00:00:00
oh my God my wife has been murdered my wife has been murdered February 19 1987 started out as a typical Thursday
00:00:11
evening for Terry and Roxanne wood after work they met for dinner at a restaurant
00:00:17
in downtown Niles Michigan and then went to their local bowling alley both arriving in separate cars
00:00:24
at around midnight Roxanne was ready to head home but her husband Terry wanted to stay to play one more game there's
00:00:31
Witnesses where Terry and she said goodnight to each other hug kiss love you drive safe he arrived home 45
00:00:39
minutes after her and once in their home He Came Upon a horrific site notices Roxanne laying in the kitchen he notices
00:00:48
a pool of blood on the floor she was bleeding profusely from her neck she was sexually assaulted the assailant
00:00:57
left his DNA a sample was preserved but given the limitations of Technology back
00:01:03
in 1987 not much could be done with it the case went cold decades went by and police still had no
00:01:11
leads in the murder of Roxanne wood I was starting to lose hope Dr Ashland Kirsten and I had been
00:01:27
talking about involving the students at Western in a Cold Case project in 2020 a
00:01:34
criminal justice studies professor at Western Michigan University figured out a way to speed up the investigation with
00:01:40
the help of several students their plan the students would process around 3 500 pages of documents into a single
00:01:48
digitized database the officers are able to search by name and see if they've already been interviewed if they needed
00:01:55
a follow-up they can search locations things that they wouldn't be able to do just flipping through thousands of pages
00:02:01
around the same time the students began their work detective Christensen hired identifinders International a company
00:02:09
that specializes in genetic genealogy to try and come up with a genetic profile of the killer I believed that this case
00:02:17
was extremely solvable and I believe that I could Solve IT Gabrielle Vargas who worked as a consultant for
00:02:26
identifinders is considered by some investigators to be one of the world's best genetic genealogists
00:02:34
the first thing that I died was I requested access to the case File it was very easy to read through
00:02:42
quite quickly due to the work of the students Vargas was able to create a genetic profile of the suspect and later
00:02:50
with the help of an online DNA service started building a family tree of Roxanne's killer
00:02:56
this couple was born around 1920. based on that we can presume that they would have kids around 1940 maybe 1950. it
00:03:08
would have to be one of their children the couple had three sons but detectives quickly eliminated two of The Three
00:03:15
Brothers as possibilities he's been involved in a lot of different things violent things violent things
00:03:22
sexual deviant things you name it he's probably been involved in it and you connect the DNA with someone who has a
00:03:28
history of violent Behavior you got yourself a suspect absolutely the individual they identified was Patrick
00:03:36
Gillum but investigators still needed a piece of gillum's DNA to compare to the DNA they had found at the scene of
00:03:43
Roxanne Woods murder in May 2021 Trooper Ryan cotty and his team surveilled Gillum for days on end and picked up a
00:03:51
crucial clue that would help them collect his DNA we noticed that he was a smoker and why
00:03:58
does that help you just in the simple fact that uh you know when you're smoking it's a great source of DNA you
00:04:05
have your lips directly on the butt of the cigarette and your saliva gets in the cigarette hot on gillum's tail the
00:04:12
team witnessed Gillum flick a cigarette butt outside the window while he was driving but when they sent the cigarette
00:04:18
to the lab for testing it wasn't a match well you were scratching our heads I called the trooper that grabbed that
00:04:24
cigarette butt and I said is there any way at all that you lost sight of that when it flipped out of his finger
00:04:32
and he said a card to go by right then it was possible the cigarette wasn't gillums so Katie went back to work
00:04:41
he pulled into this laundromat which we saw as a window of opportunity that he would most likely be coming out to take
00:04:47
a smoke break I'm not a smoker and there was a gas station right over on the corner that I
00:04:54
saw and I I was like well you know I need to go over and get a pack of cigarettes and sit on the The Crib next
00:04:59
to the laundromat he came and took a seat probably about six to eight feet away from me and we had a smoke together
00:05:06
so how did you strike up a conversation with him I just tried to say hi to him made some small conversation he liked
00:05:12
the Red Wings it wasn't long before Gillum finished his cigarette and went back inside
00:05:17
I saw him throw his cigarette which was right in about this area so it was a great situation because the
00:05:25
cigarette was by itself so I pull out a uh a glove and go over and I picked the cigarette up with my hand was it still
00:05:33
small it was it was still warm yes it was so I wrapped it up inside that glove I stuck it in my pocket and and headed
00:05:39
out investigators held their breath until the results of gillum's cigarette butt came back this time it was a
00:05:47
perfect match to the DNA left at the 1987 crime scene