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on October 10 2019 Joe ellidge told police that he had gone to sleep with his wife mungshi ji on October 8th he
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said that when he woke up on October 9th she was gone at the time that munchie G disappeared
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she was a young married mother she had a child who was one years old among Shi had moved from China to Columbia
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Missouri in 2012 to finish up her undergraduate studies at the University of Missouri
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mungshi's ritual was a daily phone call that she had with her mother in China when mangshi didn't call her mother on
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October 9 2019 her parents sent a friend to check on her it wasn't until after that visit that
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Joe decided to call the police uh I need to follow a mission person to the report Joe told police that the
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previous day he had woken up and found his wife missing then he went on two long drives in mungshi's car looking for
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new hiking trails there's just a big area that's all it's all green on the Google Maps and so I wanted to go and
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see if there were walking paths back there naturally that raised eyebrows detectives searched through Joe's
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apartment and on a hunch police took in a pair of Joe's muddy boots as evidence just in case down the road they might be
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relevant something was amiss yes and they they sensed it and they took them despite mungshi's whereabouts still
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being unknown district attorney Dan Knight took a chance and filed first degree murder charges against Joe
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ellidge A year later a hiker making his way through a wooded area stumbled upon a purse that lay in the dirt he had this
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walking stick and he kind of flipped that purse around just a little bit he noticed that there were these shoes
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and then he saw something that looked like was maybe a skull in fact it was a skull look she skull
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she had finally been found that's right that's right it was it was a miracle Dan
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Knight was building evidence against Joe ellidge and noticed that his cell phone
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records put him near among shi's burial site the day he reported her missing what were the weather conditions like
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that day unfortunately for Joe fortunately for justice it was raining Dan remembered those muddy boots found
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at Joe's apartment and that hunch investigators had about them was about to pay off
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so we've got 12 different types of vegetation in these boots Joe's boots were sent out for analysis at a lab at
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the Missouri Botanical Garden where juniper tree needles were carefully removed from the soles for DNA testing I
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wanted to see if there was some way that we could match the vegetation in the boots to the the site where Women's
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remains were found these are two samples that were collected from the the left boot right here
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once we knew that we could get usable DNA out of the forensic samples that we took from the boots then we needed to
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match them to the the trees at the site Missouri Botanical Garden assistant scientist Alex linyan was tasked with
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collecting sample needles from the juniper trees surrounding mungshi's gravesite plants have DNA just like
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people absolutely yeah every organism living organism in the planet back at the lab the needles were
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compared to the needles found on Joe's boots these two lines here are the genotype of
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one of the samples from the boot and this one is from the tree that is overhanging the grave site and as you
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can see the lines match up and that moment for you when you realized you had a match yeah
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typically confirmed yes just like a fingerprint just like DNA blood DNA that is presented in trial this is just as
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reliable exactly exactly the same technology even so what you're telling me is these trees that are all around us
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here played a role in solving a murder absolutely yes