closely together.

Speaker 2 They're comparing notes. They're not missing the similarities, especially the similarity in the description, because.

Speaker 2 The maintenance man, if you remember, he said that he'd seen a six-foot-tall black man leaving Fiona's apartment. And there was a similar description that was given for these other two attacks.

Speaker 4 Okay, but the dorm room attack, that was two guys, right?

Speaker 2 Right, that one was two. And I'd like to give you more details on what exactly was put out in those other cases as far as descriptions and stuff, but it's not in any of the old reporting.

Speaker 2 But I do know that within just a few days of those two September attacks, this tip comes into police that someone recognizes whatever description they did put out.

Speaker 2 And they pointed investigators toward a local Tempe high school student.

Speaker 2 But it seems like the tipster didn't actually have a name though, or chose not to give it, because officers turned to a yearbook to narrow down who they were looking for, which turned out to be Lee Comey Jr.

Speaker 2 The two women who survived the attacks picked Lee out of a photo lineup and either Lee or investigator surveillance of him led to his accomplice in that dorm room attack.

Speaker 2 It was another high school kid named Derek Wood.

Speaker 2 High schoolers.

Speaker 2 Now they end up finding some of the dorm room student stuff in Lee's home.

Speaker 2 And between that, some incriminating statements that he had made and witness testimony, it was case closed on those two attacks. But not for Fiona.

Speaker 2 Because of course, they tested Lee and Derek's DNA against their sample in Fiona's case, and neither one of them was a match.

Speaker 4 So how many roaming predators did ASU have in 97?

Speaker 2 It's weird, right? I mean, especially they were so similar.

Speaker 4 Yeah, they were so, so similar.

Speaker 2 I know, I know. Now, even with the DNA that ruled out Lee and Derek, police were still saying that they weren't totally ruling out that angle.

Speaker 4 That angle meaning Lee or

Speaker 2 Derek and Lee or I think specifically Lee. Hang on, there's a quote in the Arizona Republic article that I was reading.

Speaker 2 Okay, so here it is. So it's talking about the DNA not matching.
Quote, that's just one piece of evidence, Tempe Police Sergeant Toby Dias said. We don't want to rule him, Comey, out yet as a suspect.

Speaker 2 We'll continue to work the case and look at the evidence and see where it takes us.

Speaker 4 Was there DNA evidence in the two September cases?

Speaker 2 I think we're thinking the same thing because I searched newspaper archives high and low and I couldn't find any mention of DNA. I know the first case where Lee acted alone, he used a condom.

Speaker 2 I don't know if he took it with him. I don't know if they recovered it.
I don't know anything really about the second case in the dorm.

Speaker 2 I feel like they would have DNA samples because, I mean, it would make it even more of a slam dunk for prosecutors, but I can't tell you for sure. But I guess, why are you asking?

Speaker 2 Like, tell me where your head's at with that.

Speaker 4 Okay, I guess what I'm thinking is if he had an accomplice for one crime that we know of, like maybe he had one for Fiona is just a different person and it's that person's DNA.

Speaker 2 I had a feeling because that's exactly where my head was at too.

Speaker 2 And I have to imagine that is what detectives were thinking as well when they said they're still looking into him, even though his DNA didn't match and then Derek's DNA didn't match, right?

Speaker 2 Because like, okay, if Derek wasn't his accomplice, but Lee could have been there. There's just this mystery accomplice we don't know about.
I don't know.

Speaker 2 Now, Lee denied any involvement in Fiona's case. So if he was connected somehow, he's not saying, he's not giving anyone else up.

Speaker 2 So by the time he went to trial for the first time in 1998, the media wasn't really connecting him to Fiona's case anymore.

Speaker 2 Later reporting just starts to summarize the Lee and Derek angle by saying both men were cleared.

Speaker 2 But I kind of wonder, were they actually cleared or did the nuance get lost due to a reporter's like word count limit? You know what I mean? Right.

Speaker 4 Like, were they cleared, like rubber stamp, not in the file, cleared, or are they just not being talked about anymore?

Speaker 2 Yeah. Or do people look back and say, oh, it wasn't a DNA match.

Speaker 2 So they're cleared when really, like I said, the nuance is their DNA wasn't there, but at some point police were saying they were still looking.

Speaker 4 Right. They could still be connected.

Speaker 2 Right. Police could have in the interim, like really been certain they weren't.
And maybe the reporting is completely accurate. But this is the problem of having this big gap.
I just, I don't know.

Speaker 2 Again, I don't know what the the nuance is or where that happened or when that happened.

Speaker 2 I tend to think that maybe things were just getting summarized and reporters were saying, you know, not their DNA, not them, especially because that same year that Lee goes to trial, there's a new predator that was lurking around the ASU campus.

Speaker 2 And if you only have so much room to tell a story in an article, you know, cut out the details about the guy whose DNA wasn't there and make room for the new faceless monster on the loose one that was specifically targeting asian women near the asu campus

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Speaker 2 Now, the reporting on this is embarrassingly sad. Apparently, the incident started in December of 1997, which would have been four months after Fiona's murder.

Speaker 2 But police actually hadn't connected them until two incidents happened really close together in late March of 1998.

Speaker 2 The first article I found by Jim Walsh said, quote, Tempe police are seeking a stalker they say is preying on young Asian women near Arizona State University.

Speaker 2 Five times since December, an Anglo motorist in a blue compact station wagon has told an Asian victim that he was armed with a gun and ordered her into his car. End quote.

Speaker 2 Now, it seems like none of the women got in. They all fled and were able to escape him, or at least the victims that they know of were able to escape him.

Speaker 2 But there were concerns that there were many more that they didn't know of because of a million, zillion discriminatory and prejudiced reasons around reporting, reasons involving being a woman, reasons that are specific to being an Asian woman.

Speaker 2 And specifically, a lot of these Asian women were foreign exchange students. So police urged any more victims to come forward, hoping that they might have more information.

Speaker 2 And that plea must have worked because the number of victims grew from five to eight by the time they arrested a suspect in mid-April.

Speaker 2 Though that suspect, Thomas Floyd Phelps, said the real count was closer to 20.

Speaker 4 Were they able to connect him to Fiona?

Speaker 2 I assume not because it's so weird. His name just straight up drops out of newspapers after his arrest.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Because I was really looking for like when the other three incidents happened that investigators connected him to.
Was it before December? Was it after? But I can't find anything.

Speaker 2 I assume that they tested his DNA and cleared him, but that's never stated explicitly anywhere that I can find.

Speaker 2 And really, I don't think that he was a very likely suspect when you really dive into his MO, because he would just drive alongside these women while they were walking or jogging and ask for directions or say that he wanted to have sex with them, that he had a gun, so they should get in his car if they didn't want to be hurt.

Speaker 2 But every one of them that we know of ran. None of them were actually harmed.
And before and after he was caught, everyone who spoke in an official capacity on this case just kept saying.

Speaker 2 that they were fearful about what he was capable of if his behavior escalated. Right.

Speaker 4 And compared to Fiona's murder, stalking women is a de-escalation.

Speaker 2 Right. And Fiona's murder happened before all of the cases that we know about with this man.

Speaker 2 And what we know too is that her attacker came into her home. So there's a lot that doesn't fit.

Speaker 2 But at least there's another monster off the streets, or at least I hope, because I couldn't find what his punishment was.

Speaker 2 And I honestly just have this awful feeling with the way that stalking or attempted assaults are handled, especially over 20 years ago, that like, maybe it wasn't what it should have been.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 And I feel like I'm getting more and more convinced the more you're telling me that it could be just someone random who attacked Fiona with all of this stuff happening at the same time.

Speaker 2 And Britt, this is even a half of it, because the same year of Fiona's attack, 97, there were two sexual assaults in Chandler, Arizona, which is just south of Tempe where the college is.

Speaker 2 And those went cold until there was a CODIS hit in 2019.

Speaker 2 Then there was another sexual assault and two attempts that happened in the Phoenix area from December of 96 to December of 97. The two of them were linked, but not confirmed until 2011.

Speaker 4 None of those linked to Fiona's, though?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 And all this to say, like, I'm just saying, don't discount who we keep calling this roaming predator because... Roaming predators were like a thing in this area at the time.

Speaker 2 Also, like everywhere at the time.

Speaker 4 Yeah, so I'm just floored that all these other cases got solved, but the sample from Fiona's case has never hit, not even to another crime.

Speaker 2 Nope.

Speaker 2 Year after year passed with little to no movement in her case. Investigators have dusted off her files over the years.
They've gotten new eyes to look at it.

Speaker 2 And like I said, they even brought in a well-known profiler to like assess the files at some point, but nothing really moved the needle. Except maybe time.

Speaker 2 Because we know with time comes new technology. You got it, my friend.
And I bet everyone knows where this is headed, or at least where it's heading, because the ending isn't quite written yet.

Speaker 2 But in 2017, Parabon Nanolabs was still the new hot thing on the scene, creating phenotype snapshots to give a face to unknown killers.

Speaker 2 Here, Britt, I'm going to have you read this from a 12 news article on the case.

Speaker 4 According to the Tempe Police Department investigators, using the services of Parabon Nanolabs, a company that specializes in DNA phenotyping, we're able to predict the suspect's ancestry, eye color, hair color, skin color, freckling, and face shape.

Speaker 4 In a news release Thursday, Tempe police say investigators are looking for a Hispanic man, approximately 45 years old, with light brown skin, brown eyes, black hair.

Speaker 2 Wait, they can't actually tell age with that, though, right? No, that's actually clarified in another article. I think they were working off the assumptions or profiles or whatever from the time.

Speaker 2 So they must think that the perpetrator was in his teens or 20s, which would put him in his mid-40s when this thing was published in 2017, basically.

Speaker 4 Okay, but they didn't say mid-40s. They said 45.
That seems hyper-specific.

Speaker 2 It is.

Speaker 2 I didn't get too hung up on that because... Again, nuance.
They did say approximately, but maybe it got lost in the shuffle from detective to press release to publishing. Maybe I'm assuming too much.

Speaker 2 Or possibly more accurately, I got distracted by something else in the article. Scroll down a little bit more.
Okay.

Speaker 2 Yeah, right there. Oh, okay.

Speaker 4 According to Tempe Police, the digital composite matches a similar description given during another sexual assault incident within a few days and close proximity to use murder.

Speaker 4 They believe the two may have been committed by the same suspect.

Speaker 4 Ashley, what?

Speaker 2 I know, right?

Speaker 4 Okay, Okay, so I don't even know where to begin breaking this down. I want to get to the description because there's been no one we've talked about who matches that, right?

Speaker 2 No. I know they tested a lot of people.
Those are all ruled out, but there have been no suspects that I know of. No.

Speaker 4 Okay, so I have thoughts. But before that, what other sexual assault case are they talking about?

Speaker 2 That's a good question. I don't know.
What? All the ones I've covered today, even the ones that we just touched on ever so briefly, those have all been solved. So, of course, like I couldn't drop it.

Speaker 2 I got so hung up on that when I tell you, like, again, the 45-year-old.

Speaker 4 This is all you did for like a week, isn't it?

Speaker 2 I got obsessed.

Speaker 2 So I went digging through newspaper archives online for specifically a couple of days before and after Fiona's attack, keeping it isolated to Arizona, not just Tempe or Phoenix, but just the state of Arizona.

Speaker 2 The only thing I found was this one robust story. And I'm not saying this is it, because there were also like, you can find like the call out reports for like crimes in the area.

Speaker 2 And I found some that say sexual assault, but there's, there's no news article. There's no follow-up.
These are literally just like the calls that police get. And there were.

Speaker 2 There's some little blips. Yeah, there's some blips around.

Speaker 2 But the most robust story I found was about a woman in her late 30s in Tucson, Arizona, which is like an hour and a half away from where Fiona's killed.

Speaker 4 Which I wouldn't necessarily call close proximity.

Speaker 2 Not necessarily, but so this one, but again, it's all I found. So let me tell tell you what I found.
And you can tell me if you think it's just too out there.

Speaker 2 So this woman's out for a jog and this teenager stops her. He's on his bike.
He's trying to talk to her, but then things quickly turn and he attacked her.

Speaker 2 Now she like clocks him pretty good with a rock to the side of the head, but he was able to like ride off and he flees.

Speaker 4 And when did you say this happened?

Speaker 2 So this is happening in late July of 1997.

Speaker 2 So I don't know the exact date, but I mean, you know, we're talking like within, like the article said, a couple of days or whatever, right around Fiona, so right before.

Speaker 2 Now, police put out a sketch of this guy on August 1st. And a day later on August 2nd, Tucson Citizen published the sketch.

Speaker 2 And the description given in the Arizona Daily Star was, quote, the assailant is Hispanic, about five feet three inches tall and about 120 pounds.

Speaker 2 He had very short black hair and wore a blue bandana and khaki pants with a web belt. He rode a silver-colored low-ride style bicycle with high handlebars.
End quote.

Speaker 4 Okay, but unless there was a bike we don't know about that was seen at Fiona's place, the physical description alone isn't that descriptive.

Speaker 2 No, and I've never seen a mention of a bike or anything like that. It is just the physical description that they're going off of as far as I know.

Speaker 2 So I agree, it's not like the bombshell I thought it might be.

Speaker 4 Is there any way they can just compare the DNA?

Speaker 2 So they could, but I don't know if that's happened. I know from some follow-up reporting that there was some blood on this Tucson victim.
So again, I think from her hitting him,

Speaker 2 they end up tracking down who they think is her attacker, this kid. I mean, they like arrest him, everything, but then he ends up getting released because his blood doesn't match the blood on her.

Speaker 2 All that to say, I don't know if the blood on her was ever compared to the blood on Fiona. I have to assume it was because if, well, I guess I don't have to assume.

Speaker 4 I would see why they wouldn't because they have two samples with no hits in any system. Yeah.
What's the point in connecting them, you know?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 so again, A, was the sample in the sexual assault actually entered into CODIS. We know there's a lot of problems around like backlogs for that.
Maybe they just did a direct comparison, TBD.

Speaker 2 I don't know if it was entered into CODIS.

Speaker 2 And the only way I think they would direct compare them is if this is the case that they're talking about that they, I mean, mean i might have found a case that actually wasn't the one that they were referring to in that one article you know right we're making a lot of assumptions that this was even right considered as something to look at in connection with fiona's case right so

Speaker 2 there may be answers if they can find this kid in tucson because as far as i can tell that case is still unsolved so if people recognize that description or that bike there's something in that case that could help fionas potentially but it also could be completely unrelated Completely unrelated.

Speaker 2 And as far as Fiona's case, since 2017, after they released that snapshot sketch, there has been nothing else published about her case. And I'm not kidding you.
Nothing since 2017.

Speaker 4 I mean, Ashley, they have to be considering genealogy, right?

Speaker 2 I hope.

Speaker 4 I mean, Parabon has done this a ton. We've seen snapshot cases turn into these huge genealogy wins.

Speaker 4 You'd think it's on their radar.

Speaker 2 Yeah, because we know that if you can do the snapshot, at least my understanding is if you can do the snapshot, you have everything you need to do the full genealogy. It's already there.
Right.

Speaker 4 So can we go back to that snapshot for a second? Cause I do want to touch on it. I'd be interested to know if anyone in her life matched that description.

Speaker 2 So I don't know.

Speaker 2 I am pretty confident in saying that they've tested everyone in her life, but I have seen in other cases, and I can't remember the one specifically, where they collected so many swabs that they would start prioritizing them, right?

Speaker 2 And I remember one case, God, I wish I could recall the name where the person seemed, you know, so normal. There was like, you know, no real motive there.
They were so willing to cooperate.

Speaker 4 They were put like on the back burner.

Speaker 2 Yeah, willing to give their swab that they collected it, but then they were like not even worth testing it. And it ended up being that person.
So,

Speaker 2 you know, there are ways that things fall through the cracks, but I don't know specifically if anyone who has given their DNA matches that description.

Speaker 2 You know, the one thing that really sticks with me still is that maintenance man's report of seeing who he thought was a black man leaving Fiona's place.

Speaker 2 Because if the perpetrator that they're looking for, we now know is Hispanic, how does that fit? Was the maintenance man lying? Was he mistaken? Was it a different day?

Speaker 4 Were there two people?

Speaker 2 Were there two people? Yeah.

Speaker 2 And this is what I mean. This case seems right on the edge of solvable.
It just needs a little nudge.

Speaker 2 And if anyone from the Tempe Police is listening and the genealogy hasn't been started, here is my plug for Season of Justice.

Speaker 2 It is a nonprofit that provides funding for advanced testing that many departments just don't have the budget for. The application is super straightforward, super easy.
Just go to seasonofjustice.org.

Speaker 2 And if it is in the works, here's my plug to all our listeners who may have done ancestry DNA.

Speaker 2 No matter which service you did it through, be sure to upload your results to GEDMACT and opt in to allow your results to be used in investigative genetic genealogy.

Speaker 2 I believe in my heart of hearts, we will bring you an update on Fiona's case very, very soon.

Speaker 2 You can find all the source material for this case on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com.

Speaker 4 And you can follow us on Instagram at Crime Junkie Podcast.

Speaker 2 We'll be back next week with a brand new episode.

Speaker 2 Crime Junkie is an audio Chuck production. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?

Speaker 6 Have you ever experienced something truly unexplainable?

Speaker 6 A moment that felt almost like a vivid dream, leaving you with a lingering sense of wonder, leaving you questioning everything you thought you knew?

Speaker 2 Perhaps it was a fleeting glimpse of something extraordinary, a chilling whisper in the dead of night, or an undeniable premonition that comes to life.

Speaker 6 I'm Yvette Gentile.

Speaker 2 And I'm her sister, Rasha Pecarrero.

Speaker 6 Each week on our podcast, So Supernatural, we partner with the one and only Ashley Flowers, host of the number one true crime podcast, Crime Junkie, to take you on a journey of the world's most mystical mysteries.

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