00:00:01
[THEME MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: Carlsbad, New
Mexico, 1987, a family member makes a terrible discovery.
00:00:19
I think her last
moments were very violent. Mama knew a lot of people,
and they all loved her.
00:00:25
Sometimes it just
takes one moment to be in the wrong
place at the wrong time. NANCY GRACE: Detectives
work the case for years,
00:00:32
but they can't catch the killer. I'd pretty much given up hope. Just like following a
trail of cookie crumbs,
00:00:40
and there was just
no more crumbs. This is the story of a murder,
a murder that goes unsolved
00:00:48
for decades, and
an investigation taken up by a cold case team
determined to crack the case.
00:00:57
The original investigators
on this case were phenomenal. They were fantastic,
and it was only
00:01:03
because of their diligence,
we were able to pick this case up and move forward with it.
00:01:10
NANCY GRACE: Early advances
in DNA technology cannot solve the case until the
arrival of a new,
00:01:17
powerful scientific
tool, investigative genetic genealogy. I think this is
the most exciting
00:01:25
thing that's happened in 30
years to forensic science. From everything we
have learned about him
00:01:31
was nothing short of evil. NANCY GRACE: Now criminals
hiding in the shadows for years find there's
no escaping science
00:01:40
and their own family's DNA. I'm Nancy Grace. This is "Bloodline Detectives." [THEME MUSIC]
00:02:11
NANCY GRACE: Carlsbad,
New Mexico, 1987. It looked much the
same as it does today,
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a friendly, desert town proud
of its welcoming community and beautiful countryside.
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Being in uniform patrol, I was
highly visible and everything. And I adopted a habit of
literally, rain or shine,
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of always running around
in that marked unit with the window
down because I would
00:02:39
constantly get
chastised for failing to say hi or wave to people. It used to be a lot different.
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It was a lot better living
here back in the days, more quaint town than it is now.
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Now it's pretty busy. I mean, we're close to
El Paso, the border, so we get a lot of drugs here.
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Overall, it's not
crazy like a big city, but it does have its times where
we do have a lot of crimes.
00:03:09
We have been a, what you would
say, a rapid growth explosion. Carlsbad has really changed.
00:03:15
It changes day to day, month
to month, year to year. There's a community
spirit here that runs deep.
00:03:25
I liken it to the fact that the
Pecos River bisects the city. Psychologists say that if
you have a community that
00:03:36
has a water feature
in, by, or near that it produces a sense of unity. That unity however, is shaken
the night of July 8, 1987.
00:03:55
That evening, the body of
38-year-old Donna Sue Hyatt is discovered. Donna Sue has two daughters
Angie and Michelle,
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and its 21-year-old Angie who
discovers her mother's body. Angie had gone out that night
and taken her son with her,
00:04:17
and then returned
home after 11:00 and ultimately found her
mother deceased in the floor.
00:04:25
From the report
I read and then from talking to Angie a little
bit, she was extremely upset.
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She ran out of the
house screaming, she went across the street. There was an actual
neighbor that was
00:04:37
there and called the police. As I came down the street,
I had a real bad feeling.
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I remember dashing up
the steps and inside, and it was immediately
evident to me
00:04:57
that something
horrific had happened. It was one of the worst
I've ever encountered.
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There was blood spatter splashed
all the way around the room. She was lying on the floor.
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She had on a yellow
top that had been pulled up above her bustline
in a state of semi nakedness.
00:05:26
When I viewed Donna Sue,
the fluid I had suspicion was seminal. When I saw the
stains, the blood,
00:05:36
I immediately said
to myself, OK, this is going to
require expert handling. DNA testing and collection
was in its infancy.
00:05:50
It was pretty much
cutting edge, so my major concern was
that I keep the scene as sterile as I could.
00:06:02
Exactly-- I didn't
want to even so much as move a speck of dust. And once I'd satisfied
myself that I
00:06:12
had much more than
an apparent suicide, then I just backed out and said,
let's get the team in here.
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The normal stuff on a
crime scene was submitted. There was a smear on Donna
that was a glistening.
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I remember that was the exact
words that the investigator used, that they
did a swab of that,
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which was very strange
to me because it's 1987. We're not doing DNA. We're not doing that kind of
stuff, and they swabbed that,
00:06:43
and they sent that into the
lab also and it was secured. Mainly just for
evidential collection,
00:06:53
you know, not really for the DNA
testing like we use nowadays. NANCY GRACE: Donna Sue
Hyatt lives on Elm Street
00:07:01
on the West side of town. She was at that time living
with her adult daughter and her grandson were
staying with her.
00:07:10
Speaking to her daughter,
she was a good mom. She just wanted the best for
them, like any other mom.
00:07:17
Mama loved music. She liked to listen to music. She liked to do crafts. She liked to work in the
dress shops when she could.
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I remember her cleaning
house with her music, her records going. She liked Kenny Rogers and Dolly
Parton and contemporary gospel.
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And she loved going to church. We'd go to church on Sunday
with our grandparents.
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That was always the highlight
of the week was Sunday morning. She had a lot of things happen
to her, marriages that ended
00:07:48
in deaths of
husbands, and she had seizures that were
pretty frequent from what we had learned.
00:07:55
She had epilepsy, and it made
it really hard for her to work sometimes, and she didn't have a
driver's license because of it.
00:08:02
So it was hard for
her to get around. But from everything
that we learned about her,
00:08:07
she didn't let
that drag her down. We learned that she was a
very happy, vibrant person.
00:08:13
Very outgoing and very welcoming
and very kind to everybody. NANCY GRACE: After
securing the crime scene,
00:08:21
investigators transferred
Donna's body to the coroner in nearby Albuquerque. The autopsy sheds more light on
Donna Sue Hyatt's final hours.
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She had head trauma. Her hyoid bone, which is your
bone here on your throat, it was broken, so
they could definitely
00:08:43
tell she was strangled. She had been raped. She was very bruised,
beaten, very bloody.
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NANCY GRACE: A homicide
investigation is launched. Detectives begin
to gather evidence
00:08:57
and they try to learn
more about Donna Sue Hyatt and her daily routine. The officers who were
backtracking Donna's events
00:09:08
in that day learned that
she had been to the salon that day, she had
gotten her hair done,
00:09:13
she had went to lunch with
a friend who was in town, and just basically kind
of backtracked her day
00:09:18
to see who all her
involvement had been with in the last 24 hours. Detectives quickly make
an astute observation.
00:09:28
There is evidence at the crime
scene suggesting Donna Sue Hyatt shared a
drink with someone
00:09:35
in her home the
evening of her murder. On the table, it
appeared to detectives who arrived on scene, that there
had been more than just Donna
00:09:46
in her house that evening. There were, in fact, two glasses
of Coke that had been poured.
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Along with the Coke on
the table was a fried pie from a convenience store,
and then they ultimately
00:09:58
found a receipt, which began
their timeline for tracking the night's events. And they found that Donna
had gone to the store.
00:10:09
It had the time
that she had gone to the store, which was there
at approximately 9:30 or so.
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She had entered the
store with a male. He was a light skinned,
brownish blonde hair, very tall,
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broad shoulders, kind
of scruffy looking is how he was described. The store clerk said that he
knew the guy wasn't from there
00:10:34
because he had come in earlier,
bought some cigarettes, and then he also tried
to buy some beer,
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but they didn't sell beer there. And so he figured he
probably wasn't from there.
00:10:45
He was with Donna,
and Donna, I remember from some of the witnesses
saying that Donna
00:10:51
was like talking to him like she
was going to buy him something. What do you want?
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And he was like
whatever, I don't care. One witness I remember
reading said that Donna seemed
00:11:04
persistent, like she wanted
to get him something, and then she got a Coke,
and then he got a Coke.
00:11:10
And then they went up to the
front and bought the Cokes, bought the pie, and
they left together.
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The two witnesses
said it seemed weird. The guy seemed kind of strange. JOEY LANDGRAF: They had a sketch
made up of that individual
00:11:26
to the best of their
abilities and they, of course, distributed it. My summary was that she
had gone to the store,
00:11:37
picked up a snack, possibly
either met or had made arrangements to have a visitor.
00:11:47
It would appear
that she maybe had invited the individual into the
house and something snapped.
00:11:58
That was my first
suspicion based on the blood spatter,
the furniture placements,
00:12:06
her clothing disarray. It almost looked like she
spurned someone's advances and they attacked.
00:12:16
Who is the fair
haired stranger police believe followed
Donna Sue Hyatt home? We find out next on
"Bloodline Detectives."
00:12:27
[THEME MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: 1987,
Carlsbad, New Mexico, detectives investigating
the brutal rape
00:12:42
and murder of a 38-year-old
mom of two, Donna Sue Hyatt. They know the night Donna Sue
is murdered she's in the company
00:12:52
of a fair haired man. Now detectives ask
the FBI for help. The FBI had a unit
they referred to
00:13:02
as the behavioral science unit. They had highly
trained individuals in different disciplines that
could take our case files
00:13:13
and build a psychological
profile based on evidence and circumstances and things
that we could supply to them
00:13:24
to give us direction
of what type of person might possibly be involved. They said that he was
kind of like a loner,
00:13:35
liked his mom a lot,
almost like a mama's boy. They said if he was
in the military,
00:13:41
he wouldn't have been
good in the military. He would probably most likely
had a dishonorable discharge.
00:13:49
He was kind of not like
a very social person. Really kept to himself. NANCY GRACE: With
the FBI profile,
00:14:00
local law enforcement
begins interviewing potential suspects. I think any time things
like this happen, of course,
00:14:08
you look at people that are
going to fit the profile that potentially either
have a previous record
00:14:13
or have committed similar
incidents of that type. If you can hopefully make
a connection to a victim
00:14:20
or make a timeline that puts
them in the area at the time, they're going to have to
be a person of interest.
00:14:26
Looked at a lot
of people in town. They looked at 20 some suspects
they looked at overall.
00:14:32
When Donna Sue's
funeral happened, they looked at those people
and who came because sometimes
00:14:39
a killer will show up you
at something like that, especially at the victim's
funeral or back at the scene.
00:14:47
NANCY GRACE: Years pass, the
investigation remains open, but the chances of identifying
Donna Sue Hyatt's killer
00:14:54
are fading. As the years went on,
occasionally a new detective would come into the force and
open the case and contact us,
00:15:03
and we'd always hoped
something would happen. But after a while, I'd honestly
kind of given up really.
00:15:10
I figured that I'd probably
never know, that we would probably never know. All of those years,
it just ate at me.
00:15:17
The trail and the case and
the circumstances, everything just went cold. It's just like following
a trail of cookie crumbs
00:15:26
and there was just
no more crumbs. The cold case
detectives are finding important clues hard to
come by but new science is
00:15:37
now coming into play. By the late '90s, 10 years
after Donna Sue's murder, DNA forensic technology
is advancing.
00:15:46
It is now possible to
create a unique profile based upon evidence
from a crime scene.
00:15:54
In this case, it
is male body fluid left behind by the killer. The key piece of
evidence that was located
00:16:03
was that semen sample that was
swabbed and ultimately sent to the New Mexico
state lab, where
00:16:10
that sample of the
suspect DNA was uploaded into the CODIS system. NANCY GRACE: CODIS is the United
States combined DNA system,
00:16:21
a national database
of DNA profiles from convicted offenders,
unsolved crime evidence,
00:16:28
and some missing people. The US would
nationalize a system called CODIS based on kind of a
newer version that DNA testing.
00:16:37
But even then, that wouldn't
have been helpful in solving the crime unless the person
responsible had already
00:16:42
been convicted of
another crime and had been entered into the database. And so it took both the
advent of advanced testing
00:16:48
but then also the exhaustive
testing of people that have been known
to commit a crime
00:16:53
before they can start piecing
those relationships together. And in this case, Donna's
killer never ended up in CODIS.
00:17:00
NANCY GRACE: This is yet another
setback for investigators, but it is by far not
the end of the story.
00:17:08
Another decade goes by. In May 2020, a new cold case
team takes over the case. I actually took the
case off of a shelf.
00:17:21
I was working another case,
and I went in the back into the records, and I saw
this case, and I thought, well,
00:17:29
what the heck? So I pulled it off the shelf,
I started reading the case. It was very interesting.
00:17:36
What really stood
out to me is how good these other investigators
were back then.
00:17:41
They followed
everything to the end. They didn't stop until
literally it just went cold.
00:17:49
I mean, there was
nothing to go on for what they had at that time. Two detectives
came by my house,
00:17:59
and they said, do you
remember this case? And I said, oh, yeah. And they told me, he said,
yes, we've read your report,
00:18:08
and we're reopening the case. I was ecstatic. I was literally over the moon. NANCY GRACE: The
new cold case team
00:18:22
looks at all the
old evidence, then they take advantage of a
new forensic science that
00:18:29
goes far beyond
phenotyping that provides a profile of the suspect. My partner had come
across Parabon lab
00:18:40
and we were trying to
determine some descriptors of our suspect. So in researching that,
ultimately he located Parabon,
00:18:51
and we were able to send a
sample of our DNA to Parabon and get that descriptor
of what our suspect would
00:18:58
have looked like. He was of European descent. He was fair complected,
probably freckly.
00:19:04
He had strawberry blonde
or dirty blonde hair, and he would have been tall. Ultimately, we took that and the
old sketch that had originally
00:19:15
been done and had a new sketch
done of what we had found out. NANCY GRACE: All
that's missing now
00:19:22
to identify the so-called
fair haired man is his name. For that, detectives turn
to a new ground breaking
00:19:31
technique, science
that is solving seemingly impossible cases. That technique, investigative
genetic genealogy.
00:19:42
They came to me in early 2022,
told me that they were really picking up the case and really
looking at it hard again,
00:19:49
that they had made some
really good progress. But that it was
coming to a point where they felt like-- they
wanted to prepare me that there
00:19:55
might be some things that
might come down to genealogy, investigative
genealogy, and involving
00:20:01
DNA evidence that was recovered
from the original scene. We talked about what
all that would entail,
00:20:06
the testing that would
have to occur in that. We didn't really stop to really
think about the monetary cost.
00:20:12
Even though it had
to be discussed, I don't think that was
ever a roadblock for us
00:20:16
moving forward in the case. Will Donna Sue
Hyatt's killer be identified after 30 long years?
00:20:25
Next on "Bloodline Detectives." [THEME MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: The unsolved rape
and murder of Donna Sue Hyatt
00:20:41
is now over 30 years old,
but cold case investigators are lucky because
detectives at the time
00:20:48
of the murder very carefully
preserved crucial evidence. The most important
evidence, male bodily fluid
00:20:57
from Donna Sue Hyatt's killer. Now, a brand new generation
of Bloodline Detectives
00:21:04
are using investigative
genetic genealogy to blow this case wide open. I actually talked
to an FBI agent
00:21:13
that I knew, who actually
worked with me on another case, and he told me, hey,
these guys are phenomenal.
00:21:19
You should reach out
to them, and so I did. I think that
this new technology is the most exciting thing
that's happened in 30 years.
00:21:28
In the last 30 years,
there's really not been anything as
nearly as exciting as this forensic
genetic genealogy, which
00:21:35
now for the first time can use
DNA to find people that are tied to a crime scene,
but even without the need
00:21:40
to use a database like
CODIS or without the need to actually have
folks that are already
00:21:46
suspects or people of interest. NANCY GRACE: So how exactly
does this new investigative
00:21:52
technique solve crimes? Forensic genetic genealogy
is an interesting application
00:21:58
of genetic genealogy. Genetic genealogy came into
existence about 20 years ago and was a field that
emerged from a combination
00:22:08
of an interest in
genealogy and the pursuit of genealogical
records that could help build out family trees.
00:22:13
And the need to essentially
remove the ambiguities when the names are wrong
on a public record,
00:22:19
or when there's confusion about
the same surname, for example, is part of that family or not.
00:22:23
And so DNA testing and
genome wide testing became a valuable
tool to essentially
00:22:30
refine people's observations
of the genealogical space. And that combination of
DNA testing and genealogy
00:22:36
became known as
genetic genealogy. Forensic genetic genealogy
is the application
00:22:41
of that approach using
genealogy and using genetics to identify relationships,
but to do this
00:22:47
in a forensic context, which
means that you're focusing on a forensic investigation,
usually the identification
00:22:54
of a victim or the
identification of a suspect in a crime and the
need to work from DNA
00:22:59
material that is imperfect. In genetic genealogy,
that information that you're gathering
comes from a buccal swab
00:23:05
or from saliva that is
coming from a living person. They may have tested last week,
and so there's lots of DNA.
00:23:11
It's fresh. It's high quality. Forensic DNA is a lot more
complicated than that.
00:23:17
There's usually very little DNA. It's chemically damaged. It's degraded. There could be
multiple contributors.
00:23:22
There could be
non-human components, like bacteria and other things
that are kind of mixed in.
00:23:27
And so it's just simply a more
challenging starting point from which to do the work.
00:23:33
The team then uses a technique
known as forensic grade genome sequencing. Forensic grade
genome sequencing
00:23:43
is a sequence of processes
that are used for us to prepare the DNA for our type of
sequencing technology,
00:23:52
and then sequence the DNA to
create a high performing DNA profile that can be uploaded
to genealogical databases
00:24:01
in order to get the matches
necessary to identify someone, or can be used for detailed
biogeographical analysis
00:24:09
or any other technique
necessary to get the investigative information
that you need to return
00:24:15
back to the detectives
and allow them to move their case forward. From the case file, looked
pretty typical of what
00:24:25
we've seen for
sex assault cases, and we said that we
would give it a shot. And so we sent them over
the shipping instructions,
00:24:31
unique barcode to assign
their evidence to our case. I sent them the
actual swab that
00:24:38
was taken from the smear
of Donna Sue Hyatt's thigh and kind of stomach
area, and I sent that
00:24:47
to Othram to have it tested. We worked very closely
with the Carlsbad Police on this case.
00:24:52
It was very important to
them to know at every step kind of where we were getting.
00:24:56
If things were moving in
the right direction, and so we were very
excited to tell them
00:25:00
at the conclusion of
the laboratory part, that we had successfully
built a DNA profile
00:25:04
and that it was a
high quality profile and ready for that
next step, which is the genealogical
research investigation.
00:25:11
In this case, we were
working with the FBI, so our profile was
sent to the FBI, and they are the ones
that did the genealogy.
00:25:21
Here's how the FBI does it. The suspect's DNA is linked to
profiles from existing family
00:25:29
DNA databases. This delivers hits to
several distant relatives of the suspect. Very soon, the list of
names is narrowed down
00:25:41
to one close family member
of the suspect they believe murdered Donna Sue Hyatt.
00:25:48
Through matching and through
the genealogy and stuff, we were able to figure out
that there was a family member.
00:25:56
The family's name was Wigley. NANCY GRACE: Police discover
two brothers with the surname
00:26:03
Wigley were living in
Carlsbad, New Mexico at the time of the murder. Ultimately, we were able to
get the suspect sister's DNA
00:26:17
and find out that they were
100% biological sibling matches to our suspect. NANCY GRACE: Detectives
quickly tracked down
00:26:25
one of the Wigley brothers. I had gotten DNA from him
and sent it directly to the New
00:26:32
Mexico state lab
for testing, and he was eliminated as our suspect. We knew there was only
one other brother and that
00:26:39
would be Michael Ruff Wigley. NANCY GRACE: Michael
Ruff Wigley moves from being a person of interest
to becoming the prime suspect.
00:26:48
He did live in Carlsbad
at a period of time further back than the 80s. He went to high
school in Eunice.
00:26:56
He went to the military. He was kind of a loner. He was very tall, very
thin, very fair complected,
00:27:04
kind of reddish hair. Things that were said
about our suspect, of course, turned out to be very much true.
00:27:14
You know, somebody who may
have been in the military and then ultimately been
expelled from the military,
00:27:21
had problems with women
and ultimately, that's what we found. Michael Ruff Wigley had actually
been arrested and charged
00:27:31
in Coppers Cove, Texas, for
the rape of a young woman, who had come into
a police department
00:27:37
and asked for directions. He had been himself at
the police department requesting a copy of a report.
00:27:45
Ultimately, he went outside,
he waited for this young lady to exit the police department.
00:27:50
He grabbed her, he drug
her into the alley. He beat her severely. He raped her. And then he threatened to
kill her if she told anyone.
00:27:59
She did come forward,
she notified police. She made a report. She was terrified.
00:28:04
She did not want
to pursue charges. We then kept
digging into Michael and we located that he had been
the sole person of interest
00:28:15
and a suspect in a homicide
of one of his neighbors back in the same time. A young lady went missing,
her decomposing body was found
00:28:26
naked, and she had been beaten. She suffered blunt force
trauma, died as a result of it,
00:28:33
and ultimately, he had been
seen walking away with her. And he was the last
person seen with her.
00:28:39
Due to decomposition
of her body, they couldn't obtain enough
evidence to go after Michael
00:28:47
Ruff Wigley for that. They went back to the
original rape victim, told her about the homicide that
they believed he was involved
00:28:54
in, she then agreed to
move forward and proceed with charges against him. Ultimately, he was
convicted and he spent
00:29:02
just under six years in prison. Detectives now face a
new roadblock in arresting
00:29:12
Michael Ruff Wigley. After his release
from prison in 1989, he's killed when his
car fails to give
00:29:20
way to an oncoming train. The impact carries his
vehicle over half a mile. He dies at the scene.
00:29:29
Wigley had died in 1989, which
would explain the reason why our CODIS DNA never got a hit.
00:29:37
Because we knew two
things about our suspect, either he committed
this one crime
00:29:43
and moved on and never
done anything ever again, or he had died and
that was the reason we
00:29:50
weren't getting a hit in CODIS. Knowing that he died shortly
after he killed my mama,
00:29:59
I'm glad for that because
that means that's fewer people he hurt along the way. Sounds like he had a pretty
bad death and that's OK too.
00:30:12
NANCY GRACE: Still, detectives
and Donna Sue Hyatt's family want definitive proof Michael
Ruff Wigley is her killer.
00:30:21
The Bloodline Detectives must
match his DNA with male bodily fluid left at the murder scene.
00:30:30
It just felt like
the case was moving forward and getting closer
and closer to being closed.
00:30:34
It was a tentative match,
and I crossed my fingers, and I was holding my breath.
00:30:40
And I got notification
from the detectives that there was going
to be an exhumation
00:30:46
in Texas of the body. But will this tentative DNA
match hold up after Michael Ruff Wigley's body is exhumed?
00:30:58
We find out next on
"Bloodline Detectives." [THEME MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: Carlsbad,
New Mexico, 2023.
00:31:14
Detectives are so
close to solving the 1987 rape and murder of
a young mom, Donna Sue Hyatt.
00:31:24
Thanks to investigative
genetic genealogy, they have the name
of a man they believe
00:31:31
is the killer,
Michael Ruff Wigley. Wigley is a man with a
very long criminal history.
00:31:38
He's also dead, killed in
a traffic accident in 1989. Investigators must exhume
Wigley's body in Texas
00:31:47
to match his DNA to
biological evidence left at the murder scene. We wanted to make
sure we got 100% match,
00:31:56
that this was our suspect. When we got the
search warrant to exhume Michael Ruff Wigley
once he was identified
00:32:04
as our suspect for certain-- NANCY GRACE: Detective Nyce
called my aunt and my aunt
00:32:10
called me, and then
I called Detective Nyce to get the details. And he told me that they were
going to exhume the suspect.
00:32:19
And then I believe it was
October when they managed to do that, to exhume him. When the body was
exhumed in Amarillo,
00:32:29
we took Michael from
Amarillo to Lubbock, and we took him to a
forensic pathologist.
00:32:36
His femur bone was
removed from his left leg, and then six of his
teeth were removed also.
00:32:45
It was sent to Othram
and they did the sample. NANCY GRACE: Othram's
based in Texas.
00:32:53
It has an incredible
track record of cracking cold cases
using investigative genetic genealogy.
00:33:01
We can take the skeletal
remains, we can isolate a small piece of the
remains, a little fragment,
00:33:07
and from there, pull enough
DNA to be able to then identify that person. We were very excited to
share the news that we
00:33:15
were able to build a profile. This is the first time
that Carlsbad had attempted
00:33:20
to work on this method. This ended up being the
first publicly announced case of the FBI helped sort
out genealogically,
00:33:27
and so there was a lot of firsts
here, and we were excited. It's very important as
we're trying to encourage
00:33:32
the broad adoption of this
method, that especially if it's your first or
second time, that you
00:33:36
have a good experience. So making sure that we were able
to deliver them a good outcome
00:33:40
was important. And we were able
to get 100% match to the suspect DNA that was
left on Donna Sue Hyatt's body.
00:33:52
NANCY GRACE: The murder case
of Donna Sue Hyatt is solved, but now Bloodline
Detectives think her killer
00:33:59
may have murdered other women. Next on "Bloodline Detectives." [THEME MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: Carlsbad, New
Mexico, 2023, a suspect,
00:34:18
now dead, named Michael
Ruff Wigley has been identified as the man
who raped and murdered
00:34:25
Donna Sue Hyatt in 1987. Wigley has a long
criminal record. Detectives now hoping
investigative genetic genealogy
00:34:36
will link Wigley to
the unsolved murders of even more young women. I'm actually surprised
that we haven't had any more
00:34:47
hits on his DNA in CODIS. He is still listed
as unknown DNA at this time as a
suspect DNA, and we're
00:34:55
hoping that we can
get that changed and add his name to that DNA. The highlight of
this case for me
00:35:02
was when Michelle and
Angie came in and sat down with Detective Nyce and
just to know that they
00:35:11
finally had an answer. I called them in to the
Carlsbad Police Department. We met in a briefing room.
00:35:18
I met with Michelle Perry, the
older daughter of Donna Sue, and I met with Angie,
the younger daughter,
00:35:25
and then Michelle's husband. I told them that
we got 100% match. I was able to actually
give them the readout
00:35:35
and explain how it
worked from Othram. And I told them, you know,
I had a picture of Michael.
00:35:43
They weren't interested
in that, of course. It was a relief. I mean, it doesn't change
anything that happened
00:35:51
by any means, but it is a
relief because it's something you think about all the time.
00:35:58
I'm sure that the
whole community is somewhat relieved
because anyone who knew her always wonders.
00:36:05
It was a shock to everyone,
not just my family. The way I look at it is
is you should never give up
00:36:13
because there's always a
chance you could give closure to a family and help them.
00:36:17
To finally put a name
to who killed their mom, I think, yeah, definitely. In order to give
closure to my victims,
00:36:34
I always tried to give, where
possible, an explanation and the why that this happened.
00:36:43
Even as abstract or
heinous as it may be, I felt a duty to my victims to
be able to say this is why this
00:36:53
happened, or at least, I could
say this is why I suspect this something happened.
00:37:00
I think that Donna Sue
befriended a guy while she was walking, and I think Michael
is, what I've learned
00:37:08
through my
investigation, that he was kind of a slick
talker in the fact that he was friendly to people.
00:37:15
And Donna was
friendly to people, and I think they talked,
they walked, they went to the Circle K.
00:37:23
I think he convinced
Donna that he was somebody that he wasn't,
and her being who
00:37:27
she was, because she
was a very kind woman, I think in his
convincing her of who
00:37:34
he was, he walked back from
the Circle K to her residence with her. She invited him in
and then ultimately, I
00:37:42
think he made a pass at her and
she squashed that very quickly, which enraged him.
00:37:49
She was a very
small, petite woman. He was very tall. He would have towered over her.
00:37:55
And the first hit pretty
well knocked her unconscious. The doctor even
speculated that maybe she
00:38:03
would have gone into
a seizure, and then he continued to beat her. And I don't think at any time
that she could even fight back.
00:38:13
I think she had
been hit and beaten to the point where
that capability no longer existed for her.
00:38:21
It may not even be
a sexual nature, but it's about
control over somebody. And ultimately, somebody
who's just, in all honesty, I
00:38:30
think an evil person. The Bloodline Detectives
are now solving cold cases more than 50 years old.
00:38:38
Of course, forensic science
is the major reason for that, but there's another ingredient
needed for that amazing science
00:38:46
to work. I can't thank those
original detectives enough, and the police officers
that secured the scene
00:38:58
and took care of everything. For them to have the
wherewithal, the determination,
00:39:03
to collect every
piece of evidence and that have been
collected, that was it. That was the key piece of
evidence that solved the case.
00:39:14
I can't say enough. All the credit really goes to
the investigators in this case.
00:39:18
Because without
their dedication, without their passion,
without their determination
00:39:24
to see this thing
through, then we wouldn't be sitting here today. NANCY GRACE: Investigative
genetic genealogy
00:39:30
is solving cases that were
previously deemed unsolvable. There was an old adage that I
used to use when I was training
00:39:40
my people, and that
was is that people lie, but evidence never does. It can be misinterpreted,
but it never lies.
00:39:53
My daughters never
got to know her. My sister's kids
never got to know her. I tell them about when we were
young and how much fun she was.
00:40:04
And we look at pictures. They see pictures of her. We share those all the time. She would be at the
birthday parties,
00:40:11
you know, she would be at
all of the family events. She would be a big part of it.
00:40:18
The incredible science of
investigative genetic genealogy is also creating a
new type of justice.
00:40:25
It's inevitable
that when a case is as old as Donna Sue Hyatt's, the
actual perpetrator may be dead.
00:40:34
In those cases, forensic science
can link that perpetrator to his crimes even
after death, but yet, it
00:40:44
can never bring him to trial. For the families of victims and
for investigators that means
00:40:51
there's yet another definition
of so-called closure. I'm Nancy Grace. Thank you for joining us here
on "Bloodline Detectives."
00:41:10
[THEME MUSIC]