00:00:01
[THEME MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: December 2,
1988, Three Rivers, Michigan. A man returning home expects
to be welcomed by his fiancée.
00:00:19
Instead, he makes a
horrible discovery. He walked upstairs and saw
his fiancée, who he was planning
00:00:28
on marrying about six
months later, brutally, brutally murdered. NANCY GRACE: The victim is
19-year-old Cathy Swartz.
00:00:36
She's the mother of a
nine-month-old baby girl, and with Christmas
just weeks away,
00:00:41
she has everything to live for. She had a large
laceration to her throat, and she had also been strangled.
00:00:49
She had numerous
cuts on her hands from what you would think
would be defensive wounds.
00:00:55
NANCY GRACE: While
Cathy Swartz lies dead, her baby daughter is also in
the house, apparently unharmed.
00:01:03
Three Rivers
detectives immediately investigate her murder. They started looking at
people in the community
00:01:10
around similar age range. NANCY GRACE: In the
months that follow, investigators fail to find
Cathy's killer, and in the end,
00:01:19
the case goes cold. Who in their right mind
would do that to somebody? NANCY GRACE: This is the story
of the murder of a young mom,
00:01:29
Cathy Swartz, and
how advances in investigative genetic
genealogy blow open a seemingly
impossible case.
00:01:39
I'm Nancy Grace. This is "Bloodline Detectives." [THEME MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: Three Rivers,
Michigan, a town two hours
00:02:10
East of Chicago, one
hour from Grand Rapids. Three Rivers is a small,
rural, middle class town.
00:02:19
Not a lot happens here. NANCY GRACE: Just
before Christmas 1988, this friendly town shaken
by a terrible murder.
00:02:29
The victim 19-year-old
Cathy Swartz, murdered while her baby
daughter Courteney is
00:02:35
asleep in the same apartment. She had gotten up that
morning with Mike at about 5:30
00:02:41
before he left for work. She was supposed to go
do laundry that day, so he'd left some
money behind for her
00:02:47
to go to the laundromat. She went and laid back down. At about 3:30 in the afternoon,
Mike returns home from work.
00:02:55
Mike comes home, sees
that the front door is open. When he came
into his apartment,
00:03:01
he noticed some blood
near the entryway. He calls for Cathy,
doesn't get a response.
00:03:11
He comes upstairs and finds
her laying in the doorway of the master bedroom. He was shocked and he
ran out of the apartment
00:03:23
to a neighbor's,
and the neighbor reported that she called 911
because he just wasn't able to.
00:03:32
NANCY GRACE: Three
Rivers Police immediately respond to the emergency call. They go in and clear
the apartment to make sure
00:03:39
that there's nobody inside. They saw an excessive
amount of blood splattered on the
floors, walls, banister.
00:03:47
They went upstairs and verified
that Cathy was deceased. She didn't have a pulse.
00:03:55
NANCY GRACE: Then
police discover Cathy's nine-month-old baby
girl asleep in the room
00:04:00
next to where Mommy's
body is lying. At that time, they had
Mike Warner come and take
00:04:07
the child from the apartment. They immediately realized
that they needed a lot more
00:04:13
resources for what they had. And then they called for
the Michigan State police for the crime lab to come down.
00:04:21
An officer from Three Rivers
PD along with the lab techs collected the evidence there at
the scene and took photographs.
00:04:30
There was no forced entry. One of the theories they
started to work with is that Cathy might
have known the person.
00:04:42
There is reason to
believe that Cathy tried to fight off her attacker. Presumably, she tried
to get away from him,
00:04:49
calling a neighbor,
family member, or 911. My theory was that Cathy
was retreating upstairs
00:04:57
to call 911, but she was
also retreating upstairs instead of exiting the
apartment because her daughter
00:05:03
was upstairs in the bedroom. And she felt that if she
could make it to that phone,
00:05:08
she could call 911 and get help. Instead of running
out the door, she ran upstairs because
that's where I was.
00:05:19
They were putting a
waterbed in her room, and she couldn't close
the door because the hose
00:05:26
was in the door. And that's where he tried
to sexually assault her, and he cut her neck
from ear to ear.
00:05:40
There was a phone
sitting on Cathy's bed. There was blood on there. There was two fingerprints
found on the phone.
00:05:47
One was Cathy's
fingerprint and another was for an unknown subject that
was blood of an unknown person.
00:05:55
NANCY GRACE: Detectives find
more evidence in the bathroom. In the bathroom between
the toilet and shower,
00:06:04
there was a footprint. It was later determined that
it was in Cathy's blood. Anyone can look
at that and surmise
00:06:12
that the suspect
obviously attempted to clean up in some way. NANCY GRACE: Police
hoping a coroner's autopsy
00:06:21
will provide more clues. She had multiple stab wounds
on her head, midsection, legs.
00:06:31
She also had
numerous lacerations on her back and two lacerations
on both of her hands.
00:06:38
It looked like she
put up a fight. One of the things that came
up was Cathy's ex-boyfriend.
00:06:47
Mike said he'd been there. They had partied together there
at the apartment with Cathy.
00:06:52
He was interviewed
and could not account for some of his time that day. But they quickly
were able to determine
00:06:59
that the blood typing didn't
match, and he was released. In a small town like
this, where violent attacks
00:07:06
are extremely rare, police
are confident they'll quickly find the killer. We find out if that happens
next on "Bloodline Detectives."
00:07:16
[THEME MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: December
2, 1988, Three Rivers, Michigan, a small, rural
town where serious crime
00:07:32
is a very rare event. On this day however,
the town is stunned by the murder of 19-year-old
mom Cathy Swartz.
00:07:42
Her battered body, discovered
by her fiance when he gets home from work, her
nine-month-old baby girl
00:07:51
found sleeping in the
room next to Mommy's body. They were looking
at a lot of people.
00:07:59
They went through
the process one by one, interviewing, getting
fingerprints, and footprints
00:08:06
from these people. Unfortunately, a
lot of it was just based on speculation and rumor.
00:08:13
NANCY GRACE: Leads
are drying up. Detectives from Three
Rivers ask Michigan State police for a behavioral
profile of Cathy's killer.
00:08:24
The profiler
believed that it would be someone who was in
Cathy's social circle,
00:08:29
but not particularly
close to Cathy. It would be somebody
who has trouble making
00:08:34
relationships with women. It also stated that
there was a likelihood that after the homicide
that this person
00:08:43
would most likely try to
distance himself from the area. NANCY GRACE: Investigators
focus on the men
00:08:49
who are known to
Cathy, the victim. They followed up on a
lot of similar aged males
00:08:57
to Cathy that were in her social
circle, who either left town or joined the military right
after the murder happened.
00:09:06
NANCY GRACE: The investigation
drags on all through 1989. At the end of the
year, detectives
00:09:13
appeal again to the public
for any information. A year later, there was
a reward of $7,000 put out
00:09:22
by the Three Rivers
Police Department and calls for the
public to call in tips. NANCY GRACE: Years go by and
every single lead dries up.
00:09:35
Friends, family, and
police investigators are all concerned Cathy's
killer remains at large.
00:09:44
Everyone just described
her as energetic and fun and had her whole life ahead. She was going to get
married the next year.
00:09:51
Her father worked at the
local bowling alley, which, in the '80s, was the hangout.
00:10:01
She liked to draw. She was absolutely crazy
about her daughter Courteney. She just sounds like a
genuinely wonderful woman.
00:10:12
NANCY GRACE: Little
baby Courteney is cared for by Cathy's grieving family. They have a very difficult
decision to make,
00:10:20
when to tell Courteney
about her mother's murder and what exactly they should
say to this little girl.
00:10:29
When they first
told me anything, it was in first grade. They just told me that a
really bad man hurt my mom,
00:10:35
and that she was in heaven. It was just empty. Like, I knew that I had them,
and I knew that they loved me,
00:10:43
but that's not my mom. NANCY GRACE: Also
struggling to come to terms with the loss of Cathy
Swartz, her young partner Mike.
00:10:53
He can't get the
image of his murdered fiancee out of his mind. And I feel so bad
for him because I
00:11:02
could not imagine
seeing the love of my life, how it's described. He told his mom that
it breaks his heart
00:11:09
to look at me because
I remind him of Cathy, and I haven't really seen him. Detective
Smallcombe and I have
00:11:19
met with Mike several times. He admits that that
dramatically affected his life and that he still struggles
with it, still has
00:11:30
these memories that haunt him. NANCY GRACE: More years
pass and still no suspects,
00:11:36
but police do have the killer's
bloody fingerprint from the phone at the crime scene.
00:11:42
DNA technology is
still in its infancy, but some new developments
in fingerprint profiling
00:11:50
may offer hope to investigators. Cathy's case was
actually the fifth one to be entered into AFIS, which
is the Automated Fingerprint
00:12:01
Identification System that's
run nationwide by the FBI, and we really thought that when
we entered the prints into AFIS
00:12:09
we were going to get a hit
and be able to solve the case. There was a lot
of hope at that time
00:12:14
that we would get a match
through that system, but it never happened. In 2012, we were contacted
by the Michigan State Police
00:12:25
for CODIS believing that we
could take the DNA that we had from the scene and enter
that into the system,
00:12:31
and we'd get a hit. Members from our
forensic laboratory created that profile for
CODIS, entered it into CODIS,
00:12:39
but there was never any
hits as to a suspect. NANCY GRACE: Then, 2022, 34
years after Cathy Swartz's
00:12:50
murder, the new
chief of police there in Three Rivers,
Scott Boling, takes a fresh look at the old case.
00:13:00
I became chief. I sat down with my
officers, and we discussed cases that were
open, cases that were
00:13:06
important to the community, and
this case immediately came up. And at that time, Detective
Sergeant Smallcombe
00:13:16
started briefing me
on the case, and it instantly sparked an interest. And it was our one
unsolved homicide
00:13:26
that we had for the department. I think that we both
agreed we were at a point that if we didn't use
forensic genetic genealogy
00:13:39
that we had pretty much
exhausted all our other leads. NANCY GRACE: Investigative
genetic genealogy
00:13:48
is an exciting new
scientific technique that is yielding incredible
results with cold cases.
00:13:56
The Three Rivers
Police don't have much expertise in
the area, so they ask Michigan State police for help.
00:14:05
Our state police
and the state receive grants to examine old cold
cases that had some usable DNA.
00:14:15
This is a tricky
thing to do, right? Because in 1988, we really
don't know much about DNA.
00:14:22
We don't know how to
preserve it necessarily. When you go back
through these boxes,
00:14:29
it really takes a
team of people to go figure out what is
available with DNA and what's still testable.
00:14:38
NANCY GRACE: The
blood sample police believe comes from the killer is
given to Othram Labs in Texas.
00:14:44
Othram, a pioneer in
solving cold cases using genetic genealogy. We do basically a
four point inspection.
00:14:55
We look at how
much DNA is there. Is there degradation? Is there contamination? And is there a
mixture component?
00:15:01
And if we pass all
those four levels, then we accept the case
forward, and then we
00:15:06
move on to sequencing. If we don't pass those four
steps, then we stop there. We don't burn any
evidence or budgets,
00:15:11
and we let them
know, hey, you're going to want to wait for
technology to advance before we
00:15:15
try to consume this DNA. We received the evidence for
this case at the end of 2022,
00:15:21
and we were able to process
the bloody fingerprint left behind by the perpetrator.
00:15:27
I've seen law enforcement
personnel decide not to utilize the one last sample that they
have because the DNA technology
00:15:36
has not caught up yet. And if they use the DNA
that they have, that's it. They only have one more
test that can be done,
00:15:43
so they kind of put things
on hold for another few years until the DNA
technology can catch up.
00:15:50
We used a laboratory
test that we developed called forensic
grade genome sequencing.
00:15:54
It involves measuring hundreds
of thousands of markers throughout the genome, and
we built a computer file
00:16:00
that represented essentially the
DNA profile, all these markers for this unknown individual.
00:16:06
The bloody fingerprint
was found on the telephone in the bedroom. There was DNA there
from other people
00:16:10
as well, and so that's
what made this case a little bit more complicated. Plus, it was trace amounts.
00:16:17
We then did a
genealogical search. We do this in databases that
allow law enforcement search,
00:16:22
and involve the
matching of this profile to folks that have consented
for law enforcement,
00:16:27
and also share some
minimal genetic similarity with this person. We arrived at no
close relatives,
00:16:34
but a lot of distant relatives. And with these
distant relatives, we began to build a family tree.
00:16:40
When we get the information
from our genealogist team, from Carla and her team, and
they put it in a report form,
00:16:46
we get very excited to get
law enforcement on the phone and let them know that we have
a piece of information that can
00:16:51
help them solidify the case. It's a fantastic
breakthrough, but there is still so much work to be done.
00:17:00
We find out exactly what that is
next on "Bloodline Detectives." [THEME MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: Three
Rivers, Michigan, 2022.
00:17:15
There's been a breakthrough
in the 1988 murder of teen mom Cathy Swartz. Cathy found dead
in her apartment,
00:17:24
her nine-month-old baby
girl sleeping in the room next to her mom's body. Now, a new police
chief is applying
00:17:32
new forensic technology,
investigative genetic genealogy, to the cold case. The idea behind it is
that from a blood sample,
00:17:43
you kind of establish
a family tree. It helps narrow us
down to typically a family of people that
could be possibly suspects.
00:17:57
NANCY GRACE: January 2023,
that's just what happens. The team gets the news they've
waited many years to hear.
00:18:06
We had a match
that was between a third and fourth cousin level. We start looking for
information to identify
00:18:13
who that person
is in the database and extend those branches. We don't know until
we start building
00:18:18
the tree how that match actually
is related to the perpetrator. They finally got a hit,
and we've got an idea.
00:18:27
There's a family
that it came back to. They'd called Michigan State
Police, which was related
00:18:33
to my detective, and he
came into the office, and he's like, you'll
never guess what.
00:18:39
They had narrowed
it down to one specific family that
had lived in the Three Rivers area in 1988.
00:18:47
The brothers were Sonny, John,
Robert, and Barry, the children of John and Judith Waters.
00:18:54
There was one half brother, but
Othram had already ruled him out because they knew
it was a full sibling
00:19:01
of one of the four brothers. Before they
approached the brothers, detectives enlist the help
of criminology students
00:19:10
from Western
Michigan University. They asked the students
to digitize all the case
00:19:16
notes going back 30 long years. It was the biggest
file that we've ever gotten, about 10,000 pages.
00:19:24
And we got it dropped off,
and I got assigned to it. We had to go through and make
sense of it all, organize it.
00:19:31
We basically dumped them out
and covered the entire floor with the papers,
depending if it was
00:19:38
a police report, an interview. We made probably 50
different piles of papers. One box was just probably
15 different officers
00:19:48
or detectives names that we
had to sort through those. It was quite the process.
00:19:52
I think it took us
about two weeks just to sort through them. We scan it, digitize it,
organize it on the computer,
00:20:00
and then put it
into an OCR, which is the ocular recognition, so
that we can keyword search it.
00:20:05
After everything's scanned,
it's then put into that, and then that's the final copy
that we give to the detectives.
00:20:10
That was extremely helpful
to our investigation. That we literally have
boxes and boxes of files
00:20:20
and it helped the review
process of the investigators. When we had a
theory or we wanted
00:20:28
to investigate a path
that we could quickly access that information. NANCY GRACE:
Detectives now focus
00:20:35
on the four Waters brothers. At this time, we've got the
OCR file from Western Michigan
00:20:42
students, so we're able to
search them pretty easily and see when and where
they were interviewed back
00:20:48
during the original
investigation. We're immediately
able to rule out Barry because his DNA was
already in the system.
00:20:56
He had a lengthy
criminal history and had his CODIS entered
into several different state's
00:21:02
databases, so that kind
of took us back down to just three brothers now. Sonny Waters, John
Waters, and Robert Waters.
00:21:10
Two of the brothers
had been interviewed and were still living
here in Michigan locally.
00:21:16
Detective Sergeant
Smallcombe was assigned to make contact
and interview one, request a DNA sample.
00:21:24
I made contact with Sonny, who
lives in the Three Rivers area, to interview him
and he willingly
00:21:31
submitted a DNA sample. Because at this point,
we know that our suspect is one of these three brothers.
00:21:40
And then Detective
Sergeant Peterson from Michigan State
Police handled making contact with the other brother.
00:21:48
I then contacted John Waters. They were both very cooperative,
immediately consented
00:21:52
to their blood, which was
then sent up to genealogy and to CODIS at the same time.
00:21:58
And we were able to eliminate
both of those brothers. Othram did
another test, and it
00:22:05
was a kind of
another verification that it says it is definitely
one of the siblings.
00:22:12
So we knew beyond a reasonable
doubt that it was one, and we had just ruled out
three, and the last one
00:22:21
was Robert Waters, currently
living in South Carolina. NANCY GRACE:
Detectives have a lot
00:22:27
of questions for Robert Waters. They wonder how he managed to
evade police so many years.
00:22:34
The Waters family
grew up in Flowerfield just outside of Three Rivers. He never got more
than a traffic ticket,
00:22:42
which is probably why
he's escaped notice for after all of these years. NANCY GRACE: And now
detectives look back
00:22:49
at those recently digitized
files from the students at Western Michigan University.
00:22:56
Is there a mention
of Robert Waters? He was only
mentioned one time, and that was on a list of people
that had been interviewed.
00:23:06
And next to his name,
it said that he had moved to Arizona in September. He seemed like a two bit
player in this whole story.
00:23:15
He left Michigan
right after her death. I think that Cathy
knew Robert Waters. His brother John had
been interviewed.
00:23:26
John actually worked with
Cathy at a local grocery store. She wouldn't have let someone
in that she didn't know.
00:23:36
NANCY GRACE: Police
are satisfied they've got a prime suspect. They start to build
a case against Robert
00:23:42
Waters, a case strong enough
to secure a conviction. Robert Waters was
in South Carolina,
00:23:50
had been for years and years. So we immediately started
to come up with logistically
00:23:56
how are we going to now continue
this investigation there? Our plan was that we
wanted to go down there,
00:24:04
we wanted to interview
him, and then we wanted to get a sample of
his DNA, his fingerprints,
00:24:13
and get his footprint. Rather than trying to
surreptitiously get DNA from him in another
state, we were just going
00:24:23
to do the direct approach. So we reached out to detectives
in Beaufort, South Carolina,
00:24:30
to their police department
to ask them for help. Once we came up
with the initial plan,
00:24:37
we met with the prosecutor. We discussed the case. Started putting things together,
working on an affidavit.
00:24:46
Through Beaufort, we
received a search warrant for Robert Waters'
DNA, his fingerprints,
00:24:53
and his footprints through
the local courts there. And once we got that
fingerprint match,
00:24:59
that we would submit request to
the prosecutor to get an arrest warrant to arrest him on that.
00:25:07
And then we would also submit
the footprint and the DNA, which would take a little
bit longer to match.
00:25:16
Investigators travel all
the way to South Carolina to confront the prime suspect.
00:25:21
Next on "Bloodline Detectives,"
how will Robert Waters react when he's questioned
about a brutal murder
00:25:28
committed in 1988? [THEME MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: Three
Rivers, Michigan. Detectives use investigative
genetic genealogy
00:25:45
to ID a suspect in the murder
of a teen girl, Cathy Swartz, back in 1988. The suspects name,
Robert Waters.
00:25:56
He was also 19 at the
time of the murder. Detectives travel
to South Carolina to face the murder suspect.
00:26:07
We flew down to
South Carolina, made contact with the local
police department down there,
00:26:12
Beaufort, and they
made arrangements to bring additional
personnel and give us any resources that we needed.
00:26:21
Robert was a plumber, so
most likely during the week, he would be out
doing plumbing jobs.
00:26:28
We were afraid that if we tried
to approach him on a Monday through Friday, he would
be too busy doing jobs
00:26:33
to come in and speak with us. So we decided to try and
make contact with him on a Sunday thinking that
would be a day off for him.
00:26:43
On April 30th, myself and
Detective Sergeant Smallcombe go out and wait
near the residence
00:26:49
while a surveillance is
watching Robert's residence. We saw him come
out of his house.
00:26:54
Detective Smallcombe
and Detective Peterson said that, hey, he's
just walked out of his house.
00:27:00
You guys want to make
contact with him? And at that time, they made
contact with him and asked him,
00:27:06
hey, we're following up
on a cold case we have. We're just trying
to rule people out.
00:27:13
Do you mind coming
down to the station and talking to us for a while? He immediately agreed.
00:27:19
Said that he had just a
couple of things to do and that he would come right
down to the police department
00:27:23
and speak with us. But then he never showed up. The two brothers that
live here in Michigan
00:27:27
still talk, so I'm sure after
we contacted the first brother and then we contacted
the second brother,
00:27:34
they probably called
the third brother to let him know that,
hey, law enforcement has
00:27:39
been contacting us. So at that point, I put
a call in to Mr. Roberts to see just if
there was a hold up,
00:27:46
and it went right to voicemail. Another 20 to 30 minutes later,
I placed another phone call,
00:27:51
Robert answered the phone. And I asked him just said,
hey, we're still here. Just wondering if
you were coming down.
00:27:56
What was going on. He asked, explain to me again
what are you guys here for? So I explained to him that we
were reopening a case in Three
00:28:06
Rivers, Michigan, from 1988. It was a homicide case, and
he stated that he didn't feel
00:28:11
it would be appropriate for
him to come down and talk to us without his attorney.
00:28:16
Then I kind of felt
like the game was up. He knew why we were here. NANCY GRACE: Robert
Waters is clearly
00:28:23
reluctant to speak to cops. They're concerned about
what he may do next. If he's talking
about attorneys
00:28:31
and not coming down
now, I figured, well, now we've got
a problem because now Robert's in his house.
00:28:36
He's not going to consensually
come down and talk to us, so I need to focus
more on how I get
00:28:41
him peacefully out of
that house and serve these search warrants. So we kind of talk
back and forth,
00:28:46
and he said he could
come in on the following week with his attorney. And I advised him
that, you know,
00:28:51
we're not going to be here. We don't have that kind of time. We're only going to be
here for a couple of days.
00:28:55
And I then told
him, hey, why don't you give your lawyer a call. Talk to him, give him my
cell phone number, and let me
00:29:01
know what you guys find out. So we did. We waited for a few minutes,
and a few minutes later,
00:29:04
I got a call from his attorney. And so we explained to the
attorney that we did in fact
00:29:09
have search warrants for
his DNA, his fingerprints, and his footprints, and
we'd rather he consensually
00:29:14
come in and submit to that
versus us executing the warrant and kicking his door in and
possibly somebody gets hurt.
00:29:23
My goal at this point
is to get those things as safely as I can. He agreed, and then he went
to work talking with Robert
00:29:31
so that he could come in and
meet with us consensually so that we could serve
those search warrants.
00:29:36
So the end result was
his attorney told us that we were not allowed to ask
any questions of Mr. Waters,
00:29:42
but that he would
arrange for him to surrender to us for the
search warrant collection.
00:29:47
We showed up at his house,
and he willingly came out. He was transported back by
the Beaufort Police Department
00:29:55
to get his fingerprints taken. When he came in,
we advised him, hey, we have search warrants for
your fingerprints and your DNA,
00:30:02
and kind of explained
to him the process. That at the PD there,
there was no live scan
00:30:08
digitized fingerprinting
system, so we had to roll the prints in ink. So we had to do ink and
paper, and then scan them in,
00:30:15
and email them back to Michigan,
where we had two fingerprint examiners from the Michigan
State police on standby
00:30:22
to compare Mr. Waters
prints to the prints found at the crime scene. The problem we had was trying
to get those fingerprints,
00:30:32
which was our first
best piece of evidence that we could get as
quickly as possible,
00:30:37
verified to kind of
bolster that probable cause that he committed this murder. It took numerous attempts at
different parts of his fingers
00:30:48
to be able to get the
portion of the fingerprint that we needed to
make that analysis.
00:30:53
So in between sending
those prints off and the lab techs
examining those, that Detective Peterson just
engaged in small talk with him.
00:31:05
I sat and talked with
Robert for over five hours about everything but that case.
00:31:12
Everything from
our kids and family to plumbing to
remodeling houses. Anything you could possibly
think of, we talked about,
00:31:19
and he had no hesitation
about any of it. No concerns about
the length of time. Five hours to someone
you don't know
00:31:26
is a considerable
amount of time. He actually seemed very calm,
very pleasant, very engaging,
00:31:34
which kind of
surprised all of us. NANCY GRACE: Later that
afternoon, the detective team
00:31:42
in South Carolina gets
the call from fingerprint technicians in Michigan,
and it's the news
00:31:47
they've been waiting for. Detective Sergeant Tom Flowers
from Michigan State Police
00:31:52
forensic laboratory in Grand
Rapids finally called and said, hey, we've got enough.
00:31:56
We can say now that we have
made an identification. That his fingerprints match the
bloody fingerprint on the phone
00:32:02
found in Cathy's bedroom. I advised Detective Sergeant
Smallcombe that I had just
00:32:06
gotten the call
from the laboratory and, yep, the
fingerprint matches. I immediately called our
prosecuting attorney here
00:32:13
in Saint Joe County and advised
him the fingerprint matched, and then I sent off our
affidavit of probable cause
00:32:21
to the prosecutor. He then wrote up a
complaint and authorized it, and we sent that
to the magistrate.
00:32:29
The magistrate then reviewed
it and issued a warrant for the arrest of Robert Waters
for the murder of Cathy Swartz.
00:32:37
I walked in and Mr. Waters was
sitting in the interview room there at the Beaufort
Police Department,
00:32:42
and we'd been talking to
him in just friendly chatter for the last five hours. And I advised him,
I said, Mr. Waters,
00:32:50
do you remember
those fingerprints that we took from you earlier? Those matched to
the crime scene.
00:32:55
You are under arrest for
the murder of Cathy Swartz. There was very little
emotion in his response,
00:33:04
and I think that's what
really struck all of us. He knew it was coming. If you're an innocent man and
someone comes in and tells you
00:33:13
that you're under arrest
for the murder of someone that you didn't murder, that's
going to raise your blood
00:33:18
level a little bit, I think. Most people, it's going
to be contentious. So to see him just
say, OK, and literally
00:33:25
there's no emotional
change with him, I think says a lot
about his guilt. The Bloodline Detectives
are convinced they've
00:33:34
caught Cathy Swartz's killer. Now they want to know exactly
what happened in her apartment
00:33:41
34 years ago. That's next. [THEME MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: Three
Rivers, Michigan, 2023.
00:33:56
Cathy Swartz's
killer can finally be brought to justice
34 years and two months after he murdered her.
00:34:04
One of the first people to hear
the news, the victim's daughter Courteney. As a baby, Courteney is
found asleep in the room
00:34:13
next to her mom's dead body. Courteney was happy that
we've identified a suspect.
00:34:26
I always wondered. Like, I wonder if they're
still working on my mom's case. It's always in the
back of your mind,
00:34:33
but to know that
they actually were, it feels good to know that
they actually cared enough.
00:34:41
Because it was 35 years. NANCY GRACE: Detectives
cannot take Waters directly to Three Rivers, Michigan.
00:34:49
He's in a different
state, South Carolina, and there's the formality
of extraditing him from one
00:34:56
jurisdiction to another. We served him the
warrant that day, and then the officers from
the Beaufort Police Department
00:35:05
then transported him to the
local jail there in Beaufort. NANCY GRACE: In Three Rivers,
the community breathed
00:35:12
a collective sigh of relief. There was this
looming fear that there may be a murderer around us.
00:35:22
Who could have done that? Are they still living here? Is it my neighbor? Is it somebody that I
pass in the grocery store?
00:35:30
One of the things that I was
told by Cathy's brother David was now I at least
know that I'm not
00:35:37
going to walk through
the grocery store and wonder if one
of these people was the person that
killed my sister.
00:35:43
NANCY GRACE: So what
motivated Robert Waters to murder Cathy Swartz? I think that we all have an
idea of what a murderer is,
00:35:54
and he just is not something
that would come to mind. The question I think
everybody wants to know, why?
00:36:02
Why did he do it? He never showed any
remorse for the murder. NANCY GRACE: In the days
following the arrest,
00:36:08
new information comes to light. It wasn't until
after the arrest that we made contact with Mike,
and he stated that he knew
00:36:20
him from elementary school. And that Robert
Waters had actually stopped by his apartment out of
the blue several weeks earlier.
00:36:33
He had been to the house
at least once before. I believe it may have been
more than that for Cathy
00:36:38
to just open the door to him. I just think a
teenage boy thought he was going to
get lucky, and he
00:36:51
didn't, and my mom fought back,
and it led to him killing her. Once the arrest was made,
Robert was taken to the jail.
00:37:10
The following day, he
went through a hearing for extradition back to Michigan. He waived that, so he
would be extradited back
00:37:16
to Michigan as
soon as they could make arrangements for travel. We all flew back,
came back and started
00:37:23
putting things in order
with all the documentation. The following Saturday,
May 6th, at about 6:45
00:37:31
in the morning, I
received a phone call from Investigator
Nicole Anderson from Beaufort City
Police Department.
00:37:38
I knew something must be wrong. You know, that
hour on a Saturday, and she advised me that
she had just been contacted
00:37:45
by SLED, which is their
investigative division in South Carolina. I get a text from
Detective Peterson telling me
00:37:54
that Waters was found
dead in his jail cell in Beaufort, South Carolina. The suicide of
the man in custody,
00:38:04
the man believed to be the
killer of Cathy Swartz, is a shocking development. Detectives now need to tell
Cathy's daughter Courteney.
00:38:14
I got hold of my
detective and we both agreed that, hey, we're going to
need to let her know in person.
00:38:23
They came to my house. It was Saturday,
and I knew it wasn't good because it was Saturday.
00:38:28
And they told me that
he killed himself. And I don't believe that he
deserves to be in heaven.
00:38:35
I don't think he
deserves to be in hell. I don't think he
deserves to be anywhere.
00:38:40
I feel like he needs to be
in limbo where I am with all these questions, everything.
00:38:47
Like, he deserves
to be where I am. When someone does
that, they kind of take any of those
possibilities of hearing
00:38:53
any of those pieces of why. A lot of times we
solve the homicides, and we're able to produce enough
evidence to put people in jail,
00:39:00
but we don't know the why. Because that's something
that they hold, and that's going to be that
way with this case.
00:39:05
We're never really
going to know why. NANCY GRACE: Robert Walters
unexpected death behind bars
00:39:11
has a ripple effect, which goes
way beyond his prison cell. I think there's a lot
of collateral damage.
00:39:19
I think it affected a lot
of people in the community. There was times that
there was probably
00:39:24
mothers afraid to let their
children outside for a while. NANCY GRACE: Now police
can say with certainty they
00:39:32
know who killed Cathy
Swartz and a community can hopefully find . Peace I have a daughter the
same age as Cathy was.
00:39:45
I think it definitely
impacted me. I don't think anybody
deserves to die that way.
00:39:53
I don't think it's fair that
they took this beautiful girl away from the family.
00:40:00
Just be involved in
it and be asked to help with it was huge for me. NANCY GRACE: For Cathy's
daughter Courteney
00:40:07
so many questions will
always remain unanswered. I know her
grandparents stepped
00:40:14
in and raised her as their own. It still leaves that question,
you know, who is my mom?
00:40:19
What was she like? Why isn't she here? I want to know like,
her favorite color. What kind of music
she listened to.
00:40:30
Everything. NANCY GRACE: As tragic as the
murder of Cathy Swartz is, it highlights the
incredible power
00:40:42
of investigative
genetic genealogy. It's a forensic science that
is empowering law enforcement
00:40:48
and victims to
find at least some of the answers that were
thought unattainable just a few years earlier.
00:40:58
I'm Nancy Grace. Thanks for being with us here
on "Bloodline Detectives." [THEME MUSIC]