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April 25 1980 the body of a young woman discovered in an apartment in Rosemount California there was blood everywhere
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she had a water bed so coupled with the blood and the injuries it was a very very very traumatizing scene the female
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victim has been raped and stabbed to death I can't comprehend how anyone would stab somebody repeatedly it just I
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don't know what goes through their minds the investigation into this brutal murder lasts over 40 years until
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revolutionary forensic science comes into play it is by far the greatest advancement in crime solving In Our
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Lifetime it's what finally solved it it made it possible when Cold Case detectives
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exhaust all their other leads they often turn to new groundbreaking technology investigative genetic genealogy I'm
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Nancy Grace this is bloodline Detectives [Music] [Applause] [Music] April 24 1980 Robin Brooks settling into
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her new life she's just moved to California's state capital all the way from the East
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Coast Robin Brooks was a 20-year-old young lady who had grown up in New York and had recently moved out to Northern
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California to be closer to her sister she was 20 years old and just ready to start a new chapter in her
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life she was close to her sister Maria and she was out here to start a new life so she found a job she's working at a
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doughnut shop and she's just trying to do her very best in the world she was vibrant happy she was
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loving she was more daring than me adventurous we hung out a lot we did spend a lot of time together she loved
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photography we were just sisters together the extremely close bond between the two sisters is soon
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shattered on April 24th 1980 Robin went went to work at the donut time donut shop she got off work around midnight
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that night and she had plans to go to a party with a few of her friends that evening then the following day she had
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plans to meet up with a friend of hers to go swimming but the friend was surprised that her friend robin never
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showed up that day she had friends that came to visit her at her apartment cuz she was
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supposed to go swimming go somewhere with with them and there was no answer at the door they went to the dut shop
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she wasn't there and so they knocked again later on in the day no answer but
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the turning point was at about 4:30 she was supposed to show up to work at 4:00 and didn't show up for work so her
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friends who actually worked at the dut shop also went to her apartment and no answer still door was locked so they
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kicked in the door and found her stabbed to death in her water bed there was blood every everywhere she
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had a water bed so coupled with the blood and the injuries it was a very very traumatizing
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scene when First Responders arrived on scene their first responsibility is going to be to preserve the crime scene
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make sure no one else can enter or leave make sure that photographs are taken make sure that any evidence that might
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be there whether it be evidence on the body around the body is collected this was a violent scene she had been
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brutally stabbed to death she was found faed down in her water bed she had been stabbed through the heart she had been
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bound clearly she had put up a struggle and she had tried to save her own life and the killer overtook her and
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ultimately killed her we surmised that this suspect probably on purpose slashed the water
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bed so that Robin's body would be underwater when she was found eventually I don't know if that was because she was
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sexually assaulted also to try and conceal the fact that that he had raped her or not but um her sweater that was
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she was seen in at work that night was found there in the in the water bed the killer uh hurt himself obviously Robin
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fought hard to save her own life she was not successful but what she was successful in was the fact that the
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killer left his own bullet behind when I was that age I was the flight I would have run you know but my sister
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was always even though she was younger she was the fighter I think she fought back as much as she
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could the police were able to gather a lot of key evidence inside the apartment one of which was some blood across the
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walls as well as near the door the blood seemed kind of cast off and I think at the time the investigator
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thought well the suspect stabbed her you know five times if she was fighting maybe he stabbed himself or cut himself
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during the assault there were several drops of that blood throughout the apartment but we knew it wasn't Robin's
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blood and anybody else that had been in the apartment we either got their fingerprints or their blood to see if we
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could compare it investigators were able to uncover a few sets of fingerprints on Robin's
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window this was crucial for the investigation because it suggested that the window was how the perpetrator had
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got inside the apartment but when they tested the fingerprints to see who they belong to
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they unfortunately weren't able to get a match there was blood at the scene smears there was fingerprints there was
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semen on the body all of those things even though it was 1980 had the potential to identify who Robins killer
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was the first instinct was probably that it was somebody that Robin knew she was 20
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years old but she was young and having a lot of friends but she wouldn't invite a
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stranger into her apartment um all her friends and family said that so you know the thought was maybe it's somebody she
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knew maybe an ex-boyfriend maybe somebody that she wanted to date her and she didn't so that was what they focused
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on originally in in the investigation investigators may not have a prime suspect but they do have one
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promising piece of evidence blood from the man who may be Robin Brooks's killer
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that's next on bloodline [Music] detectives April 25 1980 the body of a young woman discovered in an apartment
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on the outskirts of Sacramento California the victim 20-year-old Robin Brooks Robin recently moved all the way
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from New York to the West Coast she is found brutally bound raped and stabbed multiple times detectives now must break
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the news to her sister Maria three police officers came in and then I thought that she' been hit by a
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car cuz she had a 10speed so when they said she was deceased but that wasn't what it was so later I don't
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think they even shared so I know we needed to call my mother and then it was awful actually it
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was like a nightmare an autopsy is conducted investigators hope the coroner will
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discover more about Robin Brooks's last moments alive Robin had been restraint her her
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hands had been restrained and so had her legs um the restraints were gone but the
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markings were still there um we believe that all of the assault as far as the murder itself
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happened on the water bed beddings and towels that would have been either in her bathroom or in her bedroom were gone
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so that was interesting why would somebody take that that we're talking 1980 this isn't the the age of
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DNA so it was interesting that the suspect take had taken the items with him the autopsy revealed a couple key
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details about what happened to Robin the first thing was that she had been sexually assaulted and the second was
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that she had been stabbed approximately five times one of the stab wounds had gone through her heart and the medical
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examiner was also able to determine that she had died sometime around 2:30 in the
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morning she didn't really have identifiable defensive wounds her family says she would have put up a fight which
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is why I believe she was restrained by the suspect and then it would have been very hard for somebody her size to uh
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fight this person off I remember the wake I remember the day of the funeral just like Snippets because you I
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think your mind protects you everyone learns to their own Survival Mode like how they're going to
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deal with it some it's fight or flight some are everybody kind of goes into their own it's like a survival mode
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because it's so horrendous detectives have blood evidence left at the crime scene by the
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suspect but it doesn't really help them in 1980 DNA technology is still in its
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infancy and a match to the Killer is way Out Of Reach investigators instead rely
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upon traditional police methods they go door too looking for information that could
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help unfortunately at that time nobody knew was aware that she had gone to this party that would have been another
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person to talk to obviously but I think at the time when she was killed the young people that were at the party I
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think were scared to say they were at a party so they certainly didn't want to
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come forward with any information about Robin at that time just being naive kids who was in her sphere of influence
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who were her friends who were her potential enemies was there anybody that was perhaps sexually interested in her
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that she wasn't interested in so all of those things would have been on the table for law enforcement and that would
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have been what they were immediately looking at months go by the case investigation stalls and then goes cold
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but never forgotten fast forward more than two decades advances in DNA technology offer new
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hope that the killer of Robin Brooks could be identified the blood that was found on
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the walls in the victim's apartment was analyzed for DNA a male DNA profile was
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obtained and that was uploaded into the state and National codus databases in 20 2 is when we started the
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Cold Case unit in Sacramento that's when we went around and started making our
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list of all these unsolved murders or unsolved rapes where we had DNA Robin's
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case was right there at the top and we knew that we had DNA from the bad guy and so we sent that to our crime lab the
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Sacramento da crime lab they developed a DNA profile that DNA profile of the killer was put into the DNA data bank
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codus and ultimately there were no matches they got the approval and then they put it in and then I'll never
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forget like it was I don't know if it was Christmas Eve or the day before Christmas Eve I get a call and I was
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like wow maybe you get excited right you think wow and then the whoever called me
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at that point left a message and said that there wasn't a match that was devastating at that
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point it is a heartbreaking development the codus DNA profile is unique to the suspect but it lacks one crucial element
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a name it's frustrating because that is you know one of the best tools that law
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enforcement has been given is this DNA Data Bank but it's not always perfect
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it's probably solves maybe 30 to 40% of crimes that have DNA but it's not going
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to solve all of them DNA testing was very beneficial for law enforcement because DNA testing
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allowed investigators to eliminate many possible Suspects and in Robin's case DNA eliminated
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nearly 50 people in 2004 investigators received information that the DNA collected at
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Robin's crime scene was also linked to another assault on a young female that
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happened just 3 weeks before the discovery of a second attack reinvigorates the investigation but
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still detectives cannot link the suspect's DNA to a name Will new forensic science finally help catch a
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killer we find out next on bloodline [Music] detectives Sacramento California over 20
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years since the 1980 stabbing murder and sex assault of 20-year-old Rob Robin Brooks in her own apartment at the crime
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scene police collect blood evidence blood evidence belonging to the killer but they cannot find a DNA match the
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case goes cold but Robin's family becomes actively involved in making sure she's not
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forgotten Robin's murder was devastating for the family and they were willing to
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do anything and everything they could to get get some answers in this case and the family decided to take matters into
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their own hands and offer a $110,000 reward for any information in the case when I was the supervisor of the
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sexual assault unit we had a cold case team and I was in charge of that and basically I I went through our cold
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cases at that time we probably had over 300 and just reviewed those cases to see
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what kind of evidence do we have which ones would be probative for maybe DNA or or
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fingerprints and you know assign those to the team so we could maybe make some progress on those cases so there were
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quite a few that I read but the robin Brooks case was kind of near and dear to my
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heart I think we just kept in contact and I believed in her like I just believed in her there was and never in
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my heart once DNA came out I never thought anything but the case could be solved the co case team has the
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suspect's DNA profile but no name to go with it the profile doesn't match anyone
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in the national law enforcement database codus but then a breakthrough 2017 investigators focus on a new DNA
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technique called phenotyping in 2017 I reached out to to parabon who was uh this kind of a new
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technique of using genetic material for uh coming up with a profile different than the one that's in codus and so
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because we had waited so long to try and solve this case we thought this was a perfect case to try
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that the sheriff's office in Sacramento sent the DNA off to parabon for phenotyping which would then give
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physical characteristics they really they had no idea they didn't know if the
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perpetrator was white black Hispanic whatever and ultimately that proved very helpful to law enforcement because it
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identified the perpetrator as an African-American male approximate age in his late
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20s it was clear you know where his Heritage came from and that that's who we were looking for and it's it's quite
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a tool because it's very reliable so you're probably not going to be spending
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a lot of time looking at say an Asian suspect or whatever because you now have this great piece of evidence evence
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that's giving you a lot of information investigators hoping the combination of a physical image and a
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DNA profile will lead them to Robin's killer well the first thing I did was I
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showed it to Maria Robin's sister to see if she recognized the guy at all because
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um I thought she knew most of her friends and and the people that she hung around with um but Maria did not
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recognize the composite of of anybody that she knew I was just in shock because I
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remember Mickey called me and I was at work she said if you have time you know I'm going to send you something and she
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sent it via the text and I was kind of just shocked because I don't think they
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were looking like they were looking with everybody she knew and but I don't think
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they were looking at just a random person having the case been so old I think it was hard to generate a picture
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of what somebody looks like 40 years later law enforcement put it out to the public but it did not generate any
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substantial leads I got a lot of leads on different people um but as it you know as we investigated that person or
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that lead um we would try to find ways to eliminate them or include them as a potential suspect and at that time I
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probably eliminated after that media went out probably 15 additional subjects it's frustrating it's frustrating for
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the families I mean I was in touch with Maria quite a bit cuz she knew we were doing this type of investigation and I
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could tell that many times when we thought we were close and we weren't it it was it was frustrating for her to I
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was like I'm never bothering with this again I'm just you know you go through
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those stages where I'm done I'm done but you you keep chipping away Mickey was
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unbelievable she just was relentless DNA phenotyping is a huge help it adds a piece to the
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investigative puzzle but detectives still need more now they turn to an exciting new technique investigative
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genetic genealogy this remarkable technology has already blown open several seemingly impossible cold cases
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including the infamous California's Golden State killer case in the back of my mind I was sitting there thinking
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well if this works on the GSK then we're going to do this case this case this
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case and this case and Robin Brook's case was right there on the top of the list as well I've worked with her since
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2001 and she has always been uh on the Forefront of what's new and where are we
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going with our investigations with the science and um when we talked about this case she said that's it's a perfect case
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to try this forensic investigative genetic gentic genealogy is perhaps one of the
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most advanced tools of identifying somebody through genetic genealogy meaning that we take the DNA from the
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crime scene or from the perpetrator you send it to a laboratory for doing this very sophisticated kind of testing
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called snip testing which stands for single nucleotide polymorphism and what you're doing is you're looking at
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700,000 to a million places on the DNA that gives you so many more data points that then you can then take that profile
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put it into genealogy site such as Jed match or family tree and build family trees and find relatives of your
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perpetrator or if you're trying to identify a missing person you can find relatives of that Jane do or John do it
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is by far the greatest advancement in crime solving In Our Lifetime you're using a different type of profile you're
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using you know the forensic genetic genealogy profile which they call a snip and you're using that to find relatives
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of your suspect and that will help you narrow down maybe who your suspect is detectives then contact Jean by Jean a
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genetic testing company based in Houston Texas when we were first contacted about
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the robin Brooks case we do an initial consultation we were called by law enforcement they said we have a
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potential case we think would be a good candidate for forensic genetic genealogy
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and we asked them questions questions about what is the case type we only accept certain cases uh certain types of
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cases so it has to be sexual assault homicide unidentified remains or abductions and obviously this this case
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checked off two of those boxes uh we asked about the DNA what kind of evidence they have and they did have DNA
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evidence that was of suitable quantity and quality for microarray testing microarray testing looks at individual
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positions in your DNA it doesn't look at the entire sequence it's not trying to
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get the entire sequence information it's like if you were reading a book but
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instead of reading the sentence the complete sentences you're looking at every 10th word so it turns into a
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snapshot of the book that's essentially what micro testing is doing with your
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DNA sequence in this case there's a risk the blood evidence may be contaminated whenever you have DNA
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mixing with something else it can cause problems in this case it was mixed with the water from the water bed and that
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can cause problems for multiple reasons first it can dilute the DNA which means instead of having a certain amount you
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have much less of it it's very watered down second because a water bed you use
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stabilizers or you know know add additives that you put into the water um any of those chemicals can have an
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effect on the DNA it's it it's possible that it could degrade the DNA it could
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break it down it could make it unstable Dr Connie Borman and her team determine the sample is indeed
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viable you do have to be patient and all these cases that we've done we've never
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gotten a very very close match so there's a lot of investigating and digging to figure out who your suspect
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is with the family members that you might have I have some great people over at the district attorney's office that
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are are amazing at this and they help with our cases and this case um took about 2 years once we uh got the snip
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profile to determine who our suspect was and we finally did bloodline detectives are so close to
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identifying Robin Brooks's killer but can they ever find him and can he be brought to Justice that's
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[Music] next 2020 bloodline detectives make a breakthrough in the 1980 murder of
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20-year-old Robin Brooks Sacramento California a DNA sample from blood left at the scene by the prime suspect and
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the sign of investigative genetic genealogy finally give investigators a name when the DNA was analized law
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enforcement came across the name of Philip Lee Wilson this seemed to fit for us so then
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you start investigating their life you see if they've been involved in any criminal activity uh and that was one of
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the first things that we found was that he did have a criminal record but we could never figure out where he was
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living at the time of Robin's murder but when we found one of his Ex-Wives she
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had the address of the same apartment complex and they were married at the time and he was living there which just
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made us know we had the right guy detectives are positive they've identified Robin Brooks's killer but
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they still need one more piece of Hard Evidence to link him to her brutal murder we need to get DNA to confirm
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that most of the time if this is your suspect you're not going to want to go
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ask them for it cuz they're probably not going to give it to you so we do a ctitious collection normally it has to
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be a discarded item that the suspect has either touched or drank from and you test that against the profile that you
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have in codus from your blood at the scene so we did that and it matched the timing of the suspect's
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arrest is especially meaningful for investigators and for Robin Brooks's family we identified Philip Lee Wilson
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as our suspect the week before the 40th anniversary of Robbin being murdered and
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I wanted to arrest him on either the day before or that day so I did not call and
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let the um Family know until we actually had him in custody so we got him on the
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23rd of April 2020 and then once he was on his way to jail um I called Maria to give her the
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news I've been in class all day I was taking some classes um then I got out and I know Mickey had called and I was
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like tired I was like oh but I got to call her back so I called her back and then she said she was driving in her car
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I think she pulled over and she had shared they she didn't want to share anything with me until they double
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double tested or whatever they did to make sure they absolutely had the right person so I think they ran they must
00:28:00
have got a hit and then they got his DNA to just confirm it and then she had shared that with me was kind of like
00:28:06
almost in shock I was um it's almost unbelievable you know 40 years it's just
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unbelievable I mean 40 years to the day that we identify this guy and arrest him
00:28:23
I think she was in shock and unfortunately I would love to have done that in person but but she lived out of
00:28:28
state so I had to call her on the phone but I was very emotional and she just seemed in shock and then we talked a
00:28:35
little later and she was emotional she just was in such shock that she just couldn't even have those emotions that I
00:28:42
know she continues to have now about the relief you don't get the sense of relief
00:28:49
right away you um like I said it's almost unbelievable um I think how you feels then you start
00:29:02
going inside and remembering you know just what she must have went through once law enforcement had
00:29:14
identified Philip Lee Wilson in Robin's case they made the arrest in April 2022 he was arrested he was booked and
00:29:25
his mug shot was made public why am I here do you recognize that picture no is that is that the doughnut girl
00:29:42
that you dated no no the reason I know is because her chest is not big enough okay what does that mean girl had a
00:29:51
large breast oh yeah okay okay my my memory is really foggy but uh I think you've done really good
00:29:59
with your memory especially your the what's happened in many years ago you've
00:30:04
done really well well like I said I have my long-term memory is really good yeah
00:30:10
we have the search warrant we want to get your fingerprints right and we're going to get your DNA and and the reason
00:30:17
you came up is because we're Cold Case detectives right so we started looking
00:30:20
at this old case and we and and we found that La Riviera report where you were stopped for looking like the guy that
00:30:28
raped that woman right right and you were interviewed by the cops right right that was 3 weeks before
00:30:35
this we were done with the interview and we also did major case prints and what those are is not just the the pads of
00:30:43
your fingers but all parts of your hand because we had fingerprints on our um window sill that were never identified
00:30:51
and I realized that they were probably the suspect hanging on as he went out the
00:30:56
window so we got major case prints so they they did that part too before he went to jail and a week later those were
00:31:03
compared to the prints on the window sill and they matched when Mr Wilson was first
00:31:08
interviewed by law enforcement he completely denied any knowledge of Robin what I find interesting about many of
00:31:15
these cases now when you reopen them and you identify them with this genealogy tool some of them just live right there
00:31:22
I mean this is another example of I would call a line of sight murder meaning that he lived right in the same
00:31:28
complex that was something investigators once his name came up fairly quickly figured out that he lived right in that
00:31:34
complex but he had his own record he had been I think to prison at some point for
00:31:39
a short stint in Texas for some type of drug stuff he had some other types of crimes on his background but clearly
00:31:45
this was the most horrific of all of them at this point Philip Lee Wilson was early 7s when we arrested him um so if
00:31:53
convicted he was going to spend the rest of his life in prison after over 40 years investigators arrest
00:32:01
Philip Lee Wilson for the 1980 rape and murder of Robin Brooks when Wilson's
00:32:09
trial commences he comes up with an explosive defense that's next on bloodline
00:32:19
[Music] detectives Sacramento California March 2022 the trial of Philip Lee Wilson for
00:32:33
the 1980 rape and murder of Robin Brooks begins prosecutors have incredibly strong DNA evidence linking Wilson to
00:32:44
Robins homicide but Wilson goes to extraordinary links to deny any involvement he had a somewhat of a
00:32:54
Cavalier attitude that he just had sex with her and somebody else killed her I think it's very difficult for any
00:33:01
family it's not just the fact that their sister was killed in a very brutal manner raped in a very brutal manner but
00:33:09
it's the fact that this person now gets up and perpetuates these lies in front
00:33:14
of a jury in an effort to get out from underneath the crimes he committed what it does is it just seeing
00:33:22
him just really brings how she must have suffered like my feelings towards him I he can't take up
00:33:31
that room in my heart not only does Philip Le Wilson refused to admit guilt his defense
00:33:39
claims that the boyfriend of Robin's sister Maria is the real killer of course that's not true but imagine how
00:33:48
Robin's family feels hearing that and that was horrible it was like that was just one more part
00:34:06
of just all of what what what this was it's like it just it's like it kept
00:34:15
going but like a friend told me in the abyss you'll find a pearl and that he was arrested convicted
00:34:27
and he'll spend the rest of his life in jail I don't know if that's the Pearl
00:34:32
but that was the end result but he just he just took he wanted to take everybody with his pain my
00:34:43
pain H to spin a tail in front of a jury that's a level of narcissism that we
00:34:52
don't see so much Mr Wilson because of the special circumstances was sentenced to life
00:35:00
without the possibility of parole as a family member I can only imagine I don't stand in their shoes but
00:35:07
I can only imagine the agony um but ultimately the relief in hearing that the man who killed their sister raped
00:35:15
and murdered her has is now going to get Justice bloodline detectives now unmasking criminals like Philip Lee
00:35:23
Wilson who otherwise would literally have gotten away with murder I think for law enforcement I'm
00:35:32
more willing to use the word closure because they did what they were supposed to do and they never gave up they found
00:35:38
the answers they put the bad guy away I think for Robin's family and many families out
00:35:45
there I think it's a very difficult word to use the word closure because Robin's gone she's never coming
00:35:54
back she was killed in a brutal way and so I'm very very hesitant because um closure there's no such thing for
00:36:04
closure for many families I think the Hate's gone but the act of which what he did to
00:36:13
her is the hard you know that's that's the thing family has to live with
00:36:20
forever this how she had to suffered for that you know it's hard they say to
00:36:31
forgive because then you can let your own pain go and I think I work on that I say
00:36:41
heard something somewhere if you can't pray for the person individually then
00:36:45
pray for everybody and I include him in that prayer because I have to cleanse my
00:36:50
heart and soul of who he is the closure comes where I don't have to be obsessed anymore and
00:37:05
driven every holiday all the special moments in your life this is a case where the
00:37:14
Revolutionary science of investigative genetic genealogy succeeds and finds the truth against remarkable
00:37:24
odds I don't think that this case case could have been solved without forensic
00:37:29
genetic genealogy I mean it has been decades since and there had been no progress made on the
00:37:36
case Philip Wilson would have continued to live his life on the lamb if we had not used this tool and because of
00:37:44
forensic investigative genetic genealogy Philip Wilson now will die in prison and ultimately I think what
00:37:52
stands out for me is the fact that 40 years went went by without an answer and the passion and the
00:38:01
Persistence of people like Sergeant lyns was what brought this man to Justice I think I just have that don't
00:38:10
give up attitude and when you solve cases by not doing that just more of a reason to keep it going um so yeah I
00:38:19
mean we've been successful we're not going to solve every case but um I hope
00:38:24
it gives people hope that if they have a case maybe it can't be solved even 40
00:38:30
years later every case that we get leaves an impression this one impacted me one
00:38:39
because Robin was so young and because of the nature of how she was murdered I I just the fact that
00:38:50
the he came through a window it makes me double check everything at night or when
00:38:57
I'm home alone are my windows locked are my doors locked are my car doors locked
00:39:03
um and it's it's sad but it's the reality I think he just knew that she
00:39:09
was not ever going to date him and when we found out that she had gone to that party the night uh she left work one of
00:39:17
the people at the party that I eventually got to speak to said she was telling a couple girls at the party
00:39:23
there there was a guy that was harassing her and begging her and she was scared of him and I think that was Philip
00:39:28
Wilson There is a human toll of crime it changes people's lives I look at Robin's
00:39:34
case and I look at her sister Maria who has now created a foundation to help bring more cases to answers and I look
00:39:44
at it you know public policy is often times impacted by the actual victims of crime and so for me I never want the
00:39:51
public to forget that human toll she went down fighting and ultimately it's because she went down
00:39:58
fighting that that this person left his DNA behind I think the world knows that she
00:40:05
didn't have the opportunity to fulfill her life on Earth I think she was a beautiful funloving happy go-lucky
00:40:21
trusting kind person with her whole life ahead of her and that's what she lost
00:40:28
time incredible science and determination solve the case of Robin Brooks's murder after 42 years the
00:40:38
forensic techniques of phenotyping and investigative genetic genealogy now mean that no killer no matter how old the
00:40:48
case no matter how distant the time and location from his horrible act can ever feel safe from Justice
00:40:58
I'm Nancy Grace thank you for being with us here on bloodline detectives [Music]
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[Music] [Music]