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Tonight on Dateline. He had a premonition. He believed someone was plotting his murder.
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I wonder what it must have been like when he saw the face of the person who was about to end his life.
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I saw John laying right there. His clothing was drenched in blood. You can see the bloody footprints that went through the hallway
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and out the back door. This was clearly a killing of passion. You're talking about someone who is a very strong, powerful, aggressive killer.
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You're in charge of the investigation. You really cast a wide net. I did. Days turned into weeks.
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Weeks turned into months. No arrests came. Something's not right. This had the whole town just uneasy.
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The dentist who predicted his own death and the loved ones who would not stop until the case was solved.
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What are you thinking? I mean, he could be our prime suspect and I'm being told not to interview him.
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I just had to keep going. He probably was one step ahead of me every time. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.
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Here's Andrea Canning with The Premonition. He told me that he wanted to send me $10,000 to hold to investigate his murder
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because he was convinced that he was going to be killed and that his murder would be covered up
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and that the evidence would be buried along with him and that it would go unsolved.
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That's one of the craziest things I've heard in this job. It's almost like he was writing a story about his life, yes.
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A terrible premonition. It all happened here in the town where he grew up. John Yelnick's life story came to an end in Blairsville, Pennsylvania.
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It was April 13, 2006. A little boy from next door, 9-year-old Zachary Yuse, was the first to discover the awful thing that happened to the 39-year-old dentist.
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I know this is really hard. Why did you go over to John's house that day? That day I was just looking for somebody to hang out with.
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Zach was hoping to see John's son. They'd been such good friends. Instead, Zach saw something no child should ever have to see.
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So I'm walking up to his porch and I noticed the broken glass on the steps. He had red carpet, so I didn't notice the blood at first.
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But I noticed that his panel side window on the left was broken. And there was blood kind of smeared a little bit going down the front.
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He was scared, but he kept going. I put my hand through the window, I unlocked the door, went inside, and I saw John laying right there.
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How bad was it? He had a slit on his throat. His clothing was drenched in blood.
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You see this horrific scene, and do you run home? Yeah, I run to my porch. He wanted to tell his big brother to come.
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And I was just like, Craig, Craig, Craig. In minutes, the family was on the phone with 911.
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When dispatchers put out the call, first responders were mistakenly told it was a heart attack.
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So when Blairsville patrolman Don Isherwood pulled up, he was surprised by what he found.
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Well, as I approached, the neighbor kids and the father were on the porch. And then as you approached the stairs, you could see the broken glass from one of the window panes.
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And the glass was out over the steps and onto the porch. What are you thinking now?
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Well, you could see blood rolling down from the shards of the blood. This was no heart attack.
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Doesn't look like a heart attack now, no. The terrible truth was on the other side of the door.
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So we walk in here and you see the struggle. And the poor doctor's body was lying right here.
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So that must have been a real shock to the system. Because you didn't know yet that a man's been stabbed to death right here.
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It was pretty gruesome. You could see the bloody footprints that went through the hallway and not the back door.
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Are you thinking right away that those footprints likely belong to the killer? Yeah, the first thing I looked at was the doctor was in bare feet, so you know that someone else was in here.
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He knew he needed help right away. His superior, Corporal Janelle Lydic, was driving around with her kids when she got the call.
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And even then, the details were confusing. They said there's a cardiac arrest. Is that kind of weird that you're being requested?
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For a cardiac arrest? For a cardiac arrest, it is. So I actually turned the car around with my whole family in it, four kids and my husband,
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and just pulled up in front of the house. What do you see? Blood is the first thing that I noticed on the walls.
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And I stepped in a little bit further and I saw a body on the floor. And I'm like, okay, you go clear the house.
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It would be Lydic's first murder investigation, and events were unfolding quickly.
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She and Isherwood were the only officers there, and she was afraid the killer was still nearby.
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Not only this is a crazy scene, but your four kids are out in the car, and your husband.
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Yep. This was... I don't know if somebody else is in a house, so I stood between the house and them and waited.
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So you're protecting the scene and kind of protecting your four kids who are out in the car.
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Exactly. And then after I come down... She sent patrolman Isherwood room to room to look for the assailant,
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And that's where he found another horrible sight. So as I come down into the basement to clear,
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the first thing I notice is a large puddle of blood in this area here. I'm starting to think, well, did the scene begin down here?
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And then when I looked up, I realized that the blood was dripping through the floor.
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That just tells you how gruesome it was that there was that much blood Correct At about the same time John Yelnick cousin Marianne Clark was running some errands
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Easter was just three days away. And as I'm driving through Blairsville, I hear fire whistles blowing.
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And I didn't think anything of it. I went home, but as I'm going into my house, my phone's ringing,
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and it was a good friend of mine who lived by John. And she said, something bad's happening at John's house.
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And I said, well, it can't be. he should be at my parents' now. And she said, no, there's something bad. So I went over.
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What happened when you approached the house? I see the local funeral director walking my way. And when we confronted each other, I said,
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you know, did John have a heart attack? And he said, no, it's much worse. Who finally told you what had happened inside that house?
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Janelle Lydic, an officer with the Blairsville Police came up and said that John had been murdered.
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That premonition about his own murder had come true. But he also predicted it would go unsolved.
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Would he be right? Not if John's loved ones had anything to do with it. I was determined it's not going to happen.
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It's not going to go away. When we come back, who would want to kill John Yelnick?
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Do we now lock our doors? Do we now get security systems? This is unheard of. The case of the small-town dentist would take some strange turns.
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Your mom had the medium psychic sisters come over to help out? Yeah. Unusual investigators and an unbelievable obstacle.
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Did you quickly start to have an uneasy feeling about the thoroughness of this investigation?
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Yes, almost instantly. Blairsville is a little town about an hour from Pittsburgh.
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Not a place where big news stories are a common occurrence. But a prosperous young dentist had been murdered in a horrible way.
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And that got people's attention. Jennifer Mealy, who was a local TV reporter in Pittsburgh, was among the first on the scene.
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I still remember being taken back by what I saw. Not only were there people everywhere, there were police and firemen and ambulance everywhere lining the street.
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After the scene was secured, that's when I began canvassing the neighborhood and talking with the neighbors to see if anyone heard or saw anything during the night.
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One thing seemed clear. The neighbors were terrified. Because no one in this community wants to think this was a random crime.
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Do we now lock our doors in Blairsville? Do we now get security systems in Blairsville?
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This is unheard of. Things like this don't happen here. Most of the neighbors could only tell police that John Yelnick was a nice guy.
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John's closest friends, like Dennis Vaughn, would agree. I met John in 1985. We were both attending the same college.
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and I was struck immediately by his personality. You always knew where John was at a function or at a party,
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usually because there was a crowd of people around him. Maggie McCartan met John later in life, but they had a lot in common.
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Anytime you were around him, he was making you laugh, he was making you smile. He and I kind of shared that same affiliation for old TV,
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so we'd try to one-up each other on TV trivia. Was he kind of old school, given his choice in TV?
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and was he kind of old-fashioned? He was very old-fashioned. He literally was born too late in a lot of ways.
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All of his entertainment choices, movie, television, music, all tended to skew towards older things.
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And in his personal life, he was old school too. Did not own a cell phone. Up until the day he died, he didn't own one.
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John's friends became his family. And his real family? Well, that was pretty small.
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His father died when he was just months old in a tragic car accident. So for years, mom was his world.
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His mother doted on him. John was smart. John was very bright, yes. He was always on a roll in high school, dean's list in college, and he wanted to be a dentist.
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And he did. He ended up being a partner with his own dentist later after he graduated, moved back to his small town of Blairsville.
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His partner was his childhood dentist, the guy who inspired him to go into family dentistry.
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And he really liked working with kids. He loved working with kids. Working on kids' teeth.
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Yes, yes. And I think it was mutual. I think the kids enjoyed coming to see him, too.
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He would try to make me laugh to open my mouth to check my teeth, but, you know, sometimes it wouldn't work.
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Was he a good dentist? Yeah, he pulled out a tooth. I remember that day very vividly, and he gave me a toy out of the box.
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John Yelnick dated around for a few years, but when he was in his late 20s, he met the one, Michelle Kamler.
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And his life would never be the same. Michelle worked for a while as a Budweiser girl, going in a bathing suit around to bars,
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giving samples and things, getting her picture taken with the customers. He would tell his friends and people that he finally got the homecoming queen.
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Dr. Maria Takaleski met John in dental school, and they stayed close. John had dated pretty girls in the past, but none that looked quite like Michelle.
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She was beautiful. That was the first thing he was taken with, that someone that was so pretty was interested in John.
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John brought her to Dennis' housewarming party. I think he was very proud walking around having her on his arm.
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Everyone at the party noticed John's new girlfriend, including Dennis' father. And he made the comment something along the lines of John better watch out for this one But John was moving full speed ahead Michelle had two kids which was fine with him He always dreamed of having a big family
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And when John's mother fell ill with pancreatic cancer, Michelle dropped everything to take care of her in her final months.
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Michelle stepped up to the plate and helped John care for his mom. Yeah, Michelle pretty much provided full-time care for John's mother
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while she was sick and while he was tending to his dental practice. She was there most of the time caring for her daily needs.
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Michelle seemed to be everything John needed, too. And in a matter of months, she had a two-carat diamond ring on her finger.
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Some friends felt that maybe that was a little too generous and that maybe he should have just got the smaller diamond.
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Hey, when you're in love, you're in love. So they got the big ring and the tennis bracelets
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and all of the lovely things that the girls like. I'm sure he thought she was worth it.
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I'm sure. Not too long after they met. Viva Las Vegas. Viva Las Vegas. Before any of us knew, they were planning to go to Las Vegas and get married.
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New Year's Eve. John's happy? John's happy. Yes. He got his homecoming queen. And bride all in one package.
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So yes, John was on top of the world. John's new life as a husband and stepdad was just what he wanted.
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The one-time bachelor was now involved with school, sports, travel hockey. He even helped take Michelle's kids on road trips with the rest of their team.
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Come on here. There's Michelle. John's behind the camera. Michelle, you wanted this on tape.
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But something was missing. He was happy as a stepfather, but at the end of the day, he just wasn't fully satisfied, I think, until he could have a child of his own.
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That was always something very important to him. and so they tried and finally they made the decision then that they would just adopt
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and ultimately made a couple of trips to Russia that resulted in them one time coming home with a little baby boy.
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JJ. Suddenly, all of John Yelnick's love and hopes were wrapped up in this little boy.
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How excited was John? John was thrilled. He, he, I'd never seen him that happy ever.
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And John was just beaming from ear to ear. Just so proud of this little boy. They bought a big house with a pool, a bar, and a hot tub.
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Life was rich and full for a while. But that wasn't the house where police were standing now.
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This was a small house where John Yelnick was killed. What was the house telling you about the victim?
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As you walk through, it was very neat and orderly. After I went upstairs, you could see the recently renovated child's room with the new carpeting and paint.
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And you even had a TV with a video game set up to play. And there among the shards of glass and blood-soaked floorboards, police noticed something else.
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With Easter just three days away, there were Christmas presents still unopened. How had it come to this?
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what happened to John Yelnick's carefully crafted life. Coming up, a violent struggle.
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His head is pushed through this multi-paned glass arrangement on the right side of the door.
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What kind of clues would be left in the chaos? I needed any evidence they may have collected, including the fingernails of John Yelnick.
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When Dateline continues. At first glance, the scene of Dr. John Yelnick's murder was all blood and chaos.
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But investigators are trained to make sense of the chaos. And that's where a local legend, forensic pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht, entered the case.
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This case of Dr. Yelnick was certainly one of the most violent deaths I've seen.
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Dr. Wecht consulted on sensational cases from the Kennedy assassination to the murder of JonBenet Ramsey.
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He'd done more than 20,000 autopsies. And with his lab just minutes from Blairsville, the local coroner asked that he perform the autopsy on John Yelnick.
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Dr. Wecht also decided to visit the murder scene. My own inspection of the death scene indicated that Dr. Yelnick had been injured already in the back part of the house.
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Dr. Wecht believed the assailant then chased John Yelnick through the house. It's a very mobile situation.
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You're fleeing from me and I'm chasing you and I'm inflicting injuries as you go along.
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Dr. Wecht explained why the window by the front door was broken and covered in blood.
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His head is pushed through this multi-paned glass arrangement on the right side of the door, looking at it from the inside.
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John Yelnick suffered massive, possibly fatal injuries to his neck when his head was pushed through the glass.
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But the attack wasn't over. Dr. Yelnick then finally fell to the ground, obviously, and his throat then was slashed.
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As a forensic scientist with more than 50 years' experience, Dr. Wecht surmised the killer had to be strong and large enough
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to overwhelm the nearly six-foot-tall dentist and to slash him with a knife. The blade would have been maybe six inches or more,
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and as I recall, I think a one-sided blade. That was the story of John Yelnick death Over in Blairsville the crime scene was also telling a story about his life In the living room there were papers and maybe TV Guide and magazines
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There was something on the table that was very important, very telling to what this victim was going through.
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Yeah, the divorce papers were on the coffee table and they were covered in blood also.
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John Yelnick was literally about to get divorced. Tomorrow, that was the next day.
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Hours. Yes, he was to sign the papers the next day. John Yelnick's dreams of a Brady Bunch family had fallen apart.
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He and his wife Michelle were in the process of divorcing. After they cashed in the house, John moved to this modest home and set Michelle up here with the kids.
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That's where Janelle Lydic sent an officer to break the news to Michelle. John shares his son, JJ, with his estranged wife, Michelle.
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was it imperative that you notify her right away about the death? They were still married, so she would be the next of kin and the person we had to notify.
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Michelle was living in her new place with a new boyfriend, a Pennsylvania state trooper.
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They'd been together for nearly two years. How did you feel about her dating a state trooper?
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When I first heard it and I knew that she and John were headed for a divorce, I thought, you know what, couldn't be any better role model or better influence on John's son or on Michelle's children.
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JJ and the older two were in bed by the time police arrived at Michelle's home. She had already heard that John had died, but told police she heard it was a heart attack.
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They let her know he was murdered. John's friends got the news the next day. I was picking up my children for the weekend.
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And it was Easter weekend, and I saw a lot of missed messages, texts, and voicemails.
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So I listened to one of the voicemails, and it was just somebody sobbing. Who was it? Who had left the message?
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It was John Schneider. What did she tell you? She said that John was dead. Maria was home with her family. Her husband took the call.
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And I remember just looking at him and saying, no. And I start pleading to God, please don't let him have been killed.
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Please don't let him have been killed. and I fell to the floor and just sobbed. Back in his forensic lab, Cyril Wecht was saving blood samples, tissue.
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He collected photos and clipped Yelnick's fingernails, along with the precious DNA that might be underneath them.
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You sent one of your officers to the autopsy of John Yelnick? I did. Why did you want someone to be there?
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I needed any evidence that they may have collected, including the fingernails of John Yelnick.
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That's when she did something unusual. Officer Lydick stashed them in the evidence fridge at police headquarters
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instead of immediately sending them to the state police lab. This may have been her first homicide investigation,
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but her instincts were telling her, protect the evidence and move very carefully.
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Coming up. Neighbor after neighbor told us we needed to hone in on the next door neighbors.
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What was going on next door? So you just straight up asked her, were you having an affair with John Yelnick?
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Yes. Funerals are never easy. John Yelnick's was particularly grim. John was wearing a turtleneck in the casket, and when I went early the next morning,
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I moved the turtleneck down and saw the slash wounds where his head was almost severed.
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John never wore a turtleneck in his life, but it was the only way to cover up how he died.
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It was an emotional roller coaster in a lot of ways, but it was also an opportunity to get together and share John's stories.
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Tears and memories. Now it was time for friends to talk to the police. The morning after, I was at the police station and was questioned because I was one of the last people at his house just a few days earlier.
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Did they have to look at you as someone they needed to eliminate? Yes. Yeah. So they asked a lot of questions of me and my relationship with John and things like that.
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The Blairsville police spent a lot of time speaking with John's friends, neighbors, and even drinking buddies,
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establishing alibis and checking out shoe sizes to compare against the bloody prince left in the house.
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They already knew the prince didn't belong to Zach, the boy who found the body. Were you certain that those footprints were the killers?
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They had to be. I don't know who else it could have been. It had to be. So find out who belongs to the footprints and you'll probably find your killer.
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It's a big clue. Yes. They started with the neighbors. And in this town, where everyone knows everyone, police learned a lot.
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Your officers are told that there was some commotion or some noise at 1.30 in the morning.
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Right. According to Jennifer Mealy, one neighbor said the sound was just awful. So you have one neighbor who hears what he believes to be a pig squealing in the early morning hours of the murder.
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Another neighbor heard what sounded like an argument, a man yelling something specific.
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I'll never loan you money again. The neighbor across the street is hearing someone say, I'll never loan you money again.
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Correct. Interesting, since they're among John Yelnick's papers. Police found a blood spattered check from Zachary's mother, Melissa Use, who lived next door.
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Neighbor after neighbor told us we needed to hone in on the next door neighbors.
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The next door neighbors had the biggest connection to John Yelnick. Did John ever talk to you about Melissa Use?
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No, no. I knew that they went to high school together, and I knew that Melissa was wanting to open a bakery.
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And I knew John being John, he didn't care about money at all. And so he was loaning her money to start up a bakery in Blairsville.
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$15,000? Yes, $15,000. Melissa's married. Melissa's married. But rumors start up that John and Melissa are having a fling.
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I never heard those rumors until after the murder, that people were seeing them on the porch or that there was neighbors paying attention and thought that something was going on because her husband was in the Navy and he would be gone for periods of time.
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If the rumors of an affair were true, police had to consider the possibility that Tom Hughes, Melissa's husband and the father of the boy who found the body, was involved in the crime.
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That must have really bothered you, the fact that that was a rumor around town. Yeah, and John would never do that. John was never that kind of person. He would never do that to somebody.
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And, you know, my mom was like family to him. Was that something that you had to look at closely?
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Yes, I had to look at everything. How do you go about that? What's your strategy?
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I was bold. So you just straight up asked her, were you having an affair with John Yelnick?
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Yes. What did she say? No, we're just really good friends for a long time. Did you believe her?
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Yes. Lydick also spoke with Tom Use. And did he think that they were having an affair, his wife and John?
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He wouldn't answer the question directly. That's kind of strange. He kept saying about, I have to take care of the kids.
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Officer Lydick decided to keep Tom Use on her list of possible suspects. Not that they were sharing this information with anyone.
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The police were playing this case pretty close to the vest. When a murder investigation in a rural community begins, the release of information often comes in drips.
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So it wasn't a big city murder. So it wasn't a big city press conference about what happened.
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But at one point, the police did offer information to calm the public's fear. And I think the first press information, if I'm not mistaken, locally in Blairsville, was a statement from the chief of police in Blairsville saying that the people of Blairsville shouldn't be worried.
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This is an isolated incident. And so I took that to mean, OK, they know that John was targeted, so they must know more.
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Did police know enough that they were about to catch a killer? Not in this case. Not even close.
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Coming up. She goes, I need you girls to help me. Enter the investigators from another realm.
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Psychics come into this? Yes, because we were so looking for clues, leads. When Dateline continues.
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The people who lived on John Yelnick's quiet little street were startled awake by the sound of yelling,
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even screaming on the night of the murder. And one of the neighbors heard a kind of argument.
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Someone yelled, I will never loan you money again. John Yelnick may have loaned money to Zach's parents,
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but police learned he also loaned money to a number of people. One of them was a cousin, Tracy Jacobs.
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All right, Tracy Jacobs, someone else you looked at, why? He also borrowed money.
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He wanted to start our lawn mowing business or lawn care business. He borrowed $20,000 to be exact.
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I didn't know anything about him, So I wanted to find out more about him and try to find out if it's a possibility.
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Jacobs told police John had never asked him to pay back the money. And police couldn't find evidence of any bad blood there.
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Did you have him take a polygraph? I did. And? He came back clear. He passed. So no Tracy Jacobs.
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Police questioned other people with financial ties to John Yelnick, including his business partner.
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Turns out they were talking about splitting up the practice. What happened there?
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We looked into him only because he was trying to get out of the partnership. In the end, police cleared the business partner.
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But suspicions about Tom Use seemed to linger. Had it gotten out around town at school that your dad was being looked at?
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Yeah, at school, actually. Kids would tell me all the time, you know, we heard your dad did it.
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And I would tell them, like, he did not do it. He did not do it. You know, like, where did you even hear that?
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And, you know, they're like, oh, my parents said it or, you know, the TV said it or, you know, they said that he was a suspect or whatever.
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It must have really hurt. It did. It hurt a lot. Melissa was worried about the toll this was taking on her family.
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So she launched a very different kind of investigation. Your mom had the medium psychic sisters come over to help out?
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Yeah. Meet Suzanne and Jean Vincent, Pittsburgh's psychic sisters. How did you get involved in this case?
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We got involved in this case when we went up to a psychic tea party. Melissa Use attended that tea party, and the sisters say they sensed her fear and despair.
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The police were looking at her husband, Tom, as a suspect or a person of interest.
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She could not sleep. She was very fearful. The kids were fearful. the whole family was a murder,
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a bloody murder was right next door to their house. Melissa was so desperate to clear her husband name she asked the sisters for help And she goes I need you girls to come back and help me Would you please come back to Blairsville and do a walkthrough through John Yelnick house And we said that we would
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Psychics come into this? Yes. You know, at the time, because we were so looking for clues, leads,
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you know, you bring in whoever might help in that area. As they walked through the house and yard, they reported feeling warm spots, cool spots.
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And they said they saw a black SUV and a woman with dark hair, among other things.
00:30:29
As we were going through the house, we had a flash of dog tags. And then we had a flash of this person who was in the military as we were walking through the house.
00:30:37
The psychics later made a few more visits. Eventually, the media took an interest.
00:30:43
Even the police came along to hear what the sisters had to say. What's happening in that house as you're all going through the house with these psychic sisters?
00:30:52
I just kind of followed along and in the back of my mind saying, really? I guess the question really is, at this point, were you becoming a little bit desperate or frustrated?
00:31:05
So maybe they could shed some light on it? No, I was more upset with the family pushing it to get things done when I still had more work to do.
00:31:16
So you were kind of placating them that like, here, I'll do this for you. Yeah, I figured it couldn't hurt, and I had the time, and I'm like, okay, let's go down and listen to what they have to say.
00:31:26
Did you learn anything from them? No. Did you feel like they were helping from what you were hearing?
00:31:33
Let's say I didn't learn anything new. The psychics told Melissa they could see that her husband had nothing to do with the murder.
00:31:40
The police were already coming to that conclusion. For one, he had the wrong shoe size.
00:31:46
He has like a size 13 shoe or something like that, huge shoe. And their footprints were not anywhere near that.
00:31:54
Police also learned that Tom Yuse had a good relationship with John Yelnick. And when he passed a polygraph, he was taken off the list.
00:32:02
So as neighbors, friends, and distant relatives fell off the radar, police started to home in on someone else.
00:32:12
Coming up. What did you learn about John and Michelle's marriage? It wasn't good.
00:32:17
Stunning moments from a stormy marriage. Michelle started yelling, screaming at him, how dare you? You need to get out.
00:32:25
The cops came to his dental office and arrested him. Blairsville police officer Janelle Lydic worked around the clock,
00:32:45
chasing down leads in the brutal slaying of John Yelnick. You really cast a wide net looking for suspects.
00:32:52
I did, because at that point, the neighbors could have been suspects. Anybody was.
00:32:58
It was hard not to take the murder personally. You lived just a few blocks from John Yelnick.
00:33:04
I lived three blocks away from him. So this murder happened in your backyard. And it happened two doors down from my kids' best friends, where they would stay or play.
00:33:17
so I was not comfortable in letting my kids go there anymore for a while. Even more reason, Lydic was keen to make an arrest, and quickly.
00:33:28
Still, she believed this was no random killing. The more people she talked to, the more Lydic suspected John's marriage had something to do with it.
00:33:37
What did you learn about John and Michelle's marriage? It wasn't good almost the whole way through.
00:33:44
I've often wondered at the end of the day, when everybody else was gone and it was just John and Michelle sitting in the house after the kids
00:33:49
went to bed, what would they talk about? Did he confide in you about his relationship?
00:33:54
Over time, he started to open up to me more and more and expressing to me that he was unhappy.
00:34:00
They were just so different. Dennis says Michelle enjoyed showing off her big house with the pool
00:34:06
and its hot tub and wine cellar. John seemed embarrassed by it until Dennis' favorite room
00:34:13
was in the basement. Of all things, it was the furnace room. This tiny little, wasn't much bigger
00:34:19
than a closet. He said, you know, this is really the only place in this whole house that I feel
00:34:24
comfortable. The furnace room? The furnace room. This dark, dingy, spider webby room. What did that
00:34:31
say to you? It broke my heart. Maria says it was obvious Michelle just wasn't that into John.
00:34:38
John was affectionate toward Michelle, but I never saw Michelle be affectionate back to John.
00:34:44
She always seemed distant or almost put off by him. It was always like, or, you know, he was just there.
00:34:55
Four years after their quickie wedding in Las Vegas, the marriage imploded. What was causing this battle to brew?
00:35:03
The biggest event that I'm aware of from what John shared with me was when Michelle came to John and said that she had been involved in an extramarital affair.
00:35:15
That'll do it. John had a confession, too. He told Michelle he'd had a brief fling with someone in his office.
00:35:24
According to John, Michelle just basically lost it. Started yelling, screaming at him, how dare you have an affair.
00:35:31
Even though she had one. Yes. And at that point, she said, we're going to get a divorce. You need to get out.
00:35:38
So he did. The day John moved out was the day Maggie McCartan met him for the first time.
00:35:44
Her boyfriend was John's close pal, and they went to help him pack up. I felt terrible for him and I felt very bad for JJ Both were incredibly sad Maggie says Michelle seemed anything but She talked a lot about the fact that she was seeing someone else that he was great in bed that he had a lot of money and was buying her
00:36:09
all these presents. Saying this to someone she just met. You're a stranger to her. A stranger to her
00:36:15
and in front of her little boy. After the split, John moved into that modest house in Blairsville.
00:36:22
He saw JJ whenever he could. He'd go to the amusement park. He would take him to movies.
00:36:27
He would take him on trips. Anything that JJ really wanted to do, John was up for.
00:36:34
He was an awesome dad. JJ loved him. Which is why what happened next shocked everyone.
00:36:41
A year and a half after they first separated, Michelle accused John of child abuse,
00:36:46
choking the five-year-old and punching him in the face. Maggie said it couldn't be true.
00:36:51
So you and your boyfriend were with John the weekend that he is accused of choking his son.
00:37:00
Yeah. Did you see anything that would suggest that that could be true? Never. I never saw him raise a hand to that boy, much less a voice.
00:37:08
He was just not that type of person. He was a very gentle, loving father. A judge ordered John to stay away from JJ and Michelle.
00:37:18
Not long after, Michelle reported John for violating the order. The cops came to his dental office and arrested him and kind of took him out the back.
00:37:29
And try as he might, because he did try to keep a sense of humor about it, he called me and said, hey, I was just in the clink.
00:37:37
You know, they hauled me away in silver bracelets trying to make light of it. But I knew that that for him was a turning point.
00:37:44
John denied everything. but after months away from JJ, agreed to take anger management classes so he could see him again.
00:37:52
He also got himself a hotshot divorce attorney. When Michelle tried to stop John from taking JJ on a trip to Disney World,
00:38:00
Effie Alexander was ready to fight for him in court. Coincidentally, John's son went to the same school as the judge's children,
00:38:08
so every excuse that Michelle threw at the court as to why he shouldn't go, The judge literally picked up the phone and called the principal during the hearing.
00:38:17
And it was all it wasn't true that he can't miss school, that they have a policy that he'll get behind in homework.
00:38:23
He was six years old. He was in first grade. The judge said JJ could go. And that's when things got weird.
00:38:30
John calls me and says, hey, I went to pick up JJ for this trip and his head was shaved.
00:38:38
Did he have a theory about why this was happening? No, other than I think just he thought, at least what he shared with me,
00:38:47
was she shaved his head so that, you know, he'd look like a prisoner in these pictures.
00:38:52
John's friends say the father and son had a great time on the trip, but there was something that upset John.
00:38:59
Hearing JJ talk about Michelle's boyfriend, the state trooper. If he was mad at John, he'd say,
00:39:05
well, I'm just going to go and troopers my daddy or not my daddy anymore. JJ wasn't the only issue John and Michelle were battling over.
00:39:13
They were bickering over money, too. John's receptionist later told police Michelle made angry calls to the dentist asking for money.
00:39:22
Maggie, you talk about John almost being a hostage. Absolutely. She'd call and, you know, scream at the young ladies who worked in his dental office.
00:39:34
And I think he was just so embarrassed and mortified. He just kept giving her more and more to try to appease her.
00:39:42
A less than attractive portrait of the beautiful Michelle was coming together for police
00:39:47
as they talked to some of the people who knew her. She was money hungry. It's the very first thing I heard about her.
00:39:54
Gold digger? Gold digger. Which made the investigator wonder. Michelle was the beneficiary of John's will and his million-dollar life insurance policy.
00:40:05
Of everyone around John, maybe she had the most to gain from his death. Coming up.
00:40:13
He was sobbing, and he said, I don't know if I'll ever see my son again. An explosive new front in the battle with Michelle.
00:40:20
And later, concern grows. Would John's killer be caught? Something's not going well here.
00:40:27
There's just no reason for this to take so long. This had the whole town just uneasy.
00:40:32
When Dateline continues. Continuing with our story, small-town dentist John Yelnick has been murdered in his own home.
00:40:51
I saw John laying right there. I still remember being taken back. He had fought fiercely for his life and were about to learn he had also feared his death.
00:41:01
He wanted to send me $10,000 to investigate his murder because he was convinced that he was going to be killed.
00:41:08
A chilling premonition that had come true. Could police catch this killer? Something's not right. Something's not going well here.
00:41:16
Doubts creep in about the investigation. To the family, to even people watching this, they'll say, that's Detective 101.
00:41:24
He probably was one step ahead of me every time. Here again, Andrea Canning. The poison in John and Michelle's broken marriage
00:41:36
had never been more obvious to John's cousin, Marianne, than on the day of his funeral.
00:41:42
Did Michelle come to the funeral? No, Michelle did not come. Did you talk to her? Did she give a reason?
00:41:48
Nothing. Did his son come? No. The funeral director told Marianne that Michelle who was still John next of kin hadn wanted anything to do with the body You know how do you dismiss a human being much less you know your husband and the father of your child
00:42:07
and say you don't care what they do with the body? John's friends and family told investigator Lydic how ugly the divorce had been,
00:42:16
the incessant wrangling over money and little JJ. And then things got worse, the accusations.
00:42:22
Yes. It was an explosive allegation. A year before the murder, Michelle said John sexually abused JJ. She reported that to the Pennsylvania State Police. Six-year-old JJ told investigators a story that backed up his mother's allegations.
00:42:38
People might wonder how a boy that young could come up with stories like that if they weren't true.
00:42:47
Why would he tell stories like that? Right. A boy that age shouldn't, unless he's being coached at home or being told what to say.
00:42:56
John was ordered yet again to stay away from J.J. and was summoned to the trooper barracks to explain himself.
00:43:02
Dr. Yonick seemed like a nice guy. He seemed pretty mild-mannered. I mean, he wasn't jumping up and down screaming or anything.
00:43:08
Retired trooper Jeff Whitmer spent 15 years as a criminal investigator. He sat in on the interview as John denied everything.
00:43:16
He was calm. He really was. And like I said, I think he really wanted to at least help us get to the bottom of things.
00:43:23
John agreed to take a polygraph and passed. No criminal charges were ever filed.
00:43:29
But it was up to a judge to say whether John could see J.J. again. His divorce attorney showed the judge what she considered to be proof the abuse never happened.
00:43:39
A home video John had made the day he was supposed to have molested JJ. The video showed that JJ loved this day with his dad.
00:43:48
He smiled and was so happy. And at the end, he turned around and said, I don't want to go home, Daddy.
00:43:54
I love you. I had so much fun. And he looked right into the camera and said it. The judge also spoke to JJ in her chambers.
00:44:02
That day in Chambers, did John's son actually say, you know what, it didn't happen?
00:44:08
No, John's son didn't say it didn't happen. So he kept saying that it happened? He repeated what was alleged repeatedly.
00:44:15
And she just wasn't buying it? She wasn't buying it. And no judge that has experience with those types of allegations would have bought it.
00:44:23
It just sounded too rehearsed and too coached. The judge made a finding that there had been no abuse and dismissed the court order preventing John from seeing his son.
00:44:33
How happy was John? John was so happy, but he was also leery that, you know, I won the battle, but I'll never win the war because I know Michelle.
00:44:41
It's not over. It's not over. Michelle denied ever coaching JJ, but John's friends were sure she had fed him the story as a way to hurt John during their bitter divorce.
00:44:53
This was a way of her manipulating him to give her whatever she wanted in the divorce.
00:44:58
She was using a child as a pawn in this game of money. After so long apart, John was excited to pick up JJ for a Thanksgiving visit.
00:45:10
Zach went with him. It didn't go well. What happened during this pickup? So JJ was deathly afraid. Blake was screaming, kicking, hooting, hollering.
00:45:21
And Michelle was, you know, saying, oh, you're scaring him. You're scaring him. John called me and never heard him crying like this.
00:45:29
He was sobbing. And he said, I don't know if I'll ever see my son again. So this was irreversible damage.
00:45:35
It must have felt like. Yes. Because how do you how do you turn that ship around?
00:45:41
You can't. You can't. John was defeated. JJ didn't visit him for Christmas that year.
00:45:51
Those presents police found in John's house after the murder were JJ's, unopened, still waiting for him.
00:46:00
Friends say after the failed reunion, John wanted the divorce negotiations done so he could focus on repairing his relationship with JJ.
00:46:09
In January 2006, John and Michelle finally reached an agreement. Michelle would get 60% of their assets and they'd share custody of JJ.
00:46:19
That must have felt good in this ongoing saga. It was a relief only because I felt we had been very generous towards Michelle.
00:46:28
I felt that the deal was fair. But Michelle seemed to get cold feet. During the separation, John had been paying her spousal support, amounting to $2,500 a month.
00:46:41
The divorce agreement cut that off. Michelle wasn't happy about it. She had her attorney call me. That didn't work. She had other people talk to John. That didn't work. But she knew what had been fail proof in the past. When she called John and asked for money, he always gave it to her.
00:46:59
So she resorted to that. She resorted to it. But this time it didn't work. Well, he held his ground at my advice.
00:47:07
Not long after, someone vandalized John's car. John's divorce attorney says this incident sparked John's extraordinary premonition about his own murder.
00:47:19
John called me one day shortly after his car had been vandalized, and he just really blew me away.
00:47:27
He told me that he wanted to send me $10,000 to hold to investigate his murder because he was convinced that he was going to be killed and that his murder would be covered up and that the evidence would be buried along with him and that it would go unsolved.
00:47:45
That's one of the craziest things I've heard in this job, predicting your own murder and wanting to set aside money for the investigation.
00:47:53
That's almost a ridiculous plot line. It's almost like he was writing a story about his life.
00:47:58
Yes. It was so... Chilling. Coming up, a suspect gets a closer look. He would stand over John in a menacing manner.
00:48:08
And new questions about the police investigation. I thought, are you smoking something? Because this does not make any sense.
00:48:15
John Yelnick's divorce papers had been found by crime scene investigators just a few feet from his body.
00:48:35
He'd been planning to sign them that day and finally be free of his toxic marriage.
00:48:40
They were blood splattered. They were sitting on his table. I mean, that's such a just an eerie visual, you know, to think of the divorce papers with blood on them from this murder.
00:48:53
Literally, literally like the blood was on the papers that he was to sign to finalize his divorce.
00:49:01
John's friends were sure his divorce battle with his estranged wife, Michelle, had something to do with his death.
00:49:07
They got together after his funeral to swap theories. So is everyone kind of on the same page, the friends about who could have done this?
00:49:17
I don't think there was anybody who came up with an alternate theory. If they did, they didn't voice it at that time.
00:49:24
And that theory focused not so much on Michelle, but rather her boyfriend, Kevin Foley,
00:49:30
who happened to be a Pennsylvania state trooper. John told friends Trooper Foley didn't seem to like him one bit.
00:49:38
John would go to pick up or drop off JJ. and from what John described, he would stand over John in a menacing manner
00:49:45
or stand out on the porch with his arms crossed and stare John down, things like that.
00:49:51
After Michelle accused John of abusing JJ, he told friends the trooper got even more aggressive, making verbal threats.
00:49:59
Maria says John was scared. I said, John, we have to do something. I'm coming out to Blairsville and we're going to go see the police.
00:50:06
And he said, Maria, what police can we go see? we can't go to the blairsville police department they hauled me out of my office
00:50:11
we can't go to the state police because foley's one of them he said we don't have anyone to go to
00:50:17
other friends say they found it hard to believe that a state trooper sworn to protect people and uphold the law could be a danger my mom would call and say
00:50:28
like john's still being bothered and my response out of being so naive i don't know what the word
00:50:34
is, was always, state police don't do that. Now John was dead, and Mary Ann was one of nearly
00:50:40
10 people who told the Blairsville police that Trooper Foley should be their number one suspect.
00:50:47
We thought that that message had been received loud and clear, because we spoke with law
00:50:54
enforcement and anybody who would listen. We were giving them all the information we had. I gave them
00:50:59
the memo that I had put in the file after John had offered to pay $10,000 to investigate his
00:51:06
murder because that was the best I could do. In the small town of Blairsville, where local and
00:51:12
state police often crossed paths, Trooper Foley was no stranger to police officer Janelle Lydic.
00:51:19
He was a criminal investigator. So in a normal world, after this murder happened,
00:51:25
Kevin Foley potentially could have been called to aid in the investigation. Yes.
00:51:30
That's irony. That's why it was so difficult. Lydick says the trooper was already on her list of suspects,
00:51:37
thanks to a patrol officer who'd seen him with Michelle after the murder. She said that Foley had a mark on his forehead,
00:51:46
and she asked how he got that, and he said he just came back from hockey and got hurt in hockey.
00:51:51
Did it seem like a plausible explanation, given that he plays hockey? I don't know.
00:51:55
It threw up a little bit of red flag. Lydic listened to the friend's stories about Foley with interest.
00:52:02
But because of who Foley was and the pressure she says she was under, she made an unusual decision.
00:52:09
Before she zeroed in on Foley, she says she wanted to eliminate everyone else first.
00:52:15
I went backwards from the way I think that most people do it. I looked at everybody who could possibly have been first.
00:52:23
I wanted to make sure that nobody else could have possibly have done it. You went from the outside in.
00:52:27
Correct. When John's friends called police to ask for status updates, they heard the same thing.
00:52:35
We're looking at this case outside in. Did that make sense to you? Not at all. I thought, are you smoking something?
00:52:42
Because this does not make any sense. You start with and see where the case leads you.
00:52:47
I mean, you don't have to watch cop shows to realize that's the way it's done. And yet they told you it's not like you see on TV.
00:52:54
Right. That's the line. Many, many times. It does seem outrageous that this person is not being looked at closer.
00:53:01
And they want to make me or friends feel like we're expecting the impossible. Why is that so impossible to do?
00:53:09
Why is that expecting too much? I know they wanted me to go up and arrest Foley right away.
00:53:15
And it's like, you can't do that. You just can't walk up and arrest somebody when you have the possibility of it could not be him.
00:53:24
At the end of the day, Lydic admits it was hard to think of Foley as a killer. In the past, she trusted him with her life.
00:53:32
I've worked with him, you know, on other cases. He's been my backup. You know, I let him behind me with a gun, and I was okay with that.
00:53:40
I was safe. And so I guess I didn't want to believe that. Remember, before he was killed, John had predicted his murder would go unsolved.
00:53:49
Now, his friends and family worried he was right. Coming up what was going on inside the investigation That a real head snapper The district attorney telling you not to interview someone who had a real issue with John Yelnick
00:54:09
Did you feel like it was wrong? Yes. When Dateline continues. Those close to John Yelnick thought his murder should be easy to solve.
00:54:28
They told police on day one the prime suspect should be Michelle's boyfriend, state trooper Kevin Foley.
00:54:35
We'd all take turns calling the police. What's the status? What's going on? Why haven't anything happened?
00:54:41
Did you quickly start to have an uneasy feeling about the thoroughness of this investigation?
00:54:49
Yes, almost instantly. Like something's not right. something's not going well here because there's just no reason for this to take so long.
00:54:57
Marianne Clark seethed. Michelle had custody of JJ and was living with the trooper.
00:55:03
We'd be hearing all the stories about Kevin and Michelle adopting another child and just
00:55:08
going on with life as though, you know, nothing's wrong. Trooper Whitmer worked in the same state police barracks as Kevin Foley.
00:55:16
He agreed with the family that Foley should have been looked at harder right away.
00:55:21
He says Foley didn't hide his dislike of the dentist. You know, he'd come into work, he'd be venting, you know, like talking about John did this or John won't do that.
00:55:31
Whitmer was dispatched to the crime scene within hours of John's body being found.
00:55:36
It says colleagues were already talking about Kevin Foley. A couple people were coming up to me and making references to Kevin.
00:55:46
Like, boy, where was Kevin last night? I hope he had an alibi last night, that type of thing.
00:55:52
You know, kind of gallows humor type thing. Fully was put on desk duty back at the barracks.
00:55:58
Whitmer says it made for an awkward working environment. We were told informally not to talk to Kevin about the homicide or the investigation.
00:56:06
There wasn't anything in writing, but the word was odd. Don't bring it up to him. Don't talk to him about it.
00:56:11
When an investigator went to the barracks to interview troopers about what they knew,
00:56:16
Officer Lydick says they didn't say much. They may have not lied, but I don't think they gave us everything.
00:56:22
Is there that kind of code of silence with some of them? Like protect the brother at all costs kind of thing?
00:56:28
Yeah, and I think in my eyes, I think that's what the family thought I was doing too.
00:56:33
Does the same thin blue line apply here? Yes. Trooper Whitmer believes it was complicated, but not corrupt.
00:56:42
There is reluctance to think the worst about someone, especially someone you work with.
00:56:48
Because if you're wrong, you've still got to work with this person. Lydick says from the beginning, she felt in over her head, and she worried what her fellow officers would think of her.
00:56:59
How intimidating was it to be investigating a state trooper? Very. Because I had probably 50% of them like, how could you possibly do this?
00:57:10
How could you investigate one of your own? Lydick says she and her chief hesitated to send a key piece of evidence to the state crime lab.
00:57:19
John's fingernail clippings. You just, you wanted to be extremely careful about who was handling your evidence.
00:57:27
Correct. and something else that didn't happen something big a formal interview with kevin foley
00:57:35
i think to the family to to even people watching this that they'll say you know that's that's
00:57:42
detective 101 interview the strange spouse and her and her new boyfriend especially
00:57:47
when there was feuding going on this was a bitter divorce battle but he's a state trooper
00:57:53
It's not like I could walk up to him. And he knew it. He knew what I was planning.
00:57:58
He probably was one step ahead of me every time. But why not even try that first day to interview them?
00:58:06
I don't know. I don't know why we didn't do that. I didn't because I was with the scene.
00:58:13
I was there for 24 hours. Lydick says the decision to not interview Foley right away wasn't her call.
00:58:20
It was the decision of then district attorney Bob Bell. I mean, that's a real head snapper.
00:58:28
The district attorney telling you not to interview someone who had a real issue with John Yelnick.
00:58:36
I don't know his reasoning behind it. I didn't ever ask. Did you push back at all?
00:58:42
No. He was a district attorney. He was there for years. He knew. Hopefully he knew what he was doing.
00:58:48
Did you feel like it was wrong? Yes. The DA, Bob Bell, knew there were suspicions about Foley right away.
00:58:58
Foley's supervisor in the state police called the DA that night as soon as he heard about the murder,
00:59:04
telling him to get a search warrant for Foley's house. But he didn't. John's family and friends wondered if DA Bell was giving the trooper special treatment.
00:59:14
So you asked the DA what his relationship was with Trooper Foley. Yeah, I just finally raised the question with him.
00:59:25
Have you worked with Kevin Foley before in cases? Do you have a relationship with him?
00:59:31
And he said, no, I don't know him. Marianne says she heard the same thing when she spoke to Bell at the crime scene.
00:59:38
I told him that we felt strongly that Kevin Foley was behind it. and his reaction was,
00:59:45
do we have a state trooper named Kevin Foley? But Bell did know Foley. They'd worked cases together.
00:59:54
Dennis did a quick Google search and found this photo of them in the local newspaper You didn need to be a detective to figure that out or find that photo No The former district attorney denies ever saying he didn know Foley
01:00:08
but told us they were not friends. As for why he didn't immediately get a search warrant for Foley's home,
01:00:15
he says there wasn't enough probable cause. He also told us he didn't want Officer Lydic to interview Foley
01:00:21
because she was too inexperienced. This was a tricky investigation, given the fact that this is a small area.
01:00:30
Everybody knows everybody. We got state troopers. We got local police. And I, you know, having no experience in any kind of police work or anything like this,
01:00:41
like I had at the time no clue of how very tricky it was and how instantly everything could just be mishandled.
01:00:48
As for the state police, troopers from a barracks not connected to Foley stepped in to help with the investigation and later took it over.
01:00:58
They did some things that the Blairsville police hadn't. They eventually obtained a search warrant for Foley's car, but found nothing.
01:01:05
Ditto for the house he shared with Michelle. The investigation dragged on. Months became a year, and Marianne ran out of patience.
01:01:16
She decided to make some noise. She organized a vigil. The vigil was to keep investigating.
01:01:22
Was that the idea? To keep it out there? Yes, to keep it out there and to remember John.
01:01:28
And just to, you know, for people who were still waiting, neighbors. I mean, this had the whole town just uneasy.
01:01:35
But their wait was about to come to an end with a big change in the case. coming up what would those fingernail clippings in the fridge reveal and a vehicle caught on
01:01:50
camera the night of the murder if he's the killer then we should see his truck was it kevin foley's
01:01:56
Marianne Clark was relentless. From the beginning, she challenged and criticized the investigation into her cousin's murder.
01:02:18
It was a daily battle. It really was a daily battle. You weren't going away. No, that's what I said. I'm not going away. Whatever this takes.
01:02:26
and something has to break eventually. Something has to happen. To try to make something happen,
01:02:34
Marianne called Pennsylvania's attorney general, the highest law enforcement officer in the state,
01:02:40
asking him to take over the case. Tony Krastic was the deputy AG. Marianne Clark had been involved in politics at the local level.
01:02:48
She knew the then attorney general on a first name basis. It's pretty admirable that she wasn't going to give up
01:02:55
on justice for her cousin. She did not give up, no. Marianne's efforts paid off.
01:03:00
One year after John was killed, Tony Krestik took over the case and called a meeting with John Yelnick's friends and family.
01:03:07
How did you feel leaving that meeting? Rejuvenated. They just came in with an air about
01:03:12
they knew what they were doing. I mean, we all felt a lot more hopeful than we had in a long time.
01:03:18
We just all felt a sense of like things are going to start happening. And he had the power to do it.
01:03:23
When the prosecutor first looked at the case, he thought it was absurd that Kevin Foley and John's wife Michelle
01:03:30
had not been immediate targets of the investigation, despite all the ugliness that swirled around the Yelnick's broken marriage.
01:03:38
She spewed hate about how she felt about John Yelnick. That was the life Kevin Foley was living,
01:03:46
that Michelle was just constantly saying what a horrible man he was. She fueled that hatred.
01:03:52
Investigators never questioned Michelle or Kevin. And by the time Krastic took over, it was too late.
01:03:59
Kevin Foley had lawyered up and wasn't talking. Why were Michelle and Kevin not taken down to the police department and questioned like other people were?
01:04:11
I mean, obviously you have the two main suspects. I can't in any way excuse the failure to at least attempt to interview Michelle and Kevin.
01:04:21
Despite that, Crastic didn't see a conspiracy to protect the trooper. In fact, he says a lot of evidence had been gathered by Blairsville PD and the state police.
01:04:32
And he wasn't sure why D.A. Bell hadn't done more with the case. Well, the case had kind of languished a bit.
01:04:39
They were kind of shredding water. The D.A. told us he was being cautious, wanted more evidence, and welcomed the AG's help.
01:04:45
In the case file, Krastic saw that investigators had gone back to interview more of Foley's fellow troopers, and the prosecutor found what they said alarming.
01:04:56
What did they learn from them about Kevin's relationship with John? He'd say, I wish John Yelnick was dead. I wish he died a horrible death. I wish he died in a car crash. This was daily. This was after hello.
01:05:14
Krastic was given security camera video from the two convenience stores near John's house
01:05:18
that showed a truck passing by at around 1 a.m., about 30 minutes before John's blood-curdling screams were heard by neighbors.
01:05:27
An FBI specialist had tried to match the video to Foley's truck. The analyst found that there were similarities, but also dissimilarities.
01:05:36
She could not exclude that vehicle. It's not perfect, but it sure doesn't look good for Kevin Foley.
01:05:42
If he's the killer, then we should see his truck. We see his truck. Forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht had described the crime scene as one of the most violent he'd ever seen.
01:05:52
The killer had chased John around the house and then slaughtered him most likely using a single blade This was clearly a killing of passion Kevin Foley was a knife guy He had this commemorative state police knife which was a very sturdy knife
01:06:08
He played with it so often, he'd flick it open, close it, flick it open, close it.
01:06:12
The murder weapon was never found, but Krastic was convinced Kevin Foley had the means, the motive, and the opportunity to kill John Yelnick.
01:06:22
But still, it wasn't an airtight case. The prosecutor needed more. Remember John Yelnick's fingernail clippings?
01:06:30
A year after the murder, they still hadn't been tested for DNA. I said, well, do I have to make a phone call?
01:06:36
Because they're going to be tested. The clippings were sent to the FBI lab. When the results came back, they pointed to Foley.
01:06:44
But it wasn't a perfect match. Wasn't it true that the DNA really could have matched thousands of people
01:06:49
in the Blairsville-Pittsburgh area? Absolutely. Yet they still included Kevin Foley,
01:06:56
along with all the other evidence. That's not a slam dunk in a trial. Well, it's not a slam dunk, no.
01:07:04
Maybe not enough for a slam dunk in a trial, but altogether enough to bring charges.
01:07:09
On September 27, 2007, nearly a year and a half after John Yelnick was killed, Kevin Foley, a Pennsylvania state trooper,
01:07:18
was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. D.A. Bell was there for the announcement, praising law enforcement.
01:07:26
It is a testament of how well they worked together and never had a give-up attitude that has caused this case to be resolved as it has been today.
01:07:34
A state police commander talked about how difficult that resolution was. It was obviously a very dark and disturbing day for the Pennsylvania State Police.
01:07:44
Take us to the moment when you find out that Kevin Foley has been arrested. Well, it was my birthday. It was like the best day ever. It was such a sense of like, finally, justice is being served.
01:07:57
Coming up, the trial begins and those bloody shoe prints make a mark. That was an aha moment.
01:08:05
Then, a groundbreaking DNA gamble. Had it been used before in court or was this the first time?
01:08:10
It was the first time. Talk about questionable. It doesn't sound like science to me.
01:08:14
When Dateline continues. The murder trial of trooper Kevin Foley started in March 2009 in the old courthouse in Indiana, Pennsylvania.
01:08:36
A small town best known for being the birthplace of an American icon, Jimmy Stewart.
01:08:41
Drive down the street, you see statues of Jimmy Stewart. I mean, what's more American than that?
01:08:46
But this case was not going to be tried by some homespun country lawyers. The deputy attorney general of Pennsylvania had come to town with a very modern, high-tech presentation.
01:08:58
To walk in a historic courtroom and see flat-screen televisions and every kind of electronic multimedia device possible, in this case, they put it to use.
01:09:10
As the trial got underway, prosecutor Tony Krastic described John Yelnick's murder in great detail,
01:09:17
using 3D animated computer graphics to give jurors a virtual tour of the crime scene
01:09:22
and projecting disturbing photos of John's body on the widescreens for all to see.
01:09:28
Dennis, you're particularly bothered by a slash on his hand. Yes, this was the hand that picked up little JJ.
01:09:35
This was the hand that I shook at my wedding. That was the picture that made it seem more real to me than any of the others.
01:09:41
The others looked like horror movie stills, but that hand just went right to my heart.
01:09:46
Crastic addressed Foley's motive by calling his fellow troopers to the stand. They described how Foley would get enraged when talking about the unproven allegations of child abuse
01:09:57
and said he hated John and wanted him to die. On the night John was killed, the prosecutor thinks that hatred may have boiled over
01:10:05
because John was going to sign his divorce agreement the next day, drastically reducing his monthly payments to Michelle.
01:10:13
Maybe he was going there to try to bully him into continuing the alimony, trying to just threaten him in some way.
01:10:19
All of a sudden he starts to fight him. Now we have a fluid scene. So now the passion takes over.
01:10:27
Krastic methodically laid out his case for the jury. He called Terry Shallow, a director from the athletic shoe company ASICS,
01:10:35
He'd analyzed the bloody shoe prints found at the crime scene. We knew that it was an ASIC shoe.
01:10:40
And we thought almost immediately that it was a particular style of shoe called the Jel Creed.
01:10:48
Shallow told the jury the Jel Creed was a limited edition shoe, not sold in western Pennsylvania.
01:10:55
But he said there was still a way for the trooper to get a pair. We had a law enforcement purchase program where police officers and even firefighters
01:11:03
could order from ASICS directly at a discount. So Shallow checked ASICS' records,
01:11:09
and right there in the files, he found something to connect fully. We had direct evidence from a purchase order
01:11:16
with his signature on it. And that was an aha moment. Krastic introduced the DNA evidence
01:11:24
from John's fingernails. Remember, the FBI analysis wasn't conclusive. They reported a ratio of 1 in 13,000.
01:11:32
That result didn't exclude Foley, but it didn't mean the DNA was his beyond any doubt.
01:11:40
So Krastic turned to Dr. Mark Perlin, whose bioinformation company, Cyber Genetics,
01:11:46
had developed an innovative new computer technique for analyzing DNA data. Had it been used before in court, or was this the first time?
01:11:53
Never. It was the first time. At the time of the trial, FBI DNA analysis was still being done by agents
01:11:59
who were not used to be a human being. Not a supercomputer. It's like comparing a Ferrari with a go-kart.
01:12:04
Perlin's computer analysis in the Foley case had come up with an astonishing result.
01:12:09
The prosecutor thought it was the smoking gun. According to Perlin, this was definitely Foley's DNA.
01:12:18
189 billion to one. 189 billion to one. What exactly does that mean? In this case, what it means is that a match between Dr. Yelenic's fingernails and defendant Kevin Foley is 189 billion times more probable than a coincidence.
01:12:40
To defense attorneys Richard Galloway and Jeffrey Monzo, the DNA evidence was more a smokescreen than a smoking gun.
01:12:48
You tried to discredit the science, the DNA. What was your strategy with that? Talk about questionable science, junk science.
01:12:58
The evidence was sent to the FBI, which is the premier lab for DNA testing. They found it to be one in 13,000.
01:13:07
That is exceedingly low. And eventually they send it to this new guy, Perlin. And Perlin says, I put it into my machine and it comes out the other side and it's one in five billion.
01:13:19
189 billion. Okay. if you include Mars and Venus and everywhere. That's such a disparity that it doesn't sound like science to me.
01:13:29
Dennis Vaughn was paying close attention to the jury during the back and forth on the DNA
01:13:33
and didn't like what he saw. I was watching the jury intently during that, and to me it looked like there were a lot of glazed expressions,
01:13:42
and so I was worried that they were going to miss the point. Defense attorneys told the jury Kevin Foley was an innocent man,
01:13:50
that on the night of the murder, he played hockey and then went home. They tore into the investigation,
01:13:57
not for the reason John's friends and family complained about. They said the opposite.
01:14:02
This was a rush to judgment. Right from the get-go, in the newspaper, they were pointing to Kevin Foley.
01:14:08
The defense pointed the finger at others, including John's neighbor, Tom Use. And they called a different neighbor,
01:14:16
who described hearing that argument the morning of the murder. He clearly heard someone yelling,
01:14:21
I'll never loan you money again, and heard glass breaking. Of course, a window was shattered in this case.
01:14:26
Kevin fully didn't owe Dr. Yelnick any money, so that certainly didn't fit in with Kevin.
01:14:32
The defense also told the jury about a convict who reportedly made a jailhouse confession that he killed John Yelnick The state found that to be somewhat laughable this inmate That was their way of rejecting him in front of the jury
01:14:48
Doesn't seem to be something you can easily laugh off. The defense called its most important witness, the defendant, Kevin Foley.
01:14:58
The trooper acknowledged his dislike for John Yelnick, but denied any involvement in his murder.
01:15:03
and maybe more important than what he said was the way he said it. To many, Foley seemed calm and steady on the witness stand.
01:15:12
Kevin was someone you believed in, and I thought it was good that the jury got to meet him, so to speak.
01:15:18
After watching Foley's testimony, John's friend Dennis was troubled. For me to be able to come to terms with what happened,
01:15:25
I had to paint in my mind that Foley was a boogeyman, that there was something inherently evil.
01:15:31
He wasn't. He was just like anybody else. And I still have trouble accepting that.
01:15:39
Michelle Yelnick, the victim's wife, the defendant's girlfriend, and the woman at the heart of the story, was conspicuously absent from the courtroom.
01:15:49
Throughout the trial, we thought, OK, maybe she'll make an appearance. Maybe they'll call her to the stand.
01:15:54
They had said in their opening arguments that she would provide alibi witness testimony. Never showed up.
01:16:01
John Yelnick feared he would be killed and predicted there would be no justice afterward.
01:16:08
But after eight days of testimony, his murder case went to the jury. The justice system was about to speak.
01:16:17
Coming up. They came back with a question, which was, please redefine beyond a reasonable doubt.
01:16:24
An agonizing wait for a verdict. What would it be? We're sitting in that courthouse on pins and needles.
01:16:30
And what was in store for Michelle? Was an effort made to try to find evidence against her?
01:16:40
There's always more to the story. To go behind the scenes of tonight's episode, listen to our Talking Dateline series with Andrea and Blaine, available Wednesday.
01:17:00
It had been a tense trial, and Dennis Vaughn was there almost every day. It felt like a very winding road.
01:17:07
There were evidence that seemed kind of shaky at times, and I'm watching the jury,
01:17:13
and I was just absolutely emotionally and physically exhausted just from going through that whole process The jurors deliberated for four hours and then asked to speak with the judge They came back with a question which was please redefine beyond a reasonable doubt which is the worst
01:17:31
possible question that a prosecutor can hear. Did that make your heart skip a beat? Well, yeah,
01:17:38
I wasn't feeling all that well, but it didn't improve my condition, no. The jury went back to
01:17:43
deliberations. Two more hours passed. In most of the murder trials that I have covered,
01:17:50
I could have told you ahead of time what the verdict was going to be. I really wasn't sure
01:17:54
what the verdict was going to be in this case. I kept thinking to myself that how I see the world
01:18:01
from this day forward really is in the hands of 12 strangers. While Michelle never showed up in
01:18:09
court. Marianne learned she was paying close attention. As we're sitting in that courthouse
01:18:14
on pins and needles, we find out through a family member that Michelle was at home with welcome home
01:18:21
signs and balloons and planning a big party for that night whenever he was acquitted. Finally,
01:18:29
after six hours, the jury returned to the courtroom with a verdict. There would be no welcome home
01:18:35
party for Kevin Foley, the jury found him guilty of first-degree murder. What's that moment like
01:18:42
for you? Well, it's more one of relief than anything else. It was a real sense of satisfaction.
01:18:47
I don't have any doubt that he did it. It was like, okay, we got the right guy. A bad apple
01:18:52
in law enforcement. He was. Marianne had been a passionate advocate for her cousin.
01:18:59
For her, the verdict was an emotional release. You just wanted to collapse. I mean, because all
01:19:04
of this work, all of this time, it was... Justice? Justice. Justice for John, finally.
01:19:11
As pleased as Marianne was about the verdict, there was something that nagged her.
01:19:16
One person she believed still had not been held accountable, John's wife, Michelle.
01:19:23
I don't think she planned how it would be. I think she made it clear she wanted John gone.
01:19:28
I think she was the one that had to gain from it. In fact, before the trial started,
01:19:33
Mary Ann had filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Michelle and Foley. In a court filing, Michelle denied any involvement in John's death.
01:19:43
She also said she was not aware of and did not fuel any alleged hostility Kevin may have had toward John.
01:19:50
Mary Ann dropped the suit after the trial and Michelle never faced any criminal charges.
01:19:55
Do you think Michelle Yelnick got off easy in all of this? I didn have the evidence to charge her If I had the evidence to charge her I would have done that To the extent that she may have provoked this to use that expression well that something that she has
01:20:11
to live with if she can. Was an effort made to try to find evidence against her? Oh, constantly,
01:20:17
yes. But we took that side of the case as far as we could. Not long after the trial,
01:20:22
Michelle moved out of state to build a new life with JJ and her other children. As soon as he was convicted, her bags were packed and she took off to Georgia.
01:20:33
So never, never had to face us. Maria Takaleski has unfinished business with her friend John to relay a message to JJ.
01:20:44
He said, if they had me killed, tell JJ that I loved him and that he was my whole life.
01:20:49
And someday get in touch with them and make sure he knew how much I loved him. Kevin Foley was given a life sentence for murdering John Yelnick.
01:20:59
That ended the legal case, but what happened in court here had a profound effect on the justice system.
01:21:06
Dr. Mark Perlin's technique for DNA analysis is now considered state-of-the-art technology
01:21:12
and is accepted in courtrooms around the world. And in the quiet community where John Yelnick lived and died,
01:21:21
the emotional ripple effects are still being felt. It was stunning to have a state trooper from their community convicted of murder.
01:21:32
It really is going to be decades before this community will get over something like this.
01:21:39
It's been years since John Yelnick was killed. But for those who loved him, the grief is still very raw.
01:21:47
I don't think you ever get over a murder. You learn to live with a new reality, but it's always with you.
01:21:58
I wanted people to understand he was a good man who didn't deserve this to make sure people understood how much he was loved.
01:22:06
One of my favorite photographs that I have of myself and John is in a frame engraved with my brother from another mother.
01:22:15
If there was ever a person that I knew that deserved to die peacefully in bed surrounded by a loving family, it was John.
01:22:27
That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again Friday at 9, 8 central.
01:22:33
And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt.
01:22:38
For all of us at NBC News, good night.