A Promise to Gloria

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Speaker 1 Tonight on Dateline.

Speaker 3 I remember them saying, we found a body.

Speaker 4 I just fell to my knees when I found out that Gloria had been murdered.

Speaker 3 You're just trying to adjust to the emptiness.

Speaker 3 How do you plan a funeral for your child?

Speaker 7 She was 14 years of age, an innocent girl, walking to school alone. Somebody was seen following her.

Speaker 4 She never screamed. She never called for help.
I believe that this person had been watching her.

Speaker 9 You have a mystery, man, that could be your killer.

Speaker 10 We talked to classmates, friends at school, teachers.

Speaker 11 Months turned into years and years.

Speaker 7 There has to be a way to solve this.

Speaker 11 They can take a piece of evidence that's 25 years old, 30 years old, and they can test it.

Speaker 7 We knew exactly what we had to do.

Speaker 3 I made a promise to her. I said, Gloria, I'll find out who did this.
We needed to find the killer.

Speaker 13 Years lost, lives shattered, a mother fights to uncover the truth. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 13 Here's Andrea Canning with a promise to Gloria.

Speaker 9 The morning of December 6th got off to a bad start for Yvonne Poynter.

Speaker 9 She had a nightmare, or maybe a premonition.

Speaker 6 I had a horrible dream.

Speaker 3 Blood was everywhere. But when I woke up that morning, I sat up in the bed.
I said, call the police, call the police.

Speaker 9 When Yvonne grasped what was happening, she was relieved. Everything was fine, actually better than fine.
Her 14-year-old daughter, Gloria, would be getting a perfect attendance award at school.

Speaker 9 Gloria was excited to get the day started. Does she just have that bubbly personality that she did fit with being a cheerleader?

Speaker 3 She did, and people loved her. She was always trying to help people with their problems.

Speaker 3 I remember the first time I saw her cheer when she said, hello, people, how do you do? My name is Gloria. And I just stood up and screamed, Gloria.

Speaker 3 And so she's like, oh no, that's my mother.

Speaker 9 Gloria called her best friend before sunrise and told her she'd stop by her house on the way to school to borrow a special comb for her hair. She wanted to look her best for the awards ceremony.

Speaker 9 Gloria's cheerleading coach, T. Stallworth, would be there to wish her well.

Speaker 4 Gloria would have probably been my friend, you know, my buddy. We would have gone shopping.
She was like a daughter.

Speaker 17 We were that close.

Speaker 9 Was she going to be something?

Speaker 4 She was going to be something

Speaker 4 to be proud of.

Speaker 5 I loved her.

Speaker 9 It was cold and snowy in Cleveland that morning, all those years ago in 1984, when Gloria's mom, stepdad, and brother set out in their car to deliver newspapers. Along the way, they spotted Gloria.

Speaker 3 I saw her walking down the street, which was in the opposite direction from what she was normally going to go. And I rolled down the window and I screamed at her so loud.

Speaker 3 I was like, why are you going this way?

Speaker 9 So you didn't like the route that she was going to go?

Speaker 3 Taking the road because she was going through the back way.

Speaker 4 The cut through, which is what she was going through the cut.

Speaker 9 I've always told her.

Speaker 6 She said, don't go that way. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Not to take. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 9 Gloria heard her mom, but still chose to take the shortcut to school. She disappeared down the dark alley.

Speaker 9 Shortly after, Gloria's friend, Lamar Thomas, left home for school and caught sight of Gloria behind him. She'd made it through the alley and was near the school, apparently with a friend.

Speaker 9 Are they crossing the street or are they already across the street?

Speaker 17 They went up aside a house and seemed like they was just goofing off and about to come, you know, just a few minutes later, they'd be in the school.

Speaker 9 Deshaun Haley, Gloria's boyfriend, was waiting for her in the school hallway.

Speaker 9 But there was no sign sign of her.

Speaker 9 Dayshawn, were you expecting to see Gloria that morning before homeroom?

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 9 And were you looking for her?

Speaker 18 Every morning we hook up at the locker.

Speaker 8 At her locker or mine.

Speaker 13 So yeah, I was looking for her.

Speaker 9 He wasn't the only one. Gloria was now so late she'd missed the awards ceremony.
And her best friend told the principal she'd never made it to her house to borrow the comb.

Speaker 9 The office gave Gloria's mother, Yvonne, a call.

Speaker 3 They just said, Is Gloria there? Because they called her name to get this award and she didn't respond. You know, where's Gloria?

Speaker 4 And they, the kids kept coming to me and saying things like,

Speaker 4 T, they can't find her.

Speaker 9 The principal was so concerned, he made an announcement on the school's PA system asking if anyone had seen Gloria.

Speaker 17 When that came through the intercom, I'm like, what they talking about?

Speaker 12 She in school, so she was right behind me, and

Speaker 17 they said she never made it.

Speaker 3 And so within about 20 minutes, the phone rang again. But this time it was the principal.
And he said, call the police.

Speaker 6 Just like that.

Speaker 9 Did your heart just sink?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I'm like, call the police for what?

Speaker 9 But police were already on the scene. They'd received a call about something suspicious at an apartment building near Gloria's school.

Speaker 9 Officers made their way to the back of the building, including Detective Jack Bornfeld.

Speaker 10 It was a metal fire escape,

Speaker 10 and there were steps, 15 of them, leading down to the basement level of the building.

Speaker 9 It was dark, but officers could see something at the bottom of the stairs. Was Yvonne's premonition coming true?

Speaker 3 I remember them saying,

Speaker 3 we found a body.

Speaker 9 An apartment building in Cleveland was now a crime scene. There was a body at the bottom of a dark stairway to the basement.
Former Cleveland homicide detective Jack Bornfeld.

Speaker 10 When they first went down there, they observed the victim. She was laying on her stomach at the foot of the stairs.

Speaker 9 A school ID and book bag were found next to the body.

Speaker 9 They belonged to Gloria Poynter.

Speaker 9 It was an appalling crime. Gloria had been beaten to death.
There was evidence of a sexual assault. Detective Janice Abernathy was at the scene.

Speaker 4 It was very hard to sit there and look at this 14-year-old, innocent child that was on her way to school to be victim of such a horrendous crime.

Speaker 9 And a girl with so much promise.

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 9 Word spread quickly at Davis Junior High. The news was too much to handle for Gloria's boyfriend, Deshaun.

Speaker 18 I heard people crying.

Speaker 20 They were saying she was dead. And it was like,

Speaker 18 it was just going around.

Speaker 16 And I just couldn't.

Speaker 14 you know, couldn't handle it, couldn't believe it.

Speaker 18 I just ran out of school.

Speaker 9 Just the day before, T. Stallworth had talked to her students about stranger danger.

Speaker 4 And I never will forget, Gloria

Speaker 4 said, do we have to talk about that today, T?

Speaker 4 I said, yes, we do, because people are crazy.

Speaker 4 So I just fell to my knees when I

Speaker 4 found out that Gloria had been murdered.

Speaker 9 After they identified Gloria's body, police went to Yvonne's house to deliver the awful news.

Speaker 3 I remember them saying,

Speaker 3 we found a body.

Speaker 9 Before they could say another word, Yvonne collapsed to the floor.

Speaker 3 I was having an out-of-body experience. It's almost like you go to a place

Speaker 3 of comfort, of denial.

Speaker 9 Yvonne's denial was easy to understand. Just hours earlier, Gloria had bounded off to school, upbeat and full of life.

Speaker 15 Typical Gloria.

Speaker 9 What kind of daughter was she?

Speaker 3 Gloria was the type of daughter that every mother wished she could have had. Very obedient, just a caring, loving person.
The child that the school loved and the teachers loved and everybody.

Speaker 3 I know I'll probably make it sound like she was so perfect, but she was.

Speaker 9 What happens in those first days? What are you doing? What can you do?

Speaker 3 The first days after the homicide, you're just trying to adjust to the emptiness. But now you have a funeral to plan.
How do you plan a funeral for your child?

Speaker 9 At the funeral home, Yvonne was warned not to look inside the casket.

Speaker 9 But she insisted on having a private moment with her daughter.

Speaker 3 I pulled the cover back

Speaker 3 and I just looked at her from head to toe and I said, Gloria, don't worry, I'll find out who did this.

Speaker 9 You made her a promise that day.

Speaker 3 I made a promise to her

Speaker 3 and grief took a back seat at that moment because we needed to find the killer.

Speaker 21 Where did she die? Down here? Down there.

Speaker 9 Finding Gloria's killer also became an obsession for Detective Abernathy.

Speaker 21 It's just so hard to think about and so horrific.

Speaker 16 Yes.

Speaker 9 Detective Abernathy retraced the route Gloria took to school on December 6th, starting with when she left her house at about 7 a.m.

Speaker 9 You can almost imagine her walking down this street on that freezing cold day with all that snow.

Speaker 4 This is the cut that kids refer to as the cut

Speaker 15 alley.

Speaker 9 Okay, so she was going to cut through here.

Speaker 4 She was going to cut through here, which is a straightaway down or down to the street.

Speaker 9 Detectives learned that at 7, 10 a.m., Gloria was spotted by a teacher who was driving to school. She said Gloria wasn't alone.
Detective Jack Bornfeld.

Speaker 10 The female school teacher saw Gloria along with a male, and they split and walked around either side of the car.

Speaker 10 And the female teacher remarked to her husband, I wonder what Gloria is doing out so early.

Speaker 9 In the minutes that followed, several other people saw Gloria with a man.

Speaker 10 Because it was winter, the suspect had on heavy clothing, so so they couldn't tell whether he was thin, medium, or heavy built. But it was a very general description.
Nothing specific that stood out.

Speaker 9 Nothing really easy to go on.

Speaker 19 Correct.

Speaker 9 None of the witnesses saw anything to suggest Gloria was in danger.

Speaker 4 She didn't show any sign of fear. She didn't scream.

Speaker 9 Not to mention,

Speaker 9 you've described it as a whiteout.

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 9 Probably even harder to tell what's going on when there's all that snow.

Speaker 4 Exactly.

Speaker 9 You have a mystery, man, that could be your killer.

Speaker 9 You don't know for sure.

Speaker 9 Where do you start?

Speaker 10 This case

Speaker 10 rests on good old-fashioned police work, pounding the pavement and knocking on doors. Nothing happens like on TV, you know, at the end of an hour, you got the bad guy.

Speaker 9 But just hours later, on that snowy day, another frantic call, another attack. Could it be the same man who killed Gloria?

Speaker 4 There's some detectives at the time said, well, this got to be the guy.

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Speaker 9 1984 was a frightening year in Cleveland. The news of Gloria Poynter's murder came on the heels of several other other attacks targeting young girls.

Speaker 3 Gloria was the fourth girl. It was four 14-year-olds murdered in like three months times.

Speaker 9 Had that been weighing on you just hearing the news about these other girls?

Speaker 3 Absolutely.

Speaker 21 Because I didn't know who her killer was, I was so afraid to be at home. by myself when other kids was no one was there.
So you would come here?

Speaker 21 I would come to the church and some days I would sit for eight hours at a time. Didn't feel comfortable at home.
Didn't feel comfortable in the streets. But here I felt comfortable.

Speaker 9 Meanwhile, detectives were developing leads.

Speaker 10 We spent a lot of time tracking down every individual that we could, canvassed the entire area house to house, and some rumors started to pop up. about possible family members being involved.

Speaker 9 Who would you say kind of rose to the top first as someone that that you thought could be responsible for?

Speaker 4 Her stepfather. Why?

Speaker 9 What was that relationship like?

Speaker 4 Gloria and her stepfather did not get along. She did not like the man.

Speaker 9 Gloria and her stepfather were often at odds, and detectives thought his reaction to her murder was suspicious.

Speaker 6 He was

Speaker 4 cold,

Speaker 4 indifferent,

Speaker 4 and

Speaker 4 his attitude was really poor.

Speaker 9 So he wasn't even mourning her death, it felt like no.

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 5 Nope.

Speaker 4 He did not mourn.

Speaker 9 Did you ask, did you have anything to do with this?

Speaker 3 Absolutely. You know, he said, no, he didn't.

Speaker 9 Did you believe him?

Speaker 3 At this point, I don't believe anybody.

Speaker 9 But once detectives put together a timeline of the crime, they determined Gloria's stepfather was delivering newspapers at the time she was killed. So you essentially

Speaker 4 was completely ruled out.

Speaker 9 So police turned their attention to Gloria's boyfriend, Deshaun, and started digging into their relationship.

Speaker 4 Her mother didn't allow her to date.

Speaker 6 Right.

Speaker 4 So it wasn't like she can go home and say, mom, Deshaun coming over in a whole bit, no way.

Speaker 4 And at that morning, was there a possibility that she was trying to get to school early so she could meet Deshaun?

Speaker 9 You brought Deshaun in for questioning.

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 4 He was scared. He was upset.

Speaker 9 Did you feel like they were kind of

Speaker 8 putting the pressure on to get answers?

Speaker 18 It was rough. I mean, you know, I didn't know what the heck was going on.
Like, why do they keep coming to me asking these questions?

Speaker 12 They ask me the same questions over and over again. They obviously think that I did something

Speaker 12 or I'm guilty of something. I started thinking maybe I am guilty of something.

Speaker 9 But Deshaun denied any involvement in Gloria's death. And several people said he was in school at the time of the attack.

Speaker 9 So detectives moved on. And a few days later, another suspect emerged.
This one was a neighbor.

Speaker 3 He concerned me because he was weird, you know, and strange and whatever and always talking about female body parts, you know, and I thought if anybody, he could be somebody that would do something like that.

Speaker 9 Yvonne says the man was disturbed and his pattern of inappropriate behavior turned positively creepy at Gloria's wake.

Speaker 3 When he got to the casket, he leaned over and kissed her on the lips. And we all just kind of went, what, what just happened?

Speaker 3 So that's why the next day,

Speaker 3 on the way to the funeral, he was taken in for investigation.

Speaker 4 Not too many people kiss a corpse,

Speaker 4 except for maybe a loved one, you know,

Speaker 4 but for a stranger to do it.

Speaker 9 Did he do or say anything in your interviews that

Speaker 9 was giving you a bad vibe?

Speaker 4 Not really. Not really.
We just kept an eye on them.

Speaker 9 Investigators built a long list of possible suspects, but knew they needed a break to solve the case. And they got one.

Speaker 9 At around 6.30 p.m., hours after Gloria was killed, there was an attack on another girl not far from the school. She escaped, and a man named Romel Broome was arrested.

Speaker 9 Detectives thought he might be responsible for Gloria's attack, too.

Speaker 4 He had a record of previous rapes. There's some detectives at the time said, well, this got got to be the guy.

Speaker 9 So you think it's possible he's struck or tried to strike twice in one day?

Speaker 4 This is what they were thinking.

Speaker 10 He was number one on the hit parade, so to speak. And he was checked out top to bottom, inside, forward, backward.

Speaker 9 Detectives circled back to the witnesses who'd seen Gloria with that mysterious man and showed them a photo lineup that included Broome.

Speaker 9 Two witnesses picked him out of a photo lineup.

Speaker 10 Yes, but again, you got to understand the witnesses that observed the suspect with the victim only saw him from the side or the back.

Speaker 10 Nobody got a good look at his face because it was windy and snowing and cold that day.

Speaker 9 The identification was too murky, and there was no other evidence to bring charges.

Speaker 9 But Broome was positively identified by witnesses in the case of Trina Middleton, one of the other 14-year-old girls killed in Cleveland that year.

Speaker 9 On October 3rd, 1985, Broome was convicted for Trina's murder. The judge sentenced him to death.
But there was still no justice for Gloria, even though detectives believe Broome killed her too.

Speaker 9 So Yvonne decided to ask Broome herself.

Speaker 3 Guess what I started to do? Write letters to Romel.

Speaker 3 My name is Yvonne Pointer.

Speaker 3 They say you murdered my daughter.

Speaker 3 I just need to know if you did.

Speaker 3 I would write that letter to him over and over. Would he write back? No, not ever.

Speaker 9 The fact that he's not writing you back,

Speaker 9 does that make you think maybe he did it?

Speaker 3 No, no, it didn't make me think he did it, but it kept the door open. That if you did, just say it so we can put an end to this nightmare.

Speaker 9 Yvonne's nightmare would endure for years as she waited for a response. Those years brought grief and frustration, but also a new new way to solve crimes, DNA technology.

Speaker 9 Could it possibly solve Gloria's case? This man hoped so. Was the Gloria Poynter case one that you felt

Speaker 9 should be looked at right away?

Speaker 7 It was one of the first cases that we opened up.

Speaker 9 Yvonne Poynter never stopped mourning her daughter. Over time, she channeled that pain into helping others enduring similar tragedies.
She gave speeches across the country.

Speaker 9 And at home, she focused on projects to fight crime, like a midnight basketball league. Hoping to keep kids off the streets and give them something to focus on.

Speaker 3 We thought if we can get these people who are committing the crimes into the gym, Between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., that would reduce crime.
And it did.

Speaker 9 She became a surrogate mom to the kids in the neighborhood, comforting and counseling when they had no one else to turn to. Gloria's murder really led you on a path you never expected.

Speaker 3 I was feeling unqualified for the task. But then I think about God doesn't call the qualified.
He qualifies to call.

Speaker 9 Part of that calling meant keeping Gloria's case front and center every time a new police chief took over.

Speaker 3 I was on a quest and I went through, I think, five or six police chiefs.

Speaker 9 When Ed Tomba became deputy chief, she met with him as well.

Speaker 3 I went to him, I said, okay, here I am and we're going to solve Gloria's case. I introduced myself to every chief.

Speaker 3 Sometimes I would get these ideas of what we could do to help solve the case and Tomba was right there. He never said, you're bothering me.
Quit calling my office.

Speaker 3 He was just a wonderful, wonderful person.

Speaker 11 What really struck me about Yvonne was she said she wanted to be a partner.

Speaker 11 She wanted to help in any way that she could to resolve this case and that she would never ever criticize anybody or make any assumptions.

Speaker 11 But she said that she had a calling to keep the memory of her daughter alive and to find out exactly what happened to her.

Speaker 9 Turns right. And Janice Abernathy, she kept working the case even after she left the job.

Speaker 9 How badly did you want to solve this case?

Speaker 4 Enough that when I retired, I worked on the case and constantly

Speaker 4 keeping in touch with them and giving them any

Speaker 4 ideas that I may have had that I recall that they may want to look into.

Speaker 9 As the years passed, Yvonne went to extremes to try to solve Gloria's murder, reaching out to convicted killers. Maybe they knew a convict who claimed responsibility.

Speaker 9 And she kept writing to Ramel Broome, who was on death row for the murder of another young girl in the neighborhood. Police suspected he might have had something to do with Gloria's death, too.

Speaker 3 I was worried that he was going to die without answering my question.

Speaker 9 Not hearing back from Broome left Yvonne despondent. But maybe the answer would come from somewhere else.
Back then, Judge Richard Bell was an assistant prosecutor, inundated with unsolved cases.

Speaker 9 He got an idea.

Speaker 7 I went to the county prosecutor at the time and I asked him if we could open up a cold case squad, the first ever cold case squad in a prosecutor's office.

Speaker 9 Was the Gloria Poynter case one that you felt

Speaker 9 should be looked at right away?

Speaker 7 It was one of the first cases that we opened up.

Speaker 9 At the time of Gloria's murder in 1984, crime scene investigators collected every scrap of evidence from the scene, even before they knew how important it might be someday.

Speaker 10 You got to understand, too, at the time of this homicide, there was only blood typing. There was no DNA.
All right. That didn't come until maybe 10 years later.
And

Speaker 10 thank God for that.

Speaker 9 Over the years, investigators had tried to use developing DNA technology to solve the case.

Speaker 10 There were swabs taken of the victim at the time of her autopsy. There were also her underwear and her clothing.

Speaker 10 shoes, socks,

Speaker 10 were still in custody at the coroner's office. So we had that looked into again and had it tested for DNA.

Speaker 9 They were able to get a profile, albeit a weak one by today's standards, and sent it off to various DNA databases, but didn't get a match from any of them.

Speaker 9 As the years went by, DNA technology kept improving, producing more markers and better matches. So Richard Bell's unit tried again.

Speaker 7 We decided, let's go back in now and let's see whether or not there's anything more that could possibly be tested.

Speaker 9 They were able to develop a slightly better DNA profile and compared it to persons of interest in the case.

Speaker 10 And none of those multiple samples that we submitted came back as a hit at that time.

Speaker 9 All these years, Gloria's boyfriend, Deshaun, felt like he was living under a cloud. Was that getting around that you were kept being interviewed and how the police were viewing you?

Speaker 9 Was it affecting your life?

Speaker 8 It would definitely affect my life with other people.

Speaker 8 Wherever I went, people knew that's Gloria Poynter's boyfriend.

Speaker 9 Investigators would end up testing Deshaun's DNA against the stronger DNA profile. He wasn't a match.
This was vindication for you. And now finally,

Speaker 9 everyone knew for sure, 100% sure it was not you.

Speaker 18 Right.

Speaker 20 But more especially for Miss Poynter, she didn't know who did it.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 10 maybe it could have been me, you know.

Speaker 20 And I don't know if he had if that even crossed their mind, but it was good that it was cleared up that definitely it was me.

Speaker 9 Investigators also checked Romel Broome, and his DNA didn't match either.

Speaker 9 While that seemed to rule him out from killing Gloria, detectives and Yvonne couldn't shake the feeling that Broome was somehow responsible.

Speaker 3 I knew his execution date was coming, and I wrote him again. I said, Romel, please don't take it to your grave.
If you did this, just say it. I forgive you.

Speaker 9 In 2009, 25 years after Gloria's murder, Romel Broome's execution day arrived. That morning, he did something he'd never done before.
He sat down and wrote Yvonne a letter.

Speaker 9 Was this finally the confession Yvonne had been waiting for?

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Speaker 9 September 15th, 2009, the morning of Romel Broome's execution. It was his last chance to respond to all those pleading letters from Yvonne.

Speaker 9 That morning, he finally wrote back.

Speaker 9 Just hours later, an unimaginable scene unfolded in the death chamber. Prison officials had trouble finding a vein for the lethal injection.

Speaker 9 Authorities called off the execution and moved it to a later date.

Speaker 9 Days later, his letter to Yvonne arrived.

Speaker 3 I went to my post office box and there was this big brown envelope and it had from Romel Broom.

Speaker 3 My heart almost stopped. And he said, with my dying breath, I did not murder your daughter.

Speaker 9 Broome wrote that maybe Gloria's killer thought he'd gotten away with the crime because police believed Broome was responsible. He wrote, that is not the case.

Speaker 9 Did you believe what he wrote in that letter?

Speaker 3 I did, but it only

Speaker 3 opened the door for more questions. He thought he was about to be executed.
He had no reason at this point to lie. He could have just told the truth.

Speaker 3 But he encouraged me, as a matter of fact, in this letter, to keep looking.

Speaker 9 That's exactly what she did.

Speaker 3 I was not going to stop until I found out who killed her because

Speaker 3 I promised her that day in the funeral home that I would find out.

Speaker 9 It had been so long, 25 years since that snowy day, frozen in time and frozen in the memory of Gloria's cheerleading coach, T. Stallworth.

Speaker 4 I was hoping to prepare and shape Gloria's life, but after Gloria, I was not not able to trust life

Speaker 4 anymore. And still telling

Speaker 4 my students, when you go out there, you be careful. Stop trusting everybody.
And I started doing

Speaker 4 a segment that wasn't even in the health book about street smart kids

Speaker 2 because of Gloria.

Speaker 4 You know, and I would tell them about Gloria.

Speaker 9 Gloria's friend, Lamar Thomas, who saw her outside school that morning, could never bring himself to visit the place where she died.

Speaker 19 Yeah, it hunts me. I never went over there to even view, you know,

Speaker 19 what all took place over there.

Speaker 17 I blame myself because if she would have screamed or yelled or would have been right there, but.

Speaker 17 For years, you know, I just was like, it was my fault.

Speaker 9 Over the years, he stayed close with Gloria's mother. Like so many other kids in the neighborhood, he leaned on her for comfort and advice.

Speaker 17 She didn't help me out so much.

Speaker 14 I just like to, you know, give back like she didn't give back.

Speaker 17 And I do just try to go over there, cut her grass, keep the yard work up, break leaves, do something for her, since she done done a lot for,

Speaker 17 you know, for a lot of people.

Speaker 9 For Gloria's family, family, the years never dulled their grief or their determination to find her killer.

Speaker 9 Then, in 2013, almost 30 years since Gloria died, something caught the eye of Yvonne's sister, Sylvia.

Speaker 9 It was a newspaper article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer about using improved chemical DNA processing to solve cold cases. Sylvia perked up.

Speaker 9 You felt like this could be something that could help you all. I thought so.
That maybe this could, maybe this could crack the case.

Speaker 4 No, I thought,

Speaker 4 why aren't they looking at her case?

Speaker 9 Sylvia emailed one of the reporters, Rachel DeSell.

Speaker 4 She responded right away. I'll look into it.
I'm surprised you all haven't heard anything by now. Then that's when things started happening.

Speaker 9 Decell, the reporter, called the DA's office to ask if DNA from Gloria's case could be entered into the national DNA database known as COTIS.

Speaker 7 When she contacted our office, I contacted the coroner himself, and I asked whether or not the case could be put into COTIS. We had asked for it to be put into COTIS on several occasions.

Speaker 9 Even though Prosecutor Richard Bell had obtained the strongest DNA profile yet, it still didn't meet the standard for COTIS.

Speaker 9 But two days after the reporter called, the DNA was submitted to the state DNA database. All they wanted was one breakthrough, one match.

Speaker 19 Boom.

Speaker 6 Boom.

Speaker 7 We get the hit.

Speaker 9 Over the years, prosecutor Richard Bell's cold case unit had submitted several DNA samples from Gloria Poynter's case to DNA databases. Then in 2013, Bell submitted his strongest profile yet.
And...

Speaker 9 Boom.

Speaker 6 Boom.

Speaker 7 We get the hit.

Speaker 9 A DNA hit on a case that haunted Cleveland for decades.

Speaker 9 I can see you getting emotional just thinking about it.

Speaker 14 No.

Speaker 9 It was that important to you.

Speaker 7 It's important. It was important for the case.
It was important for Yvonne. It's something that we had been hoping for for a very long time.

Speaker 9 Thanks to the DNA match, Tim McGinty, then a Cuyahoga County prosecutor, suddenly had a potential name and face for Gloria Poynter's killer.

Speaker 9 58-year-old Hernandez Warren.

Speaker 14 Then immediately, I said, let's do a record check on this guy, see where he's been, and boom, he'd been to the penitentiary and what for?

Speaker 5 Rape.

Speaker 5 Bingo.

Speaker 9 Warren had a long rap sheet that included 16 years in prison for rape and felonious assault.

Speaker 9 Now he was back living comfortably in the community.

Speaker 7 Once you get the DNA, that's just the first step.

Speaker 5 Now you're going to have to confront the killer.

Speaker 9 Warren had grown up less than a mile from Gloria. He even went to the same school, Harry E.
Davis Jr. High.
He was 29 when Gloria was murdered.

Speaker 14 So we had a team meeting. You got the FBI, you got the prosecutor, you got the Cleveland police, you got the sheriff,

Speaker 14 you got the detectives themselves.

Speaker 9 Working closely with the FBI, investigators strategized about how to get Warren to come clean. They decided against a shock and awe arrest, opting instead to simply ask for Warren's help.

Speaker 7 We had a team that would knock on the door

Speaker 7 with the ruse that they wanted to look at old cases in the area from the 1970s and the 1980s.

Speaker 16 Okay.

Speaker 9 Warren agreed to talk.

Speaker 26 Like I said, if you guys need anything to food, any drink,

Speaker 14 he agreed to talk to the police and the fbi without an attorney first off time

Speaker 7 do the investigators straight up tell him we have your dna no absolutely not you want him to make the first move you want him to explain whether or not he knows the person so this young girl here is gloria pointer

Speaker 16 okay

Speaker 10 let's take a better look at it you wouldn't have any association with her right no okay all right not to my knowledge not to your knowledge

Speaker 26 I'd like you to sit still as possible.

Speaker 9 Next, police gave him a polygraph.

Speaker 26 Did you cause any of those injuries to Gloria?

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 15 He failed.

Speaker 9 Investigators decided to put more pressure on Warren.

Speaker 26 No, I don't.

Speaker 9 So they brought in a new team of detectives to question him for a second day.

Speaker 9 Handcuffed to a chair. You're almost placing yourself in the courtroom while you're watching this interrogation.

Speaker 7 I know what I need from the witnesses.

Speaker 9 And making it ironclad.

Speaker 7 It has to be tight, because if it's not,

Speaker 7 with the personality that he has, he was going to try to manipulate his way out of it.

Speaker 8 You were scared.

Speaker 27 You was on the drugs.

Speaker 8 You wanted to get away.

Speaker 9 This is Gloria's body.

Speaker 7 It's her body. It's her face.
It's her picture. And he would turn the picture over so he wouldn't have to look at it.

Speaker 9 This was rattling him.

Speaker 7 It was rattling him?

Speaker 16 Just right here.

Speaker 9 Finally, Warren cracked.

Speaker 27 I'm just thinking about one thing.

Speaker 8 What's that?

Speaker 27 Her dying. Her dying.
Her death, right?

Speaker 27 So all these years you've been thinking about her death.

Speaker 27 Since it happened, hurt that dude.

Speaker 14 How do you gotta do something right now?

Speaker 9 He confessed and told investigators what really happened on December 6th, 1984. Warren said he spotted Gloria on her way to school and approached her, grabbing her by the elbow.

Speaker 9 He said he strong-armed her to the bottom of the stairwell behind the school, attacked her, and beat her to death.

Speaker 15 Is this it?

Speaker 27 I guess so.

Speaker 9 29 years after Gloria's murder, police arrested Warren. and called Yvonne to tell her they'd at last caught the killer.

Speaker 9 Yvonne met them at a police conference room, a picture of Warren face down in front of her.

Speaker 3 They turned the picture over and slid it across the table and they said, do you know this person? I said, I've never seen him before in my life.

Speaker 3 And again, I wanted to know, are you sure?

Speaker 3 Are you sure?

Speaker 3 That's what I kept asking. Are you sure?

Speaker 3 And they would say, it's him.

Speaker 9 Yvonne called Detective Abernathy, who remained involved in Gloria's case long after her retirement.

Speaker 9 What was your first reaction to that?

Speaker 4 I say, oh my gosh, I say, thank you, Lord.

Speaker 9 It's so bittersweet because it doesn't bring Gloria back, but it gives Yvonne what she needed all these years.

Speaker 9 And you.

Speaker 9 I gotta think of break.

Speaker 9 It's amazing that after all this time,

Speaker 9 this is still the reaction that you have.

Speaker 4 My empathy lies with Allah.

Speaker 4 A lot of other people who's lost their child to such vicious crimes.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 9 Emotions a hardened detective never let go of.

Speaker 9 Until now.

Speaker 9 And he's finally released.

Speaker 9 He's finally released.

Speaker 9 He's finally released.

Speaker 9 You cared about her so much.

Speaker 12 I mean, I was

Speaker 12 going through my own troubles when I was younger then, and she

Speaker 12 brought me peace and joy.

Speaker 9 She made you feel better about your life.

Speaker 6 About me.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 9 Warren pleaded guilty to aggravated murder and rape.

Speaker 9 Because Yvonne didn't want the death penalty,

Speaker 9 he was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole after 30 years.

Speaker 7 Hernandez Warren is perhaps one of the most dangerous people to have walked the streets of Cleveland. He didn't see himself as a monster, but he was.
He was a monster.

Speaker 9 In spite of her immense loss, when Yvonne Poynter came face to face with her daughter's killer at his sentencing hearing, she chose to forgive.

Speaker 21 2 Timothy 4 and 7 says, I have fought a good fight. I have finished my course.
I have kept the faith. May the Lord have mercy on your soul.

Speaker 9 In the years since Gloria was killed, Yvonne has made it her life's work to speak out against violence.

Speaker 3 And I'm not okay with what happened to my child.

Speaker 9 About how crime disproportionately devastates people of color. You were inducted into the Ohio Women's Hall of Fame.
You went all the way to the White House. You became a minister.

Speaker 9 Look at all these things that you have done

Speaker 9 in the years since Gloria died.

Speaker 3 Her homicide gave me the option that I could lay down and die, or I can rise up and live. And along the way, I became the person who I was looking for.

Speaker 9 How do you want people to remember Gloria?

Speaker 3 I want people to remember Gloria as a child who had a right to live in spite of the color of her skin.

Speaker 9 And that there's so many other Glorias out there who deserve the same thing.

Speaker 3 Exactly.

Speaker 9 Sounds to me like Gloria's life saved other lives through your work.

Speaker 3 It didn't save her life, but it is saving other lives.

Speaker 10 That's all for now.

Speaker 13 I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 10 Thanks for joining us.

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