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a twelve-year-old girl is murdered in her own home and the case stalls when investigators
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find little forensic evidence at the crime scene but scientists also know that criminals
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unknowingly take evidence with them as they leave a crime scene and in this case
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the killer left with the genetic fingerprint of his victim [Music] [Music] [Music]
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in between two of minnesota's ten thousand lakes is the small town of wasika a quiet community with virtually
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no violent crime not far from the shores of loon lake was the home of connie larson and her
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three daughters they're all like five and four years apart but they are very close you they were
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never apart and they just adored each other callie was definitely the baby of the family
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and she was daddy's little girl twelve-year-old kelly joe was in the seventh grade and loved gymnastics
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she was good i think because she just loved it and she put a lot of energy into it it was a wonderful place for her
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to be and with her energy and spirit she just she just really did well in gymnastics
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after school on april 20th 1999 kelly joe got off her school bus and walked down this path towards home
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just as she always did kelly joe was the first one home that day her mother and sister were expected
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later the rule of the family was everyone needed to be home and no visitors at five o'clock because
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that's when i arrived home and then we had our family time sixteen-year-old jamie was the next
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family member to arrive home when she opened the door she saw evidence of a burglary and something
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far worse jamie immediately called her mother at work and then police i realized that there was something
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wrong and she wasn't telling me coming around the corner and looking up the stairs was a difficult sight for
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everybody i mean there were 30-year investigators that were having a difficult time with that
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but it's just looking at who would do something like this upstairs kelly joe was dead
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the fatal stab wound was uh in the uh left chest area severed the or cut the ascending aorta and she bled to
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death internally still hard for me to think that she's gone i mean that means
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dead dead that just it just can't be i've got two kids of my own if somebody
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if this occurred to one of my children i don't know what i would do and i can't
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even imagine kelly joe's school books were near the front door an indication she may have surprised the
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intruder the point of entry was the basement door some cash silver certificates and the
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girl's cd collection of music were missing forensic scientists found blood on the
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stairs which was collected for analysis despite the clutter investigators also looked for
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fingerprints you kind of tend to focus on the areas where you're pretty sure that the
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perpetrator was and then you focus on areas where drawers were tossed and stuff has been
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you know taken out moved around there weren't too many surfaces left in that
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house that did not have some kind of fingerprint powder residue investigators vacuumed the carpeted
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floors for possible trace evidence they were convinced that the killer had left behind enough
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forensic evidence to catch him we had a lot of fingerprints there were hundreds of hairs
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in those vacuumings i initially thought that we were in good shape a forensic case is like a puzzle and you
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are trying to find different pieces of the puzzle that fit to give you the picture as to what happened in the case
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[Music] kelly joe larson's death set a sad precedent for waseca minnesota the small town had never had a homicide
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in its history it destroys the safety factor of everybody in this town everybody well i think a lot more people
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started locking their doors which sounds a little flippant but that's the reaction
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forensic scientists thought the blood on the steps near cali joe's body may have
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been the killers but forensic tests revealed it was cali joe's next investigators hoped the killer left
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his fingerprints in the home but this was another dead end when all the dust had settled so to
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speak all of the latent prints that we had taken out of the house were identified to
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family members and friends there were no unknowns left one of the fingerprints found on the
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bathroom sink was initially difficult to identify but later it was identified as cali joe
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larson's fingerprint over time peterson would come to easily recognize cali joe's unique pattern
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she had a loop pattern but it had another loop that was over the first loop and kind of came to a point on the other
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end that's unique you don't see that very often the only other physical evidence from
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the crime scene were two foreign hairs one found on cali joe's body the other
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on the carpet but until you know whose hairs to compare them to you've got nothing
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and the hairs didn't have any root material so they couldn't be sent for nuclear dna
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testing a neighbor reported seeing an unfamiliar man near the larson home around the time
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of the murder this is the composite sketch of the man another neighbor saw a black pickup
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truck in the area [Music] police searched their records for individuals matching this general
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description who also had a past history of burglary and sex offenses they found 12 potential suspects
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we call them the dirty dozen and because we had 12 suspects that we could not exclude from the investigation
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either you know by alibi or for whatever reason one of the so-called dirty dozen was a
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convicted sex offender donald bloom significant fact about blum was that he was also a suspect in the kidnapping and
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murder of 19 year old katie poyer a convenience store cashier in moose lake minnesota just a few hours drive away
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these are security camera pictures of that abduction unfortunately they weren't clear enough
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to identify the abductor police learned that blum made several trips to wasika around the time of cali
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joe's murder he also drove a black pickup truck like the one seen near larson's home
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i was being bombarded with so many truths that i didn't want to know so as i heard more about don blum
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i i suppose the more fascinated we became with the possibility that it could be [Music]
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blum denied any involvement in cali joe's death and said he had an alibi for
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the day of the murder as winter approached in wasika hope faded november december was a very bleak time
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everybody was very depressed despite more than 30 000 pages of reports and boxes of physical evidence
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investigators weren't any closer to solving the crime than the day it occurred
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and at that point we had absolutely nothing and i was really becoming concerned whether this case was ever going to be
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solved and soon police in wassega were faced with another crime problem there were a rash of home burglaries in
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wasika not far from the larsen home and the perpetrator left behind some evidence a shoe impression from an
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athletic shoe which had a distinctive zigzag pattern a lot of the burglaries had been
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happening on my shifts and it was becoming very personal on a routine patrol near the burglaries
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officer moccasin spotted a man walking along the sidewalk as moccasin drove past the man abruptly
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changed direction this didn't make a whole lot of sense just it just kind of rolls the rolls the hair up in
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the back of my neck so marcus and stopped the man to ask a few questions when he did
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he noticed something familiar and marcus and was able to look down and saw the shoe print
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in the snow and that looked like the shoe print that they'd been seeing from
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some of those burglaries and while patting him down found a large screwdriver and a
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flashlight in his pocket burglary tools there's no good reason for this guy to be walking in this
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neighborhood at eight o'clock at night with a screwdriver and flashlight in his
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pocket the man was identified as lorenzo sanchez an illegal immigrant from mexico
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in his home police found stolen property from several burglaries and police couldn't help but wonder
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whether lorenzo sanchez was also the man who had killed kelly joe larson not surprisingly with the arrest of
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lorenzo sanchez the wasika burglaries stopped in sanchez's home police found items
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stolen from the burglaries they also found many compact discs but not the ones stolen from cali joe
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larson's home in the bottom of sanchez's closet police found two cd cases on a hunch
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they were photographed and shown to connie larson officer came over with a picture of the
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cd cases and said they saw these and i just want you to look at them and just tell me if
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you recognize them and i took the picture and i said yes those are those are calories
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sanchez denied the cases were stolen and said they were his i bought those in the store
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it had been almost a year since cali joe's murder and investigators hope there may be some forensic evidence on
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the cd cases the first problem was that the outside cover was vinyl just getting the
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latent fingerprints off off them is slimmed in on to begin with if you do get one getting one that's a
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good usable identifiable blatant fingerprint is even slimmer nevertheless the cases were sent to dave peterson for
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analysis and i got to the second of the last page of the second cd case i opened it up and
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there was a blonde hair laying in between the sleeves now i got a little excited about that
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in fact my heart started racing just a hair i'm pardon the pun that hair was sent for dna testing
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next peterson wanted to see if there were any fingerprints on the plastic sleeves which hold the individual cds
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for that he used a technique called super glue fuming i suspended these two cd cases from a
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rod and then fanned out these plastic sleeves that were on the inside and what happens the super glue
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fumes as they are emitted from the heat will adhere to the moisture left behind in the latent print
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and turn the ridge detail white peterson found only one print on the very last sleeve of the second cd
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case the print had a distinctive overlapping loop one peterson immediately recognized
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the analysis confirmed that it was cali joe's right ring fingerprint and at that point i called bob bergen
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said i think i got something for you i said you got to be me i knew that it was our guy at that point i knew
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it was him we weren't finding the suspect's fingerprint on something to put him at the scene
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we kind of did this in reverse we found him in possession with something that came from the scene
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the blonde hair found in the cd case was further confirmation dna tests showed it belonged to kelly joe
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despite the evidence sanchez denied he was involved in the murder all the evidence proved was that sanchez was in
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possession of a piece of stolen property you killed cali joe larson but police had one last piece of
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evidence the two foreign hairs recovered from the larsen crime scene those hairs along with a hair sample
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from lorenzo sanchez were sent to the forensic lab for the newest dna test available
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mitochondrial dna is a specialized dna test if you cannot obtain results using nuclear dna analysis you'll fall back on
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mitochondrial dna testing mitochondria live outside the cell nucleus [Music] for the test
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each hair sample is placed into a vial where it changes form into a liquid the impurities are extracted leaving
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only purified dna next millions of copies are made of just the mitochondria portion and then
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sequenced when completed dr holland could read the genetic code of the hairs from the crime scene and so
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this particular piece of the puzzle suggested that those errors were in fact from mr sanchez
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the question was which mr sanchez mitochondrial dna is passed from a mother to her children all of whom will
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therefore have the same mitochondrial dna profile in other words the suspect lorenzo sanchez would have
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the same mitochondrial dna as his six brothers and sisters [Music] to complicate matters lorenzo's younger
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brother miguel also had a police record and was in wasika at the time of the murder
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the investigation into kelly joe's murder wasn't over yet [Music] so you know
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i am innocent of that cause i did not kill her it doesn't injustice what they're doing with me
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lorenzo sanchez continued to maintain his innocence in the murder of cali joe larson even though a cd case with cali
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joe's fingerprint was discovered in sanchez's home and two hairs found at the crime scene
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had the same mitochondrial dna profile as lorenzo sanchez mitochondrial dna is not positive
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identification as nuclear dna is since mitochondrial dna is passed from a mother to her children all of the
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sanchez siblings would have the same mitochondrial dna profile [Music] two of lorenzo sanchez's brothers had
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spent time in wasika a younger brother miguel and an older half-brother pedro pedro said he had an alibi that he was
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in mexico on the day of cali joe's murder which checked out miguel sanchez was in wasika that day
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but his timesheet showed that he was at work at the time of cali joe's murder
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lorenzo was the only sanchez brother with no alibi his work record showed that he was not
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at work when the murder occurred with that lorenzo sanchez was charged with first
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degree murder he maintained his innocence until his sister-in-law visited him in prison and
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the two had a conversation that was taped by prison officials [Applause] he specifically says in that
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conversation you know the only thing that they have to link me is the hair you understand the hair is
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the only thing they've got and sanchez asks his sister-in-law to place the blame for cali joe's murder on
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his half-brother pedro she refused there was some apparently some sibling rivalry there and his brother pedro had
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a record which included some violent offenses when lorenzo sanchez was confronted with
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the tape of this conversation he had few choices he eventually pled guilty to first
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degree murder and was convicted when kelly jo walked into her home and saw sanchez in the middle of a burglary
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sanchez silenced the person he thought was the only witness but there was another witness that day
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forensic evidence [Music] the microscopic hair sanchez left behind and cali joe's hair and fingerprint on
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the cd case told the story at his sentencing connie larson finally had her chance
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to speak directly to her daughter's killer when his confession and then in his
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statement after asked us to forgive him can you well um you know that's a when you
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haven't been in this place it's hard to know what you would do but being in this place
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it hasn't been hard for me honestly on that day i put it down two years after the crime
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lorenzo sanchez was sentenced to life in prison i know where to start today connie larson works as a social worker
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with families who've lived through traumatic events she's also become an advocate for better
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databases to track criminals like lorenzo sanchez who often slip through the cracks
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kelly joe is never far from her thoughts we talk about her constantly we tell stories about her you read her notes
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she is just a part of what we're doing now today without the forensics we had nothing
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this case was to live or die by the forensic evidence well it was absolutely critical we would
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have not had a case without that forensic evidence lorenzo sanchez would never have been
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convicted of the murder of kelly larson without it [Music] [Music] you